At Sixth Form College
The computers were all RM Nimbus 8086s. They ran some weird arbitrary front end whereby you got a RM login screen and once you logged in you had two columns of squares for the F-keys which launched such things as BBC Basic, RM Basic (which was fuck weird), WordStar, SuperCalc 2, and other such late 80s goodies.
The login screen was a basic affair, name and password and that was pretty much it. So, I had a go at recreating it in BBC Basic. This was piss easy, so I had it capture the name and password and write it to a file. Then I added a routine whereby once it had captured it to a file, the program halted and it would close the RM menu system and drop into DOS.
After the last period of the day had ended, I logged onto each computer in the room and ran my program to capture loads of usernames and passwords. Not like there was anything worth accessing, just the thought of collecting the login details was too exciting to ignore.
After a few minutes, my fake login screen was running, and I left college and went home.

The next day, the Computer Studies teacher (and system manager), Ray (etc) collared me and told me what had happened. A night class was on the previous night, a group of people who were doing a "basic introduction to computers" course. They had turned up, logged in and rather than being presented with the menu, were reverted to a DOS prompt.
The tutor knew how to teach the subject, but had no clue about the system management and was at a loss at what to do. So she phoned the Ray who came out to the college from home to sort it out. He went around and rebooted each computer and then went to check the server logs, and found the last person to login on each computer was me, all at the same time.
I was banned from the computer room for a week for that stunt.


I also once told him he was speaking out of his big fat arse, though he didn't find it as funny as I thought he would in my head.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 9 Sep 2011, 17:55, 5 replies)

I did exactly this.
Except that mine blanked the screen after login, so it got power cycled. And I only ran it on the machine the teacher used.
( Ungersven would support SpankyHanky's patreon, Fri 9 Sep 2011, 18:04, closed)

God, I love 80's computers.
i had forgotten about Nimbus- How the shuddering fuck are you meant to pluralise that-, I still feel things got better in the 90's though. What would I give for an Archamedies,and a copy of Interdicter.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Sat 10 Sep 2011, 0:01, closed)

I've got an A310 in my parents' garage
They were shittier than the Nimbuseses though, I seem to recall. Mine had a dodgy sound podule so kept making fart sounds. No joke.

I do wonder if I could get ArcLinux working on it, though…
( Ungersven would support SpankyHanky's patreon, Sat 10 Sep 2011, 9:57, closed)

Arc Linux just about runs.
I've still got a modded A440 c/w SCSI + ethernet, ARM3 + VIDC enhancer. Luckily my then employer bought it for me and upgraded it over the years for me. For its time, it wasn't too bad, but they should have bought me the R260 to donk with.
Last time I powered it up, it offered RISC/OS3.1 or Acorns slobberingly shit version of Unix.
After much fannying about, I got a shell prompt, thought fuck it and put it back in the loft. The big PITA on that class of Arc is the useless floppy disc drive.
Linux on a RiscPC or later is not too bad, but compared to even a low end Pentium is shit slow.
( moonbadger Doesn't judge a fish by its ability to climb trees, Sat 10 Sep 2011, 18:27, closed)

The A310 has RiscOS 2 ROMs, not 3. That might be a good start.
( Ungersven would support SpankyHanky's patreon, Sun 11 Sep 2011, 12:58, closed)