Hello hello. I keep getting pulled back to these forums in Google searches when searching for documentation and problem-solving so I feel I should introduce myself and Bessie - so I shall give a little background.

I am somewhere between 6 and 8 years old in the early 90s. I keep pestering my parents for a computer as the V-Tech toy I have been playing with just isn't cutting the mustard anymore. So my dad buys one of the old ones they were selling off at his work and brings it home. He sets it up and tells me to not touch it until he gets home the next day from work so he can sit with me. Me being me I promptly ignore him, and turn it on when I get a moment. Only to turn it off again in terror that I've broken it as it beeped at me...

So for the next year or so I discover the insurmountable joy of games like Crystal Caves, Commander Keen, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, Halloween Harry, Bubble Dizzy, and Wolfenstein 3D. That is until my friends little brother gets a broken 3.5" floppy (you know how the metal sheath could begin to bend outwards). Computer won't boot as there's a floppy disk in the drive. So my and his mothers proceed to remove the disk using knives. The disk gets removed, but the "insert system disk or disk error" message never goes. Bugger - broken floppy drive. Cue my dad taking it back into his work for repair.

Home comes Bessie again, but looking a bit different, it's missing the third-slot drive which I had no idea what it did (i think it was either a fixed-disk drive, or a tape drive), and the game loadout is different, and my saves are gone! Still... the floppy drive is still acting weirdly and my parents wouldn't LIE about fixing it and bringing home another computer instead would they? Never...

Anyway, Over the years it got used less and less, eventually living in a cupboard. Then a few years after I move out and unbeknownst to me, my parents decide they will be renovating my room. So I discover Bessie has been living in a GARAGE for the last year. A GARAGE! I need to save it. So on Saturday just there I went to collect it!

So meet Bessie! My Compaq 386s Desk pro.