Teaching an old dog new tricks

Remember the movie "Revenge of the Nerds"?

I'd watch my back side if I were you! ;)

(Just kidding)

Anybody remember QBASIC Gorillas?

Where can I get a modern version of this game?

by admin Jun 17, 2003

e-mail me I'll send you a .zip

:>

by road-dog Jun 18, 2003

since the Reagan Administration. That's the one where you put in the angles and force and throw bananas?

This is a trip in the wayback machine!

Really. Freeware. No Trojans even :)

Anyway, you should have got it by now Jim :) If not, let me know!

I got it, just haven't had time to install it and run it.

Thanks.

by maxwell edison Jun 17, 2003

Lastdrive=z
Subst q: c:\alpha\beta\charlie\delta

wildcards were something other than one-eyed jacks

and don't forget to park the hard drive before you move the computer.

I would have put lastdrive=q in this case, but that's just me. ;)

by admin Jun 17, 2003

xcopy and a little .bat run in scheduler and everyone thought you were a genius and could fix everything!

hheheee

:)

Don't forget to do attrib -a as the first step, to set (or was it reset?) all of the archive bits, then run xcopy /m to copy (and check them off as copied) for your archive.

Of course, you had to have a stack of formatted disks before starting, or a second computer to format some more during the process!

I always wondered why more people didn't use xcopy/m to do their archiving...

by orvillec Jun 20, 2003

Most people have come into PC technology during the WIN GUI days. They are not even aware of the existance of a 'Prompt'! They have been WINDOWIZED!
DOS has become Denial Of Service to most!

Ask any user about FDISK, or FORMAT C:/s...response.. HUH?

by merchantbanker Jun 18, 2003

Remember ? Low-levelling bad drives ?

You often had to invoke the embedded ROM routine on the disk controller card which was usually ..

Debug>
Then it was: -go=c800:5

Then wait 2 hours or more ...

What fun !

by jim phelps Jun 18, 2003

I remember those days, when I was promised that I could get more capacity out of an MFM drive, if I would format it RLL.

However, I was told it was risky.

I didn't do it.

by 1stladytech Jul 17, 2003

My favorite trick was to install a 30 meg into a system that didn't support it. Set up your low level routine to format a 40 gig, then sit and wait for the drive to start clicking the heads on the last cylinder while trying to lowlevel the last 10 meg. Shut the machine off, and you could format the first 20 meg as c: and the rest as d: And they said that it couldn't be done.

Vickie

by jim phelps Jul 17, 2003

Sounds like you go back further than me! I always thought that you simply created multiple partitions of 33? megs each, and the system would assign drive letters.

I guess in the system to which you're referring, the system wouldn't even recognize the full 30 megs of the drive.

I remember the first IBM PC I ever had, if the BIOS had been ONE DAY OLDER, it wouldn't have supported a hard drive!

by jim phelps Jun 18, 2003

I installed SuperStor on my DOS 5.0 original IBM PC (B) (any older and it wouldn't have natively supported a hard drive!), with my 20 Meg hard drive (and 2400 baud modem, and daisy wheel printer! I was uptown!). It doubled the capacity of the harddrive. However, when I ran one of the SuperStor utilities on the drive, it corrupted the drive.

I had to wipe the drive and reinstall everything, which was a piece of cake, since it was all DOS!

by admin Jun 18, 2003

r cx
8
n fastxt.com
a100
IN AL,61
OR AL,04
OUT 61,AL
INT 20

w
q

write it in ERSO.INP then DEBUG

by jim phelps Jun 18, 2003

Man, you DO go way back!

By the way, I tried to email you to get a copy of Gorillas, but it came back. Can you send it to jim.phelps@paxemail.com?

Thanks.

by admin Jun 18, 2003

Jim, I saw you posted your addy and was going to mail you Gorilla's 2 when I got home... now I'm home and your post won't show no matter how many times I refresh!

As soon as I see it again, I'll get it out to you :)

jim.phelps@paxemail.com

Thanks.

Sorry about the re-post.... I see the original again now! :)

by guruofdos Jun 18, 2003

Hee hee...getting DOS games written for older PC's (XT) to work on newer ones!

I had a game called 'Grand Prix' where you had to manage a GP race team. It was released when the DX33 was in vogue and used software timing loops to provide delays inthe 'real-time' action in the game! My first home computer (up until '95 I used works 486's at the weekend!) was a P120 and the 70 lap races that took 5 minutes on the DX33 lasted about 9 seconds on the P120. One of the objects of the game was to monitor tyre wear and fuel levels during the game and decide when to pull cars in for pit-stops! The only way to play the game on the P120 was to seriously underclock the PC! There were various tricks...a software utility called slo-mo which diverted the clock-tick interrupt to run idle loops where you could preload a register with the number of repeats to slow the pc doen by the desired amount was one solution. My favourite method was to 'hardware underclock' by fitting dip switches to a drive bay blank panel and wire them across the clock and multiplier jumpers...using an interposer on the CPU, it was possible to divide the CPU clock down by /2 or /4 using a couple of 74HCT family chips and get the board to run at 50MHz, divide the CPU clock down to 12.5Mhz and a multiplier of 1.5 to effectively get a 18.75MHz Pentium!

Remember "Compatibility mode"? I can't remember which program needed it, but if your PC went too fast, you could run it in compatibility mode so that the software would run.

I think that was an IBM thing.

Oh man... I am a fanatic about the Bullfrog Entertainment game Hi-Octane!!! It too is software clocked and I have to software force it to run slow enough to be playable!

Who would of thought this would happen.... :)

by jellimonsta Jun 20, 2003

Was that the game that was a hover-auto race? I used to love that game too! I guess Pod Racer is a suitable replacement though.
I had a ROM fighting game that I tried to run on my 2.5GHz sys w/ 1GB or Rambus and 128MB vid. I had to top the frame rate out as it was running at 240 fps.
Needless to say it was not at all playable, and the computer kicked my butt every time :)

by guruofdos Jun 20, 2003

...if this discussion thread was called 'Teaching a NEW dog OLD tricks'

:-)

Mike

One of the two DOS Scrabble games (called "Scramble" no doubt to avoid copyright infringement) which I mention will not run an anthing faster than a DX33. So I have it installed on a DX66, and just switch off "Turbo" to get it back down to a playable speed.

by jardinier Jun 18, 2003

is that I pretty much missed out on the DOS era. My first computer was a Kaypro 4, running C/PM, on which I wrote a novel and other things. When it konked out, I purchased my first Windows computer: 386SX; 4 MB RAM; 170 MB HDD.
It was at these point that I became a software junkie. Gradually upgraded this computer to 486DX50; 16 MB RAM; additional 850 MB HDD.

However, as my hobby/obsession/addiction is collecting software, I have just about everything that was ever released for DOS. I love the creativity expressed in the early games. Whilst I have never encountered a Windows version of Scrabble, I copied off an old machine a DOS version created in 1990. It is annoyingly clever, and thrashes me 19 times out of 20. I have another more rudimentary DOS version of Scrabble, created in 1988.
I sincerely regret the total disappearance of DOS from PCs because there are several DOS commands that I frequently use, especially "diskcopy."
Long live MS-DOS!

by maxwell edison Jun 18, 2003

I'm sure you have valid software licenses for all that software you collect, and you've paid all the appropriate license fees.

Even though they're DOS programs, license compliance is still important. (And the honest and honorable thing to do, of course.)

Perhaps his DOS programs are all "shareware", and he is still evaluating them... ;)

Remember those days?

You can still use many DOS commands, such as xcopy, if you shell out (remember that term?) to a DOS prompt.

When Windows 3.1 first came out, I was firmly entrenched in DOS, writing and maintaining C programs. I found that Windows was a really great DOS shell, allowing me to run multiple DOS windows, so that I could cut and paste between DOS sessions. I ran PC Anywhere in one window (connected to a user), in another window I ran a local copy of what the user was running, in another window Iran QEdit (remember that one?), and in another window I ran our call tracking program.

That was living!

Thinking about it reminds me that instead of the GUI I ran C-Menu for a long time.... I found it much faster and easier to use than Windows at the time!! hehe C-Menu and DOS 6.22 (Or better yet- DRDOS IMO) hmmmmm.... now I'm thinking of switching back.... :)

Sorry about the misunderstanding. Whilst I haven't used XP, I understand that it doesn't have a DOS facility. Please correct me if I am wrong. Yes, I still use DOS commands on all the Windows OSs I have, up to ME.

I collect Macintosh software also, and Macintosh computers are SO HORRIBLE!
For example: "Such and such has occurred because of an unexpected error."
Or: "Restart your computer by holding down the keys "Command" "Option" and "Delete," Nothing happens.
Or: "Restart your computer using the 'Start' button." Again, nothing happens.

And my brother collects Commodore :) Mac isn't all that strange!

by guruofdos Jun 18, 2003

Actually, over 50% of the computer world still use DOS in one form or another (an actual DOS installation or as a command prompt from within Windows) and DOS is very much alive and kicking.

There are some things that DOS still does faster and better than any GUI and there are cases where a very simple task or process can be carried out much more effectively under a DOS environment than under Windows. Some software doesn't need colour displays or fast processors and if a PC is dedicated to performing that one single task then why bother with the overhead of Windows?

I look forward, rather than back, to the days when DOS is treated as a valid tool and people learn how to use it effectively...rather than viewed as a historic novelty!

by maxwell edison Jun 18, 2003

I too use DOS (command prompt) quite frequently. I still use a batch file that I wrote to incrementally archive the files on a couple a couple of servers. And we still have a stand-alone DOS machine for a certain application. (Which backs-up to a second removable hard drive in a hot-swap bay.)

by guruofdos Jun 19, 2003

Microsoft became what they are today BECAUSE of DOS and IN SPITE OF Windows!

I still have several genuine shrink-wrapped copies of DOS3.0, 4.01 (all on 5.25" SS SD floppies!), 5, 6.0, 6.1 and 6.22 and even to this day, I still install full versions of DOS on some PC's for certain uses. Mind you...thats a hell of a lot of partitions on a 40Gb hard disk :-)

Gurus Unite :-)

by hal 9000 Jun 19, 2003

At a MS Partners meeting in Feb this year the head of MS Marketing in Australia told us that they are still selling about 50 copies of DOS per month and he couldn't understand just why anyone would buy these. He then went on to try to talk us all tousing the embeded XP alternative.

But what I found most interesting is that this guy would never consider telling us Partners to pirate enbedded XP but he saw no problem with pirating DOS.

by jardinier Jun 21, 2003

Amongst an assortment of computer stuff which I purchased recently at a garage sale, was a program: "Windows Arcade Solid Gold," (for Win 3.0 and circa 1991).
It consisted of a single DD 3 1/2 in disc. But would it install? Oh no. "Can't read from Drive A" etc.
So back to DOS Prompt and type:
copy a:\*.* c:\arcade

Now I've got 8 new games, including a previously undiscovered version of tetris called "Bloxs."

by jim phelps Jun 23, 2003

You mean you went to the useless and obsolete DOS prompt and actually did something?

Will wonders never cease! ;)

Anybody remember Carbon Copy for DOS, and what a dog it was? You could be 95% through a lengthy file transfer (perhaps 10K?), and the connection would drop, and you'd have to start over. And it took so long to load.

Then we got PC Anywhere for DOS. If the connection dropped, it would pickup right where it left off with the file transfer when you reconnected.

About the only thing I liked about Carbon Copy for DOS was that you could issue standard DOS commands to transfer files, like:COPY RC:\filename.txt LC:

(R being remote, and L being local)

I can't remember the first one, but I soon switched to PowerBBS software, which was AMAZING! Especially in the early days of internet when I had to drop to the shell from the early dial-up local library renewal service if I wanted to get to the internet and then there wasn't much content of interest! Not much in the way of web pages really... just hoards of files and text mainly... then there were the BBS networks...(I was a member of a great few of them) which kept all the geeks connected viamodem.... Thats right, a modem for EVERY node! (My personal BBS only had one node) hehehee :)

Did you ever set up your own BBS using Procomm Host?

Where have the simple times gone? Anything was possible (and simple) in those days.

by maxwell edison Jun 19, 2003

Yes, there were a lot of those. I especially loved the ones that said it's free to use and share, but if you like it you are also asked to send in $25 to help defray the costs. Did anyone ever send in the $$. However, come to think of it, didn't WinZip, I mean PK Zip, I mean Zip start that way? And what about McAfee - didn't that start as shareware?

All the freeware, well most of it anyway, always seemed rather rudimentary, and anything that was really slick or worked well had that license requirement. What many people don't realize is that with software, the creator always "owns" it, and the user is simply granted permission to "use" it - for a fee - under certain stated conditions. OEM software, for example, in most cases can't be used on any computer other than the original one on which it was installed.

I use "PowerZip," published by Expert Software, which I purchased at the standard retail price.

I use "PowerZip," published by Expert Software, which I purchased at the standard retail price.

I am pretty sure it's freeware if I remember, if not, well I'll check and make sure I can distribute it to you legally! ;>

If it's Shareware, I'll try it for awhile, to see if I like it...

Remember GeoWorks and GeoDesk? I read an article about it which stated that it worked on an XT (as opposed to MS Windows, which required at least a 286), and worked well. And when you would shell out to DOS, it left a 4-byte stub in memory!

I always wanted to try it out, but I never did. GeoWorks sounded like a really great alternative to Windows (not so much bulk).

I'll bet they used Microsoft compilers to write and compile the code for Windows. Whenever I used Microsoft compilers (like Foxpro), the result was always a WHOLE BUNCH of unintelligible files (which did who knows what), and lots of BULK! When I wrote my own code and compiled it under Borland, the end result was a lot smaller, and "lean and mean".

Perhaps Borland was used for GeoWorks...

I have thought about setting up a BBS again just for the fun and the community! You don't need to pay for phone lines and modems anymore... you could use the internet to get in... and..... I was thinking about dusting off a couple of my old XT'sand saving any Shareware or Freeware I could from those days and then uploading it all for public access.... hmmmm... what would I call it.... XTasy perhaps??? hehehe :)

Perhaps someone can recommend a way of locating people who no longer reside at the address/website listed on the software that was written 10 - 15 years ago. I have even wasted the cost of international phone calls trying to contact companies/individuals who have moved on.
Perhaps you could recommend a reliable Private Investigation service?

How much would you spend for the private investigative service? Would it be more than the software is worth?

I would check with some of the computer magazines, particularly with some of the authors who have been around a long time. Bill Machrone and John Dvorak immediately come to mind.

by zlitocook Jun 19, 2003

You brought back memorys of my first computer an 8088 I had to use one giant floppy to start the thing and another to load things. I wrote my first program on it. Hay did you use mosaic as you first web browser? I remember having to set up all the settings like mtu, bbs server settings ect., before you could even try to get online.

Remember WordPerfect 5.0 for DOS? You could actually run it from floppy!

WordPerfect software (and 1-2-3 and dBase 3+) alone gave anyone sufficient reason to stick with DOS.

you could really make short work of a document with WP. No stupid paperclip or dog getting in your way, no sir! No 100 ways to do everything!
It was all there, at your fingerrrrrtips, wiating for the the single key that would get you what you needed! Less really is more. :)

Actually I enjoy reading "Nag Screens," and I have no intention of depriving myself of this most fulfilling pastime for the sake of the odd $25 here and there.

Possibly the only program that actually stopped working after 30 days was "Serif Page Plus" which I purchased legitimately. Registration was free, but had to be performed by telephone. I liked the program so much I actually telephoned the company in England, but was unable to make contact. However I was still able to access the excellent clipart collection which was on the CD-ROM.

Yet another reason NOT to switch to XP!

(Don't you just love Bill Gates?)

How many of you have fond memories of the IBM keyboard? It was loud, but boy, could I type fast and accurately on one of them!

Dell used to give you the IBM keyboard with the Dell logo on it.

Now, even IBM has dumped their "real" keyboard forthe "toys-r-us" imitation.

by orvillec Jun 20, 2003

Yes! Still have one in storage. That sucker would wake up my wife at night. It was very noisey....like rats on the floor..would drive even the user insane at 3 in the morning. CLACK! CLACKETY! CLACK!..Gime a break!

I recovered some of them out of the trash when they were being tossed out.

You can actually fix one of those keyboards, or take the keycaps off and clean them.

We used to use one for spare parts.

Best keyboard EVER MADE.

on anything else. I have a box of the old metal giants. Soon the keyboard will be the heaviest thing I drag to a LAN party!

:)

I'll bet you're the life of the party, clacking away like that!

by jardinier Jun 20, 2003

I use an original IBM keyboard on my most recent computer. Why? Well you just can't beat it for typing accuracy.

by jim phelps Jun 23, 2003

I'm amazed that IBM sold off, dumped, or shelved all of their successful ideas in the desktop arena. The venerable IBM keyboard was just the last in a long line of what if's.

I know that IBM could have made the same keyboard quieter, and therefore they would have satisfied most of the naysayers. Perhaps then we would still have the best keyboard ever made.

by 1stladytech Jul 17, 2003

it was and is. I used to carry one in my briefcase to use when I had to work on someone else's computer. I still use them an all my workstations and servers here in the office.

Vickie

by jim phelps Jul 17, 2003

The sad thing is that a few years back, when companies were retiring their PS/2s (remember that dog?), they were THROWING OUT their IBM keyboards! I grabbed a few out of the trash, one of them about 5 years old AND STILL IN THE ORIGINAL BOX AND SHRINKWRAP!

They should have recovered the keyboards and put them in storage, so that the user could choose a "toys-r-us" keyboard or a "real" keyboard.

by orvillec Jun 20, 2003

Man, We are showing our age! Ohhhh for those Atari 800/ Vic20/ C64/ IBM compatible/ Dos days. Then Microsoft had a bad dream and created MS Windows...All hell broke loose. Back then graphic games could fit on a 320K floppy - now a single graphic file cannot!

Remember typing code samples from magazines ..with no drive to store the files...Wow! Thats was fun.
Now can somebody explain why my two 23gig scsi's are nearly full of crap?

by maxwell edison Jun 20, 2003

In the mid to late 80s while I was becoming more and more of an "expert" (whatever that is) on using DOS and various other programs - HATING and RESISTING using the new Windows and looking for every opportunity to slam it (Windows 1 in 1985, Windows2 in 1987 and Windows 3 in 1990)- I should have instead just bought 1000 shares of Microsoft (for a couple of bucks a share) and called it a day. (That would be 225,000 shares today - at $26 per - after all the splits.)

Kinda' makes you sick, doesn't it?

http://tinyurl.com/etq3

by jellimonsta Jun 20, 2003

Hindsight is 20/20 huh Max?
Remember in Forrest Gump when he had those shares in Apple?

I still wonder if they can actually EVER write an OS core as clean as DOS.... :)

My first computer was the Atari ST 1040. The big deal in those days was to install some sort of chip or run some sort of program, to make it Mac-compatible.

Atari made such a big deal about their new Atari PC (IBM compatible), but then it died.Atari comes up with great ideas, and publicizes them, but then they don't follow through with it.

Yes, in the last days the Atari was a hollow shell, a straw Man hiding behind the marketing... The ST1024 was my last Atari. The days of the 400\800 were quite exciting though... and the ST's were really ahead of the game when they came out and the GUI and MIDI were way ahead IMO, of course yours is probably a later model ST as a 1024, so it had been "Caught Up" to somewhat. (can you tell I'm biased yet..hehe)

I have fond memories of writing visualization programs to run in my dorm room while I ran my stereo on an Atari and for some stupid reason thinking girls would like this, as well as making prank phone calls with the synthesized voice module late nights with friends around the old Atari knowing girls would probably NOT like this.A synthesized voice was something not many people had heard back then :)

We would get books or magazines and write and modify programs because we couldn't afford a lot of software and there wasn't a lot of sharing until I hit a University. hehehe... then it was on to the early IBM's in the computer lab where I delighted in sending unsuspecting other users messages from outer space and beyond and watch them look around uncomfortably upon reciept while I tried to both stare straight ahead and watch a bit.... hehehe oh well, that was a long time ago. It sounds crazy to the younger crowd, but it was really innocent then. No one was really being malicious, just curious, and if you pulled a good prank it was looked up to for the technical ability and geek humor by the geek crowd....

:)

Remember when college students used to hack into the scoreboards at football games and put messages up there?

by hal 9000 Jun 20, 2003

It was much better than the MS alternative as there where far more switches that you could apply and you could even "xcopy" to different size drives in the early versions something that MS latter rectified but I still used DR DOs because it was justbetter than the MS alternative.

Those where the days when a complete OS came on 3 floppies and installed in a few minutes instead of the up to 1 hour for Windoze XP and 2003. MS even sent me out a copy of Visual Studio .net & it came on a DVD. Thatthing is much bigger than any hard drive we could buy back then.

by hal 9000 Jun 20, 2003

It works better than MS Office but then again whats new? WP always was better than MS Word. You can still use the keyboard shortcuts although I'll be the first to admit that I've forgotten most of them as the Windoze version didn't need these and version 8 came with Dragons Naturally Speaking. Pitty that it doesn't work on XP.

But then WP 2002 is still better than MS Word and all the bits and pieces that come with the complete Office package. Even today MS Word hasn't managed the "Make It Fit" utility that WP has. I'd be lost without WP and I really feel terrable when I have to use MS Office for anything. Perhaps I'm just too old and set in my ways but I can't get Word to work as well as WP the only thing against WP now is there are toomany fonts and everything.

WP 5.0 for DOS had a printer driver for EVERY CONCEIVABLE PRINTER on the market. All designed very well. And it was easy to program the printer driver, say, if you needed to create accented vowels (for Spanish). What was really cool was programming my daisy wheel printer to print UPPER CASE accented vowels. You had to resize the line feed, do a reverse line feed and backspace, put the accent, do a forward line feed, then size it back to normal.

It was really fun watching it print -- it was printing away, and then it would stop in the middle of the doc and put an accent over the tall letter.

I worked with a guy who worked on LONG (+/- 120 pages) documents with imbedded spreadsheets. He said it would ALWAYS choke Word, but WordPerfect could handle it. Too bad he was behind the times with a product like WordPerfect. "Get with the times, buddy! Use the same garbage software that all the other companies are using!"

Sound familiar?

by hal 9000 Jun 20, 2003

I sell a lot of MS Office at the request of the clients but I also sell a lot of WP once they have got their Office running and then start complaining about the thing. A long time ago I think it was V6 for Windoes I put a copy on a business computerand allowed them to try it out for a couple of weeks. I then went into the Corel {I think} Office and told them what I had dome and the Australian Manager went through the roof. He was ranting and raving and after about 1 hour of this I simply said "So I guess that all this means that you don't want to sell me a 3,800 Site Licence?"

He was somewhat taken aback by this and he asked what I was talking about so I had to explain that the only way I could sell his product was to let the people actually have a play with it and every time they bought it just because it was soo much better.

What is interesting now however is once again when WP is starting to take off but without any help from Corel they are talking about selling both the Graphics and WP programs. So I guess that means the end of another Software Company but they really don't deserve to be in business as they have never attempted to pus their product in any manner what ever.

I honestly don't know how they have stayedin business for so long.

Ask them how to scan for a virus which is imbedded into Windows -- they'll simply reimage the PC.

Boot to DOS with NTFS-DOS, then scan. You'll get EVERY virus that way.