Two interesting items have just come into my possession, and I'm
wondering there's a museum to which the should go, or if someone wants to
take them off my hands for, oh, I don't know, maybe a $10-$20 donation to
the 501(c)3 organization of your choice.
Both items are in their original shrinkwrap packaging and appear
undamaged.
1) IBM Disk Operating System 5.00 Upgrade (requires a hard disk with
a previous version of DOS (2.1 or higher) already installed).
Includes printed manual and software on three 720kb 3.5-inch diskettes.
2) Borland dBase IV for DOS version 1.1. Includes printed manuals
and software on 5.25 and 3.5 inch disk sets. Requires PC or MS DOS
versions 2.10 through 3.31, 4.01 and 100% compatibles. Multiuser mode
requires Netware 286 and 386, 3Com 3+, IBM PC LAN (including Token Ring),
100% compatibles.
Anyone interested?
32 responses total.
> Anyone interested? Not at all. A copy of Windows 1.0 might be a genuine curiosity but Dos 5.00 and dBase IV 1.1 were *way* too common..
I have a copy of Windows 2.0 somewhere. Not the original disks, though, unfortunately. Windows 1.0 is hardly recognizable as Windows. The Program Manager didn't appear until 2.0, for example. Anyone remember DESQview? I never had a copy, but I remember when it was pretty hot stuff.
Did I mention these items are still in original shrinkwrap?
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I know a *lot* about DESQview, since my old company's original (warehouse software) platform was DOS. We used DESQview to multitask several DOS programs at once: Recovery logger, user interface, alarms handler, radio terminal server... it was pretty slick, actually. They had an API for DESQview, so programs to send messages to each other and control which window was on top. And the memory manage, QEMM, that stuff was genius. Of course setting up each machine required using different tricks, but it would steal unused areas between 640K and 1Mb to run stuff in, so you'd have as much as possible below 640K. Never did play with the X windows stuff, though. I think that was a separate product.
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Yeah, and then Microsoft came out with their own inferior clone of it.
I didn't like dBaseIV, but I'm still using FoxPro, which started as a clone for dBaseIII. I use FoxPro to maintain and regenerate the 20,000-some pages of PoliticalGraveyard.com. Admittedly it's kind of weird to be using DOS software in 2003, but I have more than 30,000 lines of code into this; it works well; and I can't imagine making the time to port the whole thing into something else.
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If 'twere me, I'd be looking at ways to automate the port process. I'm sure there're lots of code snippets in the original which could be grepped and replaced with the appropriate replacement code using regexps as part of a source conversion utility which would probably be easier to develop than a manual replacement for the whole thing.
But on the other hand, if what he has now works, why change it?
Well, as the hardware/software combo on which it is running gets older and more out of date, I suppose it will be more and more expensive to maintain in the current format. Making a change now will make it more practicable to keep the whole thing up to date the next time. It is sort of a circular logic, but then that's the way technology works...
In fact Microsoft's business plan depends on that very model. ;-)
I think if it's working, there's no good reason to change.
Normally I'd agree, but in this case, that is the same logic that made Y2K such a huge debacle.
(Indeed. In preparation for Y2K, I stocked up with a 2.5 gallon jug of water. During the power outage in August, I couldn't find it. A few weeks later it showed up in the furnace room. Alas, the cap was loose and I didn't consider it good for anything other than watering plants. What a debacle! Not needed, not found, not drinkable. What a waste of $3!) Anyone have a good jug of water to trade for a Sperry PC? (Actually, I think my sister just tossed it.)
Kiwanis threw out lots of copies of DOS 5 -supposed to be the worst version. We use 6.22 or DR-DOS.
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My first computer was a Sperry PC. I got it from the MTU bookstore. It had MS DOS 3.3, 640K of RAM, 2 big 360K floppy disk drives for storage, and a Hercules monochrome graphics card. It cost around $2500.
(And was actually made by Mitsubishi.)
(Yes, that's right. It was a very good computer for it's time.)
DRDOS is horrible.
The first non-mainframe computer I used was a Kaypro 4.
My Zenith 148 was similar to jep's (a bit less memory) and cost half as much but I had to wait 6 months for it. The video was MDA not MGA and that cost me about $200 extra (instead of CGA). I used it until the late 90's, after adding 5M of hard drive.
dos 4.x was teh turkey, 5.x was pretty darn good - ran that on my apple //e for a while .. adn then 6.2.2 ran better.
You ran DOS 5 on an Apple II? Are you sure you aren't thinking of Apple (not Microsoft) DOS?
uhhh, yes, ran msdos 5.x and up t 6.2.2 onan apple //e with the applied engineering 640K ram card ... even hvae 360K adn 720k floppies on line! still WerkxFine (tm). and about 80 megs of scsi hd space too.
Shheeeesh tsty
...<hardcore hardware geek!> .. gotta luv me for that!
re: 27: ah. right. my mistake. right on!
/emote bows <tsty bows>
whore//.
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