Who here has fond memories about the good old days of DOS and such?

Question

I was in grade school when my family got their first computer:

40mhz 486DX
4mb ram
2mb Trident graphics card
250mb hard drive
Reveal sound card

haha I remember all this quite well, and I actually hold fond memories of it (yeah i'm strange). Anyone else like this?

I also remember installing Windows for the first time (3.1) and remembering how cool it seemed.

Answer 1

It's called nostalgia or retro. There are quite many sites that are dedicated to the memories of the development of computers. There are also some old DOS programs that had been preserved.

Computer Timeline:
http://www.thocp.net/timeline/1989.htm

Old DOS Programs:
http://www.woundedmoon.org/msdos.html

Answer 2

I have seen even older days... of BBC MicroComputer.... that used to be a single unit including CPU and the keyboard (74 keys)... there were no harddisks on those days (at least for BBC) so softwares used to reside on Chips (and we had BBC-BASIC, Logo, Pascal and a wordprocessing app) you could store your files on floppy disk (later I found it to be 360KB on PC) and there were two sides which you had to call specifically (using a command whereby drive would start using the second side) if you needed to use it... not like today's operating systems where OS takes care of both sides...

Specs:
Could connect to any Television and sent signals in UHF

RAM : 32KB
(that was a lot as BBC also had a model with 16KB RAM)

Answer 3

Got our first PC at work in 1983.
No hard drive.
Drive A was for the program disk
Drive B was for the work disk

No menus. Had to memorize commands, and I worked in engineering where we typed equations using the Control key + an alpha key to get symbols, subscripts and superscripts. It was a lot of work, but we got a real kick out of it when the final print came out.

Today's programs take all the work and sense of accomplishment out of it.

Answer 4

My first computer I built had no keyboard or CRT display.

CPU was Motorola 6800. Memory was 2KB. All handwired. Display was 7 segment LED (8 digits) and the input was 10 key.

Yes - one of those days, I'd like to recreate what I had back then.

Answer 5

I dunno. My family's first computer was an Apple McIntosh IIVX. My sister and I practically had to beg our parents to get it! Not sure of the specs, but we had it for ten years, I think it was, and only had like one or two problems with it. Unlike our windows machines which we've had for less than two years, but have had waaaayyyyy more than 10 problems with! Currently, I'd like to convert over to Red Hat, but I can't seem to get my modem to work in Fedora Core 4. That, and the Printer doesn't work when I try to communicate with it. I have messed around with the command prompts of both operating systems (DOS and Linux), and I think that the Linux commands are more logical, whereas DOS's are confusing.

Answer 6

I remember using punch cards...

But, yes, I still have a DOS for Dummies book. I'm sort of fond of it, because it was the beginning of a whole new world for me.

Answer 7

Thanks for a blast of the past.