DOS vs. Windows

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

applying the latest patch

Download the code in hex.
Punch in the hex address of a command you want to change
Punch in the op-code / address / value in hex
Rinse and repeat as necessary
Burn the patched code to an EPROM...

Cake.

 

[DFH65]

Anyone get down with OS/2 WARP...

32-bit
Mulit-task GUI

I worked for UPS back in the 80s and 90s when they first started putting in their DIAD boards (scanners drivers carry) the system used WARP. It was really a pretty good OS as has been said ahead of it's time just didn't market it well.

How old are you?
Me: When I was in high school I wrote a tick-tack-toe game in APL on a DECwriter. When I was in college I had to write an assembler in assembly language. I just missed punch cards. We had to submit our programming jobs and wait about 20 minutes to go to a window and get the green bar paper print out of the results. Debugging code was a painstaking experience.

 

[ColoPilot]

Even better would be to cut out the middleman and ssh directly from Terminal on the Mac.

As long as we are all using ed, the standard editor, though, I won’t take issue with the route anyone takes to get to the terminal.

Alright, we can use ed as the editor as long as all programs are written in Malbolge:

"Malbolge was specifically designed to be almost impossible to use, via a counter-intuitive 'crazy operation', base-three arithmetic, and self-altering code ... Despite this design, it is possible to write useful Malbolge programs." from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbolge

 

[Ghery]

I loved my TRS80 and Commodore 64! Still got my Atari 2600!

My Commodore 64 is in a box out in the garage. Probably still works, too.

What's all that new fangled DOS stuff? At one time I was pretty handy with VM, MVS, RACF, JCL, and 360/370 assembly language. Then I ventured off into engineering.

My first experience in programming was my senior year in high school (graduated in 1970). FORTRAN using the WATFOR compiler on an IBM System 360 Model 67. JCL was a true pain in the neck. I remember over 10 years later when the IBM PC came out people were complaining about how "user hostile" DOS was. User hostile? Try IBM JCL. Try the NOS OS on a Cyber 176, especially as administered by Martin Marietta Data Systems. I'll show you 'user hostile". DOS was a piece of cake by comparison. Now, VMS on a DEC VAX 11/780 was a nice OS. I really liked that one.

Oh, and I am an engineer. Retired (mostly) now, but...

 

[Archer Jack]

Piker. This is me about forty years ago.

The rotary dial phone in the background reminds me of my dad. He had a push button phone which could use either pulse or tone for dialing. He kept the switch set on pulse because he didn't want to pay the phone company the extra $1.00/mo fee for tone dial. If he was dialing a number with a lot of 9's or 0's it could take 20-30 seconds to dial the number. Of course he did save the $1.00/mo. I sure do miss him.

 

[wanttaja]

ha ha...I used to be pretty good at using autexec.bat, config.sys, using basic, etc.... Kinda sad what I've forgotten. I wouldn't know where to start with any of it now.

I do most of my FAA registry and accident analyses using a combination of Excel and Access. But sometimes they won't do what I need them to do (or I can't figure out how to MAKE them do it) and I write a VisualBasic V6.0 program instead.

Just this week, I was trying to determine the effect on accident rate of one particular factor that was present in about 103 aircraft in the past 15 years. I wrote a VB program to Monte Carlo the heck out of it... Pick 108 registered aircraft at random (nine per year from 2008 to 2019, excluding the ones in the exemplar set), compare them to the list of accidents over the same time period. Repeat 200 times, compute the average accident rate and compare the result to the exemplar set. Took a couple of days to tweak the program, but a run took only 30 seconds or so.

This is what scares me about Windows 10/11... my old VisualBasic 6.0 is incompatible, and can't be installed. I might be able to get it to work in a virtual PC running Windows 7, but if I can't, I lose a lot of capability.

Ron Wanttaja

 

[wanttaja]

My Commodore 64 is in a box out in the garage. Probably still works, too.

I've got nearly ALL the Commodore computers in storage... VIC, C64, C128, C16, and Plus 4.

You can get emulators so you can run C64 programs:

https://vice-emu.sourceforge.io/

I released the copyright on my flight simulator a while back so the emulator community could port it over.

Ron Wanttaja

 

[gkainz]

I just got a new Macbook Air and a 27" LG display, so I can RDP into a Windows box, so that from there I can open up a couple of big, beautiful PuTTY sessions to linux machines...

GeorgeC,
celebrating diversity

rookie move ... skip the RDP to Windows, open up a terminal window and ssh straight to linux

 

[DaleB]

What's all that new fangled DOS stuff? At one time I was pretty handy with VM, MVS, RACF, JCL, and 360/370 assembly language. Then I ventured off into engineering.

I worked on a few S/360s (Army), a bunch of 370s, some 308x, a ton of 4331/41/81s, and a couple of 3090s, and pretty much ALL of their peripherals. Never did learn any of the programming or operations. I just did the hardware maintenance and repair. I could write a little COBOL, some Pascal, BASIC, and is on… but the only thing I ever ran on mainframes was diagnostics. On the older ones with real front panels I’d occasionally toggle in a loop for memory testing or something.

 

[Pilawt]

My first computer - I built one of these as a school project in 1964.

 

[Sac Arrow]

My first computer - I built one of these as a school project in 1964.

View attachment 102912

You win.

 

[Albany Tom]

I'd love more info on that analog computer, actually. I didn't know there were kit versions.

 

[Mxfarm]

Anyone get down with OS/2 WARP...

32-bit
Mulit-task GUI

 

[Pilawt]

I'd love more info on that analog computer, actually. I didn't know there were kit versions.

Oh, that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I remember very little of it.

Here are some links:
https://museum.syssrc.com/artifact/252/
Assembly manual: https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2009/09/102649920.05.02.acc.pdf
Operation manual: https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2009/09/102649920.05.01.acc.pdf

 

[Mxfarm]

Oh, that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I remember very little of it.

Here are some links:
https://museum.syssrc.com/artifact/252/
Assembly manual: https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2009/09/102649920.05.02.acc.pdf
Operation manual: https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2009/09/102649920.05.01.acc.pdf

An ‘analog computer’ bit of an oxymoron that is.

 

[Albany Tom]

An ‘analog computer’ bit of an oxymoron that is.

Not really. Obsolete, maybe. For a decent amount of time, analog computers were significantly faster than digital computers. Analog computers were used for real time processing, while digital computers were used for batch processing. It took a while for the hardware to catch up to the point of interactive digital computers. Until they went solid state, the analog computers were probably more reliable, too. The advantage of the digital computer over analog was accuracy, but they were good enough for the purposes at hand. These days, with agile development, I could see that switching back.

 

[Albany Tom]

Oh, that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I remember very little of it.

Here are some links:
https://museum.syssrc.com/artifact/252/
Assembly manual: https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2009/09/102649920.05.02.acc.pdf
Operation manual: https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2009/09/102649920.05.01.acc.pdf

Thanks! Building an analog computer is on my list of "things to do if I ever have infinite time", but I am not crazy enough to do it with tubes. That Heathkit is a pretty nice design.

 

[Pilawt]

but I am not crazy enough to do it with tubes.

I spent a lot of time standing in front of the tube tester machine down at the local Thrifty Drug Store ... tubes from the TV, the hi-fi ... even the Narco Mark 12 in my dad's Cessna 150.

 

[Pilawt]

That Heathkit is a pretty nice design.

Remember how the Heath company got started and what was its first kit?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_Parasol

 

[IK04]

CP/M would have ruled the world if a dirtbag from Washington hadn't resorted to highly questionable and illegal measures to ensure the domination of the x86-based PCs.

I remember driving around in Sunnyvale, CA and wondering what all those MSDOS billboards were about. They said it was the future.

 

[Ghery]

My first computer - I built one of these as a school project in 1964.

View attachment 102912

Not really. Obsolete, maybe. For a decent amount of time, analog computers were significantly faster than digital computers. Analog computers were used for real time processing, while digital computers were used for batch processing. It took a while for the hardware to catch up to the point of interactive digital computers. Until they went solid state, the analog computers were probably more reliable, too. The advantage of the digital computer over analog was accuracy, but they were good enough for the purposes at hand. These days, with agile development, I could see that switching back.

I took a class in college on programming an analog computer. By the time I graduated it was the primary way to solve a differential equation. Program it into the analog computer and let it draw the solution. It worked very well for that.

 

[wanttaja]

You kids, with your electrons.

The original Link trainer was an analog computer...using vacuum. Sucked air out of a tank to store altitude (1/2 the rate or ordinary altimeters), a vacuum manifold that established the airspeed (with a valve that would trigger a spin if the airspeed got too slow). To simulate random turbulence, a set of cams rotated above a piano-like keyboard, with the keys connected to the vacuum bags that controlled attitude. When one of the cams pressed a key, vacuum leaked from one of the bags, and the cabin jerked in the opposite direction. You could crank the cams closer to the keyboard to have them press the keys harder for stronger turbulence.

Ron Wanttaja

 

[gkainz]

The least known pc based o/s I ever dealt with was PC-MOS … it allowed multiple users to run dumb terminals connected to 1 beefy (at the time) desktop PC acting like a server. We bought a Dell 286 for it, added a whopping 1MB memory card (full length, full height card packed with RAM on both sides for $1000 iirc).
It supported 5 simultaneous sessions.

 

[Albany Tom]

Remember how the Heath company got started and what was its first kit?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_Parasol

Had no idea that's how they started. That's cool! Their kits were great. The last I built was an H19, which was an ANSI serial terminal. It was a little disappointing, in that the entire logic board was pre-built. No idea why, as it was all through hole and probably running at 1MHz or slower clock, but I guess they figured the precision required for that assembly was beyond that of the average kit builder. Anyway, shortly after that they were out of the kit business. The wiki article in part blames surface mount and the computer hobby for their decline, but I don't believe that. Yes, for business purposes the market was in IBM clones, but even in that space through hole technology was in use into the 16 and 32 bit processors into the mid 90's at least.

 

[Albany Tom]

CP/M would have ruled the world if a dirtbag from Washington hadn't resorted to highly questionable and illegal measures to ensure the domination of the x86-based PCs.

I remember driving around in Sunnyvale, CA and wondering what all those MSDOS billboards were about. They said it was the future.

I don't know the political history of it, I was too young to follow that part of it, but I do know that the winner of the computer race went to one of the worst os/s, one of the worst chipsets, and a lousy hardware platform. Business people picked IBM. On the plus side, Burroughs would have been worse. "Is it a desk, is it a computer, no it's both!"

 

[Sac Arrow]

My DEC VAX experience:

1. Bradley Fighting Vehicle simulator. Full turret mockup, graphics on the sights. Periscopes too I think. The whole thing took up a room. It was kind of cool, cartoon-ish BMP's and MI24 Hinds. You expected the Roadrunner and Wily Coyote to pop up at any time. All powered by a VAX 11 something or whatever. Or maybe a 9 or an 8 or I have no clue on the numbering sequence. The NCOIC running it was a computer expert. The console told him which memory bank was bad, and he plugged in a new one when it failed. Mid 80's. Today the same thing could be driven by an iphone and it would be more realistic.

2. Fortran programming class in junior division ME. Class assignment was to write a matrix inversion routine on a DEC 11 something or whatever. Early '90's. Had to log in on a terminal with an account. It was kind of cool. I realized it was history in the making. Accent on history.

3. Large international consulting firm. The timesheet and project management system was run on a VAX. I have no idea if it was a DEC 11 or something or whatever, just that it was a DEC. We logged in from PC clients. Crude, no graphics, but I assume it got the job done. Late 90's.

 

[Shepherd]

I confess.
I actually make a few bucks on the side supporting some apps for seriously obsolete operating systems.
I have 3 people who are still running dedicated OS/2 systems, and I support the code. Two of those machines are PS2 Mod 80s. I keep 2 working Mod 80s in my house to make my life a little easier.
I support code that runs on a DOS 7 machine. I have a PC-AT in the house for that. I also use VMbox for some of it.
I also have a VIC-20 running Basic and Assembler stuff. That's actually personal. When the VIC-20 came out I bought one for the kids. I wrote a "big" Christmas video app in Basic. House with smoking chimney. snowfall, Santa and the reindeer flying through the sky, delivering presents. It ends with a Christmas tree with everyone's name on an ornament. We need to get the video on a DVD, I'm having serious problems with the tape drive. Not sure how much longer I can keep it running. Long live the 6502!
I also support a Series 7 running FOURTH. No, I go to them to work on that.
And because there isn't enough aggravation in my life I also have 3 dual boot Linux/Win 10 servers in the house.
And my favorite code monkey video.

 

[gkainz]

To echo Sac Arrow's reminiscence ... I spent a lot of years on DEC VAX running VMS. The software for the E-2 Hawkeye (B and C models at least) backend was written/maintained in C on VMS, then compiled/assembled down to run as Litton assembler on the L-304. The test lab backend simulator ran Burroughs and Sperry/Rand computers that were booted with a multi-page set of boot instructions, performed on DIP switches on the front of the machines. Screw up just 1 toggle and wipe it and start over.

I built a number of Oracle databases on VAX VMS machines for QA analysis and performance of air launched weapons for the Navy, running on VAX 11/780 up through the 8000 series and ending on the VAX-9000.

 

[IK04]

...the winner of the computer race went to one of the worst os/s, one of the worst chipsets, and a lousy hardware platform.

You got that right!

 

[Crashnburn]

Hec, I was on the internet before Al Gore created it.

Me,tooD

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

I spent a lot of years on DEC VAX running VMS.

At one time, I had a copy of the FORTRAN compiler for either VMS or TOPS-20 on punch cards....
(it was being discarded and I just couldn't pass it up...)
But loved VAX/VMS. Connecting the VT100 over Ethernet at 9600 baud was, like, WOAH DUDE! This is FAST!

 

[murphey]

I don't know the political history of it, I was too young to follow that part of it, but I do know that the winner of the computer race went to one of the worst os/s, one of the worst chipsets, and a lousy hardware platform. Business people picked IBM. On the plus side, Burroughs would have been worse. "Is it a desk, is it a computer, no it's both!"

The IBM won because every secretary had an IBM electric typewriter on her desk. That was the only advanced, electronic equipment in the office, so that was the computer the boss bought. It was branding taken to the max.

I’m still looking for a book I read in the 80s about Gates and Microsoft. Sat in the bookstore for over an hour reading it, couldn’t afford to buy it at the time. It was a very candid and not favorable analysis how Microsoft came into being, including the battle over DOS, CP/M, DrDOS, etc. Also had the source code to a number of early OS’s, hence about 2 in thick.

 

[murphey]

At one time, I had a copy of the FORTRAN compiler for either VMS or TOPS-20 on punch cards....
(it was being discarded and I just couldn't pass it up...)
But loved VAX/VMS. Connecting the VT100 over Ethernet at 9600 baud was, like, WOAH DUDE! This is FAST!

I still have my VAX manuals, orang binders and all. Worked for DIGITAL back in the late 80s, watched it disintegrate. Fortunately never bought stock. Compac bought it a few years after I left. I’ve worked for 7 companies that no longer exist, including 2 of the 7 Drawfs….if you know that term…….

 

[tspear]

I still have my VAX manuals, orang binders and all. Worked for DIGITAL back in the late 80s, watched it disintegrate. Fortunately never bought stock. Compac bought it a few years after I left. I’ve worked for 7 companies that no longer exist, including 2 of the 7 Drawfs….if you know that term…….

Remind me to never hire you.

Tim (could not resist)

 

[scarcherpilot]

A bit off topic but similar in many respects, a few years ago I was sitting with my kids (around 8 years old at the time) while watching TV, one of them suddenly asked what was wrong with the TV, in my confusion I asked what were they talking about. I was watching an old Gilligans Island that was in Black and White....they didnt understand so I explained to them that they didnt have color back then. They asked, the world didnt have color back then? Ahhh to be young again.

 

[ElPaso Pilot]

Well, this is bringing back memories.

Programming (er, wiring) or debugging relay logic panels, anyone?

 

[Sac Arrow]

Well, this is bringing back memories.

Programming (er, wiring) or debugging relay logic panels, anyone?

I've seen old panels wired with a combination of relay logic like that plus a rotary drum sequencer (e.g., for performing backwash sequences on filters.) Some of the very simple controls we will do, like well pump on/off will typically be hard wired, but anything more complex will be PLC based. They are cheap these days.

 

[Jay Urish]

Anyone get down with OS/2 WARP...

32-bit
Mulit-task GUI

I was totally WARPED.. I just laughed at my winblows friends and their BSOD's. Then IBM dumped Warp4 on the world.. What a steaming pile of ****. I installed it and could watch it crash doing nothing....

 

[ElPaso Pilot]

I've seen old panels wired with a combination of relay logic like that plus a rotary drum sequencer (e.g., for performing backwash sequences on filters.) Some of the very simple controls we will do, like well pump on/off will typically be hard wired, but anything more complex will be PLC based. They are cheap these days.

Oh, my. Was so happy to convert some of the massive 40’ long panels packed full of relays to PLCs.

But, it was impressive how sophisticated of control system for large equipment could be implemented with wires and relays. Just a PC chip on a massive scale, I guess.

And one step more removed, doing the same thing in explosive environments using compressed air logic circuits to remove all electricity.

 

[Albany Tom]

Somewhere between the relays and rotary switches and actual processors, you can build controllers, state machines really, from a counter and either an EPROM or combinatorial logic. I wouldn't be surprised if some designers are building them out of programmable logic today. They're really fast, and if there are only a few states, it's simple.