Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] DOS memories

[Nathan Odle <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Our family's first computer was an IBM 5150, a.k.a. the original "IBM 
PC".  Not XT, not AT, not a clone...just the IBM PC.  We got it when I 
was 5 years old, somewhere around 1982.  That said, I find myself amazed 
how much I remember about the thing (I even fuzzily recall the day they 
delivered it)...probably some of the only memories I have of being that 
young.

This machine came with dual 360k floppies and 128KB RAM, but an upgrade 
to a 20MB Seagate "winchester" drive (I can still hear the unique sound 
it made when seeking in my dreams) soon followed, necessitating swapping 
one of the full-height floppy drives for a  half-height drive in the 
process.  I believe an AST memory board upgrade to 640KB happened at the 
same time (remember when you used to be able to add RAM on an ISA 
expansion card?) upon which my dad proclaimed that he could now make 
'unlimited size spreadsheets'.  The software suite was Ashton-Tate's 
FrameWorks (and later FrameWorks III), which was ahead of its time 
technically and also was the progenitor of the original dBase.  It was 
one of the first office suites, and included a word processor, 
spreadsheet, and database.  Later on and thanks to my grandpa, I became 
familiar with Lotus 1-2-3 and made lots of meaningless pie-charts with 
only monochrome hatching to distinguish the slices.

I first learned to program on this machine, and in fact found a file of 
BASIC programs a couple weeks ago that I had printed out on the 
Panasonic wide-carriage dot-matrix printer.  Included were such gems as 
a calculator that played a little tune on the speaker every time it made 
a calculation, and another program that took inputs and printed a "While 
You Were Out" sort of phone message page.  Of special note is that I 
learned BASIC solely through the function reference (that 3-ring binder 
that had a sheet for each function explaining what each did).  I had to 
figure out the syntax on my own with the aid of just a few examples 
sprinkled throughout the function reference.

The first game we had was GATO, a great submarine simulation that had a 
'special' cheat code that would allow one to warp the sub to anywhere 
they wanted.  You had to run around torpedoing enemy ships, and when you 
ran out of ammo/fuel you had to find a subtender.  I distinctly remember 
the fog-horn type warning when your sub took too much damage and began 
to sink; that happened a lot when I was playing.

I eventually got a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator (no version 
number) and had fun flying the Cessna in addition to playing the 
'hidden' WWI dogfight game.  I was strictly a keyboard flyer though, no 
money for a joystick.  Although the machine had a CGA card, we only had 
a monochrome monitor.  I do remember looking upon with envy the color 
screenshots on the box.

I learned DOS 1.0 with a little tutorial program called "Professor DOS" 
that taught basic command line stuff including switching paths, 
formatting drives, et cetera.  You can find the Compute! magazine review 
of a little later version of the same program here:

http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue147/162_PC_Instructor_Profe.php

Of special note was the intro, which played a little song and then for 
the grand opening introduced itself with some text-to-speech action that 
I'm pretty sure pre-dated any of the stuff on the Apple IIGS.  Probably 
not 'real-time', rather pre-rendered speech, but impressive 
nonetheless.  80's appeal aside, I find myself wondering why someone 
hasn't written a similar interactive tutorial for the Linux CLI.

Anyway, there are the memories I can come up with at this late 
hour...I'm sure there are others with similar experiences...

-N

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