37 replies to this topic

[Avid Fan]

Me and my Dad were talking the other day about how much we miss DOS. I mean computers seemed more solid and less problem prone back then. It seems most people didn't use a computer unless it had Windows, because that black screen with green writing (or gray when we finally got a color monitor). I remember when Windows 95 came out, and thats when DOS began to die. Our computer was the one of 2 computers I knew of that could run Windows 95, and had no problems with DOS. Most people I knew couldn't get it to go into true DOS mode, only a shitty DOS window. To me things just seemed so nice and simpler. You could buy a game, and play it, wether it was ancient (Leisure Suit Larry Classic and VGA) or brand spanking new (The 11th Hour was the newest, best graphics game at the time). Its just like when the PS and N64 game out. You had to have memory cards and shit. I hated that and never owned a system any newer than a Genesis because of it. I dunno, the days of when game systems and computers were cool instead of being a pain in the ass when I was at best buy last night and realized that I'm getting a cube, but I still need a memory card, another controller. It made me think of how cool the NES was back in the day with 2 games, 2 controllers, the light gun, RF adaptor and RCA pluggins. Now you have to buy all of that shit.
As cool as modern games and systems are, it will never be cooler than the old school of buying a game, and not having to worry about having to buy accessories for it or spend all day trying to get it to work on your computer. I miss those days

[Gregory DG]

Avid Fan said:

As cool as modern games and systems are, it will never be cooler than the old school of buying a game, and not having to worry about having to buy accessories for it or spend all day trying to get it to work on your computer. I miss those days

Are you kidding? There was all kinds of configuration problems using games with DOS! HIMEM, BUFFERS, LASTDRIVE=Z, Soundblaster config problems, CGA, EGA, VGA...

Ugh. No thanks. I'll take the newer stuff that works 99% of the time. Shoot, if I want to play DOS games, I'll run them in a window...

As for consoles, I do wish joysticks were included with them instead of those dreaded pads.

[Albert]

I agree with Greg on this issue, I do not miss DOS at all. It was hell getting many games to work, especially those that required a "minimum" amount of memory to run. What a nightmare that was! While I'm no fond of Windows, at least DirectX makes it a snap (generally) to run any games written for it.

..Al

[bjk7382]

Well isn't windows 95 just an overlay for dos. All it does is just adds GUI to dos. It isn't until much later when they finally got rid of dos alltogether and just limited it to the Command Prompt. Back when it was windows 95 you could shut down windows and just use dos, but not nowdays, you HAVE to use windows if it is your OS. (unless you use Comm. Line, which is not true dos)

[spongebue]

bjk7382 said:

Well isn't windows 95 just an overlay for dos. All it does is just adds GUI to dos. It isn't until much later when they finally got rid of dos alltogether and just limited it to the Command Prompt. Back when it was windows 95 you could shut down windows and just use dos, but not nowdays, you HAVE to use windows if it is your OS. (unless you use Comm. Line, which is not true dos)

I think you are thinking of windows 3.x. windows 95 is an independant OS IIRC.

Personally, I could go either way between DOS and windows. I like it how windows has a decent GUI, but I love DOS's stability (the way it doesn't freeze up or anything, sound cards were a pain in the butt though.)

[Avid Fan]

True BJK7382, but a lot of people that I know couldnt get dos to work right. It would always say "Exit windows, and go to MS-DOS mode". Even when you already had. We experienced this but my Dad is a whiz with computers, and fixed it quick.

[bjk7382]

spongebue said:

bjk7382 said:

Well isn't windows 95 just an overlay for dos. All it does is just adds GUI to dos. It isn't until much later when they finally got rid of dos alltogether and just limited it to the Command Prompt. Back when it was windows 95 you could shut down windows and just use dos, but not nowdays, you HAVE to use windows if it is your OS. (unless you use Comm. Line, which is not true dos)

I think you are thinking of windows 3.x. windows 95 is an independant OS IIRC.

I don't think windows 95 was independant, because you could click and exit windows just like in 3.x I don't think it was until after 98 that they totally got rid of any dos. (not able to exit windows)

I just fired up my old 486 DX 66 the other day, and I think the best windows we had on that was 3.x, but I mostly used dos on that because it was only 66 mhz with 40 meg ram or something like that. I do recall running AOL 2.0 on that 486 though.

[Albert]

Windows 95, 98, and Windows ME are all based on DOS, which is of the reasons why they are not as stable as Windows 200 and XP (which were written form the ground up without DOS underpinnings). This is why it's easier to get DOS-based programs to run inside 95/98, as opposed to Windows 2000.

Yes, DOS was stable, but it's not much of an operating system compared to what we have today. I'd take any modern operating system (yes, even Windows) over DOS any day of the week. My favorite OS right now is OS X, which has a very solid foundation (BSD) and a great UI. However, DOS apps don't run very well on it.

..Al

[liquid_sky]

dos was like a baby with colic. get it happy and it was great, upset it and the problems just kept coming up.

[Bryan]

Neither DOS nor Windows is a perfect solution.

DOS had no inherent support for the myriad of different hardware configurations out there, making game development a nightmare.

but...

Windows throws away a fair chunk of your resources and getting things to work often requires a steady stream of driver and system updates.

Oh well... Linux never seems to get organized enough to launch a formal assault for the PC. They'd rather bicker over this and that and re-invent the wheel over and over again.

-Bry

[liquid_sky]

linux is a good platform until it comes to gaming, thats when as you said, the bickering takes over. Nobody has or most likely ever will release a good functionating directx emulator.. SDL is nice but it cant handle near as much as directx.

[Ze_ro]

liquid_sky said:

Nobody has or most likely ever will release a good functionating directx emulator.. SDL is nice but it cant handle near as much as directx.

Uh... OpenGL? It's been around longer than DirectX, and is the defacto standard for 3D on pretty much anything that isn't Windows.

There was a company called Loki that tried the Linux gaming thing. They ported over all kinds of games like Simcity 3000, Rune, Soldier of Fortune, and others. They're out of business now (although their website is still up). I think the problem is that the Linux community is too small to really market commercial games to. Luckily there are plenty of free games that people have written (although they are obviously somewhat limited).

I would have thought that supporting the myriad of different combinations of Linux systems would have been hard, but Loki actually had that working quite well.

I do sort of miss Dos... everything seemed so much simpler back then. All the XMS/EMS/Conventional memory stuff was annoying, and you had to remember your IRQ's and such, but when things broke, you could fix them. If you install a game on Windows, and it crashes, all you can do is wait for a patch and hope that it fixes it. It was also nice in the Dos days when you could install software and generally not have to worry about it installing spyware and crap behind your back that you couldn't get rid of.

Windows seemed like just a (really) bloated version of dosshell at the time. If it wasn't for the fact that you pretty much needed Windows 3.1 to do any internet stuff, I would never have bothered with it at all.

--Zero

[Bryan]

liquid_sky said:

linux is a good platform until it comes to gaming, thats when as you said, the bickering takes over. Nobody has or most likely ever will release a good functionating directx emulator.. SDL is nice but it cant handle near as much as directx.

It's really is a "too many cooks" situation. At some point moving the platform forward needs to become the main objective.

-Bry

[liquid_sky]

for some reason my geforce3 wont render opengl faster than 5fps or so and i have all the drivers so i didnt bring it up only becasue im used to not using it i guess

oh ze_ro.. try the game Battle for Wesnoth if you like strategy games.. been addicted to it recently.

[Scooterb23]

Just one random point...last week I got hold of a computer with DOS on it...I was having such a great time trying to remember all my command prompt commands...but I got to play a rousing game of Commander Keen...so it was all good

[Xot]

Avid Fan said:

I dunno, the days of when game systems and computers were cool instead of being a pain in the ass when I was at best buy last night and realized that I'm getting a cube, but I still need a memory card, another controller. It made me think of how cool the NES was back in the day with 2 games, 2 controllers, the light gun, RF adaptor and RCA pluggins. Now you have to buy all of that shit.  
As cool as modern games and systems are, it will never be cooler than the old school of buying a game, and not having to worry about having to buy accessories for it or spend all day trying to get it to work on your computer. I miss those days

Well, considering that you can get a Cube for $99, get your second controller for $30, memory card for $20 and a full priced game for $50, that's still only $200 for the whole setup. Sure, most systems before the PSX came with a pack in and two controllers, but if you didn't want them, you still had to pay for them.

Yeah, it's frustrating to have to buy several items at once. But it only makes sense IMO. You don't get a free movie with a DVD player or a free CD with a stereo.

[Video]

Umm. I don't remember to many people having Dos on a configurable computer. Well, maybe you could add more memory, but adding memory and other shit was two different things.

I loved doss personally. But then again, as I said, it only was used on old unconfigurable computers. We had it on TRS80, Tandy, and Commodore 64. I am pretty sure the games weren't compatable between the three, but just like with consoles, using the correct disc with the correct system and you never have problems.

Of course, Early configurable computers were a bitch, there wasn't any auto booting or plug in play, you had to put it in, jack with jumpers, put on some software, take it off (if you had a hard drive, which even in early windows days, many people didn't) reinstall it, and it took half a day. But once it was set up, you never had to wory about it again.

[JB]

Video said:

Umm.  I don't remember to many people having Dos on a configurable computer.  Well, maybe you could add more memory, but adding memory and other shit was two different things.

I loved doss personally.  But then again, as I said, it only was used on old unconfigurable computers.  We had it on TRS80, Tandy, and Commodore 64.  I am pretty sure the games weren't compatable between the three, but just like with consoles, using the correct disc with the correct system and you never have problems.

I think people are talking about MS-DOS, which only runs on IBM-compatibles..

And didn't the TRS80 and C64 come with BASIC as an operating system, through some drunken miscarriage of sanity?

[Raijin Z]

I can't miss DOS. I'm never without it. I have no fewer than four PCs with 3.0 or higher installed. Well, I'm not quite sure about one of them. I found it on the curb last night... It's slow enough to have DOS on it, but I'm haven't tried booting it yet.

[bjk7382]

JB said:

Video said:

Umm.  I don't remember to many people having Dos on a configurable computer.  Well, maybe you could add more memory, but adding memory and other shit was two different things.

I loved doss personally.  But then again, as I said, it only was used on old unconfigurable computers.  We had it on TRS80, Tandy, and Commodore 64.  I am pretty sure the games weren't compatable between the three, but just like with consoles, using the correct disc with the correct system and you never have problems.

I think people are talking about MS-DOS, which only runs on IBM-compatibles..

And didn't the TRS80 and C64 come with BASIC as an operating system, through some drunken miscarriage of sanity?

I have dos for my Atari 8bit, but I was talking about MS-DOS before.

[Ze_ro]

JB said:

And didn't the TRS80 and C64 come with BASIC as an operating system, through some drunken miscarriage of sanity?

Back then, having BASIC was better than an operating system really... Most of the people who used C64's did at least some of their own programming (Back then, the only people who used computers were people who actually knew what they were doing), so including BASIC became pretty important. BASIC worked for normal OS tasks as well, like reading directories... although stuff like deleting/copying files was a pain. Of course, you could always get GEOS.

As for hardware configuration, I never had too much trouble... and I was doing it when I was just a kid. As long as you assign things the right numbers and such, it's not hard at all. Adding a new sound card was usually as easy as putting it in the machine, and adding a line to your autoexec.bat or config.sys that would load the proper driver, telling it the card's IRQ and DMA settings.

--Zero

[Happy_Dude]

Ze_ro said:

Of course, you could always get GEOS.

Is there anywhere I could download a disk image of GEOS. I have a 5 1/4
drive on my intel machine so I can make a real copy for my C=64.
I picked GEOS up a while back with a C=64 mouse but the disk is screwed

[Raijin Z]

1541 drives can't read PC disks. There's a way to hook a 1541 drive up to the parallel port of a PC to read and write C64 formatted disks, but not the other way around. It's a royal pain in the ass any way. Also, you most likely have 1.2MB disks like I do. Also incompatible with C64.

[Happy_Dude]

Raijin Z said:

1541 drives can't read PC disks. There's a way to hook a 1541 drive up to the parallel port of a PC to read and write C64 formatted disks, but not the other way around. It's a royal pain in the ass any way. Also, you most likely have 1.2MB disks like I do. Also incompatible with C64.

Actually one of my C=64 lots had a stack of blank disks so they're not 1.2Mb's
My drive only does 360k anyway.
I just assumed it could be done because I can use my 1.44Mb floppy drive to write 720k images

[Raijin Z]

There's a wealth of information on the subject, I'm sure somebody will chime in soon with more specific information. Also, I'm screwed for Amiga boot disks. Even though Amigas* can read PC formatted diskettes, and even though I have the right density diskettes, I can't make boot disks on a PC. All of my workbench and kickstart disks are damaged, and without them, I can't even boot the systems far enough to copy diskettes on them.

* prehistoric Amiga desktops, not the workstations that people still use