YAAYD (Yet another "Ten (0A) year" discussion) (was: GOPHER

From: Scott Stevens <chenmel_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Tue Oct 26 19:24:55 2004

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 23:47:26 +0100 (BST), you wrote:

>> What is wrong with talking about esoteric OS and hardware for x86 systems
>> other then windows like XENIX, other old and forgotten Unix, Desqview/X etc?
>> Most people just don't want this list to turn into a "help me fix this
>> common problem in Windows" resource.
>
>Althought I am not really a 'PC person', I would agree with this. There's
>nothing wrong with talking about IBM-PC related stuff that's no longer
>mainstream, it's as interesting as most other micros. But like you, I
>don't want to see this list degnerate into a Windows/Pentium support list
>(there are plenty of other, better, places to talk about such machines).
>Of course, If you want to try to write a pentium-compatible microcode for
>a PERQ, then this list may well be a good place to talk about it...
>
>-tony

There's even a fair amount of interesting esoteria about the first IBM
PCs that should be on-topic. I.e.: The very first boxes from IBM had
painted black power supplies, painted black card-edge plates, and
sported one row of 16Kx1 RAM chips soldered in place, and up to three
more in sockets, if you ordered more than 16K of memory with your
system. Also included was the audio-cassette cable, since the first
PCs (I think up to the 256K motherboards) could be purchased with no
floppy drives and boot into 'cassette BASIC' in ROM and store and
recall programs from audio cassette, like many other machines of the
era.

I doubt if there will be many people posting support questions about
the dipswitch settings (confusing as hell, they were) for that
generation of hardware to tell the motherboard how much memory was
installed, and where (motherboard versus on the I/O channel).

I have a Kaypro 8088 portable box, and while it's a 'PC Clone' with
ISA slots, and can run dreary software like MS-DOS, it currently runs
CP/M-86, which I hope people would welcome discussion of if it were
brought up.

I also have an all-original IBM-AT box (6 MHz), with IBM's EGA card in
it, and all IBM hardware throughout. I personally consider it
criminal to swap in a third-party VGA card, and since I don't have an
EGA monitor, I've never turned it on (yet). One would think that by
observing such an attitude even a '286 box would be considered a
worthy topic once in awhile.

My PC Convertable laptop (with all 640K, extremely rare) should also
qualify even with the most ardent IBM-PC hater, since it's function in
computing history was to make a mockery of IBM's feeble offerings of
the time in DOS computing.

Anyhow, sorry for rambling.
Received on Tue Oct 26 2004 - 19:24:55 BST

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