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My first computer/parents was a 386SX and a 20mb hard disk (almost all of my peers started w/ the Apple IIs, so I was late to this game). I begged by dad over a
by InTheArena 5y ago
My first computer/parents was a 386SX and a 20mb hard disk (almost all of my peers started w/ the Apple IIs, so I was late to this game). I begged by dad over and over to buy a 386DX, not a SX, but no luck on that.
There was something weird where windows wouldn't run in 386 protected mode. I was sure it was DX and SX, but this article has the assertion that protected mode worked with SX. I know my dad replaced the system, I assumed he updated the CPU, but maybe it was a bad mobo or something.
DIY computing to me will always be RLL/MFM hard disks with insane ribbon cables and IRQ toggles on ISA slots.
God, I am old.
- ansible 5y agoOld enough to remember Plug-N-Play ISA cards? More like Plug-N-Pray... har har. It was also a bit of an art back then to stuff as much of the needed TSRs and device drivers into the memory above 640K, to leave as much room as possible for applications.
- gadders 5y agoTweaking EMM386.exe and your config.sys and autoexec.bat..
- ansible 5y agoYes. I remember being confused more than once about extended memory vs. expanded memory. These days I'm dealing with an SoC company that has a dozen variants of the same processor, which have different combinations of four letters in the suffix in various combinations.
- gadders 5y agoI used to do telephone support for Lotus 1-2-3 in that era. I've completely lost track of modern CPU naming conventions.
- fullstop 5y agoDo you remember the graphical meters in Wolfenstein 3D which showed lower memory, EMS, and XMS before the game ran?
- scns 5y agoNever saw those! My favourite mememory from that that game is when you open that door to the first bossfight, behind it waiting is huge guy with gatling guns instead of arms saying: "Guten Tag" befoee he start shooting.
- fullstop 5y agoIt was right as you started the game -- it looked like this: https://i.imgur.com/yjWksNt.png https://i.imgur.com/yjWksNt.png
- fullstop 5y agoI kinda liked using 4dos and norton utilities to make menu trees to set specific parameters in config.sys and autoexec.bat based on what you were going to use the PC for that boot cycle.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoAnd comparing that with QEMM and 386 to the Max! And using some bootmanager to even switch between DOS/DR-DOS and PTS-DOS!