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FORMAT /S is always good. RMDIR /S is good too.DIR | SORT /+13 is fun...I'd run Norton's SD just to watch it - my version of a redneck buglight...
— dewitte
I just love to see a clients jaw drop when I drop down to DOS and go to town. Especially on Vista that isn't supposed to have it.
— TechZilla
I've done that. People think you're a wizard or something. I guess it's almost a lost art. I was helping someone who was having problems with their modem and I went into Hyperterminal and started typing ATZ and ATH1, etc and you'd think I was using binary or something. I think the new layers of windows have separated users so much that they really don't need to know how to do anything anymore.
— dewitte
Unfortunately it also eludes the new generation of so-called technicians also. They have no clue. Eventually they won't even know what a floppy drive is.
ATL3M1DT7671234
Im pretty rusty with my Hayes commands but I used to build my own init strings.
— TechZilla
DOS prompts, Hayes Compatible modems, and 360k floppy drives. Well at that time, it was more like 140k floppies on an Apple ][. ;)
— PhoneBoy
don't forget the green or yellow text on the monitor.
— TechZilla
Ha - I had the only TRS-80 Model III in the area with one of those Amber monitors. I ordered it from a company and installed it myself. It was cool because it had that phosphorus glow to it.As far as technicians, one of my friends asked me to look at her work computer once (she had her own company). I went over and cleaned it up and defragged the drives, etc. Then her tech guy came in later and said that defragging drives ruins them and she might need to get them replaced now. What an idiot. At least she knew better.
— dewitte
Hopefully she is looking for another tech. Phoneboy was blastng rocketships off a trash80 when he was 7...I knew I was doomed.
— TechZilla
I think the 360k was a double-sided disk. Alot of the early discs were single sided. CPM was the OS of the Day back then and pretty much all those disks were single-sided.
— TechZilla
The Apple ][ had single-sided floppies, as did all the various instances of CP/M.
— PhoneBoy
holy crap....I wrote my first publicly used program on the Model III. It was a teaching utility that taught users Basic. The school used it for about 3 years. I was in 8th grade at the time. shit I'm old
— northerngeek
A few months ago I helped and old guy recover some of his .bas files and get them working for him again.He is sufferring from Alzheimers, had a stroke and was also diabetic.
He had written a record keeping program that he could use to chart and record his diabetic readings to give to the doctor. All in GWBasic.
Fortunately, I still have some DOS and Basic skills.
— TechZilla
I miss GWBasic. I'm sure I could still find it somewhere, but I used to use it all the time for quick file conversions. I like how you take a .bas file that was like .5k and when you write the same thing in VB.NET, it's about 30 megs and runs slower.
— dewitte
This should make it easy for you to find....
http://www.lesswaiting.com/info103.html
— TechZilla
Got it! I haven't even bothered to look for that. I just assumed I'd have to find my old dos disks somewhere. That's cool - maybe I can polish off my skills and revamp my hunt the wumpus game.
— dewitte
I threw all my old dos disks away. I maintain a large collection of bootdisk images though just in case. Command.com is something that is always useful.
— TechZilla