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    #16
    Re: US nuclear force still uses floppy disks

    Originally posted by B. de Corbin View Post
    While in college, my roommate taking computer programming had to do punch cards. Yup... I do be old.

    When I took computer graphics for my teaching art degree, I have to plot dots on a McIntosh to make a picture that looked light light-bright.
    I had to do the punched cards when I was doing programming in High School. Hated those darn things for one mistake and the card had to be retyped. Recall it was mostly for COBOL program language that I used them for though I think I also used them for NEAT 3, RPG and FORTRAN. Of course the upgrade to that was the 5 and 8 level punched tape that you had to feed to the processor to update coding or re-install corrupted programming.

    Of course you had the full size cards which took up loads of space or the half sized or mini cards that were used in some systems.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Originally posted by anunitu View Post
    Dos could be intimidating for some users,it was text driven,and you had to remember many key words,and have your dos manual right there to refer to. Windows was a BIG game changer,point and click...I did go online in the very early days using a dos text browser(That was on the WELL)

    See the WELL here.

    That was also where "The whole earth catalog" was from,if you are old enough to remember that.
    DOS was a pain but I know for me I was able to save from more than a few errors because of it. Did like to program in it though it sure took up a lot of memory at times to do really simply commands. I agree about the manuals being next to you and digging through them for some little used command or figuring out some typing mistake you made when typing in a line of code.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Makes me wonder though how many recall using the old tape drives? Granted the main frame systems had their drums or 3600 foot reels of analog tape but those old cassette tapes cold be a pain.
    I'm Only Responsible For What I Say Not For What Or How You Understand!

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      #17
      Re: US nuclear force still uses floppy disks

      Remember for some people,windows is all they have ever known..I have from time to time shown people DOS just for fun,and they are saying how do I use the mouse here?

      There were some early mouse friendly programs that ran in dos,but Windows did take over the computers..and you are right,some things are easier to fix using dos,but that was before dos went completely By By..
      MAGIC is MAGIC,black OR white or even blood RED

      all i ever wanted was a normal life and love.
      NO TERF EVER WE belong Too.
      don't stop the tears.let them flood your soul.




      sigpic

      my new page here,let me know what you think.


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      http://www.witchvox.com/vu/vxposts.html

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        #18
        Re: US nuclear force still uses floppy disks

        Heh, if I want command line then I can get it perfectly fine without DOS. Windows has a functional CLI and the CLI for Linux may well be more functional than the GUI. Granted, I'm not most people but any technician who is completely lost in a CLI isn't worth the name and there are lots of technicians.
        life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

        Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

        "But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else..."

        John Rowlands, The Grey King by Susan Cooper

        "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

        Aslan, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis


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          #19
          Re: US nuclear force still uses floppy disks

          One reason REAL dos is better for fixing things,you can in fact delete a file,that under a windows console is still protected from deletion because it is under another program.
          Fine line,but some use a boot CD that runs dos to fix problems. Most fix-it CD's use ether linux or a dos boot system to work on windows problems. no GUI involved.
          MAGIC is MAGIC,black OR white or even blood RED

          all i ever wanted was a normal life and love.
          NO TERF EVER WE belong Too.
          don't stop the tears.let them flood your soul.




          sigpic

          my new page here,let me know what you think.


          nothing but the shadow of what was

          witchvox
          http://www.witchvox.com/vu/vxposts.html

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            #20
            Re: US nuclear force still uses floppy disks

            Well sure but that doesn't need DOS. It just needs a LiveCD. You can make a Windows one with the right software, I'm not convinced it'd be worth the effort but give me a Windows CD and a few hours to relearn the procedure (and acquire the right tool) and I can make LiveCD in Windows that will gleefully assault any file in another Windows. It was a security lab I did a few years ago. I just don't have any real need. Why make a LiveCD for Windows when I can make one for Kali and get all the forensic and intrusion tools I need and several that I don't?

            This is also presuming that the file I need to kill is protected if either
            A. I use safe mode with command prompt or
            B. I access command prompt through Windows Recovery Environment

            Between those two options, especially B which is effectively a wannabe LiveCD already, most things aren't gonna be safe.
            life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

            Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

            "But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else..."

            John Rowlands, The Grey King by Susan Cooper

            "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

            Aslan, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis


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              #21
              Re: US nuclear force still uses floppy disks

              I remember seeing someone that did what I think was the first live CD for repair tools. hirens boot cd,I knew the guy who came up with that..old friend online.
              MAGIC is MAGIC,black OR white or even blood RED

              all i ever wanted was a normal life and love.
              NO TERF EVER WE belong Too.
              don't stop the tears.let them flood your soul.




              sigpic

              my new page here,let me know what you think.


              nothing but the shadow of what was

              witchvox
              http://www.witchvox.com/vu/vxposts.html

              Comment


                #22
                Re: US nuclear force still uses floppy disks

                Hirens is one I've heard of. Haven't had occasion to use it yet, generally Kali has more tools than I know what to do with and I'll use an Avira one if I'm deeply concerned about malware but Hiren's is a name I've come across. Actually, I've also used an Ubuntu liveUSB for diagnostics. Once to run memtest on a laptop and another time to see whether a problem was hardware or software based.
                life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

                Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

                "But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else..."

                John Rowlands, The Grey King by Susan Cooper

                "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

                Aslan, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis


                Comment


                  #23
                  Re: US nuclear force still uses floppy disks

                  Hirens has to be over hmm,I think it showed up almost mid 90's in its earliest incarnation,and evolved over time.
                  MAGIC is MAGIC,black OR white or even blood RED

                  all i ever wanted was a normal life and love.
                  NO TERF EVER WE belong Too.
                  don't stop the tears.let them flood your soul.




                  sigpic

                  my new page here,let me know what you think.


                  nothing but the shadow of what was

                  witchvox
                  http://www.witchvox.com/vu/vxposts.html

                  Comment


                    #24
                    Re: US nuclear force still uses floppy disks

                    My ex-husband used to build dos based computers. The keyboard & monitor were all in one casing, and I remember playing some primitive version of space invaders. Around the same time (very early 80's) we had one at work & I remember printing things on that paper that was folded with perforations and little holes on the sides for the printer sprockets.
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                    Can you hear me, Major Tom? I think I love you.

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                      #25
                      Re: US nuclear force still uses floppy disks

                      Dot matrix printers,noisy as hell,but very easy to fix. Sounds like an early Commodore PET.



                      Not sure I remember a MS DOS in that configuration unless it was a Zx80 system

                      - - - Updated - - -

                      Maybe this XT system,but the monitor only sat a top the computer.
                      Last edited by anunitu; 26 May 2016, 15:29.
                      MAGIC is MAGIC,black OR white or even blood RED

                      all i ever wanted was a normal life and love.
                      NO TERF EVER WE belong Too.
                      don't stop the tears.let them flood your soul.




                      sigpic

                      my new page here,let me know what you think.


                      nothing but the shadow of what was

                      witchvox
                      http://www.witchvox.com/vu/vxposts.html

                      Comment


                        #26
                        Re: US nuclear force still uses floppy disks

                        I vaguely recall the trs-80 also came in an all in one configuration. Some with an internal tape drive others with an external tape drive. Actually used one of those early in my Naval career. Do not recall IBM, Atari, Commordore having such a configuration. I vaguely recall there was a system by Collecko (sp?) I think it was that was all in one but it didn't last long.
                        I'm Only Responsible For What I Say Not For What Or How You Understand!

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                          #27
                          Re: US nuclear force still uses floppy disks

                          Those printers were crazy! It was on a little table and it would shake, rattle & roll! My ex had his own business with another guy, designing/developing PC boards, etc., and they bought the cases and built the things - I wish I remembered more of the details. There was a boot disk, & I remember typing in "boot". The case looked like the old Apple II ones, kinda like the Commodore but sleeker.

                          He was a really smart guy but unfortunately, other popular 1980's pursuits meant more to him than anything else, and so the world has Bill Gates instead LOL
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                          Can you hear me, Major Tom? I think I love you.

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                            #28
                            Re: US nuclear force still uses floppy disks

                            There was the first portable computer. Pic here.


                            A friend had one because he was a field engineer,he did world wide projects developing cell towers in far flung places like Azerbaijan.


                            With the keyboard locked in it looked just like a suitcase.

                            Here.
                            Last edited by anunitu; 26 May 2016, 18:39.
                            MAGIC is MAGIC,black OR white or even blood RED

                            all i ever wanted was a normal life and love.
                            NO TERF EVER WE belong Too.
                            don't stop the tears.let them flood your soul.




                            sigpic

                            my new page here,let me know what you think.


                            nothing but the shadow of what was

                            witchvox
                            http://www.witchvox.com/vu/vxposts.html

                            Comment


                              #29
                              Re: US nuclear force still uses floppy disks

                              The TRS Model III was all in one housing with two floppy drives built in.
                              I had the original TRS-80 that came with 4 Kbytes of RAM and updated to 16 Kbytes of Ram. I later updated to the "enhanced" keyboard with the numeric keypad, the Expansion interface that brought RAM up to 48K and had serial and parallel ports. I sold the computer three years ago for more than it had cost me. I had the manuals, docs and programming books for it, two floppy drives and two disk operating systems. It was the first computer I used to get on the internet - back when it was all text based.

                              I still operate an old DOS computer but with FreeDOS which allows access to the web, email and mouse support. I use it to run my old software that won't run on anything else. I wrote it back in the mid '80s and still use it because there aren't any other software for the jobs they do. I don't run any Windows computers because Linux is so much better.
                              Last edited by DragonsFriend; 27 May 2016, 07:53.
                              The Dragon sees infinity and those it touches are forced to feel the reality of it.
                              I am his student and his partner. He is my guide and an ominous friend.

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                                #30
                                Re: US nuclear force still uses floppy disks

                                There is a growing market for working old systems,one commodore group has them as collectors things,but some run and connect to the internet. As collectors items the price can be kind of steep,and may sell at auction.

                                - - - Updated - - -

                                See here about the collector scene

                                - - - Updated - - -

                                This is an example of how old systems sell for a lot.

                                In fact, there's a vibrant market now for anything from full computer systems to vintage console games and even magazines, and prices are rising by the year. At the top end of the market, valuations approach those of fine art. An original 1976 Apple I computer sold at auction in May of last year in Cologne, Germany, for a record $671,400—more than double the price of similar auctions just three years ago. The computer's original sale price was $666.66.
                                MAGIC is MAGIC,black OR white or even blood RED

                                all i ever wanted was a normal life and love.
                                NO TERF EVER WE belong Too.
                                don't stop the tears.let them flood your soul.




                                sigpic

                                my new page here,let me know what you think.


                                nothing but the shadow of what was

                                witchvox
                                http://www.witchvox.com/vu/vxposts.html

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