FreeDOS

I keep wanting to get a "modern" MS-DOS system.  I've gone to Monotech and was desiring their NuXT. But the price was restrictive.  $320 for just the motherboard.  I'd still need to get a case and power supply - which, while less than $320, was still a good amount of money.

I noticed that I had a spare HP EliteDesk G1 SFF that I had purchased as a "burner" PC for the Man Cave and decided to give FreeDOS a try on it.

FreeDOS is basically MS-DOS made for more modern PCs.  So it's actually DOS, but you can run it on more modern PCs and it will work nicely.

Problem 1:  Getting software on it.  The EliteDesk had no floppy drives and FreeDOS doesn't support USB sticks (sort of).

Solution: FreeDOS does support USB drives only if it's set as the boot drive.  So, you have to plug it in, set the BIOS to boot from it - but here's the workaround - you have to tell the BIOS that, for this boot, you need to boot from the hard drive.  Weird, but it works.

So software loaded.  Yay.

But I still want that "real" MS-DOS experience.  I need to have a floppy drive in it.

So I went into the display case and pulled out the last floppy drive that I had installed in a PC.  1.44MB 3.5".  Good.  But how to hook it up?

The EliteDesk has no floppy controller (no surprise).  So I found this on eBay.  I simply ran the USB cable out the back of the case and into one of the USB ports.  And it works.

Some software isn't compatible, though.

The CPU is a quad core 4.2Ghz, so software that relies on clock cycles for timing just run wayyyyy too fast.

The system is naturally a VGA system, but it's not old VGA, so some video stuff just crashes.

But, overall, most stuff works and works nice.  I had fun playing Duke Nukem 1 and other games.

I have the Wifi modem hooked to the serial port, so I can BBS.

But I don't have a mouse (and don't really want one), so some software fails there.

I'm still working on getting the CD-ROM working in FreeDOS.

Review: The Modem World - A Prehistory or social media by Kevin Driscoll

As some of you know, I'm still active on the BBSs (Yes, they still exist).  So when Kevin Driscoll posted that he wrote a book on BBSs and how they inspired the current social media platforms, I was interested.  Now that I've read it, it's time for a review.

The tl;dr:

It completely fails on the "prehistory of social media" part.  There was no direct link from BBSs to something like Facebook other than "BBSs were places were people with common interests could post messages."

However, it is a well researched book on the evolution of BBSs from the first BBS in Chicago, through FidoNet and into the Internet.  He didn't cover enough of the BBS history, but that's a bunch really big topics, each well deserved of its own book.

The down side is that the information that was researched was filtered through the Reality Distortion Field that the Woke seem to live in.  So the view you get of what BBSs were, and still are, is very skewed.

OK.  The longer explanation.

First off, the "woke-ness" of the book really left a bad taste in my mouth.  Just little things like "The demographics or BBS users appears to have tracked with the broader adoption of personal computers in the United States..." - which is true.  But then he had to tack this on: "skewing in favor of white men."

Later "While there was little variation by age and income, single white men were nearly twice as likely as other groups to report using bulletin boards."

Why the need to call this out?  On the BBSs there's a very old saying "No one knows you are a dog."  Meaning that race, sex, religion, etc. mean little.  All people can see of you is your words in text.  People judge you by those words - and nothing else.

In other places, he focused on BBSs that catered to the LBGT community, yet completely ignored the BBSs that were dedicated to ham radio, science fiction, and the other large interests of the geek community.  If there was a "group" that BBSs identified with the most, it was the geeks, but he completely ignores that.

While not every section had such woke BS, it was scattered through out the book.

In the final chapter, he laments that some of his students came away with a "unexpected misunderstanding of early online culture."  Well, duh!  The book highlights the fringe groups and doesn't really talk much about the majority of interests on the BBSs.  No wonder the students had a misunderstanding.

Most of the information presented was accurate, but woefully incomplete.  ex: In one place, he posted a list of FidoNet message groups, but the list was heavily lopsided toward the groups that the ignorant woke people would like to see and it was not even close to representing reality.  Reality was more heavy on the geek topics.

Unlike Kevin, I actually lived in the "The Modem World".  I was heavily into the BBSs from the 1980's until the Internet killed most of the BBSs off.  The world in this book is not the world that existed back then, but rather a Leftie-skewed parody of the actual "Modem World".

Bottom line:

Not really worth it.  You'd be better off viewing some YouTube videos on BBSs (Like Al's Geek Lab's Back to the BBS) or getting Jason Scott's BBS Documentary.  They would be much more accurate than the Left-skewed "information" presented in this book.

As for me, the book is going into the Goodwill bag never to be seen again.

Commodore 128

I got a good deal and picked up a working Commodore 128 and have been playing with it lately.  But I'm very unimpressed with it.

The C128 is actually 3 computers:

1. A Commodore 64.

2. A Commodore 128 with 40 or 80 columns.

3. A Z80 (usually CP/M) machine.

By the time the C128 came out, CP/M and the Z80 were on the decline - close to being not sold at all.  I understood why they wanted to add the Z80, but their timing was way off.  And unless you also purchased the new 1571 floppy drive, disk access was WAY slower than the other CP/M systems.  Useless.

In C128 mode, there's a problem.  There are 2 video outputs.  The old style C64 one - which only does 40 column mode and the IBM-PC CGA-like one - which only does 80 column mode.

The problem is that no one wrote code for the 40 column C128.  It's all 80 column.  99% of the software is targeted at the C64.  Which means you will need 2 monitors - or a brand new monitor that can do both the old and new video plugs.  Yuck!

The end result is that the C128 is pretty much a C64 with some useless added hardware.  Oh, it does have a better keyboard with a modern layout, though.  So that's a plus.

But over all, it's just a C64 and that's a disappointment.

I find myself enjoying using my Plus/4 over the C128.

More new toys

On a whim, I picked up a Commodore Plus/4.

This was Commodore's attempt at breaking into the business/productivity market, but it was too little, too late.

Only 64K max - when the IBM compatibles could go to 640K

40 column screen - when the standard was 80 in this market.

But they did correct some of the glaring issues that the Commodore 64 had: Mainly BASIC 4.0 that the Commodore PET had before discontinued (The C-64 had BASIC 2.0).  BASIC 4.0 had disk commands (like DIRECTORY and DLOAD).  But they enhanced it even further to allow you do to graphics and sounds from BASIC - as opposed to programming the SID and VIC yourself with POKEs.

Unfortunately, there was no SID or VID.  Meaning lower quality sound and no sprites.  So the Plus/4 wasn't a gaming machine.

And the market was moving to desiring IBM compatibility.  So the Plus/4 wasn't around long.

And I finally found my Holy Grail: A TRS-80 Model I.

I was able to pick one up locally at a reasonable price with working monitor!

No power supply, so I have those parts on order.  I hope I can get it working again.

But the hatch over the reset button was intact!  Usually these were lost over time.

New Toy - DevTerm

My latest toy arrived this week:  A DevTerm A04 from ClockworkPi.

Quick description (if you don't want to follow the link and read for yourself):

This is a small computer with a TRS-80 Model 100 form factor.  It runs Linux (Armbian) and uses a Raspberry PI compute module.

It comes as a kit (pretty much all snap together) that you have to assemble, but it's simple.

Even before it arrived, I was a little disappointed.  When I purchased it, I thought I would be buying something about the size of my Tandy 102.  The reality is that it's about 1/2 of that - meaning mostly that the keyboard is very cumbersome for my adult-size hands.  No touch typing.  All hunt-and-peck.  So much for using it as a little laptop.

When it actually arrived, I was impressed by the ease of assembly and it worked right away.

So I copied over a bunch of stuff that I use on my other Pi's and found that many of the programs just don't work.  "No problem," I thought.  "I'll just recompile them."  But no.  I got some really strange compile errors (like duplicate definitions of objects).  I didn't want to deal with those right now, so I just deleted them.

Unfortunately, some of them were the programs that I use to call BBSs and read BBS messages off line.  So another thing that I can't use this toy for.

One cool thing it came with was a little thermal printer (think store receipt printer) and the paper that I bought for it came yesterday.  So I gave it a shot.  I didn't expect too much from it and it met my expectations.  You won't want to use this for program listings, that's for sure.  But it works and prints clearly.

It's a little frustrating.  On one hand, I can't find any fault with what I purchased.  It does exactly what it promised it would do.

On the other hand, I'm really struggling to find a place for this in my normal computer use.