Andrew Roach @ajroach42@retro.social

@Qwxlea If I get bored with DOS, I can always load up a weird DOS window manager like seal or gem or throw caldera in my windows 3.11 and make it look like 95.

Or I can telnet to the raspberry pi that will likely be it’s internet connection, and use it as a glorified terminal.

@Qwxlea so yeah, DOS stays.

I have a huge library of DOS software, and I’m a fan of the OS in general. It’s what I was using in the 00s, occasionally even by choice, but mostly because I was using hand me downs.

I can get everything done I want to do on this machine from DOS, and keep a backup that I can toss in to qemu or DOSbox running off a flash drive on any machine I have access to. (This is what I was doing in highschool.)

@Qwxlea it’s running DOS 6 and Windows 3.11 now.

I’ll probably keep that for at least a little while.

Eventually, I might move to freeDOS, but it’s almost as old as I am, and if it wants to run DOS, who am I to tell it “no”?

It *can* run Linux. The hardware is supported, or was as of 2004. It requires DOS for the bios to work, and power management under Linux can be wonky on these old laptops. (What’s the standard? ACPI or something? I’m pretty sure this predates it. )

I find myself wondering what DJ sundog would do.

I also find myself wondering how much networking I’m going to do on this thing, vs playing infocom games and writing BASIC programs.

(But gopher, and BBSs, and I’m going to have to get some kind of networking on it.)

10) some more:

I don’t want to use the pcmcia slot if I can avoid it. I only have one, and I plan to use that for file transfer, backups, and data storage.

I think that the pi or the ESP8266 is probably my best bet. I have several of both kicking around waiting for me to do something with them.

Going with the Pi would give me the added bonus of having a full Linux box available if I need one.

Going with the esp8266 would feel more authentic, but probably not work as well??

10) this is not 8. Networking options

- Get a 16 bit pcmcia type II WiFi card, set up a wireless BG router, try to figure out if I can do WPA2 in DOS

- get a pcmcia type II Ethernet card, wire myself in to my home network

- buy or build something like a wifi232 (that is a WiFi enabled microcontroller that plugs into the serial port and is interacted with like a modem with AT commands.)

- run SLiRP on a pi (probably a 0W), connect to it via serial or Ethernet.

- other stuff?

8) it has a backlit monochrome VGA screen, but the contrast on it is inconsistent. Text and most DOS applications look great, but I find myself adjusting the contrast slider and playing with the pallet options every time I have a reason to go in to Windows.

9) the pointer is ridiculously stiff. It takes actual pressure to engage it at all and it moves very slowly. I’m going to seek out a different driver to mitigate this.

8) I’m considering my networking options. This needs it’s own toot.

@ignitionigel there was a shorty movie a few years ago starring Johnny Depp.

Before that, after the show ended, there were two movies, several novels, and a multiple hundreds of episodes long audio drama sequel.

Conventional wisdom on the net is to start with the appearance of barnibus Collins, and to skip the ~200 episodes before that.

I didn’t do that, but I might skip ahead at some point.

4) one I have verified that I can read data to/from the pcmcia slot, I’m going to backup the HDD, and then remove it and replace it with a CF card (I think I already have an adapter.)

5) while I’m in there, I need to replace the cmos battery.

6) The power plug is in the battery, so I’ll have to be careful with it when I rebuild it. If I break the casing, I won’t be able to power.

7) after having used my HP 200LX and a 286 desktop for a while, this 486 is absolutely greased lightening.

On the gateway handbook 486 #retrocomputer project:

1) the driver I found on the HDD was for spinning metal ATA HDDs, and cant be used with flash cards.

2) but there is a flash driver out there in the world, that works with this cardsoft subsystem, I just need to find a download (archive.org, here I come!)

3) It has Windows 3.11 and the Windows terminal program, and a serial port, so I’m going to try to do file transfer from a Linux box to it via serial.

It’s been picking up the pace recently. We’ve got ghosts popping up now, and hints that something bigger is coming.

It was a daily show, 5 days a week, done mostly in single takes, very little editing, With minor flubs and errors abounding.

It aired from 66 through the mid seventies, but feels much more like an early Tv production as a result of the live nature of the show.

I haven’t talked about this in a while, but a couple of nights a week we watch an episode or two of the 60s soap opera Dark Shadows. We’re around 30 episodes in to a 1200+ episode series.

I *think* I have every episode. They’re short, right at 20 minutes. The early episodes are classic soap opera fair.

Later on it’s supposed to get darker, and dabble in the supernatural, before finally giving way to a full fledged vampire plot line. And time travel?

@igneckosmoz no idea how to get to the bios on this machine, but I’ll give it a shot.

Need to replace the cmos battery, though.

It appears there is something called cardsoft on the hdd, and in the cardsoft folder is something called atadrv.exe.

I assume I can add this to config.sys, load it high as a device, and have it recognize my compact flash card in the pcmcia adapter as an ata hdd.

I have not tried this yet, but I will when I get back home.

@Ethancdavenport Whoever built the Iron Giant seeded the earth with human, built the iron giant to test/exterminate us.

And the music is good!

Mostly 60s garage and psych? plus a fair amount of instrumental late 50s/early 60s rock?

Which seems impossibly lucky for me.

My HP200LX automatically mounts PCMCIA cards as Drive A.

I don't know how normal DOS or early Windows machines would have handled that.

I assume I need to load a device driver. I don't know the specifics of that.

If you've worked with #PCMCIA cards on #DOS and want to give me some pointers, I'd appreciate it.

Alright, my workday is nearly over. I have about an hour left, and I'm about my new computer.

It's the perfect size to use, although a dash too big to comfortably carry without a bag (at least, with the power adapter, once I have it running on AAs, that'll be better.)

I need to figure out how to tweak the mouse sensitivity, because it's very stiff.

I also need to figure out how to get DOS to recognize and mount an ATA PCMCIA card.