Your favorite Old School OS

ManofGod said:
Yeah, it must be Microsoft's fault. :rolleyes: Dude, whether you like them or not, they made computers accessible to the masses like no one else ever did before or have since. Pretty much the same as what Apple did with the smart phone. Let me guess, you think it is Ford's fault because no one can fix their car and know what is going on under the hood, amirite? :D :LOL:
Click to expand...

Blame game aside, I can't help but notice that the current generation are fairly clueless when it comes to the underlying OS of their machine. In fact, using your automotive example, most would honestly struggle to change a flat tyre at the side of the road.

Of course that's no fault of the GUI, the GUI was just an evolution that was bound to happen one way or another - Having said that, there's no doubting people's negativity and blind fear of anything command line based, even though it's still very much a necessity under every OS in even mildly advanced situations.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ChadD
like this
ManofGod said:
Yeah but, that $500 you paid for the Amiga 500 was just the beginning. I paid $500 for a brand new Amiga 500, then I bought the 512KB fast ram upgrade. Later, I bought an external SCSI 50MB hard drive with ram slot expansion and installed 4mb of ram. I remember also upgraded it with a 68030 processor, installed a kickstart 1.3 and 2.04 rom and a switch to choose between them and I loved that machine.

I played a crap ton of games on it as well.
Click to expand...

Fully equipped, the Amiga still came in under the price of the equivalent PC in 88 and was a vastly better machine. You're so lucky you could afford the hard drive, that was one expansion that was pure unobtainium for me. That sounds like an awesome system, have you still got it?
 
cyclone3d said:
DOS 6.22 and Windows 98SE.

Best for old-school gaming.
Click to expand...

I tried 98SE recently on my Pentium 3 build, I had so many issues getting it running. My gawd is it fragile, drivers are just impossible to find. In the end I settled for Windows 2000.

AmigaOS 3.1 is by far better supported in modern times than 98SE.
 
BulletDust said:
Fully equipped, the Amiga still came in under the price of the equivalent PC in 88 and was a vastly better machine. You're so lucky you could afford the hard drive, that was one expansion that was pure unobtainium for me. That sounds like an awesome system, have you still got it?
Click to expand...

Nah, I had sold it back them but now I wish I had not. I could get the Amiga 3000 system from a friend but, he wants me to take everything or nothing and I do not have all the room for the books and stuff he has. :D
 
I had an A500 but it never got expanded beyond the 512KB trapdoor expansion, because I moved on to an A1200 and that little beast got an expansion card kitted out with 68030 & 68882 FPU co-processor and 4MB of RAM, plus an internal IDE HDD which was 80MB (but later on got swapped out for a massive 330MB drive). Oh happy days!

That system is still in the loft, but hasn't been powered up for years. I also have a horrible feeling that, were I to dig it out and open it up, I'd find that the battery for the A1200's real-time clock will have ruptured and spilt corrosive shit all over the PCB. Should have disconnected that bastard before I put it in storage, because the batteries are notorious for failing in this manner :(
 
ManofGod said:
Nah, I had sold it back them but now I wish I had not. I could get the Amiga 3000 system from a friend but, he wants me to take everything or nothing and I do not have all the room for the books and stuff he has. :D
Click to expand...

There's a member on these forums with a 3000T. They were beasts, I'd love a 3000T, but the shipping fees from the US would be out of this world.

Bawjaws said:
I had an A500 but it never got expanded beyond the 512KB trapdoor expansion, because I moved on to an A1200 and that little beast got an expansion card kitted out with 68030 & 68882 FPU co-processor and 4MB of RAM, plus an internal IDE HDD which was 80MB (but later on got swapped out for a massive 330MB drive). Oh happy days!

That system is still in the loft, but hasn't been powered up for years. I also have a horrible feeling that, were I to dig it out and open it up, I'd find that the battery for the A1200's real-time clock will have ruptured and spilt corrosive shit all over the PCB. Should have disconnected that bastard before I put it in storage, because the batteries are notorious for failing in this manner :(
Click to expand...

Dig that A1200 up, they're worth a fortune now. Plus the A1200 doesn't have a battery soldered to the mainboard or a RTC as standard, so you may be lucky and the damage could be limited.

I love my A1200 with 68030, even if it is safely tucked in a pillowcase in the closet ATM while my C64 takes pride of place.
 
ManofGod said:
Yeah, it must be Microsoft's fault. :rolleyes: Dude, whether you like them or not, they made computers accessible to the masses like no one else ever did before or have since. Pretty much the same as what Apple did with the smart phone. Let me guess, you think it is Ford's fault because no one can fix their car and know what is going on under the hood, amirite? :D :LOL:
Click to expand...

Sometimes dude you have a hard time detecting a joke... the best jokes I find always have at least a wiff of truth to them.

I do not believe that MS, Apple or anyone else have on purpose hidden the workings of peoples machines.... as is the case with Ford and other car manufacturers. Jesus seriously I swear they even put oil filters in the most stupid spots these days. :LOL:

C64 was a golden age though... every kid that had one learned at least a basic level of programming concepts. Of course they didn't all go on to be genius coders, but I do believe it was a generation that learned a lot more about basic logical thinking thanks to those machines. I have known plenty of coders over the years... it was always my experience that the children of the 80s that grew up with c64-128s Amegias Apple IIs had an advantage. The generation after them where imo less for being introduced to early MS PCs... the generation after them had easy access to web / java programming. As I see those poor bastards that grew up in between the 80s golden age and the rise of the net just didn't get the same easy exposure to programming languages and concepts. Really the DOS / early windows based compilers where just not widespread nor all that great or newbie friendly. Still I guess I have some fond memories of turbo pascal on dos... perhaps I should shut up. lmao
 
Solaris 7. That OS just worked, hard to believe it's 20 years old at this point.
 
ChadD said:
Sometimes dude you have a hard time detecting a joke... the best jokes I find always have at least a wiff of truth to them.

I do not believe that MS, Apple or anyone else have on purpose hidden the workings of peoples machines.... as is the case with Ford and other car manufacturers. Jesus seriously I swear they even put oil filters in the most stupid spots these days. :LOL:

C64 was a golden age though... every kid that had one learned at least a basic level of programming concepts. Of course they didn't all go on to be genius coders, but I do believe it was a generation that learned a lot more about basic logical thinking thanks to those machines. I have known plenty of coders over the years... it was always my experience that the children of the 80s that grew up with c64-128s Amegias Apple IIs had an advantage. The generation after them where imo less for being introduced to early MS PCs... the generation after them had easy access to web / java programming. As I see those poor bastards that grew up in between the 80s golden age and the rise of the net just didn't get the same easy exposure to programming languages and concepts. Really the DOS / early windows based compilers where just not widespread nor all that great or newbie friendly. Still I guess I have some fond memories of turbo pascal on dos... perhaps I should shut up. lmao
Click to expand...

I don't know what it was like in the US/Canada in the day, but in my day we we're taught BASIC coding in class. I don't think coding is even part of primary/high school curriculum anymore?
 
BulletDust said:
I don't know what it was like in the US/Canada in the day, but in my day we we're taught BASIC coding in class. I don't think coding is even part of primary/high school curriculum anymore?
Click to expand...

Good point. I was taught pascal in high school, basic and pascal where pretty common at least here in Canada. Now they have fluffier classes involving media creation ect.
 
BulletDust said:
I tried 98SE recently on my Pentium 3 build, I had so many issues getting it running. My gawd is it fragile, drivers are just impossible to find. In the end I settled for Windows 2000.

AmigaOS 3.1 is by far better supported in modern times than 98SE.
Click to expand...

MWAHAHAHAHAHA.

Noob :ROFLMAO:

My fastest Win98SE rig is:
Abit KT7A
Athlon XP-M 2800+ running around 2.4Ghz (modded BIOS and socket wire mod)
Nvidia 7900GTX - modded drivers

I haven't actually finalized it because I have been working on other stuff as of late.

I've also got a P4 2.8Ghz Toshiba laptop running Win98SE. The drivers for the video card (Geforce FX Go 5200) were a huge pain to find. Finally found a set for a different brand of laptop that actually works.

Finding some drivers can be sort of difficult, but if you know where to look it is fairly easy to get a good Win98SE rig going.
 
cyclone3d said:
MWAHAHAHAHAHA.

Noob :ROFLMAO:

My fastest Win98SE rig is:
Abit KT7A
Athlon XP-M 2800+ running around 2.4Ghz (modded BIOS and socket wire mod)
Nvidia 7900GTX - modded drivers

I haven't actually finalized it because I have been working on other stuff as of late.

I've also got a P4 2.8Ghz Toshiba laptop running Win98SE. The drivers for the video card (Geforce FX Go 5200) were a huge pain to find. Finally found a set for a different brand of laptop that actually works.

Finding some drivers can be sort of difficult, but if you know where to look it is fairly easy to get a good Win98SE rig going.
Click to expand...

Calling an AmigaOS user a 'noob'...

Interesting.

If I really wanted to work out Windows 98, I could have. Problem is, the OS isn't that good to waste the time on.
 
ChadD said:
Good point. I was taught pascal in high school, basic and pascal where pretty common at least here in Canada. Now they have fluffier classes involving media creation ect.
Click to expand...

We were taught Pascal, Turbo Pascal is actually quite a good language, I still like it to this day.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ChadD
like this
BulletDust said:
That could have been Apple's fault, they brought the GUI to the masses.
Click to expand...
OTOH they introduced the hypercard which could have been what BASIC was to us, only at a GUI level. It still lives in the form of LiveCode.
 
Bawjaws said:
Yeah, in 1987 when the A500 came out, a comparable PC price-wise was absolute shite :D VGA graphics came out at about the same time iirc, but PCs were miles behind as a gaming platform compared to the Amiga, and cost an absolute bomb too. The Amiga really was the golden age of gaming as far as I'm concerned: I loved my Amiga even more than my Spectrum (which was the machine that got me into computers in the first place, way back in 1984).
Click to expand...

It wasn't VGA; EGA was still the PC's dominant graphics adapter as VGA had just been introduced in the PS/2 in '87. It was rough for PC games primarily because people couldn't afford to flip five thousand dollar computers just for the new hotness the way we do now. So they had to have multiple SKUs or a binary that could handle 8/16 bit CPU and CGA/EGA/VGA(MCA!) in the same box. Amiga wasn't really a panacea either with the different daughterboard/RAM combos that existed and the A1000 quirks. Trying to have enough disks in the box to cover all of that is what almost sunk Sierra On-Line.
 
What wasn't VGA? :D I said that VGA graphics came out in 87, but sure, I should have stressed that EGA was the top mainstream graphics tech :)

As for the A500, for a good while after launch it really was a single-config platform for games: you had an A500 with half a meg of Chip RAM, and that was it (your point about A1000 configs is valid but if we're taking gaming platforms then the A500 was where it was at). Things changed once you got games like Dungeon Master (one of the first games to require a full meg of RAM, and the reason I got a trapdoor expansion card), and later still when the A500+ et al arrived.

But in comparison to PCs of the time, the Amiga was an infinitely more harmonised platform.
 
BulletDust said:
Calling an AmigaOS user a 'noob'...

Interesting.

If I really wanted to work out Windows 98, I could have. Problem is, the OS isn't that good to waste the time on.
Click to expand...


I was joking about being a noob. Figured the rofl smiley would have helped point that out.
 
Hey man, I'm so old I don't even understand this new-fangled "Information Superhighway". It'll never catch on!
 
cyclone3d said:
Should I have used ASCII art instead?
Click to expand...
Yes please!

Code: 
 __      __         .__                       .__       .___      __                .__   
/  \    /  \ ____   |  |  __ _____  __   ____ |  |    __| _/_____|  | ______   ____ |  | 
\   \/\/   // __ \  |  | |  |  \  \/ /  /  _ \|  |   / __ |/  ___/  |/ /  _ \ /  _ \|  | 
 \        /\  ___/  |  |_|  |  /\   /  (  <_> )  |__/ /_/ |\___ \|    <  <_> |  <_> )  |__
  \__/\  /  \___  > |____/____/  \_/    \____/|____/\____ /____  >__|_ \____/ \____/|____/
       \/       \/                                       \/    \/     \/
 
Bawjaws said:
What wasn't VGA? :D I said that VGA graphics came out in 87, but sure, I should have stressed that EGA was the top mainstream graphics tech :)

As for the A500, for a good while after launch it really was a single-config platform for games: you had an A500 with half a meg of Chip RAM, and that was it (your point about A1000 configs is valid but if we're taking gaming platforms then the A500 was where it was at). Things changed once you got games like Dungeon Master (one of the first games to require a full meg of RAM, and the reason I got a trapdoor expansion card), and later still when the A500+ et al arrived.

But in comparison to PCs of the time, the Amiga was an infinitely more harmonised platform.
Click to expand...

I was being pedantic primarily because nobody (other than those of us with employee discounts) was buying a PS/2 for gaming. Clones were _much_ cheaper by comparison. And that EGA as the PC mainstream with 16-colours couldn't hold a candle to the Amiga's GFX/sound capabilities, even outside of HAM mode.

(edit) can't form coherent thoughts today. Need more coffee!
 
cyclone3d said:
I was joking about being a noob. Figured the rofl smiley would have helped point that out.
Click to expand...

I know, you're all cool my friend.

A Pentium 3 build is unique as really Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows XP could be classed as 'period correct' (in fact I think they finally stopped production of the Tualatin as late as 2013). Considering my Pentium 3 build is a Tualatin, Windows 98 was just being a fickle bastard.

I can say that with a default clock speed of 1.4Ghz, it appears to hit 1.6Ghz no worries and the bios of my Gigabyte GA-60XET is very unique as it has 1/5th and 1/6th PCI/AGP dividers - You can overclock with such precision!
 
Last edited:
Todd Walter said:
It wasn't VGA; EGA was still the PC's dominant graphics adapter as VGA had just been introduced in the PS/2 in '87. It was rough for PC games primarily because people couldn't afford to flip five thousand dollar computers just for the new hotness the way we do now. So they had to have multiple SKUs or a binary that could handle 8/16 bit CPU and CGA/EGA/VGA(MCA!) in the same box. Amiga wasn't really a panacea either with the different daughterboard/RAM combos that existed and the A1000 quirks. Trying to have enough disks in the box to cover all of that is what almost sunk Sierra On-Line.
Click to expand...

Oh, if only the Amiga had WHDload in the day! Simply the best idea for the Amiga platform ever - No fragmentation of the platform whatsoever these days. I run OCS A500 based titles on my AGA A1200 no worries, all stored on my HDD with a lovely front end.
 
Win XP is the first system I really liked, and I don't know if Vista counts as old school but at the end of the run I thought it was pretty good.
 
McDork said:
Win XP is the first system I really liked, and I don't know if Vista counts as old school but at the end of the run I thought it was pretty good.
Click to expand...

I really liked XP in the day, but when I look at it now the interface looks too colorful and in your face compared to the interface used by 95/98/2000 - I really think 2000 was Microsoft's peak in terms of UI as well as major stability and uptimes for the first time.
 
Slackware LINUX - which was contemporary with MS-DOS 6 and WIndows 3.1 at least and definitely pre-dated Windows 95.

I also still have a soft spot for RSTS/E but that might be older than some of the folks IN this thread.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top