Anyone know of a good computer/internet history website?

[yoda313]

Hello,

I was wondering is there a good all-in-one website for oddball faqs and such for computers/internet stuff?? There are always little questions I've wanted ansered. Like where did the term "bump" come from for moving up an old post. Or why is the harddrive always the letter "c". Stuff like that.

I know about www.cnet.com and www.slashdot.com and www.zdnet.com. These are great for current news but are there better places for a hands on access to all the odd ball questions out there?

TIA.

Kevin

--Also, where did all these abbreviations for chatting come from? Like TIA for instances- who thought of turning Thanks in advance to that acronym??--

[BJ_M]

C is the standard hard drive letter because when pc's first came out with hard drives - they had 2 floppies most often

google is your best resource

[Heywould3]

dont know of any better sites.. but i can answer your firts two ? the phrase is easy.. Bump is just a term used to get the topic moving again.. i know you know what it means. but its just that simple.. i was just a common word the same as all other things. now the C drive goes back to teh early days of the 8086 large (Real Floppy drive days) they had an 8" and a 5.25 drive were the first two recognised in cmos (BIOS) hence A: B: C: and so on.. pretty simple if you think about it.

P.S. oops i think i just dated myself... anyone remember the "punchcards" if you do then you know were im comming from.. if you dont then your a youngen

[yoda313]

Hello,

Thanks guys! I kinda figured the c drive thing. It's just sometimes there are more complex answers. I'll just surf the net for anyother oddball questions that pop up. Thanks again .

Kevin

[Heywould3]

Another tidbit of information.. the 8" floppies had a capasity of 100k and in those days 1979 or so that was huge .. so big infact that they use to partition them upto 4 times. 25k each lol.. go figgure.. no wonder Bill gates was quoted as saying no one will ever need more than 640k memory.

[yoda313]

Another tidbit of information.. the 8" floppies had a capasity of 100k and in those days 1979 or so that was huge .. so big infact that they use to partition them upto 4 times. 25k each lol.. go figgure.. no wonder Bill gates was quoted as saying no one will ever need more than 640k memory.

Hello,

Ahh.. 640k! The nemesis of old dos gaming! I remember the battles well. You know how hard it was to always have the right amount of virtual memory available? Thank god for boot disks!!!

Kevin

[Capmaster]

Anyone remember manipulating your memory to apportion so much for "extended" memory and so much for "expanded" memory?

Or the little apps that would optimize it so if you had a game that needed 605K conventional memory, this thing would shuffle things so it'd run?

Or the Six Pack ISA cards?

Or "1DIR"? Daymmmmm, I'm old

[yoda313]

Hello,

Cap - You mean emm386? Or memmaker? I just did that on a computer I converted to run dos 6.2 (amd k6). It was for gaming only. Unfortunately I tried to get it back to 98 to give to some one else but it fried. I still haven't tried to restore it yet .

Kevin

TSR - Terminate and Stay Resident - right??? I think I'm close there!

[Heywould3]

I remember all that.. getting a little newer, i remember a cool feature of windows for workgroups (3.11) that i havent seen in MS since and i think it was the best featuature ever offered by any OS.. it had the ability to search the HD for installed apps and it would create a "Pif" for them and allw them to be run.. GREAT if you were dual booting.. you didnt need to reload all your apps.. PIF if i remember correctly stood for Program information file. it was basicly a window with all the app icons in them.. if you remember 311 you know what it looks like.

no one does that now.. they should.. its great.. i have 3 OSs on my computer.. and some work accross all 3.. DAMN Registry.

[yoda313]

Hello,

i have 3 OSs on my computer.. and some work accross all 3.. DAMN Registry.

This may be super simplistic as I am by no means a network expert but: couldn't you save on a dvdrw and then use that for a simple recall later??? That way it would be on one drive accessible by all systems??? Or is that at work and no dvd burner???

kevin

[Capmaster]

Hello,

Cap - You mean emm386? Or memmaker? I just did that on a computer I converted to run dos 6.2 (amd k6). It was for gaming only. Unfortunately I tried to get it back to 98 to give to some one else but it fried. I still haven't tried to restore it yet .

Kevin

TSR - Terminate and Stay Resident - right??? I think I'm close there!

Memories ...yep. Those were the two apps I used. Putting a line in the config.sys file (or was it autoexec.bat?).

Hey heywould, what about the "macro recorder" that you could click "record" and it would record the mouse movements, clicks and keyboard commands to be used for repetitive tasks?

[Heywould3]

Hello,

i have 3 OSs on my computer.. and some work accross all 3.. DAMN Registry.

This may be super simplistic as I am by no means a network expert but: couldn't you save on a dvdrw and then use that for a simple recall later??? That way it would be on one drive accessible by all systems??? Or is that at work and no dvd burner???

kevin

You can do that.. BUt i was refering to the "registered pgms" IE to use norton you need to install it on all three OSs to get it to work because it nee3ds to regiester itself with the os. with 311 it would look on the HD and find pgms and in most cases set it up for you without having to re-install it.. it would just load it and work out of the original dir. pretty neet if i do say so myself

[Heywould3]

Hello,

Cap - You mean emm386? Or memmaker? I just did that on a computer I converted to run dos 6.2 (amd k6). It was for gaming only. Unfortunately I tried to get it back to 98 to give to some one else but it fried. I still haven't tried to restore it yet .

Kevin

TSR - Terminate and Stay Resident - right??? I think I'm close there!

Memories ...yep. Those were the two apps I used. Putting a line in the config.sys file (or was it autoexec.bat?).

Hey heywould, what about the "macro recorder" that you could click "record" and it would record the mouse movements, clicks and keyboard commands to be used for repetitive tasks?

emm 386 and memmaker actualy were seprate commands.. but you put one in config sys and the other in autoexec.bat.. thats also where you told the pgm where to load things like load high for dos etc..

macro recorder lol.. its funny the good ideas that get lost in time.. they do have similar things out now but nothing as easy as that was.

speaking of that.. anyone ever have DOS actually crash on them? other than power or hardware issues.. DOS always worked.. Hmmm

[bazooka]

Try

www.arstechnica.com

and www.extremetech.com

[yoda313]

Hello,

anyone ever have DOS actually crash on them? other than power or hardware issues.. DOS always worked.. Hmmm

Nope. But how many lines of code did dos have versus ANY version of Windows??? I think that may have something to do with it.

Also, aren't network apps similar to that windows pif thing? You now where you run the program off the network and not the pc?? Or am I mistaken about that??

Try

www.arstechnica.com

Thanks! I'll give it a go.

Kevin

[DVD_Ripper]

dont know of any better sites.. but i can answer your firts two ? the phrase is easy.. Bump is just a term used to get the topic moving again.. i know you know what it means. but its just that simple.. i was just a common word the same as all other things. now the C drive goes back to teh early days of the 8086 large (Real Floppy drive days) they had an 8" and a 5.25 drive were the first two recognised in cmos (BIOS) hence A: B: C: and so on.. pretty simple if you think about it.

P.S. oops i think i just dated myself... anyone remember the "punchcards" if you do then you know were im comming from.. if you dont then your a youngen

I remember dropping a box of about 2000 cards once in high school .... I think the cards added two numbers together in a program

I used to use EDLIN (built into DOS) to edit my Autoexec and Config.sys files . Anyone remember that beast.?

I also used a great little program back during my DOS days call Dr Dos... it allowed (in essense) ALT)_TAB switching between multiple DOS apps ... .it worked great and I would have a 'windows' environment back in early eighties.

[yoda313]

Hello,

remember dropping a box of about 2000 cards once in high school .... I think the cards added two numbers together in a program

GEEZER!!!!

Kevin

---Just kidding! ----

[bazooka]

You could also try www.theregister.com

[DVD_Ripper]

Yoda... your talking up some old technology too... How old are you?

[yoda313]

Hello,

Bazooka - Thanks for the sites! I'll check them out this weekend. Though like I said I really don't have specific questions, just musings about oddball stuff that I've run into over the years.

Kevin

[bazooka]

There are others.

[yoda313]

Hello,

Dvd_ripper - 26. I started on a texas instrument cartridge system that was hooked up to a tv! Then we got a 286 with dos 4 and from then on I never looked back!! I've got a amd850 right now and am looking to get a p4 or a fast amd!

Kevin

[Heywould3]

@ DVD-ripper.. you ever drop a box of those cards on the ground lol.. they dont work out of order (AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH) what a bitch

[Madz]

80's...Those were the days! Our first machine was certainly a C64! Writing little programs in basic and storing them on audiocassettes. Loads of fun! Till my mom finally broke down and bought the 1541 floppy.

For the dos world: Memmaker was the program that optimized emm386.exe & himem.sys w/ arguments to give the best possible base/exp/ext memory combo by loading dos & tsr's high (among other things). That didn't need to run everytime in autoexec.bat, only when you wanted to tweak the settings. Always had to fiddle w/ that (say auto vs. manual config) when trying different games.

As for the C drive? The original IBM PC had two full-height single-sided 5¼" FDD's (180K), which were A & B. I think the HDD was optional. A full-height monster in place of the second FDD that held a whopping 10MB and cost a king's ransom. Oh yeah, and it had 64K RAM & green-on-black monochrome video. The PC XT had a max of 640K onboard and a 20MB half-height 5¼" MFM/RLL HDD. "Hercules" MC or IBM CGA color graphics. That was all from memory but I think it's accurate.

[BJ_M]

80's...Those were the days

yea -- now i feel REALLY old ... almost as old as cap :P

[yoda313]

Hello,

The 80s were great! That's when I was into Carebears, and Transformers and a little of the GI JOE stuff.

We had a Sony Betamax and that's when I first saw Star Wars. I had a copy off of tv and I must have watched it a thousand times (I started using it when I was only 4!).

Kevin

[Capmaster]

80's...Those were the days

yea -- now i feel REALLY old ... almost as old as cap :P

Byte me

[bazooka]

Trash-80 or apple 2C anyone?

[Capmaster]

Or how about a coco with a fake 8" floppy bezel next to the monitor - impress your friends

[bazooka]

Or a mainframe that takes up several rooms.