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[Rogerwilco]

Heh . . .. And I was a Sales Manager at the time I bought that Trash 80....

Sidekick wasn't like Norton commander,

Sidekick was the first TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) program out there...

Simple stuff, calulator, address book, notepad...you hit some weird key combination to bring it up....but Wow...... Was that something...
Norton commander..... I've lived with that for years and years...the Grandaddy of all dos shells....

I'm using Total Commander now, but they use the exact same commands as NC.... I've still got it in storage, and would use it 'cept that old DOS 8 char file name max..... it'll truncate anything longer.....

What was the name(3) of some of the popular BBS software? For some reason, all I can recall is Fido...which was old when I got into it.... I had a BBS, BTW...

Remember those BBS "On line" games?

How about 300 Baud modems?

My first was a 1200 Baud, and man, that smoked!

Heh

Looking at your handle, do you have any software out there, either Retail, shareware or freeware that you've written?

I wrote a grand total of two Shareware programs, had a bit of response, but that was in the late 80's early 90's.....

a few dozen freeware bits, almost all savegame cheats......

Heh....Just flashed on....remember ZZT?

Rogerwilco and out

[Data]

5th has a nice in between programming language for editing savegames.


It might be beneficial to split this thread on savegame editing and nostalgia talk.

[SlowCoder]

Originally Posted by Rogerwilco

Heh . . .. And I was a Sales Manager at the time I bought that Trash 80....

Sidekick wasn't like Norton commander,

Sidekick was the first TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) program out there...

Simple stuff, calulator, address book, notepad...you hit some weird key combination to bring it up....but Wow...... Was that something...
Norton commander..... I've lived with that for years and years...the Grandaddy of all dos shells....

I'm using Total Commander now, but they use the exact same commands as NC.... I've still got it in storage, and would use it 'cept that old DOS 8 char file name max..... it'll truncate anything longer.....

What was the name(3) of some of the popular BBS software? For some reason, all I can recall is Fido...which was old when I got into it.... I had a BBS, BTW...

Remember those BBS "On line" games?

How about 300 Baud modems?

My first was a 1200 Baud, and man, that smoked!

Heh

Looking at your handle, do you have any software out there, either Retail, shareware or freeware that you've written?

I wrote a grand total of two Shareware programs, had a bit of response, but that was in the late 80's early 90's.....

a few dozen freeware bits, almost all savegame cheats......

Heh....Just flashed on....remember ZZT?

Rogerwilco and out

I never actually ran a BBS, but I was very active in the local ones at the time. Made friends with the sysops, a couple of which I still talk to. Contributed games I'd snagged from other BBSs, and drew come ANSI screens.

My first modem was also a 1200bps. Unfortunately my father bought it when 2400bps modems were already out, so I was still the "slowest on the block". I'd sometimes go to my friend's house to use his. My next modem was a USRobotics 14k external, which was a great improvement! But by that time I had found the Internet, and my time on BBSs was decreasing. Looking back, I really wish I could go back to my XT with its 1200bps modem, and have a day of atl3x4dt! (For those that don't get it, that's a modem dial string, typed into a terminal.)

As far as ZZT, I never played it, though "ZZT" is a very familiar sequence of letters from back in the day. From a little googling, it looks like it was some sort of Rogue/WOW type game? Looks pretty neat! Think I might have to give it a real teardown.

Other than my Animator software, I never released anything of my own to the public, until recently. I decided to place my stuff out there because I became nostalgic about QB about a month ago, and wanted to contribute my old stuff to the QB community.

Oh, yes. Now I do remember Sidekick. I think I tried it once, but had problems with performance, or it didn't work, or something or other. That was back in the late 80's-early 90's? I was a teen at that time, so software like that wasn't of real importance yet.

Edit: Holy Bug Eyes Batman! SideKick for DOS is still being sold. The surprise here is that it still costs between $59 and $99??? Holy Mazoli! I'd figure that someone who could afford that price could also afford a newer computer that can run newer software to do the same stuff!

[Rogerwilco]

It might be beneficial to split this thread on savegame editing and nostalgia talk.
__________________

Hey, Data....

Reason was, no one responded to wanting to learn, so it kinda drifted into chewing the fat....

I you are interested, just pot it here and I'll continue...lemmie know

Rogerwilco and out

[Rogerwilco]

Hey, slowcoder

(As far as ZZT, I never played it, though "ZZT" is a very familiar sequence of letters from back in the day. From a little googling, it looks like it was some sort of Rogue/WOW type game? Looks pretty neat! Think I might have to give it a real teardown.

Other than my Animator software, I never released anything of my own to the public, until recently. I decided to place my stuff out there because I became nostalgic about QB about a month ago, and wanted to contribute my old stuff to the QB community.

Oh, yes. Now I do remember Sidekick. I think I tried it once, but had problems with performance, or it didn't work, or something or other. That was back in the late 80's-early 90's? I was a teen at that time, so software like that wasn't of real importance yet.

Edit: Holy Bug Eyes Batman! SideKick for DOS is still being sold. The surprise here is that it still costs between $59 and $99??? Holy Mazoli! I'd figure that someone who could afford that price could also afford a newer computer that can run newer software to do the same stuff!)

ZZT was a really popular game using just ascii. It's still fun in a retro way, and if you haven't played it, give it a whirl. It's out there.


As I recall, sidekick was always buggy, and with those oldie systems, taking up even a small amount of memory could be a problem.

I can't believe it's still being sold. And for that price? I doubt if it would work, not to mention there's a plethora of freeware packages out there that to that and a whole lot more....

Hey, do you remember MLBBS's?

The latest and greatest in the late 90's.....

ANSI Graphics..... Still cool. I wrote a bucketfull of ANSI utilities back in the day....

Wonder how I got anything else done?

[SlowCoder]

Originally Posted by Rogerwilco

I can't believe it's still being sold. And for that price? I doubt if it would work, not to mention there's a plethora of freeware packages out there that to that and a whole lot more....

http://www.emsps.com/oldtools/borsk.htm

Originally Posted by Rogerwilco

Hey, do you remember MLBBS's? The latest and greatest in the late 90's.....

By the late 90's I was well into the Internet, and had pretty much left BBSing behind. There weren't many of the local old-school BBSs left by that time, anyway. It's really too bad because they were a great hobby from what I understand. But older tech makes way for newer.

Originally Posted by Rogerwilco

ANSI Graphics..... Still cool. I wrote a bucketfull of ANSI utilities back in the day....

Yeah, but they've been replaced by GIF and JPG, and most people have left it far behind. Unfortunately just like many of the games here. It's really too bad, because so much of the old-school technology could give a lesson to the newer stuff, and show the youngies what it took to get from the dark ages to now in technology. These days kids come in knowing all about how to browse the Internet and to use Word effectively. But they never get a good feel for how a computer works in the background, unlike the older days. Sad really.

Any of your ANSI utils in use today? TheDraw was my staple, and I was ok with it, but nothing real special. I opened TheDraw for the first time in many years just a couple of months ago, and couldn't remember much. I did manage to get the Ship/Castle animation to work, though! Hehe ...

[Rogerwilco]

Yeah, but they've been replaced by GIF and JPG, and most people have left it far behind. Unfortunately just like many of the games here. It's really too bad, because so much of the old-school technology could give a lesson to the newer stuff, and show the youngies what it took to get from the dark ages to now in technology. These days kids come in knowing all about how to browse the Internet and to use Word effectively. But they never get a good feel for how a computer works in the background, unlike the older days. Sad really.

Any of your ANSI utils in use today? TheDraw was my staple, and I was ok with it, but nothing real special. I opened TheDraw for the first time in many years just a couple of months ago, and couldn't remember much. I did manage to get the Ship/Castle animation to work, though! Hehe ...
__________________________________________________ ______


Arrrg! I messed up...MLBBS's were the latest and greatest in the late *80's*

oh yea, I'm gratefull to be there when this whole computer thing was "growing up"

you had to know what you were doing back then......

the entire DOS was three files: Command.com, Msdos.sys and.... another one...the last two were hidden, so you only saw Command.com when you DIR'ed it.



Used to peruse PC Magazine for these little code snippets...either in Basic, or Binary(Assembly?)

you wrote it out as something like:

...if I recall....to convert it...lessee....it was, I *think* a consol command....remember those?

like

COPY CON THIS.TXT
This is a test <enter>

then CTRL-Z to put an EOF mark
<enter>

and you had yourself a text file

Anyway, when you ran the code it turned into a .COM file....

Those dozens of little utilities you couldn't live without.....

Hey, remember...EDLIN?????

Wow.....those days when microsoft had the crappiest utilities going....Hmmm...nothing has changed much, has it.....


ANSI stuff.....lessee... I probably have the sorce code somewhere...the only one that comes to mind right now was ANSIFY....took any standard ascii text file and ANSIFIED it, turned each letter into a random color.....did other stuff too, like cOnVeRtInG cAsE

you could set the intensity, Blinks or no blinks, etc.

Tells you how slow the old systems were: it had a progress bar so you could see it processing...heh.....

I did some stuff you could incorporate into your Basic program, graphics wise, but i can't remember off hand.....

Oh yea, I remeber The Draw's Spaceship and castle...and what passed for animation back then.....

It had an export function that made BLOAD images...

Remember when screensavers were really used to save the screen? Those old green monitors would burn an image if the text/whatever was left on too long....

Retro stuff.....what happens when you get old....

[SlowCoder]

* Imagines what the other forum guys are thinking when they read this stuff. Probably making some offhanded expletive remark, rolling their eyes and clicking the Back button to find something more interesting to read *

I didn't use edlin much at all. But I did use the "copy con" command quite often during the early DOS 2/3.x days, mostly to rewrite config.sys and autoexec.bat. When DOS 5 came out I moved on to the new EDIT software. WAY EASIER!

Working in the education environment, I see kids these days doing so much with computers. They are able to accomplish so much, very amazingly. But if you ask them HOW the computer does stuff, they have no idea. Basically they're the equivalent of script kiddies, using the applications as a means to an end, but not understanding what's under the hood. And since most use MS OSs, life's so simple that they can't even tell what an interrupt or bus is. There are very few who manage to pass muster as far as I'm concerned. (Wholly geez! Did I just say "muster"? Age is creeping up on me!)

These days I use Linux for a number of reasons. One of those is that I enjoy being able to tinker with the OS, and nothing is hidden from me. For instance, I can trace what happens when I plug a piece of hardware all the way from the kernel to the driver, to the apps themselves. Really fun stuff for me.

I don't remember anything just becoming a COM, but I do remember using DEBUG to make the computer do things that were otherwise not available, such as restarting via batch file.

[dosraider]

Originally Posted by Rogerwilco

the entire DOS was three files: Command.com, Msdos.sys and.... another one...

IO.SYS

Originally Posted by SlowCoder

* Imagines what the other forum guys are thinking when they read this stuff........

Boooooooooooooooooooooooring, that's what I think.
And: WhyTF they don't do this in a chat session.

[dosraider]

Originally Posted by Rogerwilco

you wrote it out as something like:

...if I recall....to convert it...lessee....it was, I *think* a consol command....remember those?

like

COPY CON THIS.TXT
This is a test <enter>

then CTRL-Z to put an EOF mark
<enter>

and you had yourself a text file

Anyway, when you ran the code it turned into a .COM file....

You meant this? Post 24 that is, post 21 is -or was- RW's postcount ... LMAO.
Yep, that's a case of weird writing I guess, though there exist conversion progs that compiles batch files into executables ones.
You still can find them around TeH InTrAhNeT.

And this whole topic is still booooooooring.
It looks more and more as a talky between some ol'men on a bench ... *do you remember, when we were young and beautiful, ....* ....LMAO.