Things TLs 7-9 would be interesting to see WITHOUT

sjard · 10-21-2009, 10:15 AM

Pre GUI I don't think there was a typical user. Everyone had their own personal preferences as to which dos commands to use for example. Or how to set up their machines or system files.

For example, I was one of only a handful of people locally who seemed to even know about the dir/p command when everyone else seemed to just stick with either dir or dir/w.

One guy I knew had hugely complex autoexec.bat files to work around the 640k barrier. It involved about 80 lines of code telling the machine to load, run, and then unload the various TSR programs.

My preferred method was to add more than 640k of onboard memory to the motherboard (most boards before the 486dx2 had half a dozen chip slots for this).

The number of people using computers jumped dramatically when programs like Xtree showed up. That program used a GUI directory tree that is very similar to what is still used today.

10-21-2009, 10:15 AM	#11
sjard Stick in the Mud Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Rural Utah	Re: Things TLs 7-9 would be interesting to see WITHOUT Pre GUI I don't think there was a typical user. Everyone had their own personal preferences as to which dos commands to use for example. Or how to set up their machines or system files. For example, I was one of only a handful of people locally who seemed to even know about the dir/p command when everyone else seemed to just stick with either dir or dir/w. One guy I knew had hugely complex autoexec.bat files to work around the 640k barrier. It involved about 80 lines of code telling the machine to load, run, and then unload the various TSR programs. My preferred method was to add more than 640k of onboard memory to the motherboard (most boards before the 486dx2 had half a dozen chip slots for this). The number of people using computers jumped dramatically when programs like Xtree showed up. That program used a GUI directory tree that is very similar to what is still used today. __________________ MIB #1457