On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 21:38:02 -0000, you wrote: > I was not impressed to be told I couldn't have a 5.5 inch >drive. I have stacks of those, including a copy of Windows v2.0, in those >dark days before the launch of 3.1 which made it famous. I collect and enjoy >using old software. Someone has too ;-)
Ah, the good old days when I dragged my computer to school on a four-wheel cart, uphill both ways, in the snow. A couple of years ago I sold a box of software for $5. The guy got a bargain - it was all very functional registered stuff that he could have transferred title if he wanted. Full version of MS Word 4.0 for DOS, and even an decent Office 95 for Windows that was on about 110 disks. Boy was I glad to get rid of it - I had moved that box of discs and floppies so many times. I gleefully waved it goodby for the last time and danced a little jig. The neatest thing in that sale was an original box containing Windows 286. I'm pretty sure it was considered Windows 1.0 but not called that. I am almost positive it pre-dated Windows 2.0, but all that was a long time ago in computer years. I bought it from a guy who worked for Microsoft at the time, and he got it through his job. I remember I could not get it to run worth a hoot on my fancy 286 - 12mHz computer with 512k of RAM and 10 Mb HD. I couldn't justify the week's salary it would have cost to upgrade from 512k to 640k of RAM to try to get it to run faster. An Excel file took ten minutes to open and fifteen to save, and five minutes or more for every computation, if it did not crash at the first sign of data entry. But that little 286 was a real workhorse without Windows. Word for DOS was very fast, and I even knew a whole lot of the formatting shortcuts. Printing on a dot matrix printer from a 286 machine could get really slow, though. It wasn't until Pentium 3 - 450mHz age that I got as fast using MS Word (for Windows) as I was using Word 4.0 for DOS. Oh well, trip down memory lane. Most likely other PDMLers go back much further than me with computers. I still like to remember how well that old 286 served me. It only crashed once in two years, and that was when a spider took up residence in it, and hatched little spiderettes which one day all of a sudden came scurrying by the dozens out of the floppy drive slot like lemmings over the cliff, heading right across the desk towards me and scattering in every direction at once. Eeek, I went scurrying myself that day, you can be sure. -- John Mustarde www.photolin.com
