On Mon, 14 Jan 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Amen, brother! I was a Commodore Commando for eleven years > (a lifetime in computer years).
Same for me. '82 - '92. > I was a real virtuoso: peeking > and poking, programming in 6502 machine code, compiling, writing > magazine articles, business programs and adventure games, and being > a general know-it-all. I even invented a buffer-overflow exploit > (fortunately I used my powers for good, rather than evil). I peeked, poked, and wrote 6510 machine code. I got a book on C, and the (a?) C compiler for the C=64, but I just never could get into it much. > And then came the decline. As the IBM PC increased in popularity, > Commodore wilted. One-by-one the Commodore groups, magazines and > contacts disappeared. Most of my Commodore friends switched to > IBM PCs. I became more and more isolated in my Commodore world. > I was stubborn to the last, telling anyone who would listen that > Commodore could do anything and that there was no need to switch > to this new IBM thing, with all its fancy commands and complicated > ways of doing things. Sound familiar? Sounds WAY familiar! ;-) > Eventually I surrendered and bought a new 386. That bright shiny new 386SX-16 was running at a clock speed SIXTEEN times faster than the C=64, not to mention it had a whole MEGA-byte of RAM!!!! Yes, that's SIXTEEN times the speed, AND SIXTEEN times the memory!!! Not to mention, that it comes with a FORTY MEGA-BYTE hard drive!!! My God, man, it's a super-computer! Have you tried "DOSSHELL"? The number of directories and subdirectories is just staggering! It'd take a year just to explore it all. > I hated my IBM PC. > I hated the fact that I had gone from Commodore hero to IBM zero. There's the rub. Spend all that time to become proficient, and now all that knowledge is about as useless as an 8-track cassette... or a BetaMax machine. > The transition from Commodore to DOS was *very* painful for me. > But it was worthwhile. I just wish I had done it four years > earlier. Because, by the time I was comfortable with DOS, it > was already in decline. The world was moving to point-and-click > and I would soon be obsolete again. For the last couple of Commodore years, I was using GEOS, so I was already getting into using a joystick to push a cursor around the screen. The biggest reason I got a Laser brand PC was that it came preloaded with PC/GEOS. In that respect, it made the transition somewhat easier. > > You don't really have to dive in all at once. You can just > > stick a toe in to begin with. Either dual-boot between DOS and > > Linux, or get a throwaway computer (or a $10-$25 ebay special) > > and put Linux on that. > > I'll second that. Even a 386 (with 8meg RAM) is just fine. I don't think I'd want to try running X on that, but sure, for a sandbox server machine, it'd be fine. - Steve
