ECN Forum Forums Technical Discussion Re: Computers and the Internet What computer programs do you use??

Bill,

Ya, it's hard for me also to part with old stuff, but with my eyes closed, I was able to "purge" my stock pile of collected stuff [to an extent]

I still have the 386 - Annie's mom is using it right now. I'll never get rid of that machine, or any others! The 386 was a valuable working model of experiences for me in my extreme infancy with this technology.

Still have the Model 2. Where you mentioned formatting the DOS boot disk, that reminded me of when we first tried to use the model 2.

In early 1993, I had no clue about any operations of computers - other than extreme basics [what memory is, binary, stuff like that], and the only hands on work was pulling in and terminating LAN cabling [such as coax, triax and IBM type 2], or moving computer equipment.

My parents had this machine since it was new, back in 1980 - they paid nearly $10,000 for the entire system!!!
They were going to use it in a small business that they had with another partner. This didn't amount to much, so it was folded within a year.
They never could use the machine [gee, I wonder why not like it's hard to use that type of machine ], so it was packed up in it's original boxes and put into storage.

We [my wife and I] decided it was time to learn how to use a computer, so we setup the model 2.
As you and your wife had done, we read the manual[s] prior to doing anything. After somehow figuring out enough to get things started, we setup the system.
It had the case and monitor, plus drive A: combined into one unit [like an Imac]. It had an external disk drive in a case that is the size of an IBM 4702 Contoller!! It connected to the PC via SCSI. It also had a "Daisy Wheel" impact printer.

The worst [but turned out to be the best] thing that happened was the DOS boot disk was lost [didn't get a chance to format it ].
The manual said to place the disk that says "Operating System" on it in the A: drive [local drive].
There was an included word processor, which was already written and saved to a floppy. On it at the top in small letters were the words "for the TRSDOS operating system".
We had no clue of the missing Dos disk, and as far as we could figure, the wordprocessor was the bootdisk mentioned in the book.

Well after endless attempts to get the thing to boot, and seeing the "Non-System Disk, or Diskette - Reboot" error message [got to know Interrupt 081 real good from this!], we just gave up on it.

My brother in law was, and still is, a PC user with a lot of knowledge.
Asked him what the heck was going on with this thing, and he easilly explained it to me.
The way he explained it and the fact that I actually grasped it, was so cool and easy to realize, that I had to know more about these misterious machines - so began the non stop quest!

So, to end the story on a happy note, we got a copy of the DOS diskette [big old 8" floppy ], which cost a whole $5.00 from Radio Shack [that's another story!], put it in the drive, fired it up, and FINALLY got passed the IRQ 081 error message!!!
I was so shocked to see it ask me for time and date that I just stared at it for some time!!
The rest is history

I mentioned the boot problem was bad and good. This simple thing was such an interesting principle, in the whole bootstrap sequence and logic, that it made me want to learn as much as possible, plus continue using computers. Things would have certainly been much different now if that didn't happen.
It also was a great thing to identify boot errors in the future.

Scott SET