#86boxing

[never-obsolete]

[commodorez]

Hi! I'm so sorry if this has been asked before, but I'm completely clueless on computers, but I want to learn about them. Any places you'd recommend starting for bare bones beginners? I'm also interested in early-mid 90's tech particularly too. I'm guessing I have to figure out the basics before I can move onto specific tech though, right?

You're really knowledgeable and nice so I figured I'd just ask. Any help at all would be appreciated. Thank you! :]

That's an excellent question, I don't think I've been asked it before in such a general sense. I was raised with the benefit of being immersed in computers regularly, so providing a solid answer may be a bit difficult since for the basics, I never had to think about it.

I had computer classes of various types throughout my school years. We learned how to use a mouse, typing, word processing, programming -- and that was all before middle school. We got proper typing, html, and general purpose computer science courses in middle and high school, and you can bet I took those too. I also have the benefit of a bachelors of science in computer science, so you'll forgive me if my answer sounds incredibly skewed with 30+ years of bias.

The biggest suggestion I can give you is simply to find a device and play with it. Whatever you can get your hands on, even if its not that old, as long as it's considered past its prime, and nobody will get upset of you accidentally break something (physically or in software). Learning about things with computers in general tends to have some degree of trial and error, be it programming, administrating, or whatever -- try, learn, and start over if things don't work out as expected the first time. Professionals do it all the time (I know I do, and nobody's fired me for it yet).

Some cast-off 90s or early 00's surplus office desktop computer running Windows would be a good start, just explore it and its settings. Start digging into folders, see what's installed, see what works and more importantly what doesn't work right. Try to find comparable software, and install it. Even the basics like old copies of Microsoft Office, or whatever.

I recommend looking through the available software on winworld as it's an excellent treasure trove of operating systems, applications, games, and other useful software of the time period. I'd link it directly, but tumblr hates links to external sites and will bury this post if I do. If you're a mac fan, and you can find an old G3 or Performa, there is the Macintosh Garden's repository of software, but I'm not the right person to ask about that.

Some of you might be like "oh, oh! Raspberry Pi! say Raspberry Pi!" but I can't really recommend those as a starting point, even if they are cheap for an older model. Those require a bit of setup, and even the most common linux can be obtuse as hell for newcomers if you don't have someone to guide you.

If you don't have real hardware to muck about with, emulation is also your friend. DOSBox was my weapon of choice for a long time, but I think other things like 86Box have supplanted it. I have the luxury of the real hardware in most cases, so I haven't emulated much in the past decade. Tech Tangents on youtube has a new video explaining the subject well, I highly recommend it. There are plenty of other methods too, but most are far more sophisticated to get started with, if you ask me.

For getting a glimpse into the world of the 90s tech, if you haven't already discovered LGR on youtube, I've been watching his content for well over a decade now. He covers both the common and esoteric, both hardware and software, and is pretty honest about the whole thing, rather than caricaturish in his presentation style. It might be a good jumping off point to find proverbial rabbits to chase.

I guess the trick is to a find a specific thing you're really interested in, and then start following that thread, researching on wikipedia and finding old enthusiast websites to read through. I'm sure there are a few good books on more general history of 90s computing and the coming internet, but I'm not an avid reader of the genre. Flipping through tech magazines of the era (PC Magazine comes to mind, check archive dot org for that) can provide a good historical perspective. Watching old episodes of the Computer Chronicles (youtube or archive dot org) can provide this too, but it also had demonstrations and explanations of the emerging technologies as they happened.

There are so many approaches here, I'm sure I've missed some good suggestions though. I also realized I waffle a bit between the modern and vintage, but I find many computing troubleshooting skillsets transcend eras. What works now can apply to 10, 20, 30, or sometimes even 40+ years ago, because it's all about mindset of "this computer/program is dumb, and only follows the instructions its given" . Sometimes those instructions are poorly thought out on the part of the folks who designed them. And those failures are not necessarily your fault, so you gotta push through until you figure out how to do the thing you're trying to do. Reading the documentation you can find will only take you so far, sometimes things are just dumb, and experimentation (and failures) will teach you so much more about the hard and fast rules of computers than anything else. I'm rambling at this point...

So, let's throw the question to the crowd, and ask a few other folks in the Retrotech Crew.

@ms-dos5 @virescent-phosphor @teckheck @jhavard @techav @regretsretrotech @airconditionedcomputingnightmare @aperture-in-the-multiverse -- anything big I missed?

[s-lycopersicum]

HI :3 wat VM software are you using to run your XP system? I found a cool emulator software which can do full system emulation for IBM PCs called 86Box, you might want to check it out if you’re into retro computing!

Hi, hiiii!! I'm using just plain old VirtualBox here. I had a KVM/QEMU setup before, but I switched back because of some unrelated issues...

Also, I don't know much about IBM PCs and that era of computing, but I'm always up to learn more about it, specially about the games!

[hydralisk98]

Czarina-VM, study of Microsoft tech stack history. Preview 1

Write down study notes about the evolution of MS-DOS, QuickBASIC (from IBM Cassette BASIC to the last officially Microsoft QBasic or some early Visual Basic), "Batch" Command-Prompt, PowerShell, Windows editions pathing from "2.11 for 386" to Windows "ME" (upgraded from a "98 SE" build though) with Windows "3.11 for Workgroups" and the other 9X ones in-between, Xenix, Microsoft Bob with Great Greetings expansion, a personalized mockup Win8 TUI animated flex box panel board and other historical (or relatively historical, with a few ground-realism & critical takes along the way) Microsoft matters here and a couple development demos + big tech opinions about Microsoft too along that studious pathway.

( Also, don't forget to link down the interactive-use sessions with 86box, DOSbox X & VirtualBox/VMware as video when it is indeed ready )

Yay for the four large tags below, and farewell.

[thedeve]

another game version comparison since apparently I'm able to do this one

Quake 2 on 86box (Opengl and Software)

Quake 2 on Yamagi sourceport (Opengl 3.2 and Software)

and finally Quake 2 RTX (Opengl and RTX)

[hackernewsrobot]

86Box – Low level x86 emulator that runs older operating systems and software

https://86box.net/ Comments

[mesutakcan]

8) 86Box ile IBM 5150 sanal makineye PCDOS 1.0 kurulumu

[glowing-disciple]

I’ve been using Dosbox and Virtualbox to run old software for ages, but some software just won’t work with them.

Recently I’ve been trying to figure out DOS programming, and this led me to try a new virtual machine called 86Box.

86Box does things differently than the other virtual machines, so I started wondering if it could get these incompatible programs working again — and it did!

So tomorrow’s gonna be spent with an old and obscure edutainment game I used to play.

There’s some other obscure software that I’d like to try and get running again, but one thing at a time.

[darkjusticiar]

taking a break from my 86box travels because every step of the way infuriates me

[whomobile]

I'm playing around with 86box and idk this amuses me to no end

[never-obsolete]

[teknolojihaber]

Microsoft, MS-DOS 4.00'ın kaynak kodunu açık kaynak olarak GitHub'a koydu

Microsoft, GitHub'da MS-DOS 4.00 kaynak kodunu, ikili dosyaları, disk görüntülerini ve belgelerini yayımladı. 45 yıllık kod, MIT lisansı altında yayınlandı ve geliştiricilere kodu kullanma konusunda tam özgürlük verdi. MS-DOS 4.00'in dördüncü sürümü, IBM ile işbirliği içinde yazılması, çoklu görevin başlangıcını göstermesi ve dağıtımı sınırlı olan Çoklu Görev DOS (veya MT-DOS) adı verilen bir DOS dalı oluşturması açısından merak uyandırıcıdır. MS-DOS 4.00 kaynak kodunun piyasaya sürülmesi, eski Microsoft CTO'su Ray Ozzie ile bilgisayar araştırmacısı Connor Hyde arasındaki bir işbirliğiydi. Şu anda GitHub'da bulunan tüm kodlar ve diğer materyaller Ozzie tarafından kaydedildi. Lotus'tayken, MS-DOS 4'ün birkaç yayınlanmamış ikili beta sürümünü arşivledi. Tarihi koruma çabalarına ayrıca Microsoft Geliştirici Topluluğu Başkan Yardımcısı Scott Hanselman ve İnternet arşivcisi ve meraklısı Jeff Sponaugle da katıldı. İşletim sistemi kaynak kodunu yayınlamadan önce meraklılar, telif hakkı sahibinden gerekli tüm izinleri aldı. MS-DOS'un bu sürümüyle ilgili en ilginç şey, IBM OS/2'nin temelini oluşturan çoklu görevin bazı temelleri taşımasıdır. MS-DOS 4.00'in amaçlanan çoklu görev iş akışının önemli parçalarından biri SM.EXE oturum yöneticisidir. Bu sistem bileşeni, kısayol tuşlarını kullanarak önceden tanımlanmış altı uygulama arasında geçiş yapmanızı sağlıyor. Ancak Hyde'ın testleri çalışmalarındaki ciddi hataları ortaya çıkardı. Hyde'ın blogunda MS-DOS 4.00'deki çoklu görevler ve bu sürümle birlikte gelen tüm yardımcı programlar hakkında daha fazla bilgi edinebilirsiniz . Intel 8086 MS-DOS 4.00 derleme kodu, ikili dosyalar, disk görüntüleri ve belgeler GitHub'da barındırılıyor . Disk görüntüleri v4.0-ozzie/bin dizininde bulunur. Eski donanımla çalışan meraklılar, işletim sistemini orijinal biçiminde çalıştırabilir. Modern bilgisayarlarda çalıştırmak için, açık kaynak kodlu PCem veya 86box gibi bir emülatöre ihtiyacınız olacak. Bu arada, MS-DOS 1.25 ve 2.0'ın kaynak kodu aynı GitHub deposunda saklanıyor. Read the full article

[korutori]

I could have normal hobbies like everybody else but no, Windows 95 running on an emulated AMD K6-2 calls to me.

Anyway, check out 86Box, it's really cool

[hydralisk98]

'DOSBox-X' & '86box' experience

Welcome to my latest comment on MS-DOS 6.22, taking direct hints from a French "For Dummies" guide borrowed from my hometown's public library...

This very article is a quick follow-up & also a remaster of this previous article of mine, mostly because the live-stream did not record well my actions properly so I hope that I have fixed the issue now...

More to come soon...

[joshuacity]

86Boxing E6: Wilder|Breazeale|KOTY|The Monster|Inoue|Manny Rodriguez|Taylor|Prograis|Baranchyk|WBSS|Brooklyn|#86everything