#MS-DOS

[soapdispensersalesman]

[digitalfossils]

[foone]

I've been hacking on Railroad Tycoon (DOS, 1990) for a week+ now and I decided to finally put some of my knowledge to good use and I made a custom map for the game:

It's the Trans(-continental) Railroad (Tycoon)!

[stoplookingup]

A lot of younger folks find it weird and even hilarious that their elders are over-cautious -- dare I say, terrified -- about accidentally hitting the wrong button on their computer, like if they're not careful, they'll accidentally blow it up.

That's because younger folk have only ever used fairly idiot-proof computers. They've never known the joys of MS-DOS, where every floppy disk had to be formatted from the command line by typing FORMAT followed by the letter of the appropriate drive. And if you typed the wrong letter -- or even just forgot to type any letter -- before hitting enter, you reformatted your hard drive. That's right, you wiped everything on your hard drive, with one keystroke, in the course of doing a common, everyday task.

There were all kinds of other pitfalls. Like for example, foolishly starting to upgrade Windows without realizing that you had to first make sure certain files were in the correct path, and if they weren't, the install couldn't find them and it just ground to a halt, leaving you with a half-installed OS, which is the same as having no OS at all. (Ask me how I know.)

Mind you, people should be able to learn new ways of doing things, and they should understand that there are safeguards now that make those kinds of mistakes nearly impossible. But it's not that easy to let go of fear, and those early PCs really traumatized us. More than a few of us lost days, weeks, even months of work. Whole novels. So next time Grandma is kind of freaking out about hitting trash or install or whatever, have some pity. She's been through a lot.

[boyslit]

ok if you've been using Windows for a while which one has been your favorite. bc i just got hit with a huge nostalgia brick for the os of my youth

if you don't have a favorite you can pick which one sucked the least :) feel free to rant and bitch in the tags if you want to, we're all haters at the end of the day <3

[fuzzyghost]

[doyouknowthisgame]

[gamemories]

[neververy4]

It’s official

I have written my first x86 assembly program, complied it directly onto a floppy, and ran it on original hardware!

Alas, I used EMU8086 to write and compile the code 😔 so I’m almost there, but not quite. But I’m more than close enough to be happy (:

All this program does is print text to the DOS screen. But, that’s all I wanted it to do :) Just a test

[katherinestasaph]

lovedos: the shareware-era yandere simulator, except good

Continuing to transfer old blog posts to the new site; here's one on a wild shareware prank game from ~1991.

[thechosenpumbloom]

A collection of random box covers of both notable and not so notable MS-DOS horror games. All credits to people on Mobygames. Feel free to add.

[found-in-retro-game-mags]

Hell on CD-ROM

“This CD-ROM is so good... You’ll crap your pants!” (PC Gamer #15, Aug. 1995)

[digitalfossils]

[sucka99]

[metaljesusrocks]

The eXoDOS project is like a digital Noah's Ark for DOS games, meticulously rescuing and preserving thousands of PC classics from the treacherous seas of obsolescence. Imagine a pixelated Indiana Jones, armed not with a whip but with an external hard drive, bravely navigating the dusty catacombs of abandonware to unearth treasures like "Commander Keen" and "William Shatner's TekWar". https://www.retro-exo.com/exodos.html