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| MS-DOS, WFW, Win95 diskettes |
I have (3) MS-DOS 6.0 diskettes, MS-DOS 6.22 setup diskettes, (8) diskettes for Windows-for-Workgroups 3.11, and (13) diskettes for Windows 95.
And yes, I still have a diskette drive, one that connects to a system via USB. I would be interesting to see if I could set up a VM in VirtualBox running any of these systems.
I guess the days of tweaking your autoexec.bat file are long gone. Sigh.
I did find some interesting sites when I went looking around the purport to provide VirtualBox images:
Kirsle.net (this site refers the reader to downloading the files at Kirsle.net)
Vintage VMs, 386Experience
I wish I still had my OS/2 Warp disks. I was in grad school when OS/2 Warp 3.0 came out, and I went up to Frye's Electronics in Sunnyvale, CA, and purchased a copy of OS/2 2.1, the box of which had a $15 off coupon for when you purchased version 3.0. I remember installing it, and running a script provided by one of the CS professors that would optimize the driver loading sequence so that the system booted and ran quicker. I really liked being able to have multiple windows open doing different things, and web browser that came with Warp was the first one where you could drag-n-drop images from the browser to the desktop.
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| Windows, Office on CD |
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| OS/2 Warp 4.52, running in VirtualBox |
Nice to see I am not the only IT historian out there. I have pretty much the same set of flopies / cd's as you mentioned. Plus several binders full of MS TechNet cd's should you ever require them. I have a shrink wrapped copy of IBM TopView for DOS from 1984 that runs under DOS 2.0. I have a couple of usb floppy drives from IBM as well and of course, they still work. I imaged the DOS disks when I was first learning about FAT in forensics. As for OS/2, there is at least one major bank here in Denmark using it :)
ReplyDeletebr, mitch
@Mitch,
ReplyDeleteI got rid of some old stuff, but kept the stuff that was...well...more meaningful. In grad school, I set up two small networks; one 10-BaseT, the other 10-Base2. Both had an NT 3.51 Server and two Win95 systems, and were connected across two Cisco routers. The entire thing connected to the campus backbone via a 10-Base5 vampire tap.
While I was out there, I went to Frye's a number of times, and "Weird Stuff" was right next door. They had tape drives, MS-DOS, IBM-DOS, MS OS/2 v.1.0, all in shrinkwrap.
I notice that when I look at VirtualBox and what the options are for a "New" VM, I can create Win95...not that I'd want to, but hey, it's there. Might be fun to do an older version of Windows NT, though.
And I hope you noticed the OS/2 Warp 4.52 VM that I got set up...kind of cool...
Back in the 90's I had a complete collection of Byte, PC World, etc that became a lot less meaningfull once it exceed 10 feet of shelf space. Same with sw, I literally had a real copy of almost every piece of standard retail sw sold. I moved a lot back then and when I moved from Toronto to Munich, all of that was chucked out. When I moved to Denmark, I worked for a IT distributor, so that was similar to a wolf guarding sheep.
ReplyDeleteBut I still have too much "IT history" on hand :)
Yes, I noticed your OS2 Warp... it is all cool :) I can loan you my CD's ? :) Or some older versions of Sun Solaris for Intel ? Should fire those up in a vm once I get my thesis and 508 exam over. Still working on my book review as promised, nearly there !
I'm not going to reminisce over 'tweaking your autoexec.bat' or "feeding the toaster" with floppies (IIRC OS/2 required something like sixteen (16) floppy disks - and 1.2MB floppies each could take MINUTES to load). Ease of use definitely was not paramount back in the 1980s/90s. WARP was a great product. Share IBM couldn't market ice to Eskimos.
ReplyDeleteOS/2 lives... http://www.techrepublic.com/article/os2-resurrected-blue-lion-becomes-arcaos-details-emerge-for-upcoming-release/
ReplyDelete