The Start of an Empire: MS-DOS Celebrates 30th Birthday

[MrBig55]

Wow you can remember some games you played. ^^ It was a long time ago, all I remember was my Dungeon & Dragons series, both on DOS and Commodore.

 

[Antimatter79]

Man, some of the DOS commands in these posts bring back fond memories. I loved DOS, b/c that's when I really started learning about PCs, at the age of about 10. I didn't learn much on my old Timex Sinclair 1000, but when I got my first PC clone, and then the Tandy 1000 EX....Remember making a Vdisk so a game would load 100 times faster than from a 5.25" floppy? Or having so many games on disks and having to remember what was the name of the batch file or exe to load each one? Sierra games would have 2 or 3 each of batch files, com files, exe files, but at least they would usually load with sierra.exe. Ahh, the good old days, when you had to actually know something about your PC, rather than what icon to click on to get things done. Game designers had to rely on genuine skill, creativity, and the art of story telling, not just big name licensing and perpetual sequels to sell games.

 

[Antimatter79]

[citation][nom]jerreece[/nom]I remember playing DOS games. They installed from a single 3.5" Diskette (later games had multiple disks!). Then you had to use another 3.5" Diskette to create a customized "Boot Disk" in order to get memory settings (config files) and such right in order to make that game run.The next game you installed needed it's own "Boot Disk" because it needed different memory settings and such. Oh the joys of DOS back in the day...Some of my fondest gaming memories were DOS based games though. Aces of the Pacific by "Dynamix" (later bought by Sierra).[/citation]
That makes me want to see if I can find Falcon and play it again. I never did finish all the missions, but I still remember the joy of seeing "Splash one Mig" on the screen.

 

[atikkur]

using QEMM to get the most out of memory management.

 

[FloKid]

The next Windows should be dubbed Windows Xenix

 

[palladin9479]

You guys laugh. I have an old Dell Optiplex GX60 I setup for running Dos 6.22 and WFW 3.11. Pentium MMX 233 + 128MB RAM (laying around), kinda funny seeing DOS 6 with that much memory.

 

[megamanx00]

C:\DOS
C:\DOS\RUN
RUN\DOS\RUN

 

[drwho1]

My first PC was a 286 with 640K of memory that "ran" at the unbelievable "speed" of 8MHz, the "immense" hard drive of 20MB alone cost me $600 dollars!

Now I'm waiting for the 5TB hard drives for $100 bucks

 

[jhansonxi]

You didn't really learn DOS until you had a game that required 620K of conventional memory, SoundBlaster 16 sound card, CD-ROM, mouse, and had a SCSI system.

If you don't understand the implications of this then you're too young.

 

[vaughn2k]

error reading in drive a:\ Abort, Retry, Ignore?

 

[bmullan]

It was a LONG time ago... but I remember standing next to Gary Kildall talking at some early computer convention when a string bean kid and a couple buddies walked up and the string bean laughed/sneered... "I thought we put you out of business".

His buddies all laughed.

That was when CP/M was still innovating but losing ground to the deal just signed earlier that year between Microsoft & IBM for pcdos.

Gary Kildall was a really nice guy. That skinny kid seemed like a jerk to me at the time.

 

[palladin9479]

You didn't really learn DOS until you had a game that required 620K of conventional memory, SoundBlaster 16 sound card, CD-ROM, mouse, and had a SCSI system.

If you don't understand the implications of this then you're too young.

DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.exe /NOEMS /I=B000-B7FF
DEVICEHIGH=C:\MOUSE\MOUSE.sys
DEVICEHIGH=C:\CDROM\CDROM.SYS /D:IDECDROM

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T6
LH C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:IDECDROM /M:10 /E
LH C:\SBLASTER\SBPCI.com


Ohh those were the days. Master of Magic needed 618K of conventional memory and 2500K of EMS memory. Had to use alternate boot configs to get things to work.

 

[Mottamort]

[citation][nom]cptnjarhead[/nom]I remember configuring a config.sys file to allocate 640k so i could play darklands the good old days![/citation]

DARKLANDS!! YES. Remember that huge map and i may even have a notepad with names of cities that owe me florins for merchant quests. ah, the good ol days.

 

[Mottamort]

[citation][nom]NightLight[/nom]oh so much memories... with current cpu power and graphics power, they still can't make games like they did in dos.maybe i'm just nostalgic[/citation]

Thats because games of those times were 100% about gameplay and 0% graphics. they knew graphics didnt make the game and made immense stories to compensate...now it's the other way round :/

 

[jacobdrj]

I remember hearing somewhere that MS DOS was someone's late night last second report that was never intended to be an actual production kernel, but worked well enough to be used... And that is why we are still dealing with the repercussions of that last second all nighter to this day with legacy products (that are still backwards compatible in many cases)...

 

[palladin9479]

Thats because games of those times were 100% about gameplay and 0% graphics. they knew graphics didnt make the game and made immense stories to compensate...now it's the other way round :/

Totally true. They spend millions of USD on blockbuster AAA PC game titles, and all they do is make it look good. No actual gameplay functionality, storyline, or just plain "Fun". Need less CoD #48 and more Serious Sam / DNF style games. Lots of shooting, lots of running and a few puzzles with cheesy catch phrases in there.

 

[TwoDigital]

I'm all in on the "new games with good gameplay..." Give me a bigger, well-planned, enchanting game like Ultima IV or Master of Magic *ANY* day running under Windows 7 and you'll have a killer game. Don't blow the budget on graphics... make it imersive and fun. Imagine how much BIGGER an old dos-era game could be with the computing power and memory of a modern system.

 

[jacobdrj]

Back in Windows 95's era, I used to vacillate between 95 games and DOS games... It was ALWAYS graphics vs game-play, even back then. DOS games were more fun, Windows games were more 'prettyfull'...

Some games transcended: The Hive, Command And Conquer Red Alert was the same game play, but enhanced with good graphics in 95 mode... But games like Syndicate Wars and Tie Fighter and Duke Nukem 1, 2, and 3D were great games for DOS... Windows games had more colors and higher resolutions, but tended to be way less well thought-out...

 

[cuba_pete]

I wish I could load my memory high so my mind would run faster now!

 

[cuba_pete]

[citation][nom]megamanx00[/nom]C:\DOSC:\DOS\RUNRUN\DOS\RUN[/citation]
I still have this on a Win2k desktop. Ya gotta love the old computers we still use in the military.

 

[cuba_pete]

[citation][nom]palladin9479[/nom]You guys laugh. I have an old Dell Optiplex GX60 I setup for running Dos 6.22 and WFW 3.11. Pentium MMX 233 + 128MB RAM (laying around), kinda funny seeing DOS 6 with that much memory.[/citation]
Nice...kind of like my XP SP3 on a PII w/128MB...why? It was there...