Please allow me to introduce myself...

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DxHum

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I come from a time of MS-DOS 3.31, MFM drives, and dial-up modems. There were no graphic user interfaces, no high-speed internet. 10 megabyte hard drives were of a 5-1/4 inch footprint, took up 2 bays and weighed about 8 pounds.

Who here recalls the "fdisk" command or "format c: /s"? These things have gone away, rendered obsolete by advancements in technology. Gone are the days when we sat in front of a keyboard with the "C Prompt" on a screen; a green light to begin issuing commands to make our computers do their magic.

Today, everything is mouse pointing and clicking. We have become disconnected from our computers. We have come to rely on a group of people (programmers) to act as our interpreters; we tell the user interface what we want, and the user interface translates that into a language the machine can understand. But what goes on behind the scenes of those GUIs? We don't know.

After 19 months of experimenting with different flavors of Linux, I have decided Ubuntu is my flavor of choice.

I look forward to sitting at my terminal screen and issuing commands again.

Thank you, The Old DOS Guy.
 


Welcome to the forums,
I would say there are a lot of classical users on these forums, but to become classical you have to have ceased composing and started decomposing.:eek:
My IBM compatible didn't even have a hard drive, it had 2 big floppy bays, one read [for the programs] and one write for storage,

you will probably find this will be moved by the janitors to the introductions forums
 
Brickwizard said:
Welcome to the forums,
I would say there are a lot of classical users on these forums, but to become classical you have to have ceased composing and started decomposing.:eek:
My IBM compatible didn't even have a hard drive, it had 2 big floppy bays, one read [for the programs] and one write for storage,

you will probably find this will be moved by the janitors to the introductions forums
Click to expand...

Was there an introduction forum? I missed that.
 
Welcome,

We are from the same era, my first computer was a TI99/4A that my Mother won as a door prize.

Enjoy your Linux experience.

Bob
 
Are you a man of wealth and taste?!?

Anyhow, moved to the Member Intro sub-forum.
 
fdisk is a thing in linux too, but i'd recommend parted ;)

welcome to the tribe!
 
DxHum said:
I was wondering who might catch that. Good job!
Click to expand...

It's a good song. I can even enjoy GnR's version.

Also, welcome aboard. Or, should I say, "Pleased to meet you..."
 
blunix said:
fdisk is a thing in linux too, but i'd recommend parted ;)

welcome to the tribe!
Click to expand...

I think you mean...fsck.
1717370264663.gif
 
Welcome to the Forum.
1717370329728.gif


I'm glad the old days are gone...so much better now...for Linux I mean.
1717370532761.gif
 
To avoid confusion for beginners...from the net...
"fdisk is a command-line utility used for partitioning hard drives. It allows you to create, modify, and delete partitions on your storage devices. You can use fdisk on both traditional hard drives (HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)."

Most would use GParted these days in Linux.

"fsck (file system check) is a command-line utility that allows you to perform consistency checks and interactive repairs on one or more Linux file systems. It uses programs specific to the type of the file system it checks.
You can use the fsck command to repair corrupted file systems in situations where the system fails to boot, or a partition cannot be mounted."

Of cause fsck is best run from the Live Session and unlike windoze it works.
1717375080411.gif
 
Welcome to the forum, old timer. :)

Do you also remember running spinrite on those old systems and having the entire system magically become three or four times faster? That was an eye opener for me. A lot of folks paid big bucks and still suffered with horribly slow computers just because the interleave factor on their spiffy new HD was wrong for their particular controller / hard disk combination.

I also remember going into a retailer that had running MS DOS systems on display and, just for giggles, while no one was looking, changed the command prompt on a high end model so that it always showed:

Not ready reading drive C
Abort, Retry, Fail?

I suspect there's a retired salesman out there somewhere who still thinks mean thoughts about me. :)


And yeah, just last night I used fdisk and format on a drive - but it was on a USB flash drive with a quarter of a million times more capacity than those old 10 MB ones (and which cost about 15 bucks). It's kind of a shame that I have to even say it but no, I did not do a full write / read test to make sure it really has the capacity it claims to have (though it -is- a name brand stick).
 
MikeRocor said:
Welcome to the forum, old timer. :)

Do you also remember running spinrite on those old systems and having the entire system magically become three or four times faster? That was an eye opener for me. A lot of folks paid big bucks and still suffered with horribly slow computers just because the interleave factor on their spiffy new HD was wrong for their particular controller / hard disk combination.

I also remember going into a retailer that had running MS DOS systems on display and, just for giggles, while no one was looking, changed the command prompt on a high end model so that it always showed:

Not ready reading drive C
Abort, Retry, Fail?

I suspect there's a retired salesman out there somewhere who still thinks mean thoughts about me. :)


And yeah, just last night I used fdisk and format on a drive - but it was on a USB flash drive with a quarter of a million times more capacity than those old 10 MB ones (and which cost about 15 bucks). It's kind of a shame that I have to even say it but no, I did not do a full write / read test to make sure it really has the capacity it claims to have (though it -is- a name brand stick).
Click to expand...

"Old Timer"? Ouch!

;)

Yes!! I do remember SPINRITE...

Just for giggles, huh? Diabolical!!
 
DxHum said:
I come from a time of MS-DOS 3.31, MFM drives, and dial-up modems. There were no graphic user interfaces, no high-speed internet. 10 megabyte hard drives were of a 5-1/4 inch footprint, took up 2 bays and weighed about 8 pounds.

Who here recalls the "fdisk" command or "format c: /s"? These things have gone away, rendered obsolete by advancements in technology. Gone are the days when we sat in front of a keyboard with the "C Prompt" on a screen; a green light to begin issuing commands to make our computers do their magic.

Today, everything is mouse pointing and clicking. We have become disconnected from our computers. We have come to rely on a group of people (programmers) to act as our interpreters; we tell the user interface what we want, and the user interface translates that into a language the machine can understand. But what goes on behind the scenes of those GUIs? We don't know.

After 19 months of experimenting with different flavors of Linux, I have decided Ubuntu is my flavor of choice.

I look forward to sitting at my terminal screen and issuing commands again.

Thank you, The Old DOS Guy.
Click to expand...
Welcome young one.

The NewDos/80 Guy ;)
 
I was once using an old 286 that had 1 megabyte of RAM so yeah, I remember those days. No hard drive either. Just one 3 1/2 inch floppy drive. xterm will bring you back to that comfortable command prompt. While Linux doesn't use driver letters you can set up aliases to make all of those old DOS commands work again. I used a ramdisk to hold command.com so I could actually remove the disk without the system crashing.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell
 
Hello @DxHum,
Welcome to the linux.org Forum. I can remember the old Dos days. But have been on Linux so long that I've forgotten much of that. Of Course the Terminal is still a big part of my operation here. In any event enjoy the journey!
 
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