January of 1994 I Just built a new computer...the first one I ever built from mail-order parts.
486-66 running 16Megs of Ram and a 512meg Hd. I think I spent about $3200 on it. Windows 3.1 w/ Norton Desktop. (The reason I didn't upgrade to win95 for a LOONG Time), and a 3x CD-ROM (damn cd-caddies back then).....for some reason I decided to go SCSI on my CD-ROm and got a Sound Blaster SCSI II Sound Card (integrated Sound card and Scsi controller). OH, yah, I know why. back then, it was the only CD Rom that had play controls on the front of the CD-ROm so you could plug in your headphones, and just use the buttons on it (w/ LCD Track Number) and play CD's without having to use Windows.......
Around March of that year, I remember reading an article in COmputer Flopper, I mean shopper, about the brand new screamin video card, the Diamon Stealth (a 1 Meg version). My current video card had just 512k of memory. Well, I had just purchased Papyrus Indy racing, and it ran like a whore, so I went and bought the Diamond Video Card. Turns out my friend and I wanted to play the same game and race each other......so he needed a new video card too. He bought the Trident 1 Meg Video Card. And to my astonishment, his actually ran better then mine. A buddy of mine at a computer shop said it's bedcause trident's been around so long that they're drivers are pretty solid (my how times have changed)......
Anyway. Back then when you played games, you had to create either boot disks, or use Dos 6.x w/ multi-config. And to play head to head (the only mode supported) you had to use a null modem cable. I had a helluva time using MSFT's memmaker/ with the config.sys file to figure out how to get the 600K or so I needed of conventional memory, and still load interlink (a msft util) for the null-modem cable.
Back then, I was on the internet, I used Prodigy and Delphi......but it was only for FTP, Finger, Gopher and Email. I hadn't yet been to my first "web page"....but my modem was a 14.4.......a helluva jump from my friend's 2800. We went to a lot of BBS's back then too.
And then sometime in March, I went for a fun ride and tried to use Microsoft's Voice Command Driven Sound System 2.0. The absolute worst piece of softwawre I 've ever tried in my life. It took about 4 tries to get everything to where I could even run the bastard, and then I spent two weeks training it, and the most I could get out of it was a window open, and window close that worked about 40% of the time. Had to speak like a robot. Not to mention, that it completely fubarred my system.
BTW...my windows 3.1 install disks were 5.25. I even had a 200Meg Tape Backup that I used all of ONCE. It was so slow I had to run it at night, and it was so loud that I could hear it from my bedroom across the hall with two doors closed.
Anyway. Just thought I'd share. It's amazing to me to see what I have now compared to back then. And my computer is two years old. I might bash M$ft as much as the next person....but in 9 years what there's really been an incredible amount of increased stability and ease of use from the OS level. I just wish back then I'd have heard of Linux.......and would have tried it then.
BTW......I've never been in to prOn....but I've always liked collecting Nature, Fantasy, and Space images. I used to use Gopher a lot to find images......or I'd just use some .edu FTP sites I new about (ftp.sunet.edu was my favorite)....and all the images were UUEncoded...so you had to download the parts first, and then uuDecode them to see it.......no graphical client....all command line. IT took forever to just get one image and then a lot of times, you'd have to figure out which part you downloaded that was bad.
Games That I played back then:
Panavia Tornado
X-Wing
Strike Commander
Wolf 3d
Doom
Lemmings (embarassed to admit it)
Terminator 20xx (a FPS)
Falcon 4.0
F-15 Strike Eagle
I cried when I installed Strike Commander and it took up 52 Megs of HD Space
486-66 running 16Megs of Ram and a 512meg Hd. I think I spent about $3200 on it. Windows 3.1 w/ Norton Desktop. (The reason I didn't upgrade to win95 for a LOONG Time), and a 3x CD-ROM (damn cd-caddies back then).....for some reason I decided to go SCSI on my CD-ROm and got a Sound Blaster SCSI II Sound Card (integrated Sound card and Scsi controller). OH, yah, I know why. back then, it was the only CD Rom that had play controls on the front of the CD-ROm so you could plug in your headphones, and just use the buttons on it (w/ LCD Track Number) and play CD's without having to use Windows.......
Around March of that year, I remember reading an article in COmputer Flopper, I mean shopper, about the brand new screamin video card, the Diamon Stealth (a 1 Meg version). My current video card had just 512k of memory. Well, I had just purchased Papyrus Indy racing, and it ran like a whore, so I went and bought the Diamond Video Card. Turns out my friend and I wanted to play the same game and race each other......so he needed a new video card too. He bought the Trident 1 Meg Video Card. And to my astonishment, his actually ran better then mine. A buddy of mine at a computer shop said it's bedcause trident's been around so long that they're drivers are pretty solid (my how times have changed)......
Anyway. Back then when you played games, you had to create either boot disks, or use Dos 6.x w/ multi-config. And to play head to head (the only mode supported) you had to use a null modem cable. I had a helluva time using MSFT's memmaker/ with the config.sys file to figure out how to get the 600K or so I needed of conventional memory, and still load interlink (a msft util) for the null-modem cable.
Back then, I was on the internet, I used Prodigy and Delphi......but it was only for FTP, Finger, Gopher and Email. I hadn't yet been to my first "web page"....but my modem was a 14.4.......a helluva jump from my friend's 2800. We went to a lot of BBS's back then too.
And then sometime in March, I went for a fun ride and tried to use Microsoft's Voice Command Driven Sound System 2.0. The absolute worst piece of softwawre I 've ever tried in my life. It took about 4 tries to get everything to where I could even run the bastard, and then I spent two weeks training it, and the most I could get out of it was a window open, and window close that worked about 40% of the time. Had to speak like a robot. Not to mention, that it completely fubarred my system.
BTW...my windows 3.1 install disks were 5.25. I even had a 200Meg Tape Backup that I used all of ONCE. It was so slow I had to run it at night, and it was so loud that I could hear it from my bedroom across the hall with two doors closed.
Anyway. Just thought I'd share. It's amazing to me to see what I have now compared to back then. And my computer is two years old. I might bash M$ft as much as the next person....but in 9 years what there's really been an incredible amount of increased stability and ease of use from the OS level. I just wish back then I'd have heard of Linux.......and would have tried it then.
BTW......I've never been in to prOn....but I've always liked collecting Nature, Fantasy, and Space images. I used to use Gopher a lot to find images......or I'd just use some .edu FTP sites I new about (ftp.sunet.edu was my favorite)....and all the images were UUEncoded...so you had to download the parts first, and then uuDecode them to see it.......no graphical client....all command line. IT took forever to just get one image and then a lot of times, you'd have to figure out which part you downloaded that was bad.
Games That I played back then:
Panavia Tornado
X-Wing
Strike Commander
Wolf 3d
Doom
Lemmings (embarassed to admit it)
Terminator 20xx (a FPS)
Falcon 4.0
F-15 Strike Eagle
I cried when I installed Strike Commander and it took up 52 Megs of HD Space
