The Drabblecast

DDR-DOS was a command line OS you controlled with a DDR foot pad. Eight random letters were displayed at a time. If one you wanted came up, you hit the appropriate foot pad. Music played in blazing early-80s era PC-Speaker glory.

The cocky kid at the local arcade mastered it and formatted your hard drive in 13.3 seconds. You loved that hard drive. It had your novel and your favorite family recipes and now it was gone in a puff of caffeine-fueled glory. Oh well.

You could always try MacAroni, the early Apple clone you ate when it became obsolete.

LOL! That's pretty good. I wonder how many here remember DR-DOS.

Thanks!

I was aware DR-DOS back in the day, but mostly stuck to MS-DOS. Making batch files to implement a primitive version of user profiles in Win 3.1 was about as fancy as I got back then.

Do I remember DR-DOS? Shucks, I still have my original operating manual (type-written in a 3-ring b inder) for Microsoft Basic version 1.0 (I wonder if that's worth anything on e-bay?)

Ah, good or DR-DOS and memories of the original Noob, Gary Kildahl, who lost the contract to sell his operating system to IBM, preferring to go golfing rather than meet with the IBM executives, who left in a huff when they found out he had left his assistant to handle the negotiations.

Whereupon they packed up their briefcases and gave Billy Gates a phone call.

ROU Killing Time wrote:Ah, good or DR-DOS and memories of the original Noob, Gary Kildahl, who lost the contract to sell his operating system to IBM, preferring to go golfing rather than meet with the IBM executives, who left in a huff when they found out he had left his assistant to handle the negotiations.

It's always fascinating hearing how things worked in the computer industry back then. Crazy stuff.

dreamrock wrote:DDR-DOS was a command line OS you controlled with a DDR foot pad.

Groan. BTW, I worked for a company that developed a, for real, foot mouse.

dreamrock wrote:The cocky kid at the local arcade mastered it and formatted your hard drive in 13.3 seconds.

That's what's brilliant about this drabble. Your DDR-DOS kid did a Denial Of Service (DOS) attack on the hard drive.

Dreamrock, I think that you are on to something. I have been worrying what would happen to me professionally should I lose both my hand when, for example, tickling my hypothetical pet gator.

tbaker2500 wrote:LOL! That's pretty good. I wonder how many here remember DR-DOS.

I remember it but have a little trouble placing it.

My first computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80 that I bought in 1977. Somehow it led to my developing code professionally for twenty years.

eric_marsh wrote:

tbaker2500 wrote:LOL! That's pretty good. I wonder how many here remember DR-DOS.

I remember it but have a little trouble placing it.

My first computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80 that I bought in 1977. Somehow it led to my developing code professionally for twenty years.

Same thing happened to me after my dad, thinking these computers might be a good thing for his kids to learn about, bought us an Altair 8800a.

(I always win the, "who had the oldest computer" bar-bet...)

My goal with the TRS-80 was to model engine development. I was (and am still) into motorsports and I figured that a computer would be just the thing to gain a competitive advantage. I also wanted to do a computer graphics model of an engine. What I didn't realize at the time was that it takes more than 4k of ROM BASIC to do the job. However about twenty years later I did do that CGI engine.

http://ericmarsh.info/Erics_World/Engine_Model.html

Yeah, I got into computers thinking they would be great for solving math problems and maybe even taking dictation.

I never would have believed that their main use would be to make the rock-solid phone system something of a crap shoot. Or, to change the microwave from a simple one-twist knob to requiring 20 keystrokes to heat soup.

~~~~
My old man refused to buy me a computer or even let me use my own savings. 'Course he later refused to buy Apple stock. Alas, all he remembers is me telling him not to buy Microsoft because "the products are absolute crap and only a fool would buy them" (The government bought by the truckload).

A good friend of mine, (my best man for my first wedding, and I was the best man for his first wedding... hmmm, I guess we were both pretty crappy best men, come to think of it, but I digres...) relates how if only he'd listened to me when I advised him to by Microsoft in the early 80's, he'd be a very wealthy man today. Of course, if I had followed my own advice, I'd be wealthy too.

Good thing money doesn't buy happiness, (although it certainly buys a much more comfortable and classy form of misery...)

On the subject of Way-back-when computing, I played Neverwinter Nights on a server that was written and developed by the guy who designed the Commodore 64. Maybe not the most uber of computers out there, but certainly the first that really brought micro-computing into the main stream for a vast group of first time PC gamers...

We still hang out together on Proudmoore.

Shadow Priests, FTW...

(amazing the digressions that occurr when Norm is slammed with real life delaying the weekly DC fix. I sure hope a hungry pumpkin didn't get him..)

I remember Windows 3.1...