cognitivegears

joined 1 year ago
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retrocomputing
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Remembering multi-tasking in MS-DOS: DESQView in c/retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org
[–] cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 9 months ago

I remember that well. We used DESQView to run our BBS as well. It was only a single line system, but DESQView let us do other things on the computer without taking down the board.

Has anyone played with TriDOS? https://github.com/prokushev/tridos - it doesn’t look nearly as featured, but has the advantage of being open-source and I thought might be interesting for a project I have in mind.

The history of Vim in c/retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org
[–] cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah it makes sense - and even now that isn’t an issue, I feel like the ability to “program” your edits is still a great interface for productivity.

94
The history of Vim (pikuma.com)
 

Amazing article from Gustavo Pezzi about the history of the vi editor up to vim. Did you know that vim was first developed for the Amiga? That and lots of other interesting tidbits.

9
Interview with Laine Nooney and Adam Conover about early computers and the Apple II (www.youtube.com)
 

This video blew me away. Not because of a deep dive into the Apple II from any technical standpoint, but instead because it instead takes a broader look from a cultural perspective of the history around the late 70's and early 80's computer industry, and puts it in terms of the software and people who used them. It's a long listen (about an hour,) but includes gems such as:

"The history of early Apple is antithetical to the Apple we understand today. I mean it came out of a supreme love of tinkering, of engineering, and a believe that people should be empowered to understand how their own systems worked." - Laine Nooney

1
Check out Greaseweazle! (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org to c/retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org
0 comments fedilink
 

Finally got around to play around with Greaseweazle, and wish I had done it a long time ago! Greaseweazle is a tool to read and write raw data from many different systems. Want to read a CoCo disk, or write a new Amiga disk? I haven't tried it, but it supposedly can even deal with 8" disks (if you have the drive and interface) as well. My hardware setup was kind of a mess (as you can see from the picture!) but I'll be cleaning that up over time with a smaller power supply and some kind of enclosure. Below are some pictures of it in use:

I used it to archive my first piece of software, one I had posted about earlier - a Star Trek themed organizer software named Stardate. Find it over at the Internet Archive.

If you have been on the fence about getting a Greaseweazle, I'd highly recommend it. I feel like the ability to read and write disks from many different retro systems will be very valuable going forward, not to mention the ability to perform real preservation.

bbs tutorials? in c/bbs@lemmy.sdf.org
[–] cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

It’s a lot easier to get into then it used to be! Most BBS systems support connecting over the internet using the telnet protocol. Some of them you can connect to right off their web page.

You can find everything you need over at the telnet bbs guide:

https://www.telnetbbsguide.com

There are BBS listings there, as well as a handy guide:

https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/faqs/how-to-telnet/

1
Two-Factor Authentication with a Commodore 64 (hackaday.com)
 

Fantastic article about setting up 2FA using a Commodore 64. I'd love to see people port this to more platforms as well.

1
/c/trek is leaking :) (lemmy.sdf.org)
 

I recently found this Star Trek Stardate calendar and address book software for Windows 3.1 - between this and the After Dark Trek screensaver I should be able to decorate my computer desktop like a true early 90's Trek fan! I can't find this anywhere on the Internet Archive etc, so I'm currently putting together a greaseweazle setup so that I can get this backed up and archived.