Post As7R26ILjKgaVCiLTc by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
(DIR) More posts by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
(DIR) Post #As6RjHpmVcjBaIz6Wm by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-03-16T05:55:11Z
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OK sheesh, THIS was a super-sweet spot in my (admittedly ancient) computing platform history: DESQView and QEMM.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQviewI mistakenly remembered it as OS/2, which I did run around that time (88, 89, 90) but no, it was desqview.I'm fine without a mouse, it turns out. I've been writing a bunch of CP/M sofware and old workflows came back (hint: its barbaric, I don't fully recommend it).Gonna put a web page up about the CP/M thing soon. Got my version 2 boards from JLCPCB, awaiting a delayed delivery from Digikey.#retrocomputing
(DIR) Post #As6UlYfnAnd6Fd5S4m by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-03-16T06:29:13Z
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This was well after my desqview time, somwhere in the mid 90s i'd switched to 386/bsd. but it looks very nice.I can attest the multitasking of earlier desqview was top notch.https://lunduke.substack.com/p/desqviewx-the-forgotten-mid-1990s
(DIR) Post #As6Y9Inu7qrrqWtY80 by adorfer@chaos.social
2025-03-16T07:07:04Z
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@tomjennings i spend just a few weeks in late 1990 with Desqview/386, trying to run FrontDoor in parallel with GoldEd, while a .MOD player was running as in a third task. But it was just unreliable. Switching to OS/2 was a great step up. (and going from FrontDoor to Binkley too ;-)
(DIR) Post #As72usx6XeBwC4ntSa by NorwayJose@techhub.social
2025-03-16T12:51:50Z
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@tomjennings I've got fond memories of using DESQview 386 to enable me to run a BBS while still being able to use my PC for other tasks. If I ran a game, BBS users could notice the lag but overall it ran amazingly well. I used that until I started playing with Yggdrasil Linux.
(DIR) Post #As7Airlxtvuoh3NCc4 by Starcade@sfba.social
2025-03-16T14:19:18Z
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@tomjennings Hah...QEMM brings back memories of fighting with memory managment during the DOS days.And OS/2... UGH. My company was an early adopter. We even tried to roll it out as a desktop OS replacement. Everyone hated it, except the person responsible for deployment.
(DIR) Post #As7CohSpLDmAMqKaP2 by ExtentOfTheJam@mastodon.social
2025-03-16T14:42:46Z
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@tomjennings I remember people used to use that to run multiple BBS instances
(DIR) Post #As7ICito9lHdXVE35U by tbortels@infosec.exchange
2025-03-16T15:43:08Z
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@tomjennings I spent close to a year beta-testing DVX after-hours when I worked for Quarterdeck. It was lovely - dinner plus overtime to mess with computers, which was what I was going to do anyway!
(DIR) Post #As7QHt1cjbyS1fr292 by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-03-16T17:13:43Z
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@NorwayJose Me too! I ran Fido and FidoNet, various whatever in the foreground, and long slow tape backups etc in another. I'm considering playing at that again, with modern hardware and a shit-ton of RAM. Next project maybe.
(DIR) Post #As7R26ILjKgaVCiLTc by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-03-16T17:22:06Z
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@adorfer A lot of code then cheated int 21h calls, and poked around in the bios and other not by the book things... Programs that were well behaved worked great. Of course that's not sufficient, and 1990ish cheating was common for feetch and performance. But when you culled the bad programs or worked around them Desqview was great. Big ask though.
(DIR) Post #As7RQ4Yhpwj04FnOHQ by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-03-16T17:26:27Z
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@Starcade Bummer! I may be significant that I have no specific memories of OS/2.... Lol.
(DIR) Post #As7RWP4qSlLvRRqanY by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-03-16T17:27:35Z
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@ExtentOfTheJam Yeah this I think helps explain the BBS explosion then.
(DIR) Post #As7RoSNIwO0ask5dQW by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-03-16T17:30:49Z
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@juliagreaven We had one of those in our punk house!! A terrible old 4.77mhz 8088 machine, yes, with floppies only, man geoworks was BADASS SOFTWARE... I was the sole nerd, this was 1987, 88, the smart but non nerds used geoworks machine for flyers, writing, all sorts of stuff. Real multi task! You could load the thing down til it typed one character a second and it NEVER FAILED. It was truly amazing software c
(DIR) Post #As7RzNk4VPTvhOwsPA by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-03-16T17:32:47Z
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@juliagreaven Do you have anything on geoworks? I guess I'll websearch when I get home.
(DIR) Post #As7S2PvErA7XKTcRua by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-03-16T17:33:21Z
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@tbortels Lucky man!
(DIR) Post #As7S81IdJe10hWEX3I by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-03-16T17:34:21Z
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@drscriptt Ooohhh... Ok gonna think about.
(DIR) Post #As7SDebUbxTG34k1Oy by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-03-16T17:35:23Z
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@juliagreaven Also we had an ARCnet lan! Interconnecting the geoworks box and my desqview setup! And some other things. ARCnet was horrible, but wonderful! Lol
(DIR) Post #As7W8ETMjpTVNCbtoG by adorfer@chaos.social
2025-03-16T18:19:12Z
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@tomjennings my guesses were that DOSint21 and BIOS too were not reentrant at all and Desqview had to catch as many critical conditions as possible (especially with file system operations) with little state machines trying to solve it cooperatively between conflicting tasks.I suppose IBM had a better starting position, as they used their DOS source code license from MS, in order to implement those VirtualDosMachines without lots of reverse engineering.
(DIR) Post #As7alsnt7cXdZHN6mG by Starcade@sfba.social
2025-03-16T19:11:10Z
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@tomjennings It was as if Windows 3 diverged and never fully evolved. While it was initially developed with Microsoft and it ran Windows 3.0 applications, it was cludgy and not well polished. Driver support was lacking. Polish did arrive later, but by then it was too late.It did work well as a server OS at the time, but NT 3.51 later blew it out of the water.
(DIR) Post #As9cm0l48TlaSlA0I4 by Quazatron@mastodon.coffee
2025-03-17T18:42:59Z
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@tomjennings I never used DESQview/X before, but I got curious enough to get this running in MS-DO 6.22 under VirtualBox because I'm a sucker for forgotten software. Took me a while as it would not work in FreeDOS for some reason.I would have been much happier with this that Windows 3.1 at the time.
(DIR) Post #AsA6720nZCex6StWxk by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-03-18T00:11:49Z
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@Quazatron NEATO!! Lol I only ran the early one, never the X version. But I may want to change that...I've done some simple searching for 80386 boards, but what I'd really like is a fake one with a ton of memory and another zero on the clock speed. Are there chips that cane be jammed into 80386 mode? I'm lazy and want to run on the iron, not a virtual solution....
(DIR) Post #AsA68lOaJiGQ9DqXOS by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-03-18T00:12:09Z
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@Quazatron that's very clean.
(DIR) Post #AsA6sihudzYB8BnhYm by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-03-18T00:20:23Z
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@ltning That's really great! There's been so many posts about how goot DV is Im gonna up priority in setting one up. Gotta find a board. I'll use emulation to explore and setup but I want to run on iron.
(DIR) Post #AsA6yllQC0AwLfKIam by ltning@pleroma.anduin.net
2025-03-17T08:42:19.178498Z
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@tomjennings I'm using DESQViee on a 286 to multitask http, ftp and irc servers on http://floppy.museum .. it's awesome.
(DIR) Post #AsA6ymjgZwNhMZWQWe by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-03-18T00:21:29Z
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@ltning Your websit is great and I'm gonna peruse tonight after dinner (slow read).Have yo uconsidered hosting in gopherspace? I'm seriously gonna.