• Re: Favorite 90s 486 mach

    From Marcham@VERT/CAVEBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Oct 2 22:24:00 2020
    Re: Re: Favorite 90s 486 mach
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Marcham on Fri Oct 02 2020 07:44 am

    Marcham wrote to All <=-

    Hey all, looking to see what some favorite 486 machines from the 90s might have been. Running a Thinkpad 770X right now and it's a great machine, but would like a desktop that's a bit interesting. Unlike the 80s, everything from the 90s feels beige and boring. Anyone have any favorites with a bit of something special going on? Cheers.

    I loved the design of the PS/2 series, but the MicroChannel
    architecture makes finding parts tough. I think they made some models
    with PCI bus later on, but that might have been pentium-era.

    Back then, I didn't run anythig name-brand. Everything was
    custom-built, you'd buy a motherboard, power supply, case, and move
    your hard drive from machine to machine.

    Old thinkpads do rock - some of the best keyboards out there.




    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

    The PS/2 machines are decent looking machines, but nothing that grabs the eye Good to know about the internals though - want something that I can maintain without needing to grab a microscope and spend hours looking on eBay.
    Building something custom would be a fun adventure, but people seem to be charging an arm and a leg now for old PC parts.

    As for ThinkPads; ah I miss those machines. Used to ues them before switching to macOS. The best keyboards you'll even find - agreed. Well, at least I have this beast to play around with for now.
    - Sent from an IBM ThinkPad

    ---
    ■ Synchronet ■ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Marcham on Sat Oct 3 00:01:15 2020
    Re: Re: Favorite 90s 486 mach
    By: Marcham to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Oct 02 2020 06:24 pm

    As for ThinkPads; ah I miss those machines. Used to ues them before switching to macOS. The best keyboards you'll even find - agreed. Well, at least I have this beast to play around with for now.

    The oddball device I want (again) is an IBM Workpad Z50. Looked like a 10 inch screen thinkpad, lightweight, running Windows CE. Instant on. I had one of those for about a year, and it was a fun little toy. It'd sync with your desktop Outlook, you could connect mail via IMAP, and Word and Excel were usable.

    ---
    ■ Synchronet ■ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat Oct 3 00:33:00 2020
    Re: Re: Favorite 90s 486 mach
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Marcham on Fri Oct 02 2020 07:44 am

    Marcham wrote to All <=-

    Hey all, looking to see what some favorite 486 machines from the 90s might have been. Running a Thinkpad 770X right now and it's a great machine, but would like a desktop that's a bit interesting. Unlike the 80s, everything from the 90s feels beige and boring. Anyone have any favorites with a bit of something special going on? Cheers.

    I loved the design of the PS/2 series, but the MicroChannel
    architecture makes finding parts tough. I think they made some models
    with PCI bus later on, but that might have been pentium-era.

    Back then, I didn't run anythig name-brand. Everything was
    custom-built, you'd buy a motherboard, power supply, case, and move
    your hard drive from machine to machine.

    Old thinkpads do rock - some of the best keyboards out there.




    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

    PS/2's also required the configuration utility, as did the BIOS on early
    Compaq systems.

    ---
    ■ Synchronet ■ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Marcham@VERT/CAVEBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Oct 4 02:12:00 2020
    Re: Re: Favorite 90s 486 mach
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Marcham on Fri Oct 02 2020 08:01 pm

    Re: Re: Favorite 90s 486 mach
    By: Marcham to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Oct 02 2020 06:24 pm

    As for ThinkPads; ah I miss those machines. Used to ues them before switching to macOS. The best keyboards you'll even find - agreed. Well, least I have this beast to play around with for now.

    The oddball device I want (again) is an IBM Workpad Z50. Looked like a 10 in connect mail via IMAP, and Word and Excel were usable.
    Ah, that's a fun little machine; i've never had a chance to play around with C Windows CE. Always thought all the Workpad devices were Palm based too.
    - Sent from an IBM ThinkPad

    ---
    ■ Synchronet ■ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Dennisk@VERT/EOTLBBS to Ogg on Mon Oct 5 02:32:00 2020
    Ogg wrote to All <=-

    Hello Dennisk!

    ** On Sunday 04.10.20 - 06:40, dennisk wrote to Marcham:

    Amazing how 4MB today is absolutely laughable. And yes,
    this further makes me think about building my own 486
    machine. I'll have to seek out parts on ebay. - Sent from
    an IBM ThinkPad

    I've got parts, perhaps I should put them up on e-bay. I'll
    never use them except maybe as replacement if a part dies.
    IO cards, RAM, 2 x Sound Blaster 16's, network cards, video
    cards, hard disk or two.

    Me too. I have a handful of 128K or 256K modules that I am
    willing to free-cycle. I still have many ribbon connectors.

    I've got so many ram sticks from 64M to 128M, they are just laying in drawers here and there, even a small bag full. I don't even know how I got them all, there was just this period of time I kept finding them. I should sell them, if anyone wants them.


    ... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    ■ Synchronet ■ End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com
  • From Ogg@VERT/EOTLBBS to Dennisk on Mon Oct 5 00:04:00 2020
    Hello Dennisk!

    ** On Sunday 04.10.20 - 23:32, dennisk wrote to Ogg:

    Me too. I have a handful of 128K or 256K modules that I
    am willing to free-cycle. I still have many ribbon
    connectors.

    I've got so many ram sticks from 64M to 128M, they are just
    laying in drawers here and there, even a small bag full. I
    don't even know how I got them all, there was just this
    period of time I kept finding them. I should sell them, if
    anyone wants them.

    :) I think I even have some from a couple 286 PCs and two 386
    PCs. When I had the opportunity to replace a 128 with a 256
    and even a 512 next, across 4 newer pcs, I went for it.

    I maxed my WinME machine to 1GB using the tweaks that people
    published. Mobo could handle more. I didn't have older pcs
    that could use the smaller ram sizes. The smaller sizes just
    accumulated.

    ---
    ■ Synchronet ■ End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com
  • From Dennisk@VERT/FREEWAY to Tracker1 on Wed Oct 7 02:42:00 2020
    Tracker1 wrote to Dumas Walker <=-

    On 10/3/2020 5:45 AM, Dumas Walker wrote:
    Hey all, looking to see what some favorite 486 machines from the 90s
    might have been. Running a Thinkpad 770X right now and it's a great
    machine, but would like a desktop that's a bit interesting. Unlike the
    80s, everything from the 90s feels beige and boring. Anyone have any
    favorites with a bit of something special going on? Cheers.

    I actually skipped over 486s. I had a 386DX40 which, because I didn't run Windows on it, seemed to me to be more responsive than the 486 at work.

    While at a client's office, I did have chance to briefly use a 486DX2-66 that seemed pretty snappy. I was early in my career and a little cash strapped so, buy the time I went looking for a new (to me) computer, I
    wound up with a used Pentium.

    A 386DX40 is probably faster than many of the slower 486's... First
    time I was really impressed at a jump was my oc'd 1ghz AMD Duron from a 5x86@133, next was i7-860 with an SSD... next that I really noticed was
    my current system r9-3950X coming from my i7-4790K.

    I've also had a tendency to get the fastest storage option (until
    current gen, still using pci3 nvme) and maxing out ram, again, not
    quite on this one 64gb vs 128 for my mobo/cpu.

    Usually buy top of mid-range every 3-5 years or so with a mid-cycle upgrade. The hand-me-down is usually faster than whoever I give it to
    was already using.

    A 386 DX40 would be faster than a 486 SX system. But I don't think 486 SX systems were all that prevalent. I think a friend had one, and it was pretty slow. Any 486DX would blow that 386 out of the water though.

    As I upgrade less frequently, each of my machines seems significantly faster, though the later updates less so than the previous.

    ... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    ■ Synchronet ■ Freeway BBS, Bendigo Australia. freeway.apana.org.au
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Marcham on Sun Oct 4 11:17:00 2020
    Marcham wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    Ah, that's a fun little machine; i've never had a chance to play around with C Windows CE. Always thought all the Workpad devices were Palm
    based too.

    Yeah, they relabeled Palm devices, this was from another vendor, I
    think. They had another line of devices the thinkpad i1200 and i1300
    at the time that were made by Acer, but still felt like Thinkpads.

    They had a sync tool that let you synchronize folders, edit documents
    with the pocket versions of Word and Excel, then sync them back to
    your desktop. It was pretty nice, I had a 45 minute commute by ferry
    to work, and I negotiated to leave work an hour earlier since I could
    get work done on my commute. With the workpad I'd be in the office
    with agendas for my meetings and a head start on documentation (no
    wifi back then = no distractions)




    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
    --- MultiMail/XT v0.52
    ■ Synchronet ■ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Tracker1 on Wed Oct 7 14:22:00 2020
    Re: Re: Favorite 90s 486 mach
    By: Tracker1 to Dumas Walker on Mon Oct 05 2020 03:56 pm

    On 10/3/2020 5:45 AM, Dumas Walker wrote:
    Hey all, looking to see what some favorite 486 machines from the 90s
    might have been. Running a Thinkpad 770X right now and it's a great
    machine, but would like a desktop that's a bit interesting. Unlike the
    80s, everything from the 90s feels beige and boring. Anyone have any
    favorites with a bit of something special going on? Cheers.

    I actually skipped over 486s. I had a 386DX40 which, because I didn't run Windows on it, seemed to me to be more responsive than the 486 at work.

    While at a client's office, I did have chance to briefly use a 486DX2-66 that seemed pretty snappy. I was early in my career and a little cash strapped so, buy the time I went looking for a new (to me) computer, I wound up with a used Pentium.

    A 386DX40 is probably faster than many of the slower 486's... First time
    I was really impressed at a jump was my oc'd 1ghz AMD Duron from a
    5x86@133, next was i7-860 with an SSD... next that I really noticed was
    my current system r9-3950X coming from my i7-4790K.

    I've also had a tendency to get the fastest storage option (until
    current gen, still using pci3 nvme) and maxing out ram, again, not quite
    on this one 64gb vs 128 for my mobo/cpu.

    Usually buy top of mid-range every 3-5 years or so with a mid-cycle
    upgrade. The hand-me-down is usually faster than whoever I give it to
    was already using.

    --
    Michael J. Ryan
    tracker1 +o Roughneck BBS


    The advantage of the 486DX was the integrated math co-processor. When i
    worked at ZDS, our lead tech found out the cpu clock chip was a carry over from the 386 systems, and by adding a wire jumper we could bump up the cpu clock
    to 80Mhz to give us a 40Mhz option with the 486. It was the cool thing to do before the DX2 and DX3 models came out. Running at 40Mhz required a fan and heatsink.

    ---
    ■ Synchronet ■ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Dennisk on Wed Oct 7 12:59:00 2020
    Dennisk wrote to Tracker1 <=-

    A 386DX40 is probably faster than many of the slower 486's...

    Those were interesting times. AMD's 386 was fast, 486SX versus DX,
    clock doubled 486es versus single speed, competing CPUs from Cyrix,
    AMD and IBM, VLB versus EISA...

    My favorite PC at the time was an ISA bus 486dx/50. Surprisingly, it
    was faster at gaming with an ISA card than a VLB dx2/66.



    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
    --- MultiMail/XT v0.52
    ■ Synchronet ■ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org
  • From Dennisk@VERT/EOTLBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Oct 4 10:28:00 2020
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Dennisk wrote to Tracker1 <=-

    A 386DX40 is probably faster than many of the slower 486's...

    Those were interesting times. AMD's 386 was fast, 486SX versus DX,
    clock doubled 486es versus single speed, competing CPUs from Cyrix,
    AMD and IBM, VLB versus EISA...

    My favorite PC at the time was an ISA bus 486dx/50. Surprisingly, it
    was faster at gaming with an ISA card than a VLB dx2/66.

    That is interesting. The 486 I'm using now has a VLB video card, and
    when I tried an ISA, it was definately slower. Was the 50MHz CPU and
    AMD one?

    I think of all the machines I've had, the Amstrad PC2386 was my
    favourite, even though it was on loan to me (for 3 years!). Mostly
    because so much was new, it was current (all my previous machines were
    quite old), and there was just so many different games to try, programs
    to run, things to do. MIDI music, Tracker music, VGA graphics, BBSing, Assembler Programming, viewing pictures that looked realistic, Digital
    sound playback and recording, making Doom levels, all these were new
    things I could which is why that machine was the most interesting.


    ... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!
    --- MultiMail/MS-DOS v0.29
    ■ Synchronet ■ End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com
  • From Ed Vance@VERT/CAPCITY2 to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Oct 9 17:25:00 2020
    10-07-20 08:59 poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Dennisk about Re: Favorite 90s 486 mach
    Howdy! Poindexter,

    @VIA: VERT/REALITY
    @MSGID: <5F7FCE84.41711.dove.dove-gen@realitycheckbbs.org>
    @REPLY: <smb_getmsgidx
    Dennisk wrote to Tracker1 <=-

    A 386DX40 is probably faster than many of the slower 486's...

    Those were interesting times. AMD's 386 was fast, 486SX versus DX,
    clock doubled 486es versus single speed, competing CPUs from Cyrix,
    AMD and IBM, VLB versus EISA...

    My favorite PC at the time was an ISA bus 486dx/50. Surprisingly, it
    was faster at gaming with an ISA card than a VLB dx2/66.

    The Compatiable PC's that My Section used were hand me downs when the Boss
    got a newer PC.

    I had been reading Popular Electronics and Radio-Electronics magazines and
    had a C=64 at home when the ITT DOS v2.11 XT w/10MB HDD got put on the desk.

    A Zenith 286 came next, but to Me it seemed to be slower than the XT when writing to its 20 MB HDD when it was used for downloading reports from a Dial-Up connection.

    The next PC was a Dell 386 that had DOS 3.0 & Win3.1, I liked it better than the Zenith 286.

    Thinking about that Dell, I came to work one afternoon and saw someone on the 1st Shift playing Solitaire.

    They were moving each Card individually up to the Suite Stack and I said:
    "Why don't You just double-click on the Card instead of moving it to the Stack?", they try double-clicking a Card and saw it went on the Stack, and asked Me: "How did You know to do that?" and I told them I clicked on HELP
    at the top of the window and read about how to do that.

    I've already wrote in this Thread about getting a 486DX33 built so I won't go on about how much I like it.
    I still have it but haven't turned it on lately.

    I was given a old ISA network Card for the 486 and I put it in but haven't figured out how to use it along with this XP box.

    I've searched for Drivers for it but couldn't find them at the Manufacturers web site.

    I uuess I was just too late to get those Drivers for the 486 box.
    When the 486 was built I ordered MS-DOS 5.0 to come on it.
    Years later I was at a Salvation Army Thrift Store and found a IBM DOS 7.0 CD and added it to the 486.

    Would there be a generic Network Driver in MS-DOS 5.0 or IBM DOS 7.0 that I could used for Networking? Thanks in advance!

    The ISA Network Card has a CAT 5 connector and the Linksys Router still has some empty port sockets.

    While typing this, my mind got to thinking about someone has made a Adapter with a LAN connector to use with a C=64, now that would be awesome to have
    all of my PCs connected together!

    Just Dreaming...

    73 de Ed W9ODR . .



    ... Hillbilly Dining: fast food is hitting a deer at 65.
    --- MultiMail/MS-DOS v0.49
    ■ Synchronet ■ CAPCITY2 * capcity2.synchro.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/Rlogin/HTTP
  • From Vk3jed@VERT/FREEWAY to Ed Vance on Sat Oct 10 22:21:00 2020
    On 10-09-20 13:25, Ed Vance wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    I was given a old ISA network Card for the 486 and I put it in but
    haven't figured out how to use it along with this XP box.

    Hmm, I should be able to make them talk. :)

    I've searched for Drivers for it but couldn't find them at the Manufacturers web site.

    What's the brand and model of the network card? You've obviously identified the manufacturer. In the ISA days, NE2000s (and clones) were common, and there's likely some generic drivers around for those. More upmarket places went for the 3c509, which was considered the bees knees in those days - I rarely saw one of those, but saw a pile of NE2000s (and RTL8019s, which were a common clone).

    Would there be a generic Network Driver in MS-DOS 5.0 or IBM DOS 7.0
    that I could used for Networking? Thanks in advance!

    Possibly, you need to identify the card.

    The ISA Network Card has a CAT 5 connector and the Linksys Router still has some empty port sockets.

    Hmm, does it have jumpers? If not, you may need the configuration utility from the manufacturer. For DOS, you will need to make sure it's in "Jumperless" mode (where the I/O and IRQ are configured into the card by the utility) and noy "PnP (Plug and Pray for ISA). DOS will not see the card in PnP mode.

    In the late 90s, I used to configure these things by the boatload. :)

    While typing this, my mind got to thinking about someone has made a Adapter with a LAN connector to use with a C=64, now that would be
    awesome to have all of my PCs connected together!

    That one, I can't help with, I was never into C64s myself.

    ... Hillbilly Dining: fast food is hitting a deer at 65.

    Here, we can get you some fresh 'roo that way. You'll have your car in the panel shop the next day too, if it's not written off! :D


    ... The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
    --- MultiMail/Win v0.51
    ■ Synchronet ■ Freeway BBS, Bendigo Australia. freeway.apana.org.au
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Dennisk on Sat Oct 10 17:42:53 2020
    On 10/6/2020 4:42 AM, Dennisk wrote:

    A 386 DX40 would be faster than a 486 SX system. But I don't think 486 SX systems were all that prevalent. I think a friend had one, and it was pretty slow. Any 486DX would blow that 386 out of the water though.

    There wer a TON of those... most of the retail systems from that era
    were 486SX class, because people saw 486 and didn't know better... often
    the same today, they see Intel Core i7, and if it's 4-6yo, it's slower
    than a Core i3 today.

    As I upgrade less frequently, each of my machines seems significantly faster, though the later updates less so than the previous.

    Yeah, I used to have a 1-2 year turnover in the late 90's throught the
    early 2000's... Since around 2010 or so, it's been less of an urgency.
    I really wanted to get to 16core and up to 64gb though, as I was facing
    some bottlenecks with some work projects.

    Of course, I have to use my work laptop for everything, which is 4c, 32g
    and sometimes that bottlenecks... at least it has an nvme (slower) which
    helps some. It's tollerable as long as I'm not doing anything that
    requires a full set of services up at the same time.

    Some software is PostgreSQL, some MS-SQL, and spatterings of RabbitMQ,
    Redis and others, not to mention API, worker systems, and UIs. So when
    I have to put different things up to work on locally it can take its'
    toll. WSL2 and Docker help a lot in making it easier to reset/teardown
    and test though. I cringe when I have to work on something tethered to Windows, which I don't have to too much.

    ----

    Adside: on the web app front, I do get it... I've seen some horrible
    things... called a car dealer last night to chew them out at how poorly
    their site worked on a phone... tempted to see what the payload looks
    like from a simulated phone now... (doing it now).

    libertybuick.com

    On simulated android, with 4g low (1500kbps down, 300 up), it's 5.5s for
    dom loaded time and about 13s to full render... 3mb payload size, 1.8
    was JS (fucking ridiculous, that's with privacy badger and ublock
    origion), without ublock+pb it's 2.7mb of JS... With caching enabled
    another 1.5mb of JS for the search screen (500k with blocking enabled). Sluggish AF on my actual phone... my desktop is an r9-3950X, so other
    than simulating network throttling, rendering is *FAR* faster than my
    phone with iirc 4 or 6gb ram.

    By contrast for the main application I'm working on, it's ~700kb for the
    full site/application and will load 400kb for a charting/graphing
    library if you hit that area, and another library around 250kb (rich
    text editor) if you use that area of the application (both for admins
    only). The total load is under 2s in similar conditions and meets AA accessibility guidelines (govt work) ... the other application I work on
    is under 400kb payload and actually has SVG overlays on scanned images
    (the images themselves far outweight any JS payload for that app).
    These are for the full applications though, not singular pages that
    could have been done mostly static + vue/svelte/hyper or similar (If I
    were working on the former car site). I also actively review and push
    back when other devs try to bring in new modules... I swear every new
    dev tries to include moment.js


    --
    Michael J. Ryan
    tracker1 +o Roughneck BBS

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - coming back 2/2/20
  • From Dennisk@VERT/EOTLBBS to Tracker1 on Sun Oct 11 16:23:00 2020
    Tracker1 wrote to Dennisk <=-

    On 10/6/2020 4:42 AM, Dennisk wrote:

    A 386 DX40 would be faster than a 486 SX system. But I don't think 486 SX systems were all that prevalent. I think a friend had one, and it was
    pretty
    slow. Any 486DX would blow that 386 out of the water though.

    There wer a TON of those... most of the retail systems from that era
    were 486SX class, because people saw 486 and didn't know better...
    often the same today, they see Intel Core i7, and if it's 4-6yo, it's slower than a Core i3 today.

    Interesting. I only ever saw one. And I suspect it was an SX because it was really slow in comparison. Every other 486 I've seen is a DX.

    Maybe in Australia the market was different? Maybe here people were still buying 386's instead. Maybe I'm wrong altogether.

    As I upgrade less frequently, each of my machines seems significantly
    faster,
    though the later updates less so than the previous.

    Yeah, I used to have a 1-2 year turnover in the late 90's throught the early 2000's... Since around 2010 or so, it's been less of an urgency.
    I really wanted to get to 16core and up to 64gb though, as I was facing some bottlenecks with some work projects.

    Of course, I have to use my work laptop for everything, which is 4c,
    32g and sometimes that bottlenecks... at least it has an nvme (slower) which helps some. It's tollerable as long as I'm not doing anything
    that requires a full set of services up at the same time.

    Some software is PostgreSQL, some MS-SQL, and spatterings of RabbitMQ, Redis and others, not to mention API, worker systems, and UIs. So when
    I have to put different things up to work on locally it can take its' toll. WSL2 and Docker help a lot in making it easier to reset/teardown and test though. I cringe when I have to work on something tethered to Windows, which I don't have to too much.

    ----

    Adside: on the web app front, I do get it... I've seen some horrible things... called a car dealer last night to chew them out at how poorly their site worked on a phone... tempted to see what the payload looks
    like from a simulated phone now... (doing it now).

    libertybuick.com

    On simulated android, with 4g low (1500kbps down, 300 up), it's 5.5s
    for dom loaded time and about 13s to full render... 3mb payload size,
    1.8 was JS (fucking ridiculous, that's with privacy badger and ublock origion), without ublock+pb it's 2.7mb of JS... With caching enabled another 1.5mb of JS for the search screen (500k with blocking enabled). Sluggish AF on my actual phone... my desktop is an r9-3950X, so other
    than simulating network throttling, rendering is *FAR* faster than my phone with iirc 4 or 6gb ram.

    By contrast for the main application I'm working on, it's ~700kb for
    the full site/application and will load 400kb for a charting/graphing library if you hit that area, and another library around 250kb (rich
    text editor) if you use that area of the application (both for admins only). The total load is under 2s in similar conditions and meets AA accessibility guidelines (govt work) ... the other application I work
    on is under 400kb payload and actually has SVG overlays on scanned
    images (the images themselves far outweight any JS payload for that
    app). These are for the full applications though, not singular pages
    that could have been done mostly static + vue/svelte/hyper or similar
    (If I were working on the former car site). I also actively review and push back when other devs try to bring in new modules... I swear every
    new dev tries to include moment.js

    To sell PCs, to sell Windows, something that had to appeal to people had to be created, and that shaped computing from there on in. It was imperitive that the CONSUMER could feel they get something out of their machine easily. There was a shift towards being "user friendly", which was a marketing concern. It became more important that there would be a prebuilt GUI app, than the ability to build your own. There was more focus on the form that the solution took, rather than how it worked. That is why I struggle at work copying and pasting stuff. The primary problem being solved is how to make someone who has no training, find functions in the ribbon menu easier rather than actually be more productive. Advanced functions are there, and there are ways in which we could improve our systems using them, and I've put together some solutions. But no one wants to use them. No one wants to structure things so they are usable. People are seeking a 'consumer level' experience, not a productive one.

    Thats the difference I guess I'm awkwardly getting at. Humanities attempts at employing computing power to solve problems seems more focused on selling a product to people who don't understand what they can do with it in the first place. Companies buy newer versions and updates of software in the hope that it will be better, without bothering to see what the existing one is fully capable of. So we base our decisions on what we can understand. We understand how GUI's can look, and graphical effects, and pinch-to-zoom, so thats what we get.

    To use an analogy, imagine if tool manufacturers changed on a fundamental basis, how tools operated, because of preconceived notions people have of how they should work, or simply that they were used to using Tool X, so therefore Tool Y should work the same. Or, they based their design of their tools on what how the manufacturer preferred to produce them. Our bridges and towers would collapse! MS Word is the quintessential example. Instead of handling text and formatting approprite for computers (as LaTeX does), it just gave people something they are familiar with, a virtual A4 sheet of paper. Easy for memos, but when it comes to managing things at a large scale, not good at all. Our information is held within binary blobs emulating paper, and then, to manage it, we develop complex web-apps, which of course have to have the GUI elements that we are familiar with. Apps that cost hundreds of thousands and require the latest browser. These apps have to be sold to managers who know NOTHING AT ALL about what a computer can do, and aren't aware that most of these solutions have already been solved. They are just looking for something familiar, and if it kind of acts like their web-apps, SOLD! IT will worry about updating the browsers and the hardware.

    So organising plain text quickly turns into something hideosly complex and wasteful.

    ... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
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  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Ed Vance on Sun Oct 11 00:44:00 2020
    Re: Re: Favorite 90s 486 mach
    By: Ed Vance to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Oct 09 2020 01:25 pm

    10-07-20 08:59 poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Dennisk about Re: Favorite 90s 48 mach
    Howdy! Poindexter,

    @VIA: VERT/REALITY
    @MSGID: <5F7FCE84.41711.dove.dove-gen@realitycheckbbs.org>
    @REPLY: <smb_getmsgidx
    Dennisk wrote to Tracker1 <=-

    A 386DX40 is probably faster than many of the slower 486's...

    Those were interesting times. AMD's 386 was fast, 486SX versus DX,
    clock doubled 486es versus single speed, competing CPUs from Cyrix,
    AMD and IBM, VLB versus EISA...

    My favorite PC at the time was an ISA bus 486dx/50. Surprisingly, it
    was faster at gaming with an ISA card than a VLB dx2/66.

    The Compatiable PC's that My Section used were hand me downs when the Boss got a newer PC.

    I had been reading Popular Electronics and Radio-Electronics magazines and had a C=64 at home when the ITT DOS v2.11 XT w/10MB HDD got put on the desk.

    A Zenith 286 came next, but to Me it seemed to be slower than the XT when writing to its 20 MB HDD when it was used for downloading reports from a Dial-Up connection.

    The next PC was a Dell 386 that had DOS 3.0 & Win3.1, I liked it better than the Zenith 286.

    Thinking about that Dell, I came to work one afternoon and saw someone on th 1st Shift playing Solitaire.

    They were moving each Card individually up to the Suite Stack and I said: "Why don't You just double-click on the Card instead of moving it to the Stack?", they try double-clicking a Card and saw it went on the Stack, and asked Me: "How did You know to do that?" and I told them I clicked on HELP at the top of the window and read about how to do that.

    I've already wrote in this Thread about getting a 486DX33 built so I won't g on about how much I like it.
    I still have it but haven't turned it on lately.

    I was given a old ISA network Card for the 486 and I put it in but haven't figured out how to use it along with this XP box.

    I've searched for Drivers for it but couldn't find them at the Manufacturers web site.

    I uuess I was just too late to get those Drivers for the 486 box.
    When the 486 was built I ordered MS-DOS 5.0 to come on it.
    Years later I was at a Salvation Army Thrift Store and found a IBM DOS 7.0 C and added it to the 486.

    Would there be a generic Network Driver in MS-DOS 5.0 or IBM DOS 7.0 that I could used for Networking? Thanks in advance!

    The ISA Network Card has a CAT 5 connector and the Linksys Router still has some empty port sockets.

    While typing this, my mind got to thinking about someone has made a Adapter with a LAN connector to use with a C=64, now that would be awesome to have all of my PCs connected together!

    Just Dreaming...

    73 de Ed W9ODR . .



    ... Hillbilly Dining: fast food is hitting a deer at 65.

    DR DOS 7.x and FreeDOS have network drivers. If you go the DR DOS route, pick the install that has the Novell client and drivers.

    ---
    ■ Synchronet ■ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Dennisk on Sun Oct 11 11:36:00 2020
    Dennisk wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    My favorite PC at the time was an ISA bus 486dx/50. Surprisingly, it
    was faster at gaming with an ISA card than a VLB dx2/66.

    That is interesting. The 486 I'm using now has a VLB video card, and
    when I tried an ISA, it was definately slower. Was the 50MHz CPU and
    AMD one?

    No, an Intel 486 DX/50.

    Some machines are blessed. I had an intel dev board running a
    Pentium/75 that felt faster than Dell P/133 systems. Later, I had a
    IBM Aptiva, a Pentium II/266 system with a Matrox add-in 3d card that
    was an amazing gaming system and kept up with P3/500s with native 3D
    cards.





    ... Emphasize the flaws
    --- MultiMail/XT v0.52
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  • From Dennisk@VERT/EOTLBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed Oct 14 00:51:00 2020
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Dennisk wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    My favorite PC at the time was an ISA bus 486dx/50. Surprisingly, it
    was faster at gaming with an ISA card than a VLB dx2/66.

    That is interesting. The 486 I'm using now has a VLB video card, and
    when I tried an ISA, it was definately slower. Was the 50MHz CPU and
    AMD one?

    No, an Intel 486 DX/50.

    Some machines are blessed. I had an intel dev board running a
    Pentium/75 that felt faster than Dell P/133 systems. Later, I had a
    IBM Aptiva, a Pentium II/266 system with a Matrox add-in 3d card that
    was an amazing gaming system and kept up with P3/500s with native 3D
    cards.

    Yeah, its weird how some systems can 'feel' faster. I think the Windows setup in many cases matter. I've always tried to keep the OS as lean as possible, which makes my computer feel snappy compared to others. Software choice matters a lot. Video card also makes a difference, ram, CMOS configuration.

    ... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
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  • From HusTler@VERT/HAVENS to Dennisk on Tue Oct 13 11:57:00 2020
    Re: Re: Favorite 90s 486 mach
    By: Dennisk to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Oct 13 2020 08:51 pm

    Yeah, its weird how some systems can 'feel' faster. I think the Windows set in many cases matter. I've always tried to keep the OS as lean as possible, which makes my computer feel snappy compared to others. Software choice matters a lot. Video card also makes a difference, ram, CMOS configuration.

    Switching to Linux and getting rid of Windows will make any machine "Snappier". ;-)
    Regards, Havens BBS
    HusTler (havens.synchro.net:23)

    ---
    ■ Synchronet ■ Havens BBS havens.synchro.net
  • From Jon Justvig@VERT/STEPPING to HusTler on Tue Oct 13 15:03:00 2020
    ... HusTler scribbled to Dennisk in the sand ...

    in many cases matter. I've always tried to keep the OS as lean as possible, which makes my computer feel snappy compared to others. Software choice matters a lot. Video card also makes a difference, ram, CMOS configuration.

    Switching to Linux and getting rid of Windows will make any machine "Snappier". ;-)

    And much more efficient.

    Sincerely,
    Jon Justvig

    ... OOPS I didn't know my screen would do that!
    --- MultiMail/Win32 v0.49
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  • From Dennisk@VERT/EOTLBBS to HusTler on Wed Oct 14 01:02:00 2020
    HusTler wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Re: Re: Favorite 90s 486 mach
    By: Dennisk to
    poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Oct 13 2020 08:51
    pm
    Yeah, its weird how some systems can 'feel' faster. I
    think the Windows set
    in many cases matter. I've always tried to keep the OS as lean as possible, which makes my computer feel snappy compared to others. Software choice matters a lot. Video card also makes a difference, ram, CMOS configuration.

    Switching to Linux and getting rid of Windows will make any machine "Snappier". ;-)


    From Windows to Linux yes, kind of. I go for 'minimalist' software and minimal set ups. We've all seen peoples Windows set up with 100 icons on the bottom right from all the crapware "services". Linux allows you a minimalism, which is how I like to operate.



    ... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
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  • From Gallaxial@VERT/SPACESST to HusTler on Tue Oct 13 21:55:04 2020
    Re: Re: Favorite 90s 486 mach
    By: HusTler to Dennisk on Tue Oct 13 2020 07:57:00

    Switching to Linux and getting rid of Windows will make any machine "Snappier". ;-)

    Linux is good for programmer or techki person
    Linux is not refine like windows but Coming better




    ... A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.  

    ---
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  • From HusTler@VERT/HAVENS to Gallaxial on Wed Oct 14 12:02:52 2020
    Re: Re: Favorite 90s 486 mach
    By: Gallaxial to HusTler on Tue Oct 13 2020 05:55 pm

    Switching to Linux and getting rid of Windows will make any machine "Snappier". ;-)

    Linux is good for programmer or techki person
    Linux is not refine like windows but Coming better

    Linux is FREE!!



    HusTler
    Regards, Havens BBS
    HusTler (havens.synchro.net:23)

    ---
    ■ Synchronet ■ Havens BBS havens.synchro.net