Any one in reto PCs?

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

The biggest weakness is storage. Floppy drives have moving parts, floppy disks are no longer being produced. Fortunately people out there are designing flash devices to replace floppy disks. So these things should be usable for decades to come.

Actually take a walk through any office supply store, wal-mart media aisle or computer supply shop and you'll still see floppies and floppy drives.

The only people company who stopped making them was sony but there are still dozens of industries and applications around that require them to work so for the time being floppies are still here to stay in some capacity.

[Hobie-wan]

Actually take a walk through any office supply store, wal-mart media aisle or computer supply shop and you'll still see floppies and floppy drives.

I don't remember any Commodore or Apple II drives last time I was at Office Despot. Haven't even seen any 5 1/4 disks at Goodwill.

[Hatta]

I don't remember any Commodore or Apple II drives last time I was at Office Despot. Haven't even seen any 5 1/4 disks at Goodwill.

Yeah, it's getting real hard to come by DSDD floppies, you can't substitute HD floppies. When I got my IIgs I spent more on floppies for it than I did the actual computer.

[jfrost]

Whaaaaat!?!? When??!?!!?

A while ago: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment ... d=10614879

[pakopako]

(Mechanical keyboards...) Meaning an actual switch for each key instead of a membrane and rubber domes.

I thought membrane keyboards were only for laptops and portable keyboards; specifically I'm thinking of all desktop keyboards pre-2000 that used PS/2 and DIN connectors. Not these newfangled USB, laser keyboard claptrap!

8 inchers were really only for minicomputers and bigger though, not home PCs. I worked at a Kmart in the early 90s that still used them with the computer that ran the inventory and UPC lookup database.

One of my first colleges still had them on one of the campus club servers.

I don't remember any Commodore or Apple II drives last time I was at Office Despot.

Are you sure about that?

[DinnerX]

I've got one freedos laptop.

How the heck do you use that exactly?

I'm actually installing it on my spare laptop as I talk so any help would be appreciated as I"m a newbie to DOS but had forgotten all about this until you'd mentioned it.

If you've installed everything from the disk just type "gem" and press enter to start up the gem gui.

If you want to get started on the command line wikipedia has a nice list of commands. Read about dir (showing what is in a directory) and cd (changing directories) to get started. Dosbox guides can help you learn commands too.

[Nemoide]

I have an Apple IIe and think it's a lot of fun to play around with. Aside from games, I have some music-making software which I think is pretty cool. And Pascal, though I really don't understand it.

I know there's a way to hook up my laserdisc player up to my Apple II but I have no idea what kind of software would be needed... or what that would even DO.

I also have a 486, running DOS and Windows 3.11. As late as 2004, I had a machine just running DOS, and had replaced the prompt to ask "What is thy bidding, my master?" instead of displaying the drive/location.
I'll sometimes play around with BASIC, a simple programming language that's no longer used. But I'll admit that it isn't very often and mostly for fun rather than anything necessary.

[Hobie-wan]

I don't remember any Commodore or Apple II drives last time I was at Office Despot.

Are you sure about that?

Drives sir, not computers. And no the DVD drive in there wouldn't count.

[RCBH928]

I don't remember any Commodore or Apple II drives last time I was at Office Despot.

Are you sure about that?

Drives sir, not computers. And no the DVD drive in there wouldn't count.

Is it me or is that Commodore is very very very expensive
I thought something more like $100 would do


Also I won't be amazed if you still can find floppies but
I doubt any 1 still manufacturing them

[Hatta]

I have an Apple IIe and think it's a lot of fun to play around with. Aside from games, I have some music-making software which I think is pretty cool. And Pascal, though I really don't understand it.

Do you use ADT Pro? I just have to check to make sure everyone knows about it.

I also have a 486, running DOS and Windows 3.11. As late as 2004, I had a machine just running DOS, and had replaced the prompt to ask "What is thy bidding, my master?" instead of displaying the drive/location.

Nice. I need to get something in the 286-486 range. There's a pretty big gap between the 8088 and the P200 MMX. If you don't use it already, you should try 4dos. Much, much nicer than command.com.

I'll sometimes play around with BASIC, a simple programming language that's no longer used. But I'll admit that it isn't very often and mostly for fun rather than anything necessary.

Basic is more fun on the Apple II than on a DOS machine. It's also really easy to get into assembly on these 6502 machines. All you have to do is poke some machine code into memory and call it. Writing anything useful is beyond my capabilities, but it's fun to even write hello world.