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Picture the scene – you’re surrounded by white text, a huge black background and you keep pulling at your hair in frustration. No, you’re not a shareholder of Microsoft, you’re in DOS, the forgotten tool of yesteryear.
Everyone over a certain age will have, at one point in their lives, dealt with DOS. It was as common to use as Windows 3.1 and 95 at the time. I'm sure a lot of you remember such commands as cd and dir/w/p, deltree or even edit readme.txt
Then again, I'm sure there's a lot of people reading this who are thinking "what the heck is that?" or have lost it all down that big black hole of a memory you have. After all, DOS is all but extinct now, as Windows can run all the games you have on your hard drive. You might not even own any games which would be run in DOS, or if you do, you can run them in Windows now anyway. In fact, I just checked and my PC can't even shut down into MS DOS. Has it been forgotten already? The old days of D: then install.exe so you could install your games? Setting up your sound card? How about having to install your mouse drivers, or do a step by step confirmation so you could choose what to load and what NOT to load, so you had enough memory to run certain games? No?
Well I remember being 10/11 years old when we got this PC. My neighbour had had a PC for years, so I'd already played classics like Monkey Island, back before sound cards came as standard and pitiful little floppy discs were the equivalent of CD-ROMS. We got the old 486 up and running and the first thing my brother taught me was not how to use Windows 3.1, but how to operate DOS. Oh how I enjoyed the problem solving element of trying to get things to work, working out why it didn't think you had the right IRQ of your soundcard, trying to get VESA to work, going from VGA to SVGA. Watching the old blue and yellow screens as games (which took up no more than 30mb) installed over a long enough period for ice ages to come and go, and yes, even the constant "bad command or file name" errors.
Heck, I was still using DOS when Redalert came out in 1995, as my PC at the time couldn't run the Windows version. I even did the rules.ini cheat in DOS, editing the mix file and cutting out the rules section so I could "edit rules.ini" and change all the costs and weapons of the units. Ah, happy memories
That's the trouble with today's youth, everything is done for you. You put in a CD, the autorun comes up, you select install, it installs the game, updates your drivers if need be, and even detects your sound and video card for you. Then you double click on the shortcut it makes for you and you play! None of that in my day. We had to shut down into DOS, go to the D: drive, type install.exe, choose a directory, spend half an hour watching the little bar move from the left to the right, then spend another half an hour messing with the sound card settings, trying to get the tinny sound and MIDI music to work. Then you'd go to the directory you'd installed it in and type "c&c.exe" or whatever. And you'd play. With awful graphics.
So, am I the only one who misses DOS? I mean, it serves no purpose now. It's been retired. You don't need it for games, you don't need it for programming, you don't need it to delete files (my mate used to delete a game by deleting each file one by one with the delete command because he didn't know how to do it in Windows) and basically, it's obsolete. Ah, you kids don't know what you're missing. The black and white screen, the constant struggle with your settings, the bitty SFX of games at the time. In my opinion, you don't know jack about computers if you can't use DOS with ease, like my generation can. All these kids being taught computers at school who think they're so smart, wouldn't know a change directory from a setup command. Sometimes I load up MS DOS prompt (run in Windows) just for nostalgia reasons, just to see the familiar black and white and the endless text. Even the MS DOS icon brings back memories.
Don't forget your old friend DOS - without him we wouldn't have been playing Warcraft, Command & Conquer, the Monkey Island series, Dark Forces, Doom, Duke Nukem, Grand Theft Auto, UFO, Syndicate, Ultima 7, Theme Hospital and Theme Park, Sim City and countless other classics. So next time you play GTA3, Warcraft 3, Max Payne, Soldier Of Fortune 2 or Medal Of Honour, take a moment to remember your long lost friend, now on the virtual scrap heap along with the Amstrad, disc drives and virtual reality.
Everyone over a certain age will have, at one point in their lives, dealt with DOS. It was as common to use as Windows 3.1 and 95 at the time. I'm sure a lot of you remember such commands as cd and dir/w/p, deltree or even edit readme.txt
Then again, I'm sure there's a lot of people reading this who are thinking "what the heck is that?" or have lost it all down that big black hole of a memory you have. After all, DOS is all but extinct now, as Windows can run all the games you have on your hard drive. You might not even own any games which would be run in DOS, or if you do, you can run them in Windows now anyway. In fact, I just checked and my PC can't even shut down into MS DOS. Has it been forgotten already? The old days of D: then install.exe so you could install your games? Setting up your sound card? How about having to install your mouse drivers, or do a step by step confirmation so you could choose what to load and what NOT to load, so you had enough memory to run certain games? No?
Well I remember being 10/11 years old when we got this PC. My neighbour had had a PC for years, so I'd already played classics like Monkey Island, back before sound cards came as standard and pitiful little floppy discs were the equivalent of CD-ROMS. We got the old 486 up and running and the first thing my brother taught me was not how to use Windows 3.1, but how to operate DOS. Oh how I enjoyed the problem solving element of trying to get things to work, working out why it didn't think you had the right IRQ of your soundcard, trying to get VESA to work, going from VGA to SVGA. Watching the old blue and yellow screens as games (which took up no more than 30mb) installed over a long enough period for ice ages to come and go, and yes, even the constant "bad command or file name" errors.
Heck, I was still using DOS when Redalert came out in 1995, as my PC at the time couldn't run the Windows version. I even did the rules.ini cheat in DOS, editing the mix file and cutting out the rules section so I could "edit rules.ini" and change all the costs and weapons of the units. Ah, happy memories
That's the trouble with today's youth, everything is done for you. You put in a CD, the autorun comes up, you select install, it installs the game, updates your drivers if need be, and even detects your sound and video card for you. Then you double click on the shortcut it makes for you and you play! None of that in my day. We had to shut down into DOS, go to the D: drive, type install.exe, choose a directory, spend half an hour watching the little bar move from the left to the right, then spend another half an hour messing with the sound card settings, trying to get the tinny sound and MIDI music to work. Then you'd go to the directory you'd installed it in and type "c&c.exe" or whatever. And you'd play. With awful graphics.
So, am I the only one who misses DOS? I mean, it serves no purpose now. It's been retired. You don't need it for games, you don't need it for programming, you don't need it to delete files (my mate used to delete a game by deleting each file one by one with the delete command because he didn't know how to do it in Windows) and basically, it's obsolete. Ah, you kids don't know what you're missing. The black and white screen, the constant struggle with your settings, the bitty SFX of games at the time. In my opinion, you don't know jack about computers if you can't use DOS with ease, like my generation can. All these kids being taught computers at school who think they're so smart, wouldn't know a change directory from a setup command. Sometimes I load up MS DOS prompt (run in Windows) just for nostalgia reasons, just to see the familiar black and white and the endless text. Even the MS DOS icon brings back memories.
Don't forget your old friend DOS - without him we wouldn't have been playing Warcraft, Command & Conquer, the Monkey Island series, Dark Forces, Doom, Duke Nukem, Grand Theft Auto, UFO, Syndicate, Ultima 7, Theme Hospital and Theme Park, Sim City and countless other classics. So next time you play GTA3, Warcraft 3, Max Payne, Soldier Of Fortune 2 or Medal Of Honour, take a moment to remember your long lost friend, now on the virtual scrap heap along with the Amstrad, disc drives and virtual reality.
I remember not being able to run the high res version (when you pressed Alt and R) I got too much slow down
Heh, I never did get Theme Park working on my 6OMhz 486.
....
....
Oh, those were the days... in fact, I was just about to quote the old command:
cd/theme
Theme
Before I realised that someone had done exactly the same thing! Now there was a game- I never could get the "toggle mode" to work though!
Sonic
cd/theme
Theme
Before I realised that someone had done exactly the same thing! Now there was a game- I never could get the "toggle mode" to work though!
Sonic
Technically, this is a different PC to the one we bought back in the early 90s, but since we always upgraded it, and never bought a new one from scratch, I still think of this beast as being the old 486. The only things we still have are the Escom speakers (Escom went bust years ago) and the old printer (we have a new one, but we keep it as a spare)
As for Theme Park, it came with the PC, so it got played. A lot
As for Theme Park, it came with the PC, so it got played. A lot
Reminds me of my first ever PC...
A 486 25Mhz IBM!
My favourite command was:
cd/theme
*return*
theme
*return*
Then loaded theme park!
What a game!
A 486 25Mhz IBM!
My favourite command was:
cd/theme
*return*
theme
*return*
Then loaded theme park!
What a game!
Picture the scene – you’re surrounded by white text, a huge black background and you keep pulling at your hair in frustration. No, you’re not a shareholder of Microsoft, you’re in DOS, the forgotten tool of yesteryear.
Everyone over a certain age will have, at one point in their lives, dealt with DOS. It was as common to use as Windows 3.1 and 95 at the time. I'm sure a lot of you remember such commands as cd and dir/w/p, deltree or even edit readme.txt
Then again, I'm sure there's a lot of people reading this who are thinking "what the heck is that?" or have lost it all down that big black hole of a memory you have. After all, DOS is all but extinct now, as Windows can run all the games you have on your hard drive. You might not even own any games which would be run in DOS, or if you do, you can run them in Windows now anyway. In fact, I just checked and my PC can't even shut down into MS DOS. Has it been forgotten already? The old days of D: then install.exe so you could install your games? Setting up your sound card? How about having to install your mouse drivers, or do a step by step confirmation so you could choose what to load and what NOT to load, so you had enough memory to run certain games? No?
Well I remember being 10/11 years old when we got this PC. My neighbour had had a PC for years, so I'd already played classics like Monkey Island, back before sound cards came as standard and pitiful little floppy discs were the equivalent of CD-ROMS. We got the old 486 up and running and the first thing my brother taught me was not how to use Windows 3.1, but how to operate DOS. Oh how I enjoyed the problem solving element of trying to get things to work, working out why it didn't think you had the right IRQ of your soundcard, trying to get VESA to work, going from VGA to SVGA. Watching the old blue and yellow screens as games (which took up no more than 30mb) installed over a long enough period for ice ages to come and go, and yes, even the constant "bad command or file name" errors.
Heck, I was still using DOS when Redalert came out in 1995, as my PC at the time couldn't run the Windows version. I even did the rules.ini cheat in DOS, editing the mix file and cutting out the rules section so I could "edit rules.ini" and change all the costs and weapons of the units. Ah, happy memories
That's the trouble with today's youth, everything is done for you. You put in a CD, the autorun comes up, you select install, it installs the game, updates your drivers if need be, and even detects your sound and video card for you. Then you double click on the shortcut it makes for you and you play! None of that in my day. We had to shut down into DOS, go to the D: drive, type install.exe, choose a directory, spend half an hour watching the little bar move from the left to the right, then spend another half an hour messing with the sound card settings, trying to get the tinny sound and MIDI music to work. Then you'd go to the directory you'd installed it in and type "c&c.exe" or whatever. And you'd play. With awful graphics.
So, am I the only one who misses DOS? I mean, it serves no purpose now. It's been retired. You don't need it for games, you don't need it for programming, you don't need it to delete files (my mate used to delete a game by deleting each file one by one with the delete command because he didn't know how to do it in Windows) and basically, it's obsolete. Ah, you kids don't know what you're missing. The black and white screen, the constant struggle with your settings, the bitty SFX of games at the time. In my opinion, you don't know jack about computers if you can't use DOS with ease, like my generation can. All these kids being taught computers at school who think they're so smart, wouldn't know a change directory from a setup command. Sometimes I load up MS DOS prompt (run in Windows) just for nostalgia reasons, just to see the familiar black and white and the endless text. Even the MS DOS icon brings back memories.
Don't forget your old friend DOS - without him we wouldn't have been playing Warcraft, Command & Conquer, the Monkey Island series, Dark Forces, Doom, Duke Nukem, Grand Theft Auto, UFO, Syndicate, Ultima 7, Theme Hospital and Theme Park, Sim City and countless other classics. So next time you play GTA3, Warcraft 3, Max Payne, Soldier Of Fortune 2 or Medal Of Honour, take a moment to remember your long lost friend, now on the virtual scrap heap along with the Amstrad, disc drives and virtual reality.
Everyone over a certain age will have, at one point in their lives, dealt with DOS. It was as common to use as Windows 3.1 and 95 at the time. I'm sure a lot of you remember such commands as cd and dir/w/p, deltree or even edit readme.txt
Then again, I'm sure there's a lot of people reading this who are thinking "what the heck is that?" or have lost it all down that big black hole of a memory you have. After all, DOS is all but extinct now, as Windows can run all the games you have on your hard drive. You might not even own any games which would be run in DOS, or if you do, you can run them in Windows now anyway. In fact, I just checked and my PC can't even shut down into MS DOS. Has it been forgotten already? The old days of D: then install.exe so you could install your games? Setting up your sound card? How about having to install your mouse drivers, or do a step by step confirmation so you could choose what to load and what NOT to load, so you had enough memory to run certain games? No?
Well I remember being 10/11 years old when we got this PC. My neighbour had had a PC for years, so I'd already played classics like Monkey Island, back before sound cards came as standard and pitiful little floppy discs were the equivalent of CD-ROMS. We got the old 486 up and running and the first thing my brother taught me was not how to use Windows 3.1, but how to operate DOS. Oh how I enjoyed the problem solving element of trying to get things to work, working out why it didn't think you had the right IRQ of your soundcard, trying to get VESA to work, going from VGA to SVGA. Watching the old blue and yellow screens as games (which took up no more than 30mb) installed over a long enough period for ice ages to come and go, and yes, even the constant "bad command or file name" errors.
Heck, I was still using DOS when Redalert came out in 1995, as my PC at the time couldn't run the Windows version. I even did the rules.ini cheat in DOS, editing the mix file and cutting out the rules section so I could "edit rules.ini" and change all the costs and weapons of the units. Ah, happy memories
That's the trouble with today's youth, everything is done for you. You put in a CD, the autorun comes up, you select install, it installs the game, updates your drivers if need be, and even detects your sound and video card for you. Then you double click on the shortcut it makes for you and you play! None of that in my day. We had to shut down into DOS, go to the D: drive, type install.exe, choose a directory, spend half an hour watching the little bar move from the left to the right, then spend another half an hour messing with the sound card settings, trying to get the tinny sound and MIDI music to work. Then you'd go to the directory you'd installed it in and type "c&c.exe" or whatever. And you'd play. With awful graphics.
So, am I the only one who misses DOS? I mean, it serves no purpose now. It's been retired. You don't need it for games, you don't need it for programming, you don't need it to delete files (my mate used to delete a game by deleting each file one by one with the delete command because he didn't know how to do it in Windows) and basically, it's obsolete. Ah, you kids don't know what you're missing. The black and white screen, the constant struggle with your settings, the bitty SFX of games at the time. In my opinion, you don't know jack about computers if you can't use DOS with ease, like my generation can. All these kids being taught computers at school who think they're so smart, wouldn't know a change directory from a setup command. Sometimes I load up MS DOS prompt (run in Windows) just for nostalgia reasons, just to see the familiar black and white and the endless text. Even the MS DOS icon brings back memories.
Don't forget your old friend DOS - without him we wouldn't have been playing Warcraft, Command & Conquer, the Monkey Island series, Dark Forces, Doom, Duke Nukem, Grand Theft Auto, UFO, Syndicate, Ultima 7, Theme Hospital and Theme Park, Sim City and countless other classics. So next time you play GTA3, Warcraft 3, Max Payne, Soldier Of Fortune 2 or Medal Of Honour, take a moment to remember your long lost friend, now on the virtual scrap heap along with the Amstrad, disc drives and virtual reality.