Brandon @bsharitt@fosstodon.org

Reading the articles around the source release of GWBASIC I now recall that Microsoft released the source to DOS 1.25 and 2.0 under an MIT license a while back so I can get an open source DOS on my Compaq portable on a version closer to what it came with(I think it may have been 2.0) rather than FreeDOS which may have been a resource hog and even require a memory expansion. Neat.

Help me out, were the Deer Hunter PC games and derivatives actually popular in the late 90s, or did it just seem that way to me as a symptom of growing up in rural Alabama?

This quote basically sums up why I use pretty standard Ubuntu despite being pretty technically adept:

"because it's a bleeding-edge distro—one targeted to the very newest software, possibly at the expense of stability. That's not what I personally want in an operating system—I fix broken things professionally; I'd prefer not to fix them personally any more than I have to"

from https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/05/linux-distro-review-fedora-workstation-32/

My recent retro-computing kick is making it hard to get rid of my old Asus u36sd and part of me even wanta to restore it to its "vintage" Windows 7 install 😂

A little blog post about why I like retro computing

https://sharitt.com/2020/05/18/why-retro-computing.html

Repaired an old iMac I got for free. While a slightly older model and a different color than what I had, one of these was the first computer that I bought myself, so this has a bit more nostalgia attached to it than my other old computers.

It’s been a month since I started collect vintage computers. This may have gotten out of hand. And I still have an Osborne 1 on the way.

When my Compaq Portable arrives, I'll have to get FreeDOS running on it so my retrocomputing posts on @fosstodon have a bit more FOSS in them.

Nice turns out that the battery is this old PowerBook still holds a charge. Now to rebuild the PRAM battery and figure out what’s wrong with the CD-ROM.

New (old) toy has arrived.

Whew, after a week in USPS purgatory(i.e. "the moving with in the USPS network, but we don't really know where it is" tracking state), my Commodore 64 is looks like it's finally out for delivery. Better late than never I guess.

The other day I wanted an ethernet cable on the table near by network switch, but the only available cable I had unused for the past few days was only 3 feet long, but while it was inconvenient, I put up with it. Only today did I realize that the cable going from the switch to the PC right below it is 6 feet, and the 3 feet cable would work there and I could swap them. 🤦‍♂️

My package that should have been here on Friday is now in the vague "moving with in the USPS network on its way to its destination" phase. I wonder if I'll ever see it.

Sigh... it looks like my recent retro computer addiction is getting me back on Facebook for Marketplace at least. Far less price gougy than eBay(and some of those old computers are heavy, so shipping it legitimately high, even when things are for a good price) and not as dead as Craigslist around here for that kind of stuff.

I guess I forgot about Kdenlive, I'll give that one another shot first. I can't remember what caused me to give up on it last time.

Looking at doing some YouTube(maybe cross post to PeerTube if I can figure that out) videos again, but it looks like open source video editing is still not in a great place(at least if you try to do anything beyond Windows Movie Maker or iMovie), but at least DaVinci Resolve is on Linux so I don't need Windows or a Mac to edit. Open source still has streaming locked down pretty good, thanks OBS.

Just found an original Compaq Portable being sold on eBay listed as Presario instead and a good bit cheaper that correctly listed Compaq Portables, and the listing looks like a legit case of the seller not really knowing what they have rather than a scam, so I'm going to roll the dice on it.

While I've been I jumped ship from Windows to Linux over 20 years ago(with some OS X thrown in there from time to time), I've been playing with Windows 3.1 in DosBox lately and just find it completely charming, especially all the "entertainment packs" that Microsoft released. I only used Windows 3.1 at school(at home we went from Mac System 7 to Windows 95), but this just feels the best to me. I should probably do up proper retro computing blog post soon rather than long Mastodon posts.

Looks like drunken server upgrade was a success with just a few PHP issues(it's always PHP issues) to iron out for Nextcloud.