NIB – Microsoft MS-DOS 5 Upgrade

2008-11-19 09:24:14 -05002008-11-19 09:27:03 -0500

Mike, our IT coordinator dropped this on my desk this morning. It’s still shrinkwrapped. 1991. We have a USB 3.5″ drive, but unfortunately we don’t have an earlier version to get this installed. Would Boot Camp support it?

Amongst the highlights:

  • Online Help from the shell or command-line interface…” – Online help has come a long way.
  • Undelete utility helps you recover critical files…” – Control+Z and “Undo” were born.
  • Unformat utility…” – What?
  • MS-DOS QBasic replaces GW-BASIC…” – Many a coder’s first language.
  • “… freeing up at least 45K more conventional memory…”
  • “Is network ready” – Remember “net use“?
  • Although we test with a wide variety of system manufacturers, it is your responsibility to confirm with your personal computer manufacturer that this product correctly supports your computer and peripheral devices.” – So, ummm, is it REST or SOAP?

Click through on the images to Flickr – the pics are high enough resolution to read the full the text.

My April Fool’s day special – 1994

Today is the day for geeks to go out and find sites like ThinkGeek which have terrific April Fools day pages. For me, April 1st has an interesting story.

Mazda MX3

At age 17 in 1994 I had been running my own small ceramics manufacturing business for three years. I bought a brand new Mazda MX3 with my own money on December 31st, 1993 (my birthday). On April 1st, 1994, I totaled the car by taking a corner at a great rate of speed on a gravel country road.

The crash was noteworthy in that the car was jumped off a cliff, hit a giant oak tree, sideways, in mid-air before falling the remaining distance. I walked away without a scratch. My passengers, two of which weren’t wearing seat-belts, all walked away with nothing more than bruises (the two in the back seat bonked heads from making out at the time).

Take your corners a little slower today… Calling a family member and convincing him or her it isn’t a prank is hard to do!