Some Days I Feel Older Than Others

[Belinda Barfield]

Some of you computer savvy guys will probably get a laugh from this. Our business neighbor across the street recently sold his business to a much larger company. His daughter works in the office. For the past two weeks she has been in training for the new company's procedures, accounting, etc. She has been in tears for the better part of the training because she is having to learn DOS. She's young and had never even heard of DOS. I, on the other hand, remember IBM Selectric typewriters and taking short hand in high school. The times, they are a changin'. :D

[Bill Edwards(2)]

DOS? Really? Wonder if they're using WordStar for word processing?

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Sounds like things are coming "full circle"......LOL!

[Keith Outten]

PC DOS or MS DOS?

I think I still have PC DOS version 2.0 disks around here somewhere but I'm positive I don't have a single sided 360k drive that would read the disc.
I also have a Windows 3.1 operating system if anyone needs it.

The first computer that Jackie and I purchased used a tape drive to store and load basic programs, no floppy discs then.
Our second machine had a 360k disc drive.
Our third machine had a 5 meg hard drive.........
Yep, I'm feeling a bit old myself today :)
.

[Ryan Mooney]

Could be DR Dos :D

I remember using tapes on the Apple I (II?) fast forward to the counter where the program was... oops to far!

[Val Kosmider]

DOS? Really? Wonder if they're using WordStar for word processing?

Perhaps...and then they will move to Wang Word Processors.

Why in the world, i wonder, is anyone having to 'learn' DOS at this point. I know there is a BUNCH of old code that is written that way, but aren't those times changing too?

What's next? Batch processing?

[Kevin Bourque]

I remember writing on papyrus with peacock quills.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

The first computer I bought for use at home was a "Timex" IIRC. No external storage...tape or disk drive. You had to enter the program in manually.

Meanwhile at work, I had already written diagnostic software for Dec-PDP-11 and for Floating Point array processors. Some purchasing officer got a really good deal. He got a good contract price on the array processors but didn't negotiate the support or diagnostic software into the deal. Duh!

[David Helm]

I'm captured by the fact that you remember the IBM Selectric. Since I learned to type on a manual (no electricity even) typewriter, when the Selectrics came out they were the most fantastic thing in the universe. Old is certainly a relative term!

[Moses Yoder]

I thought everything was still being programmed in Basic?

[Mel Fulks]

Doesn't seem like a good way to run a business . But just a couple of years ago I heard a story on NPR about old Computor software still being used by Feds . Some people with IRS had been asked to stay on because the current computor geniuses could not work the old stuff.

[Jerome Stanek]

Is it DOS or UNX My daughter has to know UNIX for her job and her boyfriend uses it all the time for his job. One works for a bank and the other a software company

[Steve Meliza]

A large company using DOS as part of its accounting doesn't seem likely. What is more likely is that they are using a Unix or Linux command line interface as that is what DOS is/was so a novice would think of them as being the same. At work I use the occasional graphical program, but right now I have 12 command line terminals open on a Linux system which is where I get all of my work done. Sometimes I might have as many as 20 open and many of those in use at the same time so that I can take advantage of the 12 CPU cores and 100GB of RAM.

[Brian Elfert]

I'm guessing rather than using DOS they are really using a program that runs in old fashioned text mode like a terminal. I can't imagine with Y2K and everything since then that anyone is really still running MS DOS or PC DOS as their operating system. (I guess there was a Y2K compatible version of PC DOS.)

One of my friends worked for a small company that was bought out by a larger company. One of the first things the larger company did was lay off the IT staff at the smaller company. The bad thing was none of the IT functions had been transferred to the larger company. When someone at the small company called the new help desk nobody at the larger company's IT dept had any clue how the IT stuff at the small company worked.

[Joe Angrisani]

I remember writing on papyrus with peacock quills.

You had papyrus?? Lucky dog.

[Ryan Mooney]

DOS lives! http://www.freedos.org/

You can still buy DR Dos http://drdos.com/products/dr-dos/ $35/seat hahaha no thanks.

And for the unix nerd (raises hand) who needs dos (puts hand down): http://www.dosemu.org/

[Belinda Barfield]

It may not be DOS, but that is what she said. She said everything is a function key stroke and she can't use her mouse for anything. She was told the reason they have this system is that is completely safe from viruses, etc. She can, however, take a photo of her receipt from a business lunch, send the photo to the home office and it goes into their accounting program (somehow, don't ask me), so they aren't living in the dark ages. It's a 400 million dollar a year company.

[Bill Edwards(2)]

It's probably a mid range, like an IBM iSeries. Without a GUI interface, very little mouse or graphic function. (It's where I live, work and play) There are a whole bunch of us out here.:D
People raised on PC's are often lost on this type of system. Ask her if it's "green screen" (green letters on a black background)

[Ryan Mooney]

Ask her if it's "green screen" (green letters on a black background)

I always liked the green screens better than the amber screens anyway, the amber had lower contrast for me :D

I've been using white (#F6F4F4) on dark blue (#0C108C) for a long time, I even had all of my DOS setups configured like that.

I would be moderately surprised (but not astounded) if they still had dumb terminals and weren't using an emulation software. Most of the folks I knew using dumb terminals had ditched them by the mid 90s because they were getting specialized enough to start costing more than the alternative hw+emulation software.

[Ole Anderson]

I always thought amber was cool, but it was so short lived when they came out with color. But do you remember dedicated word processors that still typed out using plastic ribbons? Lanier if I remember. Our company was one of the first to use an IBM 1130 with single platters and punch cards and using a flat bed plotter to do civil engineering drawings for water and sewer systems. Had to write all of our own code.

[Randal Stevenson]

They may be using Freedos as a terminal, or they may be aliasing dos commands to nix (Aix/Unix/Linux, or posix compliant), OSes. I've known a few people who did alias dos commands, as they grew up with it as the basis of (pre)Windows.

[paul cottingham]

Sounds like UNIX to me. Lucky person!

[jeff . whitaker]

I remember writing on papyrus with peacock quills.
HAH!! Ya whipper snapper... I 'member rit'n on ROCKS and ya had to use yor finger!! and walking up hill in the snow both ways when you wanted to to do a little dinosaur hunt"n!!!
(what? yes nurse I'll take my meds now.........)

[Ryan Mooney]

, or they may be aliasing dos commands to nix (Aix/Unix/Linux, or posix compliant), OSes. I've known a few people who did alias dos commands, as they grew up with it as the basis of (pre)Windows.

I used to know some folks who did that. It simply killed me to watch them do anything. One had even set it up with a shell function so if he did "cd c:\" it would take him to his home dir. Sooo much effort to avoid learning something a little bit different.

[Jason Roehl]

At least two of the local paint stores I visit (both of them are, or are owned by, large, global corporations) use ASCII interfaces on their POS and inventory control software. The experienced associates are generally pretty quick at using it because they have it memorized (along with product codes), and they don't have to switch between using a mouse and the keyboard. They'll even have new LCD screens hooked up to doorstops of computers to use as terminals.

[Rich Riddle]

Belinda, trust me, you are younger than many of the members here. Think moderators. Come here and feel young.

[Belinda Barfield]

Belinda, trust me, you are younger than many of the members here. Think moderators. Come here and feel young.

It is possible Rich, that I am feeling this way as I am about to celebrate the 25th anniversary of my 25th birthday. :D Birthdays have never bothered me before but I can't quite get a grip on this one.

[Mel Fulks]

So THAT'S why you use that college photo!

[Rich Riddle]

It is possible Rich, that I am feeling this way as I am about to celebrate the 25th anniversary of my 25th birthday. :D Birthdays have never bothered me before but I can't quite get a grip on this one.Belinda, I have the identical anniversary in September and come here to feel young and get the wisdom of the ages, or is that the aged? Happy birthday. You look quite young in your picture.

[Belinda Barfield]

So THAT'S why you use that college photo!


Belinda, I have the identical anniversary in September and come here to feel young and get the wisdom of the ages, or is that the aged? Happy birthday. You look quite young in your picture.

Thanks! That photo is actually pretty recent, it was taken last March.

[Jim O'Dell]

Belinda, don't worry about 50, unless you're a late bloomer. It was no different than 49. 40 is the one that killed me. That very afternoon I felt like my body fell apart.
I used to watch my brother, 3 years older, do programming on punch cards. His first job out of college was at XXXXXX Bank in OKC. He wrote a program that tracked loans by loan officer. Several loan officers lost their jobs, IIRC one was a Vice President. IBM purchased the rights to the program from the bank, and marketed it to other banks. I think it had my brother credited, but of course the bank got all the money. He had a terminal where he could write and punch cards at home when he had an idea. It was pretty slick way back when......
My first computer was an Atari 400 with a cassette tape back up. I used it for years playing video games. Wasn't much of a computer, but it was fun to do some very basic stuff on. Jim.

[Brian Kent]

My sister is a professional dancer and dance teacher. She is 39 plus shipping, handling and sales tax. :D

[Belinda Barfield]

Well, my goodnesss Jim. From your pic you don't look a day over 3 or 4. :D Forty didn't bother me at all. There are several 'transitions' going on my life right now so I'm tending to overthink things. Just thought I'd be in a different place at this age, but life doesn't always play by my rules - darn it. I'm going to try not to work on my birthday. I have several lady friends who, along with me, aren't expecting a valentine in the mail so I think we are going to stay at a farm nearby on the following weekend and have a big ol' party. Yeah, I know, no pics - didn't happen . . . and this is why there will be no pics! I really should just go to Vegas . . .

[Harry Hagan]

It is possible Rich, that I am feeling this way as I am about to celebrate the 25th anniversary of my 25th birthday. :D Birthdays have never bothered me before but I can't quite get a grip on this one.

Once again, Belinda; you make me laugh!

[John C Lawson]

What kind of application is it? If it's green screen, and and accessing menus and commands is a function key, as another poster said, it may be iSeries (formerly AS400, formerly System/3). Primitive and frustrating, but still supported in modern versions and damn near bullet proof. Of course there is the extremely unlikely possibility of mainframe DOS, now called z/VSE I think. My old job ran DOS-based PC's with a custom application right up until we went out of business in 2001.

[Harvey M. Taylor]

speaking of aging, as we seem to be doing on this thread, I was one year old when the dead sea first got sick. [86] Max.:D:eek::rolleyes: