Did you use DOS?

Did you use DOS?

  • Yes

    Votes: 46 100.0%

  • No

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Comedy 'What's DOS' option.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    46
I started using DOS on my parents first computer in the early 90's (486SX 33) and I resisted Win95 for a few years until it became absolutely necessary (ie games were coming out win95 only) on my own P166 (non-MMX). Around 98 I found Linux and then OpenBSD and I now use the latter pretty much exclusively (AMD Duron 1000MHz). For my next computer I plan on a G5 :)
 
I had a C64 way back when (I'm not even sure what you'd qualify that operating system as) . . . but back in grade school we had some good ol' Tandys that ran just DOS and seemed to be good only for playing Where in the World/Time/US/etc is Carmen Sandiego? and all those great text adventure games (we had some typing tutorials and whatnot on them too, but that wasn't any fun :) ). My "first" home PC ran Windows 3.11 (sometime back around 1990 or so). So yes, I did use DOS extensively back in the good ol' days.

Edit: Wow, I figured there be at least a few 'No's

C-ya
 
Well, let me see...the first computer that I have knowledge of was called a PC Jr. No HDD, VERY limited RAM (i.e <1 MB), and everything ran off 5.25" disks. Of course, DOS was the only option for that little joy (oh, the memories of playing Kings/Police/Space Quest on that). We then upgraded to a 286 10 MHz computer. Oh that was high tech back then. This was followed by a 386 25/33 (it had a turbo option) that had a 40 MB hdd (finally, we could play Ultima 7 on that...but only if we deleted all of our other games). I believe we tried running Wing Commander 1 on it, but we couldn't get it to work...so after 2 days of frustration, we returned it (later on, my brother's friend got WC and let us borrow it for a while...we finally got it to work). After the 386 we made the leap to pentiums (P-60) that had Windows 95 installed on it. But, because most of our games were still DOS-based, we would primarily boot up the computer in DOS mode, tinker with the config.sys and autoexec.bat files and merrily go our way. Even when we got our Pentium Pro 200, my brother and I primarily stuck with DOS. It wasn't until games started to use native Win95 support that we finally switched over to windows.

That's a quick history of Ein's computer lineage...there's more, but it isn't relevant to the topic.
 
My family got our first computer back in 1990, and it came with Windows 3.1 and Dos 5.0. Upgraded to Dos 6.2 as soon as we could, then my dad decided to buy a Sound Blaster soundcard pack - came with the card, speakers, a CD drive, a cheap joystick, and around 15 games. One of 'em was WC II Deluxe, so it came with SO1 and 2 on the same CD. Considering I was used to Missle Command and Chip's Challenge, WCII had me hooked from the moment I saw the Claw go up...even if I'd never heard of Wing Commander before that, or had any idea why the bad guys were giant cats.

So yep, plenty of DOS experience.
 
DOS is more of an OS then you'll ever be, Windows. DOS is excellence personified.

DOS is Dead!

DOS is symbolic of all that we'll archieve in the future!

EDIT: "archive" in the fugure would sonud funnier.
 
Hmm, the evidence so far supports half of my theory, but not the rest of it. Perhaps I should try this on some Warcraft forums, knowing that I'd catch both ends of the spectrum a bit more evenly.

Oh well. My hypothesis is thus:

Those that have spent a considerable amount of time using DOS (or were forced into using a similar text only system... linux or unix would work but only if they had nothing else to fall back on) are drastically more likely to participate in a forum, on IRC, or other forms of text chat using proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation than those that do not. The rigors of having to use precise spelling at a command prompt or precise form and punctuation in configuration files has forced us to become acutely aware of our typing and the mistakes that result from it. Sort of like the way Arrakis forced the Fremen to become so conscious of the way their bodies lose water.

All of you said you used DOS, and all of you, aside from the rare slip, have shown that side of it to be true. Look at the great many younger gamers, however, who have not experienced DOS: it takes but a single match of Counter-Strike to see the teenagers using the shorthand that is all too common nowadays. Unfortunately this trend has been slipping into schoolwork and such. Perhaps if I were in charge of education at some level, I would recommend mandatory classes in DOS or Linux at the second or third grade level, right when proper writing begins to become an issue.

Anyway, thank you for playing guinea pigs to my mad, mad schemes.
 
I’d agree there’s a generational difference, but would peg the cause as more the “speed-up” of communication technology in general, along with the greater versatility of video/graphics, which has created a corresponding “pressure” to tailor and streamline text-based messages too. Yes, I worry about the long-term effects on traditional writing and grammar, but I worry about kindergarten and elementary school children being taught to rely on programs like PowerPoint more.
 
Asking Wing Commander fans isn't a good way to prove that theory, though - since almost every Wing Commander game requires some sort of DOS ability to play. Yes, there were people who started with Prophecy - but Prophecy came out seven years ago... and anyone still 'hard core' enough to post to the CZ will have gone back to play some of the DOS games.

Asking somewhere like SomethingAwful or at a forum for a "modern" game series would probably yield more interesting results.
 
I remember my family's first computer. It was a Dell Dimensions P-75 (the first to use an Intell Pentium processor!), with 540 megabytes of harddrive space (if I remember correctly. I know that it was over 500), 8 megabytes of ram, a 4x cd rom, and a 28.8 Data/Fax modem. We ran MS-DOS with Windows 3.11 for a while, but my crazy uncle decided that OS2 was the "wave of the future" and installed it on our machine. It was only there long enough for me to figure out how to disable it and reinstall Dos. Eventually, my crazy uncle upgraded us to PC-Dos (or, as I came to call it, Piece o' Crap Dos) 6.0 with the usual Windows 3.11 and all was seemingly alright with the universe.

I recall being so excited about getting a computer because I'd fallen in love with WC1 on the SNES, and I couldn't wait to play it, and all of its sequels, on PC. I first got wc3, then a copy of wc2 (and my dad couldn't understand why I wanted to go "backwards" by playing a game that came before it) and then wc1 on floppy disk, only to discover that 75 megahertz was way too bloody fast to play wc1.

My best friend and I decided to hold out against Windows 95 for as long as we could. We held to Dos until just after the release of the Kilrathi Sage. We called ourselves the Dosketeers. :: sigh :: I miss those days. Games were better back then. Privateer, Pirates! Gold, Castles II, Jagged Alliance, Sherlock Holmes (from EA, no less), Worms . . . the list just keeps on going.
 
TyeDyeBoy said:
Those that have spent a considerable amount of time using DOS (or were forced into using a similar text only system... linux or unix would work but only if they had nothing else to fall back on) are drastically more likely to participate in a forum, on IRC, or other forms of text chat using proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation than those that do not.
Click to expand...

But what about "leet" talk? Didn't it begin on the hardcore underground culture of people that were supposed to know how to use DOS?
 
Generally, Phreaks use phones. Hackers use computers.

(Though, no matter how long I've done without that BBS in Garrison Utah, I can't help but think of phones as having BBSes, not computers)
 
my first computer I was able to use was a 1984 apple macintosh. (I still use mac's for 95% of my computer stuff). My family got it's first PC in 1993-4. Soon after I was playing WC1/2 through DOS. I wasn't really a fan and didn't really take to long to explore the DOS world. After win95 came out that became the norm on the PC (although DOS was still used for most games)

Now I run a iMac running OS X 10.2.6
 
LeHah said:
Generally, Phreaks use phones. Hackers use computers.

(Though, no matter how long I've done without that BBS in Garrison Utah, I can't help but think of phones as having BBSes, not computers)
Click to expand...

Know that, I always thought that whole 'l8t sp33k' thing started with the phreaker crowd though.
 
I think I first started on an ancient Toshiba portable computer (think of a laptop which has had far too much to eat), possibly in 1988. Not sure what version of DOS it was running (3? 4?), but I used MS Word, Lotus 123 (anyone else use this before Excel?), and occasionally Paradox (some sort of database, IIRC).

Oh, and I despise 'leet speek'. :(
 
Well... I've poked a finger at DOS-mode, boot -> F8-style. (Fullscreen DOS, cd/md del erase copy .bat an' all that.) No DOS without Win95, though we had 3.11 at the school I spent 4-6th grade in. Hooray.

*Votes a careful yes.*
 
My first computer was a 286 clone running MS-DOS 3.something. The very first program I ever ran on a computer was gwbasic, in order to play games. I got somewhat frustrated with just typing in rote command lines without understanding what they did, so the first time I really used DOS was in conjunction with a 'DOS tutor' program. Learning how to reformat the hard drive was fun! ;) (No, I never actually did that, except intentionally during upgrades.) I thought it was so cool when MS-DOS 5 came out. Ah, such innocent days. These days, I run Linux or FreeBSD, with an XP dual boot for playing the occasional game.
 
Not "Did" I use DOS. I use DOS now. (Not RIGHT now, you know what I mean.) :D
 
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