LEAPING IN TIME WITH FREEDOS


     Since  a few days, and between two revision sessions, I  had 
     fun to install FreeDOS and configure it with Qemu.  Today  I 
     (finally!)  managed to get the network working and was  able 
     to browse gopher thanks to gophernicus.  How pleasing it is!  
     There's two cons though.

     First, Qemu sometimes takes a lot from the host CPU, causing 
     the  temperature  to rise and the fan to  be  activated.   I 
     wonder  if it's from the emulation itself or if it's me  who 
     needs to tweak Qemu's configuration more properly.   Because 
     I'm  emulating a very basic system with little RAM to run  a 
     very  light  system, it shouldn't take that much  on  my  so 
     modern quadcore CPU, or did I missed something?

     The  second concern is that I have problems with the  sound.  
     I managed to configure the emulator but having sound results 
     in  serious  slowdowns  of the virtual  machine  (only  when 
     sounds are played).  This make video games relatively unusa-
     ble  (unless  I cut the sound) and playing  mp3's  is  quite 
     messy.  Something to dig in the next days...

     But for everything else, and for now, it's great!  It's  not 
     my first time with FreeDOS.  Years ago I had it on bare  me-
     tal,  a proud 486DX I unfortunately don't have anymore.   It 
     brings back good memories though.  Maybe I could find an old 
     machine at a local broker's, just to make it more real?

     And for the record, I'm actually writing today's entry  from 
     WordStar 4.0, which is quite the fun.  I've downloaded  from 
     ZLIB the Easily into WordStar manual by Christine Simons and 
     already learned how to manage the margins, the (manual)  hy-
     phenation (with help from the word processor), &c.

     Reading this manual is a leap in time.  It was clearly  made 
     for  "regular" people back in the 80's (the version  I  have 
     was  published in 1988).  Meaning the author takes the  time 
     in the introduction to explain what is a computer and how to 
     casually use it.  Furthermore, knowing that many people  may 
     never  had the chance to put there hands on a computer,  she 
     constantly needs to explain what is happening on screen.

     For  instance,  here is an example page 12  where  Christine 
     Simons  clearly thinks of the typists of the time  who  used 
     only mechanical typewriters (I use '*' to show words in bold 
     in the book):

     "(...) it is important to remember that the computer has  an 
     automatic  *WRAPAROUND* function which takes the  text  from 
     one  line to another at the right-hand margin.   This  means 
     that when keying-in your work *YOU DO NOT PRESS 'RETURN'  AT 
     THE END OF LINES WITHIN A PARAGRAPH*."

     Yes, this last sentence is in bold AND uppercase!  To empha-
     size  enough this small revolution, I guess?   Certainly  it 
     was  necessary  to conteract years of habit of  hitting  the 
     enter key to do a carriage return!

     On page 17, something else made me smile:

     "Because the screen can show only a certain number of  lines 
     of  type under the menu, the text *scrolls* (it  appears  to 
     move  up  under the menu) and you may think  your  work  has 
     disappeared.  But it hasn't (...)."

     Yes,  it  was definitely a different time, wasn't  it?   One 
     would not imagine today having to explain in computer  class 
     that text has not really disappeared from the word processor 
     as you type and reach the bottom of the screen!

     Digging  into FreeDOS is a lot of fun, I'm telling you.  And 
     frankly,  I'm having so much pleasure rediscovering the  way 
     things  were that I plan to keep using FreeDOS and  WordStar 
     to write for the phlog.  That will be the start of many more 
     plain text adventures I hope.


                                             f6k, 2o23/o5/11