[PLUG] wow, dust that baby off and she still works!

Russell Senior seniorr at aracnet.com
Fri Dec 13 08:33:56 UTC 2002


In the process of my recent data archeology, I was led to believe that
I might have some old mbox files lying around.  I didn't find them on
my current box, but I thought they just might still be on my
_original_ computer, a 1986-era AT&T PC6300.  It originally came with
an 8 MHz 8086, which was rare back in those days.  I later replaced
the CPU with a NEC V20 or V30 or something, which was a little bit
faster.  It was still in use as recently as 1997, but ever since my
wife got back from grad school with a Pentium 133 box (currently a
firewall) it has been in either a closet or an attic.  For the last 5
years it has sat untouched, gathering dust in the far end of the
attic.

Well, what's to lose!  So I haul it out, plug it in and fire it up.
Monitor comes on (a still-sharp green monochrome), but it hangs at
detecting the HD, a 20 meg "Hardcard".  No problem, I remember well
that the drive had a stiction problem, so I bang it a few times and as
it comes free I can hear it whir up to speed.  Reset button restarts
the boot up.  Hey, it is working!

So, it boots up Microsoft MS-DOS version 3.10, but the autoexec.bat
takes it right to Procomm Plus.  The machine ended its useful life
doing duty as essentially a remote terminal that I could dial-in to
the office with from my apartment.  Alt-Z doesn't seem to get me out.
Maybe I don't have the keyboard plugged in all the way.  Next time I
boot, I just blitz it with Ctrl-C's to interrupt the autoexec.bat.  I
get a prompt.  Must get rid of the damned PCPLUS, so I start wondering
how the hell I used to edit things on this box.  Edlin!  Well, I crank
that up, it starts up, but no "help".  I manage to delete the last two
lines: a CD to the PCPLUS directory and the execution of PCPLUS, but
don't remember how to save.  "w" seems to be the right thing, but it
doesn't seem to work.  I "q" to quit, but I lose the changes.  I try a
few more times, without luck.  Then I remember my normal editor on
this machine was "microemacs", so I run \etc\me c:\autoexec.bat, and
it starts up!  Wow, old home week!  Nuke the two offending lines, save
with the familiar emacs commands and reboot.

I look around.  For a while in the mid-90's, it had been in my
father's possession.  So there are a smattering of his files.  A
supercalc spreadsheet program.  An old DOS Word.  But no mbox's.
Damn.

I also had noticed that there was an ethernet card plugged in the
back.  That must have arrived shortly before it was retired.  I don't
remember ever getting it to work, but I had completely forgotten it
was even there.  I'd even asked Eric Harrison once about NIC's for
these old boxes.  When I plugged in the RJ45, the link light went on.
There is a directory tree on the HardCard copied from an install
floppy.  I look around.  It is apparently an NS2000, whatever that is.
It's got drivers for w95 and NT.  Run the setup program, but the
diagnostics fail, something about an SRAM failure, but I am not sure
the base I/O port is set correctly, so I give up.

Hmm.  I remember a box of floppies, and find them on the shelf.  This
is the first box of double-sided, double-density 360K floppies I ever
owned.  The FUJI Film floppy disk, labelled MD/2D, came in a nice
robust cardboard box.  I probably haven't touched them in even longer
than the machine.  I open the drive latch and give a quick puff of
breath to disarrange the dust a little, and stick in the first floppy.
DIR A:, I type, and I get an error: Abort, Retry, Ignore.  I type "r"
for retry and it works.  The rest of the disks work too, and not just
to read the directories, I pkxarc'd several .arc files to see what was
inside and _that_ all worked.  Annoying thing is I didn't find the
files I was looking for.  Maybe they don't actually exist.  But
frankly, I am amazed it still works.  And those 16 year old floppies!
Pretty impressive.  Now that I've got the poor thing warmed up, it's
probably off back to the remote corner of the attic again.  Sad, so
sad.

-- 
Russell Senior         ``I've seen every kind of critter God ever made,
seniorr at aracnet.com      and I ain't never seen a meaner, lower, more
                         stinkin' yellow hypocrite than you!'' 
                                        -- Burl Ives as Rufus Hennessy




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