Well, I see your problem. You never learned DOS.
I'm afraid that you're completely wrong there. I didn't only
learn DOS, I'm still very much using it! The mail/newsreader
program that I use to post and read messages on this
newsgroup is a DOS one and the computer that I use most of
all is a DOS-based palmtop (the HP 200LX).
It took me a year, at the least, of trial and error, to learn all I did about
DOS. And now I can do almost whatever I want, including BATCH files.
I agree that batch files can be very powerful tools,
especially when supplemented by third-party utils. Anyone
ever heard of Batchman?! (Didn't think so!)
Problems with DirectX. "No video cards were detected." "No sound cards were
detected.", mucky graphics, no sound, bad sound, dead sound that just keeps
repeating itself, funky colors (no, I wasn't smoking anything at the time.
)
and make mouse trails.
I guess I've just been lucky. Or maybe you've just been
really unlucky! It wasn't an American computer you were
using, was it...?
Memmaker was a great program. It worked whenever I used it.
It worked surprisingly well, but was nowhere near a perfect
solution. And besides, hardly the ideal solution, is it?!
I never had to make a boot disk... perhaps you just had a bad computer?
To be honest with you, I never had to either. But I knew
plenty of other people who had to, mainly because they
weren't proficient in the dark arts of DOS memory
management.
What really annoyed me was that it wasn't just which drivers
you had, it was also the order in which they were loaded
which could also affect memory. And as for what should be
loaded into high memory, and what shouldn't... I must have
spent more time editing the Config.sys than I ever did
playing games! <g> And, as for the poor souls who weren't
experts... I dread to think!
If I could, I'd dump WinBlowz completely. Get myself AOL for DOS or something.
Had you forgotten that MS also made DOS? <g>
I can't stand Microsoft's useless products. Only problem is everybody else
likes them and keeps making games for them.
Well, you might be in luck if Linux keeps on gaining in the
popularity stakes... And there's always Macs.
I guess people prefer what they know how to use. I know how to use DOS;
obviously, you don't.
Well, it's a nice assumption that is sadly totally wrong! If
you visit my site (it should be at
http://games.hplx.net,
but the redirection doesn't seem to be working currently, so
visit
http://ds.dial.pipex.com/town/plaza/aj93/waggy/hp
instead), you'll see quite a few DOS references. In fact,
all the games listed there are none other than old DOS ones.
I've also programmed for DOS using C and C++.
Also, like I said, I continue to use DOS every day and I do
consider myself to be reasonably knowledgable regarding its
use!
Believe it or not, I do actually quite like it,
mainly because of the speed and stability. The fact is,
however, that I prefer Windows. It's definitely a long, long
way off perfection, but for my money (and the vast majority
of the world's PC users), it's simply a whole lot better.
-Mike [
http://games.hplx.net]
