[ale] Ancient desktop

Wed May 10 01:57:32 EDT 2023

OK Chuck.....since you mentioned me then told a great story....

I too was a user of Slackware (and I will tell anyone who will listen what
a fine human being Patrick V. is) so I was downloading and installing the
150+ floppy images of an early release of Slackware.  Only I was too CHEAP
to buy 150+ diskettes, so after I had downloaded 75 and installed them I
started reusing the first diskettes and (of course) diskette ~85
malfunctioned and O had to start the whole process over again.

As I sat there cursing I happened to see an article about this little
company that made a distribution that booted off CD-ROM.

I did not have a CD-ROM at the time (remember that the first ones attached
to your audio card) but I ran out THAT NIGHT and bought it along with a PC
magazine that had that distribution in it.

And that is how I started using Red Just.

On Tue, May 9, 2023, 22:31 Chuck Payne <terrorpup at gmail.com> wrote:

> DJPfulio, the good ole Walcreek CD Packs, I still have mine ( and my
> FreeBSD ones as well). Slackware was my first distro, I have my book from
> Matt Welsh that Patrick signed for me. One of my biggest Geek
> treasures along with my Linux License plate, that I got from the other geek
> that goes by Maddog gave me at the the Atlanta Linux Showcase.
>
> I wish I had known about ALE at that time. I was alone learning this
> stuff. As Maddog states, X was a nightmare and don't get me started on
> compiling software. The pain of spending all weekend compile a kernel so
> that it can support S3 Diamond, only to have it blow out my cheap 17"
> monitor, that I had hiked in the snow because I lived at the bottom of
> hill and wanted a PC monitor for my Linux install.
>
> Ugh! I had no programming background here. I am trying to understand how
> to use configure to make sure I had all the libraries for getting AfterStep
> running on my Slackware install because TWM SUCK!!!  I had no clue that
> AfterStep was based on NextSTEP. What was worse, I wasn't a PC user, I was
> a Mac Head and I had to learn how to format a disk to work on a Linux box,
> Mac OS was a pain to deal with DOS or Fat formats, . and because I had a
> roommate and one phone line, I usually stayed late at the office to use
> their internet and the PC to get my disk, lucky my boss was cool with me
> doing that because I kick off 200 to 300 CAD prints for our field offices.
>
> I just remember that a friend told me to go CompUSA by Red Hat 4.2, and I
> was happy because it was simple, rpms were cool. No compiling but Ugh,
> don't get me started on Dependence Hell, which  was an early issue with RH.
> The one thing that was so cool was the sound test that came with RH, "This
> Linux Torval and I pronounce Linux Linux!" and I was able to use X without
> the nightmare, I got ppp working for local mom/pop ISP I worked part at (
> Avana Communications ), I got a news reader software working and what was
> the best thing that came with 4.2, Real Player, I know a lot of people
> hated but, but I could listen to WCW Events for free and more important, I
> could listen to the Japanese Jazz show I listen too while I lived in Japan.
> Netscape was cool too, I had bought a few copies back when you had to buy
> it.
>
> 26 years ago, If I remember right, back then even number kernels were
> production and odd numbers were beta/test.
>
> I might not be a PUP anymore as I got white hair of an old dog, but I am
> so happy that I got to start then. A lot of distro have come and gone, but
> I can say that it has made me who I am today, why I still have my lab and
> the ton of computers I am running. Think about this, if someone told you 26
> years ago, you can run a computer with 512 MB and 4 Cores on a board that
> the sizes of a stick of gum, want would you say. I got new Rock Chip Arm
> boards the same size of Raspberry Pi 4, that have 8 Cores and 16 GIGS of
> memory, more powerful that that AMD K 486 Series with 16 Megs of memory.
>
> I hate seeing everything to the cloud, I am lucky enough to have taught my
> son ( Who love my nic he stole it and just add a Jr. at the end of it. )
> how to work hardware, he builds systems for his friends and is going to
> school for Engineering. Oh, that another thing, I never when to school for
> computers. I was just again lucky to be hang around Radio Shack with the
> TSR-80 came up and started learning from the guy that ran the store, at
> first he might me hanging around but once he saw I was picking up, he start
> teaching me a lot stuff.
>
> Jim, good luck with your old desktop, I can upload my disk on my Netcloud
> server if you need them.
>
> On Tue, May 9, 2023 at 2:59 PM Jon "maddog" Hall via Ale <ale at ale.org>
> wrote:
>
>> >Just the simple change from "running this may destroy your
>> >monitor" to "it just works out of the box" for X is huge.
>> Much of this was due to the change of ISA bus to PCI bus and the
>> associated changes to the functionality of the hardware.
>>
>> There was not much information handed back when the CPU probed a card on
>> the ISA bus, so you had to edit the config file to supply that information.
>>
>> The monitor being destroyed was mostly due to lack of power limiting
>> circuitry.  As the scan rate increased more and more power was pulled
>> through the circuitry eventually heating it up to flames.   This happened
>> more times after the monitor was separated from the system it was designed
>> for and was paired with other controller boards which would attempt to
>> drive it at higher scan rates.   Later "multi-scan" monitors eliminated
>> that problem.
>>
>> md
>>
>> On Tue, May 9, 2023 at 1:23 PM Jim Kinney via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Ah. Old slackware floppy images. Needed 7 to get a working OS plus
>>> enough network bits to use the modem and get more.
>>>
>>> I LITERALLY learned scripting because my wife would pick up the phone to
>>> see if I was online :-)
>>> I could get 1 floppy per night.
>>> Now I can get 5gbps into my house.
>>>
>>> Kids these days have no idea how much easier things are now. Just the
>>> simple change from "running this may destroy your monitor" to "it just
>>> works out of the box" for X is huge.
>>>
>>> On Tue, May 9, 2023, 10:24 AM Boris Borisov via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> There is some ancient stuff here:
>>>>
>>>> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/historic-linux/distributions/
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, May 9, 2023, 10:07 Boris Borisov <bugyatl at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> slackware.cs.utah.edu
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, May 9, 2023, 10:05 DJPfulio--- via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 5/9/23 07:31, Jim Kinney via Ale wrote:
>>>>>> > I'm gonna look at the v 1.3 I found in their downloads. My testing
>>>>>> of
>>>>>> > it was from '95-97 time frame. Many thanks!
>>>>>> >
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I kept an old Walnut Creek 6-disc Linux collection. Used to buy $15
>>>>>> updates from Microcenter every 6 months during most of the 1990s.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Can probably find a Slackware 0.96 disc somewhere here.  I didn't
>>>>>> have a CDROM at the time, so I'd buy 50 floppies and stay late at work to
>>>>>> use the CDROM drive on my workstation there to build the floppies from the
>>>>>> CDROM.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I was living outside Houston then and it was a 45min drive on Sunday
>>>>>> morning to get to the "PC area" of town. It was a full day to head over
>>>>>> there and visit NewEgg, Microcenter, CompUSA, and a few others that have
>>>>>> long died.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Life these days with Linux is 1000x easier.
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>
>
> --
> Terror PUP a.k.a
> Chuck "PUP" Payne
> -----------------------------------------
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