Message-Id: <20070704062501.JEFD1254.aa04.charter.net@[192.168.1.60]>
X-Chzlrs: 0
0131, 4 July 07
First, the BBC Gaza corrospondant Alan Johnston, captive for 16 weeks and the
subject of an armada of pleas by politicians, journalists, and over 200,000
signers of an electronic petition,
has been freed.
Much in the way of huzzahs are definatly in order.
Now then, being forcibly removed from modern computing, I find myself doing...
less computing at all. Developed two rolls of 620 film today [shout out for
fomapan] but did attempt to circumvent the performace problems.
I have a feeling these issues are due to extensive use of virtual memory; and
though that can speed up certain operations, they probably don't follow this
trend as dos does not file-map in the same way as native PPC code.
So, at the suggestion of LS on the telnet chat, I went to
emulation.victoly.net/windoze and downloaded a program called 'PCx'- a freeware
[really it seems abandonware] x86 emulator.
It downloaded and installed without a problem [I ditched IE for Mac and went
back to Opera, which still has memory issues but I think those are due to lack
of physical ram as well], and I set up a 16meg ram buffer and 50meg hard disk.
Henceforth followed a long wait before activity [does this happen everytime? I
don't know...] and a full boot screen shows, with the requisite blocky dos
letters.
The boot screen indicates the processor emulated is "80586sx", which makes me
wonder if this is a Pentium. Might have to look that up.
I insert my totally legal copy of MS DOS 6.2.
"General failure reading drive A"
-->Retry
Setup boots to a standard load screen, dark blue. Is this the 'Blue Screen of
Life' fabled in so many manuals?
It asks to allocate and prepare the disk, and reboot.
*reboot*
Blue screen. System settings appear- and they are correct. But the date is
shown as 7/04/07- is this ok? Is there a lesson to be learned from Y2k? And
does DOS care?
-->Accept these settings.
Installation proper begins.
I have a panicky thought here. On most x86 emulators, the computer's hard disk
is represented by a mounting image (Virtual PC 6) or a folder (SoftPC) that
allows the sharing of files back and forth. Does PCx do this? Opening the hard
drive document a few moments before writing this confirms that this is not the
case, as it launches the program like most documents would. Is my only recourse
to getting files in floppies? Can I burn a cd it would read?
..time might tell. If you ask it really nicely.
In a few moments, this asks for Disk 2. Normally, a Mac would eject Disk 1
here; it doesn't. Flipping to the Finder shows no disk either. So via
paperclip it comes out. Disk 2 is inserted.
This one is read quickly, and just as quickly dismissed- forcing me to paperclip
it out as well, reinsert, and hit enter.
No dice.
I hit F3 to exit the program. It says to put in #1. I do, hit F3 again- and
it reboots to the A:\> prompt.
Somewhere along in years past, I've used MS DOS 7.10 or so and seem to recall
that it was released under the GPL- and that I have disks of it around here.
Spending at least another hour looking for them (I only have around 1,000
floppies, almost none of which are labelled...) yeilds nothing.
And the A:\> stares me in the face.
A:\>setup
"Continue setup and replace your current version of DOS" is the route I want to
go-- I wonder if I can download a disk image of DOS 7 now...
Twenty minutes after the first time I needed it, I discover the eject button in
PCx- hidden in a menu in an off-screen screen you're not looking at.
When it needs the next disk, I properly eject and replace- which it munches
until... "An error occurred while reading or writing to drive A".
-->Try operation again.
10 seconds pass... same error.
--->Try operation again.
Seems ok this time...
Around 57% installed, it begins to behave like a bag of popcorn left in the
microwave a tad too long.
"An error occured while writing to drive A"
-->Try operation again.
"An error occured while writing to drive A"
-->Try operation again.
"An error occured while writing to drive A"
-->Fail operation.
"Error reading --> subst.exe"
-->Enter (continue)
The bar graph that had read 57% installed wipes to zero, but the drive is active
and file activity is had.
Read/Write error, again.
-->Fail Operation.
"Error reading --> unformat.com"
-->Enter (continue)
"Error writing --> subst.exe"
-->Enter (continue)
"Error writing --> unformat.com"
-->Enter.
Here, I am prompted for Setup disk 3.
Plan of attack for tomarrow? You bet. Gunna actually use it?
Maybe not.
No comments:
Post a Comment