Ltning

@ltning@weirdr.net

He/him. This is one of my alter egos in the retro world. Read about this instance on front page. My goal is to be able to post here from a 286* running DOS. Might be a while..

and enthusiast with a craving for retro (mostly PC) hardware. Four kids and a wonderful patchwork family.

*Speaking of 286es: http://floppy.museum/

29 following, 72 followers

8 ★ 4 ↺

[?]Ltning »
@ltning@weirdr.net

Despite all the things IBM did right with OS/2, there were some absolutely mind-boggling decisions made. Today's example: Using Java (version 1.11 or better, mind you) and a Netscape browser plug-in to install TCP/IP. Other than the chicken-and-egg-problem (which is solved by installing the transport services - NIC and protocol drivers - first), there's the fact that they had a perfectly good software installation framework which ran fine on like 6-8MB of RAM (total!). This variant swaps until my CF card starts sweating with 16MB, and is s-l-o-w!

I mean yeah, great, I get a proper BSD-4.4, 32-bit TCP/IP stack and tools. But it's taken me half a day. Getting the installation files over involved loading packet drivers and using in a DOS session. Which works .. surprisingly well. But still .. FixPak43, reboot. MPTS, reboot. Netscape 2.02, reboot. Java 1.18, reboot. Feature Installer plug-in (no reboot). Then, finally, TCP/IP.

All this to have a machine to play with at .


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    [?]April :verified8: »
    @lepidotos@bitbang.social

    @ltning "Oh just download the drivers and necessary prerequisites before you reinstall and keep them on a disk!" is probably what they were thinking, but that seems like the kind of thing that should absolutely just come with the OS itself.

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      3 ★ 1 ↺
      Pun Boleh boosted

      [?]Ltning »
      @ltning@weirdr.net

      In fairness, if there is such a thing which can exuse this travesty: this is an OS released in 1994, with a browser that came along in 1996, a Java version (1.1) from 1997 and a TCP/IP package from 1998 or so. Of course all this would have been easier had I been using OS/2 Warp 4, but that one is just a tad too resource hungry on this hardware. :D

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