Asking For Help Identifying Computer

[MikeS]

...Did I get it or did I mess it all up (again)?

I'd say you got it pretty well exactly right!

A lot of the terms in what you'd think would be a precise and logical field are ambiguous or even misleading; for example CMOS stands for Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductors, an entire family of ICs and other semiconductors characterized by its extremely low power requirements (and thus ideal for battery powered uses), but in the PC world it refers to the chip holding the system's configuration (or the configuration itself); mind you, in even newer systems that info is actually stored in flash RAM, but of course it's still referred to as 'the CMOS'. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonvolatile_BIOS_memory
When 'configuring a BIOS' you are using a program in the BIOS ROM to change the system configuration in the Non-volatile RAM that the BIOS uses to do its thing. When the OS sends a command to the BIOS (e.g. read a disk sector on drive 0), the BIOS looks into the configuration RAM (or the PC/XT dip switches) to see what type of disk that is (or if it even exists) and handles the request accordingly.
No offence intended by the dyslexia remark; my typing seems to be getting more and more dyslexic as I get older, but fortunately I can still catch most of it when I re-read what I typed... yeah, pretty funny sometimes ;-)

 

[Stone]

..... my typing seems to be getting more and more dyslexic as I get older, but fortunately I can still catch most of it when I re-read what I typed...

That's because you're still young. In a few more years your eyes will get bad enough that the dyslexia will win out.

 

[Chuck(G)]

That's because you're still young. In a few more years your eyes will get bad enough that the dyslexia will win out.

...and then your memory begins failing. I've gotten strange looks from people when I've been seen walking the dogs wearing a binocular loupe on my head...

 

[PGB1]

Thanks MikeS for the details & link. Good article.
No worries about the D comment. I do it, too. As a matter of fact, I wrote a book about living with Dyslexia, but no one could figure out how to read it.
I find it more of an amusement than a problem- a distraction at worst. My wife gets great laughs daily about what new goofiness comes out of my mouth when the words go 'Alphabet Soup' on me. Never boring around here. Life's good!

As far as walking the dog with the Optivisor on, Chuck(G)-
Honest to goodness, I noticed mine on my head in the grocery store the other day. Crazy coincidence. Last week, I got in the shower dressed. Instead of being attributable to age sneaking up on me, I prefer to think of it as an eccentricity of genius. That's my excuse & I'm sticking to it!

Thanks again everyone for the information about this computer. It is the longest lasting computer I've owned. I was also surprised that almost all of the hundred or so 5-1/4's I accessed still worked fine. Maybe three had problems. I've been having a great time exploring it again.

Paul