• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

How to Post (On topic vs Off Topic)

Status
Not open for further replies.
Believe it or not, I was a big OS/2 user. I started with 2.11 on a 486 and struggled my way through Warp 3 with Fixpack 30 something ... I only finally retired that machine 2 or 3 years ago.

Great, now I'm off topic. ;-0
 
And to make this thread even more off-topic, OS/2 tended to be the first operating system former Amiga owners looked at when they felt forced to migrate to a PC in the early-mid 1990's.

I think it is a good move by the moderators to include a sub-category for 386 and 486 computers. Those offended by the thought of a 486 as vintage don't have to read it, and those newbies who consider anything older than two years obsolete will at last find an on-topic place for discussing what they figure is "very old". It also bridges how 68040 based Amigas, Atari TT/Falcon, Macintosh etc have been on-topic for years, but 80486 PCs have been off-topic. Sometimes, people even post about early PPC Macintoshes in that subsection, which strictly speaking is just as out of the forum scope as early Pentiums are.

As other people indicated, this forum is a bit of jack of all trades, and I'm sure for almost every topic presented here, you could find another forum, mailing list, newsgroup or other expertise that specialises in exactly that topic, but in which every other subject would be off-topic.
 
carlsson said:
And to make this thread even more off-topic, OS/2 tended to be the first operating system former Amiga owners looked at when they felt forced to migrate to a PC in the early-mid 1990's.
Click to expand...

That and BeOS, another great OS crushed under the tank-treads of the M$ juggernaut.. :(

Cheers,

80sFreak
 
mbbrutman said:
Use 'Later PCs' for 386s and 486s.
Click to expand...

That list should include 286s.

Not just sarcasm: in my opinion, the 286 started the modern* era, therefore it's not vintage. Old, yes.

* No, I won't get into a pissing war about the definition of "modern" because that can be argued emotionally and technically, just as much as what's non-modern a.k.a. vintage. All that's important is that I am right and Erik is probably wrong. :biggrin:
 
Ah, so many versions of 'modern era' though. The 286 was groundbreaking because unlike the previous 16 bit chip in the line it had memory management features which enabled OSes with paging and extended memory. But the design/implementation was pretty bad, and most of those features were redone (but the original version kept for compatibility) with the 386. Most 286s were used to run DOS faster.

The 386 is the real ground breaker here. It has 32 bits and usable memory management which enabled all of the modern OSes - OS/2 2.x, Win 95, 98, NT, Linux, etc.

The 386 was really too slow for normal people to put up with. The 486 repackaged the 386 and added a cache to improve the performance. It's with the 486 that we finally see the unwashed masses buying and using machines at home.
 
Yeah that's true, and if I was doing a 486 Win95 build I'd probably post in there, but for general 95/98 I'd expect to be hanging out in Club Pentium or one of the general forums further down. I was also somewhat taking queues from this:

mbbrutman said:
Windows 95 and 98 are definitely off topic ...
Click to expand...

I ran Windows 95 on a 386 once though, but admittedly it was only once!
 
SpidersWeb said:
Yeah that's true, and if I was doing a 486 Win95 build I'd probably post in there, but for general 95/98 I'd expect to be hanging out in Club Pentium or one of the general forums further down. I was also somewhat taking queues from this:



I ran Windows 95 on a 386 once though, but admittedly it was only once!
Click to expand...

I think the word you want is 'cues.'

Yes, this thread is ancient and has not been updated in many years. I don't think anybody expects us to go back and keep something like this up to date proactively. But now that it has been pointed out it should be updated.

In general, 32 bit operating systems are still not exactly what we call "vintage." But at least that particular software (Win 9x) is getting close to 20 years old now, not like it was when the thread was first started. The 386/486 and first generation Pentium sub-forums are appropriate places for the hardware. And I think if a Windows 95 question comes up in the software section nobody is going to get too bent out of shape.
 
SpidersWeb said:
...
I ran Windows 95 on a 386 once though, but admittedly it was only once!
Click to expand...

FWIW, my main Win 95 box years ago was a 386SX-20 with 5MB of RAM and two Rodime 70MB ST506-interface MFM hard drives, later updated to a Maxtor 690MB ESDI drive. I can't say I ran Win95 on it; 'walked Win 95 on it' is the better statement. It was definitely not mainstream. Win95 on a 486SX-20 was doable, though, especially with 8MB or more.
 
I still have Win95 OSR2 installed on a 386/20 with a 9GB FH SCSI drive. It works and, with DOSLFN, I get FAT32 functions even in DOS CLI mode.

It's not fast, but that really depends on what you're doing. Web browsing? Not so much, but ftp, Win32 support, sure.
 
lowen said:
FWIW, my main Win 95 box years ago was a 386SX-20 with 5MB of RAM and two Rodime 70MB ST506-interface MFM hard drives, later updated to a Maxtor 690MB ESDI drive. I can't say I ran Win95 on it; 'walked Win 95 on it' is the better statement. It was definitely not mainstream. Win95 on a 486SX-20 was doable, though, especially with 8MB or more.
Click to expand...

Windows 95 is pretty light. It runs quickly on my 486/33 with 24 MB RAM

Of course 386/20 with 5 MB is a lot slower
 
mbbrutman said:
I think the word you want is 'cues.'
Click to expand...

Thanks, yes it was, I don't think I'd ever actually written that phrase before.

If a "Windows 95/98/OS2 Warp" area was being considered I'd put a vote in. Many of us use them as tweeners, and they're the DOS PC of yesteryear for the younger generation of collectors. I don't consider them "vintage" but still feel they're part of what we do.
 
Its an OS.. Its software. Our topics are mostly hardware. The CP/M and MP/M i feel mostly pertains to the specific machines running those OS's. Why would we need OS based topics? Just post win95 questions in the 486 or early pentium categories.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top