[LAU] Poll - Was: Hey everyone, a simple question.

drew Roberts zotz at 100jamz.com
Thu Mar 21 22:59:10 UTC 2013


On Thursday 21 March 2013 15:52:14 Len Ovens wrote:
> On Thu, March 21, 2013 9:59 am, Neil wrote:
> > That's why my talk about audio production at Ohio Linux Fest focused on
> > the
> > stuff that *didn't* go smoothly when I switched from Mac to Linux.
>
> It is interesting how people's experience shapes what they expect.

I started in micros on a borrowed TRS-80 Model I.

http://oldcomputers.net/trs80i.html

With the cassette drive even. Writing games in basic and saving them to tape. 
Ouch.

> Apple 
> was always out of my price range and still is. I started out with an atari
> mega and various bought/shareware/freeware/DIYware. It had a nice
> sequencer and as I had only 4 tracks, putting MTC on one track gave me
> drums and keys up to 16 tracks as well as three analog tracks. Got
> interested in BBSs

BBSes. Started on an epson QX-10.

http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/qx-10/

With a Hayes smartmodem 1200

http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/Hayes%20SMARTMODEM%201200

that cost me $1,200.00 for the modem and an extra $80.00 for the serial cable.

The BBS software was written in basic and I wrote extensive additions for it.

> and set one up. only problem I couldn't do music at the 
> same time. Got an old (even then) 286 MB and PS (no case) and put DRdos on
> it and ran maximus.

When I got a pc compatible, I ran various bbs systems including fidonet stuff. 
I wanted to go multiline and bought The Majot BBS by Galicticom

http://www.themajorbbs.com/bbs/index.php

I spent good money on that baby.

I still have the boxes sitting on a shelf in my office.

Probably the best hardware it ever ran on was a 386. Some version of DOS I 
imagine. I think I only ever ran two lines. The board used to be listed in 
the back of Computer Shopper. I think it was called the zotzBoard.

At first I ran that board out of a closet in someone else's apartment. Later 
it moved to a bell towed at a local monestary where the transmitter for the 
radio station I currently work for is located. This was before I worked for 
the station though.

> A friend had windows (3.1 back then) ran two lines, 
> when the second line connected, the first slowed down to 1/4... we're
> talking 3kbaud here, and had to use a mechanical timer to restart the
> system at least once a day. So when I went two lines I used OS/2 (IBM was
> giving 2.1 away in hopes of selling 3.0) I could go on holidays for two
> weeks and come back to a running system. One line had no effect on the
> other. Then the Internet started to show up. I wanted to do networking,
> but IBM wanted big money for network drivers for OS/2. Windows didn't
> really have it either. and this was still pre win95. I ended up with Linux
> about 93 or 94, Slackware pre 1.0. I ported my BBS over (hand coded the
> lot) and have been with it ever since. Apple is still over priced and
> windows has never really (for me) caught up, at least in the things that
> matter. I have experienced windows in various ways. 95 on my wifes
> machine, till it got infected, NT at work, saw lots of crashes, we used
> Linux to load/back it up though, win ME was broken and never fixed, win 7
> is slow, even Ubuntu vanilla is faster.

I think my first linux may have been slack as well. I was floppy based. (6 
floppies?) The a friend and I started ordering Walnut Creek CDs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walnut_Creek_CDROM
>
> So Apple has priced themselves out of my interest. I can't afford the
> hardware, and most SW has to be bought. Windows still doesn't just work,
> you seem to need to buy a boat load of utilities to keep it infection free
> and keep it from slowing down, it really isn't a multi user system, but a
> multiuser hack on top of a single user kernel (last I checked). MS does
> not fix problems in a timely manner. The license seems to indicate that if
> I make music on their system they own a part of it. They seem to have a
> right to all the files on my disk too... not acceptable. (maybe the lic
> has changed?) Anyone with that kind of license would have a right to add
> access for themselves to my computer.
>
> So for me migrating to Linux has never been an issue, it is where I
> started, and every time I look at something else... switching looks really
> painful, better to make what I have work.

all the best,

drew


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