Rick’s Tech Talk

 Just thought I would put down something’s I have learned over the years. I have been working with PC’s since the mid 1980’s and remember DOS 3.x, 5 and 6. What we used to do to get as much memory below the 640K mark. Anyone remember “memmaker”?

 I remember getting into Novell at the time. v2.15. Man was that a lot of disks. You had to put the first 5 disks in 20 time before it would build the kernel. The first server I set up at home had a whapping 4 MB of RAM. I got that because I upgraded a bunch of 286 systems to 386 40 MHz DX AMD. I got to keep all the left over parts. My first IBM Compatible PC had 1 MB of ram and ran at 12MHz with a 40 MB HDD. I was styling. 2400 B modem was a far cry from the 300 b I had with my Radio Shack COCO which had 64K of ram and no disk drives at all. Then there was the Radio Shack model 4 I got 2 180K disk drives.

 I had a job back in the 80’s and I used a 12 MHz 286 PC to manage a service department for a major windows manufacture. (real windows not software) I used a spreadsheet Lotus 123 v1.2 and I would make a new sheet each time the tech’s had a service call. Soon I ran out of disk space because of all the spreadsheets. I found myself looking for a better way. I came across a little product call dBase III by Ashton-Tate.  Aaaa Ashton-Tate they made some many mistakes…. But dBase III was a great product. The only problem was when you start it up all you saw on the screen was this without the quote marks. “:” At the bottom left hand corner of you screen that was all you saw. I though what am I supposed to do with this? It was either learn to code or die. I learned to write code. Thus start my love of databases and programming. Then I moved to FOXPRO WOW what a product I still have a customer today working off FOXPRO 2.6.

 Back in the day when a 14.4 B modem was lightning I still had my 2400 B modem. If you were a Sysop (system operator of a BBS) you could but it for 1/2 price. I saved my pennies and purchased my very own 14.4 modem for 1/2 price at $499.00. I got into USENET news groups through UUCP. I even connect to the internet through a local collage. I remember my first web browser. Mosaic… I was able to browse the WWW which was not so wide back then. I was not the easy nav we have today. But as time went on my boss wanted to get an internet connection at the office I told that would be too expansive but he insisted. They also wanted a way to sell their products on-line back in the mid 90’s. I found Cold Fusion (as it was called then now Coldfusion) v1.5. I match this with an Access database and then moved the MS SQL later. They are still using that original program to sell products using Coldfusion 5. I would love them to move to Coldfusion 8 but I do not think they will spend the money since I do not work there anymore.

Now and then I come across some neat stuff and I will put it down.

 Rick    www.epnetworking.com