Ole Juul
Veteran Member
I was doing a bit of local mining. Now to put this in perspective, each floor of my "house" is 1000 square feet and I live on the top floor with my wonderful lady. Typically I go to the basement to dig out stuff because over half of that is computers and electronics - pretty much all vintage.
So, I got a bee in my bonnet about digging up an original copy of MS-DOS 6.22. I've been running that since it came out but haven't seen the original disks for years. They were pretty much giving them away at one point, so perhaps I'm even imagining things. Anyway, there was indeed some cases of 5.25 in the dungeon. Those were ones that people had given me years ago so I hadn't looked at them before.
There was a lot of software from the '83 to '88 era but most of it was copies. There was Smartmodem II from '83 and Xtalk from '85, carboncopy and some other standard stuff from the era. Still interesting. But there was also an original copy of AT&T MS-DOS ver3.30 Rel 1.01. I wonder what's different with the AT&T version.
However, I was just getting started. Checking old notes, I saw that there was probably disks in at least three boxes on the main floor. You have to realize that I'm not a normal person. The main floor of the old 1912 general store is completely full of my boxes of stuff in various stages of unpacking. After half an hour I found the right corner for the types of boxes I was looking for. After digging through stuff and clearing off the top layer of other antiques and interesting items. Some useful electronics parts that I can use soon and cool memorabilia. (Working the main floor is basically placer mining, but it has it's own set of logistics.) One of the things which waylaid me was copies of the Silicon Gulch and related literature from the First West Coast Computer Fair (1977). Even the train ticket I had bought to get there. It was quite a dig down memory lane. Anyway, there were indeed disks under the first couple of layers.
I was on the hunt for originals and not disappointed. There was IBM diagnostics 1.02, PC-DOS 2.10, MS-DOS ver3.30A with GW-Basic 3.22 included. Also Microsoft Word 3.1 which says it requires 192K memory. There were a few other gems, but the real nugget was an original IBM PC-DOS 1.1. That was with my old personal disks from way back. I didn't even know I had that, but it made the whole excavation worth while.
There might be a couple of games too that I could give to someone, but the boxes were damaged. Also some 3.5" disks, including a slightly ratty set of Win3.1 and a clean set of 25 disk set of MS-Word 4.2. If anybody wants to trade a DOS 6.22 disk for those I'd be into it. Even if somebody had a 6.22 original to just sell me it would be good, because I still didn't accomplish my original goal.
So, I got a bee in my bonnet about digging up an original copy of MS-DOS 6.22. I've been running that since it came out but haven't seen the original disks for years. They were pretty much giving them away at one point, so perhaps I'm even imagining things. Anyway, there was indeed some cases of 5.25 in the dungeon. Those were ones that people had given me years ago so I hadn't looked at them before.
There was a lot of software from the '83 to '88 era but most of it was copies. There was Smartmodem II from '83 and Xtalk from '85, carboncopy and some other standard stuff from the era. Still interesting. But there was also an original copy of AT&T MS-DOS ver3.30 Rel 1.01. I wonder what's different with the AT&T version.
However, I was just getting started. Checking old notes, I saw that there was probably disks in at least three boxes on the main floor. You have to realize that I'm not a normal person. The main floor of the old 1912 general store is completely full of my boxes of stuff in various stages of unpacking. After half an hour I found the right corner for the types of boxes I was looking for. After digging through stuff and clearing off the top layer of other antiques and interesting items. Some useful electronics parts that I can use soon and cool memorabilia. (Working the main floor is basically placer mining, but it has it's own set of logistics.) One of the things which waylaid me was copies of the Silicon Gulch and related literature from the First West Coast Computer Fair (1977). Even the train ticket I had bought to get there. It was quite a dig down memory lane. Anyway, there were indeed disks under the first couple of layers.
I was on the hunt for originals and not disappointed. There was IBM diagnostics 1.02, PC-DOS 2.10, MS-DOS ver3.30A with GW-Basic 3.22 included. Also Microsoft Word 3.1 which says it requires 192K memory. There were a few other gems, but the real nugget was an original IBM PC-DOS 1.1. That was with my old personal disks from way back. I didn't even know I had that, but it made the whole excavation worth while.
There might be a couple of games too that I could give to someone, but the boxes were damaged. Also some 3.5" disks, including a slightly ratty set of Win3.1 and a clean set of 25 disk set of MS-Word 4.2. If anybody wants to trade a DOS 6.22 disk for those I'd be into it. Even if somebody had a 6.22 original to just sell me it would be good, because I still didn't accomplish my original goal.
Lately I've learned that while mining it's advantageous to group like items together to make future mining expeditions more fruitful. 
