Man, that's taking me back!!! Let's see how much I remember. First you had to run FDISK. Then with the DOS disc in the drive you ran FORMAT C: /s for system and /U for unconditional. That would allow you to get a C:\ prompt when you booted.

I think I remember that as I installed programs on my own PC (Let's use Telix as the example) I would note the executable and make a batch file in a folder called C:\batch that was just c:\telix\telix.exe and from the C:\ prompt I could just run telix.bat, and that I had to put c:\batch in the file path.

I worked at a job a few months before Christmas building the most barebones computers you can imagine. Pop in a motherboard, connect all the pigtails, pop in a CPU, some RAM, a hard drive, install DOS and put it on a shelf. 2 of us did it assembly line style. If I recall I did the mobo, the CPU, the RAM and the hard drive, and the other guy did the connections and the DOS install. We were building like 4 an hour on a slow day. Sheer repetition and battery powered Black and Decker screwdrivers makes you fast! I had two of them. One had a screwdriver bit an the other had a hex socket for the standoffs on the motherboard. Compared to 2021, the computers were the biggest piles of crap I ever saw. The cheapest everything the owner could buy. There was a warehouse guy who sent orders out, received parts, and unboxed the cases and stacked them on a skid. We had those cheap PCs EVERYWHERE. Christmas was over, and after the anticipated big sales rush never came, I'd guess when he must have had at least 400 of those things on shelves. And of course, on Dec 26th we were both laid off. Furloughed. Essentially fired. We were working for a dollar above minimum wage so we didn't care. Plus the guy was a jerk.

What a gig. We sat at a bench and blasted music all day while serving as essentially human robots on an assembly line. I remember watching a guy who wanted a job there try to put the RAM in the IDE sockets. Fun times. Building boat anchors! Gigging most nights, building cheap PCs during the day. What a life.

Last edited by eddie1261; 07/09/21 03:50 PM.