fyy wrote:

So I recently just came across this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5REM-3nWHg

I found it very interesting that George R. R. Martin writes his A Song Of Ice And Fire on DOS. There's something beautiful about someone just making due with that they have and know and using it to make them tons of money. I can just picture the little DOS machine whirring away as he writes page 462 of his latest novel. I was curious if anyone knows of any more examples of people using older era machines to do a lot of useful work or serving dedicated purposes?

Wasn't Game of Thrones written on some old textwriter program?

Tetrium wrote:

Wasn't Game of Thrones written on some old textwriter program?

Wordstar 4.0 (I got this from the description in the link provided); there was another thread about it recently: Game of thrones is written on WordStar 4.0

As far as other "high value" work being done on old machines, I'm sure there's plenty of purpose-built machines from the 1970s-1990s still out there doing their tasks as designed (like the computers used in the American Space Shuttle). I've also seen a number of posts recently with people commenting about how banks/tax services/etc tend to keep fairly old machines around (486s, Pentiums, etc) that still perform whatever function they were originally purchased for.

Tetrium wrote:

Wasn't Game of Thrones written on some old textwriter program?

Same thing. "A Song of Fire and Ice" is the name of the book series, the first volume is called "A Game of Thrones", hence the name of the TV show.

fyy wrote:

So I recently just came across this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5REM-3nWHg

I found it very interesting that George R. R. Martin writes his A Song Of Ice And Fire on DOS. There's something beautiful about someone just making due with that they have and know and using it to make them tons of money. I can just picture the little DOS machine whirring away as he writes page 462 of his latest novel. I was curious if anyone knows of any more examples of people using older era machines to do a lot of useful work or serving dedicated purposes?

He never stated what machine he used. Just "DOS" and the program. For all we know he's using a Core i7 with MS-DOS 6.22, FreeDOS, etc. All the news sites assumed it's an "old machine" but somehow I doubt he'd be using a "old machine" especially since it wouldn't be very wise to trust your data on a hard drive from the 90's.....although according to the news sites he's running a 30year old "DOS" machine so hard drive from the 80's.

"“I have a computer I browse the Internet with and I get my email on, and I do my taxes on,” Martin continues. “And then I have my writing computer, which is a DOS machine, not connected to the Internet. I use WordStar 4.0 as my word processing system.”

Here's a reply to a kid who asked what MSDOS is:

Back when you still had to crank start your PC, people got tired of having to type binary commands directly into the computer. For example, back in the 1920s, you'd have to type this to get on the interwebs (called Derpanet back then)

01110010011101010110111000100000011010010110010101111000011100000110110001101111011100100110010100101110011001010111100001100101

As you can imagine, that was quite cumbersome, so Bill Gates created a system that used letters to issue commands. He called it DOS, which stands for Disk Operating System. It didn't sell well because no one knew what a disk was.

A few short years later, the Nazis were storming their way across Europe and the Allies needed to find a way to stop them. Code breakers were furiously typing at keyboards but the 1 and 0 keys were wearing out faster than the hardware could be manufactured. Finally, the US government approached Gates in secret to help solve this problem. He struck a deal with them that he would allow them to use his software to fight the Germans, but they would have to allow him to charge PC users for his software even if they didn't want to install it. PCs hadn't been invented yet, so they agreed.

Several decades later, Steve Wozniack invented the Personal Computer and Steve Jobs took most of the credit. Jobs made a career of stealing credit. In the 1980s, he toured Xerox PARC and stole the idea for Mac OS and bragged about it to Bill Gates, who in turn stole the idea from Jobs. Using the previous agreement with the government, Gates forced Windows on the world (Apple avoided this problem by slyly making their computers incompatible with Windows, which unfortunately had the downside of making them incompatible with everything else as well).

The federal government finally realized their error and attempted to renege on their deal, saying that it only covered DOS. Gates argued that Windows WAS DOS underneath, leading to Windows 95 being called "a 32 bit extension to a 16 bit patch to a 8 bit operating system written for a 4 bit system sold by a 2 bit company". Gates took this criticism very hard and spent $500 million on gold flecked Kleenex to dry his tears. Having nearly ruined himself (He only had $99.5 billion of his fortune remaining) out of grief, he decided to buckle down and show the world what he was made of. In 2000, Microsoft released Windows ME, which was hailed as the most innovative, groundbreaking operating system since Microsoft Bob. It was both a technological and financial success, and is still the most widely used operating system in the universe.

Sadly, the CIA had been threatening Gates for some time. Out of concern for his family's safety, Gates released Windows XP in 2001, which was the first consumer OS from Microsoft to not run on DOS. Washington carpe'd this diem and forced Gates to play fairly with other operating systems. But by this time, Microsoft had already captured the market almost completely.

Now secure in his dominance, Gates announced his retirement on his eleventy-first birthday (a respectable age for a geek) and donated $50 billion to a charity named after him and his wife.. which he also ran.... Now that I think about it, did he donate his money to himself???

And that's what DOS is.

Was that before or after he went back in time to save Einstein?

DosFreak wrote:

fyy wrote:

So I recently just came across this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5REM-3nWHg

I found it very interesting that George R. R. Martin writes his A Song Of Ice And Fire on DOS. There's something beautiful about someone just making due with that they have and know and using it to make them tons of money. I can just picture the little DOS machine whirring away as he writes page 462 of his latest novel. I was curious if anyone knows of any more examples of people using older era machines to do a lot of useful work or serving dedicated purposes?

He never stated what machine he used. Just "DOS" and the program. For all we know he's using a Core i7 with MS-DOS 6.22, FreeDOS, etc. All the news sites assumed it's an old machine but somehow I doubt he'd be using a old machine especially since it wouldn't be very wise to trust your data on a hard drive from the 90's.....

Yes he did state what he used, from his blog.

"So here's the thing. I am a dinosaur, as all my friends will tell you. A man of the 20th century, not the 21st. Yes, I have been using a computer for twenty years now, but while I cruise this interwebby thing with a PC and Windows, I still do all my writing on an old DOS machine running WordStar 4.0, the Duesenberg of word processing software (very old, but unsurpassed)."

Well it looks like he is actually using a PC instead of a "word processor" which is what some news sites confusingly call his machine.

http://grrm.livejournal.com/83679.html

At least as of 2009, He's using RAID1 and I doubt he's using SCSI. So that would mean PATA or SATA and either onboard RAID or with an addon controller card using either PCI or PCI express and if he does have a tech guy for working on his computer I doubt he'd set him up with PATA drives.

http://grrm.livejournal.com/320343.html

"If only I could send email with DOS. DOS never fails me."

😀

I doubt he knows anything about the hardware in his computer since he never mentions any of that on his blog.

So I'm going to go on the assumption that he's using a computer made sometime around the last decade and not one created 30 years ago....

DosFreak wrote:

Well it looks like he is actually using a PC instead of a "word processor" which is what some news sites confusingly call his ma […]
Show full quote

Well it looks like he is actually using a PC instead of a "word processor" which is what some news sites confusingly call his machine.

http://grrm.livejournal.com/83679.html

At least as of 2009, He's using RAID1 and I doubt he's using SCSI. So that would mean PATA or SATA and either onboard RAID or with an addon controller card using either PCI or PCI express and if he does have a tech guy for working on his computer I doubt he'd set him up with PATA drives.

http://grrm.livejournal.com/320343.html

"If only I could send email with DOS. DOS never fails me."

😀

I doubt he knows anything about the hardware in his computer since he never mentions any of that on his blog.

So I'm going to go on the assumption that he's using a computer made sometime around the last decade and not one created 30 years ago....

Why not SCSI? He's a rich man and if he indeed has a tech guy, he's probably been with him for a long time. Long enough to build a SCSI system when it was new for that exact purpose - to have RAID 1 and feel safe.

I'm thinking no SCSI because those drivers take up a shit ton of memory and I bet finding a working HD would be a PITA.

I emailed him so we'll see if we get a reply back. I'm sure he gets tons of emails. Used a subject line of "DOS Machine" so hopefully that's different enough.

fyy wrote:

I was curious if anyone knows of any more examples of people using older era machines to do a lot of useful work or serving dedicated purposes?

Stick around and you will undoubtedly come across threads about people desperate to use DOSBox with some ancient program that they need to communicate with some equally ancient but nonetheless vital piece of hardware. Or a Clipper database, at least.

btw, one of the lab workers where I work only uses 386DX-40 + IIT387-40 for fortran calculations. He's over 90, his grandkids have kids and I'm the only person who can repair his machine (already changed his I/O once and gotten him a better Trinitron CRT and a Trident videocard instead of old EGA stuff he was working on). I'll leave pictures later (maybe).

A lot of industrial equipment still in use utilizes older computer tech. If you have a machine that runs on a 286 motherboard and has custom made ISA cards and your software has timing loops that are CPU dependent, then upgrading to a newer motherboard isn't an option. Upgrading to a faster CPU of the same type may not even be an option.

Jorpho wrote:

fyy wrote:

I was curious if anyone knows of any more examples of people using older era machines to do a lot of useful work or serving dedicated purposes?

Stick around and you will undoubtedly come across threads about people desperate to use DOSBox with some ancient program that they need to communicate with some equally ancient but nonetheless vital piece of hardware. Or a Clipper database, at least.

Except that DOSBox is written primarily with game compatibility in mind,a point which seems to slip past most people who come here looking for help getting apps to run. If your app works under DOSBox, then it is more by coincidence than by design and that compatibility can be broken at any time in future releases since it was unintentional to begin with.

DosFreak wrote:

[...]especially since it wouldn't be very wise to trust your data on a hard drive from the 90's.....[...]

Have you forgotten? Floppy backup to the rescue!

totalizator wrote:

DosFreak wrote:

[...]especially since it wouldn't be very wise to trust your data on a hard drive from the 90's.....[...]

Have you forgotten? Floppy backup to the rescue!

That could work actually. The storage space he requires is mostly plain text, and presumably not very complex formatted text either that would take up a bunch of unnecessary space. 1.44 million bytes worth of storage space divided by say... 5 letters (bytes) average per word is 288,000 words.

He could probably fit an entire novel or very close to it on a floppy.

The man is a genius! Wouldn't that be awesome if his first draft is sitting on a floppy on the shelf? 😁

There are a ton of industrial test rigs still in use that depend on old 486/Pentium era machines with ISA slots and cards.