Grzyb wrote:

Anyway, when the 386 became mainstream, the Sound Blaster was already there as well...

In my personal, likely slightly bit 'perverted' alternate reality it was other way round.

I had a PAS16 in my 286 first, since CD-ROMs were everywhere and the PAS16 was the SCSI controller card for my CD-ROM drive.
I thus built my Covox plug after I had experienced CD quality audio.

My main motivation was tinkering with electronics, but also getting sound in The Last Half of Darkness.
The game was soo cool and PC speaker sound wasn't that great, even though that's one thing the PAS16 could emulate.

Second application was ModPlay Pro, of course.
It did support Sound Blaster (mono), but I wondered how stereo or 4-channel sound would sound like in ModPlay Pro.
So building a mono Speech Thing clone first was a fine exercise here.

(The PAS16 shipped with a fine mod player, too, but I'm not sure if it was 286 compatible.)

Edit: I forgot, this is just my personal view on things.
I've been probably been an exception here.

This is a modern product, but I wish the 24" Asus ProArt monitor had proper support for VGA resolutions in DOS. If it did, it would have been an ideal retro LCD display.

I also wish it had a way to disable the built-in smoothing / interpolation. In fact, I wish this of all LCD monitors.

default 320x240 at 70hz for S3 (at least pci trio/virge) cards... break everything

HDMI integration into computer products rather than leaving it on TVs and other such products.

Systemd as de facto init in Linux.

To me, the way programs were installed in Windows has always been flawed. There should have been a centralized installation manager in charge of it rather than every installer copying stuff into the Windows folder, even asking if dll x or y could be overwritten. Same for the uninstall routine.
I believe that's how it is nowadays with the new "app" style programs. Would have been nice if it had been that way back then as well. Clean installations and removals, no dll hell etc.

All pre-USB-C plugs that had to go in a certain way - I always choose the wrong way first.

It is amazing no one has mentioned the A20 gate yet...

akimmet wrote on 2024-07-17, 23:20:

It is amazing no one has mentioned the A20 gate yet...

Year 5000, the AIs that rule the earth are debating where they came from, "Well it's obvious innit? The gate A20 line in our most primitive ancestors must have evolved, it couldn't have been intelligent design..."

akimmet wrote on 2024-07-17, 23:20:

It is amazing no one has mentioned the A20 gate yet...

Is there anything wrong with the A20 gate?
I don't recall any problems with that...

Grzyb wrote on 2024-07-18, 01:35:

akimmet wrote on 2024-07-17, 23:20:

It is amazing no one has mentioned the A20 gate yet...

Is there anything wrong with the A20 gate?
I don't recall any problems with that...

The hacky keyboard controller aspect or the need for the /MACHINE:xxxx option in himem.sys might be reasons.

darry wrote on 2024-07-18, 02:02:

The hacky keyboard controller aspect or the need for the /MACHINE:xxxx option in himem.sys might be reasons.

The need to specify the machine type must have been rare - from what I recall, HIMEM.SYS auto-detected it correctly, it just worked.

If there were any problems with that, they were only tiny parts of the huge problem: lack of proper DOS replacement.
DOS was good for 8088, and acceptable for 286.
But it was total mistake for 386+.

DOS was good for 8088, and acceptable for 286.

Yes. It was good for 8088. At very least.

And MS-DOS was a good alternative to the 8086 port of CP/M and featured a better filesystem.
Well, a good alternative to the initial CP/M-86 releases, at least. DOS Plus and Concurrent DOS had a good CP/M core.

I'm not sure about the rest, though.
Because 8088=calculator chip, 80286=database/telephone exchange processor.

On top of that, the older Z80 was superior in design to the 8088/8086 in my eyes and got some power user OSes through MP/M and CP/Net.
They were more sophisticated than MS-DOS and could do multitasking and networking. There even was GSX, an graphical API.
Same time, Microsoft had Xenix and that niche Multitasking DOS ("DOS 4") at best. Which were quite crude, still.

If there's anything that's similar advanced to Z80, then I'd say the NEC V20/v30 are both among of that.
They're like little 286es already. If the NECs just had additional pins and an 24-bit address range. Wait, they had! :D

Edited.

Grzyb wrote on 2024-07-17, 08:41:

But seriously, the 101-key layout - with clearances between Ctrl, Alt, and Shift - still remains my favourite.

The clearances are there for purpose - the keys around them are modifiers, intended to be pressed blindly while looking at some other key, and the clearances make it much easier to blindly press the right modifier.
But at certain point it got ruined, because some marketroid at Microsoft wanted to have the "Windows" keys there 😜

Absolutely correct. The traditional AT-style 101 keyboard with mechanical key switches is still the one I use when I'm at a desktop. Laptops?! They all have hopeless keyboards with no travel, midget keys, and keys too close together. The old Dell laptops had real keys and even older Gateway laptops (early-mid '90s) also had real keyboards.

Another unforgivable annoyance. The disappearance of the ergonomic corded mouse. (the original PS/2 Microsoft mouse was one of the only great products Microsoft ever made).

Shortly after the insurgance of the touchpad, and we had even more insultingly, the touchscreen invasion, which has ruined real, productive typing the world over. How billions (?) make do without any keyboard at all, no tactile feedback, and no travel or feedback is a mystery of the deep to me. Type at 120 wpm or use a touchscreen at 5 wpm?! I guess there are lots of idiots out there!

Modern laptop designs:

Lack of DIMM slots, and removable / replacable batteries.

The BRILLIANT idea of using adhesives instead of screws.

Unforgivable.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-07-17, 19:56:

This is a modern product, but I wish the 24" Asus ProArt monitor had proper support for VGA resolutions in DOS. If it did, it would have been an ideal retro LCD display.

This reminded me of a pet peeve I have with the ProArt monitors - there is no quick way to switch inputs! You have to navigate through the menus.

Is it something so terrible that I would "never forgive"? Probably not.
Annoying enough to reject it as the monitor on my primary desk where I have to switch between two PCs? Heck yet.

I will never forgive Windows XP's silly default theme.

Anyway... changes to classic theme

Oh yeah, Windows XP... once upon a time, I saw this very appropriate comment on that product:

"Looks like a toy for children up to 3 years old - absolutely no sharp edges!" 🤣

Grzyb wrote on 2024-07-18, 13:00:

Oh yeah, Windows XP... once upon a time, I saw this very appropriate comment on that product:

"Looks like a toy for children up to 3 years old - absolutely no sharp edges!" 🤣

XP is a bit like a fungus, it grows on you. 😉

XP's Luna is OK in my book, Win9x's default color scheme however looks like it comes from the cemetery. Win10's defaults suck too, all that whiteness in the title bars. Nothing beats Aero for me, using custom theme currently on Win10 to make it look similar to Win7 + DWMBlurGlass. That's just me though, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.