Reply 40 of 53, by jakethompson1
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Sombrero wrote on 2021-09-24, 16:42:I bet figuring this stuff out back in the 80's and 90's was easy and fun without internet 😁
Kind of. If you've set up a DOS 6.22 system (or look in the oldmsdos directory on a Windows 95 CD) the HELP program has higher quality documentation, for each DOS command as well as each entry in config.sys like the ones you've been talking about, than programs tend to come with today. (When you hit "F1" in a lot of Windows 10 programs it seems it just does a bing search on how to use it).
In addition, error messages, well, "erred" on the side of confusing a novice user and therefore had at least some connection to the problem. "Abort, Retry, Fail?" "Invalid page fault" "General protection fault" may not have been clear, but it's almost as if we've gone too far in the opposite direction with all the Something went wrong 🙁 stuff.
On the other hand, once you dig deeper than the typical A+ certified technician stuff, it's amazing how much more there was to know about this hardware and that's what Vogons is great for and is a perspective totally missing back then. With all the engineering knowledge and data, rather than "shop talk" about whether Intel this or AMD that is actually faster etc.