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Ancient MS-DOS Tricks

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I had a dream last night.  In it, I was sitting in front of an old PC.  I typed:

c:
cd\
copy con config.sys
files=255
buffers=32
<ctrl-z>

I can’t remember much more of the dream.  But – I do remember typing this.  My dream must have been about something in 1991.

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August 26th, 2009     Categories: Random    
  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1061629357 Rob Freeborn

    dude…..you got some weird dreams!

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

      Indeed I do.  Did I tell you about the one where I get up on stage at a Billy Squier concert with a machine gun and blow away the entire first row?

      • http://intensedebate.com/people/cjwestbrook cjwestbrook

        I have a recurring nightmare where I'm at a Billy Squier concert and Brad Feld jumps onstage and kills everyone in the front row.

        Just kidding.

      • http://leftovertakeout.com Greg Battle

        That's not what Billy meant when he said "Stroke Me". ;-)

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/brian_hart1973 Brian Hart

    device=c:qemmqemm386.sys

  • http://www.intensedebate.com/people/brian_hart1973 Brian Hart

    device=c:qemmqemm386.sys

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

      Until they were crushed by:

         device=c:\\windows\\himem.sys
         device=c:\\windows\\emm386.exe noems
         dos=high,umb
         devicehigh=c:\\windows\\command\\drvspace.sys /move

      • http://www.riazkanani.com Riaz Kanani

        ah himem.sys those were the days.. lol

  • http://twitter.com/ruchitgarg @ruchitgarg

    I could recall DOS days..not as old as 1991, becuase my interaction with PC started around 1996.__It was fun hacking passwords in the college by faking dos prompts :) ))

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/steve_bergs2127 Steve Bergstein

      I did something similar in high school by mimicking the login process of Digital's RSTS/E (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSTS/E) operating system, which ran on the school's PDP-11. I ended up getting in a bunch of trouble.

      • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

        You have always been a naughty boy.

  • DaveJ

    Impressive that your dream didn't have any bugs. Or did you maybe fix the bugs when you were writing the blog post?

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

      Oh there were plenty of bugs in my dream.  In fact, now that I think about it, I remember having to reindex some files and run chkdsk a few times.

  • sam

    thats a nicer dream – few weeks ago, I woke up sweating that my interrupt handler for INT 21 was crashing….

  • http://twitter.com/_muddy @_muddy

    I once heard that you can never die in your own dreams. In your case, I guess you could never type delete *.*

    Having beers on Thursday night around 8:30 with a few of the TechStars guys. Let me know if you're interested.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

      Still in Keystone on Thursday so I won’t be there.

      Can you type format c:/s in your dream?

  • http://www.tuneyfish.com Scott

    Did you try typing “Joshua”? And then see “Shall we play a game”

  • Bill Mosby

    At work, we had about completed our "replace the Modcomp with two Macs" project in 1991. The only thing the Macs couldn't do better (for our use of them, that is) was survive a hit from a large pipe wrench dropped from about 12 feet overhead, as one of the Modcomp's washing-machine-sized disk drives once did.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

    Awesome.  I’ve always wanted to be in other people’s nightmares.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/jrpowers jrpowers

    Yet, despite these efforts, Wing Commander II still wouldn't run.

  • David Brode

    OK, so my Billy Squier dream was that I'm in an upscale mall and I see a shop called "Billy Squier's Racquet Sports" and in the dream I think, "Stroke Me, yeah, I guess that makes sense."

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

    Er – um – I don’t think that’s what he meant.  At least that’s not what I told my high school girlfriend.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/netroworx netroworx

    Nerdy but coudl be worse Brad.

    Your post reminds of my worst nightmare.

    Actually typing

    rm -r *.out

    on a unix machine while working on an assigment.

    Unfortunately I didn't let go of the shift key in time and so got:

    rm -r *>out

    which wiped out all my source files

  • http://the.firehou.se Mike Puchol

    My recurring nightmare from that era is installing Ami Pro. I’m there installing it from its 56 or so 3.5″ disks, and when you got to one of the last three disks, you were unceremoniously told a read error had taken place, and would you please restart the install from scratch. It actually happened to me for real a number of times, but to this day I still re-live it in my nightmares.

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    So, some tip about this issue are welcome and really sorry if my question is very simple. Thanks in advance

Brad Feld

Hi, I'm Brad Feld, a managing director at Foundry Group who lives in Boulder, Colorado. I invest in software and Internet companies around the US, run marathons and read a lot.

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