Category Archives: Story/Blog

Oldies

Something old..

Pre-1997

Before I used the Internet for making my software available I used BBS (Bulletin Board System).

I did use a BBS called “hilima” and mbnet BBS (a Finnish computer magazine, MikroBitti).

Modems did develop a bit. First one was 2400 bytes/sec modem and last one was 115200 bytes/sec modem.

(with modems, when they were handshaking, a double hearing protection should have been required, as with the dot matrix printer)

Software was in text mode mostly written in QBASIC, c and later in c++.

1997

The first VPKSoft home page in the year 1997. (There were no Google® those times 😛):

It seems to have been a colorful time then.

After clicking the CD Player link it gets even more colorful – Almost epileptic:

The CD Player in this image required 640x480x256 video mode and also had a text mode:

The modes were switchable between text / graphics with F1 key.

System requirements were also huge:

386+ processor (should be 486DX66+)
CD-ROM drive
MOUSE MSCDEX or Windows CD driver loaded
VESA 1.2+ Compatible video card (Video mode is 640x480x256). ( A good vesa driver can be found from http://www.scitechsoft.com/ )
Soundblaster (16+ ?) soundcard for adjusting soundvalues.

The best part in the software was a complete CD Player which was hooked to a keyboard interrupt and was launched by

pressing both Shift keys simultaneously

See the huge amount of free space on the drive E, 16 MB. This is also not your standard command prompt but

a JPSoft 4DOS (better scripting e.g.). 

The compiler used to build these programs was DJGPP.

It included some GNU / BSD history and/or code. You may correct me if I’m wrong. The latest release was in the year 1998/12/06.

Download link is also cool (and bigger than nowadays, also seems that I did draw it myself using Paint Shop Pro):

It was a fashion then to use command line archiver called ARJ, because it was way better than ZIP – Slower perhaps

but tighter. Better use for 3½-inch HD Floppy 😎

to be continued..