Revisiting DesqView -- next level stuff

[Rube Longfellow]

I had a spare machine laying about in my shop, and decided on a lark to set
it up as a DOS 6 machine, along with some of the old applications I used
back in the day (and several to this day!).

A 2012-era Intel machine can still boot DOS with QEMM386, Windows 3.1 (for
solitaire only, please) and run 1-2-3 r2.2 like a champ.

I was putting together a demo to wow my all my friends (yeah right),
creating some tables and charts in 1-2-3, data sources in Q&A, and finally
tying them all together in a WordPerfect 5.1 document. Just like back in the
day, I quickly grew frustrated with single-tasking; switching back and
forth, forgetting the names of documents and ranges, not being able to copy
and paste between programs.

All this was ringing a bell for DesqView, so I found a copy and put it on
the machine. In no time, I was slapping left-alt to launch, switch, copy &
paste, all as smoothly and stably as I remembered.

DesqView was fantastic; and despite the awful operating system, the DOS
library is full of titles that were absolutely next level. No other OS has
even come close, and DesqView made it actually enjoyable to workk with!

[Auric__]

Rube Longfellow wrote:

> I had a spare machine laying about in my shop, and decided on a lark to
> set it up as a DOS 6 machine, along with some of the old applications I
> used back in the day (and several to this day!).
>
> A 2012-era Intel machine can still boot DOS with QEMM386, Windows 3.1
> (for solitaire only, please) and run 1-2-3 r2.2 like a champ.

No need for Windows; there are plenty of DOS solitaire games available.

I'm running a 2013 AMD machine. It can boot DOS, but due to the high amount
of RAM installed (16GB), it acts... a bit off. Plus, it *really* doesn't
like my 2-4TB hard drives. (My previous machines always had a DOS partition.
Not this one.)

> I was putting together a demo to wow my all my friends (yeah right),
> creating some tables and charts in 1-2-3, data sources in Q&A, and
> finally tying them all together in a WordPerfect 5.1 document. Just like
> back in the day, I quickly grew frustrated with single-tasking;
> switching back and forth, forgetting the names of documents and ranges,
> not being able to copy and paste between programs.
>
> All this was ringing a bell for DesqView, so I found a copy and put it
> on the machine. In no time, I was slapping left-alt to launch, switch,
> copy & paste, all as smoothly and stably as I remembered.
>
> DesqView was fantastic; and despite the awful operating system, the DOS
> library is full of titles that were absolutely next level. No other OS
> has even come close, and DesqView made it actually enjoyable to workk
> with!

I have a "made for Windows Vista" machine that I put DVX on. It works just
fine as long as I keep the RAM and drive capacity down to reasonable levels,
but I find that I don't use it for anything, because, well, I just don't.
Before I put my current machine together, I spent maybe a quarter of my
computing time in DOS, but my main machine has gotten me out of the habit.
[shrug]

If I want/need to use a DOS app, I use some form of emulation -- depending
on my needs and which specific app, I'll use DOSbox, WineVDM, or actual DOS
under VMware.

--
If it can be destroyed by the truth,
it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.

[Rube Longfellow]

On 2021-10-26, Auric__ <not.m...@email.address> wrote:
> Rube Longfellow wrote:
>
>> I had a spare machine laying about in my shop, and decided on a lark to
>> set it up as a DOS 6 machine, along with some of the old applications I
>> used back in the day (and several to this day!).
>>
>> A 2012-era Intel machine can still boot DOS with QEMM386, Windows 3.1
>> (for solitaire only, please) and run 1-2-3 r2.2 like a champ.
>
> No need for Windows; there are plenty of DOS solitaire games available.
>

For some reason Windows Solitaire is the only one I ever got into. It's not
the only one or the best, but the look and feel are what I'm used to.

> I'm running a 2013 AMD machine. It can boot DOS, but due to the high amount
> of RAM installed (16GB), it acts... a bit off. Plus, it *really* doesn't
> like my 2-4TB hard drives. (My previous machines always had a DOS partition.
> Not this one.)
>

I still limit all of my DOS partitions to 504MiB out of pre-LBA habit. I
don't have much to put on them these days, so it's plenty of room.

Funny enough, I have 8GB of RAM in my machine, and it seems to run stable
though I have to stop highmem from doing the memory test or we'll be there
all day :-).

>> I was putting together a demo to wow my all my friends (yeah right),
>> creating some tables and charts in 1-2-3, data sources in Q&A, and
>> finally tying them all together in a WordPerfect 5.1 document. Just like
>> back in the day, I quickly grew frustrated with single-tasking;
>> switching back and forth, forgetting the names of documents and ranges,
>> not being able to copy and paste between programs.
>>
>> All this was ringing a bell for DesqView, so I found a copy and put it
>> on the machine. In no time, I was slapping left-alt to launch, switch,
>> copy & paste, all as smoothly and stably as I remembered.
>>
>> DesqView was fantastic; and despite the awful operating system, the DOS
>> library is full of titles that were absolutely next level. No other OS
>> has even come close, and DesqView made it actually enjoyable to workk
>> with!
>
> I have a "made for Windows Vista" machine that I put DVX on. It works just
> fine as long as I keep the RAM and drive capacity down to reasonable levels,
> but I find that I don't use it for anything, because, well, I just don't.
> Before I put my current machine together, I spent maybe a quarter of my
> computing time in DOS, but my main machine has gotten me out of the habit.
> [shrug]
>
> If I want/need to use a DOS app, I use some form of emulation -- depending
> on my needs and which specific app, I'll use DOSbox, WineVDM, or actual DOS
> under VMware.
>

Emulation's fine for most things and I use it here and there. I do enjoy
writing in WordPerfect, though, and the conflicts with function keys drives
me crazy, or the alt/mod keys popping up menus or shifting focus to the host
or any number of other annoyances. Using real hardware is definitely worth
the pain for me in that case.

I've been playing around with WordPerfect and Eureka Solver mostly, and so
far on real hardware it's a much smoother experience than in DOSBox or
VirtualBox.