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Old Fart's Quiz [Updated]

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday March 05 2020, @11:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the Memory-Garbage-Collection dept.

isj writes:

It is time for a quiz slightly biased toward older, larger systems giving old farts an unfair advantage.
Remember: googling the answers is cheating but we have no way of enforcing it. But it is less fun.

1. What is the advantage of unidirectional printing on a dot-matrix printer?
2. What is the distance between the black marks on a thick yellow ethernet cable (10BASE5)?
3. Which CPU did the SuperMAX from DDE have? (trick question)
4. How do you exit from a DOS program (interrupt number + subfunction)
5. Which interactive game from 1986 had the settings tame..lewd, and a scratch'n'sniff card was in the box?
6. Why is a memory dump called a "core" dump?
7. Which CPU did the Siemens PC-D have?
8. Which new features were in the file system in DOS 2.x when compared to DOS 1.x ?
9. What is the visual administration tool in AIX called?
10. Name the file server in the Amoeba OS.
11. What is the biggest difference between C64 joysticks and PC-joysticks (we are talking about the original ones that had to connect to a game port)?
12. What is the maximum line length in COBOL? (trick question)
13. Where is the main office of the Sirius Cybernetics Complaints Department located?
14. "eioio" instruction on Power. What does it do?
15. Before Borland introduced their TurboVision, which toolkit was widespread for implementing windows/ISAM-files in Turbo Pascal?
16. Why is the Unix function for creating a file called "creat" and not "create"?
17. When was SMP supported by Windows? And OS/2?
18. Which number did the Fidonet nets have in your country? (bonus point if you remember your matrix address)
19. How do you mark a block in Wordstar?
20. Which came first: Amiga, Norton Commander, or HP Laserjet?

[20200306_005148 UTC; Updated to add:

Please, when posting a reply, bracket your answer in spoiler tags, like so:

<p>My answer to question #n is:</p>
<spoiler>
Write your answer here.
</spoiler>

Which, when presented on the site, will look like:

My answer to question #n is:

Write your answer here.

Thank You! --martyb]

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday March 06 2020, @01:16AM (6 children)

    by hemocyanin (186) on Friday March 06 2020, @01:16AM (#967189) Journal

    So I was still in HS for #5 and I can make a few guesses here and there, but I totally failed:


    #5: Leisure Suite Larry was first released, and the first one I played was the one where he is on an island, I believe the 3rd release, but if I was to take a wild stab, I'd say it was the first release of LSL.

    #6: something something to do with magnetic rings -- way before my time though.

    #8: I was TRS-80 coco kid, by the time I was getting a DOS computer, I was getting DR-DOS, so ...

    #11: I'm guessing it is whether they were spring loaded to return to center? But I don't really know, except I do know my CoCo joysticks were not spring loaded (at least if I recall correctly).

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   2  

  • (Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday March 06 2020, @02:37AM (4 children)

    by vux984 (5045) on Friday March 06 2020, @02:37AM (#967235)

    #5 that was my assumption too but i really don't recall.
    yep to #6, and me too.
    #8 me too.
    Your coco sticks were not spring loaded. I remember hating them.


    1. What is the advantage of unidirectional printing on a dot-matrix printer? i remember bidirectional was faster since it didn't have to move the print head back, i don't know what unidirectional would have as an advantage.
    2. What is the distance between the black marks on a thick yellow ethernet cable (10BASE5)? I went from coax and BNC connectors to 10baseT.
    4. How do you exit from a DOS program (interrupt number + subfunction) - int21 no idea the subfunction
    5. Which interactive game from 1986 had the settings tame..lewd, and a scratch'n'sniff card was in the box? Leisure suit larry would be my guess, but my copy was "borrowed" so i never saw the box or what was in it. but a scratch and sniff card wouldn't have been out of place. :)
    6. Why is a memory dump called a "core" dump? - reference to the original physical implementation of RAM; magnetic cores? something along that line.
    8. Which new features were in the file system in DOS 2.x when compared to DOS 1.x ? folders would be my guess (directories). My first DOS was 3.3
    13. Where is the main office of the Sirius Cybernetics Complaints Department located? - Hitchhikers guide reference ... no idea the answer though.
    15. Before Borland introduced their TurboVision, which toolkit was widespread for implementing windows/ISAM-files in Turbo Pascal? Hmm... my first language after basic was turbo pascal, but i have no idea. Was delphi a thing yet, or interbase, didn't borland own dbase at some point too?
    17. When was SMP supported by Windows? And OS/2? - NT3.x i'd think. as for os/2 were they still connected at that point or already split? I was still a child dammit.
    19. How do you mark a block in Wordstar? - I used Wordperfect. And I forget how i did it there too, but I still miss editing formatting directly.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by drussell on Friday March 06 2020, @03:07AM (2 children)

      by drussell (2678) on Friday March 06 2020, @03:07AM (#967250) Journal

      I used Wordperfect. And I forget how i did it there too, but I still miss editing formatting directly.

      ALT-F4 marks a block. (Alt-F3 is reveal codes, the feature you miss so much... :) )

      We still use the old text-mode (well, it does have graphical print preview, and maybe the equation editor?) WordPerfect 5.1 on a daily basis.

      Of course, it runs each copy in a dosbox on a FreeBSD machine that you connect to each session using VNC, instead of running on the local machines, but it's still in daily use here.

      • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday March 06 2020, @03:38AM (1 child)

        by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Friday March 06 2020, @03:38AM (#967263) Journal
        Wordstar was ctl-k b for the beginning of the block, ctl-k k for the end of the block. Also used in quick edit and Borland dos turbo c and bc++.
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        • (Score: 2) by SDRefugee on Friday March 06 2020, @06:08PM

          by SDRefugee (4477) on Friday March 06 2020, @06:08PM (#967565)

          And if you use the Linux "joe" editor, you can still use those same WP key combinations. You can keep your nano/emacs/ed etc. Joe is one of the very first programs I install on a fresh Linux install.... Loved me some WP, back in the day..

          --
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    • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday March 06 2020, @03:19PM

      by hemocyanin (186) on Friday March 06 2020, @03:19PM (#967441) Journal

      19, Word Perfect, Reveal Codes (F5?). Loved that.

  • (Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Friday March 06 2020, @03:00AM

    by el_oscuro (1711) on Friday March 06 2020, @03:00AM (#967244)

    No googling, but I think it is :


    Leather Goddess of Phobos
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