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Paul Allen - RIP

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All the money in the world... but no stopping his returning cancer. [Yikes, he was just a year younger than me.]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/tech/paul-allen-dead/index.html

I remember his yacht pulling into downtown Portland. The thing had a huge sailboat on the side of it like it was dinghy! Of course, there was a helicopter pad.
 
Time waits for no man.... sad news, as he was the "quiet genius" behind the machine.
 
Heard about this earier on the news. I didn't realize he'd been ill.
 
I recall that he said he was responsible for the original DOS "C:" enter.
He had been ill for some time (most recently about 7-8 years ago). I think he was also ill when he left Microsoft (way back).
 
Boink said:
I recall that he said he was responsible for the original DOS "C:" enter.
He had been ill for some time (most recently about 7-8 years ago). I think he was also ill when he left Microsoft (way back).
Click to expand...

Somewhere around here I still have a set of old DOS 5-1/4 floppy disks.
 
DOS 2.11. I had customized a boot disk (5-1/4") for running it on an Epson 8088, couldn't afford a hard drive at the time. The machine had two floppy bays, so I could knit one up with some subroutines as the O/S ran the show from the other. Then use the mashup as the bootable O/S with "extras".
 
Somewhere I have a shoe box full of the old 5-1/4s, must be 50 or more in there, thing is I no longer have a reader for them, so the files are dormant. Even though I don't have a use for one, do they make a drive for them anymore? PJ
 
I've a couple drives here someplace, not sure how they would interface with a current MoBo, though. An IDE bus and some creative cable pinout research may get it to work... but IMO it wouldn't be worth the fussing.

Most of our data considered worth saving was always moved forward onto the next storage scheme to come along; 3-1//2" floppys to CD's, DVD's, thumb drives, redundant copies on T-byte server hard drives.

Another issue is what software would work now to retrieve files created with "legacy software"? WordStar files, WordPerfect, Paint V2.0, etc. are all gone the way of the dodo.
 
He left MS when he got Hodgkins Lymphoma. Remission. Then is what, 08, non-hodgkins lymphoma....then re-occurred this year, couple three weeks ago he announced it...and then he died.
My son-in-law is a graphics person, works in the gaming industry. Last company had a relationship with Paul Allen, went often to his hangars in Everett, climbed over the ropes, cameras, tape measures, note pads....and measured all sorts of stuff and used that information to create items for the games.

Quite the display...been there.
 
I still have a couple USB 3-1/2 external drives and a few floppy's left. I dumped a ton of those things last year, cut them in half with a shear and now their land fill. I've thrown away so much old stuff and now I see on ebay their selling the old junk for big bucks! Who in the world uses that stuff anymore? Used modern computers are pretty cheap, but I know there are parts of the world where money, however small, isn't available to a lot of folks. :concern: PJ
 
Well, just boot up your ol' Osborne. Insert cp/m disk in A drive, then insert MediaMaster disk in the B drive.

https://books.google.com/books?id=C...oECBMQAQ#v=onepage&q=mediamaster cp/m&f=false

MediaMaster was one of the multi-format readers, so users of one build of DOS or cp/m could read different disks.

(I wonder if folks will have similar problems in 100 years when they find an old thumb drive in grand-dad's garage. Drive is labeled "Family Photos". uh-oh - where's the paper copy?)
 
Yeah. Bought and restored a pile of warbirds. Had them flown all over. Collected war vehicles.

And other philanthropic endeavours.
 
I sold a couple Osborne computers I had for a few bucks (literally) 15-20 years ago. I suppose they will be worth something someday, maybe they are now, I don't know. I do have a pretty big stash of old cell phones from myself and my family, I figure they will make me rich someday. They have all the makings of future collectibles right? Culturally significant, once common, but rapidly outdated, replaced and discarded.
 
glemon said:
I sold a couple Osborne computers I had for a few bucks (literally) 15-20 years ago. I suppose they will be worth something someday, maybe they are now, I don't know. I do have a pretty big stash of old cell phones from myself and my family, I figure they will make me rich someday. They have all the makings of future collectibles right? Culturally significant, once common, but rapidly outdated, replaced and discarded.
Click to expand...

I figure it would be fun to fully bury one for archeological purposes. Just think what some future explorer might find!
 
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