<story><title>DESQview/X: Forgotten mid-1990s OS from the future</title><url>https://lunduke.substack.com/p/desqviewx-the-forgotten-mid-1990s</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>I keep pretty quiet about this out of embarrassment (there&amp;#x27;s stuff from me from when I was like 14 still hiding on the Internet --- I think there&amp;#x27;s a tfile somewhere where I breathlessly explain how to use `ls`) but if you email me, happy to share. I was an H&amp;#x2F;P&amp;#x2F;A&amp;#x2F;V board scene person. If you knew NBFC or Whammy Bar, you knew my Chicago social scene; if you knew UPT, my actual interests. My silly Chicago BBS was kitted out to look like a Gandalf X.25 router.</text></item><item><author>nope96</author><text>What was the name of your BBS? What was your handle? I know of you as the security guy from Enteract, but didn&amp;#x27;t know you were in the BBS scene!</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Yep! This is me! Both DesqView and DesqView&amp;#x2F;X --- because I had a Renegade BBS with Frontdoor.</text></item><item><author>pan69</author><text>I remember running DesqView (without the X) in the early 90&amp;#x27;s, it must have been on a 286 (is that possible?), I only got a 486 around 1994.&lt;p&gt;I remember being impressed by the fact that I could run multiple applications at the same time and switch between them. I think I ran a BBS at the time (a combination of Frontdoor and something else... the memory is thin).&lt;p&gt;I vaguely remember excitingly showing my parents, probably my mother, &amp;quot;Look! I can run multiple applications and switch between them!!!&amp;quot;, and she gave me a confused look of &amp;quot;what the hell is this boy going on about&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DonHopkins</author><text>&amp;gt;I think there&amp;#x27;s a tfile somewhere where I breathlessly explain how to use `ls`&lt;p&gt;You should post a link!&lt;p&gt;Every once in a while when I&amp;#x27;m using a common unix command, I find myself randomly re-encountering the frame of mind that I was in, the world outlook I had, and the sense of amazement I experienced when I first learned it as a kid. A sudden and explicable feeling awe at the breathtaking pervasive power of &amp;quot;cat&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;ls&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;echo&amp;quot; and how they fit together, and the very idea of a shell with commands and files and directories that you could name, look at, change, and move around. Remembering the excitement of discovering and fitting a new important puzzle piece into the growing model of what I was learning.</text></comment>
<story><title>DESQview/X: Forgotten mid-1990s OS from the future</title><url>https://lunduke.substack.com/p/desqviewx-the-forgotten-mid-1990s</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>I keep pretty quiet about this out of embarrassment (there&amp;#x27;s stuff from me from when I was like 14 still hiding on the Internet --- I think there&amp;#x27;s a tfile somewhere where I breathlessly explain how to use `ls`) but if you email me, happy to share. I was an H&amp;#x2F;P&amp;#x2F;A&amp;#x2F;V board scene person. If you knew NBFC or Whammy Bar, you knew my Chicago social scene; if you knew UPT, my actual interests. My silly Chicago BBS was kitted out to look like a Gandalf X.25 router.</text></item><item><author>nope96</author><text>What was the name of your BBS? What was your handle? I know of you as the security guy from Enteract, but didn&amp;#x27;t know you were in the BBS scene!</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Yep! This is me! Both DesqView and DesqView&amp;#x2F;X --- because I had a Renegade BBS with Frontdoor.</text></item><item><author>pan69</author><text>I remember running DesqView (without the X) in the early 90&amp;#x27;s, it must have been on a 286 (is that possible?), I only got a 486 around 1994.&lt;p&gt;I remember being impressed by the fact that I could run multiple applications at the same time and switch between them. I think I ran a BBS at the time (a combination of Frontdoor and something else... the memory is thin).&lt;p&gt;I vaguely remember excitingly showing my parents, probably my mother, &amp;quot;Look! I can run multiple applications and switch between them!!!&amp;quot;, and she gave me a confused look of &amp;quot;what the hell is this boy going on about&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bremensaki</author><text>I lost all parental credibility the day my kid learned that I used to use &amp;quot;Black Rose&amp;quot; as a BBS alias back in the 90s.</text></comment>