[01:48]  * arraybolt3 wonders how practical it would be to implement an SSD or SD card with very low-speed, low-quality SRAM and a small battery and use that as storage that doesn't wear out very easy
[01:50] <JanC> stuff like that has existed since the 1980s at least  ;)
[01:54] <JanC> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_drive#Dedicated_hardware_RAM_drives
[01:56] <sarnold> the one that I knew that you could actually buy .. https://ddrdrive.com/x1_product_brief.pdf  *four gigabytes*
[01:56] <JanC> oh, but I remember ones from the 1980s that were 1 or 2 MiB
[01:56] <sarnold> *nod*
[01:56] <JanC> one for the ZX Spectrum even
[01:56] <sarnold> lol
[01:57] <JanC> they would have ads in some Speccy magazines
[01:58] <JanC> must have been a lot faster (and less noisy) than the cassette tapes I used with it  :P
[02:07] <JanC> "2MB RAM CARD for PC" / "Includes Ramdisk/Print Spooler Software" https://books.google.be/books/content?id=my8EAAAAMBAJ&hl=nl&pg=PA56&img=1&zoom=3&sig=ACfU3U0bAYe2muiGlGb-59FqZL6rYOLUYg&w=1280
[02:07] <JanC> $399
[02:10] <daftykins> definitely had a RAM disk on the RISC OS running Acorn Archimedes i had in school
[02:10] <daftykins> even though i was 2 when i came out, somehow they lasted in schools
[02:11] <JanC> some computers would have more RAM than the processor/OS could address directly & those were used as RAM disks too sometimes
[02:13] <JanC> I could do something like that on my IBM XT compatible too (which had 1 MiB RAM, but DOS could famously only use 640 KiB of it...)
[02:13] <JanC> so I had a 128 KiB RAM disk on it  :)
[02:14] <JanC> which I used to run COMMAND.COM from
[02:14] <daftykins> \o/
[02:14] <daftykins> blazing fast!
[02:14] <JanC> no need to swap floppies then
[02:14] <daftykins> :D
[02:15] <JanC> otherwise I got the dreaded "please insert DOS disk" after running an application from another floppy
[02:16] <JanC> as DOS removed (most of) COMMAND.COM from RAM to have more to run an application...
[02:17] <arraybolt3> I remember fighting with that a bit at one point :P
[02:17] <arraybolt3> I'm not old enough to have ever used DOS as a regular PC, but I did play with it quite a bit just because I liked old stuff.
[02:18] <JanC> I even ran Windows 2.x on that machine   ;)
[02:20] <JanC> running Windows from a DD 720K floppy, imagine that  :)
[02:21] <arraybolt3> reminds me of a meme I saw where someone was showing the floppy disk version of Windows 8.1 Pro. There were like two giant cardboard boxes with four massive plastic sleeves each, each of which contained a massive stack of floppies. The first one was labeled "Disk 1 of 2876" or something insane like that
[02:23] <JanC> https://archive.org/details/windows_2.03_english_with_ms-dos_6.22_eng if you ever wanna try...
[02:23] <JanC> you can probably run it from freedos
[02:24] <JanC> DOS 6.22 they have on that page is like 6× larger than Windows 2.0x
[02:25]  * daftykins pats originals
[02:25] <arraybolt3> I've installed Win3.1 in a VM before. It was really less than fun not because of the OS being unstable, but because of my screen being so small :P
[02:26] <arraybolt3> (I mean, it was fun to install, less than fun to use)
[02:26] <sarnold> 640x480 viewed on a 15" screen vs in a 1.5" dialog box..
[02:26] <arraybolt3> exactly
[02:27] <arraybolt3> only I managed to get mine up to a whopping 800x600 :D I don't think I even managed 1024x768.
[02:27] <JanC> it could do higher resolutions  :)
[02:27] <JanC> need a proper driver though
[02:28] <arraybolt3> don't think I had a proper QEMU driver
[02:28] <JanC> there might be VBE (VESA) drivers for Windows 3.1, but not for 2.0x  :)
[02:29] <JanC> and it should be possible to have a BIOS with VBE for Qemu I'm sure
[02:30] <JanC> as VBE just provided a more or less standardised way to switch to higher resolutions that otherwise behaved more or less like (S)VGA
[02:34] <JanC> oh... http://www.win3x.org/win3board/viewtopic.php?t=5408
[02:36] <lotuspsychje> good morning
[02:36] <Paris> What tintin said to the smurfette? <tintin> are you gay?
[02:37] <Paris> wrong win.
[02:37] <Paris> lol hi.