Yo Microsoft Raps
August 11, 2024 5:48 AM Subscribe
"Welcome! To the MS-DOS 5.0 upgrade training!" (5 minutes; warning: old software ad, white guy rap, severe cringe)
Notice, the disks depicted in the video are 5 1/4" floppies.
Notice, the disks depicted in the video are 5 1/4" floppies.
Don’t copy that floppy (holding)
posted by The River Ivel at 5:57 AM on August 11 [3 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 5:57 AM on August 11 [3 favorites]
I had to bail at the "yo!"
posted by Zumbador at 6:15 AM on August 11 [2 favorites]
posted by Zumbador at 6:15 AM on August 11 [2 favorites]
This post is part of my effort to keep the good parts of old Metafilter alive, where people made fun single-link posts a lot more often. I feel like people are a bit scared of making posts, maybe? They don't have to be heavily researched; they don't have to be about a current event; they don't have to be a link to a bigsite; they don't have to be political. The LinkMe idea collection posts, while great, most of the things there that are presented for people to turn into Metafilter posts, I think, could actually be good posts themselves!
If you find something you like online, post it! Sometimes it'll catch on and people will like it, sometimes they won't. Either way, dust yourself off and try again.
It took me a long time to detatch my ego from making MeFi posts, and truthfully I haven't been completely successful at that. But I still like to make all kinds of posts.
posted by JHarris at 6:29 AM on August 11 [54 favorites]
If you find something you like online, post it! Sometimes it'll catch on and people will like it, sometimes they won't. Either way, dust yourself off and try again.
It took me a long time to detatch my ego from making MeFi posts, and truthfully I haven't been completely successful at that. But I still like to make all kinds of posts.
posted by JHarris at 6:29 AM on August 11 [54 favorites]
This is extremely my jam and I hate it, if that makes any sense. Thank you for this post, and also no
Undelete in MS-DOS was actually a pretty big deal. There were third party tools that would do it better, but for average users it was magic. IIRC all DOS would do was replace the first character of the filename in the FAT with a null, so you basically had until you started overwriting FAT entries or blocks on the disk to bring back the file, and fragmentary recovery was also possible. It's weird that this kind of recovery became more difficult over the years, not less.
posted by phooky at 6:43 AM on August 11 [6 favorites]
Undelete in MS-DOS was actually a pretty big deal. There were third party tools that would do it better, but for average users it was magic. IIRC all DOS would do was replace the first character of the filename in the FAT with a null, so you basically had until you started overwriting FAT entries or blocks on the disk to bring back the file, and fragmentary recovery was also possible. It's weird that this kind of recovery became more difficult over the years, not less.
posted by phooky at 6:43 AM on August 11 [6 favorites]
"No PC should be without it!" immediately sent me into a "bag of holding or ten foot pole?" loop, which allowed me to survive the rap.
JHarris, thanks for this post. I flagged your comment as fantastic. The only thing we have to fear isweapons-grade rhetoric deployed to destroy joy in the name of adherence to notional correctness not posting.
posted by cupcakeninja at 7:11 AM on August 11 [5 favorites]
JHarris, thanks for this post. I flagged your comment as fantastic. The only thing we have to fear is
posted by cupcakeninja at 7:11 AM on August 11 [5 favorites]
severe cringe
which was the style at the time
posted by flabdablet at 8:07 AM on August 11 [7 favorites]
which was the style at the time
posted by flabdablet at 8:07 AM on August 11 [7 favorites]
my name is microsoft
and i'm here to say
gonna install edge on your pc
every day
huh huh RAH
posted by user92371 at 8:39 AM on August 11 [2 favorites]
and i'm here to say
gonna install edge on your pc
every day
huh huh RAH
posted by user92371 at 8:39 AM on August 11 [2 favorites]
We need a mashup with this underscoring Raygun at the Olympics.
posted by yellowcandy at 8:56 AM on August 11 [2 favorites]
posted by yellowcandy at 8:56 AM on August 11 [2 favorites]
i was really not prepared for how bad this was like did they get a single actual rapper involved in any part of it or was it just a boomer with a casio who heard rap once by accident
posted by dis_integration at 9:00 AM on August 11 [6 favorites]
posted by dis_integration at 9:00 AM on August 11 [6 favorites]
Ok, T-Bone ... time for some serious crunching.
posted by credulous at 10:11 AM on August 11 [2 favorites]
posted by credulous at 10:11 AM on August 11 [2 favorites]
It pains me to admit that I did the final online editing and compositing on this piece.
posted by bz at 10:39 AM on August 11 [47 favorites]
posted by bz at 10:39 AM on August 11 [47 favorites]
bz, you must give us more details, preferably in the form of cringe inducing corporate rap lyrics.
posted by autopilot at 11:27 AM on August 11 [8 favorites]
posted by autopilot at 11:27 AM on August 11 [8 favorites]
Those 45 Ks that were freed? They were never seen again.
posted by salishsea at 11:48 AM on August 11 [3 favorites]
posted by salishsea at 11:48 AM on August 11 [3 favorites]
I think it's sweet that the YouTube algorithm knew I'd need a quick brainwash after sitting through that.
posted by mph at 2:10 PM on August 11
posted by mph at 2:10 PM on August 11
Do you remember that cereal commercial with the Flintstones rapping? No, not that one, that one.
More embarrassing than those ads they did in the '60s.
posted by box at 2:15 PM on August 11 [1 favorite]
More embarrassing than those ads they did in the '60s.
posted by box at 2:15 PM on August 11 [1 favorite]
Are you telling me Dr. Casper Darling used to work at Microsoft?
posted by Smart Dalek at 2:41 PM on August 11 [2 favorites]
posted by Smart Dalek at 2:41 PM on August 11 [2 favorites]
I checked on the release date. June 1991. Surprising that they mention online help as a feature.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:02 PM on August 11
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:02 PM on August 11
We have Tom Lennon at home
posted by General Malaise at 6:02 PM on August 11
posted by General Malaise at 6:02 PM on August 11
"Online help" almost certainly means the -? command-line argument.
posted by JHarris at 8:47 PM on August 11 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 8:47 PM on August 11 [1 favorite]
Or, looking it up, DOS 5 introduced the HELP command, where you could get info on a command by specifying it after HELP. Sort of like man on Unix systems.
posted by JHarris at 8:49 PM on August 11 [3 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 8:49 PM on August 11 [3 favorites]
Wow. That was incredible, in the original sense of “Not credible: that cannot be believed; beyond belief.”
I couldn’t stop watching it tho.
Back in the day I only used DR DOS. Something about Microsoft always struck me as off.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:50 PM on August 11
I couldn’t stop watching it tho.
Back in the day I only used DR DOS. Something about Microsoft always struck me as off.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:50 PM on August 11
It is kinda crazy that DOSSHELL was being touted as a revolutionary feature 7 years after the Mac had been introduced. I’m just imagining some MS execs looking at DOSSHELL and being like, “oh yeah. same same.”
Also, I enjoyed the passing mention of Windows. Dos 5.0 would have been released maybe a year or so after Windows 3.0, which was the first Windows that made Word for Windows a big deal (although I think 3.1 wound up being a lot more common). Still, I’m wondering how many people in 1991 had a computer that was actually capable of running Windows 3.0 in any usable way. I guess for most PC users, DOSSHELL really would be it for a while.
Side tangent : I remember discovering that DOSSHELL had a color scheme you could change, and one of them was this hilarious purple-and-green one.
Side-Side-Tangent : before most PCs could run Windows, it was common for manufacturers to ship their machines with some kind of boot up menu software to make it easy to launch apps without going to the command line. I think I had one that was in 640x480x16 VGA and was actually made for Packard Bell computers even though mine was an off-brand Emerson. The apps were represented as big square tiles, and I think you could choose what graphic was used for which tile.
Side-side-side-tangent : even though my 386sx/16 with 1mb of RAM and the 40mb HDD was in no shape to run Windows 3.0 in any meaningful way, that didn’t stop me from trying! I remember for some reason it detected the Norton Utilities File Compare utility (fc.com) as the Fortran Compiler. I didn’t know what it was, but it sounded cool. It did not, however, compile Fortran.
The things you remember…
posted by panama joe at 10:00 PM on August 11 [2 favorites]
Also, I enjoyed the passing mention of Windows. Dos 5.0 would have been released maybe a year or so after Windows 3.0, which was the first Windows that made Word for Windows a big deal (although I think 3.1 wound up being a lot more common). Still, I’m wondering how many people in 1991 had a computer that was actually capable of running Windows 3.0 in any usable way. I guess for most PC users, DOSSHELL really would be it for a while.
Side tangent : I remember discovering that DOSSHELL had a color scheme you could change, and one of them was this hilarious purple-and-green one.
Side-Side-Tangent : before most PCs could run Windows, it was common for manufacturers to ship their machines with some kind of boot up menu software to make it easy to launch apps without going to the command line. I think I had one that was in 640x480x16 VGA and was actually made for Packard Bell computers even though mine was an off-brand Emerson. The apps were represented as big square tiles, and I think you could choose what graphic was used for which tile.
Side-side-side-tangent : even though my 386sx/16 with 1mb of RAM and the 40mb HDD was in no shape to run Windows 3.0 in any meaningful way, that didn’t stop me from trying! I remember for some reason it detected the Norton Utilities File Compare utility (fc.com) as the Fortran Compiler. I didn’t know what it was, but it sounded cool. It did not, however, compile Fortran.
The things you remember…
posted by panama joe at 10:00 PM on August 11 [2 favorites]
This post is part of my effort to keep the good parts of old Metafilter alive, where people made fun single-link posts a lot more often
Dude, thank you for doing that. Even back in Mefi’s heyday, I never understood the preference for multi-link megaposts. I always found them intimidating, and unless there was a clear-and-obvious “main link,” I would usually skip them entirely.
And the current events / political / contentious issue posts? Yeah I think I’ve been skipping those since like 2011.
posted by panama joe at 10:06 PM on August 11 [2 favorites]
Dude, thank you for doing that. Even back in Mefi’s heyday, I never understood the preference for multi-link megaposts. I always found them intimidating, and unless there was a clear-and-obvious “main link,” I would usually skip them entirely.
And the current events / political / contentious issue posts? Yeah I think I’ve been skipping those since like 2011.
posted by panama joe at 10:06 PM on August 11 [2 favorites]
That’s some Seattle early tech energy right there.
May I also introduce as evidence Cops in Redmond, from Almost Live?
posted by ec2y at 1:14 AM on August 12 [1 favorite]
May I also introduce as evidence Cops in Redmond, from Almost Live?
posted by ec2y at 1:14 AM on August 12 [1 favorite]
I hear ya panama joe. I have nothing against larger/deeper/linkier posts, I've made a few megaposts myself, but variety is good.
posted by JHarris at 3:09 AM on August 12 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 3:09 AM on August 12 [1 favorite]
Yeah no I mean absolutely — deep, well-researched multi-link posts are great! But I've always needed an obvious "main link" for the post, otherwise, I don't know where to start and so I wind up feeling intimidated and skipping the whole thing.
And yes, I fully well realize this is a "me problem."
posted by panama joe at 3:18 AM on August 12
And yes, I fully well realize this is a "me problem."
posted by panama joe at 3:18 AM on August 12
45K of memory!
I did not cringe as hard as I thought I would. But yes omg don't hold the 5 1/4 floppy like that you'll damage the surface!
I think I'm going to have "NO PC SHOULD BE WITHOUT IT" popping into my head randomly today...
posted by numaner at 5:57 AM on August 12 [3 favorites]
I did not cringe as hard as I thought I would. But yes omg don't hold the 5 1/4 floppy like that you'll damage the surface!
I think I'm going to have "NO PC SHOULD BE WITHOUT IT" popping into my head randomly today...
posted by numaner at 5:57 AM on August 12 [3 favorites]
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