Start MS-DOS from a vinyl record

It seems that δίνει απλόχερα χρόνο για πειραματισμούς. Όπως σε αυτόν τον μηχανικό who ran them from a vinyl record.

If you are old enough you will surely remember with nostalgia the days when you were uploading programs to Spectrum through a tape recorder. Audio from the beginning of computers was a medium of data transmission.

The Slovak Jozef Bogin εν μέσω ς μάλλον το τερμάτισε. Αυτό που έκανε λοιπόν ήταν να εκκινήσει τα MS-DOS, αλλά αντί να χρησιμοποιήσει μια παραδοσιακή κασέτα, αποφάσισε να δοκιμάσει ένα δίσκο βινυλίου.

In the video below you will see in detail all the steps, but we should warn you that it is recommended to turn down the volume of your speakers, as the sounds that are heard are piercing. Users of 80's machines certainly know.

As you can see, MS-DOS does not boot on a modern , but on a prototype IBM 5150. The audio loading process is actually surprisingly fast as MS-DOS 6.22s are rather small in volume.

According to Bogin's website the computer has a small ROM boot loader that handles the computer's built-in "cassette interface" and is invoked by the BIOS if all other options fails, e.g. and hard drive.

The turntable spins and reads an analog record of a small RAM unit, which is 64K in size. It contains a FreeDOS kernel, modified by Bogin to reduce bulk, a micro variant of COMMAND.COM, and an updated version of INTERLNK, which allows file transfer via a printer cable, modified to run in FreeDOS. The bootloader reads its image from recording audio through it cartridge, loads it into memory and boots the system to it.

While this may all sound like rocket science to some, it's actually an experiment that could keep you busy in the midst of quarantine. Of course, there is no benefit, perhaps from the fun of playing with the software and the satisfaction of getting it done.

If you want to try it at home, Bogin gives all the instructions through his website. Good luck!!

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Written by Dimitris

Dimitris hates on Mondays .....

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