Re: [9fans] the old floppy set

[Uriel <uriel99@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 6:49 AM, John Floren<slawmaster@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 2:15 AM, Steve Simon<steve@quintile.net> wrote:
>> As Anthony says it is very very old, but I might
>> be fun if you had the time on your hands. The 2nd edition
>> books/cdrom are nolonger available but you might find
>> a set seccond hand (abebooks.com etc).
>>
>> The floppys are here:
>> /n/sources/contrib/steve/historic/2nd-edition/pcdist/
>>
>> I found a complete mirror of the old 2nd edition site
>> and I think uriel has copied it to cat-v.org.
>>
>> You will need 16Mb to install and 8Mb to run a terminal
>> though It will work at 640x480x1 resolution.
>>
>> The 4th edition should run on a 486, though you will need
>> (say) 128Mb of ram - much more if you want to recompile gs(1).
>>
>> -Steve
>>
>>
>
> With a little help from FreeDOS, I am now successfully running 2e on a
> 66MHz 486 with 32 MB of RAM and little bitty hard drive (< 300 MB).
> It's fun; on the surface, it's not a lot different, although 800x600x1
> makes things interesting (I like it, actually... rio hacking time?).
>
> I'd kill for the full CD, which I guess would have to go on my other
> 486, since I seem to recall that the full system needs 500 MB.
> However, given licensing, I suppose it's out of reach for the time
> being--anybody with experience in this sort of thing, is there a point
> in time when it could be distributed freely, or will it be stuck in
> the "You can't have 2e without a license, and you can't have a
> license" state forever?

If you follow the insane rules of copyright, you will have to wait at
least 90 years or so before it falls into the public domain. And by
then they probably will have expanded copyright terms by another extra
hundred years, so 'forever' seems about right.

uriel