If anyone cares, Microsoft is ending forum support for these products

[LarryD]

1.44 mb

[EmeryB]

You've said it, Melek. Microsoft's support isn't all that amazing on the forums so I don't think people would miss them terribly if they vanished altogether. lol

[PFMcFarland]

I recently spent over two hours on the phone with a Microsoft "tech support" representative, and in the end I was the one who figured out what the problem was, and fixed it. They still only know how to tell you what the script in their manual says, and it's usually as wrong as the online service.

PF

[Brian]

I called Microsoft Support once for a technical problem. The FORTRAN-80 compiler was setting the high-order bit of the common block name but ASM-80 did not, making it impossible to share memory between them. They told me that problem was fixed in FORTRAN-80 3.44, which I bought. The Microsoft support engineer wanted to know how I figured what was wrong- I HEX dumped the object files.

That was in 1982.

[Brazile]

What an odd bug. Hard to imagine offhand what they might have been doing that would lead to it.

Then again, in the 80s, I generally stuck to FORTRAN 77, usually the VAX/VMS implementation, and never ran into a compiler bug. Then I escaped to a job where I could return to C and Unix and never looked back.

[jamesmck]

3-1/4

I have a banker's box full of these, with "very important" stuff on them (I guess). I got a USB external drive just in case.

[Dustin McAmera]

I have a small box of 3.25" discs, saved from a larger collection of 'really important stuff' I never needed for ten years or more, because they have the shutter part made of aluminium, and I have found it's good stuff for home-made pinhole plates. Flat, reasonably stiff, and the pinhole-making method I know (from here: http://www.pinhole.cz/en/pinholecameras/pinhole_01.html ) works well with this material.

[LarryD]

I believe you mean sided and I now have a bunch more as the lady at the second hand store got me a bunch and sold them to me for a penny. We call it that. when she finds me things she saves them up and I give her a penny then I put 10 dollars in the other jar.
That said... There was a Zune in the last batch.