That's not the worst case scenario, but it is the most probable outcome.

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Remember, Safety Third!
'99 E300 Turbodiesel, '82 300TD, 1996 12V Cummins Turbo, '94 Neoplan - Detroit 6V92TA

I just want to have confidence that whatever I delete or hide or whatever, I can recover. I do not want to initiate "thermonuclear war" by a few ill-chosen keystrokes.
( uh oh--am I now on a watch list?)

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Sure. What could possible go wrong?

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

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On some nights I still believe that a car with the fuel gauge on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. - HST

1983 300SD - 305000
1984 Toyota Landcruiser - 190000
1994 GMC Jimmy - 203000

https://media.giphy.com/media/X3nnss8PAj5aU/giphy.gif

The thread by MS has caused me to reevaluate this machine, and I realize that it will be five years next spring. That's sufficient to make the jump to the next one.

So, a couple of questions:

1) I see no more offerings of a 3.5" floppy drive from Dell or HP...........is this absolutely unavailable anymore?

2) Can Win7 run DOS programs? Is the "Win XP virtual interface" a desired addition to accomplish this? Dell offers it and it appears to be something I'd seriously consider. I'm positive that everything runs on XP.........makes the addition of Win7 a pleasure.

3) There appears to be a bevy of video card options at all price points. The video on the mainboard is a bit limiting for me, but I do not have any huge graphics demands. Would the most basic of video cards suffice?


TIA

Internal floppy drives are still available from Newegg if you really need one (why?!).

Win 7 x32 will run 16-bit programs. x64 needs XP Mode (upgrade to Win 7 Pro) or just run a stolen copy of XP in VirtualBox.

You'd probably be ok with the integrated graphics chip on CPUs nowadays Brian. They're onboard the CPU and unless you do heavy gaming, they will be fine, and even better than an entry level video card in most cases.

Also newer motherboards allow booting off usb flashdrives, hence no one using floppies anymore. Hell i didnt even install a cd rom in my last build either. XP mode like spdrun mentioned will do fine for legacy apps. There are also DOS emulators (like DOSbox) that work great too.

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1985 CA 300D Turbo , 213K mi

..........because I still have some old DOS programs.............

What's a good reason to use x64? x32 should really suffice??

Thanks.

I was accustomed to the relatively slow performance of the Dell motherboard with onboard graphics in the Vostro.

Can you explain in a bit more detail? How would I load a DOS program without a floppy drive? I see that an external 3.5" is readily available for cheap. I might even get away without it completely as I can load the DOS program from the tape backup. There is no integration with Windows...........the good old days.

If you're booting from floppy, it really doesn't matter what version of Windows is installed on the hard drive. Yeah, just buy a floppy drive (and controller/cable?) from Newegg and pop it in.

You'd transfer the program to a usb flash drive. Should be a simple copy/paste. There are programs out there that let you boot into dos off the flash drive. If you dont want to bother with any of this you can always get a USB floppy drive like you mentioned, should be dirt cheap if Dell and HP dont offer floppies anymore. I dunno if the Dell/HP would have any available slots in the case to house an internal floppy or what, depends on what PC you're getting. I know my new motherboard didn't have any legacy support for floppy drive (no place to plug it in).

Have you considered building your own pc? It would be far more reliable than anything Dell and HP would build for you. It's really surprisingly easy.

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1985 CA 300D Turbo , 213K mi

What? No need for 8" floppies?
You are as much ( or more) of a dinosaur as me--and that is no compliment.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Thanks again. I'll either put the DOS program on the flash drive or just get the external floppy. Either should work fine.


I'm not all that pleased with the junk that I get from Dell, but their support is good. The hard drive failed on this machine and they sent another drive.........fully configured to the original installation.........just install it and it unpacks and loads all of its original software. I didn't need to do a damn thing. That's valuable to me.

LOL..........that would be 5" floppies there sir.............

I've decided to leave the dinosaur stage after I realized that this machine is nearly five years old. It's similar to yours and the larger programs (Adobe acrobat reader and Chrome) have really slowed it down.

I'm tired of waiting 15 seconds to open Adobe............it's time for more speed.