fsr help

 all because the gemhost disallows requests from http proxies

### introduction you were tricked- you clicked on an "introduction" and instead you get a history. i mean, sort of- a quick history is a good introduction. if its not, we will pretend it is. i will. heres your introduction: messing around with computers has a history, and it means different things depending on the generation. early computing afforded access to very few people, and messing with computers involved handing data over to people on cards or tapes, and hoping you got something useful back much later. between the 60s and 70s, timesharing became prevalent and even if you never saw the big computer you were accessing, you saw the typewriter (or maybe, electronic screen with keyboard) that spoke to the actual computer over phone lines. you would type something in, and if the connection over the phone lines wasnt too noisy, the computer maybe got the line of text you typed and would give you a useful reply. by the late 1970s and 1980s, advances in electronics made it possible to buy a small machine that could connect to a television for a display, and all the computing was actually done on a small chip inside the machine. despite this, it was still possible to use these machines to talk to larger computers or other small computers over the phone lines. but by the time home computing was becoming cheap enough for most people to have some sort of device, it was possible to "mess around with computers" without causing enormous amounts of damage in both cost and equipment. soon an entire generation of people had the opportunity to learn things the hard way, instead of first becoming a scientist or researcher. this text wont spend a lot of time on computing history, but it will start with a bit of history, so if you wanted to use your 21st century computer skills in a somewhat familiar setting in the past, maybe the best place to take your time machine first would be new hampshire, usa in the mid 1960s- where the basic programming language was invented. the point of basic was for computing to be accessible to students who were not majoring in computer-related science or research. it was developed alongside an early timesharing system called the dartmouth timesharing system or dtss, dartmouth being the university in hanover where basic was developed. computers in the 1960s were big, and originally built to do lots of operations one at a time, very quickly. timesharing was a relatively new idea to have the computer simulate doing several things at once, letting more than one user feed tasks to the machine and have them responded to, even though a tiny slice of time was being spent before accepting the next instruction from the next user. this happened quickly enough that the user could enjoy the illusion of having the computers undivided attention. instead of having to prepare a tape with an entire task to complete to be fed to the computer by an expert, the computer could be running an interface available to many people over phone lines and accept typed commands, instead of raw computer data. the dtss would let you type in commands that for example, would start the basic programming environment, load an existing file or create a new one, where each file included more commands that the computer could run as a software program. while this was developed for university students, it was easy enough to use that it started to catch on also in high schools and secondary schools. by the 1980s, a system not entirely unlike dtss (but for a single user) would allow the owner of a microcomputer to run basic programs using a chip that was either included on the computer board itself inside the machine, or on some models from a cartridge that plugged into the front or back of the computer. the whole idea of "installing an operating system", while relevant to big mainframes like the ones that originally ran dtss and also relevant to more expensive machines in the 1980s, was not a major point for most owners of early 8-bit machines. on a low powered microcomputer, there was no place on the computer itself to "install an operating system" to. what passed for the os on these machines would be called "firmware" today, the instructions the computer runs BEFORE any software or proper operating system is loaded. all of this was on a chip, the chip was read-only and included by the manufacturer, if you "installed" anything it was to create a "system diskette" for the floppy drive you very likely didnt own or use on such a simple machine. but for those who had a 16-bit machine or even an older 8-bit machine with a floppy drive and no hard drive, a system diskette could be a very useful thing. while the earliest home computers likely ran the system from a chip, it wasnt long before it was possible to connect a floppy drive and run a more sophisticated os from diskette. this had the advantage of letting you save programs and other files to disk instead of cassette tape, with cassettes being error prone and tedious to use for data. technically speaking, there is no major difference between installing an operating system to the hard drive (if there is one) and creating a system diskette. with a system diskette, you simply "install the operating system" to the diskette instead of another drive. but with hard drives came the idea of installing more and more software which would be available without swapping diskettes around, and so operating systems became more elaborate and functional and feature-rich. not all of these features were important or useful, but typically it became nicer to use the computer. for some computers in the 70s and more commonly in the 80s, it was possible to get more than one "expansion cards" or expansion boards to add functionality to the computer hardware itself. the computer would have a "main board" also known as a motherboard, and expansion cards also known as daughtercards. these expansion boards would let you do things like add serial ports, add a modem, add a mouse (while mice for the serial port would become common, a "bus mouse" was a mouse that came with its own daughtercard you had to open the computer to install) or even an adapter for a hard drive controller. there were a few considerations when adding a daughtercard: mainly, if it would physically fit the machine, if jumpers needed to be set, and actually inserting the card without damaging something. later on, jumpers (little metal devices that would bridge two connectors and physically maintain a setting that mattered to hardware functionality) would be superseded by "plug and play" technology, as firmware and hardware became more sophisticated. not every computer case was physically large enough to allow every expansion card, though on average most cards would more likely fit than not. slots on the motherboard would accept the tab on the expansion board, not (at all) unlike the connector in a classic nes cartridge and the slot that it fit into. if the bus (the system for connecting devices on the motherboard) was compatible technology, this generally coincided with a connector or tab and slot that actually fit. incompatible busses and cards generally wouldnt fit into incompatible slots as a rule. occasionally you would have more expansion cards than could be powered by the power supply in the computer. if the power supply could be upgraded, you might be able to use more cards- otherwise, the solution was simply to not have so many cards (or drives) installed at once. as difficult and tedious as all this sounds, the main difficulties were setting the jumpers properly, physically opening the computer, and avoiding static discharge which could make components unreliable. the latter was done by wearing a conductive wrist strap connected either directly to ground, or to the metal chassis of the computer itself. today, you can get esd shoes that alleviate most static discharge. while at the time, the main way to learn how to do these things was from buying expensive manuals, today (as someone on the melonland forum mentioned) you can find step-by-step video instructions on so many of these things via youtube. it should also be said that back then, boards tended to be held in place by one or two means: either by the tension of the slot connector itself, or more likely that paired with a screw that fastened the board to the case directly. most people wont miss the old way, because of the countless times they were removing or installing a card and the screw (which is metal and conductive) dropped into the circuits of the computer, either frying something or simply becoming nearly impossible to retrieve. then again, the extra latches and catches and various tabs that secure expansion cards today can be almost as tedious sometimes. instead of dropping a screw and having to retrieve it, you may end up breaking the edge of an expensive card. although like with most things, it helps to know what youre doing. which you get with knowledge and practice. hey, why have an introduction thats all introduction and no substance? maybe this was an introduction on steroids. if not, then its just an introduction and thats the excuse. its win-win. best of all, theres more here: => layers.html layers => https://fsrhelp.envs.net/ (back to the main page) => https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/fsrhelp.envs.net/ (it wouldve been cooler to do it this way instead) license: 0-clause bsd ``` # 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 # # Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any # purpose with or without fee is hereby granted. # # THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES # WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF # MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR # ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES # WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN # ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF # OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. ```