True story: the day before Dave joined our group, rumors came through: "hey, did you hear we've got a guy joining who did a CD driver, and they're going to get him to fix up our cache too?" Nobody on the team had any idea how to make one of those shiny new CDs "go" and we were all completely intimidated at the prospect. (Okay, except Chuck: nothing intimidated Chuck.) Dave rolled in like it was nothing and whipped our driver into shape in zero time flat. To this day I have no idea how he did it. Dave: your voice hasn't changed in 30 years. My god. --Richard from 11:35
@Bacon Pancakes Whatever you say, man: if it makes you feel better about yourself, you go right ahead and tell yourself whatever you need to. For the record--not that you're likely to care--I actually really like C# these days; it was weak when it first came out, but these days it's my go-to language for my personal projects. Not sure it's catching on with vertical industries like python, Julia, and R are doing, but its integration with Unity has certainly bought it a solid place in the industry. Moreover, Microsoft hasn't yet abandoned it like it has so many projects in the past, so good on them.
Huge respect to you, and thank you for making awesome software for us! I am interested... Did you end up working for Microsoft, or somewhere else since you were inter as well?
My old memories are flooding back... I remember some "freeware" utilities I wrote, the best being e2a and a2e (EBCDIC to ASCII) and later I released the asm inline procedure equivalent for Turbo Pascal. They were unique because unlike everybody else doing table lookups, I used the binary value of the character to represent the address (offset) of the replacement character from a string. It was super-fast. I uploaded them to a bulletin board in Lansing, MI and watched it "go around the world". That was cool! I also wrote my own version of single-pass diskcopy, which pretty much only worked on my Zenith PC. I threw mine away when your version came out. Your version was much better and more flexible. Thank you for doing that! I remember we e all cheered when it came out.
And that's not even a shaft of truck driving, by the way, which can be an honorable trade! After all, if you own it, by and large, it was delivered by truck at some point! It just wasn't what _I_ wanted to do for a living, was my point I guess!
@@DavesGarage Love the videos! Pretty funny, I did actually go to truck driving school at 24 years old and drove for several years. Now I do Cyber Security for the Navy! Only a few of us in the world doing what we do. So even if you did go to truck school, it is possible to get out of truck driving :)
I feel like that entire call was a calculated flex to ensure Dave was gratefully pliable when it came to contract time. You had to know Microsoft from a management perspective back in the day to appreciate how no trick was too small. As an employer, they were the Amazon of that era.
Really you should try, you might just fall in love. Obviously not on modern x86, but you know, on something nicer. 6502 is pretty nice for that. I also love how you can dip into full ARM on early Thumb platforms like arm7tdmi, found on the Gameboy Advance and so many other things. The full ARM instruction set had a condition prefix on every instruction, which makes it kinda DSP like and actually hot, since you can do branchless. Which also makes conditional jump just a jump with a prefix, isn't that cool?
Absolutely my new favorite channel. I check every day for new videos. I am at the perfect age to barely remember the days of having to swap floppies 20 times to copy a single disk.
you are a legend dave! being a computer nerd since birth (got the scars to prove it), and being a hopeful computer science student, you are truly what i aspire to be. someone who can share almost "insider" knowledge with the world in a very fun and interesting way
We have a different mantra in our office: if you have a question, ask it. Too often, Google searches will lead you down a rabbit hole and waste time. There's plenty of questions that can be resolved quickly and easily by just asking someone around you. It also helps motivate people to actually talk to each other.
Fixing to retire as a truck driver after years of general I.T. consulting. Microsoft was crazy lucky to catch you. These stories are a lot of fun. Thanks!
Am sure others as well as myself are eternally grateful your boss at the time made that call AND gave you a chance, thanks to Ben :) Dave - you're a legend, ace history lessons too, stay safe and am looking forward to your next post! More than anything, it's how you tell the why, who, when, where, - all of that - is amazing!
@@DavesGarage Appreciate reply too / hoenstly these videos help put the light on how things were done then. Got a question if you'd know - there's top guy called Ned Pyle (legend to me too / SMB1 ... he always said he never created it, though he had to look after it so to speak think he mentioned it was created when he was still in school? curious to find out if you'd know how / why / who it was created by - figure either you or Raymond Chen MSFT / OldThingNewThing Blog might have the answer?) ie. you created Task Manager and it still works now / figure it has to be in its league of its own too, (SMB1 is deprecated / though Ned's working on SMB3/ QUIC. sort of a replacement for TCP/IP) trying to get my head around that too :) You
I really like these stories. I started in PC's with the TI 99/4A and then sold CP/M systems. I remember getting my 1st copy of MS-DOS and Windows 3.0 and thinking that this might be something. Being young and broke I didn't have any money to put into Microsoft stock (silly me) It was so different then. When you had a problem you had to call Tech Support or send a fax and wait 2-3 days for an answer to come back. I remember barely being able to lift a 5Mb hard drive. Now here i am am, almost 70 years old and still loving and fixing PC's everyday. I will follow this channel closely.
Really brings back memories. Back in 89' I interviewed with MS for what was supposed to be a position on the DOS 5 team. It was one of those 8 hour interviews... where they kept shuffling you off to someone else as long as they liked what they saw. I wrote a lot of code on blackboards that day. In the end they awarded the position to an existing intern - which quite frankly I was not all that upset about. The place seemed like a complete sweat shop... everyone seemed stressed out and uptight. I don't think I saw a single MS employee except the receptionist smile during my entire 8 hours there and that struck me as odd. A couple of the interviewers were downright arrogant jerks... I think they were deliberately trying to provoke me just to see what my reaction would be. A dog eat dog atmosphere like that was not for me. I went to Boeing and got to write code for super computers and other amazing hardware and work in Unix... it was WAY more fun anyway. And while some of our projects were really challenging, we were never forced or felt compelled to work 16 hr days.
Love the secret history! Around the time MS-DOS 6.2 was released I was enrolled at a small tech college mostly studying Novell Netware through a partnership my school had with Novell. My primary Netware instructor was formerly the lead Netware administrator at FoxPro and left shortly after the Microsoft buyout.
Hi Dave, you arer amazing. I wish I could keep up with everything you say. I remember working with Diskcopy and doublespace back in the days. I started learning MS-DOS in 1983. Way back at Radio Shack when I began there as a part time sales rep. That also pre-empted me going to get a CIS degree and start my career. Even though I've been in IT all that time, my experience and knowledge don't compare to your's. It's great to hear all that history be relived again. Those were great days. I hope you continue to do well. Let me us know when you have your next LIVE session. I'd love to attend.
It's enjoyable listen to your past-time experiences from Microsoft Dave. As someone who hasn't been officially diagnosed (is the cost of diagnosis really worth the assurance of knowing?) it's surprisingly pleasant to hear the experience of someone who's "been in that position" so to speak. While I may perhaps not share your talents or intellect in the programming perspective, I very much enjoy my work as a software engineer nowadays, which has certainly not been a straightforward "sign up" in the sense either. I thank you for contributing these fantastic stories and personal experiences to the rest of the world. As someone who "does his own thing" and has his lunch suspiciously late either through forgetfulness or appreciating the calm serenity of it all, I'll certainly be following along!
Keep it up. Love the content. As an aspiring young nerd, makes me curious as to the stories I’ll witness and tell one day myself. Grabbed lunch with some senior engineers at my company. Their wisdom and stories about esoteric code they know by heart is beyond enlightening.
I just finished binge watching all of the "Secret Life" videos here in Dave's Garage. Some very enjoyable stories, please keep them up and I look forward to your next live stream. Also your content on RGB LEDs and the ESP32 is very informative. Thank you for the work you put into them.
Oh my FoxPro.. i remember a customer we supported that had thier entire manufacturing operation heavily reliant on a FoxPro setup and the one IT guy they employed who had basically written a series of fix it macros to keep it running, he just pressed whichever one it needed whenever one of a number of things failed. He ended up resigning and taking his macros with him, and the contract came to us before we understood what was involved... nightmare, we ended up having to subcontract and bring a guy out of retirement just so there was some working knowledge I am real glad your co-intern didnt end up blowing your chances, both for your own sake and because it would rob the world of some great software and great UA-cam content. Long may it continue Dave What
It is funny to hear you mention Star Castle. Loved that game as a kid. My first PC was the PCjr in 1984. Which I believe MS-DOS 2.1 came with it. Like taking a trip back through time listening to this. Fond memories.
At the MS Workgroup Canada offices in Vancouver, we even had interns interview other interns for positions since this was a tedious, repetitive task that took away from development time, and we were hiring so many people at the time. This also lead to overcrowding by doubling and tripling up on what once were single offices.
I gotta tell you, Dave. Even on the ops side of things that 'enlistment' story really took me back about 7 years. "That enlistment path isn't working. Suggestions?" "Oooh. Yea. Someone should update that documentation." Great video and great background. Keep 'em coming :)
So on the interruption of your Boss and Bill I’m reminded of a recent conversation with my boss, the chief engineer on a program and myself during some idle time on a call. It ends up just prior to us coming into the room the field was properly set, additional out of scope work was not going to be required, and all was well. Until one engineer in the back popped his head up and spoke. At the end of his statement we had signed up for the work we had been about to avoid. Said engineer was no longer in the room but I could quickly sense the frustration. In talking the Chief offered me career advice that he had once gotten as a young systems engineer. He said, “never miss an opportunity to keep your *%!?ing mouth shut.” To which I chuckled, “you notice how quiet I stay and never answer anything but what’s asked?” To whit, “yup and I’m making sure you know I appreciate it.” Glad I finally tuned it. Fellow Microsoftee Sean Kelly pointed your channel out when I was with the IoT and AI insider lab in building 25.
It's awsome to hear about how you worked on the operative system I used when I was twelve. I actually played a lot of Zork and still have a copy of the book they released with the answers to the riddles that would unlock the full version of the game! Fantastic stuff.. That was return to zork.
Hey Dave, I'm just a lowly Server Engineer who hates coding but your videos are that good you *nearly* make me consider giving up watching bars fill up and rebooting Windows to actually write some of my own stuff! Keep up the good work, look forward to the EU friendly live stream!
I saw vi first at the end of the 80th and love it since then. I worked as a Student for Nixdorf Computers in Germany and there was this guy which reformated his entire code with a long vi command. He was sort of a star. He had a PDP11 at home, 5 terminals and a rotating chair. So I started to look at vi and since then using it whenever I do coding. Being a project manager this does not happen so often any more but it is one cool tool. I think however, these days there are better editors out there. It is a pleasure to see your channel.
Thank you very much Dave. I haven't realized what time it was until I saw your recently published video. Only then I knew I stayed up too long. I'll watch this video later on when I get up somewhere in the evening. Edit:Right now it's 7:20am CST
I had subbed a while ago, but the Friendly Giant outro made me want to do it again! Love the stories, love finding out that you're Canadian, and looking forward to more stories/vids!
This is all so relatable (except for the secret backdoor). Even though I came into the JavaScript world in the 2010s, much of what you're saying is very relevant. Also, you seem to remember everyone's names, what was said, and a bunch of other facts.
Part of me misses the difficulty of ye olde days of computing, it forced us to learn ridiculous amounts of info, at low levels, and on our own. On the other hand, Google is sooooo handy. I recently went back to 6502 assembly a bit, felt nostalgic, it’s funny how much I remember.
@@DavesGarage my eldest, 24, wants to get into tech so I ordered Ben Eater’s kit to built a 6502 based computer from scratch. I figure those basics are still relevant today. I mean, an instruction is still an instruction right? See if we can get some serial IO into it and drive the RGB LED’s around his gaming rig or something.
@@c1ph3rpunk Once you get that 6502 working, dial up a BBS at 300 baud. Ah, the good old days. "Google is so handy" is the biggest understatement. I still look back and cringe at how it might take days or weeks to go down numerous rabbit holes trying to figure something out. Now, the answer (or at least some very good information) is just a few seconds away.
@@MikeBramm I’ve connected a serial port to a Pi at 1200 and had my junior guys use that as their primary terminal, I get “how did you get any work done” from them. Man, 300 was PAINFUL. Books, books and more books was the norm, we used to go to a place out by Bell Labs called “Books n Bytes” every week to see if we could land some new (used) book an engineer from Bell would sell off. Landed a Xerox copy of a ksh manual typed by David Korn that way. Biggest upside for us? We have excellent reading comprehension skills now so when we do find that *right* Google result we latch on to it quickly, “yep. That’s it”. I wouldn’t trade those days for anything.
@@c1ph3rpunk It turns out I could pretty much read at 1200. When I got my first 2400 baud modem and I wanted to read forums, I'd often disconnect, force the modem to 1200, log back in, and hit the continuous read key. (was it '='? I can't even remember the name of the most common BBS software at the time, but I'm sure it was that. Opus maybe?)
That was a great story Dave thanks. I have great admiration for your programming ability as I am a terrible programmer and more tuned to hardware. Guess my mind just doesn’t work on logic.
MASM!!!! When I went from 6502 assembler (I wrote my own in basic that so I didn't have to keep poking op-codes and address values directly into memory myself) to PC assembler was like going from riding a donkey to driving a Ferrari.. I love your stories, they always remind me of some fun coding stuff from "back in my day"..
In college I had a class using MS-DOS 3.3 (dual floppy no hard drive) and after learning command line we had a test to write 8088 instructions that bit-bang and have the exact result in all registers they specify. Thing is my source was only half the size (like 3 instructions) not as expected. The instructor pulled me aside after class and explained that he didn't believe it could work but instead of giving a bad grade, he sat down to show why it doesn't work. He slaved hours but only proved that my code worked flawless. He just had to tell me that mine was the most amazing thing he had seen in his lifetime of coding. Well my secret was knowing reset states but although it was fun to be praised, that's part of how I lost confidence in the value that school. These days I still see countless errors from new generations of programmers that just need to think it through or understand more than the textbook.
@@DavesGarage I like my Canon 85mm f/1.8 taken through a 0.64x Metabones speedbooster for microfourthirds... it tells the GH5s/G9 that it's shooting f/1.2, and I'm inclined to believe it!
Your content is absolutely superb and your storytelling is excellent and engaging. I’ve subscribed after a binge-watch of your channel and I shall look forward to your future videos. Thanks Dave! 👍
These stories from your early career is very interesting. The time you joined MS, I was still in grade school, got my first PC in the house. 6 months later my father ordered the 95 upgrade on CD-ROM, which was weeks later found in the mail shipped from some other contry. The rest of my life is more or less built on these computer adventures from back then. I feel that growing up in that exact time, being a tech head was very special. It was the very beginning. Before the IBM XT and the PC, MS-DOS and Windows 3.0, everything was a little bit too primal for me to even catch interest. Commodore, Amiga, etc. is also interesting in their own kind of way. But DOS and forward, the hardware development, 3D acceleration, the game changing GUIs that came along more and more... It was kind of the golden spot, time-wise. In early computing development. So to sit here, and listen to your stories and how things were in your end... Amazing. Been wondering though; is MS having any issues with these postings so far ? Keep it up, Dave. I'd guess that your age is just a decade above me or so. And I'm in my middle 30s. I'd say you're in early retirement... Guessing you've done well.
I remember those parties during my 9 years at Microsoft. Just a MCS and former Security PFE here not the hero like Dave here. Loving the stories btw!!!
... Really? Usually when you saw Scandisk, things weren’t exactly going your way. ;-) (Although, with FAT not having a journaling mechanism, you would see it on a lot of benign occasions too.)
So glad I found you. Thanks so much for your channel. I appreciate you posting about your work history. 👍 I'm an ex I.T guy, hardware specialist. Not a programmer.
Just finished watching a few of your videos in succession and loved everyone of them. One thing though that was driving me crazy was your ending? Took a while, but it clicked for me, "The Friendly Giant". Grew up watching that as a child on CBC, not that cable tv was an option at the time but a show I have fond memories of. Subscribed!
Back when I was using Windows For Workgroups 3.11 on my Packard Bell 486, I liked going into DOS and running scandisk. Call me crazy, but I found it fun to watch its progress. It also seemed to be a good test of computer power to see how fast it ran on other computers and hard drives.
Temps are a sensitive labor subject for Microsoft. I became an "orange badge" in 1997. Volt was on its way out at the time. Last temped for Indian recruiter (O365/Azure), "Microsoft Consulting" is based in Bangalore.
Really like your video's, image quality 10/10, sound 10/10 and stories also 10/10! Thanks for doing this. I agree that professionals should not put easter eggs in operating systems, as they could lead to unexpected behavior on a later point in time. That being said I always like them as a customer (as long it doesn't break anything) and would love to hear some of the stories behind them if you know any. I remember there was some animation with developer names to be unlocked in internet explorer by a whole combination of keys and dragging the logo around in the about window, and in word or wordpad there used to be one when you typed a sentence like: "I really hate Bill Gates" and it would be marked as misspelled with the only correction suggestion: "we agree". They always make me laugh or at least put a smile on my face.
I just found your channel and i totally love these stories! I was few years a Microsoft student partner and i could just barely imagine all the stuff that happens behind closed doors. =D
Great video! Ok, I'm clicking the bell now! One thing I wished you'd have covered is how all these assignment were given to you. Were these tasks chosen because no other developer wanted them? Were you able to suggest some of them? Were they the simplest/shortest tasks at that moment, so more fit for interns? How long beforehand did you know what you would be working on next?
The days you are talking about, were the prime days of my IT experience, when I knew all that command switches by heart, for each version of DOS. The nights spent understanding the compatibility between machine BIOS and your DOS. And between the DOS and the applications. The later fight with CDROMs and sound cards. How many times I wished DOS had a registry, and how perplexed I was when Windows shipped with a registry - without a mention in the user manual. All the @#%& to memory pages, why was like that? And I remember clearly all the thanks I gave our Lord when diskcopy went single pass, and when MSCDEX reduced my wait for CDROM loading to one tenth of the time... In reality it was you I had to say thanks. In the wider computer sector, I was considered a toy expert about my proficiency with DOS; the true computers allowed multiple applications to run simultaneously. LList instead of Dir. But from 1982 the path had become clear, and DOS was rising fast. Thank you for telling the story from MS side. 40 years on, I now know who was inventing the tools I used everyday, for years.
on open source world, that you can easily get connected with the developers, it is superior feeling. and really, they are willing to help and more than that, they really listen ideas and other feedback. that was just one reason why im on the open source, so it is direct and fast. and with closed source, we really don't know how to get contact and where. lot of closed source software companies have very complex connection system and they bury their developers very deeply on that system, so it comes very problematic to try contact anybody, who you really need to say anything in the first place. that's why it is better that we have linux and other open systems now days.
@@survivor303 In some industries, like military or aerospace, every part of the OS, every application, every driver need to be certified. There are also reasons of legal accountability, contractual liabilities, etc. that force the corporate world to use closed source software. Not that this do always work. Think Boeing Starliner ..
@@antoniomaglione4101 even i don't commenting about open source vs closed source in general, i can say couple of things about your comment. certified doesn't mean that you cannot use open source. if somebody ordered a closed source product, that's ok, im all in freedom and that is part of it. but you are not forced to use open source and those demands from customers like that, is something what you can try fight against, change their minds. you know that many military projects use open source and develop on them, cia and nsa example.
I get this whole sink or swim thing. I have similar experience. I think it is just people who came before you couldn't be bothered to document the whole process down... Oh and I love your advice on asking questions. I just finished my PhD, and doing what you said in terms of asking question is actually a prerequisite for doing a PhD.
Still use FreeDOS install almost daily with DOSBox Staging on macOS to play old DOS games. Funny to hear you were the author of improved DISKCOPY. As a very little kids back then (I started to use computers at age 5) we used ARJ's multipart archive function to "share" our games with each other. It was a shared learning experience for sure.
The pain of coming in as especially a senior engineer, they expect you know all the 'phone numbers' (servers, passwords, etc) you have to work with magically.
We had a similar intern who decided to edit a system file on an MS-DOS setup floppy that contained the (c) Microsoft Corp message to (c) Supersoft Corp. Which then got installed on all newly built machines and proudly displayed on bootup. Cue lots of calls from users suspecting a virus etc.
Ah, the bad old days. It's hard to believe that folks like you are retired at this point! My first OS was probably DOS 3.1, but theres a chance it was something earlier that I simply don't remember on account of being a tween at the time.
The advice to google the hell out everything before asking is probably great in generall good but what does microsoft think of googleing over binging??
@@DavesGarage Besides being a smart ass commentator (which I try to be), I was also a really wondering how mirosoft look at using differetn search engines and web services in generall. It must be a rather complicated topic both from a political point but also from a sequrity perspective as what you are googling can say alot of what you are working on if analysed.
I worked in Apple retail for a year like 8 years ago. (Sorry to invoke the A word!). Which was funny, because I'd been adamantly anti-Apple to that point, but needed a job, and my roommate was a lead and had been telling me to come work there for a long time. I finally bit the bullet and ended up getting the job, even though I'd never even owned an Apple product in my life. :P One thing I REALLY appreciated about the training and culture was that it was okay to say "I don't know". Like, there's nothing wrong with that, and you turn it into a learning situation where you can find the answer. I always find it weird when you hear people complain that an employee at any type of business has to go look up an answer to something. It just means they want to give the correct information.
True story: the day before Dave joined our group, rumors came through: "hey, did you hear we've got a guy joining who did a CD driver, and they're going to get him to fix up our cache too?" Nobody on the team had any idea how to make one of those shiny new CDs "go" and we were all completely intimidated at the prospect. (Okay, except Chuck: nothing intimidated Chuck.) Dave rolled in like it was nothing and whipped our driver into shape in zero time flat. To this day I have no idea how he did it.
Dave: your voice hasn't changed in 30 years. My god.
--Richard from 11:35
How awesome is this? Old days colleagues gathering to remember old stories as we were in a pub, so nice do listen!
@Bacon Pancakes Whatever you say, man: if it makes you feel better about yourself, you go right ahead and tell yourself whatever you need to.
For the record--not that you're likely to care--I actually really like C# these days; it was weak when it first came out, but these days it's my go-to language for my personal projects. Not sure it's catching on with vertical industries like python, Julia, and R are doing, but its integration with Unity has certainly bought it a solid place in the industry. Moreover, Microsoft hasn't yet abandoned it like it has so many projects in the past, so good on them.
@Bacon Pancakes Something tells me the guy who wrote ScanDisk might have a slight edge over someone who can barely type a legible sentence.
Huge respect to you, and thank you for making awesome software for us!
I am interested... Did you end up working for Microsoft, or somewhere else since you were inter as well?
@@cultureofcritique9735 Can you believe this guy? He has the audacity to talk shit to someone who worked program that got used by milions lol..
My old memories are flooding back... I remember some "freeware" utilities I wrote, the best being e2a and a2e (EBCDIC to ASCII) and later I released the asm inline procedure equivalent for Turbo Pascal. They were unique because unlike everybody else doing table lookups, I used the binary value of the character to represent the address (offset) of the replacement character from a string. It was super-fast. I uploaded them to a bulletin board in Lansing, MI and watched it "go around the world". That was cool! I also wrote my own version of single-pass diskcopy, which pretty much only worked on my Zenith PC. I threw mine away when your version came out. Your version was much better and more flexible. Thank you for doing that! I remember we e all cheered when it came out.
Interesting!!
Glad to hear the experience working for Microsoft during the early days
Oh man, the build up to: "I came this close to truck driving school". I completely lost it XD
And that's not even a shaft of truck driving, by the way, which can be an honorable trade! After all, if you own it, by and large, it was delivered by truck at some point!
It just wasn't what _I_ wanted to do for a living, was my point I guess!
@@DavesGarage yes of course, that’s not what I heard. But the 180° career change prospect got the point across. 👌🏼🤣
@@DavesGarage Love the videos! Pretty funny, I did actually go to truck driving school at 24 years old and drove for several years. Now I do Cyber Security for the Navy! Only a few of us in the world doing what we do. So even if you did go to truck school, it is possible to get out of truck driving :)
I feel like that entire call was a calculated flex to ensure Dave was gratefully pliable when it came to contract time. You had to know Microsoft from a management perspective back in the day to appreciate how no trick was too small. As an employer, they were the Amazon of that era.
@@sp10sn ouch. Wow
I love how you make dad jokes with a full-on straight face like you are stating facts. 😂
That's the only way!
I can't even keep a straight face making any type of joke
@@DavesGarage this is they way.
He's really good at talking in general, especially for a programmer.
"I love coding in assembly".
I don't think you can use words like that.
who doesn't like coding in assembly...
Great comment :)
😑
Yes, you can. It is the fastest code one can possibly create.
Really you should try, you might just fall in love. Obviously not on modern x86, but you know, on something nicer. 6502 is pretty nice for that. I also love how you can dip into full ARM on early Thumb platforms like arm7tdmi, found on the Gameboy Advance and so many other things. The full ARM instruction set had a condition prefix on every instruction, which makes it kinda DSP like and actually hot, since you can do branchless. Which also makes conditional jump just a jump with a prefix, isn't that cool?
Linux kernel dev, here. I cannot get enough of your content. I enjoy the old school Microsoft lore.
Absolutely my new favorite channel. I check every day for new videos.
I am at the perfect age to barely remember the days of having to swap floppies 20 times to copy a single disk.
you are a legend dave! being a computer nerd since birth (got the scars to prove it), and being a hopeful computer science student, you are truly what i aspire to be. someone who can share almost "insider" knowledge with the world in a very fun and interesting way
You're a good story teller. Your stories take me back to my early years in computing, even before msdos (cp/m). Thanks.
We have a different mantra in our office: if you have a question, ask it. Too often, Google searches will lead you down a rabbit hole and waste time. There's plenty of questions that can be resolved quickly and easily by just asking someone around you. It also helps motivate people to actually talk to each other.
I absolutely love the type of content you create, and the almost poetic way of sharing your experiences. Please do keep up making these videos!
Fixing to retire as a truck driver after years of general I.T. consulting. Microsoft was crazy lucky to catch you. These stories are a lot of fun. Thanks!
Am sure others as well as myself are eternally grateful your boss at the time made that call AND gave you a chance, thanks to Ben :) Dave - you're a legend, ace history lessons too, stay safe and am looking forward to your next post!
More than anything, it's how you tell the why, who, when, where, - all of that - is amazing!
I appreciate that a great deal, thanks!
@@DavesGarage Appreciate reply too / hoenstly these videos help put the light on how things were done then.
Got a question if you'd know - there's top guy called Ned Pyle (legend to me too / SMB1 ... he always said he never created it, though he had to look after it so to speak think he mentioned it was created when he was still in school? curious to find out if you'd know how / why / who it was created by - figure either you or Raymond Chen MSFT / OldThingNewThing Blog might have the answer?)
ie. you created Task Manager and it still works now / figure it has to be in its league of its own too, (SMB1 is deprecated / though Ned's working on SMB3/ QUIC. sort of a replacement for TCP/IP) trying to get my head around that too :)
You
I really like these stories. I started in PC's with the TI 99/4A and then sold CP/M systems. I remember getting my 1st copy of MS-DOS and Windows 3.0 and thinking that this might be something. Being young and broke I didn't have any money to put into Microsoft stock (silly me) It was so different then. When you had a problem you had to call Tech Support or send a fax and wait 2-3 days for an answer to come back. I remember barely being able to lift a 5Mb hard drive. Now here i am am, almost 70 years old and still loving and fixing PC's everyday. I will follow this channel closely.
Really brings back memories. Back in 89' I interviewed with MS for what was supposed to be a position on the DOS 5 team. It was one of those 8 hour interviews... where they kept shuffling you off to someone else as long as they liked what they saw. I wrote a lot of code on blackboards that day. In the end they awarded the position to an existing intern - which quite frankly I was not all that upset about. The place seemed like a complete sweat shop... everyone seemed stressed out and uptight. I don't think I saw a single MS employee except the receptionist smile during my entire 8 hours there and that struck me as odd. A couple of the interviewers were downright arrogant jerks... I think they were deliberately trying to provoke me just to see what my reaction would be. A dog eat dog atmosphere like that was not for me. I went to Boeing and got to write code for super computers and other amazing hardware and work in Unix... it was WAY more fun anyway. And while some of our projects were really challenging, we were never forced or felt compelled to work 16 hr days.
sounds like my experience interviewing for Apple!
Cool story.
Love the secret history! Around the time MS-DOS 6.2 was released I was enrolled at a small tech college mostly studying Novell Netware through a partnership my school had with Novell. My primary Netware instructor was formerly the lead Netware administrator at FoxPro and left shortly after the Microsoft buyout.
Hi Dave, you arer amazing. I wish I could keep up with everything you say. I remember working with Diskcopy and doublespace back in the days. I started learning MS-DOS in 1983. Way back at Radio Shack when I began there as a part time sales rep. That also pre-empted me going to get a CIS degree and start my career. Even though I've been in IT all that time, my experience and knowledge don't compare to your's. It's great to hear all that history be relived again. Those were great days. I hope you continue to do well. Let me us know when you have your next LIVE session. I'd love to attend.
"I didn't even get the sense that this guy was that big of a player" I had to pause I was laughing so hard at that one.
The Easter Egg story was epic! XD
Dave, you should write a book on your days at Microsoft!
It's enjoyable listen to your past-time experiences from Microsoft Dave. As someone who hasn't been officially diagnosed (is the cost of diagnosis really worth the assurance of knowing?) it's surprisingly pleasant to hear the experience of someone who's "been in that position" so to speak. While I may perhaps not share your talents or intellect in the programming perspective, I very much enjoy my work as a software engineer nowadays, which has certainly not been a straightforward "sign up" in the sense either. I thank you for contributing these fantastic stories and personal experiences to the rest of the world. As someone who "does his own thing" and has his lunch suspiciously late either through forgetfulness or appreciating the calm serenity of it all, I'll certainly be following along!
Keep it up. Love the content. As an aspiring young nerd, makes me curious as to the stories I’ll witness and tell one day myself. Grabbed lunch with some senior engineers at my company. Their wisdom and stories about esoteric code they know by heart is beyond enlightening.
Adjusted the tempo to a normal speed and it finished in 57 minutes. Way to go Dave!
Wait...you did all that in one summer?! I'm in awe!
Thanks, Dave! I appreciate that you have been sharing your story with us.
I just finished binge watching all of the "Secret Life" videos here in Dave's Garage. Some very enjoyable stories, please keep them up and I look forward to your next live stream. Also your content on RGB LEDs and the ESP32 is very informative. Thank you for the work you put into them.
Its nice to hear someone else speak about the fact they love programming in Assembly. Awesome videos dude, do keep them coming 😁
Oh my FoxPro.. i remember a customer we supported that had thier entire manufacturing operation heavily reliant on a FoxPro setup and the one IT guy they employed who had basically written a series of fix it macros to keep it running, he just pressed whichever one it needed whenever one of a number of things failed.
He ended up resigning and taking his macros with him, and the contract came to us before we understood what was involved... nightmare, we ended up having to subcontract and bring a guy out of retirement just so there was some working knowledge
I am real glad your co-intern didnt end up blowing your chances, both for your own sake and because it would rob the world of some great software and great UA-cam content. Long may it continue Dave
What
It is funny to hear you mention Star Castle. Loved that game as a kid. My first PC was the PCjr in 1984. Which I believe MS-DOS 2.1 came with it. Like taking a trip back through time listening to this. Fond memories.
At the MS Workgroup Canada offices in Vancouver, we even had interns interview other interns for positions since this was a tedious, repetitive task that took away from development time, and we were hiring so many people at the time. This also lead to overcrowding by doubling and tripling up on what once were single offices.
I gotta tell you, Dave. Even on the ops side of things that 'enlistment' story really took me back about 7 years.
"That enlistment path isn't working. Suggestions?"
"Oooh. Yea. Someone should update that documentation."
Great video and great background. Keep 'em coming :)
So on the interruption of your Boss and Bill I’m reminded of a recent conversation with my boss, the chief engineer on a program and myself during some idle time on a call.
It ends up just prior to us coming into the room the field was properly set, additional out of scope work was not going to be required, and all was well. Until one engineer in the back popped his head up and spoke. At the end of his statement we had signed up for the work we had been about to avoid.
Said engineer was no longer in the room but I could quickly sense the frustration. In talking the Chief offered me career advice that he had once gotten as a young systems engineer. He said, “never miss an opportunity to keep your *%!?ing mouth shut.” To which I chuckled, “you notice how quiet I stay and never answer anything but what’s asked?” To whit, “yup and I’m making sure you know I appreciate it.”
Glad I finally tuned it. Fellow Microsoftee Sean Kelly pointed your channel out when I was with the IoT and AI insider lab in building 25.
UofR! So cool to find an alumni unexpectedly like this. Cheers.
It's awsome to hear about how you worked on the operative system I used when I was twelve. I actually played a lot of Zork and still have a copy of the book they released with the answers to the riddles that would unlock the full version of the game! Fantastic stuff.. That was return to zork.
Hey Dave, I'm just a lowly Server Engineer who hates coding but your videos are that good you *nearly* make me consider giving up watching bars fill up and rebooting Windows to actually write some of my own stuff! Keep up the good work, look forward to the EU friendly live stream!
I saw vi first at the end of the 80th and love it since then. I worked as a Student for Nixdorf Computers in Germany and there was this guy which reformated his entire code with a long vi command. He was sort of a star. He had a PDP11 at home, 5 terminals and a rotating chair.
So I started to look at vi and since then using it whenever I do coding. Being a project manager this does not happen so often any more but it is one cool tool. I think however, these days there are better editors out there.
It is a pleasure to see your channel.
Thank you very much Dave. I haven't realized what time it was until I saw your recently published video. Only then I knew I stayed up too long. I'll watch this video later on when I get up somewhere in the evening.
Edit:Right now it's 7:20am CST
So many accomplishments in just four months. I'm in awe.
Love what you're doing here. Thanks for sharing. It's important that this kind of history be documented. Also, vi is awesome.
I had subbed a while ago, but the Friendly Giant outro made me want to do it again! Love the stories, love finding out that you're Canadian, and looking forward to more stories/vids!
I really love the narrating style! Please keep making these, I want to hear the stories from the other company gatherings too! This is so interesting.
This is all so relatable (except for the secret backdoor). Even though I came into the JavaScript world in the 2010s, much of what you're saying is very relevant. Also, you seem to remember everyone's names, what was said, and a bunch of other facts.
Your videos are always a good time. Thank you, Dave.
Part of me misses the difficulty of ye olde days of computing, it forced us to learn ridiculous amounts of info, at low levels, and on our own. On the other hand, Google is sooooo handy.
I recently went back to 6502 assembly a bit, felt nostalgic, it’s funny how much I remember.
Me too! I wrote a clock for my PET, sort of a screensaver the bounces the time around in a big font. Was a great deal of fun!
@@DavesGarage my eldest, 24, wants to get into tech so I ordered Ben Eater’s kit to built a 6502 based computer from scratch. I figure those basics are still relevant today. I mean, an instruction is still an instruction right? See if we can get some serial IO into it and drive the RGB LED’s around his gaming rig or something.
@@c1ph3rpunk Once you get that 6502 working, dial up a BBS at 300 baud. Ah, the good old days. "Google is so handy" is the biggest understatement. I still look back and cringe at how it might take days or weeks to go down numerous rabbit holes trying to figure something out. Now, the answer (or at least some very good information) is just a few seconds away.
@@MikeBramm I’ve connected a serial port to a Pi at 1200 and had my junior guys use that as their primary terminal, I get “how did you get any work done” from them. Man, 300 was PAINFUL.
Books, books and more books was the norm, we used to go to a place out by Bell Labs called “Books n Bytes” every week to see if we could land some new (used) book an engineer from Bell would sell off. Landed a Xerox copy of a ksh manual typed by David Korn that way.
Biggest upside for us? We have excellent reading comprehension skills now so when we do find that *right* Google result we latch on to it quickly, “yep. That’s it”.
I wouldn’t trade those days for anything.
@@c1ph3rpunk It turns out I could pretty much read at 1200. When I got my first 2400 baud modem and I wanted to read forums, I'd often disconnect, force the modem to 1200, log back in, and hit the continuous read key. (was it '='? I can't even remember the name of the most common BBS software at the time, but I'm sure it was that. Opus maybe?)
That was a great story Dave thanks. I have great admiration for your programming ability as I am a terrible programmer and more tuned to hardware. Guess my mind just doesn’t work on logic.
Quickly becoming one of my top faviourite channels! Awesome stuff, Dave!
MASM!!!! When I went from 6502 assembler (I wrote my own in basic that so I didn't have to keep poking op-codes and address values directly into memory myself) to PC assembler was like going from riding a donkey to driving a Ferrari.. I love your stories, they always remind me of some fun coding stuff from "back in my day"..
I absolutely love hearing these stories. I hope you have a bunch more and you keep them coming! Thanks for.... Well..... DOS and Windows!
Thanks Dave you come across as a nice, genuine, and humble guy! I think I speak over other people as well, too often.
In college I had a class using MS-DOS 3.3 (dual floppy no hard drive) and after learning command line we had a test to write 8088 instructions that bit-bang and have the exact result in all registers they specify. Thing is my source was only half the size (like 3 instructions) not as expected. The instructor pulled me aside after class and explained that he didn't believe it could work but instead of giving a bad grade, he sat down to show why it doesn't work. He slaved hours but only proved that my code worked flawless.
He just had to tell me that mine was the most amazing thing he had seen in his lifetime of coding. Well my secret was knowing reset states but although it was fun to be praised, that's part of how I lost confidence in the value that school. These days I still see countless errors from new generations of programmers that just need to think it through or understand more than the textbook.
Really enjoyed this episode Dave hope to hear from of others in the future this seems a heck a ride!
I'm mesmerized by the bokeh'd lights in the background.
f/1.4 for the win!
I just got a sigma 1.4 prime. And that's all I want to shoot right now. Lol
@@DavesGarage I like my Canon 85mm f/1.8 taken through a 0.64x Metabones speedbooster for microfourthirds... it tells the GH5s/G9 that it's shooting f/1.2, and I'm inclined to believe it!
@@fredtaylor9792 Got a 1.4 sigma for my sony. it's got damn glorious!
Your content is absolutely superb and your storytelling is excellent and engaging. I’ve subscribed after a binge-watch of your channel and I shall look forward to your future videos. Thanks Dave! 👍
These stories from your early career is very interesting. The time you joined MS, I was still in grade school, got my first PC in the house. 6 months later my father ordered the 95 upgrade on CD-ROM, which was weeks later found in the mail shipped from some other contry. The rest of my life is more or less built on these computer adventures from back then. I feel that growing up in that exact time, being a tech head was very special. It was the very beginning. Before the IBM XT and the PC, MS-DOS and Windows 3.0, everything was a little bit too primal for me to even catch interest. Commodore, Amiga, etc. is also interesting in their own kind of way. But DOS and forward, the hardware development, 3D acceleration, the game changing GUIs that came along more and more... It was kind of the golden spot, time-wise. In early computing development. So to sit here, and listen to your stories and how things were in your end... Amazing. Been wondering though; is MS having any issues with these postings so far ? Keep it up, Dave. I'd guess that your age is just a decade above me or so. And I'm in my middle 30s. I'd say you're in early retirement... Guessing you've done well.
I'm enjoying your stories, and seeing the work you've done on Windows. (from Portugal)
+1.from Montijo
+1 from Lisbon
I have the same problem with inappropriate comments with senior execs. Love the story about backdoor.
I remember those parties during my 9 years at Microsoft. Just a MCS and former Security PFE here not the hero like Dave here. Loving the stories btw!!!
"just grab an intern from the closet" - fortune 500 companies
All your videos are awesome 👏👏👏👏. Regards
Got to say, this stuff is great, and a real insight. I love the direct style. Keep it up
I remember and LOVED scandisk on MSDOS. beautiful. Seriously.
... Really? Usually when you saw Scandisk, things weren’t exactly going your way. ;-)
(Although, with FAT not having a journaling mechanism, you would see it on a lot of benign occasions too.)
So glad I found you. Thanks so much for your channel. I appreciate you posting about your work history. 👍
I'm an ex I.T guy, hardware specialist. Not a programmer.
Thanks again Dave! You're quite the storysteller. Very much looking forward to the 28th!
Amazing story! Can't wait till I finish college and start working somewhere. Btw your video quality is so good it looks good even in 360p!
Just finished watching a few of your videos in succession and loved everyone of them. One thing though that was driving me crazy was your ending? Took a while, but it clicked for me, "The Friendly Giant". Grew up watching that as a child on CBC, not that cable tv was an option at the time but a show I have fond memories of. Subscribed!
Back when I was using Windows For Workgroups 3.11 on my Packard Bell 486, I liked going into DOS and running scandisk. Call me crazy, but I found it fun to watch its progress. It also seemed to be a good test of computer power to see how fast it ran on other computers and hard drives.
You are a genius... I can listen to you all day :)
Temps are a sensitive labor subject for Microsoft. I became an "orange badge" in 1997. Volt was on its way out at the time. Last temped for Indian recruiter (O365/Azure), "Microsoft Consulting" is based in Bangalore.
Really like your video's, image quality 10/10, sound 10/10 and stories also 10/10! Thanks for doing this.
I agree that professionals should not put easter eggs in operating systems, as they could lead to unexpected behavior on a later point in time. That being said I always like them as a customer (as long it doesn't break anything) and would love to hear some of the stories behind them if you know any. I remember there was some animation with developer names to be unlocked in internet explorer by a whole combination of keys and dragging the logo around in the about window, and in word or wordpad there used to be one when you typed a sentence like: "I really hate Bill Gates" and it would be marked as misspelled with the only correction suggestion: "we agree".
They always make me laugh or at least put a smile on my face.
I just found your channel and i totally love these stories! I was few years a Microsoft student partner and i could just barely imagine all the stuff that happens behind closed doors. =D
Priceless ... similar to DEC ... thanks for sharing ...
Great video! Ok, I'm clicking the bell now!
One thing I wished you'd have covered is how all these assignment were given to you. Were these tasks chosen because no other developer wanted them? Were you able to suggest some of them? Were they the simplest/shortest tasks at that moment, so more fit for interns? How long beforehand did you know what you would be working on next?
The days you are talking about, were the prime days of my IT experience, when I knew all that command switches by heart, for each version of DOS. The nights spent understanding the compatibility between machine BIOS and your DOS. And between the DOS and the applications. The later fight with CDROMs and sound cards. How many times I wished DOS had a registry, and how perplexed I was when Windows shipped with a registry - without a mention in the user manual.
All the @#%& to memory pages, why was like that? And I remember clearly all the thanks I gave our Lord when diskcopy went single pass, and when MSCDEX reduced my wait for CDROM loading to one tenth of the time... In reality it was you I had to say thanks.
In the wider computer sector, I was considered a toy expert about my proficiency with DOS; the true computers allowed multiple applications to run simultaneously. LList instead of Dir. But from 1982 the path had become clear, and DOS was rising fast.
Thank you for telling the story from MS side. 40 years on, I now know who was inventing the tools I used everyday, for years.
on open source world, that you can easily get connected with the developers, it is superior feeling. and really, they are willing to help and more than that, they really listen ideas and other feedback. that was just one reason why im on the open source, so it is direct and fast. and with closed source, we really don't know how to get contact and where. lot of closed source software companies have very complex connection system and they bury their developers very deeply on that system, so it comes very problematic to try contact anybody, who you really need to say anything in the first place. that's why it is better that we have linux and other open systems now days.
@@survivor303 In some industries, like military or aerospace, every part of the OS, every application, every driver need to be certified. There are also reasons of legal accountability, contractual liabilities, etc. that force the corporate world to use closed source software.
Not that this do always work. Think Boeing Starliner ..
@@antoniomaglione4101 even i don't commenting about open source vs closed source in general, i can say couple of things about your comment. certified doesn't mean that you cannot use open source. if somebody ordered a closed source product, that's ok, im all in freedom and that is part of it. but you are not forced to use open source and those demands from customers like that, is something what you can try fight against, change their minds. you know that many military projects use open source and develop on them, cia and nsa example.
Thank you for disk copy & double space. I remember the performance improvements!!
Love these brother! Glad youtube recommended your channel
An old Amiga programmer eh? That deserves a sub, good show.
I can't tell you how much I'd love to see a sit down with you and Bill discussing your days at MS.
"For all your work and contribution to the company I retroactively give you a 4.5 grade, Dave"
I love coding in assembler, most all of it was on ibm mainframes. Those were the days.
Dave I just recently found your channel and boy are you a good storyteller.
I was there for 4 months in 2003. Needless to say it was very different. No way you can even get close to Bill's office doorway, never mind his house.
yesss livestream is more of a UK friendly time :) - i'll try and be there :)
loving these videos
I get this whole sink or swim thing. I have similar experience. I think it is just people who came before you couldn't be bothered to document the whole process down...
Oh and I love your advice on asking questions. I just finished my PhD, and doing what you said in terms of asking question is actually a prerequisite for doing a PhD.
Thanks for these videos Dave! This is gold, keep it up!
Still use FreeDOS install almost daily with DOSBox Staging on macOS to play old DOS games. Funny to hear you were the author of improved DISKCOPY.
As a very little kids back then (I started to use computers at age 5) we used ARJ's multipart archive function to "share" our games with each other. It was a shared learning experience for sure.
The pain of coming in as especially a senior engineer, they expect you know all the 'phone numbers' (servers, passwords, etc) you have to work with magically.
Your stories are very clever. Looking forward to the live stream!
Not getting the 5 rating helped make you who you are today. Keep the edge, Dave.
Delighted the next Live Stream's gonna be at a good time GMT Dave!!
I made it so that it was convenient for everyone this time I hope, including Europe!
@@DavesGarage Well it's much appreciated from here in Ireland :) Thanks a mill!
It was interesting to hear the story about your internship. The call was intriguing.
We had a similar intern who decided to edit a system file on an MS-DOS setup floppy that contained the (c) Microsoft Corp message to (c) Supersoft Corp. Which then got installed on all newly built machines and proudly displayed on bootup. Cue lots of calls from users suspecting a virus etc.
Nice to see the guy that post about the hypercache at retro computer forums on fb before 2020s
love your channel man great stories
Hey Dave, love your stories thanks for sharing!
Nice story, you are a good storyteller
It's amazing how tiny things can make such a big difference in our lives.
Love these videos! Would have loved to work there at that time.
Ah, the bad old days. It's hard to believe that folks like you are retired at this point!
My first OS was probably DOS 3.1, but theres a chance it was something earlier that I simply don't remember on account of being a tween at the time.
The advice to google the hell out everything before asking is probably great in generall good but what does microsoft think of googleing over binging??
Google is such a verb now that even if I'm using Bing, I'm googling Bing I think!
@@DavesGarage Adding to the confusion: Binging is also a verb, but associated with Netflix.
@@DavesGarage Besides being a smart ass commentator (which I try to be), I was also a really wondering how mirosoft look at using differetn search engines and web services in generall. It must be a rather complicated topic both from a political point but also from a sequrity perspective as what you are googling can say alot of what you are working on if analysed.
Seriously I agree, really awesome advice.
I worked in Apple retail for a year like 8 years ago. (Sorry to invoke the A word!). Which was funny, because I'd been adamantly anti-Apple to that point, but needed a job, and my roommate was a lead and had been telling me to come work there for a long time. I finally bit the bullet and ended up getting the job, even though I'd never even owned an Apple product in my life. :P
One thing I REALLY appreciated about the training and culture was that it was okay to say "I don't know". Like, there's nothing wrong with that, and you turn it into a learning situation where you can find the answer. I always find it weird when you hear people complain that an employee at any type of business has to go look up an answer to something. It just means they want to give the correct information.
Illuminating beyond description. So many assumptions confirmed or debunked.
Star Castle - my favorite game at my nearest arcade in the 80s