I was one of the people who still ran DOS when this wasn't really very common any more, and was constantly looking for things like drivers that would bring proper vesa or sound support to newer hardware on DOS. I ended up starting a webpage dedicated to collecting those drivers for DOS, which by now must've been decades ago.
It never grew very big, but I also never took it down. I wonder if it helped some people over the years.
Hard to tell exactly, both because of course it was a process (still running DOS some time while having Windows as a GUI for other uses), and I don't remember everything exactly.
I think the later Running-on-top-of-DOS-Windows-versions - the last one was Windows ME I believe - where trying to hide their DOS-based roots, and you had to use some hacks to actually boot into DOS. I can tell you that I used those hacks.
I never migrated to the "native" (non-DOS-based) Windows versions (I believe XP was the first consumer-not-dos-based version), but switched to Linux around that time.
A few years back, while browsing some such sites, I came across downloadable versions of the classic Norton Guides for Turbo C, Clipper and Assembly language, along with an app to view them. I think it was a TSR app, like the original, or it may have been the original app.
Also, at least until a few years ago, earlier versions of Turbo Pascal such as v3 and v5, were downloadable from the Museum section of the Borland (Codegear / Embarcadero) site.
It reminds me my childhood and how the pieces were nice and easily maintainable.
I would propose two improvements (sorry if I missed them)
- Add filtering for items with a picture only
- Allow to a user to browse a category (without necessity of searching)
Looking at the simple (as in good) layout and all the old hardware reminded me of Pricewatch.com (specifically the late 90s/early 2000s era version of the site)
Their server (PHP 8) is Free Software under the GPL v3 but I can't find any link to the SQL dump mentioned in the README that one would need to actually run it.
Base sql dump is in database.pgsql, then they got patches on top of that in /migrations
Afaik only one developer deploys this code to the webserver and last time I tried it wasnt reproducible https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=1207261#p1207261 I suspect he is the only one who ever does build whole project, or maybe no one ever builds it from scratch. I think problem is in the database with codebase expecting never dump.
I think the GP was talking about the database schema and not the actual data. If they were talking about the data it sounds like it would be in reference to the setup guide of the project.
Not sure if its the browser or interface, yet trying to search for Motherboards, Expansion Chips, Chipsets, ect... I always get a limited number of possible Manufacturer choices.
Motherboards ends at "ASIA DATA, Inc"; Expansion Chips ends at "Chromatic"; Chipsets ends at "IMS". I was able to view a large list briefly once, but I'm not sure what I did.
I was one of the people who still ran DOS when this wasn't really very common any more, and was constantly looking for things like drivers that would bring proper vesa or sound support to newer hardware on DOS. I ended up starting a webpage dedicated to collecting those drivers for DOS, which by now must've been decades ago.
It never grew very big, but I also never took it down. I wonder if it helped some people over the years.
https://dosdriver.de/