..."making DOS-literacy portable."
I believe it was when MS-DOS 5.0 came out and my dad purchased a copy at the beginning of the summer at Fry's in Sunnyvale. I read the instruction manual for the commands cover to cover. I used to commute with him during the summer to the Silicon Bay Area and would use his laptop to try out all of the commands and learn all of the flags. Bored teenager about to enter high school, but learning "archaic" commands like this has served me well.
When other kids were taking typing classes in HS, I was doing self-study learning NetWare (all from books), and then I'd get home and dink with our home server. I was fortunate to get a job the day after graduating HS in the Silicon Bay Area with my skills, and the sky has been the limit since then doing what I enjoy.
As much as I dislike many of BG & MS monopolistic and "crush all competition" practices, I do owe him some thanks for MS-DOS and the timing of the PC revolution. Having a PC of my own, even if it was a "Blue Chip" clone with Hercules monochrome was pretty amazing having MS-DOS and GW-BASIC to learn on. I typed up a ton of free BASIC games found in free trade magazines available at Fry's. I'm pretty sure this was the model I had, but no modem (that came a year or so later):
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1...