27 Jun
2023
27 Jun
'23
1:17 p.m.
Different thing, I believe.
Gotcha. I'd find it funny and perfectly fitting if DEC had two
departments working on the same concept and coming up with completely
different, but equally oddball solutions.
There's A-to-Z, which aimed to be something
similar but small enough to run on a PDP-11. ("A2Z" is not its official name
but it isn't surprising to see that appear as an internal marker in files.) I though
there was a RSTS version of it, I may be mistaken. Given that it ran on RSX it would not
have been a large stretch to build it on RSTS under its RSX runtime system.
Yeah, I
sort of remember this in the 80's. It was an attempt to break
into the office automation world where companies like Wang and that
weird word processing system were attempting to stave off PC's and
Netware/286. Didn't work well
P/OS is none of these things and the stuff I described
above is much newer (early 1980s if I remember right -- certainly well after I started at
DEC which was 1978).
The more I look at POS the more I realize it really could have been
good. With TMS at the front desk plus a shared 2400 baud modem plus
thinwire Ethernet, a small boot disk, one system with an RD53, and a
couple of LA50's and you would have a darn impressive office system. Too
bad the usual happened.
But I am now curious to see if I can get the POS apps to run on M+. Why not.
paul