that CP/M could have possibly been our main stream OS.. How could so ma
< great ideas get lost in the big shuffle..?
Yes I ahve a lot of the 8bit stuff like DRGRAPH.
< I know everyone has been talking about GUI's, and according to this arti
< Digital Research did alot of work in this area.
And real product for both 8 and 16 bit systems.
< Also Digital Research back in 1989 released a very good DOS called DRDOS
< used this for awhile back in 1990 and was very impressed with its featur
< then MS came out with a clone of it called MSDOS ver 6.0.. I still own
< several original copies of DRDOS in unopened packages..
What you missed is MPM-86 and CCPM that DRI did before DRDOS! Btoh of
wich were a significant advancement over DOS.
Allison
At 04:19 PM 9/16/98 -0700, Sam Ismail wrote:
>
>Anyway, sorry for the rambling. But I hope you see my point. The
>majority of people buy stuff because a disembodied voice on TV or a
>caption in a magazine compels them to.
Buy my stuff. Buy my stuff. Buy my stuff. Is it working yet?
This isn't an ordinary disembodied voice. Only *you* hear it
in your head, so it should be extra-effective.
The usual technoid misanthropy aside, "buy what everyone else
is buying" isn't a bad strategy if it's something that's
not central to your life. Do you spend as much time researching,
optimizing and comparing your decisions for buying food as you
do with buying computers?
> The majority of the people buying
>into your propaganda (marketing) is what it takes to make a successful
>product. I could sell dogshit if I marketed it right.
Like <http://www.doodoo.com/> ? Someone's beat you to it.
- John
At 09:10 PM 9/16/98 -0500, you wrote:
>There was never any O/S or GUI war. After the PC and MS-DOS, Apple never
>owned any serious hearts and minds except for a few niches like desktop
>publishing and graphics design. DR's GEM was never a serious contender,
I disagree. There are plenty of people who are mac fanatics (or
Atari/Amiga/Etc fanatics) but because their employer/school/software
requires MS/PC stuff, they switch. The vast majority of people who really
don't care one way or another; they just use whatever they have at
work/school/etc, or whatever their grandson said they should get, or even
what the guy at circuit city said they should use.
Personally, I feel the lack of Mac Clones is what kill^h^h^h^h wounded the
Mac. An awful lot of people 10-15 years ago looked at buying a full-price
Mac, a Full-price IBM/Compaq/Etc, and a PC's Limited clone, and let their
budget do the choosing. I know I did -- I bought a used clone motherboard
and case, added a disk drive, brand-x video card with a composite monitor,
and so on. There's no way I (or a lot of other people) could afford, let
alone justify the cost of a name brand computer. (The same is true, to a
lesser extent of the Atari ST (which was also hampered by Tramiel) and
possibly the Amiga.)
>nobody has mentioned the real reason for the success of Windows 3.x:
>Solitaire. Just as sex videos made VHS a standard, Solitaire is the one
>thing that kept users from simply deleting Windows 3.0 after the standard
I agree completely on this. Although, I explained its inclusion as a tool
to help people get used to the concept of and to practice with the mouse.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.sinasohn.com/
Over the course of the next two weeks, here at Power Tech, we are being
migrated from Lotus Cack-mail to Lotus Not.
It just happens that I shall be on holiday in California at the time,
doing things like vintage computer festivals.
The concurrence of these two happenings means I am going to POSTPONE the
list for the time being... no saying how long it will take me to get
back on, though!
Nice knowing you all!
Philip.
I have to admit that I'd love to know (from Gary) whether the
similarities between CP/M PIP and RT-11 (or even OS/8) are
simply coincidental or if there is something more to it...
It sure looked like a PIP from V3B of RT-11 (I remember we
did some comparisons back in the 80's...)
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com |
| Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com |
| Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' |
| 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
since im known at work as a packrat of old computer junk, someone gave me
something called a microsoft <!> mach 20. turns out it's a full length 8 bit
card that has a 286-8 and 2 meg and high density floppy controller on it. it
has a cable that plugs into the 8088 socket and the board does all the
processing. basically turns an xt into an at with lots of memory. i got
everything, disks manuals and the special cable. i guess for a fun vacation
project, i'll see about getting win3.1 running in standard mode or maybe even
os2 1.3 for a challenging project...
david
At 05:05 PM 9/16/98 PDT, you wrote:
>Indeed, that's the way it should be. Would you buy an item that's
>never been reviewed or advertised? The only problem is that there's
Never advertised, sure. Never reviewed, possibly. Don't think I ever saw
an ad for the Sony Mavica I've got, and I know I never read a review.
Bought it because a friend had one.
I don't recall seeing much advertising for the Voicemail system I have.
Saw a mention of it somewhere, got info, compared what it could do to
others, and bought it. It's still the only consumer-priced system I've
seen that can do what I need it to.
The mechanics I take my (non-Land-Rover) cars to doesn't have an ad in the
phone book. Doesn't need one; they get all the business they need by word
of mouth. If you need a big ad, your customers aren't doing your selling
for you.
Which of course does not mean that the majority of the idiots out there
don't buy things simply because some guy in a fancy suit says they should.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.sinasohn.com/
Indeed, that's the way it should be. Would you buy an item that's
never been reviewed or advertised? The only problem is that there's
a tradeoff between product quality and marketing quality most of the
time.
Back to GUIs, I think that a GUI is very useful for some things.
For example, let's say I want to look at the files in a directory
and copy five certain ones. It's easiest to do with a GUI. Graphical
software can use either. AutoCAD had a CLI up to the latest version,
not sure if they took it out. It was a Command-line drafting program,
usable very efficiently. Only now have they jumped on the Windows
buttons-pop-up-when-mouse-moves nonsense. One GUI I really appreciate
is the early Mac GUI, for being almost as simple and clear as a CLI.
That was really a user-friendly computer. But the lessons of PARC and
early Apple were forgotten and turned into a who-can-make-the-nicest-
3d-menu competition.
>Oh, I disagree.
>
>> If anything, Sony had better marketing. Many people continued to
refer
>> to VCRs in general as "Betamax" even into the mid-80s. It is widely
>> believed (but of course unproven) that VHS was preferred due to the
>> longer recording time per tape. JVC rarely even mentioned this
feature
>> in advertising.
>
>M-A-R-K-E-T-I-N-G
>
>Mac vs. Windows - who won? Microsoft. Why? Marketing.
>
>PowerPC vs. Pentium - who won? Intel. Why? Marketing.
>
>Those are simply two of the most obvious examples.
>
>Anyway, sorry for the rambling. But I hope you see my point. The
>majority of people buy stuff because a disembodied voice on TV or a
>caption in a magazine compels them to. The majority of the people
buying
>into your propaganda (marketing) is what it takes to make a successful
>product. I could sell dogshit if I marketed it right.
>
>Sam Alternate e-mail:
dastar(a)siconic.com
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Ever onward.
>
> September 26 & 27...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0
> See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
> [Last web site update: 09/12/98]
>
>
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
Lets start with the PDP-11/84... What is that console distribution board
connected to the DB-25 port in the back? Remote power control, dumb
terminal or what? What's the pinout of the connector? And about
terminals... What do I need to hook up a dumb terminal? It'll be either a
VT-220(after a good cleaning of the keyboard and a switch or two replaced)
or WY-99GT. OK, when I turn on the system the DC on light turns on and the
LED's just show a boring "77" every time... What does that mean? Anyone
have a list of error codes for the 11/84?
And then Cipher... Got two of them actually, the nicer one is labeled as an
IBM 4968(goes with my IBM Series/1). The big noisy one says it's a Cipher
0920640-98-125OU. So, what kind of interface do I need to hook it up to my
11/84? And is there any easy way to use them with a PC or Mac? And while
I'm talking about drives, does anyone in the PDX area have any cheap or
free drives or Unibus cards laying around they don't need?
--------------------------------------------------------------
| http://members.tripod.com/~jrollins/index.html - Computers |
| http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Lair/1681/ - Star Trek |
| Orham(a)qth.net list admin KD7BCY |
--------------------------------------------------------------
On Thu, 17 Sep 1998, Uncle Roger wrote:
> And therein lies one of the main reasons I use a GUI (and would have a hard
> time going back to DOS-only.) Yes, it's possible to run multiple
> programs/sessions/etc. under a CLI (use to do it with a terminal and a
> CompuPro 8/16 under MPM16 -- that was a great system!) but a GUI, with the
> ability to arrange windows, cut and paste, etc. is a definite advantage.
Certainly.
One of the most useful aspects of Linux when I was using it way back when
was the virtual terminals. I could switch between something like 32
different virtual terminals and be doing all sorts of stuff on each. Very
powerful, very useful. Its what a computer was intended to allow one to
do with it.
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ever onward.
September 26 & 27...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0
See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
[Last web site update: 09/12/98]