30 Jun
1999
30 Jun
'99
3:05 p.m.
Hello Tony:
In a message dated 6/30/99 8:32:36 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk writes:
Well, the PERQ was a sideline of the main development,
it's true. But
yes, alas....
Of course a PERQ is (IMHO) a lot more pleasant to use and a lot more
stable than some modern OSes I could name...
I _will_ name them -- I work with Windows 9x every day, and it's a horrible
travesty, a poor excuse for an operating system. It saddens me to see that
people accept this crap. I get better error report codes from my ZX81.
"Illegal operation," indeed!
But for graphics operations, it's painful. You
start in sync. After that
you have to count every microcycle so that you know exactly when a memory
address or control word has to be generated. There is no synchronisation
logic here. ]
Whew! And I thought counting Z80 t-states was bad . . .
I've long been of the belief
that software developers should be forced to use a machine at least one
'generation' behind that in normal use at the time. If their code is
useable on that, it should be useable on the public's machines :-)
Right on! Those clowns in Redmond are using 550 MHz P-IIIs with 256 MB RAM,
you can count on it! Ever try loading Win 95 on a 25 MHz 386 with a 17 ms
hard drive and 4 MB RAM?
I think the PC would have hit the workplace anyway,
and
most of the mainstream applications would be much the same.
Without a doubt.
I don't want to belittle the cheap home computers
and their place in
computer history. But equally I don't want other machines to be forgotten
either.
Likewise.
In other words the local-ish second-hand computer
shop tries to sell that
at that price. Mind you their prices are a little strange - CBM 64 :
\pounds 25.00. CBM P500 : \pounds 10.00. BBC micro : \pounds 1.00. Go
figure.
Why do the Brits hate the BBC Micro?
However _now_ you have a lot more choices :
'Modern PC, running 'standard' applications'. Not that education _about
computers.
Breaks my heart every day to see a 200+ MHz PC turned into a limping dog by
what is represented to the unsuspecting public as a "multitasking operating
system." I'll never again do any major programming on a PC, unless the OS is
non-Windows or I am completely destitute.
'Early 80's home micro'. As educational
as ever. Yes, you can still learn
a lot packing progams into 1K or whatever.
I learn from my ZX81 & 2068 every week.
'1970s Minicomputer/Workstation'. Again as
educational as ever. The point
is, these machines are now affordable. You can have a real PDP8 on your
desk.
Now, I have no -- none -- experience with anything bigger than a PC, but IIRC
C & Unix were developed on a PDP-8 (or was it an 11???). I _am_ a C fanatic
so these have some historical interest for me. Can you really have one on a
desktop? Is the CPU smaller than a Toyota? Are 8" floppies still available?
Please advise, as this may be my next foray into collecting, if I can find
one and move it without a forklift . . .
A newbie collector thanks you very much for your help,
Glen Goodwin
0/0
P.S.: Isn't it rather sad that a micro-maker (Compaq) wound up buying DEC
_and_ Tandem?