Lack of 8-bit threads (was Re: Linux question)

On Sun, 2007-04-22 at 01:44 -0500, Jim Leonard wrote: At the risk of starting a religious flame-war, my favorite of the not-quite-compatibles was the HP-150. Sleek, stylish, small, hard-shell diskettes, use of HPIB for disks and peripherals, and a touch screen. SEXY! About that 6300... I was an independent consultant to the Oldsmobile division of General Motors for a year. I signed a contract about three days before they purchased EDS, which made me, immediately, the competition, so I didn't get the contract renewed.. One of my tasks was to evaluate computer usage (which included a LOT of 3270 Color Terminal access to the IBM mainframes for CAD/CAM, etc.) and suggest the most reasonable way to move forward. I did what I thought was a thorough study, and suggested maintaining a 3270-PC base, albeit NOT expanding them by buying stuff from IBM until it worked. EDS was doing a parallel study. Their idea was to go with AT&T 6300 machines, and put IRMA cards in them for 3270 connectivity (never mind that they weren't even in COLOR, let alone hi-res.) Since GM used various IBM packages for text modification and authoring, they suggested DisplayWrite... Three, I think, at that time. AT&T had been stuck with a literal boat-load of the 6300 PCs, which were going "stale," and they were quite anxious to sell them, and at a VERY cheap price. That was all that EDS heard. EDS charged some outrageous sum, I'm remembering $7 million. When the "verdict" came down, I sighed, as I was one of the folks who would have to support this mess. The first thing I did was go get one of all the above components from stores, and set it up... if one is going to support it, one should have one at hand. Imagine my surprise when DisplayWrite would not even run. Seven million for a study, and they didn't bother to even set it up. Sheesh. Anyway, I ended up talking to Mort Myerson, the V.P. of EDS within a few minutes, and I explained the situation to him. He said he would take care of it. In the meanwhile, I was using a debugger to try to find out what actual problem was causing the failure. It turns out that DisplayWrite checked the BIOS ROM, and if it did NOT find "IBM" it shut down. I figured we would get IBM to change the program... but, no. Within a couple of hours about five Bell Labs techs showed up asking for me, and got to work on the BIOS. I explained what I had found, and they verified it. They then re-assembled the BIOS with a nonsense trademark notice about IBM, and started cranking out copies of the new chip. DisplayWrite then found "IBM" in the BIOS, and was happy. Yeah... I'm keeping my IMSAI for the same reason. Peace, Warren E. Wolfe wizard at voyager.net