11 Apr
1999
11 Apr
'99
10:14 a.m.
Once again, I've concluded it's more efficient to embed my comments in your
quoted message.
Have a look below, please.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Allison J Parent <allisonp(a)world.std.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Sunday, April 11, 1999 7:25 AM
Subject: Re: What if,... early PCs (was: stepping machanism
<You've got two tracks mixed up, I think. True,
the Apple II was quite
<plentiful in 80, but not in businesses the way it was in 82-83. I even ha
<several of them with people to man them as well. I hated the Apple but
<loved the 6502. In the meantime, I noted that the RS Model 1 was a piece
o
<junk, and, in fact, so much of one that I never
bought one, even for
<experimentation, and I had nearly every other sort of box around the shop.
OK, maybe where you were that was true. However despite the TRS80s
shortfalls (most corrected with mods or outside hardware) I knew of
businesses using them, and I may add same for the apple II.
<The model 1 was quite common, but the model 1 was in too many pieces to be
<of much interest to most folks. What's more, it was pretty weak-kneed.
Th
<model 3 held out hope, though that was later dashed
when the model 3 turne
<out to be not much better.
My slant was the M1 was close but people wanted something more "one box".
The M3 was never more than a blip on the screen because when it hit the
streets there were plenty more choices and all of them deemed (if only
subjectively) better.
The principal complaint I heard about the M1 was the principal complaint
about the M3. It was a paper tiger until you opened the box and added a
bunch of stuff/mods. The same, to lesser extent, perhaps, could be said for
the Apple. The Apple was made easy-to-open. The RS boxes were not.
In the business worlds in NY and eastern PA S100 crates
were the rule as
most were seen as the business strength machines and the apple/trs80
as toys. This was by people that didn't care what cpu only that it ran!
<The initial impact of the PC was to get people to stop buying non-PC's for
<their businesses. They were extremely costly at first, and didn't have a
<few serious problems worked out. People had to mortgage their houses to
bu
<one (a basic PC on the gray-market cost nearly
$2k).
Not really. If you were invested in apple then PC was a non-player as
nothing was compatable and you lost your investement going over. For the
z80 crowd (TRS and S100 crates) that was slightly less a concern but
PCs needed to get up to speed with applications first. Keep in mind when
the PC was introduced the only 8086 stuff out there was ISIS based
and mostly as development tools. It was the spread sheets and graphic
programs that caused the great sucking sound of people going PC but, that
would take more time than your indicating.
When I saw my first PC in a commercial environment, it was running CP/M-86
because that had the software the business owner was using previously on his
Z-80. I often wondered what motivated him to switch. I also saw a couple
of people's Apple-II running CP/M-86, and was awed by the fact they'd run an
OS that was slower than the previous and better-endowed (with software)
CP/M-80 in the same basic environment.
Yes, I remember getting a bonus check becuase of the PC
in 82. IT wasn't
for implementing as a useful system it was for FIXing the design. Seems
one of the design bugs was it would only run intel chipsets.
IBM really performed only one major service to the microcomputer world:
They lent it its own trade name, which was its legitimacy. Having done
that, the behemoth was overrun by smaller, more adept innovators.
As to the cost of a PC... equipped as a useful machine
that could run
production it was far from $2k!
Allison