7 Feb
2008
7 Feb
'08
2:38 p.m.
Fred Cisin wrote:
Starting with 5.00, MICROS~1 began selling retail.
Mostly unconfirmed rumor: ("I can not publicly confirm that")
MICROS~1's contract with IBM had non-competition clauses, and although
MICROS~1 could sell to other manufacturers (Compaq, Morrow, ... ... ),
they could not sell retail. Those clauses expired in 10 years. It is
possible that the release date and time (to the nearest 18.2 of a second)
synchronize with the expiration of those clauses.
I just about busted a gut laughing when I read "to the nearest 18.2 of a
second"! So true. Although one hopes their 5150 wasn't too warm (I
have measured timing variance on my most marginal 5150 when the
operating temperature reaches uncomfortable levels for humans; I guess
it has to do with temp. affecting the crystal or something)
My summer job between college terms was working at Egghead software, and
there was a massive, MASSIVE push from Egghead to sell MS-DOS 5.0. We
(lowly sales floor associates) were bussed to a convention center and
shown various presentations on why MS-DOS 5.0 was dA b0mB and why it was
the perfect add-on to any and all sales already in progress at the
register. Many cheezy sales guides and videos followed. While I liked
the built-in memory management and disk compression (because I'm a
compression geek) of 5.0, I was extremely turned off by the push.
Part of the promo was to point out other products in the store that
would immediately benefit from 5.0, but I couldn't bring myself to do
that as I felt it was somewhat dishonest. I *DID* have fun pointing out
the products that REQUIRED it, though, like the flight sim Falcon 3.0.
Falcon 3.0 was supposed to go on sale the same day MS-DOS 5.0 was
released, but we had gotten our copies early and had mistakenly sold a
few. The look on the customer's face when they brought it back was
priceless: "You mean this game requires software that isn't currently
for sale? Well, when will it be out? Next week? Okay, I'll come back
next week-- what was that? It's not just software, I have to upgrade my
operating system?!?" If you were particularly unlucky that day, the
next question would be "What's an operating system?"
MS-DOS 2.eleven corresponded to IBM's 2.ten,
Which is interesting because IBM's 2.eleven was a special release for
the PCjr. No MS-DOS 2.12 then? Nope, because no machine other than the
PCjr needed the PCjr changes.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/