Least PC-Compatible MS-DOS machines?

On 1 June 2014 08:16, Josh Dersch <derschjo at gmail.com> wrote: I meant to mention this earlier, but one of the least PC-compatible computers that could run anything like the DOS family of OSes is one that seems to have pretty much disappeared from the Internet these days: the Jarogate Sprite. It was a multi-user Concurrent CP/M machine, almost an x86 minicomputer. I think the original version was an 80286 and there was a later 80386DX version. It had no monitor output and no keyboard interface, just a whole bunch of serial ports to drive dumb terminals. One of these was designated as the console port. I think the smaller ones I saw had about 6 RS232 ports - 1 console, 3 terminals, and two for a modem and a printer. They had an onboard hard disk - 5 to 20MB I think - and a 5.25" 80t HD (i.e. 1.2MB, sorry Fred) floppy drive. They could read and write IBM PC media, which was very handy. We had to get a large accounts system's data off one once: multi-meg files. My boss tried some jiggery-pokery with splitting files across multiple floppies but it didn't work, and he was looking at wiring one to a PC with a null-modem cable and sending them across at 9600bps. I stalled him, and after trying a few very simple command-line DOS apps, managed to get the thing to run the original ARC tool, I think. (It couldn't handle PKZip or a few other mid-1980s archivers I tried.) ARCing the files shrank them drastically and we were able to extract everything on only 2 or 3 floppies, saving many many hours of transferring them over the wire. He was considerably surprised that a CCP/M machine could run an MS-DOS app. I see from Google that I mentioned this job on CCmp back in 2011. :?) Here's are some of the only mentions that aren't me -- one from 1987: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.cpm/ZcAwqy0yn-Q And a passing mention a bit later: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?pid=1511028 Later the company moved into PC clones and predictably failed to compete and died: http://www.cbronline.com/news/jarogate_extends_its_sprite_product_line -- Liam Proven * Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk * GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com * Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Cell: +44 7939-087884