12 Dec
2005
12 Dec
'05
3:17 p.m.
Subject: Re: Old MS-DOS & WIN Software
From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch at 30below.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 13:21:35 -0500
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
That would be me. I just can't seem to live without some form of networking
now - and to me, even my 8-bitters seem a little bit "unlivable" because I
just can't plug 'em into the network.
Write a stack and go. Seems it's being done even for Trs-80!
I was happy for
years running DOS with Norton Commander (midnight commander
for the linux user).
Never cared for either one of 'em myself... but that's just me. I still
install it on my linux boxen "just in case" tho. What I
didn't get with windows (V3.1, W9x) was a real
multitasking OS.
What you didn't get with Winders was a real OS. ;-) And yet, for certain things it was very useful. I
bought Winders 3.1 (drove
200 miles roundtrip for it) for two reasons: True Type Fonts and a better
driver for my Canon BJ-10ex portable inkjet. The documents I could produce
were much better than anything I could produce with DOS apps of the time.
3.1 was a nice desktop and the problem was DOS not the desktop
(and it was 16bit).
As to better docs... WordperfectV5/dos was better than any of the MS apps
for that back then.
If people chose Winders solely because they believed it
was the best thing
available, I'd have no problem with it's current status. It's when it's
jammed down peoples' throats thru M$ pressuring computer companies to
bundle it with machines (and sometimes even tied to the hardware warranty
like on my Fujitsu laptop!) that's most assuredly wrong.
I got into it because tools I wanted to used required it, though they
were no better for it.
As to the MS pushing it down the throat, yes it's was bad, and they
still only got a slap on the wrist.
Is winders useful, yep when it's the only way to get what you need.
But the jury for the last 15 years says, it sucketh greatly for all
thine efforts. Life in a factory town, is windows.
Allison
12 Dec
12 Dec
6:32 p.m.
Allison wrote:
As to better docs... WordperfectV5/dos was better than
any of the MS apps
for that back then.
He wasn't talking about document creation, he was talking about printing, for
which he is right on the money. If you used Word Perfect 5 for DOS, you were
limited to the fonts your printer supported. If you used Geoworks, or
Ghostscript (I used a retail package called "GOSCRIPT"), or Win 3.1, you could
use any font you want and the print subsystem would just rasterize it as graphics.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
6:50 p.m.
Jim Leonard wrote:
Allison wrote:
But then we have TEX created under a unix system for real work.
If Knuth can use it to print "The art of computer programing" you have
a good system.
GUI's are not the way to print out stuff.
As to better docs... WordperfectV5/dos was better
than any of the MS
apps for that back then.
He wasn't talking about document creation, he was talking about
printing, for which he is right on the money. If you used Word
Perfect 5 for DOS, you were limited to the fonts your printer
supported. If you used Geoworks, or Ghostscript (I used a retail
package called "GOSCRIPT"), or Win 3.1, you could use any font you
want and the print subsystem would just rasterize it as graphics. 
7:18 p.m.
Rumor has it that woodelf may have mentioned these words:
Jim Leonard wrote:
>
>He wasn't talking about document creation, he was talking about printing,
>for which he is right on the money. If you used Word Perfect 5 for DOS,
>you were limited to the fonts your printer supported. If you used
>Geoworks, or Ghostscript (I used a retail package called "GOSCRIPT"), or
>Win 3.1, you could use any font you want and the print subsystem would
>just rasterize it as graphics.
Bingo.
But then we have TEX created under a unix system for
real work.
I had to drive 100 miles one-way to find Windows... I would have had to
drive 350 miles one-way to find a copy of a much costlier Unix. Tough to
justify that cost, even for a "real OS."
And with what SCO is doing now, I'd have felt just as dirty giving them
money as M$, at this point. ;-)
If Knuth can use it to print "The art of computer
programing" you have a
good system.
GUI's are not the way to print out stuff.
It is, if that's all you have available. Just because I didn't like it,
doesn't mean I'm not smart enough to make use of what's available.
And compared to the tools for DOS and CoCo3 OS-9, I could typeset much
nicer documents. I could typeset nicer documents *yet* on a CompuGraphic
PowerView 10 w/an 8216 optical typesetter, but I didn't have the $15K
necessary to purchase one of those, either. (But at least I wouldn't have
to drive far -- that's what I used whilst I worked at a printshop as a
graphic artist / typesetter. And it's an on-topic system, too! ;-)
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Profile, don't speculate."
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | Daniel J. Bernstein
zmerch at 30below.com |
15 Dec
15 Dec
4:21 p.m.
On 12/13/05, Roger Merchberger <zmerch at 30below.com> wrote:
And with what SCO is doing now, I'd have felt just
as dirty giving them
money as M$, at this point. ;-)
Before Linux, if you wanted a cheap xNix for the PC, there was
Coherent. Pretty decent system, from everything I heard. The 386
version wasn't limited to small-model code, either, AFAICR. Don't
think anyone ever accused the Mark Williams Company of being evil!
--
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16 Dec
16 Dec
2:13 a.m.
Liam Proven wrote:
Before Linux, if you wanted a cheap xNix for the PC,
there was
Coherent. Pretty decent system, from everything I heard. The 386
version wasn't limited to small-model code, either, AFAICR.
All true, depending on how you interpret the word "decent". What killed
Coherent was lack of a TCP/IP stack and virtual memory. The head of the
company decided that a pretty GUI (X Windows) was worth more of R&D's time.
The 386 version ran in true protected mode and had a flat address space. The C
compiler was so size-efficient that we got a version of X Windows running on a
2MB 386 (remember, no virtual memory!).
Don't think anyone ever accused the Mark Williams
Company of being evil!
Not until the final year, where all of us were cursing the head of the company
(I was an employee for 3 years). But I agree with you, it was a great company
filled with very talented, quirky people. The boat anchor manual was worth the
$99 all by itself (and toward the end of the company, Linux users were ordering
Coherent just to get their hands on the manual, since Linux was around version
1.2 and had no real docs).
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
22 Dec
22 Dec
7:52 p.m.
On 12/16/05, Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> wrote:
All true, depending on how you interpret the word
"decent". What killed
Coherent was lack of a TCP/IP stack and virtual memory. The head of the
company decided that a pretty GUI (X Windows) was worth more of R&D's time.
The 386 version ran in true protected mode and had a flat address space. The C
compiler was so size-efficient that we got a version of X Windows running on a
2MB 386 (remember, no virtual memory!).
Fascinating stuff! Thanks for that. Something that I wished I'd seen
back then - I was a SCO type back then - but it's too historical to be
of much interest now...
--
Liam Proven ? http://livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=lproven
AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com
Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508
Gmail/Google Talk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Don't think anyone ever accused the Mark
Williams Company of being evil!
Not until the final year, where all of us were cursing the head of the company
(I was an employee for 3 years). But I agree with you, it was a great company
filled with very talented, quirky people. The boat anchor manual was worth the
$99 all by itself (and toward the end of the company, Linux users were ordering
Coherent just to get their hands on the manual, since Linux was around version
1.2 and had no real docs).
12 Dec
12 Dec
9:06 p.m.
woodelf wrote:
That's a bit elitist. Some of us weren't that lucky.
He wasn't
talking about document creation, he was talking about
printing, for which he is right on the money. If you used Word
Perfect 5 for DOS, you were limited to the fonts your printer
supported. If you used Geoworks, or Ghostscript (I used a retail
package called "GOSCRIPT"), or Win 3.1, you could use any font you
want and the print subsystem would just rasterize it as graphics.
But then we have TEX created under a unix system for real work. GUI's are not the way to print out stuff.
GUI is irrelevant. When I was limited to a single font and 80-char/66-line
output -- on a device capable of 200 DPI output -- I tore my hair out. It's
not my fault the only decent low-cost print systems were attached to a GUI.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
9:33 p.m.
Jim Leonard wrote:
GUI is irrelevant. When I was limited to a single font and
80-char/66-line output -- on a device capable of 200 DPI output -- I
tore my hair out. It's not my fault the only decent low-cost print
systems were attached to a GUI.
Well I was using a nice slow B&W HP inkjet printer I know what you mean.
I finaly upgraged to a low
cost $200 Can laser printer - Lexmark E232. Now that a has a replaceble
toner thingy that leagaly forces
you if use your printer, to only mail the empty toner back to them. I
say if I want to I can refill it, forget that
stupid laywer stuff.
9:44 p.m.
woodelf wrote:
Well I was using a nice slow B&W HP inkjet printer
I know what you mean.
I was actually referring to the Epson FX-80 days :-)
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
11:44 p.m.
On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 20:06:59 -0600
Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> wrote:
I was limited in the same way. There was a time (yes, for me
there really was) when I loaded Windows 2.11 to get a vector-based
drawing package that I could print from on my lousy dot matrix
printer (Micrografx In*A*Vision, which was sold including a
Windows 1 runtime version in case you didn't have the full Windows
on your system). And I wrote papers for school using the 'fancy'
fonts that I could only obtain on my nine-pin dot matrix printer
using Windows. Back then, Windows was something you darted in and
out of for specific uses, of course...
woodelf wrote:
That's a bit elitist. Some of us weren't that lucky.
When I look at my hoary old Simtelnet MS-DOS CDROM from the very
early 90's, there is a TEX directory. TEX was ported to MS-DOS,
and not recently.
I will admit that *I* didn't know what 'TEX' was at the time.
He
wasn't talking about document creation, he was talking
about > printing, for
which he is right on the money. If you
used Word > Perfect 5 for DOS, you were limited to the fonts
your printer > supported. If you used Geoworks, or
Ghostscript (I used a retail > package called "GOSCRIPT"), or
Win 3.1, you could use any font you > want and the print
subsystem would just rasterize it as graphics.
But then we have TEX created under a unix system for real
work. GUI's are
not the way to print out stuff.
GUI is irrelevant. When I was limited to a single font and
80-char/66-line output -- on a device capable of 200 DPI output
-- I tore my hair out. It's not my fault the only decent
low-cost print systems were attached to a GUI. 
13 Dec
13 Dec
6:55 p.m.
But then we have TEX created under a unix system for
real work.
TeX (please note the capitalisation) was available for MS-DOS in at least
2 versions. I am not sure _when_ it appeared, though, but I certainly
used it.
And once you've learnt TeX, you never go back to inferior systems.
-tony
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participants (7)
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ajp166＠bellatlantic.net -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca -
chenmel＠earthlink.net -
lproven＠gmail.com -
trixter＠oldskool.org -
zmerch＠30below.com