On 12/3/07 21:29, "Jules Richardson" <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
I believe this particular machine was still in active
use up to the mid-'90s;
the owner used it for some pretty heavyweight stuff before it finally got
replaced by a PC. (Adrian may be able to contribute more it he's reading this;
he actually collected the machine from the owner and I transported it to the
museum from Adrian's at a later date)
Actually it was the owner's wife who also worked for Xerox who used it the
most. Since I'm a keyboard junkie I had no problem navigating my way round
its UI and actually found it very nice to use; TAB, LINE and PAGE did what
you expected them to do, likewise SHIFT-TAB, SHIFT-LINE and SHIFT-PAGE. Hmm,
where's that behaviour mirrored these days? :)
Drives self-refreshed when you put a new disk in, there was a
centrally-maintained document list, diagnostics built-in AND a portrait
black-on-white screen with the CAT cursor controlling technology.
I liked the 860, even coming from a modern perspective. Most importantly for
an older machine, it smelt *nice* when it was hot. Maybe I'm weird, but
there's a smell associated with old hardware that's just....nice.
--
Adrian/Witchy
Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer
collection?