12 Apr
2007
12 Apr
'07
2:02 a.m.
I was looking for something else and ran across a two-binder set of
something called "PC-MOS" by The Software Link, circa 1992. I opened
the shrinkwrap on the nstallation manual and the thing looks like
it's a multi-user version of MS-DOS, talking to terminals. I
appear to have a 5 user version.
Anyone familiar with this animal? The version is 4.2.
Cheers,
Chuck
12 Apr
12 Apr
8:57 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
I was looking for something else and ran across a
two-binder set of
something called "PC-MOS" by The Software Link, circa 1992. I opened
the shrinkwrap on the nstallation manual and the thing looks like
it's a multi-user version of MS-DOS, talking to terminals. I
appear to have a 5 user version.
Anyone familiar with this animal? The version is 4.2.
Cheers,
Chuck
As others have mentioned, it allowed you to connect terminals to a PC
and have each terminal act as a virtual PC. The version I used had some
limitations such as not supporting apps that did direct screen writes,
but it was a relatively inexpensive way to share DOS apps amongst
different users (at a time when networking was rare and quite expensive,
IIRC $1200 for an ethernet card). We used Kimtron (I think that was the
name) serial terminals that were special in that their keyboard layout
mimicked the PC. Was pretty slick with the right apps, at the time
running on a NCR 286 box (which was a screamer for it's day).
George
12:41 p.m.
On 4/12/07, George Currie <g at kurico.com> wrote:
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Hmm... sounds like what the Amiga did out of the box with a "newcli
<AUX:" I used to hang a VT220 off of my Amiga and read e-mail and
NetNews (aquired via UUCP and read off-line) while my flatmate played
"Silent Service".
Nice to hear someone did that with a DOS box - back then, we'd have
sworn it couldn't be done.
-ethan
I was looking for something else and ran across a
two-binder set of
something called "PC-MOS" by The Software Link, circa 1992.
As others have mentioned, it allowed you to connect terminals to a PC
and have each terminal act as a virtual PC. 
1:17 p.m.
I was looking for something else and ran across a
two-binder set of
something called "PC-MOS" by The Software Link, circa 1992.
As others have mentioned, it allowed you to connect terminals to a PC
and have each terminal act as a virtual PC. 
10:29 a.m.
On Apr 12, 2007, at 2:02 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
I was looking for something else and ran across a
two-binder set of
something called "PC-MOS" by The Software Link, circa 1992. I opened
the shrinkwrap on the nstallation manual and the thing looks like
it's a multi-user version of MS-DOS, talking to terminals. I
appear to have a 5 user version.
Anyone familiar with this animal? The version is 4.2.
Wow...I have *heard* of it from way way back, but that's about
it. Sounds like it'd be fun to play with.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
3:32 p.m.
On Wed, 11 Apr 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote:
I was looking for something else and ran across a
two-binder set of
something called "PC-MOS" by The Software Link, circa 1992. I opened
the shrinkwrap on the nstallation manual and the thing looks like
it's a multi-user version of MS-DOS, talking to terminals. I
appear to have a 5 user version.
Anyone familiar with this animal? The version is 4.2.
PC-MOS was widely used to implement point-of-sale systems for smaller
stores that otherwise couldn't afford, say, a microVAX. I once worked at
a pizza place that used it. That system served Wyse terminals and receipt
printers through a Digiboard octopus.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
4:33 p.m.
At 11:02 PM 4/11/2007 -0700, Chuck Guzis wrote:
I was looking for something else and ran across a
two-binder set of
something called "PC-MOS" by The Software Link, circa 1992. I opened
the shrinkwrap on the nstallation manual and the thing looks like
it's a multi-user version of MS-DOS, talking to terminals.
Based on everyone else's descriptions, I'm almost certain this is something I ran
into.
When I got involved with my college's newspaper in 1992, working in the photography
department, I'd sometimes hear the people in the newsroom refer to "the
mainframe," which is where they typed stories. They were using networked Macintoshes
for page layout.
(In photo, we were rolling film from bulk canisters, developing it, and making prints on a
photo enlarger. By the time I'd gotten involved, they had just stopped using the
"stat machine" (which would make line-screened images of the photo prints,
suitable for pasting onto the final newspaper pages that were subsequently photographed by
our publisher) and were now scanning the printed photos into a computer using a flatbed
scanner connected to a Macintosh. Final newspaper pages were still partially pasted
together, and picked up by our publisher for photographing.)
One day, I caught wind of a crisis in the newsroom: "The mainframe is down!"
Having had worked with mainframes (and minis and PC's...) since I was 6 or 7, I
decided to investigate to see if I could help out.
What I discovered were these terminals running an MS-DOS-based word processor (I don't
remember which one - was probably WordPerfect, and certainly not Wordstar), all hooked up
to a single IBM PC that had a set of about 5 interface cards driving those terminals.
Mainframe indeed!
I don't remember what the problem was, but it was something that my knowledge of
MS-DOS made easy to solve. While I was repairing it, I took the opportunity to inform
them that they most certainly were not using a mainframe.
I suspect that, prior to acquiring this machine, they were using terminals connected to
one of the campus systems (probably the VAX), and so the nomenclature and concept had
carried over from then.
By the next year, they had retired the multi-user PC, and were just using networked Mac
SE's for word processing. (By '96 they were scanning negatives into the computer
instead of prints, and by '97 they were sending an electronic document to the
publisher instead of printed pages. Ah, where's the fun gone...)
- Ken
6:06 p.m.
On 12/04/07, Ken <kenzolist at counterfolk.com> wrote:
[snip]
One day, I caught wind of a crisis in the newsroom:
"The mainframe is down!" Having had worked with mainframes (and minis and
PC's...) since I was 6 or 7, I decided to investigate to see if I could help out.
What I discovered were these terminals running an MS-DOS-based word processor (I
don't remember which one - was probably WordPerfect, and certainly not Wordstar), all
hooked up to a single IBM PC that had a set of about 5 interface cards driving those
terminals. Mainframe indeed!
My last two employers were both resellers of an operating system
called "BOS", later "Global System Manager". It originally did
basically the same thing, [1] running multi-user via serial
terminals, but on a vast range of hardware. It wasn't DOS, but
basically an interpreted system that provided a virtual but consistent
environment - 64K swap backed memory space per process (and up to 9 of
them per physical terminal!) and the data //AND APPLICATIONS// could
be copied over from one system to another without change, be it
sometihng PC based, pdp-11, rs/6000 .. I should see if I've still got
an old manual with a list of platforms in it..
software wise you were limited to accounting applications, some very
basic office style apps, and some third party vertical markets
(doctors systems, import control systems, etc). Company is still
going, but I wonder if there is anybody preserving the old stuff... I
know that when I was working in with them, a few years ago, they
didn't have any of the real old stuff any more.
[1]current version is just an app running under windows acting as a
standalone environment..
http://www.oneoffice3000.com/g2000.asp
6:20 p.m.
On 12/04/07, Rob <robert at irrelevant.com> wrote:
...
and what I meant to say when I started writing that (new baby
scrambling my mind, though) was some of the host spec/user ratios I
personally saw:
80486 /33 with 24 users
80386 /33 with 12 users
80286 with 8 users
8086 with 4 users
baydel pdp-11 clone, sorry don't know other spec, with at least 48 users..
performance was always "quite good" althogh some reports could take
some time to run!
I don't think I ever saw more than 24 serial users on a single
processor, but I've seen systems with far more ports (to accomocate
printers.) Over 24 we'd usually put in two servers, networked
(ARCNET).
By, uh, 1995, ethernet was getting more common; I dealt with a couple
of UNIX based systems (SCO) where we used telnet to login to the
server, a few Novell systems (a seperate file server process ran on
the novell fileserver, and a local interpreter ran the apps direct on
PC workstations) and rather a lot of Windows based systems
(fileserver/interpreter on an NT server, either telnet access or local
interpreter, or both, talking to it.) With those, we could run an
awful lot more users per server, and did, because the hardware
available was so much more powerful now, and the apps were basically
the same, not needing that much power.
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participants (8)
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cclist＠sydex.com -
dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
g＠kurico.com -
kenzolist＠counterfolk.com -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
robert＠irrelevant.com -
spectre＠floodgap.com