12 Apr
2007
12 Apr
'07
8:34 a.m.
The version I worked with for a client was circa late 1980's. Basically it was
software that would support multi-tasking on one CPU. It was installed on an
original IBM 6 MHz AT and was fairly slow but did save the expense of another
computer by using a terminal instead. They also sold some hardware that was
basically a four-port serial card/connectors for attaching to the terminals thus
allowing multiple operations. As I said, the whole things was fairly slow then,
but worked well for something like word processing.
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
9:40 a.m.
Marvin Johnston wrote:
The version I worked with for a client was circa late
1980's. Basically it was
software that would support multi-tasking on one CPU. It was installed on an
original IBM 6 MHz AT and was fairly slow but did save the expense of another
computer by using a terminal instead. They also sold some hardware that was
basically a four-port serial card/connectors for attaching to the terminals thus
allowing multiple operations. As I said, the whole things was fairly slow then,
but worked well for something like word processing.
Slow is a bit relative here. I had the opportunity to do two similar
installations (similar in that the software was the same in both
cases). One was using the before mentioned NCR 286 (can't remember the
clock speed off hand) controlling 4 terminals (so 5 workstations
altogether including the NCR). The other was a network of 4 PC XT
clones. The relative costs of the two setups were close and the
advantages/disadvantages were pretty much as you'd expect. The PCMOS
solution would do blazing fast DB/IO, so if the solution did a lot of
IO, you were golden. The networks of the time were slow as well as the
PC's, so the networked PC's would suck when it came time to hit the DB.
However, since the PCMOS solution didn't support direct screen writes
(or maybe it did, but it had to capture it and stream it over the serial
lines), UI intensive apps suffered. Screen redraws were slow. True to
classic stereotypes, the users tended to prefer the network solution
because they liked having the responsive UI, I (since I was the admin)
preferred the faster IO. This was a POS system BTW. No, that's Point
of Sale.
George
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