Tell us another story from the old days, Grandpa. Nadine, who also could not resist ;-)
Jeremy H. Griffith wrote: > On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:32:12 -0600, Patrick Fortino <pxforti at gmail.com> > wrote: > > >> But imagine it's 1986 and you are in a computer store looking at >> computers. >> > > I can't resist. ;-) In 1986, I was working at a company that > had pretty much standardized on Macs. People loved them. I had > one of the older DOS boxes, with a special drive that allowed > it to read and write Mac disks (for conversion purposes). Macs > were so "special" other machines couldn't read the disks at all, > even at the record level, much less write to them. > > >> One the hand, you have DOS with it's blinking cursor waiting for >> instructions from you. If only you knew what those instructions were. >> > > Yes, it did call for knowing what you were doing. ;-) But > so did the Mac. How long did it take *you* to figure out that > the way to eject a floppy, other than the paperclip taped to > every Mac, was to drag it to the Trash??? This was intuitive? <bg> > > >> On the other hand, you have a Mac Plus, it's friendly face and graphic >> interface inviting you to experiment. Both computers will pretty much >> do what you want, the big difference being ease of use and cost. Macs >> were easier to use and cost a LOT more (I'm not trying to start a >> windows v mac battle here: I use both and think they are now pretty >> even on ease of use). >> > > Back then, Macs had another interesting feature. If anything > went wrong during a write to the floppy, a daily event, the > entire disk became unusable. You discovered this the next time > you inserted your wonderful project, and the Mac offered to > format the "damaged" disk for you. You could literally hear > the screams from one end of the office to the other. > > So on that DOS box, I studied the Mac filesystem on the disks. > After a while I worked out the rules for it (Apple wouldn't > tell you, unlike, say, IBM), and wrote a simple program to > fix up a very common (and harmless) error made by the Mac if > it wasn't totally done with the disk before it was removed. > (It wasn't updating the free list until then, so a block just > written would be in both the used and free lists, and the Mac > threw up its hands. I just removed any used blocks from the > free list and updated it.) > > After a while there was a steady stream of folks with tearstained > faces gingerly clutching a floppy coming to my desk. It took a > few seconds for my program to fix them up. They went back to > work on the easier-to-use system... much happier. <vbg> > > My point? It's *not* that easier is worse. It's that every > tool has its use, and if you master them all, you are better > off than those who limit themselves to one. Even if you think > it's the easiest. ;-) > > And what did you expect, on Friday afternoon? <g> > > -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc. > <jeremy at omsys.com> http://www.omsys.com/ > _______________________________________________ > > > You are currently subscribed to Framers as generic668 at yahoo.ca. > > Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com. > > To unsubscribe send a blank email to > framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com > or visit > http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/generic668%40yahoo.ca > > Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com. Visit > http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info. > >
