>> Does anyone remember what life was like before Microsoft? Well, yeah.
I shipped successful and working software on GE635's, Wang A, T, VP and MVP computers, BasicFour, Data General Nova and Eclipse, and others. NORAD deployed a huge system of radar processing systems (the "early warning system") on IBM 360s. Major colleges and universities had central computer systems, satellite terminal rooms and low-speed connectivity to each other over the Arpanet using uucp. I learned to program on the high schools salvaged PFP-4 and did all my college work on a PDP-8 and -11. On the micro-computer side, progress was moving fast with Z-80 and Z-100s, Zilog and Motorola's 65xx line of processors. First and second gen "home computers" were coming on to the marketplace. A number of computer anguages were available for them, though BASIC was most popular among the home crowd, Turtle Logo, too. Apple ][ was revolutionary, with Commodore and Atari not far behind. I had Commodore 64 and 128 systems with 80-column screens, word processing, spreadsheets and desktop publishing software that exported Postscript. Machines exchanged information primarily in ASCII, not proprietary formats, often through on-line systems and bulletin-board systems (I ran an InfoQuick BBS for several years.) Apple ][ and Multiplan were the revolutionary software that had people sneaking their home computers into the office and started the computer revolution in business. Many small businesses ran software in CP/M and Xenix. SGML, the Standard Generalized Markup Language that lead the way to XML and the modern internet, preceded Windows and ignored it for years. So, yes, I remember life before Microsoft. And I look forward to life after Windows. What's your point? -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
