Re: Object-oriented OS [was: Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen]

[Tomasz Rola via cctalk]

On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 05:40:54AM +0100, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote:
[...]
> Anyway, I think it is obvious that doing mere OO system was not really
> big deal. Some of those projects were dying of old age by then. Some
> frameworks, like PVN, are nearly 30 years old today.

PVM, not PVN, sorry (PVM blurred with PCN, both used for distr prog).

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.  **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home**
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...  **
** **
** Tomasz Rola  mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **

Re: Object-oriented OS [was: Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen]

[Tomasz Rola via cctalk]

On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 05:53:30PM -0400, Sean Conner via cctalk wrote:
> It was thus said that the Great Tomasz Rola via cctalk once stated:
> > Ok guys, just to make things clearer, here are two pages from wiki:
> > 
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_operating_system
> > 
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming
[...]
> 
> > Examples:
> > 
> >   - an object pretends to be a disk object, but is double-disk
[...]
>   You can do this now on Linux using the FUSE driver---this allows a user
[...]
> >   - an object says it is a printer but is a proxy, connected via
[...]
> 
>   Under QNX, this was a trivial operation.  It was probably pretty trivial
> under Plan-9 (depending upon how they handled printer queues).  Unix
> (including Linux) has something like this, but the name escapes me since I
> do almost no printing what-so-ever.  
> 
>   I do know that of the last N printers I've had [2] (actually, my
> girlfriend has---she's the one who prints more than I do) were all "plug on,
> turn on, oh look!  The computer found it on the network---print!"

Ok, but twenty years ago if one wanted to find something on the
network, one had to build the network first. And sometimes the thing
to be found, too.

I realize a lot of stuff I gave as examples can be done nowadays
without all that OO-thinglets. We should not mix past with today,
those are/were different situations.

> >   - object with execution thread, aka active object (in 199x
[...]
> major problem though is dealing with resources other than the CPU.  For
> instance, a process has an open file its working with when it's migrated. 
[...]
> You can't reliably provide this functionality invisibly---you have to pretty
> much involve the process in question in the process.

There was a rather huge area of research, which was concerned with
such issues. Maybe still is, I am not current. See below.

> > Plus, some kind of system programming language - I had no idea what
> > Smalltalk was and I still have no idea but I might have swallowed
> > that.
> 
>   An object-oriented image based programming language.  Except for some
> critical routines written in assembler, the entire system (operating system,
> compiler, GUI, utilities, etc.) were all written in Smalltalk and every
> "object" could be inspected and modified at runtime (including the operating
> system, compiler, GUI, utilties, etc.).  

Nice idea.

> 
> > I think it was possible to have this. But, not from MS. And as time
> > shows, not from anybody.
> 
>   Citation needed.  

Oh.. ok. I would rather go to bed than down this memory lane, but we
will see if I can do this quickly.

Some of the things that were available in mid-1990-ties:

 - Amoeba - distributed, object (based? oriented?) OS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba_(operating_system)

https://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/amoeba/

intro:

http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/amoeba/Intro.pdf

First version: 1.0 from 1983
Last version: 5.3 from 1996

http://fsd-amoeba.sourceforge.net/amoeba.html

Among other things, they claim to have an OS over a network of
computers, while X with terminal emulators served GUI to users.

 - HT Condor - started as Condor in 1988, job/workload manager for
   grid / distributed computer / network of computers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTCondor

http://research.cs.wisc.edu/htcondor/

 - Sprite - research OS, supported process migration, discontinued
   after 1994

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(operating_system)

 - Emerald, from 1984 onward, language for object oriented distributed
   programming, supports object migration

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_(programming_language)

http://www.emeraldprogramminglanguage.org/

Since we are at it, I cowrote object migration service for ANSA
(Advanced Networked Systems Architecture)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Herbert#Advanced_Networked_Systems_Architecture

and used it to build load balancer for distributed computation
(objects migrating alone or together because they are tighly coupled
etc etc), which as my master thesis (1996) earned me third prize in
national contest here in Poland. Compared to the rest of the stuff
ANSA was a bit primitive and at that time it was on its way out (while
CORBA was on its way in). Glory days. Lots of steam through the window
and out into blue skies. BTW, the wikipage claims A.Herbert is
involved with EDSAC restoration, so he went retro.

Anyway, I think it is obvious that doing mere OO system was not really
big deal. Some of those projects were dying of old age by then. Some
frameworks, like PVN, are nearly 30 years old today.

So, I suppose if someone really wanted to do their commercial OS in OO
way, they could have.

> > On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 07:34:32PM -0700, Chris Hanson wrote:
> >  
> > > A lot of Windows 95 is implemented using COM, which is probably
> > > where the description of it as “object-oriented” comes from.
> > 
> > Well, I am not going to bet my money on this. What you 

Re: Object-oriented OS [was: Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen]

[Sean Conner via cctalk]

It was thus said that the Great Tomasz Rola via cctalk once stated:
> Ok guys, just to make things clearer, here are two pages from wiki:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_operating_system
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming
> 
> What I was thinking back at the time of premiere: classes, objects
> derived from the classes, user able to make his own object from
> system-provided class or define class of his own, or define his own
> class and inherit from other class, including system-provided one.

  Yes, the typical method of OOP, which is not what Alan Kay had in mind
when he developed Smalltalk:

I thought of objects being like biological cells and/or individual
computers on a network, only able to communicate with messages (so
messaging came at the very beginning -- it took a while to see how
to do messaging in a programming language efficiently enough to be
useful).
-- Alan Kay

Basically, very small programs that talk to each other to do stuff.  Today
this is known as "microservices" [1].

> Examples:
> 
>   - an object pretends to be a disk object, but is double-disk
> partition or zip file

  You can do this now on Linux using the FUSE driver---this allows a user
process to service file system requests.  To bring this back to topic, QNX
(from the 80s) and Plan-9 (from the 90s) also allowed this, and were easier
to use than FUSE (to be honest).  But of not one of Linux, QNX or Plan-9
could be considered an "object oriented operating system."  Fancy that.

>   - an object pretends to be file object but in fact it is a
> composition of few different files, mapped into virtual file-like
> object (so as to avoid costly copying)

  I think I would classify this as a variant on the first example.  

>   - an object says it is a printer but is a proxy, connected via
> serial-line object to another such serial-line object on remote
> computer where the real printer sits (connected via parallel, as
> usually)

  Under QNX, this was a trivial operation.  It was probably pretty trivial
under Plan-9 (depending upon how they handled printer queues).  Unix
(including Linux) has something like this, but the name escapes me since I
do almost no printing what-so-ever.  

  I do know that of the last N printers I've had [2] (actually, my
girlfriend has---she's the one who prints more than I do) were all "plug on,
turn on, oh look!  The computer found it on the network---print!"

>   - object with execution thread, aka active object (in 199x
> nomenclature -> aka process), can be serialized and migrated to
> another computer without big fuss either via system provided
> migration service or via (really easy to write in such setup)
> user's own
>   - same active object, serialized and stored to file because I gotta
> go home and have to turn computer off, so I can resurrect it next
> morning

  These two are related, and the later one is actually a bit easier to
accomplish if you are doing it to all the processes on a computer.  The
major problem though is dealing with resources other than the CPU.  For
instance, a process has an open file its working with when it's migrated. 
Problems I see right off the bat:

* Does the file exist on the destination?
* If it does, does the process have permissions?
* Now you have issues with syncing the file to the destination.

And if the file is served off a network, then you have issues with network
connections---i.e. they break!  (Which is an issue today with hibernation)
You can't reliably provide this functionality invisibly---you have to pretty
much involve the process in question in the process.

> Plus, some kind of system programming language - I had no idea what
> Smalltalk was and I still have no idea but I might have swallowed
> that.

  An object-oriented image based programming language.  Except for some
critical routines written in assembler, the entire system (operating system,
compiler, GUI, utilities, etc.) were all written in Smalltalk and every
"object" could be inspected and modified at runtime (including the operating
system, compiler, GUI, utilties, etc.).  

> I think it was possible to have this. But, not from MS. And as time
> shows, not from anybody.

  Citation needed.  

> On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 07:34:32PM -0700, Chris Hanson wrote:
>  
> > A lot of Windows 95 is implemented using COM, which is probably
> > where the description of it as “object-oriented” comes from.
> 
> Well, I am not going to bet my money on this. What you wrote might be true
> but I would like something, say a blog or article, in which author shows
> how I can count those COM objects.

  How many threads are running?  There's your count.

> I tried to verify your statement and the earliest Windows which could be
> claimed to be built from many COMs was Windows 8. But the truth is, I have
> departed from 

Re: Object-oriented OS [was: Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen]

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Sat, 27 Oct 2018 at 05:33, Tomasz Rola  wrote:

I found this post incoherent and very hard to follow. I will therefore
limit myself to commenting to the responses direct to me.

OK, apart from:

> Ok guys, just to make things clearer, here are two pages from wiki:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_operating_system

This is perhaps the single worst article I've seen on Wikipedia.
Poorly written, technically ignorant, mostly nonsense.

> Plus, some kind of system programming language - I had no idea what
> Smalltalk was and I still have no idea but I might have swallowed
> that.

Right, then go learn a bit about it. You need that to understand this
subject properly, I submit.

> On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 04:14:34PM +0200, Liam Proven wrote:

> Very true, but if someone promises and does not deliver, who is he?

[1] A marketing person?
[2] Behaving in a 100% normal way for the IT industry?

> And nobody makes a small print saying "this is just marketing
> material, so do not count on it". If I cannot count on it, why waste
> my time?

You need to develop much stronger bullsh1t filters.

> No objection, except "everybody copied". I have seen those copies,
> including Gnomes and KDEs (up to about 2014, when I gave up trying)
> and considered them increasingly dysfunctional.

So? I didn't say they were _good_ copies. I made no judgement of quality at all.

>  The only thing that
> was better than original Windows GUI was stability (but after
> Windows2000 this one improved a lot, IMHO).

The NT family was always far more stable, not starting with W2K.

> And I was able to use
> virtual desktops and they did not suck (while I tried few virtual
> desktops on Win95 and they sucked like black hole and then some).

Win10 finally has working ones.

> What do I care if other people voluntarily push screwdrivers
> through the random body cavities of their own? Hey, sounds like golden
> opportunity for sharp hardware shop.

I do not see the relevance of this unpleasant image.

> This should be a responce to your message in this other thread, but I
> am not sure if I have this many time, so, as you claimed that Windows
> wrote a new book of UI or something:
>
>  :: Interface Hall of Shame / - Windows95 -
> http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/msoft.htm

Some of these are valid points. Some are quibbling about details. Some
display a serious lack of understanding of real ordinary people and
how they interact with computers. Some show a deep lack of
understanding of history -- bear in mind this was a v4 product, after
many point-releases too.

So, to pick an important example, for instance, it displays
apparently-complete ignorance of the Win3 model of "MDI" -- multiple
document inheritance -- which was an important design principle of
Windows 3.x and OS/2 1.x and which MS started to systematically
eliminate in Win9x and IBM started to eliminate in OS/2 2.x.

This is a big, important concept and I don't even see it _mentioned_.

Some are just cheap shots.

I don't consider it overall to be particularly interesting or incisive.

You are free to if you wish, of course.

> And yet I choose to use Linux harder, just because it did job, whereas
> Windows could not (unless I wanted unreliable computer, and I cannot
> use unreliable when reliable is available or I get flaming mad).

Fine. Good for you. So? What does this say about the UIs of the OSes?

> As a side note, I do not claim Linux is oh so the bestest of them
> all. It just can do things I consider important while Windows could
> not (every time I try using it in serious manner, after about hour my
> index finger wants to fall off from constant mouse stimulation). And
> some time ago Linux started accumulating certain fringe elements, so a
> jump to another platform is necessary.

All OSes suck. Some suck slightly more than others. Some, e.g. BeOS or
EPOC, slightly less.

> I am amazed too. Apparently you do with Windows something else than I
> would, and if it works for you, I am cool.

I don't use it at all if I can avoid it.

However, I did spend about 25y supporting it.


-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

Object-oriented OS [was: Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen]

[Tomasz Rola via cctalk]

Ok guys, just to make things clearer, here are two pages from wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_operating_system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming

What I was thinking back at the time of premiere: classes, objects
derived from the classes, user able to make his own object from
system-provided class or define class of his own, or define his own
class and inherit from other class, including system-provided one.

Examples:

  - an object pretends to be a disk object, but is double-disk
partition or zip file
  - an object pretends to be file object but in fact it is a
composition of few different files, mapped into virtual file-like
object (so as to avoid costly copying)
  - an object says it is a printer but is a proxy, connected via
serial-line object to another such serial-line object on remote
computer where the real printer sits (connected via parallel, as
usually)
  - object with execution thread, aka active object (in 199x
nomenclature -> aka process), can be serialized and migrated to
another computer without big fuss either via system provided
migration service or via (really easy to write in such setup)
user's own
  - same active object, serialized and stored to file because I gotta
go home and have to turn computer off, so I can resurrect it next
morning

Plus, some kind of system programming language - I had no idea what
Smalltalk was and I still have no idea but I might have swallowed
that.

I think it was possible to have this. But, not from MS. And as time
shows, not from anybody.

On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 07:34:32PM -0700, Chris Hanson wrote:
 
> On Oct 20, 2018, at 10:31 AM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk
>  wrote:
> >
>  
> > Oooh. My personal recollection about w95 is that there was a lot
> > of touting before the premiere day, how advanced it was because
> > "object oriented operating system”.
[...]
> A lot of Windows 95 is implemented using COM, which is probably
> where the description of it as “object-oriented” comes from.

Well, I am not going to bet my money on this. What you wrote might be
true but I would like something, say a blog or article, in which
author shows how I can count those COM objects.

I tried to verify your statement and the earliest Windows which could
be claimed to be built from many COMs was Windows 8. But the truth is,
I have departed from Win-Win land long ago, and only use Windows when
someone wants me to unscrew a Windows laptop.

> And while I have never been a Windows user, to denigrate it as some
> sort of non-achievement given the constraints under which it was
> developed, both in terms of target systems and backwards
> compatibility, is myopic at best.

C'mon, we are not talking about windows on 8-bit computer. I think
they had loads of cash even back then and could pick from heaps of
CVs. According to ReactOS wikipage:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactos

   On 1 May 2012 a 30,000 euro funding campaign was started to finance
   additional development projects.[43][44] On the end of the year
   approximately 50% of the funding goal was achieved and it was
   decided to continue the funding campaign without deadlines.

   (...) The development progress is influenced by the size of the
   development team and the level of experience among them. As an
   estimate of the effort required to implement Windows 7, Microsoft
   employed 1,000 or so developers, organized into 25 teams, with each
   team averaging 40 developers.[85] As of 2 September 2011, in the
   ReactOS entry in Ohloh, the page followed through the "Very large,
   active development team" link lists 33 developers who have
   contributed over a 12-month period and a cumulative total of 104
   present and former users who have contributed code to the project
   via Subversion since its inception.[86] In his presentation at
   Hackmeeting 2009 in Milan, ReactOS developer Michele C. noted that
   most of the developers learn about Windows architecture while
   working on ReactOS and have no prior knowledge.

With this funding and so few people those noble folks achieved quite a
lot. Do you think MS limitations were bigger?
 
>   -- Chris
>  

On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 04:14:34PM +0200, Liam Proven wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Oct 2018 at 19:31, Tomasz Rola via cctalk
>  wrote:
> 
> > Oooh. [...] touting [...] "object oriented operating system" [...]
> > objection [...] scam [...]
> 
> I think the explanation for that is fairly clearly there in the history.
> 
> NT 3.1 came soon after Windows 3.
> 
> [... Chicago and Cairo ... multiplied ...]

Very true, but if someone promises and does not deliver, who is he?

And nobody makes a small print saying "this is just marketing
material, so do not count on it". If I cannot count on it, why waste
my time?

> > Nowadays, I consider W95 as very interesting subject of study - a
> > technical product of non-technical genius(es) (ok, if there were tech
> 

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Bill Gunshannon via cctalk]

On 10/24/18 9:45 AM, Nemo via cctalk wrote:
> On 24/10/2018, Liam Proven via cctalk  wrote (in part):
> [...]
>> Come to think of it, most Linux users I know are Windows converts.
>> Very few are Mac converts -- once you go Mac, you can't go back,
>> apparently.
> Why would you?  (Mac is certified POSIX and works very nicely with Sun
> mice and UNIX keyboards. #6-)
>
I have used Apple computers since the earliest days.  Apple ][,

Lisa, Mac and to this day I have a Mac laptop.  I have  used

Windows since the days of 3.1, including WfW 3.11 and all the

followons  up thru Windows 10.  And during all this time I have

also used Unix/Linux.  Care to guess which one is my most used

class of OSes?  :-) (I have used other OSes during this time, but

none of them fit into this discussion.  Always, the right tool for

the job in my choices.  Guess which one meets that requirement

the most times!)


bill

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Nemo via cctalk]

On 24/10/2018, Liam Proven via cctalk  wrote (in part):
[...]
> Come to think of it, most Linux users I know are Windows converts.
> Very few are Mac converts -- once you go Mac, you can't go back,
> apparently.

Why would you?  (Mac is certified POSIX and works very nicely with Sun
mice and UNIX keyboards. #6-)

N.

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Bill Gunshannon via cctalk]

On 10/24/18 5:47 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 at 20:01, Alan Perry via cctalk
>  wrote:
>
>> Excuse me, but I work for Oracle on Solaris (primarily on USB code) and
>> it is not EOL. Oracle just released Solaris 11.4 and the next release is
>> being worked on.
> Oh! Well, I'm very glad to hear it.
>
> But the news has not spread -- cf.
>
> http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2017/09/04/the-sudden-death-and-eternal-life-of-solaris/
>
> https://www.networkworld.com/article/3160176/hardware/game-over-for-solaris-and-sparc.html
>
> https://www.networkworld.com/article/3222707/data-center/the-sun-sets-on-solaris-and-sparc.html
>
> https://siliconangle.com/2017/09/05/oracle-layoffs-signal-end-life-sparc-solaris-products/
>
> https://www.itprotoday.com/software-development/new-oracle-layoffs-probably-signal-end-line-solaris
>

You act surprised.  I find that, like the regular news, the trade news 
is more interested in

creating news than reporting real news.


bill

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Wed, 24 Oct 2018 at 00:31, Jim Manley via cctalk
 wrote:

> It's the sort of stuff marked
> with "COMPANY PROPRIETARY" watermarks that, if you try to scan or run it
> through a photocopier, produces black output due to opto-molecular chemical
> overlays.

Oh dear. Let me guess -- do you also worry about chemtrails and
fluoride in the water?

-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
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Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 at 20:12, Jim Manley via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> Wrong.  Apple has been using self-customized, optimized-for their-hardware
> supersets of the VNC protocol (which is X based)

Not true.

VNC isn't X-based.
And Apple supports it, sure, but as an accessory thing. VNC also works
fine on Windows, and there's no X.11 in Windows.

Jim, you seem awfully convinced of this stuff, but as others are
telling you, you have it almost all wrong. :-(

-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 at 20:09, John Ames  wrote:

> There's also the Afterstep/Window Maker crowd, open-source
> reimplementations of the NEXTSTEP desktop environment, which predates
> even Windows 3.x.

That sort of echoes my point, really, I think.

As I said, it's ludicrous to counter my claim that Win95 influenced
basically _every_ desktop after it by pointing out that it didn't
influence ones written before it.

And to be more specific:
* AfterStep -- last new release 2008; last minor update 2013. Effectively dead.
* LiteStep -- not updated since some time around 2011-2014, if then.
Effectively dead.
* Window Maker -- alive, but just a WM, not a desktop.

GNUstep is very much alive, with a tiny user community, but as I said,
I am not aware of any distro bundling a complete current version even
for you to custom-install yourself. Nothing offers it as an option in
place of GNOME, KDE etc., or ever has, TTBOMK.

I personally think that's criminal and tragic, but hey.

>  Win95 was certainly very influential in the design
> and refinement of many other desktop environments going forward, but
> it's not the be-all and end-all of anything.

Definitely not claiming it is. In fact my thesis is the reverse: that
we _need_ more variety but we aren't getting it, because to anyone
under about 35, there are only 2 desktops: the "traditional" one,
which means Win95-esque, and the "weird" Mac one.

> But this is kind of a questionable standard to begin with, because the
> whole point in the Freenix world is choice. No distributions offer
> those as default options during the install process, but all of them
> (aside from CDE, which only just went open-source a couple years ago
> and is still in the process of being cleaned up and forward-ported to
> modern *nixen) are available in the repositories for most major
> distributions, and all of them are still actively updated.

Please correct me if I am wrong. As I said, I am not aware of *any*
current distro of any OS that offers even current packages of GNUstep
*or* the complete ROX environment as a DIY option.

Or CDE come to that, but I hope it comes back!

> Kinda-sorta-not-really. BeOS (like just about everything post-1995)
> takes cues from Win95, but its roots are in classic Mac OS and it
> definitely hews closer to that in most respects, despite the absence
> of a global menu bar.

Reviewed it as of v4 and v5. Was a big fan. I have a full boxed copy
of v5, a naughty copy of Zeta, and a machine running a recent Haiku
nightly on bare metal (which I must update to Beta 1.)

I am _very_ aware of BeOS. BeOS was my favourite x86 OS of all time.

Drag the panel to the bottom of the screen, and then you can see how
Tracker is a Win95 clone. The default part-length top-right position
conceals this, but it is all the same.

> Haiku says hi. Or would, if they could spare the time from trying to
> awkwardly kludge Linux development models into a BeOS world.

I must admit I am surprised at how "Linuxy" Haiku feels now, but that
does mean it has a healthier software base through the Depot than BeOS
itself ever had.

> This "aside from the things that don't match up with my argument, my
> argument is flawless!" line of reasoning is novel.

:-D

I laid out my case 5-6y ago in the article I linked:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_linux_desktop_fail/

(single-page print view)

In a way I think it's a microcosm of the general OS world.

In the late '70s and early '80s there were lots of incompatible micros.

By the mid '80s, and for about a decade, this started to settle down
into 3 broad camps -- well, 2 and an outlier.
[1] Conservative x86-based machines, conforming to the IBM
compatibility standard (but several OSes & UIs)
[2] more experimental Motorola 680x0 machines (Mac, ST, Amiga)
[3] and Acorn, doing its own thing.

By the mid-'90s, finally, the Wintel camp caught up with the Mac camp,
and the non-Mac 68k machines died off.

Acorn gave up soon after and then it was a 2-horse race:
IBM-compatibles versus Macs.

Apple had undergone a schism, Jobs went off, founded NeXT, made a
futuristic Unix that discarded a lot of traditional stuff like X.11,
C/C++, config in text files, etc. Then it merged back in, all the
MacOS/Copland/Pink/Taligent stuff was tossed out, and a few years
later, Apple is an x86-based UNIX vendor.

Apple has resisted the PC trends for a long long time. It ploughs its
own furrow, always has.

Linux has thrived because it _embraced_ them. Unlike the BSDs, it uses
Windows-style disk partitioning, it embraces Windows file formats,
talks happily over the network to Windows boxes (using client software
configured with Windows-INI-format config files), runs Windows apps
with some reasonable competence. It's always been the minority player
in the Windows world and it embraces that.

BSD comes from a pre-PC, pre-DOS/Windows world and only reluctantly
works with Windows-style hardware and software.

So Linux has also absorbed 

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Alan Perry via cctalk]

> On Oct 24, 2018, at 2:47 AM, Liam Proven  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 at 20:01, Alan Perry via cctalk
>  wrote:
> 
>> Excuse me, but I work for Oracle on Solaris (primarily on USB code) and
>> it is not EOL. Oracle just released Solaris 11.4 and the next release is
>> being worked on.
> 
> Oh! Well, I'm very glad to hear it.
> 
> But the news has not spread -- cf.
> 
> http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2017/09/04/the-sudden-death-and-eternal-life-of-solaris/
> 
> https://www.networkworld.com/article/3160176/hardware/game-over-for-solaris-and-sparc.html
> 
> https://www.networkworld.com/article/3222707/data-center/the-sun-sets-on-solaris-and-sparc.html
> 
> https://siliconangle.com/2017/09/05/oracle-layoffs-signal-end-life-sparc-solaris-products/
> 
> https://www.itprotoday.com/software-development/new-oracle-layoffs-probably-signal-end-line-solaris

Well, those were pretty much all written immediately after Oracle let go of 
most of the Solaris and SPARC orgs. It was brutal and I can imagine how it 
looked from the outside. But most isn’t all and it is more that a year later 
and we are still putting out Solaris releases.

alan 



> 
> 
> -- 
> Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
> Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
> Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
> UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 at 20:01, Alan Perry via cctalk
 wrote:

> Excuse me, but I work for Oracle on Solaris (primarily on USB code) and
> it is not EOL. Oracle just released Solaris 11.4 and the next release is
> being worked on.

Oh! Well, I'm very glad to hear it.

But the news has not spread -- cf.

http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2017/09/04/the-sudden-death-and-eternal-life-of-solaris/

https://www.networkworld.com/article/3160176/hardware/game-over-for-solaris-and-sparc.html

https://www.networkworld.com/article/3222707/data-center/the-sun-sets-on-solaris-and-sparc.html

https://siliconangle.com/2017/09/05/oracle-layoffs-signal-end-life-sparc-solaris-products/

https://www.itprotoday.com/software-development/new-oracle-layoffs-probably-signal-end-line-solaris


-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 at 19:48, Fred Cisin via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> "The simplistic style is partly explained by the fact that its editors,
> having to meet a publishing deadline, copied the information off the back
> of a packet of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it with a few foot
> notes in order to avoid prosecution under the incomprehensibly torturous
> Galactic Copyright Laws. Its interesting to note that a later and wilier
> editor sent the book backwards in time, through a temporal warp, and then
> successfully sued the breakfast cereal company for infringement of the
> same laws."-HHGTTG

Speaking as a former president of the official Douglas Adams fanclub,
I am deeply honoured by the comparison. :-D

-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

Re: Aphorism (Was: Computers that never crash (Was: Microsoft-Paul Allen)

[Jon Elson via cctalk]

On 10/23/2018 05:09 PM, dwight via cctalk wrote:

I had an Ultra Sparc machine that ran continuously for more than 5 years except 
for maybe 2 power outages and a couple time to vacuum it out.
Oh, well, I had a homemade UVax-II system built out of grey 
market and 3rd party boards.
I ran it for 21 years until the last in a succession of many 
hard drives finally gave up the ghost.
I ran it from 1986 to 2007, basically 24/7 except for power 
failures and occasional maintenance.


Jon

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Chris Hanson via cctalk]

On Oct 23, 2018, at 11:12 AM, Jim Manley via cctalk  
wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 3:59 PM Guy Sotomayor Jr  wrote:
> 
>> An (optional) X server (and clients) can be added to the OS (I use them
>> all the time) but
>> is not part of the base install ...
>> 
> 
> Wrong.  Apple has been using self-customized, optimized-for their-hardware
> supersets of the VNC protocol (which is X based) for Screen Sharing since
> early versions of OS X, if not from the beginning, and It's (still) In
> There (per Prego spaghetti sauce ads) in the latest versions of OS X.

VNC is not X11, and not very related to the X11 protocol at all. I say this as 
someone who has hacked together a partial implementation of VNC in Common Lisp.

Furthermore, what’s used for Screen Sharing has almost no relationship to the 
technology used for native UI. macOS (and OS X, and Mac OS X, and 
OPENSTEP/Mach, and NEXTSTEP in its various spellings) do not and never have 
used X11 as their primary display system.

Prior to Mac OS X 10.0, the operating system used Display PostScript, where the 
Display PostScript interpreter was colocated with the window server that 
managed presentation on behalf of applications and routed events to them. As of 
Mac OS X 10.0, the window server just provides drawing surfaces and event 
routing, and drawing happens on the application side via a variety of 2D and 3D 
APIs.

>> BTW, the X server on OS X, interfaces not to the bit-map but instead to the
>> native OS X display rendering framework.
> 
> That's not possible, at least when communicating cross-platform, where
> bitmaps are the only representation.

It’s entirely possible to implement an X server atop some other display 
technology. There are X servers for Windows. There were X servers for classic 
Mac OS. There were X servers for Lisp Machines. The X server for macOS, 
XQuartz, is just an application that applications can talk to using the X11 
protocol.

Please be more conscientious in your claims.

  -- Chris

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Guy Sotomayor Jr via cctalk]

> On Oct 23, 2018, at 3:30 PM, Jim Manley via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 12:55 PM Guy Sotomayor Jr  wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 3:59 PM Guy Sotomayor Jr 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> An (optional) X server (and clients) can be added to the OS (I use them
>>> all the time) but is not part of the base install ...
>>> 
>> 
>> Apple has been using self-customized, optimized-for their-hardware
>> supersets of the VNC protocol (which is X based) for Screen Sharing since
>> early versions of OS X, if not from the beginning, and It's (still) In
>> There (per Prego spaghetti sauce ads) in the latest versions of OS X.
>> 
>> That’s distinct from the X server and apps that are available as a
>> separate download (and I believe that now they point to Xorg).
>> 
> 
> No, it's not.  You don't need any third-party X components to use Screen
> Sharing, and it works across all platforms, in both directions, that have a
> VNC-compatible client and/or server (depending on which direction you're
> looking from, remotely).  I could show you in the source, but, then I'd
> have to kill you, if Apple didn't get to both of us first.  There's what's
> in the public docs and especially marketing (including technical) material,
> and then there's what's actually In There.  It's the sort of stuff marked
> with "COMPANY PROPRIETARY" watermarks that, if you try to scan or run it
> through a photocopier, produces black output due to opto-molecular chemical
> overlays.

You’re not listening.  I said that X and Screen Sharing are separate.  I use 
both all the time.
X on OS X is *not* in any way shape or form using anything from Screen Sharing 
and is
currently sourced from Xorg.

You are also forgetting, that as an ex-Apple employee (working in the kernel) I
did get to see a lot of the source base.

> 
> 
>> BTW, the X server on OS X, interfaces not to the bit-map but instead to the
>>> native OS X display rendering framework.
>>> 
>> 
>> That's not possible, at least when communicating cross-platform, where
>> bitmaps are the only representation.
>> 
>> *sigh*
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> As far as OS X is concerned, X is just another OS X application that wants
>> to render to the screen.  I use it all the time and it works well along
>> side the normal OS X applications which wouldn’t be possible if the X
>> server wrote directly to the HW.
>> 
> 
> That's the case for your add-on X components - that's not how it can be
> done under the covers, but you apparently don't have access to that level.
> Screen Sharing isn't the only function that has this sort of capability, as
> also do 3-D graphics and video - they aren't constrained to the low-speed
> 2-D world for which Display Postscript/PDF, Quartz, etc., were developed.
> Performance is everything in these technologies, and they have their own
> APIs through which the hardware is accessed (the GPU), because going
> through the gobbledy-gook stack that's fine for documents and other
> high-drag data structures is a non-starter for them.

What I’m saying is that the X components render using the native OS X
rendering capabilities and does not access the HW directly.  Go look in
the Xorg sources.

TTFN - Guy

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Jim Manley via cctalk]

On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 12:55 PM Guy Sotomayor Jr  wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 3:59 PM Guy Sotomayor Jr 
> wrote:
>
>> An (optional) X server (and clients) can be added to the OS (I use them
>> all the time) but is not part of the base install ...
>>
>
> Apple has been using self-customized, optimized-for their-hardware
> supersets of the VNC protocol (which is X based) for Screen Sharing since
> early versions of OS X, if not from the beginning, and It's (still) In
> There (per Prego spaghetti sauce ads) in the latest versions of OS X.
>
> That’s distinct from the X server and apps that are available as a
> separate download (and I believe that now they point to Xorg).
>

No, it's not.  You don't need any third-party X components to use Screen
Sharing, and it works across all platforms, in both directions, that have a
VNC-compatible client and/or server (depending on which direction you're
looking from, remotely).  I could show you in the source, but, then I'd
have to kill you, if Apple didn't get to both of us first.  There's what's
in the public docs and especially marketing (including technical) material,
and then there's what's actually In There.  It's the sort of stuff marked
with "COMPANY PROPRIETARY" watermarks that, if you try to scan or run it
through a photocopier, produces black output due to opto-molecular chemical
overlays.


> BTW, the X server on OS X, interfaces not to the bit-map but instead to the
>> native OS X display rendering framework.
>>
>
> That's not possible, at least when communicating cross-platform, where
> bitmaps are the only representation.
>
> *sigh*
>

Believe me, after developing graphics hardware and software for the past 46
years, I'm starting to think Apple would have the right idea with you, as
noted above.  My first graphics "workstation" was a Tektronix 4014
vector-based display hooked up to a PDP-11/70 (the high-voltage green
flashes that cleared the capacitive display "memory" probably explain the
lack of kids ... as far as I know!).  My second (actual) workstation was an
Evans & Sutherland (yes, Dave and Ivan) Picture System 1 (PS/1), which was
dual-port mind-melded to one MB of static RAM in a box 3 x 3 x 3 feet, that
cost a million bucks all by itself.  The other RAM port connected to the
Mass Bus on yet-another PDP-11/70 that connected to a network from which my
user account files were accessible, from which 3-D vertex-and-edge model
coordinates were loaded into the mega-RAM.

The PS-1 then sucked in the coordinates and performed translation, scaling,
and rotation in custom 3-D optimized floating-point hardware.  However, it
could only display wireframes in real time on a very short-persistence
23-inch diagonal, absolutely flat CRT (that cost somewhere in the
six-figure range).  It was a completely vector-based display in any two
colors you wanted, as long as it was white strokes on a black background.
There was no frame rate, as there were no frames - it just kept drawing
line segments as commanded all day and night (which is what it took to get
things working as intended, not as stated to the machine!).

My third and fourth graphics workstations were a pair of $50,000 (each) SGI
2400s, delivering a whopping 30,000 Gouraud-shaded polygons/second.  My
$5.00 Raspberry Pi Zeroes can each deliver 40,000,000 Gouraud-shaded
polygons/second ... in 1040p60.  Where, oh where, did I park that pesky
time machine, so I could take what's in my pocket now and buy the entire
federal government from three-to-four decades ago???

There are a few more decades of those sorts of things on my ledger.  Let's
just say that "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are
dreamt of in your philosophy."

As far as OS X is concerned, X is just another OS X application that wants
> to render to the screen.  I use it all the time and it works well along
> side the normal OS X applications which wouldn’t be possible if the X
> server wrote directly to the HW.
>

That's the case for your add-on X components - that's not how it can be
done under the covers, but you apparently don't have access to that level.
Screen Sharing isn't the only function that has this sort of capability, as
also do 3-D graphics and video - they aren't constrained to the low-speed
2-D world for which Display Postscript/PDF, Quartz, etc., were developed.
Performance is everything in these technologies, and they have their own
APIs through which the hardware is accessed (the GPU), because going
through the gobbledy-gook stack that's fine for documents and other
high-drag data structures is a non-starter for them.

All the Best,
Jim

Re: Aphorism (Was: Computers that never crash (Was: Microsoft-Paul Allen)

[dwight via cctalk]

I had an Ultra Sparc machine that ran continuously for more than 5 years except 
for maybe 2 power outages and a couple time to vacuum it out. The only failure 
was one day the disk drive let out a stream of smoke. It was a tantalum 
capacitor. It burned the board. IT was going to give me a new drive. I said, " 
No Way". I had a lot of data on that disk. I asked for one of their failing 
disk, unsoldered the matching capacitor, scraped the carbonized PC board of and 
soldered the replacement capacitor in. It ran until I was force to give up the 
machine when we moved buildings.

Dwight



From: cctalk  on behalf of Fred Cisin via cctalk 

Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 11:01:42 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Aphorism (Was: Computers that never crash (Was: Microsoft-Paul Allen)

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
> "If it doesn't crash, you're not running a sufficiently varied and
> demanding workload."

Are rights available for wall plaques, T-shirts, and bumper stickers?

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Jim Manley via cctalk]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 9:34 AM Eric Smith via cctalk 
wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 02:36 Jim Manley  wrote:
>
> Microsoft did offer a RAM expansion board specifically to allow the
> Softcard to access 64K of RAM dedicated to CP/M,
>
> Even that wasn't dedicated to CP/M. It was a 16K RAM card that was
> equivalent to the Apple "Language Card", which allowed replacing the 12K of
> ROM of the Apple II and II+ with 16K of RAM, of which 4K had two banks.
> Although it was useful with the Softcard, it wasn't in any way specific to
> it.
>

From
https://www.pcmag.com/feature/300240/the-secret-history-of-microsoft-hardware/2
-

"Microsoft RAMCard for Apple II (1980)

Microsoft produced the Apple II RAMCard as an accessory card for its Z80
SoftCard ... The RAMCard plugged into one of an Apple II's free slots and
provided 16KB of additional system memory (brining the total to 56KB) for
CP/M programs running on the SoftCard."

MS's ad for the card appears above the writeup.  Dedicated only applies to
the Premiere Softcard for the //e, which is what I had.

The bottom line is that this Microsoft product was
_developed_for_and_sold_with_their_Softcard_.  The wise (and unavoidable,
without a lot of extra work) benefit to other software running on an Apple
has nothing to do with its primary intent.  Visicalc and other software was
modified to take advantage of the 56K memory footprint this card made
available, but that doesn't detract from its primary intended use with the
Softcard in any way, shape, or form.

All models of the Softcard could output 80 x 24 text, not only through
> third-party cards, but Apple's own 64K RAM and 80 x 24 video combo card,
>
> Which was only available for the IIe. I stand by my assertion that the
> Softcard did not in any way provide 80x24 text. It could use the capability
> if it was separately provided.
>

Oh, really?  Then where did the CP/M 80x24 text bits come from, outer
space?  They came from the Softcard - the means for how it appeared in
front of the user's eyes isn't important.  You remind me of people who
insisted that MHz and MBs were the sine qua non for evaluating systems
during The Spec Wars of the 1980s and 1990s.  Nowadays, no one even pays
any attention to such trivia, because it's meaningless, and always has been.

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Guy Sotomayor Jr via cctalk]

> On Oct 23, 2018, at 11:12 AM, Jim Manley  wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 3:59 PM Guy Sotomayor Jr  > wrote:
> An (optional) X server (and clients) can be added to the OS (I use them all 
> the time) but
> is not part of the base install ...
> 
> Wrong.  Apple has been using self-customized, optimized-for their-hardware 
> supersets of the VNC protocol (which is X based) for Screen Sharing since 
> early versions of OS X, if not from the beginning, and It's (still) In There 
> (per Prego spaghetti sauce ads) in the latest versions of OS X.  I do have 
> some first-gen PowerPC systems that I need to see if they power up (ironic 
> name, PowerPC!), let alone boot, and then I'll have to find original OS X 
> boot media ... some of us have actual lives, though, so don't hold your 
> breath!

That’s distinct from the X server and apps that are available as a separate 
download (and I believe that now they point to Xorg).

> 
> BTW, the X server on OS X, interfaces not to the bit-map but instead to the
> native OS X display rendering framework.
> 
> That's not possible, at least when communicating cross-platform, where 
> bitmaps are the only representation.  Projects such as Wayland and Weston are 
> attempting to provide a modern alternative to X that fully supports vector 
> representations (using GPU hardware acceleration), through a protocol and 
> supporting library for a compositing window manager (Wayland) and a 
> compositor reference implementation (Weston).  XWayland implements a 
> compatibility layer to seamlessly run legacy X11 applications on Wayland.  A 
> few years ago, the Raspberry Pi Foundation was funding this effort, in part, 
> but it was too soon then, and I don't know what the statuses of the projects 
> are, at this point, although instructions for building the software for Linux 
> are Out There.  Support for Retina and HiDPI displays is mentioned, but I 
> didn't see anything explicitly about OS X or Windows support in a cursory 
> scan of the associated wikis - I assume they're talking about running 
> Wayland/Weston on Linux using Apple and PC hardware.  GNOME and KDE are fully 
> supported, since that's where development started.

*sigh*

Yes, it is.  Just as there exist X implementations that use the GPU to 
accelerate rendering.  It says *nothing* about the cross platform protocol.  
It’s how the X server communicates with the rendering hardware or in OS X’s 
case the software interface to do the rendering.  As far as OS X is concerned, 
X is just another OS X application that wants to render to the screen.  I use 
it all the time and it works well along side the normal OS X applications which 
wouldn’t be possible if the X server wrote directly to the HW.

TTFN - Guy

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Alan Perry via cctalk]

On 10/23/18 11:41 AM, Paul Berger via cctalk wrote:



On 2018-10-23 2:45 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 at 19:05, Grant Taylor via cctalk
 wrote:

On 10/23/2018 10:47 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

This may be an unfortunate mismatch of English idioms.

Fair.


"Out there", to me, means "current, available/on sale/in use now, in
active use and/or maintenance".

I'm fairly sure that Solaris and AIX both continue to ship C.D.E.  ;-)



AFAIK neither Oracle nor IBM make workstations any more, only headless
servers, so it's rather academic.
Oracle does not make workstations, but, as I said, Oracle's customers 
can and do run Solaris on systems with heads.


alan

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Paul Berger via cctalk]

On 2018-10-23 2:45 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 at 19:05, Grant Taylor via cctalk
 wrote:

On 10/23/2018 10:47 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

This may be an unfortunate mismatch of English idioms.

Fair.


"Out there", to me, means "current, available/on sale/in use now, in
active use and/or maintenance".

I'm fairly sure that Solaris and AIX both continue to ship C.D.E.  ;-)

Solaris is EOL and is no longer in development. However, Solaris 11
switched to GNOME 2, nearly a decade ago.

AFAIK neither Oracle nor IBM make workstations any more, only headless
servers, so it's rather academic.


Hence why I prefer to be excruciatingly clear.

I generally try, at least with my professional hat on.

You can still get a graphics adapter with lower end P9 AIX systems but 
not on the high end machines maybe because there is no place to plug in 
a keyboard.


Paul.

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 10/23/18 11:12 AM, Jim Manley via cctalk wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 3:59 PM Guy Sotomayor Jr  wrote:
> 
>> An (optional) X server (and clients) can be added to the OS (I use them
>> all the time) but
>> is not part of the base install ...
>>
> 
> Wrong. 

Jim, have you ever WORKED for Apple

Both Guy and I have, and your level of misinformation on topics
both he and I are VERY familiar with is getting annoying.

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Jim Manley via cctalk]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 3:59 PM Guy Sotomayor Jr  wrote:

> An (optional) X server (and clients) can be added to the OS (I use them
> all the time) but
> is not part of the base install ...
>

Wrong.  Apple has been using self-customized, optimized-for their-hardware
supersets of the VNC protocol (which is X based) for Screen Sharing since
early versions of OS X, if not from the beginning, and It's (still) In
There (per Prego spaghetti sauce ads) in the latest versions of OS X.  I do
have some first-gen PowerPC systems that I need to see if they power up
(ironic name, PowerPC!), let alone boot, and then I'll have to find
original OS X boot media ... some of us have actual lives, though, so don't
hold your breath!

BTW, the X server on OS X, interfaces not to the bit-map but instead to the
> native OS X display rendering framework.
>

That's not possible, at least when communicating cross-platform, where
bitmaps are the only representation.  Projects such as Wayland and Weston
are attempting to provide a modern alternative to X that fully supports
vector representations (using GPU hardware acceleration), through a
protocol and supporting library for a compositing window manager (Wayland)
and a compositor reference implementation (Weston).  XWayland implements a
compatibility layer to seamlessly run legacy X11 applications on Wayland.
A few years ago, the Raspberry Pi Foundation was funding this effort, in
part, but it was too soon then, and I don't know what the statuses of the
projects are, at this point, although instructions for building the
software for Linux are Out There.  Support for Retina and HiDPI displays is
mentioned, but I didn't see anything explicitly about OS X or Windows
support in a cursory scan of the associated wikis - I assume they're
talking about running Wayland/Weston on Linux using Apple and PC hardware.
GNOME and KDE are fully supported, since that's where development started.

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[John Ames via cctalk]

> Grant Taylor wrote:
>> *Every* Unix desktop out there draws on Win95.
>
> Nope.  That's simply not true.
>
> The following three vast families of window managers / desktops prove
> (to my satisfaction) that your statement is wrong.
>
>   ? Common Desktop Environment (a.k.a. CDE) and it's ilk.
>   ? The various *Box window managers / desktop environments.
>   ? Motif window manager and it's ilk.
>
> They are all significantly different from each other and from Windows's
> Explorer interface, first publicly debuting with Windows 95.
There's also the Afterstep/Window Maker crowd, open-source
reimplementations of the NEXTSTEP desktop environment, which predates
even Windows 3.x. Win95 was certainly very influential in the design
and refinement of many other desktop environments going forward, but
it's not the be-all and end-all of anything.

>> Liam Proven wrote:
>
> How many graphical Unix desktops are sold or distributed in the world
> today that are not Linux? Excluding Mac OS X as I specifically address
> that point, I think.
>
> Now, I can point to 3 living (FSVO "living") descendants of those OSes:
>
> * CDE is now FOSS
> (It had a conceptual re-implementation, the XForms Common Environment,
> XFCE. Here's a screenshot:
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Xfce3.jpg
> Note, it has now moved to a Windows-like model)
>
> AFAIK no current or historical full-function general-purpose Linux
> offers CDE as a desktop choice.
>
> * NeXTstep inspired GNUstep
> http://www.gnustep.org/
> (and LiteStep but that's now dead)
>
> No current or historical full-function general-purpose Linux offers
> GNUstep as a desktop choice.
>
> * Risc OS inspired the ROX Desktop:
> http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/
>
> Again, no current or historical full-function general-purpose Linux
> offers ROX as a desktop choice.
But this is kind of a questionable standard to begin with, because the
whole point in the Freenix world is choice. No distributions offer
those as default options during the install process, but all of them
(aside from CDE, which only just went open-source a couple years ago
and is still in the process of being cleaned up and forward-ported to
modern *nixen) are available in the repositories for most major
distributions, and all of them are still actively updated.


> BeOS used the Windows model.
Kinda-sorta-not-really. BeOS (like just about everything post-1995)
takes cues from Win95, but its roots are in classic Mac OS and it
definitely hews closer to that in most respects, despite the absence
of a global menu bar.

> Outside of Apple, I think it is fair to say that no new OS or desktop
> environment since 1995 has used anything other than the Win95 model.
Haiku says hi. Or would, if they could spare the time from trying to
awkwardly kludge Linux development models into a BeOS world.

> The fact that there are a small handful of clones of the Apple Mac OS
> X GUI doesn't really invalidate this point.
This "aside from the things that don't match up with my argument, my
argument is flawless!" line of reasoning is novel.

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Excuse me, but I work for xxx and it is not EOL.


Outsider EOL predictions sometimes lead to a spike in workload for the 
Real-Time Resume' Updater.

(cf. "aerospace collapse" just under half a century ago)

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Alan Perry via cctalk]

On 10/23/18 11:00 AM, Alan Perry via cctalk wrote:



On 10/23/18 10:45 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 at 19:05, Grant Taylor via cctalk
 wrote:

On 10/23/2018 10:47 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

This may be an unfortunate mismatch of English idioms.

Fair.


"Out there", to me, means "current, available/on sale/in use now, in
active use and/or maintenance".

I'm fairly sure that Solaris and AIX both continue to ship C.D.E.  ;-)

Solaris is EOL and is no longer in development. However, Solaris 11
switched to GNOME 2, nearly a decade ago.
Excuse me, but I work for Oracle on Solaris (primarily on USB code) 
and it is not EOL. Oracle just released Solaris 11.4 and the next 
release is being worked on.


alan
- insert that not speaking for my disclaimer again -

not speaking for my *employer* disclaimer

Aphorism (Was: Computers that never crash (Was: Microsoft-Paul Allen)

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

"If it doesn't crash, you're not running a sufficiently varied and
demanding workload."


Are rights available for wall plaques, T-shirts, and bumper stickers?

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Alan Perry via cctalk]

On 10/23/18 10:45 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 at 19:05, Grant Taylor via cctalk
 wrote:

On 10/23/2018 10:47 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

This may be an unfortunate mismatch of English idioms.

Fair.


"Out there", to me, means "current, available/on sale/in use now, in
active use and/or maintenance".

I'm fairly sure that Solaris and AIX both continue to ship C.D.E.  ;-)

Solaris is EOL and is no longer in development. However, Solaris 11
switched to GNOME 2, nearly a decade ago.
Excuse me, but I work for Oracle on Solaris (primarily on USB code) and 
it is not EOL. Oracle just released Solaris 11.4 and the next release is 
being worked on.


alan
- insert that not speaking for my disclaimer again -

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Alan Perry via cctalk]

On 10/23/18 10:37 AM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:

On 10/23/2018 11:19 AM, Alan Perry via cctalk wrote:

When I bring up Solaris 11.4 in VirtualBox, I get a Gnome desktop.


Ya, I think that Solaris has started using Gnome as the default 
desktop.  But I'm fairly sure that C.D.E. is still there and a menu 
choice away at login time.




Solaris 10 defaulted to Java Desktop System (based on Gnome) and the 
various Solaris 11 released defaulted to other versions of Gnome (I 
don't know enough about Gnome to identify the versions). I think that 
since Solaris 11 11/11 (the original S11 release) there has been no CDE, 
only Gnome.

Re: Computers that never crash (Was: Microsoft-Paul Allen)

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On Oct 23, 2018, at 1:45 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> On 10/23/18 9:32 AM, Alan Perry via cctalk wrote:
> 
>> I have a RPi dedicated to a SIMH VAX-11/750 running BSD that I
>> intended to leave up and rack up some impressive uptime. Then I was
>> reminded by the local electricity provider that this isn’t the right
>> place to try that. We get clear day, calm weather power outages
>> here.
> If it doesn't crash, you're not running a sufficiently varied and
> demanding workload.

Or you may be running it on a sufficiently well designed OS.

paul

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

That notwithstanding, I have to say, I still think it's ludicrous to
imply that anything _before_ Win95 could have drawn upon it, even if
making a negative statement.


"The simplistic style is partly explained by the fact that its editors, 
having to meet a publishing deadline, copied the information off the back 
of a packet of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it with a few foot 
notes in order to avoid prosecution under the incomprehensibly torturous 
Galactic Copyright Laws. Its interesting to note that a later and wilier 
editor sent the book backwards in time, through a temporal warp, and then 
successfully sued the breakfast cereal company for infringement of the 
same laws."-HHGTTG



For those prone to misinterpretation, "wilier editor" is NOT a reference 
to "John Wiley & Sons" publishers.

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 at 19:05, Grant Taylor via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> On 10/23/2018 10:47 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
> > This may be an unfortunate mismatch of English idioms.
>
> Fair.
>
> > "Out there", to me, means "current, available/on sale/in use now, in
> > active use and/or maintenance".
>
> I'm fairly sure that Solaris and AIX both continue to ship C.D.E.  ;-)

Solaris is EOL and is no longer in development. However, Solaris 11
switched to GNOME 2, nearly a decade ago.

AFAIK neither Oracle nor IBM make workstations any more, only headless
servers, so it's rather academic.

> Hence why I prefer to be excruciatingly clear.

I generally try, at least with my professional hat on.

-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

Re: Computers that never crash (Was: Microsoft-Paul Allen)

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 10/23/18 9:32 AM, Alan Perry via cctalk wrote:

> I have a RPi dedicated to a SIMH VAX-11/750 running BSD that I
> intended to leave up and rack up some impressive uptime. Then I was
> reminded by the local electricity provider that this isn’t the right
> place to try that. We get clear day, calm weather power outages
> here.
If it doesn't crash, you're not running a sufficiently varied and
demanding workload.

c.f.Jim Gray's 1985 paper here:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-85.7.pdf

--Chuck

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Grant Taylor via cctalk]

On 10/23/2018 11:19 AM, Alan Perry via cctalk wrote:

When I bring up Solaris 11.4 in VirtualBox, I get a Gnome desktop.


Ya, I think that Solaris has started using Gnome as the default desktop. 
 But I'm fairly sure that C.D.E. is still there and a menu choice away 
at login time.




--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Alan Perry via cctalk]

Even though Oracle only sells server hardware running Solaris, there are 
customers running Solaris on laptops and other systems with graphic 
consoles. When I bring up Solaris 11.4 in VirtualBox, I get a Gnome 
desktop. (I work on USB and boot, so I don't pay much attention to the 
desktop and couldn't tell you what version of Gnome it is.)


alan
- insert blurb about not speaking for my employer -

On 10/23/18 10:08 AM, Paul Berger via cctalk wrote:
AIX probably still has them but graphic consoles are pretty rare now 
most AIX boxes are used as servers these days.


Paul.


On 2018-10-23 2:05 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:

On 10/23/2018 10:47 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

This may be an unfortunate mismatch of English idioms.


Fair.


"Out there", to me, means "current, available/on sale/in use now, in
active use and/or maintenance".


I'm fairly sure that Solaris and AIX both continue to ship C.D.E. ;-)


That notwithstanding, I have to say, I still think it's ludicrous to
imply that anything _before_ Win95 could have drawn upon it, even if
making a negative statement.


Hence why I prefer to be excruciatingly clear.

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Paul Berger via cctalk]

AIX probably still has them but graphic consoles are pretty rare now 
most AIX boxes are used as servers these days.


Paul.


On 2018-10-23 2:05 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:

On 10/23/2018 10:47 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

This may be an unfortunate mismatch of English idioms.


Fair.


"Out there", to me, means "current, available/on sale/in use now, in
active use and/or maintenance".


I'm fairly sure that Solaris and AIX both continue to ship C.D.E. ;-)


That notwithstanding, I have to say, I still think it's ludicrous to
imply that anything _before_ Win95 could have drawn upon it, even if
making a negative statement.


Hence why I prefer to be excruciatingly clear.

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Grant Taylor via cctalk]

On 10/23/2018 10:47 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

This may be an unfortunate mismatch of English idioms.


Fair.


"Out there", to me, means "current, available/on sale/in use now, in
active use and/or maintenance".


I'm fairly sure that Solaris and AIX both continue to ship C.D.E.  ;-)


That notwithstanding, I have to say, I still think it's ludicrous to
imply that anything _before_ Win95 could have drawn upon it, even if
making a negative statement.


Hence why I prefer to be excruciatingly clear.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 at 17:49, Grant Taylor via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> On 10/23/2018 04:41 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
> > It's pointless to compare environments from _before_ Win95 as a way of
> > saying that Win95 didn't influence them!
>
> Your statement that I replied to is:
>
> *Every* Unix desktop out there draws on Win95.
>
> That "every" includes desktops before Windows 95.

This may be an unfortunate mismatch of English idioms.

"Out there", to me, means "current, available/on sale/in use now, in
active use and/or maintenance".

That notwithstanding, I have to say, I still think it's ludicrous to
imply that anything _before_ Win95 could have drawn upon it, even if
making a negative statement.

-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

Computers that never crash (Was: Microsoft-Paul Allen)

[Alan Perry via cctalk]

> On Oct 23, 2018, at 8:48 AM, Jon Elson via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> On 10/22/2018 08:33 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
 You've discovered some computer that doesn't ever crash?
>> On Mon, 22 Oct 2018, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
>>> Hmmm, well, my home desktop has been up 478 days, my web server has been up 
>>> 232 days, and my Asterisk phone system has been up for 571 days.  The web 
>>> server is directly on the WAN, and subject to constant attacks, too. That's 
>>> pretty close to never crashing in my book!  These are all Linux systems.
>> 
>> I really should get around to putting together a UPS -
>> nothing here has been up more than nine hours, . . .
>> 
>> 
>> 
> OH, and NONE of these systems are on a UPS!  Now, usually, we have a power 
> interruption a few times a year, so this has been a rather exceptional 
> stretch.
> 

I have a RPi dedicated to a SIMH VAX-11/750 running BSD that I intended to 
leave up and rack up some impressive uptime. Then I was reminded by the local 
electricity provider that this isn’t the right place to try that. We get clear 
day, calm weather power outages here.

alan 

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Grant Taylor via cctalk]

On 10/23/2018 04:41 AM, Liam Proven wrote:

It's pointless to compare environments from _before_ Win95 as a way of
saying that Win95 didn't influence them!


Your statement that I replied to is:

   *Every* Unix desktop out there draws on Win95.

That "every" includes desktops before Windows 95.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Jon Elson via cctalk]

On 10/22/2018 08:33 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:

You've discovered some computer that doesn't ever crash?

On Mon, 22 Oct 2018, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
Hmmm, well, my home desktop has been up 478 days, my web 
server has been up 232 days, and my Asterisk phone system 
has been up for 571 days.  The web server is directly on 
the WAN, and subject to constant attacks, too. That's 
pretty close to never crashing in my book!  These are all 
Linux systems.


I really should get around to putting together a UPS -
nothing here has been up more than nine hours, . . .



OH, and NONE of these systems are on a UPS!  Now, usually, 
we have a power interruption a few times a year, so this has 
been a rather exceptional stretch.


Jon

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Mon, 22 Oct 2018 at 23:41, Jim Manley via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> This reference to "object-oriented" is way off, conflating GUI "objects"
> and true object-oriented software.


Yep. Welcome to the wonderful world of marketing. :-(

> U ... no.  You're apparently completely uninformed about MIT Project
> Athena, aka The X Window System, or X11, or just X, for short, and no, it's
> not plural.

Um. Right. See my length post in the other thread.

> BTW, MacOS X is based on Mach, the version of Unix that was designed for
> multiple, closely-coupled processors,

Yes...

> and it, too, uses X as a basis for
> its GUI.

No it doesn't.

Not at all, not even a little bit.

Mac OS X is based on NeXTstep. NeXTstep used Display Postscript as its
display server.

Postscript is encumbered by Adobe patents (and is mainly intended for print.)

Thus, Mac OS X moved from Display Postscript to Quartz, which renders
PDF to the screen. "Display PDF" instead of DPS.

Early OS X versions included a separate X server so that Unix X.11
apps could be run. It does not any longer, AFAIK. (I am running 10.13
on my iMac at home.)

> The iPhone was the best example of this - after swearing there would never
> be an iPhone for years, they actually shipped the original version, not
> only without an elegant copy/paste mechanism, but no means of performing
> copy/paste at all for the first year, let alone not provided a means for
> anyone outside Apple and its partners to create native apps.

I think you should read this:

https://blog.fawny.org/2018/10/22/hardtouse/


-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Mon, 22 Oct 2018 at 22:54, Grant Taylor via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> On 10/22/2018 08:14 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
> > *Every* Unix desktop out there draws on Win95.
>
> Nope.  That's simply not true.
>
> The following three vast families of window managers / desktops prove
> (to my satisfaction) that your statement is wrong.
>
>   · Common Desktop Environment (a.k.a. CDE) and it's ilk.
>   · The various *Box window managers / desktop environments.
>   · Motif window manager and it's ilk.
>
> They are all significantly different from each other and from Windows's
> Explorer interface, first publicly debuting with Windows 95.
>
> > The Win95 Explorer re-wrote the book on OS UI design.
>
> "A" book, maybe.  I don't think it was "the" book.
>
> > The _only_  company to resist was Apple, because of course, some of the
> > reasons that Win95 is the way it is are attempts to do things differently
> > from Apple so as not to get sued.
>
> I think /company/ is critical in that statement as it implies for profit
> business which excludes many other non-business related options.  Even
> then, IBM, Sun, HP, etc were releasing commercial Unixes with CDE and /
> or Motif after Windows 95.

See my comments in the other thread.

It's pointless to compare environments from _before_ Win95 as a way of
saying that Win95 didn't influence them!

And plain WMs aren't desktops. In my long comment in the other thread,
I've been very generous in what I'm calling a "desktop" but at the
least it has to be a cohesive environment offering accessory programs
and features such as file management, text editing, and so on.

A bunch of terminals in a window manager are not a "desktop environment".

-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Chris Hanson via cctalk]

On Oct 20, 2018, at 10:31 AM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk  
wrote:
> 
> Oooh. My personal recollection about w95 is that there was a lot of
> touting before the premiere day, how advanced it was because "object
> oriented operating system”.

[...]

> I might have been one of the very few people who not only
> understood some of the buzzwords but also was duped into believing
> there should be some substance behind them (which maybe makes me
> exceptional, just not in a good way).

A lot of Windows 95 is implemented using COM, which is probably where the 
description of it as “object-oriented” comes from.

And while I have never been a Windows user, to denigrate it as some sort of 
non-achievement given the constraints under which it was developed, both in 
terms of target systems and backwards compatibility, is myopic at best.

  -- Chris

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

You've discovered some computer that doesn't ever crash?

On Mon, 22 Oct 2018, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
Hmmm, well, my home desktop has been up 478 days, my web server has been up 
232 days, and my Asterisk phone system has been up for 571 days.  The web 
server is directly on the WAN, and subject to constant attacks, too.  That's 
pretty close to never crashing in my book!  These are all Linux systems.


I really should get around to putting together a UPS -
nothing here has been up more than nine hours, . . .

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Jon Elson via cctalk]

On 10/22/2018 05:15 PM, John Foust via cctalk wrote:

You've discovered some computer that doesn't ever crash?
Hmmm, well, my home desktop has been up 478 days, my web 
server has been up 232 days, and my Asterisk phone system 
has been up for 571 days.  The web server is directly on the 
WAN, and subject to constant attacks, too.  That's pretty 
close to never crashing in my book!  These are all Linux 
systems.


Jon

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[William Donzelli via cctalk]

> You've discovered some computer that doesn't ever crash?

They used to be called "IBM Midrange".

--
Will (don't call them minicomputers!)

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Jim Manley via cctalk]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 4:16 PM John Foust via cctalk 
wrote:

> At 04:40 PM 10/22/2018, Jim Manley via cctalk wrote:
> >As for multitasking, even Windows 10 can easily get bogged down where the
> >GUI becomes essentially unresponsive to user actions.  MS has never
> grasped
> >that it should never be possible to wind up in a situation where the user
> >is stuck watching a rainbow-colored wheel spin, while some set of tasks
> >consumes pretty much every clock cycle on every core, and the user can't
> >even shift context away from whatever is hogging the system.
>
> There are lots of reasons why that can happen in any OS with a GUI
> You've discovered some computer that doesn't ever crash?
>

These aren't crashes, because if you wait long enough (sometimes days), you
eventually get control back.  The system has been allowed to divert
resources to purposes the user doesn't want, away from what the user is
trying to accomplish.  They have no way to change the precedence, short of
getting an OS command prompt and running something akin to *n*x "nice" to
modify the precedence level of a process, or killing processes outright.
Yes, _if_ you can get the Task Manager up, you can do the latter, but a
typical user isn't going to be aware that they can, and very likely would
have no idea how, especially without blowing away something they shouldn't.



> >The Woz was then challenged about Commodore 64 sales far exceeding those
> of
> >Apple ][ and //e models, and he replied, "At Apple, we were always in it
> >for the long haul.  What has Commodore sold lately?"  Commodore, of
> course,
> >had long since gone bankrupt.
>
> CBM didn't do that until 1994, right?
>

Yep,  April 29th, 1994.  The Woz's comment was made December 10th, 2007,
so, that was 13 years later.  That means the celebration was for the 25th
anniversary of the year of the launch of the C64, not the 30th anniversary
- my bad.  Warning to the young people out there: DO NOT UNDER ANY
CIRCUMSTANCES GET OLD!!!  It may seem like a great idea now, but once you
start down that path, THERE'S NO TURNING BACK!!!

All the Best,
Jim

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[John Foust via cctalk]

At 04:40 PM 10/22/2018, Jim Manley via cctalk wrote:
>As for multitasking, even Windows 10 can easily get bogged down where the
>GUI becomes essentially unresponsive to user actions.  MS has never grasped
>that it should never be possible to wind up in a situation where the user
>is stuck watching a rainbow-colored wheel spin, while some set of tasks
>consumes pretty much every clock cycle on every core, and the user can't
>even shift context away from whatever is hogging the system.

There are lots of reasons why that can happen in any OS with a GUI  
You've discovered some computer that doesn't ever crash?

>The Woz was then challenged about Commodore 64 sales far exceeding those of
>Apple ][ and //e models, and he replied, "At Apple, we were always in it
>for the long haul.  What has Commodore sold lately?"  Commodore, of course,
>had long since gone bankrupt.

CBM didn't do that until 1994, right?

- John

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Guy Sotomayor Jr via cctalk]

Some corrections related to Mach and Apple.

TTFN - Guy

> On Oct 22, 2018, at 2:40 PM, Jim Manley via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> BTW, MacOS X is based on Mach, the version of Unix that was designed for
> multiple, closely-coupled processors, and it, too, uses X as a basis for
> its GUI.  

No.  Mach is a microkernel based system that split apart BSD into “kernel”
portions and Unix portions.  It really didn’t have anything to do with SMP as
the premise behind Mach (which was a furthering of Accent) was message
passing between tasks.  I can dig up the original papers if anyone is 
interested.  ;-)

OS X does *not* use X as the basis of its GUI.  It stems from NEXT which
used display postscript (modern OS X uses display PDF).  An (optional)
X server (and clients) can be added to the OS (I use them all the time) but
is not part of the base install which belies the comment of X as the basis of
the GUI.

BTW, the X server on OS X, interfaces not to the bit-map but instead to the
native OS X display rendering framework.

TTFN - Guy

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[geneb via cctalk]

On Mon, 22 Oct 2018, Jim Manley via cctalk wrote:


windowing desktop per user, while X Window not only supports multiple
desktops per user (each with its own context that can be swapped in to
occupy the display area), but natively supports remote desktop access from
a number of users over networks (MS Windows still doesn't support this).

MS Windows has supported multiple desktops either through native OS 
features or via 3rd party utility since Windows 95.


g.

--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
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Some people collect things for a hobby.  Geeks collect hobbies.

ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Jim Manley via cctalk]

Hi Liam,

On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 8:15 AM Liam Proven via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

>
> Cairo was intended to be semi "object oriented" ...
>

This reference to "object-oriented" is way off, conflating GUI "objects"
and true object-oriented software.  OO in code has nothing to do with
manipulating virtual objects (desktops, icons for folders, documents by
type, trash cans, etc.).  It's a combination of attributes supported by
programming languages, such as classes, methods, encapsulation,
abstraction, inheritance, polymorphism, composition, delegation, etc.  Even
Ivan Sutherland's 1960 - 1961 Sketchpad truly implemented object-oriented
design at both the GUI and code levels, despite being developed for the
discrete-transistor MIT Lincoln Lab TX-2, with all of 64 K-words (36-bit
word length) of discrete-transistor memory.


> Win95 was astonishingly compatible, both with DOS drivers and apps,
> and with Windows 3 drivers, and yet it was 32-bit in the important
> places, delivered true preemptive multitasking, reasonably fast
> virtual memory, integrated networking, integrated Internet access, and
> a radical, clean, elegant UI which *every single OS after it* has
> copied.
>

U ... no.  You're apparently completely uninformed about MIT Project
Athena, aka The X Window System, or X11, or just X, for short, and no, it's
not plural.  The latter is ironic, because MS Windows only supports one
windowing desktop per user, while X Window not only supports multiple
desktops per user (each with its own context that can be swapped in to
occupy the display area), but natively supports remote desktop access from
a number of users over networks (MS Windows still doesn't support this).

While the early aesthetics of X's icons, windows, widgets, etc., are just
what you'd expect some harried engineer to cobble together well after
midnight the date of a major early release, the underlying technology was
light years ahead of what MS spent decades screwing around with (per your
description of the dead ends).  Unfortunately, X, as well as other earlier
GUI systems, was bitmap-based, and still is, so, the aesthetics haven't
been improved over the past three-plus decades it's been around, despite
incredible advances in graphics hardware, which was designed from the
ground up to largely support floating-point computations necessary for 3-D
and advanced 2-D graphics.

Interestingly, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has found it necessary to spend
a considerable amount of its meager resources (compared with those in
commercial developers' piggy banks, emphasis on the "piggy") to GPU
hardware accelerate X, that its Debian-based Raspbian OS uses for its GUI
(the changes to open-source code are released upstream to benefit the
entire Debian community).  99% of the die area on a Pi's system-on-a-chip
(SoC) is the GPU, which is what boots on power-up.  The ARM CPU in the SoC
was originally included as just a traffic cop for shoveling video data
coming in from the Ethernet port and routed to the GPU for decoding and
generation of HD video signals in Roku 2 streaming media boxes.  The
acceleration included conversion from the integer bit-mapped
representations used in X to floating-point data structures on which the
GPU is designed to primarily operate.  When you're limited to one GB of
RAM, your CPUs are RISC-based, and the CPUs' clock speed is limited to 1.4
GHz, you need all the help you can get.

BTW, MacOS X is based on Mach, the version of Unix that was designed for
multiple, closely-coupled processors, and it, too, uses X as a basis for
its GUI.  Even in its early days, the Mac graphics system had a lot to
admire.  When the Mac II brought color video and full 32-bit processing to
the product line, the OS was very cleverly provided a single System32
extension file that only had to be dropped into the System folder to make
older black-and-white-only, 16-bit external-to-the-microprocessor (even the
68000 is 32-bit internally) Macs compatible with the new 32-bit,
color-based graphics architecture.  No changes were necessary to
applications, with colors merely mapped to dithered patterns of
black-and-white pixels having equivalent luminance as the colors on the
older hardware.

As for multitasking, even Windows 10 can easily get bogged down where the
GUI becomes essentially unresponsive to user actions.  MS has never grasped
that it should never be possible to wind up in a situation where the user
is stuck watching a rainbow-colored wheel spin, while some set of tasks
consumes pretty much every clock cycle on every core, and the user can't
even shift context away from whatever is hogging the system.

Other than completing a valid low-level task, such as flushing queues to
large-capacity storage, the user should always be in control of what the
foreground process with highest precedence is.  Loading ads from an
incoming network connection for products and services, that the user has
absolutely no interest in, is never 

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Grant Taylor via cctalk]

On 10/22/2018 08:14 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

*Every* Unix desktop out there draws on Win95.


Nope.  That's simply not true.

The following three vast families of window managers / desktops prove 
(to my satisfaction) that your statement is wrong.


 · Common Desktop Environment (a.k.a. CDE) and it's ilk.
 · The various *Box window managers / desktop environments.
 · Motif window manager and it's ilk.

They are all significantly different from each other and from Windows's 
Explorer interface, first publicly debuting with Windows 95.



The Win95 Explorer re-wrote the book on OS UI design.


"A" book, maybe.  I don't think it was "the" book.

The _only_  company to resist was Apple, because of course, some of the 
reasons that Win95 is the way it is are attempts to do things differently 
from Apple so as not to get sued.


I think /company/ is critical in that statement as it implies for profit 
business which excludes many other non-business related options.  Even 
then, IBM, Sun, HP, etc were releasing commercial Unixes with CDE and / 
or Motif after Windows 95.




--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Eric Smith via cctalk]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 02:36 Jim Manley  wrote:

Microsoft did offer a RAM expansion board specifically to allow the
Softcard to access 64K of RAM dedicated to CP/M,


Even that wasn't dedicated to CP/M. It was a 16K RAM card that was
equivalent to the Apple "Language Card", which allowed replacing the 12K of
ROM of the Apple II and II+ with 16K of RAM, of which 4K had two banks.
Although it was useful with the Softcard, it wasn't in any way specific to
it.

All models of the Softcard could output 80 x 24 text, not only through
third-party cards, but Apple's own 64K RAM and 80 x 24 video combo card,


Which was only available for the IIe. I stand by my assertion that the
Softcard did not in any way provide 80x24 text. It could use the capability
if it was separately provided.

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Mon, 22 Oct 2018 at 16:28, Jim Manley via cctalk
 wrote:

>
> I'm going to stand by my assertion that the Softcard was a single-board
> computer on the technicality that it did have its own RAM - you apparently
> forget that registers are a form of RAM - HA!  They're memory, they're
> addressed over a bus (that just happens to be within the microprocessor),
> and you can directly access any register at any time (random access).  As
> for I/O, that's what the Apple ][ bus was for, right?  As Opus from Bloom
> County, among other comic characters, was known to utter,
> "PBBTT!!!


Heh. Nice attempt at hair-splitting but I think you missed. ;-)

>
> For those that cited the Amstrad systems, I was referring to the S-100 and
> Softcard timeframe.


But you didn't _say_ that.

>
> CP/M was only provided with the Amstrad CPC664 and
> 6128 floppy-disk based models, and the DDI-1 disk expansion unit for the
> 464 (only CP/M 2.2 with the 664, and 2.2 and 3.1 with the 6128).


Nope. It was an option for the CPC series of colour-capable home
computers, yes. But it was supplied *as standard* with the PCW 8000 &
9000 series of monochrome-only "personal computer wordprocessors". You
got 2 boot disks in the box: one with LocoScript, the dedicated
Amstrad PCW word processor (albeit later ported to, or rather
rewritten, for IBM-compatibles), and one with CP/M 3.

CP/M was the _only_ general-purpose OS for the PCWs. (Excluding the
later, unsuccessful, PcW 16.) They had no ROM and no ROM BASIC or
anything else.

I think they were the last CP/M machines of any significance, first
released in 1985, well into the MS-DOS era. Nonetheless they were
hugely successful in their time and there were quite a few CP/M apps
released that only ran on the PCWs, directly driving their 720*256 res
screen in graphics mode or a few in 90*32 text mode.


-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

Fwd: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Jim Manley via cctalk]

[ Accidentally only sent to Eric originally ]

On Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 3:41 PM Eric Smith  wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 01:46 Jim Manley via cctalk 
> wrote:
>
>> The Softcard was a Z-80 based single-board
>> computer
>
>
> It wasn't. It was only a processor card.
>

Eric,

I'm going to stand by my assertion that the Softcard was a single-board
computer on the technicality that it did have its own RAM - you apparently
forget that registers are a form of RAM - HA!  They're memory, they're
addressed over a bus (that just happens to be within the microprocessor),
and you can directly access any register at any time (random access).  As
for I/O, that's what the Apple ][ bus was for, right?  As Opus from Bloom
County, among other comic characters, was known to utter,
"PBBTT!!! 

Microsoft did offer a RAM expansion board specifically to allow the
Softcard to access 64K of RAM dedicated to CP/M, and the Premium Softcard
//e provided on-board RAM to CP/M for the Apple //e, as you noted.  All
models of the Softcard could output 80 x 24 text, not only through
third-party cards, but Apple's own 64K RAM and 80 x 24 video combo card,
which was often offered in packages, especially through dealers that
supported business customers (that's how my system came delivered).  The
"etc." I mentioned was the functionality provided through the glueware
logic on the Softcard that enabled RAM and 80 x 24 text output, as well as
other I/O over the Apple ][ slots bus.

When I was in the Navy, our ship called at HMS Tamar in Hong Kong, and I
followed verbal directions (26 stops on the then-new subway under the
harbor into the New Territories) to the basement level of a shopping
center.  There, I found clones of everything from Apple ][s and //es to
every expansion board and peripheral available in the early 1980s,
including both the original Softcard and the Premium Softcard //e.
Everything came complete with the floppy disks and every page of the
documentation, not just photocopied, but professionally typeset and
offset-printed.

In your missing-the-forest-for-the-trees response, you completely missed
the point of my post - that the Softcard was an extremely important early
product for Microsoft, the critical connection between the Softcard and the
QDOS prototype for x86 MS/PC-DOS, through Seattle Computer Products, and
that the number of CP/M licenses was much larger on Apple computers than
S-100 systems.

For those that cited the Amstrad systems, I was referring to the S-100 and
Softcard timeframe.  CP/M was only provided with the Amstrad CPC664 and
6128 floppy-disk based models, and the DDI-1 disk expansion unit for the
464 (only CP/M 2.2 with the 664, and 2.2 and 3.1 with the 6128).  The
Amstrads came along four years after the Softcard was introduced, and three
years after the release of the IBM PC.  By that time, Digital Research's
influence had faded into insignificance, despite the full release of
CP/M-86 within six months of the IBM PC's debut (albeit at six times the
price of MS/PC-DOS).  I do know that CP/M was used in European banking
systems well into the late 1990s, mostly because it wasn't broken and
didn't need to be "fixed".  It probably would have remained in use well
past 1999 if it weren't for Y2K's impetus for massive upgrades to current
technology for 2000 and beyond.

All the Best,
Jim


On Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 3:41 PM Eric Smith  wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 01:46 Jim Manley via cctalk 
> wrote:
>
>> The Softcard was a Z-80 based single-board
>> computer
>
>
> It wasn't. It was only a processor card.
>
> that plugged into an Apple ][ slot, equipped with its own
>> 80x24 character x line black-and-white video output,
>
>
> No version of the Softcard had it's own video output. It used normal Apple
> video  output. If you wanted 80x24, you had to use a separate third-party
> 80-column card, or (later) and Apple IIe, IIc, IIc+, or IIgs.
>
> RAM, etc.,
>>
>
> I'm not sure what you're referring to by "etc.", but the vast majority of
> Softcards and their clones did not have their own RAM, and used that of the
> Apple II.
>
> The PCPI Applicard and it's clones had their own RAM. Some very late
> models of the Softcard had their own RAM.
>
>

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Sat, 20 Oct 2018 at 19:31, Tomasz Rola via cctalk
 wrote:

> Oooh. My personal recollection about w95 is that there was a lot of
> touting before the premiere day, how advanced it was because "object
> oriented operating system". The premiere came, the toutings quickly
> faded away, never heard any kind of objection about this aspect. I,
> for quite long time, had been thinking W95 was a scam because for the
> life of me I could not spot any sign of its object-orientedness (and
> there was nothing else interesting enough to make me want to tinker
> with this... something).

I think the explanation for that is fairly clearly there in the history.

NT 3.1 came soon after Windows 3.

After the OS/2 "divorce" from IBM, MS ran its 2 big OS projects,
Chicago and Cairo, more or less in parallel.

Cairo  was next-gen NT, Chicago was next-gen Windows 3, at that point
intended to be "Windows 4".

Cairo started to fall behind schedule very early.

So more effort was given over to Chicago. A fair bit of the ambitious
UI work for Cairo made its way over to Chicago.

Cairo was intended to be semi "object oriented", with a
database-oriented filesystem (something Be did better in BeOS' BFS).
That never happened, but the object-based (rather than folder- or
drive-based) system browser made it over to Chicago.

The Explorer, as it came to be known, uses several "virtual folders"
-- "My Computer", "Network Neighbourhood". "Control Panel" etc. These
have no location in the filesystem, you can't manually put anything in
them or delete anything -- they only appear in Explorer, automatically
populated with stuff _drawn_ from the filesystem or the Registry.

Those are the vestiges of the Cairo object system.

In itself, these things are vestigial remainder of concepts in
NeXTstep, Xerox Smalltalk, HP NewWave and so on. By this stage, the
real meaning has been forgotten, and "object oriented" has become a
buzzword meaning, vaguely, that the user manipulates "objects" which
may not genuinely exist as files or folders in the filesystem. They're
virtual entities, generated by the OS on the fly.

> It was only years later that it finally came
> to me: I might have been one of the very few people who not only
> understood some of the buzzwords but also was duped into believing
> there should be some substance behind them (which maybe makes me
> exceptional, just not in a good way).

There was substance behind them once.

But, in a pattern that is very typical of the development of the
digital computer, especially microcomputers, the evolution goes like
this:

[1] someone, probably an academic, invents a new concept

[2] someone else tries to implement it, finds it hard, and has to
bodge it in some way -- with hardware extensions, or an abstraction
layer, or faking it up and presenting it as if it were real

[3] (a) another company copies the general idea but, lacking the
conceptual underpinning, simplifies it into near-meaninglessness

... or...

[3] (b) the other company finds a much quicker, simpler way to
implement it, such as by doing it in cheap software rather than
expensive hardware, or by some clever hack to another part of the
system.

Examples to illustrate my point:

[a] Microsoft decided to add an RDBMS to its new OS. (It's not
integrated from the start, like in Pick.)

[b] It talks widely about some of the things this will enable, such as
querying the filesystem like querying a database rather than
iteratively searching

[c] Be builds a new OS from scratch, and free from legacy
compatibility restrictions, designs a filesystem with extensible,
queryable attributes, thus achieving MS' goal with no database
involved.

[d] Apple fakes the end result of this by hacking a
file-modification-watching daemon into its Unix, enabling the daemon
to maintain an index for the whole filesystem. That in turn enables
near-instant searching, without needing a whole new filesystem.

[e] Microsoft having now been comprehensively outdone, abandons its
database-in-the-filesystem idea and tries to bolt-on a filesystem
indexer -- but because its OS is far more widely-used by a far broader
range of hardware and software, it can't do the low-level hackery
necessary without breaking legions of 3rd party apps, so the MS
implementation is poor and takes years & multiple product generations
to get working.

It's a sort of horrible sequel (see what I did there?) to the Osborne Effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect


> Nowadays, I consider W95 as very interesting subject of study - a
> technical product of non-technical genius(es) (ok, if there were tech
> geniuses involved in its making, I would say it does not show up).

I strongly disagree. (And I am no Microsoft apologist!)

On the one hand, the cosmetics. *Every* Unix desktop out there draws
on Win95. The Win95 Explorer re-wrote the book on OS UI design. The
_only_ company to resist was Apple, because of course, some of the
reasons that Win95 is the way it is are attempts to do 

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Sat, 20 Oct 2018 at 12:55, Adam Sampson via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> Do you mean sold up to that point? Amstrad went on to sell several
> million PCWs with CP/M later in the 1980s. (They say 8 million on
> http://www.amstrad.com/products/archive/, but that includes the
> much less popular PCW16 which wasn't a CP/M machine.)

I was going to make the same cavil. :-)

The PCW was wildly successful, but not in the USA, and USAnians tend
to forget about anything that wasn't big in their own country.

I think the PCWs were also the only widely-successful CP/M *3* computers.

Although to be fair I suspect that many users never left LocoScript.
Certainly some of my acquaintance were astonished to learn that they
had the option to upgrade to LocoScript 2 (8*** series owners) or 3 /
4 (8*** & 9*** series owners). I think mostly just people who bought
additional printers learned that.

Poor marketing by Locomotive, sadly.

-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

Re: Softcard (Was: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[George Rachor via cctalk]

I have a Basis (apple ][ clone) with a cpm card built on the main board….

George

> On Oct 21, 2018, at 11:09 AM, systems_glitch via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> 
> I'd heard, but have no sources for said hearsay, that the most common CP/M
> machine in volume was the Apple II.
> 
> There were definitely knockoffs of the Microsoft Z80 Softcard. One of my
> IIe systems has one from SPACE BYTE, the other is no-name. I've personally
> seen more knockoffs than actual Microsoft cards. The two I have currently
> are definitely "photocopy" type knockoff/clone cards, the layout is nearly
> identical to the real Microsoft card I've got. That of course doesn't speak
> for what was actually deployed.
> 
> Some Apple II compatibles also came with CP/M compatibility out of the box,
> I don't personally know if that was MS Z80 Softcard compatible or something
> else.
> 
> Thanks,
> Jonathan
> 
> On Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 5:54 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk 
> wrote:
> 
 The Softcard was a Z-80 based single-board
 computer
>> 
>> On Sat, 20 Oct 2018, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote:
>>> It wasn't. It was only a processor card.
>>> No version of the Softcard had it's own video output. It used normal
>> Apple
>>> video  output. If you wanted 80x24, you had to use a separate third-party
>>> 80-column card, or (later) and Apple IIe, IIc, IIc+, or IIgs.
>>> I'm not sure what you're referring to by "etc.", but the vast majority of
>>> Softcards and their clones did not have their own RAM, and used that of
>> the
>>> Apple II.
>>> The PCPI Applicard and it's clones had their own RAM. Some very late
>> models
>>> of the Softcard had their own RAM.
>> 
>> I remember hearing, at one point, a statement (not necessarily reliable),
>> that said that 20% of Apple computers had a Softcard.
>> What was the approximate percentage in 1980/1981, when IBM contacted
>> Microsoft?
>> (or number that had been sold, which would include ones not actually in
>> use)
>> 
>> What was the PEAK percentage?
>> (or number that had been sold, which would include ones not actually in
>> use)
>> 
>> Were there other brands, or imitations, available then (1980/1981)?
>> 
>> Later, what percentage were imitations?
>> 
>> Speculatively, how much were they used V use of the machine in non-Z80
>> ways?  (How many people bought it just ot have the capability, without
>> necessarily being active CP/M users?)
>> 
>> 
>> This is definitely not the first time that I have heard that IBM had
>> assumed that CP/M was a Microsoft product.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Yeechang Lee via cctalk]

Tony Duell  says:
> > In some of the documentation, the sketch of a joystick was clearly
> > the Radio Shack Coco joystick (which needed a different connector)
> 
> And is electrically different.

The Tandy 1000 series has Color Computer joystick ports (and the
TRS-80 card-edge parallel port). I've read that some software is
incompatible with CoCo joysticks, but don't remember seeing any such
with my 1000SL.

-- 
geo:37.78,-122.416667

Re: Softcard (Was: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Sun, 21 Oct 2018, systems_glitch wrote:

I'd heard, but have no sources for said hearsay, that the most common CP/M
machine in volume was the Apple II.


At one time.
I have heard that Amstrad eventually passed them.
How were sales of Commodore 128?


There were definitely knockoffs of the Microsoft Z80 Softcard. One of my
IIe systems has one from SPACE BYTE, the other is no-name. I've personally
seen more knockoffs than actual Microsoft cards. The two I have currently
are definitely "photocopy" type knockoff/clone cards, the layout is nearly
identical to the real Microsoft card I've got. That of course doesn't speak
for what was actually deployed.


I would assume that in the early days, it was all, or almost all the real 
Microsoft one.  That would include the time when IBM thought that 
Microsoft was the source of CP/M.


LATER, there were imitations, copies, clones, and counterfeits.
Some of the "imitators" were legal, and may even have had improvements.

Don't know where to get numbers of those.  Sales data for the Microsoft 
one exist, but for the others?



The law is not always clear as to how close an imitation may be. For 
example, Kevin Jenkins/"Hercules" copied the MDA design, adding RAM and 
graphics capability.  Then he was furious when others copied his design. 
("clone smasher" ad campaign, that even claimed that imitation boards 
could destroy the computer)




Some Apple II compatibles also came with CP/M compatibility out of the box,
I don't personally know if that was MS Z80 Softcard compatible or something
else.


Basis 108 had a Z80 secondary processor.

Re: Softcard (Was: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[systems_glitch via cctalk]

I'd heard, but have no sources for said hearsay, that the most common CP/M
machine in volume was the Apple II.

There were definitely knockoffs of the Microsoft Z80 Softcard. One of my
IIe systems has one from SPACE BYTE, the other is no-name. I've personally
seen more knockoffs than actual Microsoft cards. The two I have currently
are definitely "photocopy" type knockoff/clone cards, the layout is nearly
identical to the real Microsoft card I've got. That of course doesn't speak
for what was actually deployed.

Some Apple II compatibles also came with CP/M compatibility out of the box,
I don't personally know if that was MS Z80 Softcard compatible or something
else.

Thanks,
Jonathan

On Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 5:54 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk 
wrote:

> >> The Softcard was a Z-80 based single-board
> >> computer
>
> On Sat, 20 Oct 2018, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote:
> > It wasn't. It was only a processor card.
> > No version of the Softcard had it's own video output. It used normal
> Apple
> > video  output. If you wanted 80x24, you had to use a separate third-party
> > 80-column card, or (later) and Apple IIe, IIc, IIc+, or IIgs.
> > I'm not sure what you're referring to by "etc.", but the vast majority of
> > Softcards and their clones did not have their own RAM, and used that of
> the
> > Apple II.
> > The PCPI Applicard and it's clones had their own RAM. Some very late
> models
> > of the Softcard had their own RAM.
>
> I remember hearing, at one point, a statement (not necessarily reliable),
> that said that 20% of Apple computers had a Softcard.
> What was the approximate percentage in 1980/1981, when IBM contacted
> Microsoft?
> (or number that had been sold, which would include ones not actually in
> use)
>
> What was the PEAK percentage?
> (or number that had been sold, which would include ones not actually in
> use)
>
> Were there other brands, or imitations, available then (1980/1981)?
>
> Later, what percentage were imitations?
>
> Speculatively, how much were they used V use of the machine in non-Z80
> ways?  (How many people bought it just ot have the capability, without
> necessarily being active CP/M users?)
>
>
> This is definitely not the first time that I have heard that IBM had
> assumed that CP/M was a Microsoft product.
>
>
>
>

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Tony Duell via cctalk]

On Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 8:28 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> >> Similarly, although they sold a joystick board, they didn't sell
> >> joysticks.  DA15 connector for two joysticks.
> >> In some of the documentation, the sketch of a joystick was clearly the
> >> Radio Shack Coco joystick (which needed a different connector)
>
> On Sat, 20 Oct 2018, Tony Duell wrote:
> > And is electrically different.
> > The CoCo Joystick is a potential divider across the 5V rail. Moving the
> > joystick varies the output voltage (2 voltages per joystick, X and Y). This
> > is fed into a 6 bit ADC (actually a 6 bit DAC, a comparator and some
> > firmware).
> > The IBM PC Joystick (like the Apple ][ ones) is a pair of variable
> > resistors. This are the timing resistors in monostable circuits, acutally
> > an NE558 chip (Think of it as being 4 555 timers always connected as
> > monostables in one package). The software triggers the monostables
> > then sees how long they take to flip back again.
>
> Could you provide some remedial tutoring on what I am misunderstanding?
>
> All of that circuitry is in the "controller".
> The joystick itself consists of pushbuttons and two potentiometers.  NO
> other active circuitry.
> Moving the joystick does not itself vary the output voltage, when it is
> not so connected.  Moving the joystick varies the wiper position along a
> resistive element.   (admittedly, if the ends of the resistive element are
> connected to voltage and ground, then the wiper connection provides
> a variable output voltage)

That last is basically what I am getting at.

The variable resistor consists of a resistive track with a wiper on it. It
has a total of 3 connections -- the 2 ends of the track and the wiper.

Now you can use it in essentally two ways :

1) As a 'potentiometer' [1] . All 3 connections are used. The ends of
the track are connected across a power supply (in the case of the
CoCo Joystick to +5V and logic ground). The wiper thus has a voltage
that depends on the postion of the wiper.

2) As a variable resistor. Only one end of the track and the wiper are
used [2]. This is the case of the PC Joystick. Here one side goes to
+5V, the other to the timing resistor input on the monostable.

Now because the CoCo Joystick's 2 axes use the same power supply,
corresponding ends of the 2 resistive tracks are linked inside. Which is
a minor problem if you want to use it with the PC as the 'unused' ends of
the 2 tracks should not be connected. You have to change the wiring
slightly.

[1] So called because originally it was used to measure 'potential'
(voltage). The ends of the track were connected to a stable voltage
supply, the wiper to one side of a sensitve current detector (galvanometer).
The unknown input voltage was connected between the other side of
the galvanometer and the 'bottom' end of the track. When no current
flowed through the galvanometer, the 2 connections to it were at the
same voltage, meaning the unknown voltage could be determeined
as a fraction (the fractional position of the wiper on the track) of
the stable voltage supply across the whole track.

[2] Although just to be confusing it is conventional to connect the
unused end of the resistive track to the wiper. Then if there is a
bad contact at the wiper you get the whole track resistance in the
circuit rather than infinite resisitance

>
> If the resistance is compatible, then what modifications need to be made
> to convert a "voltage divider" potentiometer to a "rheostat"/"variable
> resistor"?
> (wire to wiper and one end of the resistive element (already present),
> disconnect the connection at the other end of the resistive element)

That's it. You have to disconnect one end of the resistive element.

>
> YES, it was "intended" to be used differently.
>
> If one KNOWS that it is impossible to make it work, then it makes it more
> difficult.
>
>
> Could one safely ignore the "No user serviceable components inside"
> sticker on the bottom of the joystick?  :-)

Well, technically it's true. If I am servicing something I can't be using it
at the same time so I am not a user

> And, of course, there is the difficulty of locating a DA-15 connector!
> There are some on eBay, but the seller says that they are DB-15  :-)

I would think most of the large component suppliers (RS components
(who are not Radio Shack), Farnell/Newark, Mouser, Digikey, etc)
would have them but no idea what they are called...

-tony

Softcard (Was: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

The Softcard was a Z-80 based single-board
computer


On Sat, 20 Oct 2018, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote:

It wasn't. It was only a processor card.
No version of the Softcard had it's own video output. It used normal Apple
video  output. If you wanted 80x24, you had to use a separate third-party
80-column card, or (later) and Apple IIe, IIc, IIc+, or IIgs.
I'm not sure what you're referring to by "etc.", but the vast majority of
Softcards and their clones did not have their own RAM, and used that of the
Apple II.
The PCPI Applicard and it's clones had their own RAM. Some very late models
of the Softcard had their own RAM.


I remember hearing, at one point, a statement (not necessarily reliable), 
that said that 20% of Apple computers had a Softcard.
What was the approximate percentage in 1980/1981, when IBM contacted 
Microsoft?
(or number that had been sold, which would include ones not actually in 
use)


What was the PEAK percentage?
(or number that had been sold, which would include ones not actually in 
use)


Were there other brands, or imitations, available then (1980/1981)?

Later, what percentage were imitations?

Speculatively, how much were they used V use of the machine in non-Z80 
ways?  (How many people bought it just ot have the capability, without 
necessarily being active CP/M users?)



This is definitely not the first time that I have heard that IBM had 
assumed that CP/M was a Microsoft product.

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Eric Smith via cctalk]

On Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 01:46 Jim Manley via cctalk 
wrote:

> The Softcard was a Z-80 based single-board
> computer


It wasn't. It was only a processor card.

that plugged into an Apple ][ slot, equipped with its own
> 80x24 character x line black-and-white video output,


No version of the Softcard had it's own video output. It used normal Apple
video  output. If you wanted 80x24, you had to use a separate third-party
80-column card, or (later) and Apple IIe, IIc, IIc+, or IIgs.

RAM, etc.,
>

I'm not sure what you're referring to by "etc.", but the vast majority of
Softcards and their clones did not have their own RAM, and used that of the
Apple II.

The PCPI Applicard and it's clones had their own RAM. Some very late models
of the Softcard had their own RAM.

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Similarly, although they sold a joystick board, they didn't sell
joysticks.  DA15 connector for two joysticks.
In some of the documentation, the sketch of a joystick was clearly the
Radio Shack Coco joystick (which needed a different connector)


On Sat, 20 Oct 2018, Tony Duell wrote:

And is electrically different.
The CoCo Joystick is a potential divider across the 5V rail. Moving the
joystick varies the output voltage (2 voltages per joystick, X and Y). This
is fed into a 6 bit ADC (actually a 6 bit DAC, a comparator and some
firmware).
The IBM PC Joystick (like the Apple ][ ones) is a pair of variable
resistors. This are the timing resistors in monostable circuits, acutally
an NE558 chip (Think of it as being 4 555 timers always connected as
monostables in one package). The software triggers the monostables
then sees how long they take to flip back again.


Could you provide some remedial tutoring on what I am misunderstanding?

All of that circuitry is in the "controller".
The joystick itself consists of pushbuttons and two potentiometers.  NO 
other active circuitry.
Moving the joystick does not itself vary the output voltage, when it is 
not so connected.  Moving the joystick varies the wiper position along a 
resistive element.   (admittedly, if the ends of the resistive element are 
connected to voltage and ground, then the wiper connection provides 
a variable output voltage)


If the resistance is compatible, then what modifications need to be made 
to convert a "voltage divider" potentiometer to a "rheostat"/"variable 
resistor"? 
(wire to wiper and one end of the resistive element (already present), 
disconnect the connection at the other end of the resistive element)


YES, it was "intended" to be used differently.

If one KNOWS that it is impossible to make it work, then it makes it more 
difficult.



Could one safely ignore the "No user serviceable components inside" 
sticker on the bottom of the joystick?  :-)

And, of course, there is the difficulty of locating a DA-15 connector!
There are some on eBay, but the seller says that they are DB-15  :-)

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Sat, 20 Oct 2018, Jim Manley via cctalk wrote:

IBM wasn't even aware of the penetration of dial-up among consumers
and very small businesses, . . . 
Another sign that IBM wasn't confident about the longevity of the PC

is that they outsourced the development of its OS to Microsoft,
believing that Microsoft owned CP/M because of an Apple ][ compatible
product described in the next paragraph.


Very True.
Although to be fair, Microsoft IMMEDIATELY corrected the misperception, 
and sent IBM to DRI.
There was a bit of "culture clash" between IBM and DRI, and IBM CHOSE to 
go back to Microsoft, and get them to do the OS.


There are many conflicting "histories" of the encounter.
The most egregiously lacking in any reality at all was "Pirates Of The 
Valley", which portrayed Steve Jobs and Bill gates as being the computer 
industry, and had Bill Gates going to Florida and COLD CALLING IBM to sell 
them on the idea of having an OS!


What actually happened was that Gary Kildall flew his plane up to Oakland 
to visit Bill Godbout.  (a few reports said that he was off SAILING).
He left the business (in a house in Pacific Grove) in the capable hands of 
his wife.
One report says that he said, "They just want to sign papers for a 
license, let them come to the front desk, like any other customer."


IBM was miffed that Gary Kildall wasn't there for their meeting.
Some reports say that they were also offended by the "California culture", 
with workers barefoot, shirtless, in shorts, women without bras, 
surfboards and bicycles in the hallways, food, plants, cats, and dogs in 
offices, etc.

AND, DRI balked at signing IBMs NDA.
IBM still had at least an unofficial dress code, and wore identical suits.
One report even says that a worker looking out the upstairs window (it is 
a lovely view) when IBM approached, thought that it was a drug raid.




(In 2012, I was in Pacific Grove for a day, so I sought out the house.  I 
met a fellow who had bought it in a foreclosure sale, and found out later 
that it had a history.  He freely let me walk through and see the place.)




A small business to IBM was much larger than the sizes of businesses
that Apple was typically serving at that time.  Many are unaware that
the largest fraction of CP/M licenses ever sold were for the Microsoft
Softcard for the Apple ][ (about 300,000 sold, all told), not S-100
systems (somewhere around 150,000 systems built by hobbyists, or sold
by small manufacturers).  The Softcard was a Z-80 based single-board
computer that plugged into an Apple ][ slot, equipped with its own
80x24 character x line black-and-white video output, RAM, etc., and
that shared Apple ][  electrical power and floppy disk drives.  The
Softcard was Microsoft's first really successful product, responsible
for its first tens of millions of dollars in revenue and profits.

The Softcard was developed by Seattle Computer Products, the same
two-man company in a Seattle garage that later sold its prototype
8086/8088 OS to Microsoft for $50,000.  Microsoft turned around within
a day and sold it to IBM via a _non-exclusive_ license (a critical
factor that allowed them to field MS-DOS, their self-branded version
of IBM's PC-DOS), for $3 million _plus_ about $50 per computer sold
with PC-DOS.  That model, updated for Windows, is the cash cow that's
still printing profits for Microsoft to this day.


I'm really not sure about the "within a day".  Although, it certainly 
didn't take LONG.


Also, although I can't name anybody in SCP other than Tim Paterson and Rod 
Brock, I think that there were a few others there.  (And some high school 
kids they hired to assemble boards)


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Tony Duell via cctalk]

On Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 6:52 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk
 wrote:

> Similarly, although they sold a joystick board, they didn't sell
> joysticks.  DA15 connector for two joysticks.
> In some of the documentation, the sketch of a joystick was clearly the
> Radio Shack Coco joystick (which needed a different connector)

And is electrically different.

The CoCo Joystick is a potential divider across the 5V rail. Moving the
joystick varies the output voltage (2 voltages per joystick, X and Y). This
is fed into a 6 bit ADC (actually a 6 bit DAC, a comparator and some
firmware).

The IBM PC Joystick (like the Apple ][ ones) is a pair of variable
resistors. This are the timing resistors in monostable circuits, acutally
an NE558 chip (Think of it as being 4 555 timers always connected as
monostables in one package). The software triggers the monostables
then sees how long they take to flip back again.

I assume the PCjr Joystick is like the PC one, electrically, but I don't
feel like going upstairs to check the TechRef.

-tony

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Sat, 20 Oct 2018, Jim Manley via cctalk wrote:

IBM wasn't even aware of the penetration of dial-up among consumers
and very small businesses, or they would have initially offered
modems, at least as options, if not in package combos.  Retailers who
understood the consumer and very small business markets quickly began
offering modems in response to the vacuum that IBM had created.


They DID offer the Async Card  (Serial RS-232, AND 20mA) for using modems, 
serial printers, etc.



Similarly, although they sold a joystick board, they didn't sell 
joysticks.  DA15 connector for two joysticks.
In some of the documentation, the sketch of a joystick was clearly the 
Radio Shack Coco joystick (which needed a different connector)


LATER, they sold a joystick when the PCJr came out.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Tomasz Rola via cctalk]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 01:50:20AM -0600, Jim Manley via cctalk wrote:
> I thought it was just hilarious that Microsoft chose The Rolling
> Stones' "Start Me Up" for the theme song at the launch of Windows 95,
> unaware of the later lyrics in the song (not played during the launch,
> oddly enough), "You make a grown man cry-y-y ... You make a grown man
> cry-y-y ... You make a grown man cry-y-y ... "
[...]

Oooh. My personal recollection about w95 is that there was a lot of
touting before the premiere day, how advanced it was because "object
oriented operating system". The premiere came, the toutings quickly
faded away, never heard any kind of objection about this aspect. I,
for quite long time, had been thinking W95 was a scam because for the
life of me I could not spot any sign of its object-orientedness (and
there was nothing else interesting enough to make me want to tinker
with this... something). It was only years later that it finally came
to me: I might have been one of the very few people who not only
understood some of the buzzwords but also was duped into believing
there should be some substance behind them (which maybe makes me
exceptional, just not in a good way).

Nowadays, I consider W95 as very interesting subject of study - a
technical product of non-technical genius(es) (ok, if there were tech
geniuses involved in its making, I would say it does not show up). It
took a lot of manipulation and wind sniffing to make it such a big
success, and plenty of intellectual indolence from rivals and
customers.

:-)

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.  **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home**
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...  **
** **
** Tomasz Rola  mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[John Foust via cctalk]

At 05:55 AM 10/20/2018, Adam Sampson via cctalk wrote:
>Jim Manley via cctalk  writes:
>
>> Many are unaware that the largest fraction of CP/M licenses ever sold
>> were for the Microsoft Softcard for the Apple ][ (about 300,000 sold,
>> all told),
>
>Do you mean sold up to that point? Amstrad went on to sell several
>million PCWs with CP/M later in the 1980s. (They say 8 million on
>http://www.amstrad.com/products/archive/, but that includes the
>much less popular PCW16 which wasn't a CP/M machine.)

Thw Wikipedia page fot the Softcard has more numbers and dates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-80_SoftCard

- John

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Adam Sampson via cctalk]

Jim Manley via cctalk  writes:

> Many are unaware that the largest fraction of CP/M licenses ever sold
> were for the Microsoft Softcard for the Apple ][ (about 300,000 sold,
> all told),

Do you mean sold up to that point? Amstrad went on to sell several
million PCWs with CP/M later in the 1980s. (They say 8 million on
http://www.amstrad.com/products/archive/, but that includes the
much less popular PCW16 which wasn't a CP/M machine.)

-- 
Adam Sampson  

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Jim Manley via cctalk]

Just to be clear, it wasn't that the CGA hadn't been designed and put
into production by the launch of the PC, the demand for the CGA was
simply overwhelming compared with the much lower demand and relatively
greater supply of the MDA.  Plus, IBM had no experience selling into
retail, let alone non-business consumer channels, which had come to
expect "high-resolution" color graphics built into a system (e.g., on
the Apple ][ motherboard).  There were all sorts of distribution
mismatches for the PC where various package combinations were offered
through various channels that had no relation to reality, demand-wise.
They offered employee discounts thinking that the PC would need to be
promoted from as many directions as possible, not realizing what kind
of tiger they had by the tail.  Its suppliers suddenly had to start a
world-wide scramble just to meet the sudden increased demand for
resistors, let alone color graphics video ICs.

IBM wasn't even aware of the penetration of dial-up among consumers
and very small businesses, or they would have initially offered
modems, at least as options, if not in package combos.  Retailers who
understood the consumer and very small business markets quickly began
offering modems in response to the vacuum that IBM had created.
Another sign that IBM wasn't confident about the longevity of the PC
is that they outsourced the development of its OS to Microsoft,
believing that Microsoft owned CP/M because of an Apple ][ compatible
product described in the next paragraph.

A small business to IBM was much larger than the sizes of businesses
that Apple was typically serving at that time.  Many are unaware that
the largest fraction of CP/M licenses ever sold were for the Microsoft
Softcard for the Apple ][ (about 300,000 sold, all told), not S-100
systems (somewhere around 150,000 systems built by hobbyists, or sold
by small manufacturers).  The Softcard was a Z-80 based single-board
computer that plugged into an Apple ][ slot, equipped with its own
80x24 character x line black-and-white video output, RAM, etc., and
that shared Apple ][  electrical power and floppy disk drives.  The
Softcard was Microsoft's first really successful product, responsible
for its first tens of millions of dollars in revenue and profits.

The Softcard was developed by Seattle Computer Products, the same
two-man company in a Seattle garage that later sold its prototype
8086/8088 OS to Microsoft for $50,000.  Microsoft turned around within
a day and sold it to IBM via a _non-exclusive_ license (a critical
factor that allowed them to field MS-DOS, their self-branded version
of IBM's PC-DOS), for $3 million _plus_ about $50 per computer sold
with PC-DOS.  That model, updated for Windows, is the cash cow that's
still printing profits for Microsoft to this day.

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Paul Berger via cctalk]

On 2018-10-19 5:17 PM, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote:

On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 1:51 AM Jim Manley via cctalk 
wrote:


long before the Color Graphics Adapters were
available, about six months after launch, and the CGAs were only
produced in response to the completely unanticipated demand for the
PC.


Are you certain? My then boss* and I went to a Computerland store in
Denver** on August 12, 1981, to pick up a PC that he had preordered***. My
(possibly faulty) recollection was that they had both MDA and CGA adapters
on that day, though they might not have had the CGA monitor in stock.


I recall the day PC was announce or shortly a letter was sent to all the 
employees outlining an employee purchase plan.  The CGA adapter was 
certainly part of the initial offering as I ordered one almost 
immediately including a CGA adapter since with it I would not have to 
buy a monitor right away.  I received it less than 6 months later 
complete with a CGA adapter.  The biggest reason it took a few months to 
get it is the employee response was huge but only a percentage of the 
production was was allocated to employee sales.


Paul

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

long before the Color Graphics Adapters were
available, about six months after launch, and the CGAs were only
produced in response to the completely unanticipated demand for the
PC.


On Fri, 19 Oct 2018, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote:

Are you certain? My then boss* and I went to a Computerland store in
Denver** on August 12, 1981, to pick up a PC that he had preordered***. My
(possibly faulty) recollection was that they had both MDA and CGA adapters
on that day, though they might not have had the CGA monitor in stock.
Our purchase included a PC configured with keyboard, 64KB of RAM, a memory
expansion board with another 64KB of RAM, a floppy controller, one 160K
floppy drive, a serial card, an MDA card, an MDA monitor, and (not
installed) a CGA card, and IBM DOS 1.0. We used the CGA card with an NEC
RGB monitor, and not all of the colors were correct. The NEC monitor wasn't
designed for the PC, and I don't think it had an intensity signal at all,
so we only got eight colors rather than 16. IIRC, yellow was brown, or
perhaps vice versa, due to an oddity of how IBM encoded a particular
combination of the RGBI signals.
The software and documentation included CGA support from day one, so it
definitely was not an afterthought.
In addition to IBM DOS 1.0, we very quickly got a prerelease version of
QNX, and that was the first time I actually used a Unix-like operating
system.


My experience was similar.  I got the technical Reference Manual 
immediately.  I then had to wait a few months to get a computer.  But, 
there was no apparent shortage of boards or accessories.
I got a PC, with keyboard, 16K of RAM, Floppy Disk controller, async 
card, PC-DOS 1.00, and CGA board.
Since the parts were same/compatible with TRS80 ones, which were cheaper, 
I put in my own RAM, Tandon TM100-1s, and used a [CCTV] composite monitor.
I soon got a 192K (ECC!) RAM card (Boulder Creek?), and serial and 
parallel cards.


Much (10 years?) later, I got a deal on some surplus Wyse 700 video 
displays.  (1280x800?)



There was apparently some perception among some users that MDA was for 
"serious"/business use, and CGA for games.  Many of those same users then 
complained about lack of [graphic-oriented??] games for MDA.  Soon, there 
were efforts to provide rationalizations why graphics were "essential" for 
business use.



--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Bill Gunshannon via cctalk]

On 10/19/18 1:14 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
>
>
>>> IBM developed a Token Ring card for the PC in time for its launch
> IBM's initial networking for the PC (The PC Network) was broadband, based
> on technology from Sytek. 4Mb token ring was released later. Exact dates
> are in the manuals on bitsavers.
>
> http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/pc/pc_network/6322916_PC_Network_Technical_Reference_Sep84.pdf
>
> Another project (sigh..) has been to collect all the parts to put a Sytek
> network together.


I used to have a bunch of Sytek gear, including a StatMon.  I once wrote

a program in C on a 3B2 to collect, display and analyze the data from the

StatMon.  I also, working with a good friend who now teaches at Texas A

(unless he finally retired!) helped write a program to function as a DNS for

a Sytek Network.  Delivered a paper on it at the Sytek Users Group 
Conference

at NTSU in Denton, TX.  Good luck getting it running.  Hope you know a lot

about broadband networks because it ain't as easy as cable TV. :-)  I even

used to have a portable cable plant for explaining it to potential 
customers.

Those were the days.  Sigh

>
> I'm looking for a 50/50 Central Retransmission Unit, though I do have the
> little brother to it that IBM sold for the PC Network.
>
> http://bitsavers.org/pdf/sytek/brochures/LocalNet_50_50_Central_Retransmission_Unit_Brochure_Sep82.pdf


bill

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Eric Smith via cctalk]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 1:51 AM Jim Manley via cctalk 
wrote:

> long before the Color Graphics Adapters were
> available, about six months after launch, and the CGAs were only
> produced in response to the completely unanticipated demand for the
> PC.
>

Are you certain? My then boss* and I went to a Computerland store in
Denver** on August 12, 1981, to pick up a PC that he had preordered***. My
(possibly faulty) recollection was that they had both MDA and CGA adapters
on that day, though they might not have had the CGA monitor in stock.

Our purchase included a PC configured with keyboard, 64KB of RAM, a memory
expansion board with another 64KB of RAM, a floppy controller, one 160K
floppy drive, a serial card, an MDA card, an MDA monitor, and (not
installed) a CGA card, and IBM DOS 1.0. We used the CGA card with an NEC
RGB monitor, and not all of the colors were correct. The NEC monitor wasn't
designed for the PC, and I don't think it had an intensity signal at all,
so we only got eight colors rather than 16. IIRC, yellow was brown, or
perhaps vice versa, due to an oddity of how IBM encoded a particular
combination of the RGBI signals.

The software and documentation included CGA support from day one, so it
definitely was not an afterthought.

In addition to IBM DOS 1.0, we very quickly got a prerelease version of
QNX, and that was the first time I actually used a Unix-like operating
system.

Eric


* Jim Lauletta, founder of Apparat Inc, best known for TRS-80 products
including NewDOS/80

** on South University Boulevard somewhere near Evans Avenue, I think

*** despite that being technically impossible since the PC didn't
officially exist prior to that date; there weren't supposed to be any
preorders, but yet somehow there were

 QNX wasn't officially released for the PC until some time in 1982

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[ben via cctalk]

On 10/19/2018 1:16 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:

On Fri, 19 Oct 2018, William Sudbrink wrote:

Hmmm... so they were only "Kentucky Fried Computers" while they were
reselling other (IMSAI, etc.) brands?
You will never see a Northstar Horizon like case with a "Kentucky Fried
Computers" badge on it?


Probably not.
UNLESS, . . .
their earliest products?

I picked up a used BOOX N96 e-reader on ebay, and it is being shipped 
from Kentucky, does that count? :)

Ben.

RE: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Fri, 19 Oct 2018, William Sudbrink wrote:

Hmmm... so they were only "Kentucky Fried Computers" while they were
reselling other (IMSAI, etc.) brands?
You will never see a Northstar Horizon like case with a "Kentucky Fried
Computers" badge on it?


Probably not.
UNLESS, . . .
their earliest products?

RE: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

> https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1977-02/page/n103

On Fri, 19 Oct 2018, William Sudbrink wrote:

Wait!  It gets stranger.  I just squinted hard at that Byte Mag ad.
"Kentucky Fried Computers" is offering a "North Star Computers-FP8 &
disk"???


KFC seemed to have been mostly their STORE, and when they really got going 
with products, they started the North Star brandname?



Similarly, you will see "Morrow's Micro Stuff for Thinker Toys".
Continuing the parallel, "Thinker Toys" as a name was killed by CBS as 
being too close to their "Tinker Toys" trademark.

Morrow was at 1201 Tenth Street, which is/was a MUCH better neighborhood.
(only one block below San Pablo Avenue, and one block south of Albany 
(more upscale), with every block north or east being higher-end 
neighborhood)  Although Fantasy Junction used to have some space near KFC.


And, of course, everybody moved from Berkeley to San Leandro when they 
expanded, for the more industry friendly guvmint.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

RE: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[William Sudbrink via cctalk]

Wait!  It gets stranger.  I just squinted hard at that Byte Mag ad.

"Kentucky Fried Computers" is offering a "North Star Computers-FP8 &
disk"???

-Original Message-
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of William
Sudbrink via cctalk
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2018 2:15 PM
To: 'Fred Cisin'; 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'
Subject: RE: Microsoft-Paul Allen

Hmmm... so they were only "Kentucky Fried Computers" while they were
reselling other (IMSAI, etc.) brands?
You will never see a Northstar Horizon like case with a "Kentucky Fried
Computers" badge on it?

Bill

-Original Message-
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Fred Cisin
via cctalk
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2018 2:05 PM
To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'
Subject: RE: Microsoft-Paul Allen

On Fri, 19 Oct 2018, William Sudbrink wrote:
> Fred,
> Have you ever seen any actual "Kentucky Fried Computers" anything?
> Ads?  Marketing lit? Hardware? Letterhead?  Incorporation application?
> I've looked in the past and have never turned up anything.

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/newsletters/homebrew/V2_06/Homebrew_CC_J
un76.pdf


"Greenberg, Mark; Charles Grant (February 1977). "Kentucky Fried Computers 
advertisement". BYTE. 2 (2): pg 103. Slogan: "A Computer in Every Pot" 
Address was 2465 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710"

https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1977-02/page/n103
upper right hand corner quarter page ad


H.  where to find "Google streets" of 2465 4th street (east side of 
street, near Dwight Way) from 40 years ago?, . . .
10 years ago, when I was looking for pictures and memorabilia from those 
days, a friend of mine said that he thought that he remembered them having 
a small sign on the front of the building; but he's dead, and his 
collection of pictures of interest of Berkeley and Albany was dumpstered 
immediately after his death. Now, there is a biodiesel place and some 
maildrops there.

Hmmm.   Maybe, if you contacted KFC and asked their IP lawyers for details 
and anecdotes for how they have protected their trademark?,  . . .


---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

RE: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[William Sudbrink via cctalk]

Hmmm... so they were only "Kentucky Fried Computers" while they were
reselling other (IMSAI, etc.) brands?
You will never see a Northstar Horizon like case with a "Kentucky Fried
Computers" badge on it?

Bill

-Original Message-
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Fred Cisin
via cctalk
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2018 2:05 PM
To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'
Subject: RE: Microsoft-Paul Allen

On Fri, 19 Oct 2018, William Sudbrink wrote:
> Fred,
> Have you ever seen any actual "Kentucky Fried Computers" anything?
> Ads?  Marketing lit? Hardware? Letterhead?  Incorporation application?
> I've looked in the past and have never turned up anything.

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/newsletters/homebrew/V2_06/Homebrew_CC_J
un76.pdf


"Greenberg, Mark; Charles Grant (February 1977). "Kentucky Fried Computers 
advertisement". BYTE. 2 (2): pg 103. Slogan: "A Computer in Every Pot" 
Address was 2465 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710"

https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1977-02/page/n103
upper right hand corner quarter page ad


H.  where to find "Google streets" of 2465 4th street (east side of 
street, near Dwight Way) from 40 years ago?, . . .
10 years ago, when I was looking for pictures and memorabilia from those 
days, a friend of mine said that he thought that he remembered them having 
a small sign on the front of the building; but he's dead, and his 
collection of pictures of interest of Berkeley and Albany was dumpstered 
immediately after his death. Now, there is a biodiesel place and some 
maildrops there.

Hmmm.   Maybe, if you contacted KFC and asked their IP lawyers for details 
and anecdotes for how they have protected their trademark?,  . . .


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RE: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[William Sudbrink via cctalk]

Excellent!  Thanks very much!

Bill S.

-Original Message-
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Fred Cisin
via cctalk
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2018 2:05 PM
To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'
Subject: RE: Microsoft-Paul Allen

On Fri, 19 Oct 2018, William Sudbrink wrote:
> Fred,
> Have you ever seen any actual "Kentucky Fried Computers" anything?
> Ads?  Marketing lit? Hardware? Letterhead?  Incorporation application?
> I've looked in the past and have never turned up anything.

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/newsletters/homebrew/V2_06/Homebrew_CC_J
un76.pdf


"Greenberg, Mark; Charles Grant (February 1977). "Kentucky Fried Computers 
advertisement". BYTE. 2 (2): pg 103. Slogan: "A Computer in Every Pot" 
Address was 2465 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710"

https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1977-02/page/n103
upper right hand corner quarter page ad


H.  where to find "Google streets" of 2465 4th street (east side of 
street, near Dwight Way) from 40 years ago?, . . .
10 years ago, when I was looking for pictures and memorabilia from those 
days, a friend of mine said that he thought that he remembered them having 
a small sign on the front of the building; but he's dead, and his 
collection of pictures of interest of Berkeley and Albany was dumpstered 
immediately after his death. Now, there is a biodiesel place and some 
maildrops there.

Hmmm.   Maybe, if you contacted KFC and asked their IP lawyers for details 
and anecdotes for how they have protected their trademark?,  . . .


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RE: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Fri, 19 Oct 2018, William Sudbrink wrote:

Fred,
Have you ever seen any actual "Kentucky Fried Computers" anything?
Ads?  Marketing lit? Hardware? Letterhead?  Incorporation application?
I've looked in the past and have never turned up anything.


http://www.digibarn.com/collections/newsletters/homebrew/V2_06/Homebrew_CC_Jun76.pdf


"Greenberg, Mark; Charles Grant (February 1977). "Kentucky Fried Computers 
advertisement". BYTE. 2 (2): pg 103. Slogan: "A Computer in Every Pot" 
Address was 2465 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710"


https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1977-02/page/n103
upper right hand corner quarter page ad


H.  where to find "Google streets" of 2465 4th street (east side of 
street, near Dwight Way) from 40 years ago?, . . .
10 years ago, when I was looking for pictures and memorabilia from those 
days, a friend of mine said that he thought that he remembered them having 
a small sign on the front of the building; but he's dead, and his 
collection of pictures of interest of Berkeley and Albany was dumpstered 
immediately after his death. Now, there is a biodiesel place and some 
maildrops there.


Hmmm.   Maybe, if you contacted KFC and asked their IP lawyers for details 
and anecdotes for how they have protected their trademark?,  . . .

RE: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[William Sudbrink via cctalk]

I'd love to see it if you get the chance.

Thanks,
Bill S.

-Original Message-
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Al Kossow via 
cctalk
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2018 1:19 PM
To: cctalk@classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen



On 10/19/18 8:24 AM, William Sudbrink via cctalk wrote:
> Fred,
>
> Have you ever seen any actual "Kentucky Fried Computers" anything?
> Ads?  Marketing lit? Hardware? Letterhead?  Incorporation application?


There is something in the Jim Warren West Coast Computer Faire correspondence 
we have

http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102739208

I'd have to pull it to see what is there.


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Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 10/19/18 10:39 AM, Paul Koning wrote:
> 
> In spite of IBM marketing claims, 802.5 data link layer is not a well behaved 
> design.

Apple had to re-design their TR Nubus card, which used the TI chipset, and 
switch
to IBM's because it couldn't be made to work reliably.

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On Oct 19, 2018, at 1:14 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
>>> IBM developed a Token Ring card for the PC in time for its launch
> 
> IBM's initial networking for the PC (The PC Network) was broadband, based
> on technology from Sytek. 4Mb token ring was released later. Exact dates
> are in the manuals on bitsavers.
> 
> http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/pc/pc_network/6322916_PC_Network_Technical_Reference_Sep84.pdf

That's basically Ethernet except very slow (2 Mb/s, even slower than 
"Experimental Ethernet").  But it's described as CSMA/CD, and it uses the 
much-cursed Intel 82586 Ethernet chip.

Token ring ended up a failure because it was slow and completely incompatible 
with other 802 networks, from the backward addresses to the bizarre 
pseudo-multicast scheme to the source routing bridges.  In spite of IBM 
marketing claims, 802.5 data link layer is not a well behaved design.  Later 
token rings, like FDDI, used the 802.4 token passing algorithm ("Timed token"), 
avoiding the 802.5 algorithms completely.

paul

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 10/19/18 8:24 AM, William Sudbrink via cctalk wrote:
> Fred,
> 
> Have you ever seen any actual "Kentucky Fried Computers" anything?
> Ads?  Marketing lit? Hardware? Letterhead?  Incorporation application?


There is something in the Jim Warren West Coast Computer Faire correspondence 
we have

http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102739208

I'd have to pull it to see what is there.

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

>> IBM developed a Token Ring card for the PC in time for its launch

IBM's initial networking for the PC (The PC Network) was broadband, based
on technology from Sytek. 4Mb token ring was released later. Exact dates
are in the manuals on bitsavers.

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/pc/pc_network/6322916_PC_Network_Technical_Reference_Sep84.pdf

Another project (sigh..) has been to collect all the parts to put a Sytek
network together.

I'm looking for a 50/50 Central Retransmission Unit, though I do have the
little brother to it that IBM sold for the PC Network.

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/sytek/brochures/LocalNet_50_50_Central_Retransmission_Unit_Brochure_Sep82.pdf

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Josh Dersch via cctalk]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 12:51 AM Jim Manley via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> I
>
> IBM developed a Token Ring card for the PC in time for its launch
> based on this intent, long before the Color Graphics Adapters were
> available, about six months after launch, and the CGAs were only
> produced in response to the completely unanticipated demand for the
> PC.
>

I didn't think IBM introduced token ring until 1985 or so...

- Josh

>
>

RE: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[William Sudbrink via cctalk]

Fred,

Have you ever seen any actual "Kentucky Fried Computers" anything?
Ads?  Marketing lit? Hardware? Letterhead?  Incorporation application?

I've looked in the past and have never turned up anything.

Thanks,
Bill

-Original Message-
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Fred Cisin
via cctalk
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2018 6:01 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

Thank you for the correction.

Yes, companies often change their names.

Gary Kildall founded Intergalactic Digital Research.

George Morrow founded Thinker Toys, which later became Morrow's Micro 
Stuff, and eventually Morrow Designs.

Greenberg and Grant founded Kentucky Fried Computers, which became North 
Star (due to a lawsuit from a chicken place), and eventually NorthStar

Can you pinpoint when the microcomputer businesses lost their sense of 
humor?


On Thu, 18 Oct 2018, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:

> I would like to make a correction: Paul Allen helped to create
> Micro-Soft not MicroSoft as I had written. When trying to preserve
> computing history it's really not permissable to make such an
> error.(It's the prof. in me!)
>
> Happy Computing!
>
> Murray  :)
>

--
Fred Cisin  ci...@xenosoft.com
XenoSofthttp://www.xenosoft.com
PO Box 1236 (510) 234-3397
Berkeley, CA 94701-1236


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Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Warner Losh via cctalk]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 7:04 AM Ethan via cctalk 
wrote:

> > I thought it was just hilarious that Microsoft chose The Rolling
> > Stones' "Start Me Up" for the theme song at the launch of Windows 95,
> > unaware of the later lyrics in the song (not played during the launch,
>
> IIRC They wanted R.E.M.'s "End of the world as we know it" but R.E.M. said
> no.
>

That would have been awesome in the same kind of terrible way...  And it
would be a nice personal tie in for me... this song was on the radio, by
coincidence, when I was headed up the hill going out of town catching the
last view of my college campus after I graduated and was moving to
California...

"and I feel fine"

Warner

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Ethan via cctalk]

I thought it was just hilarious that Microsoft chose The Rolling
Stones' "Start Me Up" for the theme song at the launch of Windows 95,
unaware of the later lyrics in the song (not played during the launch,


IIRC They wanted R.E.M.'s "End of the world as we know it" but R.E.M. said 
no.


- Ethan

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Jim Manley via cctalk]

I thought it was just hilarious that Microsoft chose The Rolling
Stones' "Start Me Up" for the theme song at the launch of Windows 95,
unaware of the later lyrics in the song (not played during the launch,
oddly enough), "You make a grown man cry-y-y ... You make a grown man
cry-y-y ... You make a grown man cry-y-y ... "

Who says they lost their sense of humor ... oh, you mean them being
humorous on purpose, not making themselves a laughingstock ... mmm,
not so much.

As for when the lawyers showed up, Bill Gates' father was one of the
most wealthy corporate lawyers in Seattle, so it wasn't much of a risk
for Bill III to drop out of Hahvahd to pursue the launching of
Micro-Soft.  Hahvahd would have allowed him to return, especially
given Daddy's large checks written to cover Bill III's tuition, fees,
books, room/board, etc.

So, Bill II and Bill III undoubtedly had frequent and detailed
discussions about how to deal with IBM (non-exclusive licensing, IBM's
onerous non-disclosure agreements, IBM's likely motivations for
getting into the PC business, etc.).  The PC was developed by the IBM
Data Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, FL - the keyboards,
monitors, and terminals folks.  IBM only saw the PC as a short-term,
standalone product that, in the best case, would simply become a
not-quite-dumb terminal that would increase the access to and sales of
their office AS/400 systems and System 370 and other mainframe
products.

IBM developed a Token Ring card for the PC in time for its launch
based on this intent, long before the Color Graphics Adapters were
available, about six months after launch, and the CGAs were only
produced in response to the completely unanticipated demand for the
PC.  IBM's suppliers were brow-beaten during the early years of PC
production because they suddenly were faced with a need to produce
millions, then tens of millions of parts per year.  This was far
beyond their past parts demand experience, and challenged them in ways
companies never had been before.  As Steve Jobs said in a full-page ad
taken out in the Wall Street Journal upon the PC's launch, "Welcome,
IBM.  Seriously."  Seriously, indeed.

The Token Ring card barely sold any units, in no small part because
IBM was completely unaware that microcomputer hobbyists and small
businesses were using modems, especially the Hayes SmartModem
products, to access on-line services such as The Well, GEnie,
CompuServe, etc.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

All the Best,
Jim

Volunteer Senior Docent
Artifact Restoration Engineer
Geek 2.0 Artifact
Computer History Museum

On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 10:58 PM Wayne S via cctalk
 wrote:
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Oct 18, 2018, at 15:01, Fred Cisin via cctalk  
> > wrote:
> >
> > Thank you for the correction.
> >
> > Yes, companies often change their names.
> >
> > Gary Kildall founded Intergalactic Digital Research.
> >
> > George Morrow founded Thinker Toys, which later became Morrow's Micro 
> > Stuff, and eventually Morrow Designs.
> >
> > Greenberg and Grant founded Kentucky Fried Computers, which became North 
> > Star (due to a lawsuit from a chicken place), and eventually NorthStar
> >
> > Can you pinpoint when the microcomputer businesses lost their sense of 
> > humor?
>
> When the Lawyers got involved?
> >
> >> On Thu, 18 Oct 2018, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
> >>
> >> I would like to make a correction: Paul Allen helped to create
> >> Micro-Soft not MicroSoft as I had written. When trying to preserve
> >> computing history it's really not permissable to make such an
> >> error.(It's the prof. in me!)
> >>
> >> Happy Computing!
> >>
> >> Murray  :)
> >
> > --
> > Fred Cisin  ci...@xenosoft.com
> > XenoSofthttp://www.xenosoft.com
> > PO Box 1236 (510) 234-3397
> > Berkeley, CA 94701-1236
> >

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Wayne S via cctalk]

Sent from my iPhone

> On Oct 18, 2018, at 15:01, Fred Cisin via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> Thank you for the correction.
> 
> Yes, companies often change their names.
> 
> Gary Kildall founded Intergalactic Digital Research.
> 
> George Morrow founded Thinker Toys, which later became Morrow's Micro Stuff, 
> and eventually Morrow Designs.
> 
> Greenberg and Grant founded Kentucky Fried Computers, which became North Star 
> (due to a lawsuit from a chicken place), and eventually NorthStar
> 
> Can you pinpoint when the microcomputer businesses lost their sense of humor?

When the Lawyers got involved?
> 
>> On Thu, 18 Oct 2018, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
>> 
>> I would like to make a correction: Paul Allen helped to create
>> Micro-Soft not MicroSoft as I had written. When trying to preserve
>> computing history it's really not permissable to make such an
>> error.(It's the prof. in me!)
>> 
>> Happy Computing!
>> 
>> Murray  :)
> 
> --
> Fred Cisin  ci...@xenosoft.com
> XenoSofthttp://www.xenosoft.com
> PO Box 1236 (510) 234-3397
> Berkeley, CA 94701-1236
> 

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Bill Degnan via cctalk]

When I was teaching at the U of Delaware I helped make a computer exhibit
containing 4 of the Microsoft logos:
http://www.vintagecomputer.net/UofDelaware/microsoft/large_MS_poster_final.pdf
Bill

On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 6:01 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk 
wrote:

> Thank you for the correction.
>
> Yes, companies often change their names.
>
> Gary Kildall founded Intergalactic Digital Research.
>
> George Morrow founded Thinker Toys, which later became Morrow's Micro
> Stuff, and eventually Morrow Designs.
>
> Greenberg and Grant founded Kentucky Fried Computers, which became North
> Star (due to a lawsuit from a chicken place), and eventually NorthStar
>
> Can you pinpoint when the microcomputer businesses lost their sense of
> humor?
>
>
> On Thu, 18 Oct 2018, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
>
> > I would like to make a correction: Paul Allen helped to create
> > Micro-Soft not MicroSoft as I had written. When trying to preserve
> > computing history it's really not permissable to make such an
> > error.(It's the prof. in me!)
> >
> > Happy Computing!
> >
> > Murray  :)
> >
>
> --
> Fred Cisin  ci...@xenosoft.com
> XenoSofthttp://www.xenosoft.com
> PO Box 1236 (510) 234-3397
> Berkeley, CA 94701-1236
>
>

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Thank you for the correction.

Yes, companies often change their names.

Gary Kildall founded Intergalactic Digital Research.

George Morrow founded Thinker Toys, which later became Morrow's Micro 
Stuff, and eventually Morrow Designs.


Greenberg and Grant founded Kentucky Fried Computers, which became North 
Star (due to a lawsuit from a chicken place), and eventually NorthStar


Can you pinpoint when the microcomputer businesses lost their sense of 
humor?



On Thu, 18 Oct 2018, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:


I would like to make a correction: Paul Allen helped to create
Micro-Soft not MicroSoft as I had written. When trying to preserve
computing history it's really not permissable to make such an
error.(It's the prof. in me!)

Happy Computing!

Murray  :)



--
Fred Cisin  ci...@xenosoft.com
XenoSofthttp://www.xenosoft.com
PO Box 1236 (510) 234-3397
Berkeley, CA 94701-1236