Old MS-DOS & WIN Software

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that Allison may have mentioned these words:
> >
> >Subject: Re: Old MS-DOS & WIN Software
> >   From: Wouter <cctech at retro.co.za>
> >   Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 14:42:36 +0200
> >     To: cctech at classiccmp.org
> >
> >Hi all
> >
> >>Mind you if somebody came  up with a better OS when the 386's came out,
> >>would we have windows today?
> >
> >It's called "Linux". And yea, we still have Windoze... :-)
> >
> >W

For the poster that said Linux was way too late for the Winders 
'revolution' (revulsion? ;-) I got my '386 in '90, Linux (and others) were 
around in 91-92ish, IIRC...

>At the time of the 386 there was:
>CCPM, at least three *nix, OS/2 and DOS.

At least -- and OS/2 was 1) actually decent, and 2) still went nowhere. :-/

>   Winders was what, version 1.0?

Nah, 2.0. (with sub-flavors of '286 & '386, IIRC). At least by the time 
386's became affordable (under $2k) and that was the SX at that.

>The problem is not that we have windows, thats Apples fault. ;)

And Xerox by proxy... ;-)

>   It's how we arrived at it.

Yup.

>Funny with I hear of new OS or a port of an older one the first two questions
>are can it does it run X and can it network.  Networking is not the big 
>deal...

At first I read that as "unimportant" where I was about to disagree, then I 
reread it and caught more of the next sentence:

>...it used to be and you see everything doing it even minimal machines.

That would be me. I just can't seem to live without some form of networking 
now - and to me, even my 8-bitters seem a little bit "unlivable" because I 
just can't plug 'em into the network.

>   Windowing
>however is never trivial, like a fungus it grows and  it eats ram, cpu and
>everything in sight.

And yet, this is the "killer app" that I really could not care less about. 
I actually purchased MultiVue for OS-9 on my CoCo3, and by the time that 
poor 1.8Mhz 6809 got done multitasking the bejeebers out of the GUI, there 
wasn't enough left for my apps. Never really cared for a GUI ever since, 
but I use them when I have to.

>I was happy for years running DOS with Norton Commander (midnight commander
>for the linux user).

Never cared for either one of 'em myself... but that's just me. I still 
install it on my linux boxen "just in case" tho.

>   What I didn't get with windows (V3.1, W9x) was a real
>multitasking OS.

What you didn't get with Winders was a real OS. ;-) Back then, a lot of 
people said that an OS was only an OS if it could run everything hooked to 
the computer. Winders (not until 95, or some say NT) couldn't do that. And 
with my experiences in OS-9, I tended to agree. ;-)

>   Why?  Because DOS wasn't a multitasking OS. There lies the
>problem.

And yet, for certain things it was very useful. I bought Winders 3.1 (drove 
200 miles roundtrip for it) for two reasons: True Type Fonts and a better 
driver for my Canon BJ-10ex portable inkjet. The documents I could produce 
were much better than anything I could produce with DOS apps of the time.

If people chose Winders solely because they believed it was the best thing 
available, I'd have no problem with it's current status. It's when it's 
jammed down peoples' throats thru M$ pressuring computer companies to 
bundle it with machines (and sometimes even tied to the hardware warranty 
like on my Fujitsu laptop!) that's most assuredly wrong.

Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger  --  SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers
  _±±_                          zmerch at 30below.com
(©||®)  If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
  _)(_   disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.