Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!apple!well!farren
From: farren@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: New Thread: What _REALLY_ makes a product successful?
Message-ID: <25072@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 27 May 91 22:22:25 GMT
References: <24947@well.sf.ca.us> <1991May24.140704.24092@swbatl.sbc.com>
Distribution: usa
Lines: 46

jburnes@swbatl.sbc.com (Jim Burnes - 235-7444) writes:

>farren@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) writes:

>> The reason for the 8088 processor was simply because at the time the PC was
>> designed, the biggest expense was in the support chips, NOT the processor.

>Hmmm...not really.  Originally IBM wanted to use the 68000, but Motorola
>had another month or something until it rolled out quantity of it and
>IBM wanted it yesterday.

Take it to alt.folklore.computers.  It wasn't "another month or something",
it was much closer to another year or something.

>If IBM had waited a month or two the entire computer market would have
>changed.  We would have had machines with huge quantities of memory
>and multitasking long ago.

Oh, really?  And you're going to try and reconcile this with the "only
another month" theory?  Or the Mac, which was the first really popular
68000 machine, with neither huge quantites of memory (who, by the way,
was going to *pay* for that memory, when 64K RAM chips were running $50
each?) nor multitasking.

>Oh get real...my IMSAI followed all DTE/DCE recommendations and the use
>of CR AND LF for a simple carriage return is not only redundant but
>a pain in the ass to process in text files.

1: Perhaps IMSAI did - most S-100 I/O boards did not.  Female connectors,
by and large.

2: CR AND LF are not a simple carriage return.  Didn't say it was.  It
is, however, a succinct description of what you actually want.  The
carriage returns, and then you move to the next line.  Two different
actions.  Admittedly, not a lot of use on a glass TTY (although I've
seen some applications that *did* make use of it), but still - there's
no reason you can't deal differently internally to any application
you're running.

>The reason why nobody else used it is because its just plain stupid.

Many others used it.  Not in the "let's reinvent the wheel, unless
it was DEC who invented it first" world of micros, though.

-- 
Mike Farren 				     farren@well.sf.ca.us