Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!dayton!umn-cs!umnd-cs!news From: news@umnd-cs.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: IBM new 'standard' Message-ID: <467@umnd-cs.D.UMN.EDU> Date: Sat, 28-Mar-87 02:23:22 EST Article-I.D.: umnd-cs.467 Posted: Sat Mar 28 02:23:22 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 29-Mar-87 09:10:46 EST References: <701@imsvax.UUCP> <879@maynard.BSW.COM> <1029@rpics.RPI.EDU> <871@bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP> Reply-To: rhealey@ub.UUCP (Rob Healey) Organization: U. of Minnesota, Duluth - Computing Services Lines: 52 In article <871@bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP> madd@bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP (Jim "Jack" Frost) writes: >>Vision of TRS-80, Apple II, et al. Don't you think we deserve better >>consideration than that? > >I've used Apple II machines. They have a damn good support base. New >software all the time. It's a matter of installed systems -- how many ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ~700,000 TRS-80, Z-80, machines, not a bad market size for a GOOD program. >people have IBM PC's? Lots. Expect support for a long time. > >The TRS-80 line was different. TRS-80's were bad machines from start >to finish. Take apart one sometime. Most of the older ones have >cardboard for circuit boards. Not exactly good designing. Also, the ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Haven't seen this. Model's 3 & 4 are very good designs. >operating system they offer(ed) is (was) not so good. I'll take LS-DOS/TRSDOS over Apple's DOS any day; can you say UGLY,^D, file manipulation? I don't know what kind of TRS-80 Mr. Frost used/saw, if any. All the TRS-80's I've worked with had PC boards of equal or better quality than PC's. As far as the OS goes it is leaps and bounds better than the OS apple has/had. From 1979 on the Dos had I/O redirection and other features that weren't "discovered" till the MSDOS machines showed up. There is alot of TRS-80 software as well; the TRS-80 line has been around since August of 1977. One point missing in this article is the fact that most of the ideas in MS-DOS came from other systems that were available before the IBM PC. If I have a dime for everytime I heard someone say, "Oh, this xxx was first used by MS-DOS", when in fact it had been used in an earlier dos, I'd be a VERY rich man. Some more comments: 8 bit machines can do about 70% of what a PC can do. Because of the brain-damaged intel design of the 8088, segment memory addressing, alot of what you assume would need 16 bit power really doesn't. A good 8 bit programmer, using bankswitching, can usually achieve the same results as his 8088 16 bit counter-part. I'll admit that there are applications where 16 or more bits are nice to have, huge databases and such, but alot of the more common uses of PC's, like word processing, can be done just as well on VERY inexpensive 8 bit systems; 16 bits doesn't make a computer better, good programming makes a computer better. Take a look at the few remaining 8 bit machines, I think you'll be surprised at what you will find. -Rob Healey University of Minnesota, Duluth rhealey@ub.d.umn.edu #include