Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!littlei!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
From: leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: RFC: old PC, AT compatibility
Message-ID: <872@bucket.UUCP>
Date: 3 May 88 08:43:56 GMT
References: <4330064@hpindda.HP.COM>
Reply-To: leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Organization: Rick's Home Grown Unix; Portland, OR
Lines: 27

In article <4330064@hpindda.HP.COM> mintz@hpindda.HP.COM (Ken Mintz) writes:
<I have 2 programs that I was surprised could not run on the AT.  Can
<someone explain why (or provide an intelligent guess)?
<
<   (1) BASICA (very old) caused the AT to hang, altho ctl-atl-del worked.
<       BTW, "BASICA" is the same as "GW-BASIC", right?

No, it isn't. IBM's BASICA.COM *requires* the presence of IBM "cassette
BASIC" ROMs on the motherboard. GW-BASIC is a self-contained .EXE.
BASIC.COM and BASICA.COM won't run on clones. GW-BASIC will.

GW-BASIC also has *at least* one extra command (LCOPY, does the software
equivalent of <shift><prtsc>). Also many vendors have had extra features
added to the GW-BASIC for their machines. Tandy, for example has EFA 
support built-into the BASIC for their 3000 and 4000 models.

<   (2) Multiplan (very old) also caused the AT to hang, altho ctl-atl-del
<       again worked.  MP is copy-protected on a 360K floppy that I tried
<       to run from both the 1.2M and 360K drives.

Spend the $50 and upgrade it to the current version. The current version
(3.0?) isn't copy protected and can be installed on a hard disk.
-- 
Leonard Erickson		...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'.
You know... I'd rather be a hacker."