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From: Daniel James <dan...@me.invalid>
Newsgroups: uk.comp.homebuilt
Subject: Re: 3.5in floppy drives advice please
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:25:14 +0100
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In article <e5utu755df0d2ridams4ortv102r6en...@4ax.com>, Martin wrote:
>> The OS has its origins in things like the Supervisor program from the
>> Atlas in Manchester, and that is as recent at the early 1960s (a couple
>> of years before OS 360). It's a sobering thought that the whole concept
>> of and Operating System is only about 50 years old.
> 
> IBM360 was launched in 1964.

That'd be about right, yes ... and the Atlas Supervisor dates from around 
1962.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Computer_%28Manchester%29

> >Anyhow, *I* was talking about diskettes, ans assumed that you were, too.
> 
> I replied to
> 
> >>>>> MS (or rather their
> software) was never "the only OS around" ...
> >>>>> certainly not by the
> time 3.5" floppies arrived. They were used on the
> >>>>> Mac before the PC!
> 
> The subject of the sentence was OS.

If we consider the (slightly simplified) passage:

   MS was never the only OS around, certainly not by the time
   3.5" floppies arrived.

It's clear that we're talking about two things: "MS's OS" (singular) and 
'3.5" floppies' (plural). When the next sentence is:

   They were used on the Mac before the PC!
   
it's pretty clear that we're now talking about the (plural) floppies and not 
the (singular) OS ... especially as it would have been untrue to assert that 
the Mac had an OS before the PC (even if you don't consider the likes of DOS 
or CP/M-86 to be OSes).

.. and, of course, the subject of the thread is "3.5in floppy drives advice 
please".

> Never mind :-)

I don't. Sorry if I contributed to the confusion in any way.

Cheers,
 Daniel.