Micro Reality
Jim Semkiw
Reality'? From what I can find out, McDonnel Douglas US wrote it, they no
longer exist, McDonnell Douglas England will not support it, nor sell it.
Does anyone have a version that they wish to sell? Is there any product
more current that does the same thing? I read a msg here awhile back
stating something from SB and a C++ program language that is similiar and
is for windows, is that software similiar?
jim w stephens
If the unit is a Micro 1000 or such, it is probably a Convergent Technology
box running "cdos". The box was a 186 running a little faster than an XT.
There was a msdos emulator or environment you can load to run dos 2.0 level
programs on.
I think that all you have on this box would run essentially unchanged on a
normal dos box if you move to Revelation.
The MicroReality stuff was a recompile of revelation as near as I ever
saw of it. The latest Revelation release compatable with Micro-reality is
Revelation 6G I think.
You could move from there to arev or advanced revelation or whatever they
have out today with more work, but the Rev6 should be a direct sidestep.
You should go somewhere else if you are not porting an existing application,
since the Rev6 and Arev are somewhat obsolete even now.
Jim
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Jim Stephens j...@world.std.com Irvine, Ca
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Henry Eggers
: If the unit is a Micro 1000 or such, it is probably a Convergent Technology
: box running "cdos". The box was a 186 running a little faster than an XT.
[dele]
: The MicroReality stuff was a recompile of revelation as near as I ever
[dele]
: Jim
Thanks for the reminder.
So, Garrett, how about a history of the Rudolph project, in easy installments?
--
Henry V. Eggers | Opinions are
heg...@ca.mdis.com | solely mine.
Garrett Hildebrand
: jim w stephens (j...@world.std.com) wrote:
: : If the unit is a Micro 1000 or such, it is probably a Convergent Technology
: : box running "cdos". The box was a 186 running a little faster than an XT.
: [dele]
: : The MicroReality stuff was a recompile of revelation as near as I ever
: [dele]
: : Jim
: Thanks for the reminder.
: So, Garrett, how about a history of the Rudolph project, in easy installments?
If memory serves, Project Rudolph was begun in the summer of 1983 for the
purpose of providing a version of Reality on IBM PC's by Christmas of that
year.
I was on this project, and as a result, spent about half of my life flying
up to Lindhurst (?) North of Seattle to work with Paul Ostby, David Ostby,
Roger Harpel and Mike Nourse to ensure that the work they did on Microdata's
behalf was more or less on track. Of course, these guys are the original
folks at Cosmos, which was later bought out.
So, MicroReality was actually a highly modified version of Revalation, in a
sense. In fact, it probably would have grown to be a big force in the market
if it weren't for the hardware mentality at Microdata/MDC at the time.
What went wrong is that the margins on the IBM PC were not good enough for
the folks in charge, so they went off to find another machine which would
support the architecture. It was decided to use Convergent Technologies' NGEN
instead, and a deal was cut. Thus began the end.
The change cause everything to fall behind schedule. Also, Convergent had
high failure rates with the boxes we got from them, and they had trouble
delivering the promised volume of units, as I recall. The result is that
the whole effort became a fairly major fiasco, and a belated attempt was
made to revive the PC version of MicroReality for the domestic market. This
made some headway, but by that time you-know-who had a good hold on the PC
market place, and the rest is history.
BTW, I worked on that final PC version quite a bit, including the upload/
download code, in conjunction with Colin Seabridge. Recently, I went
digging through my files to see if I could find a floppy with the original
install information on it, and I did; the problem is that the media had
decayed to the point that I could not read it.
Into the trash it goes. Sorry about that.
Best of luck on the search for PC MicroReality. I would recommend trying
Sam Craighead in Ohio -- look for his id on Compuserve. Sam, are you out
there?
: --
: Henry V. Eggers | Opinions are
: heg...@ca.mdis.com | solely mine.
--
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Garrett D. Hildebrand | - "What the winner doesn't know, the gambler
| understands..." - Heart
E-mail: g...@ACM.org | - "Well you're still fucking peasants as far as I
Compuserve: 73311,1067 | can see." - John Lennon