10 worst PCs
Robert
a.. 10. Dell Dimension 4600 (2003)
b.. 9. New Internet Computer (2000)
c.. 8. eMachines eTower 366c (1999)
d.. 7. Commodore VIC 20 (1981)
e.. 6. Texas Instruments TI-99/4 (1979)
f.. 5. IBM PS/1 (1990-1994)
g.. 4. Apple III (1980-1984)
h.. 3. Coleco Adam (1983)
i.. 2. Mattel Barbie PC (1999-2000)
j.. 1. Packard Bell PCs (1986-1996))
Any comments?
Robert
AZ Nomad
>Robert
How do you define "worst"? I have a dell dimension 4300 still running just
find and there's absolutely nothing wrong with except for the proprietary
Dell nonsense common to most other dells as well. What exactly was so bad
about the 4600?
What was so bad about the TI-99/4 within it's niche? (all in the keyboard
housing computers) The first series was incredibly overpriced due to the cost
of the color monitor, but the later models were fine and brought 16 bit
computing well ahead of its time.
The ones on that list that I agree are truly awfull machines are the
Coleco Adam, and most Packard Bell PCs. Others are simply overpriced
(Apple III). Some I've never heard of (etower 366c, barbie PC, new internet
computer).
You forgot the commadore PET with the rectangular keyboard matrix and the
timex/sinclair with its horrible membrane keyboard and unreliable 16K memory
pack connector. The first generation Radio Shack TRS-80 with its keyboard
debounce bug also qualifies for a place on that list. Also the IBM PC Jr.
And the Osborne I (shudder).
Scott McPhillips [MVP]
> d.. 7. Commodore VIC 20 (1981)
I would be inclined to cut some slack for the VIC 20. I think it cost
less than $200 if memory serves. Heck of a deal for that price.
P.S. I bought one with company's petty cash, it worked.
--
Scott McPhillips [VC++ MVP]
Peter Flass
> On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:47:26 -0800, Robert <sab...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>>PC World's List of the 10 Worst PCs of All Time
>> a.. 10. Dell Dimension 4600 (2003)
>> b.. 9. New Internet Computer (2000)
>> c.. 8. eMachines eTower 366c (1999)
>> d.. 7. Commodore VIC 20 (1981)
>> e.. 6. Texas Instruments TI-99/4 (1979)
>> f.. 5. IBM PS/1 (1990-1994)
>> g.. 4. Apple III (1980-1984)
>> h.. 3. Coleco Adam (1983)
>> i.. 2. Mattel Barbie PC (1999-2000)
>> j.. 1. Packard Bell PCs (1986-1996))
>>Any comments?
>
>
>>Robert
>
...
>
> What was so bad about the TI-99/4 within it's niche? (all in the keyboard
> housing computers) The first series was incredibly overpriced due to the cost
> of the color monitor, but the later models were fine and brought 16 bit
> computing well ahead of its time.
>
> The ones on that list that I agree are truly awfull machines are the
> Coleco Adam, and most Packard Bell PCs. Others are simply overpriced
> (Apple III). Some I've never heard of (etower 366c, barbie PC, new internet
> computer).
>
> You forgot the commadore PET with the rectangular keyboard matrix and the
> timex/sinclair with its horrible membrane keyboard and unreliable 16K memory
> pack connector. The first generation Radio Shack TRS-80 with its keyboard
> debounce bug also qualifies for a place on that list. Also the IBM PC Jr.
> And the Osborne I (shudder).
All the small computers (TI, Commodore, Coleco, Radio Shack) filled an
important niche. They were (IMHO) the earliest affordable computers. (I
define affordable a bit lower than most). I liked the TI. As I'vr
said, I liked the color graphics and the builtin 3-voice sound
generator. The biggest problem with all of them was the reliance on the
horrible cassette interface. Floppies were way too expensive.
The Osborne was the first (IIRC) "luggable" computer, no small
accomplishment.
Quadibloc
> What was so bad about the TI-99/4 within it's niche? (all in the keyboard
> housing computers)
Well, although the TI 9900 was a 16-bit chip, TI sold expensive
machines using that chip at the same time - the 990/4.
So, the good people at TI did not want competition - the BASIC on the
chip used special memory that was very slow. So it *did* have some
important faults. Also, to use add-on items, you needed an expensive
add-on peripheral housing.
However, I'm surprised they listed the PS/1 and not the PCjr in that
list - that computer caused howls of outrage when it came out,
justified or not. (Some of the criticism of the original keyboard, and
the praise of its replacement, was wrong-headed; the spacing and feel
of both keyboards was identical.)
John Savard
Morten Reistad
I can attest for the Packard Bell stuff. Bu far the
most incompatible, unreliable, expensive thrash ever made.
The VIC, TI-99 and the Coleco Adam were never
intended as PC's, but were gaming machines.
I never saw the Barbie PC. Was it pink?
-- mrr
Frank McCoy
k.. 0: Sinclair ZX-80.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_ZX80
--
_____
/ ' / ™
,-/-, __ __. ____ /_
(_/ / (_(_/|_/ / <_/ <_
Eric Sosman
Two words: Chiclet keyboard.
--
Eric Sosman
eso...@acm-dot-org.invalid
Michael Black
The Coleco Adam was intended as a low end full blown system, complete
with daisy wheel printer and a decent separate keyboard.
The TI-99 certainly wasn't a "gaming machine", it too was a full computer
that at least saw lots of use in educational work.
Even the VIC-20, it came along at a time when home computers had been
around for a while, and the public was ready. It was a low end machine,
giving the power of a computer from just a few years before at a better price.
Michael
Chris Adams
> Two words: Chiclet keyboard.
I was wondering how that one could have been left out.
--
Chris Adams <cma...@hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
Michael Black
> Once upon a time, Eric Sosman <eso...@acm-dot-org.invalid> said:
>> Two words: Chiclet keyboard.
>
> I was wondering how that one could have been left out.
Maybe because the writer who made the list (rereading the original
post, it would seem the list came from a magazine, and it may have
been the same list that was hashed out months ago) wasn't old enough
to experience the early days of home computers? So they are relying
on second hand information?
Michael
Philip Nasadowski
et...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Michael Black) wrote:
> Maybe because the writer who made the list (rereading the original
> post, it would seem the list came from a magazine, and it may have
> been the same list that was hashed out months ago) wasn't old enough
> to experience the early days of home computers?
If they're listing PC Toys, yeah. Sure PB and Dell make junk, but
neither will be around for long.
I'd say 10 worst 'home computers' (I'm using this because not all were
"PCs", some were just sexed up videogames, really)
1 Coleco Adam. Misengineered to the max. Wasn't the printer the power
supply, too?
2 TI 99/4A. Yeah Yeah. But, it sold poorly, was overpriced, and sucked
anyway.
3 C= PET. All of them. My school district loved 'em cause 1 Apple = 3
PETs. But no software for them.
4 TRS-80. TRASH 80!!! Radio Shack managed to fuck up everything about
them. IIRC, you couldn't do 3rd party SW for them either. Whoops.
5 Osborne. I hear it was deep down a likable machine. But the Kaypro
still kicked it's ass (bigger screen, better built).
6 The pre ST Atari machines. The ST actually wasn't that bad.
7 Any of the early nonstandard PC compatibles. Oh hell, even today,
they're not very standard.
8 Mac 128k. The Mac was an amazing machine, still is. But 128k was
just not enough memory for it.
9 That funky pre PC IBM. Yeah, that one. Didn't it unleash that
cartridge backup tape thingy format, though?
10 My Toshiba laptop at work. It's one of those silly Tablet PCs too,
which i guess is supposed to be an advantage, though i can't see how,
since XP Tablet edition sucks more than XP whatever edition. Oh yeah,
and it locks up and is falling apart...
Quadibloc
> I can attest for the Packard Bell stuff. Bu far the
> most incompatible, unreliable, expensive thrash ever made.
I am sorry to hear that.
That is a tragedy, given that the Packard Bell name is immortalized in
history. It is a tragedy if the PCs bearing that name failed to carry
on the glorious tradition established by the Packard-Bell 250
transistorized magnetostrictive delay-line computer, or the Packard-
Bell 440 user-microprogrammable 24-bit computer.
I suppose if I start seeing a PC-compatible machine called the "Recomp
IV" in stores, I should watch out. There *was* a Royal McBee personal
organizer on sale recently...
Someone is getting away with selling a hand-held vacuum cleaner under
the name Univac. At least *here*, since Unisys is still actively in
the computer business, we can count on an effort being made to ensure
quality.
John Savard
Quadibloc
> 7 Any of the early nonstandard PC compatibles. Oh hell, even today,
> they're not very standard.
I suppose you're thinking of things like the Sanyo MBC 555, or the
early MS-DOS machine from Texas Instruments.
> 9 That funky pre PC IBM. Yeah, that one. Didn't it unleash that
> cartridge backup tape thingy format, though?
Of course, you mean the IBM 5100 Portable Computer.
Yes, for a personal computer, it had a small screen, and was
overpriced. But if you couldn't read the 80-column screen, there was a
switch to display the left 40 characters or the right 40 characters!
John Savard
D.J.
<nasa...@usermale.com> wrote:
]1 Coleco Adam. Misengineered to the max. Wasn't the printer the power
]supply, too?
Power cord route: computer then printer then wall socket. So if your
printer had to be taken to the shop for repairs, no electricity for
the computer.
]4 TRS-80. TRASH 80!!! Radio Shack managed to fuck up everything about
]them. IIRC, you couldn't do 3rd party SW for them either. Whoops.
When I first saw computer use across a university campus, some of
the secretaries had Scripsit on 5.25 inch floppy drives, external
ribbon cables, connected to Tandy Model IVs. The other secretaries
had IBM Selectrics. The secretaries with power had the Selectrics.
We used alot of erasers/rubbers cleaning the cards in those Model
IVs. Solder-edge connectors. Crappy design.
]7 Any of the early nonstandard PC compatibles. Oh hell, even today,
]they're not very standard.
Tandy SX-1000s ? Same university, used for WordPerfect 4.1, a
spreadsheet, and a database program. Those three programs filled up
most of the 10 meg hard drives we bought for them. [chuckle] The
hard drives were on computer cards. More than one 'helpful' office
person would take them out and dust them, drop it, then ask if their
files could be recovered with the broken pc card. They wouldn't stop
pulling the hard drive cards out to dust the computers, until the
Dean told them that damaged machines would come out of their
paychecks. Then we got the Tandy TX-1000s, 3.5 inch hard case
drives. Lots of people had all of their files on 5.25 floppies, and
it was unpleasant with the yelling at us while we moved files over.
The Dean had to get after them for bothering us while we transferred
their files to the new machines.
JimP.
--
http://www.linuxgazette.net/ Linux Gazette
http://crestar.drivein-jim.net/testy/ March 25, 2007 1E AD&D blog
http://www.drivein-jim.net/ March 2, 2007: Drive-In movie theatres
http://poetry.drivein-jim.net/ poetry blog Mar 21, 2007
Walter Bushell
IBM PC junior. It was an abomination of abominations.
Also I think the 6300 performa from Apple was called "Road Apples" by
the mac fans.
http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/IBM-PC-Junior.htm
The IBM PC Junior was manufactured from 1983 to 1985. It used the 8088
processor, came with a CGA monitor and a single 5-1/4 inch floppy disk
drive. The PC Jr. was not a big market success. The hardware interfaces
were all non-standard, and it was not able to compete with other
portables coming onto the market. It sold for about $1,300 when it was
(re? WSB) leased in October 1983.
Chris Adams
>6 The pre ST Atari machines. The ST actually wasn't that bad.
Any particular reason? I learned computers on Atari 8 bit systems. I
certainly don't remember anything that would rate them as among the
worst home systems ever.
AZ Nomad
>Once upon a time, Eric Sosman <eso...@acm-dot-org.invalid> said:
>> Two words: Chiclet keyboard.
>I was wondering how that one could have been left out.
I mentioned the commadore pet in the first followup.
winston...@yahoo.com
> On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:47:26 -0800, Robert <sab...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >PC World's List of the 10 Worst PCs of All Time
> > a.. 10. Dell Dimension 4600 (2003)
> > b.. 9. New Internet Computer (2000)
> > c.. 8. eMachines eTower 366c (1999)
> > d.. 7. Commodore VIC 20 (1981)
> > e.. 6. Texas Instruments TI-99/4 (1979)
> > f.. 5. IBM PS/1 (1990-1994)
> > g.. 4. Apple III (1980-1984)
> > h.. 3. Coleco Adam (1983)
> > i.. 2. Mattel Barbie PC (1999-2000)
> > j.. 1. Packard Bell PCs (1986-1996))
> >Any comments?
> >Robert
>
> How do you define "worst"? I have a dell dimension 4300 still running just
> find and there's absolutely nothing wrong with except for the proprietary
> Dell nonsense common to most other dells as well. What exactly was so bad
> about the 4600?
>
> What was so bad about the TI-99/4 within it's niche? (all in the keyboard
> housing computers) The first series was incredibly overpriced due to the cost
> of the color monitor, but the later models were fine and brought 16 bit
> computing well ahead of its time.
The guy writing the article doesn't know his history. The reason it
was bundled with a "TV" monitor was because the FCC was hard to get a
TV modulator past at the time. This is all documented in the TI
Timeline by a TI engineer who was there. Once they were able to get a
modulator past the FCC, which then lessened the restrictions, the
console by itself sold for about $550 in 1979/1980.
>
> The ones on that list that I agree are truly awfull machines are the
> Coleco Adam, and most Packard Bell PCs.
I've a Coleco Adam that hasn't erased any data tapes yet. Guess I
won't push it (if I ever put it back in service). And I had a Packard
Bell PC (refurb) that I bought in 1999. It was actually a pretty
decent PC.
> Others are simply overpriced
> (Apple III). Some I've never heard of (etower 366c, barbie PC, new internet
> computer).
>
> You forgot the commadore PET with the rectangular keyboard matrix and the
> timex/sinclair with its horrible membrane keyboard and unreliable 16K memory
> pack connector. The first generation Radio Shack TRS-80 with its keyboard
> debounce bug also qualifies for a place on that list. Also the IBM PC Jr.
> And the Osborne I (shudder).
The TRS-80 model I had problems with the Expansion bus, sort of like
the Timex Sinclair with the 16K memory pack.
winston...@yahoo.com
> 2 TI 99/4A. Yeah Yeah. But, it sold poorly, was overpriced, and sucked
> anyway.
Before the C64 took the lead in late 1983, it was a market leader in
sales during the time period.
2.8 million were sold before all was said and done.
As for overpriced, before the crash, you could pick up a TI-99/4A in
1982 for $200 + $300 for a Peripheral Expansion System loaded with a
disk controller/disk drive, 32k and your pick of TI Writer word
processor or Microsoft Multiplan. Almost a complete system. Add about
$150 for a RS232 card ($650) and a printer and it was a complete
system at that point.
Mind you, I never would buy a printer from the computer manufacturer
back in the day. Too much markup for a rebadged printer. My first
(real) printer was a Gemini 10x for $299. My first actual printer was
an Alphacom-81 thermal printer for $99.
winston...@yahoo.com
> In article <5a-dnYy7H8nPrJXbnZ2dnUVZ_hGdn...@comcast.com>,
>
> "Robert" <sab...@comcast.net> wrote:
> > PC World's List of the 10 Worst PCs of All Time
> > a.. 10. Dell Dimension 4600 (2003)
> > b.. 9. New Internet Computer (2000)
> > c.. 8. eMachines eTower 366c (1999)
> > d.. 7. Commodore VIC 20 (1981)
> > e.. 6. Texas Instruments TI-99/4 (1979)
> > f.. 5. IBM PS/1 (1990-1994)
> > g.. 4. Apple III (1980-1984)
> > h.. 3. Coleco Adam (1983)
> > i.. 2. Mattel Barbie PC (1999-2000)
> > j.. 1. Packard Bell PCs (1986-1996))
> > Any comments?
>
> > Robert
>
> IBM PC junior. It was an abomination of abominations.
Ugh! I adopted one once, then after realizing what a piece of garbage
it was, turned it out.
It was slow, had proprietary interfaces (even power cord! IBM didn't
learn anything from the Jr for the PS/2 fiasco) it had limited memory
b/c it shared the memory with the video, no DMA, and hard to add a 2nd
disk drive. I remember Home Computer Magazine touting the PCjr as the
"new Prince"! Ha ha...
>
> Also I think the 6300 performa from Apple was called "Road Apples" by
> the mac fans.
I have a 6290CD Performa. I still use it. Supposedly powerful, but
something about the CPU cycles being halved due to the architecture.
And a serial port with no handshaking!
Quadibloc
> Any particular reason? I learned computers on Atari 8 bit systems. I
> certainly don't remember anything that would rate them as among the
> worst home systems ever.
I'm not sure it was that bad, but I do remember it had a *few*
negatives.
The Atari 400 had a membrane keyboard; to get one with real keys, you
had to move up to the Atari 800. But the later slim black ones had
real keyboards too. On both the Atari 400 and 800, there was an extra
key that led to one of the shift keys being displaced. And didn't you
have to buy an extra cartridge to get BASIC?
John Savard
Pete Fenelon
> PC World's List of the 10 Worst PCs of All Time
> a.. 10. Dell Dimension 4600 (2003)
> b.. 9. New Internet Computer (2000)
> c.. 8. eMachines eTower 366c (1999)
I have no idea about these Wintel toys.
> d.. 7. Commodore VIC 20 (1981)
> e.. 6. Texas Instruments TI-99/4 (1979)
Both of these machines taught millions of people to program. The VIC in
particular was a machine you could *understand* right from schematics
through to ROM routines, it taught me more about low-level programming
than almost any micro I ever used. A lot of people feel the same about
the ZX80 or ZX81, or early homebrew 8080 boxes. There was a real sense
that you were *in control* of baby home micros like that - and to get
much out of them you had to be a cunning and devious programmer. OK, the
display was crap and the cassette player glacial in its lack of speed,
but in terms of fun-per-buck, it's between the VIC and the first VAX I
used ;)
> f.. 5. IBM PS/1 (1990-1994)
This is here and PCjr isn't?
> g.. 4. Apple III (1980-1984)
The wrong machine at the wrong time, symptomatic of Apple being
Balkanised into too many divisions. However, early motherboard problems
apart, it wasn't a *bad* computer - in many ways it's what the //e
should and could've been (with a bit more compatibility).
> h.. 3. Coleco Adam (1983)
The daisywheel printer was once described as "sounding like a fat person
sitting on a flimsy cane chair". ;)
The nastiest microcomputers i've ever used would have to encompass...
...Tandy MC10
...Video Technology Laser 100
...Oric 1 (if only for the horrendous ROM bugs, the Atmos fixed most of them)
...Sinclair QL (early roms... by JS it wasn't *too* bad).
...Atari 400. That bloody keyboard, the awful BASIC and you knew there
was loads of power locked up inside it.
...MPF MicroProfessor II - an Apple clone seemingly made out of bits of
old cardboard and rubber.
...an early Intertec Superbrain that kept its discs spinning constantly,
killing them in days...
...Commodore 16. What, precisely, was the point of this?
...Amstrad PPC-640. Yes, it was portable. Sometimes you could nearly see
the screen. And some of your keypresses registered, sometimes.
...Osborne 1. Great concept, fantastic... but a nightmare to use and
arm-wrenching to carry.
...Camputers Lynx - some Very Bright People Indeed made a truly manky
little micro.
pete
--
pe...@fenelon.com "how many clever men have called the sun a fool?"
John Varela
(in article <nasadowsk-8B7EE...@news.verizon.net>):
> 4 TRS-80. TRASH 80!!! Radio Shack managed to fuck up everything about them.
> IIRC, you couldn't do 3rd party SW for them either. Whoops.
Wrong wrong wrongity wrong. I myself wrote a few little game programs for
the Model 1 and sold them through Creative Computing, and Microsoft sold
software for it. I recall breaking the copy protection (for my own use only)
of Microsoft Adventure for the TRS-80 Model 1. That was fun, when personal
computing was fun. I used Visicalc on the TRS-80 to do my income taxes, and
a quarter-century later I'm still using a descendent of that spreadsheet with
OpenOffice on the iMac.
The principal problems with the TRS-80 Model 1 (the only kind I ever had)
were the crummy graphics so games had to be very primitive, the lack of an
RS-232 interface and a troublesome way of mounting the accessory RS-232 card,
and the poor quality connectors for the cable to the Expansion Interface.
That last was fixed by soldering on third-party gold-plated edge connectors.
Tandy's disk operating system was OK, and there were several third-party OS's
for the TRS-80 that were far superior to PC-DOS.
--
John Varela
Trade NEW lamps for OLD for email.
Eric Sosman
I never saw it, either. It was out of my ken.
CBFalconer
The 'cheap' IBM with the chiclet keyboard.
--
Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
<http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Bill Vermillion
Robert <sab...@comcast.net> wrote:
>PC World's List of the 10 Worst PCs of All Time
> a.. 10. Dell Dimension 4600 (2003)
> b.. 9. New Internet Computer (2000)
> c.. 8. eMachines eTower 366c (1999)
> d.. 7. Commodore VIC 20 (1981)
> e.. 6. Texas Instruments TI-99/4 (1979)
> f.. 5. IBM PS/1 (1990-1994)
> g.. 4. Apple III (1980-1984)
> h.. 3. Coleco Adam (1983)
> i.. 2. Mattel Barbie PC (1999-2000)
> j.. 1. Packard Bell PCs (1986-1996))
>Any comments?
>
One comment on Packard Bell.
When they were introduced their adds said "America grew up
listening to us. They still do".
But the people building PB computers just bought the name
Packard Bell from the original company who used to build
radios and TV's with that name.
So they started out with a lie in their adds and with their
propriety MBs and PSes you couldn't get them fixed easily
when they broke.
Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com
Stan Barr
>On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 22:21:22 -0400, Philip Nasadowski wrote
>(in article <nasadowsk-8B7EE...@news.verizon.net>):
>
>> 4 TRS-80. TRASH 80!!! Radio Shack managed to fuck up everything about them.
>
>> IIRC, you couldn't do 3rd party SW for them either. Whoops.
>
>Wrong wrong wrongity wrong.
Indeed. There were a number of assemblers and a few compilers, even a c
compiler, for the venerable Model 1. One of the first things I did with
mine was implement Fig Forth. Of course a maximum of 48K ram cramped your
style somewhat!
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr stanb .at. dial .dot. pipex .dot. com
(Remove any digits from the addresses when mailing me.)
The future was never like this!
Bill Vermillion
AZ Nomad <azno...@PremoveOBthisOX.COM> wrote:
>On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:47:26 -0800, Robert <sab...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
>>PC World's List of the 10 Worst PCs of All Time
>> a.. 10. Dell Dimension 4600 (2003)
>> b.. 9. New Internet Computer (2000)
>> c.. 8. eMachines eTower 366c (1999)
>> d.. 7. Commodore VIC 20 (1981)
>> e.. 6. Texas Instruments TI-99/4 (1979)
>> f.. 5. IBM PS/1 (1990-1994)
>> g.. 4. Apple III (1980-1984)
>> h.. 3. Coleco Adam (1983)
>> i.. 2. Mattel Barbie PC (1999-2000)
>> j.. 1. Packard Bell PCs (1986-1996))
>>Any comments?
>
>>Robert
>
>
>find and there's absolutely nothing wrong with except for the proprietary
>Dell nonsense common to most other dells as well. What exactly was so bad
>about the 4600?
>
>What was so bad about the TI-99/4 within it's niche? (all in the keyboard
>housing computers) The first series was incredibly overpriced due to the cost
>of the color monitor, but the later models were fine and brought 16 bit
>computing well ahead of its time.
>
>(Apple III). Some I've never heard of (etower 366c, barbie PC, new internet
>computer).
>
>You forgot the commadore PET with the rectangular keyboard matrix and the
>timex/sinclair with its horrible membrane keyboard and unreliable 16K memory
>pack connector. The first generation Radio Shack TRS-80 with its keyboard
>debounce bug also qualifies for a place on that list. Also the IBM PC Jr.
>And the Osborne I (shudder).
The keyboard bounce on the TRS-80 model I had a sw fix that cleaned
that up. I ran the first BBS in Orlando on a Model I and it ran
for 33,000 consecutive power-on hours, with the exceptions
from Florida Flicker & Flash saw fit to have power interuptions.
Bill Vermillion
John Varela <OLDl...@verizon.net> wrote:
>On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 22:21:22 -0400, Philip Nasadowski wrote
>(in article <nasadowsk-8B7EE...@news.verizon.net>):
>
>> 4 TRS-80. TRASH 80!!! Radio Shack managed to fuck up everything about them.
>
>> IIRC, you couldn't do 3rd party SW for them either. Whoops.
>Wrong wrong wrongity wrong. I myself wrote a few little game
>programs for the Model 1 and sold them through Creative
>Computing, and Microsoft sold software for it. I recall breaking
>the copy protection (for my own use only) of Microsoft Adventure
>for the TRS-80 Model 1.
Microsoft Adventure???
I only knew of the 8-10 Adventure games that Scott Adams - of
Adventure International wrote.
I pointed Scott to the place where he could get disk drives to
speed up his work [they were hard to get unless you knew somone].
And his dubbing operations was a big sheet of plywood with
a lot of TRS-80 cassette recorders ganged together so each
was sort of an original - IOW - not run through a duplicator.
He wrote and article in Byte with his original Adventure
interpreter/compiled, and he found he didn't have a copy, and he
called me. I did have a copy. He had made a disk for me of one of
the later adventures, and with my trusty disk editor I undeleted
the interpreter/compiler and sent it off to him.
They were fun games.
Scott said he priced his games for the cost of two nights
at the movies - as it would take about the same time to win them.
That was one of the strangest pricing strategies I've heard of.
>The principal problems with the TRS-80 Model 1 (the only kind
>I ever had) were the crummy graphics so games had to be very
>primitive, the lack of an RS-232 interface and a troublesome
>way of mounting the accessory RS-232 card, and the poor quality
>connectors for the cable to the Expansion Interface. That
>last was fixed by soldering on third-party gold-plated edge
>connectors.
I had no problems with the RS-232 interface - as if you will note
in a previous post I ran a BBS for almost 4 years, before it would
not reliably reboot from SW. I had the first TBBS outside of
Denver, and because of the 'stability' :-) of the I's they felt
the only way to be sure things were OK was to perform a reboot
when the called hung up.
Things were a bit crude in those days.
I put on the gold edge connectors, and I also put a tantalum
capacitor in the EI to keep the drives spinning a bit longer as the
original one could change value over time and the drive spin would
time out at times.
>Tandy's disk operating system was OK, and there were several
>third-party OS's for the TRS-80 that were far superior to PC-DOS.
LDOS was one of the best and with it's filters that you could
insert anywhere in the chain it got me a great early start on Unix.
And the devices were *SI *SO - for serial in and out. *DO * DI for
display In and out, and *KI and *KO for keyboard in an out.
You could link *KI to *SI and then link *SO to *DI and have
a system with which you could talk to the modem with no
software involved for quicky logins where you didn't have to
save your session.
Michael Black
>
> Microsoft Adventure???
>
> I only knew of the 8-10 Adventure games that Scott Adams - of
> Adventure International wrote.
>
> at the movies - as it would take about the same time to win them.
>
Yes, I know it's not him, but when I first saw the name "Scott Adams"
in connection with Dilbert, the name made me think it was the same
guy. It's telling that if you had a computer before a certain date,
the name would mean adventure games, while if you came later, it
would mean Dilbert.
Michael
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> I only knew of the 8-10 Adventure games that Scott Adams - of
> Adventure International wrote.
as opposed to the earlier mainframe adventure?
Rick Adams' history page
http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/a_history.html
some old email trying to track down the port to CMS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email780405 780405
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email780405b 780405
i.e. somebody (at tymshare?) had ported the fortran version to
CMS.
old post that has mention of "microsoft version of adventure"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#33 Adventure Games (Was: Navy orders supercomputer)
other old posts/threads mentioning adventure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#169 Crowther (pre-Woods) "Colossal Cave"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#44 Call for folklore - was Re: So it's cyclical.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#12 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#46 Any DEC 340 Display System Doco ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#69 IBM system 370
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#40 The real history of computer architecture: the short form
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#34 Playing games in mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#49 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#57 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#0 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#1 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#2 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#4 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#56 Xah Lee's Unixism
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#20 Whatever happened to IBM's VM PC software?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#45 History of performance counters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#38 Systems Programming for 8 Year-olds
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#18 Question about Dungeon game on the PDP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#16 Newsgroups (Was Another OS/390 to z/OS 1.4 migration
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#15 Fast action games on System/360+?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#25 Fast action games on System/360+?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#28 Fast action games on System/360+?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#3 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#18 The History of Computer Role-Playing Games
John Varela
(in article <JFKuJ...@wjv.com>):
> In article <0001HW.C22EC50D...@news.verizon.net>, John Varela
> <OLDl...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 22:21:22 -0400, Philip Nasadowski wrote
>> (in article <nasadowsk-8B7EE...@news.verizon.net>):
>>
>>> 4 TRS-80. TRASH 80!!! Radio Shack managed to fuck up everything about
>>> them.
>>
>>> IIRC, you couldn't do 3rd party SW for them either. Whoops.
>
>> Wrong wrong wrongity wrong. I myself wrote a few little game
>> programs for the Model 1 and sold them through Creative
>> Computing, and Microsoft sold software for it. I recall breaking
>> the copy protection (for my own use only) of Microsoft Adventure
>> for the TRS-80 Model 1.
>
> Microsoft Adventure???
It was the original mainframe Adventure --- the one in Colossal Cave ---
ported to the TRS-80 by Microsoft. It differed from original Adventure in
having a Software Den full of computers off of the Swiss Cheese Room. Travel
between the Software Den and the Building was effected by the magic word
LWPI. It seems to me that I once knew what LWPI stood for, but no longer (if
ever).
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Pete Fenelon <pe...@stratos.fenelon.com> wrote:
> ...Camputers Lynx - some Very Bright People Indeed made a truly manky
> little micro.
Ah the machine with the six week BASIC.
--
C:>WIN | Directable Mirror Arrays
The computer obeys and wins. | A better way to focus the sun
You lose and Bill collects. | licences available see
| http://www.sohara.org/
Pete Fenelon
> On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:54:16 +0100
> Pete Fenelon <pe...@stratos.fenelon.com> wrote:
>
>> ...Camputers Lynx - some Very Bright People Indeed made a truly manky
>> little micro.
>
> Ah the machine with the six week BASIC.
>
And it showed. Awful string handling, single-character variable names...
ok, it did have some structure to it, but on the whole... no.
I'm not saying the machine was eccentric, but "alternate green"? ;) I
fear that was just an excuse for poor design ;)
winston...@yahoo.com
> On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:45:02 -0400, Bill Vermillion wrote
>
>
>
> > In article <0001HW.C22EC50D000B1ECCB019F...@news.verizon.net>, John Varela> >> (in article <nasadowsk-8B7EE9.22212326032...@news.verizon.net>):
>
> >>> 4 TRS-80. TRASH 80!!! Radio Shack managed to fuck up everything about
> >>> them.
>
> >>> IIRC, you couldn't do 3rd party SW for them either. Whoops.
>
> >> Wrong wrong wrongity wrong. I myself wrote a few little game
> >> programs for the Model 1 and sold them through Creative
> >> Computing, and Microsoft sold software for it. I recall breaking
> >> the copy protection (for my own use only) of Microsoft Adventure
> >> for the TRS-80 Model 1.
>
> > Microsoft Adventure???
>
> It was the original mainframe Adventure --- the one in Colossal Cave ---
> ported to the TRS-80 by Microsoft. It differed from original Adventure in
> having a Software Den full of computers off of the Swiss Cheese Room. Travel
> between the Software Den and the Building was effected by the magic word
> LWPI. It seems to me that I once knew what LWPI stood for, but no longer (if
> ever).
Was there a TI-99 there? LWPI is a mnemonic of the 990/99xx series of
TI, short for Load Workspace Pointer Immediate - giving you a new set
of registers.
Seems that BLWP (Branch and Load Workspace Pointer) would have been a
better choice, since it both loads a new workspace pointer AND changes
your Program Counter location.
jmfb...@aol.com
CBFalconer <cbfal...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Robert wrote:
>>
>> PC World's List of the 10 Worst PCs of All Time
>> a.. 10. Dell Dimension 4600 (2003)
>> b.. 9. New Internet Computer (2000)
>> c.. 8. eMachines eTower 366c (1999)
>> d.. 7. Commodore VIC 20 (1981)
>> e.. 6. Texas Instruments TI-99/4 (1979)
>> f.. 5. IBM PS/1 (1990-1994)
>> g.. 4. Apple III (1980-1984)
>> h.. 3. Coleco Adam (1983)
>> i.. 2. Mattel Barbie PC (1999-2000)
>> j.. 1. Packard Bell PCs (1986-1996))
>> Any comments?
>
>The 'cheap' IBM with the chiclet keyboard.
Query: Do chiclets grow up?
'ey, CBF ;-)
/BAH
jmfb...@aol.com
Pete Fenelon <pe...@stratos.fenelon.com> wrote:
>Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>> On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:54:16 +0100
>> Pete Fenelon <pe...@stratos.fenelon.com> wrote:
>>
>>> ...Camputers Lynx - some Very Bright People Indeed made a truly manky
>>> little micro.
>>
>> Ah the machine with the six week BASIC.
>>
>
>And it showed. Awful string handling, single-character variable names...
Eh? 26 variables and that's it?
/BAH
jmfb...@aol.com
<GROAN> I never heard of that system until this list
was posted.
/BAH
Michael Black
> On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:54:16 +0100
> Pete Fenelon <pe...@stratos.fenelon.com> wrote:
>
>> ...Camputers Lynx - some Very Bright People Indeed made a truly manky
>> little micro.
>
> Ah the machine with the six week BASIC.
>
There was the Sphere, it must have been an early 6800-based computer.
One review said it used an existing BASIC, and ran it on an emulator,
which meant really slow operation.
Obviously, to get on this "list", you have to have a level of success
in order to be noticed first.
Michael
Michael Black
I gather it was a pretty generic system, but yes it was pink.
It must have been from Mattel, or at least licensed by them,
because the "Barbie" wasn't just a nickname for a pink computer,
it was a "Barbie computer".
I saw one in the window of a used computer store some years back. You
couldn't miss it, the pink really jumped out.
It's on the same level as the Mickey Mouse tv sets and DVD players I've
seen in flyers in recent years, ie the equipment is nothing significant,
but it's got the brand in place.
There might have even been a "Hot Wheels" computer at the same time to
sell to boys. I seem to recall there was an identical computer at
the time aimed at boys. It couldn't have been "Major Matt Mason"
since those action figures were decades in the past by the time of
these computers.
Michael
Pete Fenelon
>
> Obviously, to get on this "list", you have to have a level of success
> in order to be noticed first.
>
You mean the COMX-35 is out? ;)
David Powell
jmfb...@aol.com in alt.folklore.computers wrote:
If a single char variable name is good enough for TECO...
Regards
David P.
Steve O'Hara-Smith
You should have seen the source listings - there were typically
several pages of code (Z80 assembler of course) between strange one line
comments that served only as cryptic reminders to the author of what he was
thinking before going to sleep. Labels were of course uninformative.
*Nobody* wanted to try bug hunting in it :)
The Lynx wasn't too bad to do assembler coding on and add odd
hardware (eg. an SEM) to - I never had to use the BASIC, although I did
get to pick the author's brains for useful entry points in it :)
winston...@yahoo.com
...
> There might have even been a "Hot Wheels" computer at the same time to
> sell to boys. I seem to recall there was an identical computer at
> the time aimed at boys. It couldn't have been "Major Matt Mason"
> since those action figures were decades in the past by the time of
> these computers.
Yes, they had a "Hot Wheels" computer for boys at the time...
I wonder where the "Crossdresser Ken" computer was for those who were
undecided?
Steve O'Hara-Smith
"winston...@yahoo.com" <winston...@yahoo.com> wrote:
In a plain brown paper wrapper sold under the counter - except in
the more liberally minded countries :)
John Varela
(in article <1175075626.4...@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>):
> On Mar 27, 10:20 pm, John Varela <OLDla...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:45:02 -0400, Bill Vermillion wrote
>> (in article <JFKuJp....@wjv.com>):
>>>
>>> Microsoft Adventure???
>>
>> It was the original mainframe Adventure --- the one in Colossal Cave ---
>> ported to the TRS-80 by Microsoft. It differed from original Adventure in
>> having a Software Den full of computers off of the Swiss Cheese Room.
>> Travel
>> between the Software Den and the Building was effected by the magic word
>> LWPI. It seems to me that I once knew what LWPI stood for, but no longer
>> (if
>> ever).
>
> Was there a TI-99 there?
Not that I recall. As best I can recollect, there were a lot of unnamed
computers, and if you tried to take one a programmer emerged from behind the
arras and did something horrible to you---made all your treasures vanish or
something like that.
> LWPI is a mnemonic of the 990/99xx series of
> TI, short for Load Workspace Pointer Immediate - giving you a new set
> of registers.
> Seems that BLWP (Branch and Load Workspace Pointer) would have been a
> better choice, since it both loads a new workspace pointer AND changes
> your Program Counter location.
I wouldn't have thought Microsoft was developing software for the TRS-80 on a
TI-99, but who knows what those people might do? When the IBM PC came out
Gates abandoned development for the TRS-80 and I have never forgiven him for
that.
John Varela
(in article <eudmhp$8qk...@s970.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>):
In Australia they grow up to become chooks, according to a current thread in
alt.usage.english.
winston...@yahoo.com
> On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 05:53:46 -0400, winston19842...@yahoo.com wrote
> (in article <1175075626.477124.202...@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>):
ISTR an adventure game for the TI-99 written by "Microsoft Adventure",
but it wasn't a remake of "Colossal Cave". The only format of
"Colossal Cave" I know of for the TI is in two datafiles for the
"Adventure" cartridge, which was a loader for Scott Adams type
adventures.
Bill Vermillion
In email from Scott a couple of years ago he used
this as his sig.
Scott Adams (Not Dilbert, Adventure!)
Haven't heard from him for about 5 or so years.
Bill Vermillion
Hm. I never knew MS did that - but in the end I had all
of Scott Adams games - I bought about 6 or so - and he gave me
an 8" CP/M disk of the rest. That was a LONG time ago.
Bill Vermillion
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <ly...@garlic.com> wrote:
>b...@wjv.com (Bill Vermillion) writes:
>> I only knew of the 8-10 Adventure games that Scott Adams - of
>> Adventure International wrote.
>as opposed to the earlier mainframe adventure?
Right. He used to work down-range in missile tracking in the
early-mid 70s. I recall he said he had a Sol-20, but then I
checked and found it was a Sphere.
I see by his site that he has his adventures for downloads
in various formats including the TI-89 Calculator and the Palm
Pilot.
With the copius spare time on an island somewhere in the Atlantic
he wrote many games and patterned his Adventure after the orignal
one.
On the original it took me awhile to realize that the message
"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike" really
weren't identical :-( So much for observation.
Bill Vermillion
Well I don't know about MS. I was Beta testing what they were
calling Level III Basic - extensions to the RS BASIC.
It didn't have as many holes/mistreaks as any current Windows
machine SW - but that was because it needed to run in about 16K :-)
Michael Black
> In article <m3zm5yl...@garlic.com>,
> Anne & Lynn Wheeler <ly...@garlic.com> wrote:
>>b...@wjv.com (Bill Vermillion) writes:
>>> I only knew of the 8-10 Adventure games that Scott Adams - of
>>> Adventure International wrote.
>
>>as opposed to the earlier mainframe adventure?
>
> Right. He used to work down-range in missile tracking in the
> early-mid 70s. I recall he said he had a Sol-20, but then I
> checked and found it was a Sphere.
>
> http://www.msadams.com
>
> I see by his site that he has his adventures for downloads
> in various formats including the TI-89 Calculator and the Palm
> Pilot.
>
so just like p-code he just had to port the interperter to the next
computer, and then the actual adventure game was ready?
MIchael
Bill Marcum
<et...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
>
> Your memory of history is faulty.
>
> The Coleco Adam was intended as a low end full blown system, complete
> with daisy wheel printer and a decent separate keyboard.
>
If I remember correctly, the Adam could be bought as a complete system
or as an upgrade for the Colecovision game system. Either way it could
still play Colecovision games.
--
* Simunye is on a oc3->oc12
<daem0n> simmy: bite me. :)
<Simunye> daemon: okay :)
Steve O'Hara-Smith
b...@wjv.com (Bill Vermillion) wrote:
> Well I don't know about MS. I was Beta testing what they were
> calling Level III Basic - extensions to the RS BASIC.
>
> It didn't have as many holes/mistreaks as any current Windows
> machine SW - but that was because it needed to run in about 16K :-)
I will never forget a coworker coming jubilantly down the stairs at
Inelegant^WIntelligent Software jubilantly shouting "We've done it 16K
BASIC in a 4K ROM". Of course what he meant was that he had a BASIC with
all the features of Microsoft "16K" BASIC inside 4K. Even then they had
bloated code :)
jmfb...@aol.com
John Varela <OLDl...@verizon.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 08:20:09 -0400, jmfb...@aol.com wrote
>(in article <eudmhp$8qk...@s970.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>):
>>> The 'cheap' IBM with the chiclet keyboard.
>>
>> Query: Do chiclets grow up?
>
>In Australia they grow up to become chooks, according to a current thread in
>alt.usage.english.
Kewl. That's a new word.
/BAH
jmfb...@aol.com
Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 28 Mar 07 12:22:31 GMT
>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>
>> In article <qpopd4-...@fenelon.com>,
>> Pete Fenelon <pe...@stratos.fenelon.com> wrote:
>> >Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>> >> On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:54:16 +0100
>> >> Pete Fenelon <pe...@stratos.fenelon.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> ...Camputers Lynx - some Very Bright People Indeed made a truly manky
>> >>> little micro.
>> >>
>> >> Ah the machine with the six week BASIC.
>> >>
>> >
>> >And it showed. Awful string handling, single-character variable names...
>
> You should have seen the source listings - there were typically
>several pages of code (Z80 assembler of course) between strange one line
>comments that served only as cryptic reminders to the author of what he was
>thinking before going to sleep. Labels were of course uninformative.
>*Nobody* wanted to try bug hunting in it :)
The only way I'd know how to debug that would be hours of $Xing
through it using DDT. (alt-X executes one instruction at a time).
>
<snip>
/BAH
jmfb...@aol.com
Nope. 26 variables implies that you have to multiply
define them if you're doing anything more complicated
than a single run-thru of the code.
/BAH
Eric Sosman
Frank McCoy
>On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 04:45:00 GMT
>b...@wjv.com (Bill Vermillion) wrote:
>
>> Well I don't know about MS. I was Beta testing what they were
>> calling Level III Basic - extensions to the RS BASIC.
>>
>> It didn't have as many holes/mistreaks as any current Windows
>> machine SW - but that was because it needed to run in about 16K :-)
>
> I will never forget a coworker coming jubilantly down the stairs at
>Inelegant^WIntelligent Software jubilantly shouting "We've done it 16K
>BASIC in a 4K ROM". Of course what he meant was that he had a BASIC with
>all the features of Microsoft "16K" BASIC inside 4K. Even then they had
>bloated code :)
Then there was VTL-2. ;-}
Complete interpreter/editor/immediat-mode in only 768 *bytes* of ROM.
I once wrote an assembler and then a compiler in VTL-2.
(Talk about hard-to-read code!)
The language was GREAT for small programs to do something *right now*.
Faster and much easier than even BASIC for simple problems.
But you *could* write big programs in it as well.
I just don't recommend it.
(Yes, the language is still around; and even runs under DOS, though
incredibly bloated from being compiled in 'C'. Complete, as always,
with source-code.)
--
_____
/ ' / ™
,-/-, __ __. ____ /_
(_/ / (_(_/|_/ / <_/ <_
Walter Bushell
sta...@dial.pipex.com (Stan Barr) wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:56:45 GMT, John Varela <OLDl...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 22:21:22 -0400, Philip Nasadowski wrote
> >(in article <nasadowsk-8B7EE...@news.verizon.net>):
> >
> >> 4 TRS-80. TRASH 80!!! Radio Shack managed to fuck up everything about
> >> them.
> >
> >> IIRC, you couldn't do 3rd party SW for them either. Whoops.
> >
> >Wrong wrong wrongity wrong.
>
> Indeed. There were a number of assemblers and a few compilers, even a c
> compiler, for the venerable Model 1. One of the first things I did with
> mine was implement Fig Forth. Of course a maximum of 48K ram cramped your
> style somewhat!
There were even alternate operating systems for the Trash 80s. My shop
used Newdos. We used it to drive Selectrics to write letters to
presidents of foreign banks, because using dot matrix to write to them
would have been impolite.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80
(in an article marked not up to snuff.)
TRS-DOS--Radio Shack's operating system for its TRS-80 computers--was
so crummy that most discerning TRS-80 owners spurned it in favor of
NewDOS, a third-party rival sold by a company called Apparat. (Apparat
Personal Computers, Denver CO went out of business in 1987) (Eventually,
it was one of multiple TRS-80 alternatives--others included LDOS,
DOSPLUS, and VTOS.) Radio Shack probably didn't consider it an upgrade
to TRS-DOS, but the owners sure did.
Eric Sosman
> [...]
> There were even alternate operating systems for the Trash 80s. My shop
Did Newdos run on the bare metal?
(Read it aloud a few times, at speed and without overmuch
stress on the consonants. Then you may give me a dressing-down.)
AZ Nomad
>Walter Bushell wrote On 03/29/07 14:24,:
>> [...]
>> There were even alternate operating systems for the Trash 80s. My shop
>> used Newdos. [...]
> Did Newdos run on the bare metal?
what metal?
Frank McCoy
As I recall, lots of people ported CP/M to a Trash-80 for compatibility
reasons. The nice thing about CP/M was the *good* documentation about
what was needed to write a driver for any 8080/Z-80 system. I wrote my
own drivers and put them into ROM, so I could boot up my old Altair just
like "modern" computers do in the BIOS.
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Frank McCoy <mcc...@millcomm.com> wrote:
> Then there was VTL-2. ;-}
Hey it has a strange elegance
10 x=25
20 #=x=25*50
30 x=x*x
50 ?=x
60 #=!
Now doing recursion with that single array off the end of used
memory could be interesting - especially for the poor sod reading the code.
> (Yes, the language is still around; and even runs under DOS, though
> incredibly bloated from being compiled in 'C'. Complete, as always,
> with source-code.)
I want a BSD port :)
Frank McCoy
>On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 11:04:50 -0500
>Frank McCoy <mcc...@millcomm.com> wrote:
>
>> Then there was VTL-2. ;-}
>
> Hey it has a strange elegance
>10 x=25
>20 #=x=25*50
>30 x=x*x
>50 ?=x
>60 #=!
>
> Now doing recursion with that single array off the end of used
>memory could be interesting - especially for the poor sod reading the code.
>
Heh. I've done it.
Took some rather *extensive* planning though.
;-}
And, as you said, the poor sod reading the code often could get lost ...
Even if said person was the guy who *wrote* the code.
>> (Yes, the language is still around; and even runs under DOS, though
>> incredibly bloated from being compiled in 'C'. Complete, as always,
>> with source-code.)
>
> I want a BSD port :)
I can supply the 'C' code source ....
Shouldn't be *that* hard to compile for a different platform.
Either VTL-2 or VTL-3.
(VTL-3 uses double-precision, or 32-bits instead of 16.)
John Varela
(in article <proto-573446....@032-325-625.area1.spcsdns.net>):
> There were even alternate operating systems for the Trash 80s. My shop used
> Newdos. We used it to drive Selectrics to write letters to presidents of
> foreign banks, because using dot matrix to write to them would have been
> impolite.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80
>
> (in an article marked not up to snuff.)
>
> TRS-DOS--Radio Shack's operating system for its TRS-80 computers--was so
> crummy that most discerning TRS-80 owners spurned it in favor of NewDOS, a
> third-party rival sold by a company called Apparat. (Apparat Personal
> Computers, Denver CO went out of business in 1987) (Eventually, it was one of
> multiple TRS-80 alternatives--others included LDOS, DOSPLUS, and VTOS.) Radio
> Shack probably didn't consider it an upgrade to TRS-DOS, but the owners sure
> did.
I ran MultiDOS, so called, if I remember correctly, because it was compatible
with the file systems used by all the other TRS-80 DOSes. One thing I liked
about it was that the drives were numbered instead of lettered. So if you
typed, say, 2 and hit ENTER, it unambiguously knew you wanted a DIR of drive
2 .
My word processor for the Model 1 was called Zorlof the Magnificent. Yes,
really, that's what it was called. I liked it. It was later ported to the
PC as LeScript, complete with odd TRS-80 key combinations on account of the
TRS-80 not having had CMD or ALT keys. It withered away and disappeared.
CBFalconer
>
... snip ...
>
> As I recall, lots of people ported CP/M to a Trash-80 for
> compatibility reasons. The nice thing about CP/M was the *good*
> documentation about what was needed to write a driver for any
> 8080/Z-80 system. I wrote my own drivers and put them into ROM,
> so I could boot up my old Altair just like "modern" computers do
> in the BIOS.
They couldn't, because the Trash-80s had ROM in the lower memory.
They weren't smart enough to divert the initial PC setting to high
memory, nor to bank the ROM (as did Kaypro).
--
Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
<http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Frank McCoy <mcc...@millcomm.com> wrote:
> In alt.folklore.computers Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>
> And, as you said, the poor sod reading the code often could get lost ...
> Even if said person was the guy who *wrote* the code.
>
> >> (Yes, the language is still around; and even runs under DOS, though
> >> incredibly bloated from being compiled in 'C'. Complete, as always,
> >> with source-code.)
> >
> > I want a BSD port :)
>
> I can supply the 'C' code source ....
Yes please - to steve (at) sohara (dot) org.
> Shouldn't be *that* hard to compile for a different platform.
> Either VTL-2 or VTL-3.
What's the code license ? I'll happily host it and make a pkgsrc
package for both if there are no license issues to worry about.
> (VTL-3 uses double-precision, or 32-bits instead of 16.)
Wee double trouble :)
Stan Barr
>
> TRS-DOS--Radio Shack's operating system for its TRS-80 computers--was
>so crummy that most discerning TRS-80 owners spurned it in favor of
>NewDOS, a third-party rival sold by a company called Apparat. (Apparat
>Personal Computers, Denver CO went out of business in 1987) (Eventually,
>it was one of multiple TRS-80 alternatives--others included LDOS,
>DOSPLUS, and VTOS.) Radio Shack probably didn't consider it an upgrade
>to TRS-DOS, but the owners sure did.
I used LDOS. The change from LDOS 5 to MSDOS 2-point-something on a PC
felt like a severe downgrade :-)
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr stanb .at. dial .dot. pipex .dot. com
(Remove any digits from the addresses when mailing me.)
The future was never like this!
AZ Nomad
>On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 14:24:01 -0400, Walter Bushell <pr...@oanix.com> wrote:
>>
>> TRS-DOS--Radio Shack's operating system for its TRS-80 computers--was
>>so crummy that most discerning TRS-80 owners spurned it in favor of
>>NewDOS, a third-party rival sold by a company called Apparat. (Apparat
>>Personal Computers, Denver CO went out of business in 1987) (Eventually,
>>it was one of multiple TRS-80 alternatives--others included LDOS,
>>DOSPLUS, and VTOS.) Radio Shack probably didn't consider it an upgrade
>>to TRS-DOS, but the owners sure did.
>I used LDOS. The change from LDOS 5 to MSDOS 2-point-something on a PC
>felt like a severe downgrade :-)
Every time I've used a PC it's felt like a severe downgrade. The worst period
was in the early 90's when you had processors capable of running a VM OS like
UNIX that were instead running a windows 3.x on top of DOS, 50's technology with
lipstick. Fifteen years of microcomputers without any OS improvement.
Frank McCoy
>On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 15:56:36 -0500
>Frank McCoy <mcc...@millcomm.com> wrote:
>
>> In alt.folklore.computers Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>>
>> And, as you said, the poor sod reading the code often could get lost ...
>> Even if said person was the guy who *wrote* the code.
>>
>> >> (Yes, the language is still around; and even runs under DOS, though
>> >> incredibly bloated from being compiled in 'C'. Complete, as always,
>> >> with source-code.)
>> >
>> > I want a BSD port :)
>>
>> I can supply the 'C' code source ....
>
> Yes please - to steve (at) sohara (dot) org.
OK.
>
>> Shouldn't be *that* hard to compile for a different platform.
>> Either VTL-2 or VTL-3.
>
> What's the code license ? I'll happily host it and make a pkgsrc
>package for both if there are no license issues to worry about.
>
I *own* VTL-2 now; as Steve Zook sold his share to the Computer Store,
and they dropped their interest in exchange for unpaid royalties to me.
However, all I ask for license these days is acknowledgement of the two
original authors (Frank McCoy and Steve Zook) along with sending me back
information and any documentation of other implementations, so I can
pass them on to others who might be interested.
So far, I personally implemented VTL-2 on about 10 different systems.
I know others have done so on 6800, 68000, and some Apple systems;
though I don't know who or where.
>> (VTL-3 uses double-precision, or 32-bits instead of 16.)
>
> Wee double trouble :)
Yup.
If you ask, I'll include not only the 'C' source, but the old program
libraries as well. There's some strange stuff in there, including an
assembler that I assume is a 6800 code assembler. I can't seem to find
the compiler any more.
Do you want the DOS (.COM) executables too?
Oh yeah ... These versions of VTL-2 and VTL-3 include file handling.
So, you can read and write to files. That's one reason they're so
(comparatively) huge, though still COM files.
The original didn't; being designed for paper and cassette tape storage.
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Frank McCoy <mcc...@millcomm.com> wrote:
> In alt.folklore.computers Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>
> >On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 15:56:36 -0500
> >Frank McCoy <mcc...@millcomm.com> wrote:
> >> I can supply the 'C' code source ....
> >
> > Yes please - to steve (at) sohara (dot) org.
>
> OK.
Thanks.
> >> Shouldn't be *that* hard to compile for a different platform.
> >> Either VTL-2 or VTL-3.
> >
> > What's the code license ? I'll happily host it and make a pkgsrc
> >package for both if there are no license issues to worry about.
> >
> I *own* VTL-2 now; as Steve Zook sold his share to the Computer Store,
> and they dropped their interest in exchange for unpaid royalties to me.
Fantastic.
> However, all I ask for license these days is acknowledgement of the two
> original authors (Frank McCoy and Steve Zook) along with sending me back
> information and any documentation of other implementations, so I can
> pass them on to others who might be interested.
I'll put together a license file with that spelled out based on
the BSD license with an extra clause about letting you know of any more
implementations and send it to you for approval before I distribute it.
Some dates for the copyright bit would be handy.
If I get it working I aim to put it in pkgsrc/wip (the pkgsrc/wip
repository has open commit access - I'll be testing it on DragonFlyBSD.
> So far, I personally implemented VTL-2 on about 10 different systems.
> I know others have done so on 6800, 68000, and some Apple systems;
> though I don't know who or where.
>
> >> (VTL-3 uses double-precision, or 32-bits instead of 16.)
> >
> > Wee double trouble :)
>
> Yup.
> If you ask, I'll include not only the 'C' source, but the old program
> libraries as well. There's some strange stuff in there, including an
> assembler that I assume is a 6800 code assembler. I can't seem to find
> the compiler any more.
Oh yes please - sounds like fun stuff.
> Do you want the DOS (.COM) executables too?
I'd never run them - I haven't seen a DOS prompt in years :)
> Oh yeah ... These versions of VTL-2 and VTL-3 include file handling.
> So, you can read and write to files. That's one reason they're so
> (comparatively) huge, though still COM files.
Interesting - I find myself wondering how file handling was grafted
on without grossly messing up the language.
> The original didn't; being designed for paper and cassette tape storage.
--
Frank McCoy
As I recall: Adding two variables: ">" and "<"
">" being dump to file.
"<" being read from file.
Don't really remember more without poking through the documentation or
source.
I think there was some kind of "end-of-file" terminator (I'm not sure of
that. You might just close a file by pointing to a null-file or new
file); and the files were all ASCII files that were read or written just
like normal I/O.
Oh yeah ... and there was another variable added to redirect I/O.
File, printer, and console. Lower three bits significant; so you could
direct output to any or all of the three.
Again, I'd have to check the documentation.
>> The original didn't; being designed for paper and cassette tape storage.
Stuff on the way.
Frank McCoy
Oh damn!
That was *supposed* to go only by email.
Shit.
Sorry about that.
Larry Elmore
> On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 14:24:01 -0400, Walter Bushell <pr...@oanix.com> wrote:
>> TRS-DOS--Radio Shack's operating system for its TRS-80 computers--was
>> so crummy that most discerning TRS-80 owners spurned it in favor of
>> NewDOS, a third-party rival sold by a company called Apparat. (Apparat
>> Personal Computers, Denver CO went out of business in 1987) (Eventually,
>> it was one of multiple TRS-80 alternatives--others included LDOS,
>> DOSPLUS, and VTOS.) Radio Shack probably didn't consider it an upgrade
>> to TRS-DOS, but the owners sure did.
>
> I used LDOS. The change from LDOS 5 to MSDOS 2-point-something on a PC
> felt like a severe downgrade :-)
Agreed. It mostly was.
winston...@yahoo.com
wrote:
> Stan Barr wrote:
> > On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 14:24:01 -0400, Walter Bushell <p...@oanix.com> wrote:
> >> TRS-DOS--Radio Shack's operating system for its TRS-80 computers--was
> >> so crummy that most discerning TRS-80 owners spurned it in favor of
> >> NewDOS, a third-party rival sold by a company called Apparat. (Apparat
> >> Personal Computers, Denver CO went out of business in 1987) (Eventually,
> >> it was one of multiple TRS-80 alternatives--others included LDOS,
> >> DOSPLUS, and VTOS.) Radio Shack probably didn't consider it an upgrade
> >> to TRS-DOS, but the owners sure did.
>
> > I used LDOS. The change from LDOS 5 to MSDOS 2-point-something on a PC
> > felt like a severe downgrade :-)
>
> Agreed. It mostly was.
I dunno if I can agree with that, albeit I didn't start with MSDOS
2.0.
I had a peecee first, a Model 4 later. I'd say I felt like I upgraded
when going from MSDOS 3.3 (or even 5.0) to TRSDOS on the 4. It had
some very nice features. The JCL was more powerful than *.bat files
any day. I guess one of these days I will have to get around to trying
LDOS?
CBFalconer
>
... snip ...
>
> VTL.ZIP Type: Zip Compressed Data (application/x-zip-compressed)
> Encoding: x-uuencode
Please do not post binary attachments in Usenet. E-mail is OK.
This thing tied up my machine, and thousands of others, for
something like 5 minutes. It is also present on many servers, to
no purpose. Best is to mount it somewhere and post a URL, so that
those who want it can get it.
Stan Barr
>
>I had a peecee first, a Model 4 later. I'd say I felt like I upgraded
>when going from MSDOS 3.3 (or even 5.0) to TRSDOS on the 4. It had
>some very nice features. The JCL was more powerful than *.bat files
>any day. I guess one of these days I will have to get around to trying
>LDOS?
If you don't have a real TRS-80 left, there are emulators for most common
platforms and Roy Soltoff (or is it Bill Schroeder) has made LDOS v5.3.1
available for free download.
Some of us long-time LDOS users were hoping that the LDOS crew would
produce an extended 32-bit LDOS for the IBM PC but I imagine they
lacked the resources for such a fairly major undertaking.
Frank McCoy
>Frank McCoy wrote:
>>
>... snip ...
>>
>> Name: VTL.ZIP
>> VTL.ZIP Type: Zip Compressed Data (application/x-zip-compressed)
>> Encoding: x-uuencode
>
>Please do not post binary attachments in Usenet. E-mail is OK.
>This thing tied up my machine, and thousands of others, for
>something like 5 minutes. It is also present on many servers, to
>no purpose. Best is to mount it somewhere and post a URL, so that
>those who want it can get it.
>
I know. Sorry.
It was *supposed* to go out in email only.
;-{
Charles Richmond
> Robert wrote:
>> PC World's List of the 10 Worst PCs of All Time
>> a.. 10. Dell Dimension 4600 (2003)
>> b.. 9. New Internet Computer (2000)
>> c.. 8. eMachines eTower 366c (1999)
>> d.. 7. Commodore VIC 20 (1981)
>> e.. 6. Texas Instruments TI-99/4 (1979)
>> f.. 5. IBM PS/1 (1990-1994)
>> g.. 4. Apple III (1980-1984)
>> h.. 3. Coleco Adam (1983)
>> i.. 2. Mattel Barbie PC (1999-2000)
>> j.. 1. Packard Bell PCs (1986-1996))
>> Any comments?
>
> The 'cheap' IBM with the chiclet keyboard.
>
Are you talking about the Peanut, which was
designed for "kids" to use??? ISTM that it
also had a *wireless* keyboard.
--
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond richmond at plano dot net |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
winston...@yahoo.com
> CBFalconer wrote:
> > Robert wrote:
> >> PC World's List of the 10 Worst PCs of All Time
> >> a.. 10. Dell Dimension 4600 (2003)
> >> b.. 9. New Internet Computer (2000)
> >> c.. 8. eMachines eTower 366c (1999)
> >> d.. 7. Commodore VIC 20 (1981)
> >> e.. 6. Texas Instruments TI-99/4 (1979)
> >> f.. 5. IBM PS/1 (1990-1994)
> >> g.. 4. Apple III (1980-1984)
> >> h.. 3. Coleco Adam (1983)
> >> i.. 2. Mattel Barbie PC (1999-2000)
> >> j.. 1. Packard Bell PCs (1986-1996))
> >> Any comments?
>
> > The 'cheap' IBM with the chiclet keyboard.
>
> Are you talking about the Peanut, which was
> designed for "kids" to use??? ISTM that it
> also had a *wireless* keyboard.
>
Yes, which was a _stupid_ idea in a classroom.
Imagine little Billy point his keyboard at Melissa's computer and
typing something nasty...
It didn't take too long for IBM to come out with a replacement "wired"
keyboard, with real keys. Not a good way to start. Seems they would've
learned from the lessons that Atari with the 400 and TI with the 99/4
had taught.
la...@portcommodore.com
> PC World's List of the 10 Worst PCs of All Time
> a.. 10. Dell Dimension 4600 (2003)
> b.. 9. New Internet Computer (2000)
> c.. 8. eMachines eTower 366c (1999)
> d.. 7. Commodore VIC 20 (1981)
The VIC 20 was not a WORST PC by a long shot, I am sure lots of
people cut thier teeth learning computers on a VIC-20, Linus Tvorlads
(something like that) is one notable person. It was a solid computer
with reasonable BASIC, graphics and sound and the 3.5 K of BASIC RAM
may have been limited but it surely did not stop many of us from
writing some pretty fun games on the unexpanded VIC.
Also the VIC-20 certainly was cutting edge for a home computer at the
time under $300 with color, sound and a decent keyboard. It also
pioneered the low-cost modems with the $100 300 baud modem.
> e.. 6. Texas Instruments TI-99/4 (1979)
>From what I heard the 99/4 was pretty lousy and the 994/a tried to be
less lousy but still had notable shortcommings in the graphics
archetecture department and obviouls limitation imposed by the early
DRM methods for cartridge support.
> f.. 5. IBM PS/1 (1990-1994)
dunno
> g.. 4. Apple III (1980-1984)
I reall it was cool but too expensive and too late to compete with the
PC for the high-end home/small business market.
> h.. 3. Coleco Adam (1983)
That was pretty bad (plastic printer, and could erase tapes left in
the drives during power-up
> j.. 1. Packard Bell PCs (1986-1996))
Yep.
> Any comments?
I would have listed:
TRS-80 (model 1) which hard-earned the title "Trash 80" by many who
had to repeately return the machine for electonic bug fixing due to
its many flaws in the first design.
Commodore Plus/4 - The sucessor to the commodore 64 may have offered
better graphics BASIC but lacked the popular graphics and sound
capabilities of the mega-popular Commodore 64. It was overpriced and
the built-in software was underpowered.
Apple Lisa - Way over priced and under powered (most likely due to
hardware tech at the time). It took a massive software re-work to
tighten up the OS to make the Macintosh the insanely great computer it
became on the second go around.
Atari 2600 w/Introduction to BASIC Programming - Turning the 2600 into
a multi-byte RAM BASIC computer, compared to just about anything this
was the Worst computer ever made.
Pete Fenelon
>
> Commodore Plus/4 - The sucessor to the commodore 64 may have offered
> better graphics BASIC but lacked the popular graphics and sound
> capabilities of the mega-popular Commodore 64. It was overpriced and
> the built-in software was underpowered.
That truly was a "why?" computer - added hundrds of colours; lost
sprites and sound; added built-in software that was phenomenally awful;
lost the good keyboard Commodore used to put on the 64. But if the
Plus/4 was bad, the 16 was truly awful - a micro that seemed to have no
natural audience at all.
>
> Apple Lisa - Way over priced and under powered (most likely due to
> hardware tech at the time). It took a massive software re-work to
> tighten up the OS to make the Macintosh the insanely great computer it
> became on the second go around.
When I was a youngster I used to think Lisa was a phenomenally
innopvative computer. Then a few years later I heard about Alto and
realised it was cold soup warmed up ;)
> Atari 2600 w/Introduction to BASIC Programming - Turning the 2600 into
> a multi-byte RAM BASIC computer, compared to just about anything this
> was the Worst computer ever made.
Intellivision had a similar programming cart, didn't ever see it. I
think it was programmed through the keypad on the joysticks rather than
a proper keyboard; and didn't the Philips G7000 have similar?
pete
--
pe...@fenelon.com "how many clever men have called the sun a fool?"
Anders
Philips G7000 was not to be seen as a PC, it was a game console.
However I actually learn to programing on that toy, and it was a pita
because there was no way to save what you have done.
And with parents and other who tote that it should been used as a
play console for there's amusement and not been turned on 24/7, with
a ROM-cassette they din't now how to use, there was more to it and
the fact that the keyboard was some sort off an
"don't try to use me" rubber plate. :-)
/Anders
Bill Vermillion
<la...@portcommodore.com> wrote:
>On Mar 26, 1:47 pm, "Robert" <sab...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> PC World's List of the 10 Worst PCs of All Time
>> a.. 10. Dell Dimension 4600 (2003)
>> b.. 9. New Internet Computer (2000)
>> c.. 8. eMachines eTower 366c (1999)
>> i.. 2. Mattel Barbie PC (1999-2000)
>> d.. 7. Commodore VIC 20 (1981)
....
>> j.. 1. Packard Bell PCs (1986-1996))
>Yep.
And the Packard Bell ads said "America grew up listening to us,
and they still do".
But the only relation to the original radio and later TV company,
was the brand-name they bought from those who owned the rights to
that name, as PB had long stopped manufacturing anything.
That is real sleeze marekting IMO.
>> Any comments?
>I would have listed:
>TRS-80 (model 1) which hard-earned the title "Trash 80" by many who
>had to repeately return the machine for electonic bug fixing due to
>its many flaws in the first design.
The only thing I did [mine was the 4th sold in Orlando] was
to get the buffered interface, and then I put on gold edge
connectors.
It ran for 33,000 power-on-hours running a BBS from July 1, 1981
until later 1984. The SW - TBBS - and the first running outside
of Denver - would use a software reboot after ever call to make
sure the program was correct in memory.
It finally got tired of rebooting on a SW command.
The only other things I did was put in a tantalum capacitor in
the timing circuit that kept the floppy drive motors on longer.
The original would time out at time - as all drives would spin at
once, and if you were hunting for something - you could be
searching all 4 drives [as I recall]. I eventually put
in three DS/DD drives, as it wouldn't take 4, as one of the lines
was used as a head switch signal.
And that machine got me hooked - and a few years later I wound up
self-employed working in the Unix/Xenix environment.
Not a bad little machine is you knew enough to tweak it yourself.
And 33,000 consecutive power-on-hours was pretty amazing.
The original floppy drives would last from 9 months to a year -
with only a 6000 hr MTBF. Moving the DS/DD 720K drives with
a 50,000 MTBF was a great move.
>Apple Lisa - Way over priced and under powered (most likely due to
>hardware tech at the time). It took a massive software re-work to
>tighten up the OS to make the Macintosh the insanely great computer it
>became on the second go around.
And for writing some of the software for the Mac you had to have
a Lisa.
I remember the first time I saw a Lisa when Apple showed it to our
local computer club, just about the time it was released.
It reminded me so much of the Xerox Star - that Xerox showed a year
or so earlier - along with their idea of interconnecting computers
in an office building using a cable that ran through the offices
and then up and down the elevator shafts. They called it
'ethernet'.
There was always something new weekly in those days.
Did the Apple III get mentioned. I had to write a serial program
that was driving modems that used RF communication for use
in monitors along oil pipelines. I was able to get the programming
running flawless on Microports Unix V.2 on my Televideo Telecat,
but it had problems on the Apple using IBM's Xenix 2.0.
2.0 was the first supported release of Xenix from IBM as the first
was non-supported. I was only working in a couple of areas in the
OS and I found some strange bugs, that I found only by single
stepping both machines side by side.
They screwed up the 'creat' command in that it would AND the values
in the environment with the values you passed in 'creat'.
I forget what the other one was, but I'm glad I never had to
work with that again.
Yucko.
Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com
jimd
> On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:56:45 GMT, John Varela <OLDl...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 22:21:22 -0400, Philip Nasadowski wrote
>>(in article <nasadowsk-8B7EE...@news.verizon.net>):
>>
>>
>>>4 TRS-80. TRASH 80!!! Radio Shack managed to fuck up everything about them.
>>
>>>IIRC, you couldn't do 3rd party SW for them either. Whoops.
>>
>>Wrong wrong wrongity wrong.
>
>
> Indeed. There were a number of assemblers and a few compilers, even a c
> compiler, for the venerable Model 1. One of the first things I did with
> mine was implement Fig Forth. Of course a maximum of 48K ram cramped your
> style somewhat!
>
What were you writing that used 48K? That's a good 20K forth instructions.
Jim.
jimd
> In article <1175019391.795992@news1nwk>,
> Eric Sosman <Eric....@sun.com> wrote:
>
>>Morten Reistad wrote On 03/26/07 19:56,:
<snip>
>>>I never saw the Barbie PC. Was it pink?
>>
>> I never saw it, either. It was out of my ken.
>
>
> <GROAN> I never heard of that system until this list
> was posted.
>
> /BAH
I saw this thing in liquidation in the 2001-2002 timeframe. For more
then you ever wanted to know about this abortion and the Co bankrupcy:
<http://news.com.com/Bankruptcy+crashes+the+Barbie+PC/2100-1040_3-250222.html>
The laugh is Intel hooked up with Disney in 2005, To market a "disney"
themed PC. They never learn, although I don't remember hearing of it
outside of Intel since.
Jim.
Stan Barr
With LDOS and a few resident utilites loaded there was usually well less
than 30K left for use. Even with Forth you can use all that once you start
multitasking, and manipulating large data sets. Trying to write a cutomizeable
databse sytem certainly did!
Not all Forth application are tiny. Zoomracks, a Forth database system written
by Tom Zimmer while at Quickview Systems, was over 2Mb of source code and used
all available memory on a PC.
My current MSDOS Forth setup uses separate 64K segments for code, names,
etc, and I ran out of space recently...applications expand to fill the space
available!
winston...@yahoo.com
...
> With LDOS and a few resident utilites loaded there was usually well less
> than 30K left for use. Even with Forth you can use all that once you start
> multitasking, and manipulating large data sets. Trying to write a cutomizeable
> databse sytem certainly did!
You would have found TI Forth on the 99/4 VERY tight.
Lower 8k used for the interpreter, about 4k of upper memory for base
definitions, leaving only about 20k free...
Still, I think Forth had the best trade-off for speed and memory
compactness of any language of the time.
Frank McCoy
<winston...@yahoo.com> wrote:
I could argue that ....
;-}
It was a wonderful language indeed ... But *far* from being even close
to the most compact; and not much better for speed compared to others.
It was only compact if you compared it to COBOL, BASIC, PASCAL, and
similar languages. It was only speedy if you compared it to BASIC
interpreters as a better interpreter.
Forth was a *wonderfully* extensible language though.
And the language was simple enough that most anybody could learn to
program in it without spending months at a computer course.
It also had the nice advantage of being relatively simple to implement
on any platform.
Give the language its due. (It had and has *many* advantages.)
However, being the smallest, fastest, or easiest just isn't any of
those. Reasonably small, *relatively* fast, and comparatively easy,
yes. Minimal, no.
Stan Barr
>
>It also had the nice advantage of being relatively simple to implement
>on any platform.
Yep, I've got it on most of my computers, and am in the middle of getting it
running under TSS-8 in simh, emulating a PDP-8.
>
>Give the language its due. (It had and has *many* advantages.)
>However, being the smallest, fastest, or easiest just isn't any of
>those. Reasonably small, *relatively* fast, and comparatively easy,
>yes. Minimal, no.
Modern Forths are as big as any other language systems, I'm not sure
how big commercial systems like SwiftForth are, but Win32Forth is
huge and MOPS for the Mac is 11.6Mb for the whole installation, but
that's a full object-orientated Forth.
winston...@yahoo.com
> In alt.folklore.computers "winston19842...@yahoo.com"
>
> <winston19842...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >On Apr 13, 1:32 pm, stan...@dial.pipex.com (Stan Barr) wrote:
> >...
> >> With LDOS and a few resident utilites loaded there was usually well less
> >> than 30K left for use. Even with Forth you can use all that once you start
> >> multitasking, and manipulating large data sets. Trying to write a cutomizeable
> >> databse sytem certainly did!
>
> >You would have found TI Forth on the 99/4 VERY tight.
> >Lower 8k used for the interpreter, about 4k of upper memory for base
> >definitions, leaving only about 20k free...
>
> >Still, I think Forth had the best trade-off for speed and memory
> >compactness of any language of the time.
>
> I could argue that ....
> ;-}
>
> It was a wonderful language indeed ... But *far* from being even close
> to the most compact; and not much better for speed compared to others.
>
> It was only compact if you compared it to COBOL, BASIC, PASCAL, and
> similar languages. It was only speedy if you compared it to BASIC
> interpreters as a better interpreter.
Can you give examples of more compact languages? I can only think of
assembly (if the programmer knows what they are doing), GPL (a TI
language), UCSD Pascal.
And Forth programs were only about 1/3 as fast as most C programs - at
least in the era I was testing. This was figForth (Indirect Threading)
vs small-C, and figForth wasn't very optimal - but neither was small-
C. Faster than UCSD Pascal.
...
>
> Give the language its due. (It had and has *many* advantages.)
> However, being the smallest, fastest, or easiest just isn't any of
> those. Reasonably small, *relatively* fast, and comparatively easy,
> yes. Minimal, no.
I never said "easy". It requires a different mindset - so "easy" is
hard to define.
Pete Fenelon
>
> Modern Forths are as big as any other language systems, I'm not sure
> how big commercial systems like SwiftForth are, but Win32Forth is
> huge and MOPS for the Mac is 11.6Mb for the whole installation, but
> that's a full object-orientated Forth.
A drop in the ocean compared to (say) XCode on the Mac or any of the
commercial C/C++ development environments on windows!
Frank McCoy
>On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 20:42:51 -0500, Frank McCoy <mcc...@millcomm.com> wrote:
>>
>>It also had the nice advantage of being relatively simple to implement
>>on any platform.
>
>Yep, I've got it on most of my computers, and am in the middle of getting it
>running under TSS-8 in simh, emulating a PDP-8.
>
>>
>>Give the language its due. (It had and has *many* advantages.)
>>However, being the smallest, fastest, or easiest just isn't any of
>>those. Reasonably small, *relatively* fast, and comparatively easy,
>>yes. Minimal, no.
>
>Modern Forths are as big as any other language systems, I'm not sure
>how big commercial systems like SwiftForth are, but Win32Forth is
>huge and MOPS for the Mac is 11.6Mb for the whole installation, but
>that's a full object-orientated Forth.
Isn't "Object Oriented Forth" an oxymoron?
;-}
Frank McCoy
>Stan Barr <sta...@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>>
>> Modern Forths are as big as any other language systems, I'm not sure
>> how big commercial systems like SwiftForth are, but Win32Forth is
>> huge and MOPS for the Mac is 11.6Mb for the whole installation, but
>> that's a full object-orientated Forth.
>
>A drop in the ocean compared to (say) XCode on the Mac or any of the
>commercial C/C++ development environments on windows!
>
Sadly true. Talk about bloatware!
Frank McCoy
Tiny BASIC ... The minimalist version took just 2K bytes. So, with 4K
of RAM you had almost 1.5K to write programs in.
Then, of course, VTL-2, taking up only 256 *bytes* of Read-Only-Memory.
With only 1K of RAM on board an Altair 680B you had over 768 bytes for
program memory left for writing programs in; the rest used for variable
storage. That includes an editor, immediate run-time ability, and the
interpreter, all in 1/4K *bytes* of ROM; so it took up none of the
valuable system RAM. The language came with example programs: "Games
you can play in just one K". Yes, people actually wrote quite usable
applications programs in the language. I did.
Probably the easiest and fastest language to learn and write programs in
outside of a pocket calculator ever devised. Hell to write any *large*
programs in; though some people (me included again) did. Sometimes you
had to use what was available. It was even reasonably fast ... Far
faster than most interpreters, in fact, because of the simplicity and
compactness. The language got *really* fast if/when compiled; but very
few programs were; that being a two-step process, as the output from the
compiler was source-code for assembly-language input.
I remember there being a Tiny Pascal back then; but have no idea who
wrote it or what its capabilities were. AFAIK, it was compiled.
>And Forth programs were only about 1/3 as fast as most C programs - at
>least in the era I was testing. This was figForth (Indirect Threading)
>vs small-C, and figForth wasn't very optimal - but neither was small-
>C. Faster than UCSD Pascal.
>
C, for all of its adherents (and I spent over 20 years writing in C)
never really was as compact or fast as people claimed it was. Still,
being compiled, it was probably far faster than Forth, which by design
was interpreted on-the-fly.
>>
>> Give the language its due. (It had and has *many* advantages.)
>> However, being the smallest, fastest, or easiest just isn't any of
>> those. Reasonably small, *relatively* fast, and comparatively easy,
>> yes. Minimal, no.
>
>I never said "easy". It requires a different mindset - so "easy" is
>hard to define.
Once you got the basic idea down (and there really was only one basic
idea) Forth was amazingly easy to write in. It just seemed strange to
most people ... But then, the whole idea of Reverse-Polish seems strange
to most people ... at first. Once you get used to thinking that way,
then suddenly hard problems start looking easy.
For some reason though, it never seemed to catch on much outside of the
scientific community using it for real-time experiments, where the
ability to easily add special functions and hardware made it invaluable.
(At least that's *my* recollection; not having used it much myself.)
Stan Barr
>
>Isn't "Object Oriented Forth" an oxymoron?
>;-}
Actually, I've always thought OO grew quite naturally out of Forth :-)
I find the MOPS OO model more understandable than any OO extension to C,
but that might just be because I'm the world's worst C programmer!
AZ Nomad
And it was so slow that nobody ever did anything with except write demo
programs.