IBM's influence on OSF (Re: AT&T Joining OSF)

[Rich Strebendt]

In article <384 at halley.UUCP>, bc at halley.UUCP (Bill Crews) writes:
> By the way, before the IBM PC, it was typical for a system to trash the
> contents of a diskette when it powered up.  Also, the MTBF was *very* low.
> Also, we had CP/M to enjoy.  Whatever you may think about DOS, CP/M is
> certainly much worse (like, swapping diskettes without remembering to warm boot
> first and goodbye diskette contents).  It may not have been *radical* change,
> but it was a big step forward in that it took personal computing out of the
> hobby market and enabled the existence of a business market.

Bull roar.

I have an 8-year old Radio Shack Model II.  It has not trashed a disk
since I first powered it up.  The TRSDOS operating system is not
terribly exciting from a modern perspective, but it was quite adequate
to the jobs I had for the machine to do.  The MTBF of this machine is
measured in years (one trip to the shop in 8 years!).  It will also
boot up under CP/M, which I use occasionally to take advantage of some
Public Domain software and the Infocom games.  I DO enjoy working with
CP/M, grandparent (in concept, at least) to most of the succeeding
DOS's.  TRSDOS on the Model II is quite able to detect a disk change
and to gripe about it if subsequent access to that disk (to open files)
is needed.  For many small business and government customers, the Model
II was indeed their introduction to business data processing on a
desk-top.  The initials I-B-M gave respectability to this market
largely because of the amount of press they got by entering this,
already existing and growing, market.

				Rich Strebendt
				...!att![iwsl6|ihlpe|ihaxa]!res