Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!UCONNVM.BITNET!SEWALL
From: SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: DOS 3.3/ProDOS
Message-ID: <8806211011.aa08392@SMOKE.BRL.ARPA>
Date: 21 Jun 88 13:26:31 GMT
References: 
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 58

>It gets less and less reasonable to keep using DOS 3.3.  CD-ROMs would
>be ridiculous, for example, addressed 400K at a time.

True, but 32Mbytes at a time may look just as silly on a 1+ gigabyte
device (I know ProDOS can be modified to handle it -- GS OS again? --
but I couldn't pass-on the thought 'cause I'm not so sure from what
I've read that DOS 3.3 couldn't have been modified as well ).

>>How come there are so many ProDOS word processors and not one decent
>>ProDOS text editor (WYSIWYGs make TERRIBLE text editors and besides
>>they hog core with lots of "features" that a word processor needs but
>>a text editor doesn't)?
>
>Well, there's FreeWriter, and the ProDOS AppleWriter (is it still
>being sold?).  Are those the kind you're looking for?

Not really; FrEDwriter will do in a pinch, but it's paragraph oriented
(fine for letters and manuscripts, but for anything else one must be
sure to remember to add the 's.  Mainframes are LINE oriented.
What I like about PIE Writer is that it's a line oriented (dot command,
but not-WYSIWYG) word processor.  So it not only writes files that I
can upload without going through the process of printing to disk, but
I can DOWNLOAD as well without having to use a utility to strip carriage
returns.  I wonder who now owns the copyright on PIE's code (it would
be awfully nice to get it expanded to 128K and converted to ProDOS).

>That's not very fair--I don't find hard drives to be less reliable
>than other storage devices.  The reason backing up HDs is so
>important is that you can lose a LOT of stuff all at once.

Wait'll you try and restore from a streaming (mirror) backup tape after
replacement of the platter due to a physical crash.  No hard disk is
perfect, they all are manufactured with some "bad" sectors and the
controller is programmed to skip those sectors.  Replace the platter
and the bad sectors are in a different location.  Unfortunately, streaming
backups simply reproduce recorded sectors; so if the platter is replaced
chances are something important (like part of the FAT) is recorded on
what were good but have become bad sectors.  The newer, file-by-file,
technology solves the problem, but they cost a bunch more too (there's
a neat device called "The Fat Boy" described in this week's InfoWorld --
its a 1.2 gigabyte, file-by-file tape backup that uses standard Video
8 cassettes and transfers at 15 Mbytes per minute).

Optical, or even optical-magneto, storage which will begin appearing
this Fall is potentially more reliable than any of the mass storage devices
available at the moment.

---------------------
Disclaimer: --- My employer isn't responsible for my mistakes AND vice-versa!
            (subject to change without notice; void where prohibited)

ARPA:   sewall%uconnvm.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu        Murphy A. Sewall
BITNET: SEWALL@UCONNVM                           School of Business Admin.
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