Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: IBM bashing / OSF / SVID / added pennies Summary: expandability Message-ID: <3660@bsu-cs.UUCP> Date: 16 Aug 88 16:02:24 GMT References: <16792@adm.ARPA> <1260@ficc.UUCP> Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana Lines: 39 In article <1260@ficc.UUCP> peter@ficc.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes: >And we're talking about a different CP/M, too. I don't recall any serious >deficiencies in CP/M that weren't shared by the early PC-DOS... CP/M had no expandability. With MS-DOS you *began* with 64 K, remember? With CP/M, you finished there. With the IBM PC you got a turnkey machine with slots for expandability, a standard BASIC-in-ROM, and the promise of repair service *nationwide*. To the best of my knowledge there was no other machine in the same price range at that time that had this. You'll be surprised how many people (perhaps close to 100% of the first users) wrote all their applications in BASIC. With competing CP/M machines, there was no standard programming environment, since everybody's video display and language interpreter was slightly different. The IBM PC was the only machine for which you could write a good graphics program (for the color/graphics display) and expect it to work on all machines. But CP/M did last a little longer, thrashing and desperately struggling to survive, while MS-DOS added a hierarchical file system, loadable device drivers, I/O redirection and pseudo-pipes, and the ability to know how long a file was, not just guess. And when we went shopping, we found that we didn't have to spend $150 for CP/M-86, since MS-DOS was only forty bucks! And then, when Lotus 1-2-3 came out, and it worked only on an IBM PC using MS-DOS, the final blow had been struck against CP/M. The DEC Rainbow was the only other system that could boast of a nationwide service network, but what with the lack of software and hardware expandability and the horrendously unreliable disk drives, it was doomed from the beginning. Then DEC further confused its users by providing both CP/M and MS-DOS, but carefully making sure you could neither transfer files between the two nor format disks under either. Copyright 1988 Rahul Dhesi. Permission granted for Usenet distribution. -- Rahul Dhesi UUCP:!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi