Before Bill Gates and MS

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Someone had mentioned a time line for Model Makers. I replied it was written before MicroSoft. It also was before floppies and hard drives. Those of us who built our own computers?, they were two bit binary, also had to write our own programs. Ahh, the trip down memory lane had me question what we used for data storage? We used tape. Yes it was a tape recorder tied into the computer? to hold our programs. We programmed in basic and a thousand bits was a program hog.

I'm not going to say too much about Bill Gates but I really and truly have an unhealthy disrespect for the guy. There were a lot better programs that came at that time but the problem was volume and common denominator. DOS was that common denominator programers found the most common. Even IBM failed to understand as they tried to compete in the public market against Gates. Their expertise was big business and public was not a business they understood. I have an IBM DOS program which is better than MS but it failed to achieve public acceptance as MS DOS was already established.

My own failure at trying to establish a Linear Program for computers met the same end. I'm not sure where it is at or if I even still have it? The problem every computer was designed to run in binary not linear. Could it have been better than binary?

Linux and Apple have stopped Gates from being the one and only computer system for the whole world. Hopefully in the future the world moves away from binary but for the time being, we are stuck with it. And personally it was a great set of training wheels but what a load of crap for the world to be using as "the" standard in computation.
always,
Barb
The more we learn, the more we realize we know and understand nothing.

Comments

What made MS was the

What made MS was the spreadsheet, the first program for business on computers. Since they all originated from the same program, is why all of them, PC and MAC, look the same.

If I was just starting out, I might go back to Nota Bene, the best word processor ever.

Apple hardware

The hardware guru behind Apple was Steve Wosniak, he would confound people by using far less components in his designs than anyone else. For the Apple, he produce a novel disc drive controller that varied the speed of the drive so that the data rate would always be constant regardless of the head position - and used less components to do it.

Apple III vs IBM PC

erin's picture

The Apple III was released almost a year before MSDOS with a version of a spreadsheet program nicknamed "the Giantkiller" meaning IBM. Unfortunately, many of the Apple IIIs had manufacturing defects (loose chips on the mobo), and had to be recalled. Apple was unable to re-establish the III as a business machine before PC-DOS (IBM's proprietary version of MicroSoft's MS-DOS) debuted and sucked up all the oxygen. MS-DOS was a licensed/rebranded version of Seattle Computing's 86-DOS/QDOS, a lightweight competitor to Digital Research's CP/M. DR failed to make a timely deal with IBM for supplying a PC OS for the 8086 machine they planned on releasing. Gates, whose company wrote programming languages, jumped on the opportunity to supply what IBM wanted, even though it (originally) was selling someone else's rebranded product. It was slick, but not crooked.

All of these were running versions/clones of VisiCalc (I think). It was another two years or so before Lotus 1-2-3 came out and blew VisiCalc out of the water with superior charting and macros.

I was a technical secretary for an engineering consulting office at the time and learned Pascal programming via OJT, writing industrial monitoring and control programs for power plants, cement processing and burn technology. :) We also ran simulations for Ball Glass who had a contract as a supplier on the Stealth bomber.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

I remember it well

Going to a PC was a huge backward step in those days.
At the time I was working for DEC in the UK. The VAX Systems we made had all sorts of commercial software running by 1980. These were multi user systems. We had 40+ users connected to a 1Mhz processor with 1Mb of RAM. Going to a PC running domesDos was torture.

4 years earlier I involved with developing and testing the complete avionics system for a Military Aircraft. All the real hardware including Radar and weapons system was connected to a 256kHz computer. It all ran in real time.

and now we need multi-GigaHertz multi core CPU's just to play solitare and answer emails.

I could rant on how windows is a total mess internally. Patches on patches on patches but I won't. Most of the people who use this site are stuck with it. IT was what came with the PC when you bought it. If you can move to something else such as MacOS or Linux then do so before Microsoft starts charging you $9.99/month to get patches. I moved my home systems to Mac's more than 10 years ago.
Samantha

PS,
I still program in Pascal. I've just finished an App to control the charging of my Electric Car. Done with Lazarus.

VI and SOS

AuPreviner's picture

I remember writing an English paper using SOS on a VAX system I had access to in college.

Surprisingly enough these days, I use VI ( really VIM ) often daily as a text editor.


"Love is like linens; after changed the sweeter." – John Fletcher (1579–1625)