🚀 go-pugleaf

On 2018-03-24, J  Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 04:49:27 -0500, Charles Richmond
> <nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:
>
>> On 3/24/2018 3:25 AM, Andreas Eder wrote:
>>
>>> On Sa 24 Mär 2018 at 00:53, Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Try using Wordstar under CP/M on a 4 megahertz Z80 machine...
>>> 
>>> It worked quite well. Iused it for years on an Osborne I.
>>> 
>>
>> I mentioned Wordstar because Mr. Hancock was complaining that the 
>> original IBM PC did not have the horsepower to run a word processor well.
>>
>> Wordstar was a counter-example, as I thought the original IBM PC had a 
>> more powerful, faster processor than a 4 megahertz Z80...  and the Z80 
>> handled word processing well using Wordstar.

A 4.77-MHz 8088 wasn't that much more powerful than a 4-MHz Z80.

> Wordstar is a bad counterexample with regard to the PC though.  It
> took a signfiicant performance hit going from CP/M to MS-DOS and if
> one's early PC experiences involved Wordstar on the PC one might have
> a false impression--Wordstar on the PC literally could not keep up
> with a fast typist.  We had a big proposal to get out one time against
> a tight deadline and ended up using the PCs as terminals to a Z/80
> CompuPro running Wordstar for CP/M because we were never going to get
> it out using Wordsar for MS-DOS on the PC.

Did your machines have CGA?  Much of the speed problem was in the
display adapter.  A PPOE's first IBM PC clones all came with CGA;
everyone was dazzled by colour graphics, even though most of the
machines were to be used for word processing.  A good typist could
easily stay a word ahead of the display.  We eventually swallowed
our pride and swapped out the CGAs for monochrome adapters, which
were much faster and had razor-sharp displays.

-- 
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