🚀 go-pugleaf

On 3/17/2018 4:13 PM, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Mar 2018 12:56:32 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>
>> I think almost every programmer prepared some documentation on
>> punched cards and printed it out.
> 
> This you can do with any text editor. I do not use LibreOffice here when
> when coding (using vi or Emacs).
> 
>>> Apparently the IBM MT/ST (Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter) from 1964
>>> would match that description which was used only with an IBM
>>> Selectric. But there should had been applications which would not depend
>>> on an external type writer rather than using a dedicated printer, no?
>>
>> Not sure of your question.  The IBM MT/ST and MC/ST was integrated
>> with a Selectric typewriter which provided the keyboard and 'printer'.
>> As others mentioned, they were word processors.
> 
> I think I understand a word processor is something you edit a text. It
> assists you by wrapping text and allow modification of characters, like
> bold. Only *after* you are done editing you would print it out or save it
> to a file. You could move paragraphs around and often do mail
> merge. Things a Selectric could not do.

WP existed with hard-copy IO. There were people who did WP using 
teletypes. Yes, CRTs were much nicer, but that's a later development.

And with an MC/ST you could in fact move paragraphs around, by saving 
them separately (the magnetic cards could hold units of text smaller 
than a page. But note that such gear was not normally used by writers, 
but by secretaries or typists. Authors didn't type their own stuff. 
And even if they were capable of it (believe me, most weren't), the 
gear was far too expensive to give them their own, and they wouldn't 
want to devote the time to training in on it.


> The Selectric did not (for my knowledge) had a display. 

Correct.

Even if it might
> had "write ahead" you could not see what you wrote until it was printed
> on paper. If you made a mistake it was too late.

Sorta. But the Correcting Selectric had a lift-off tape so you could 
backspace an error out. If you're a typist, you probably know without 
looking (you're looking at the copy stand, not the typewriter) as soon 
as you press the wrong key. So many mistakes could be immediately 
corrected without even losing much rhythm.

  Because of that
> typewriters soon vanished after word processors were available in the
> late 70s to early 80s.
> 
> Which again raises the question: if word processors were around before
> the 70s, why didn't they supersede typewriters in offices already?

The IBM Displaywriter was IBM's CRT word processor, and came out in 
1982. According to an IBM website, "A system of three displays sharing 
a single higher speed printer and a paper handler sold for $26,185 and 
leased for $845 a month." (That's $67,555 and $2180 in 2018 dollars. 
Granted, it's for 3 workstations sharing a printer.)

On Sun, 18 Mar 2018 06:50:12 GMT, Dave Garland
<dave.g...@wizinfo.com> wrote: 

> On 3/17/2018 4:13 PM, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
>> On Sat, 17 Mar 2018 12:56:32 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
>> wrote: 
>>>
>>> I think almost every programmer prepared some documentation on
>>> punched cards and printed it out.
>> 
>> This you can do with any text editor. I do not use LibreOffice here
>> when when coding (using vi or Emacs).
>> 
>>>> Apparently the IBM MT/ST (Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter) from
>>>> 1964 would match that description which was used only with an IBM
>>>> Selectric. But there should had been applications which would not
>>>> depend on an external type writer rather than using a dedicated
>>>> printer, no? 
>>>
>>> Not sure of your question.  The IBM MT/ST and MC/ST was integrated
>>> with a Selectric typewriter which provided the keyboard and
>>> 'printer'. As others mentioned, they were word processors.
>> 
>> I think I understand a word processor is something you edit a text.
>> It assists you by wrapping text and allow modification of characters,
>> like bold. Only *after* you are done editing you would print it out
>> or save it to a file. You could move paragraphs around and often do
>> mail merge. Things a Selectric could not do.
> 
> WP existed with hard-copy IO. There were people who did WP using 
> teletypes. Yes, CRTs were much nicer, but that's a later development.
> 
> And with an MC/ST you could in fact move paragraphs around, by saving 
> them separately (the magnetic cards could hold units of text smaller 
> than a page. But note that such gear was not normally used by writers,
> but by secretaries or typists. Authors didn't type their own stuff. 
> And even if they were capable of it (believe me, most weren't), the 
> gear was far too expensive to give them their own, and they wouldn't 
> want to devote the time to training in on it.
> 
> 
>> The Selectric did not (for my knowledge) had a display. 
> 
> Correct.
> 
> Even if it might
>> had "write ahead" you could not see what you wrote until it was
>> printed on paper. If you made a mistake it was too late.
> 
> Sorta. But the Correcting Selectric had a lift-off tape so you could 
> backspace an error out. If you're a typist, you probably know without 
> looking (you're looking at the copy stand, not the typewriter) as soon
> as you press the wrong key. So many mistakes could be immediately 
> corrected without even losing much rhythm.
> 
>   Because of that
>> typewriters soon vanished after word processors were available in the
>> late 70s to early 80s.
>> 
>> Which again raises the question: if word processors were around
>> before the 70s, why didn't they supersede typewriters in offices
>> already? 
> 
> The IBM Displaywriter was IBM's CRT word processor, and came out in 
> 1982. According to an IBM website, "A system of three displays sharing
> a single higher speed printer and a paper handler sold for $26,185 and
> leased for $845 a month." (That's $67,555 and $2180 in 2018 dollars. 
> Granted, it's for 3 workstations sharing a printer.)
> 
> 

At a PPOE the secretaries had to use PC's with DisplayWrite (I,II, 3, 4 )
It was 'oribble to a simple programmer like me, used to a program editor. 
Text saved in EBCDIC. The only feature that appealed was "cursor-draw".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_DisplayWrite


-- 
Bah, and indeed, Humbug.

On 3/18/2018 8:51 AM, Kerr-Mudd,John wrote:

> At a PPOE the secretaries had to use PC's with DisplayWrite (I,II, 3, 4 )
> It was 'oribble to a simple programmer like me, used to a program editor.
> Text saved in EBCDIC. The only feature that appealed was "cursor-draw".
> 
The DisplayWriter was a fine WP station. It had a Selectric-quality 
keyboard, a good (albeit monochrome and character) display, and could 
keep up with the fastest typist. There obviously wasn't any 
"cursor-draw", since there was no mouse, but a typist doesn't need 
that anyhow. The software was solid, saving was pretty much automatic, 
and I don't think I ever saw a D'wr crash.

DisplayWrite was their attempt to recreate that experience for a PC. 
It was pretty klunky, and having what was usually a crappy keyboard 
and a monochrome monitor (CGA for WP would rot your eyeballs out) that 
couldn't handle the symbol characters didn't help. IBM obviously 
didn't know what to do when they no longer had control over the 
hardware. WordPerfect did things much better (aside from the tendency 
to assign functions to F, shift-F, ^F, and alt-F keys in what seemed 
to be random order).

Dave Garland <dave.g...@wizinfo.com> writes:
> The IBM Displaywriter was IBM's CRT word processor, and came out in
> 1982. According to an IBM website, "A system of three displays sharing
> a single higher speed printer and a paper handler sold for $26,185 and
> leased for $845 a month." (That's $67,555 and $2180 in 2018
> dollars. Granted, it's for 3 workstations sharing a printer.)

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2018b.html#94 Old word processors

followon to displaywriter was going to be 801/ROMP running CP.r written
in PL.8 (they had something like 200 people working on it in Austin).
the followon is canceled (plausibly because people moving to IBM/PCs).
They then decide to retarget to the unix workstation market and get the
company that did AT&T unix port to IBM/PC for PC/IX to do a port to
801/romp. This is then announced as PC/RT with AIX.

The followon to romp is rios for the RS/6000. The group also cuts
a deal with wang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories
typsetters, linasec, 1964
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories#Typesetters
word processors (including wang 1200, 1972)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories#Word_processors

one of the executives we worked with in RS/6000 (and HA/CMP) went over
to the wang effort in new england.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories#Decline_and_fall

In June 1991, Wang started reselling IBM computers, in exchange for IBM
investing in Wang stock. Wang hardware strategy to re-sell IBM RS/6000s
also included further pursuit of UNIX software.

... snip ...

801, iliad, romp, rios, pc/rt, rs/6000, power/pc, etc posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801
HA/CMP posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

-- 
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

On 2018-03-18 19:24, Dave Garland wrote:
> On 3/18/2018 8:51 AM, Kerr-Mudd,John wrote:
> 
>> At a PPOE the secretaries had to use PC's with DisplayWrite (I,II, 3, 4 )
>> It was 'oribble to a simple programmer like me, used to a program editor.
>> Text saved in EBCDIC. The only feature that appealed was "cursor-draw".
>>
> The DisplayWriter was a fine WP station. It had a Selectric-quality
> keyboard, a good (albeit monochrome and character) display, and could
> keep up with the fastest typist. There obviously wasn't any
> "cursor-draw", since there was no mouse, but a typist doesn't need that
> anyhow. The software was solid, saving was pretty much automatic, and I
> don't think I ever saw a D'wr crash.
> 
> DisplayWrite was their attempt to recreate that experience for a PC. It
> was pretty klunky, and having what was usually a crappy keyboard and a
> monochrome monitor (CGA for WP would rot your eyeballs out) that
> couldn't handle the symbol characters didn't help. IBM obviously didn't
> know what to do when they no longer had control over the hardware.
> WordPerfect did things much better (aside from the tendency to assign
> functions to F, shift-F, ^F, and alt-F keys in what seemed to be random
> order).

WordStar on the other hand was designed for touch typists. But they
undid that when they designed new versions with different keys (wordstar
2000?)

-- 
Cheers, Carlos.

On 3/19/2018 10:09 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:

> WordStar on the other hand was designed for touch typists. But they
> undid that when they designed new versions with different keys (wordstar
> 2000?)
>
I personally thought WordStar 4 was the acme of perfection for PCs, 
though the Displaywriter was better. WordPerfect was very popular with 
business in the US, in part due to their exceptionally good telephone 
support and aftermarket add-ons for the medical and legal professions. 
The F-key orientaton slowed me down, but I never used it for 
production typing. In the Windows era all of them deteriorated, and 
required taking your hand off the keyboard to (which slows touch 
typists down a lot, and occasionally resulted in entire paragraphs of 
gibberish due to their hand ending up one key off of where it should 
be) to use the mouse. I think that the people who marketed and wrote 
software were hunt-and-peck typists, and probably correctly assumed 
that the people who purchased the software were as well. The people 
who had to use it, not so much, back then.

On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 12:46:46 -0500
Dave Garland <dave.g...@wizinfo.com> wrote:

> WordPerfect was very popular with 
> business in the US, in part due to their exceptionally good telephone 
> support and aftermarket add-ons for the medical and legal professions. 
> The F-key orientaton slowed me down, but I never used it for 
> production typing.

	Wordperfect (5.1 anyway) was pretty good provided the keyboard had
function keys to the left in a block, it was a disaster with function keys
in a row over the top.

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith                          |   Directable Mirror Arrays
C:\>WIN                                     | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins.                |    licences available see
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    http://www.sohara.org/

On 3/19/2018 12:46 PM, Dave Garland wrote:
> On 3/19/2018 10:09 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
> 
>> WordStar on the other hand was designed for touch typists. But they
>> undid that when they designed new versions with different keys (wordstar
>> 2000?)
>>
> I personally thought WordStar 4 was the acme of perfection for PCs, 
> though the Displaywriter was better. WordPerfect was very popular with 
> business in the US, in part due to their exceptionally good telephone 
> support and aftermarket add-ons for the medical and legal professions. 
> The F-key orientaton slowed me down, but I never used it for production 
> typing. In the Windows era all of them deteriorated, and required taking 
> your hand off the keyboard to (which slows touch typists down a lot, and 
> occasionally resulted in entire paragraphs of gibberish due to their 
> hand ending up one key off of where it should be) to use the mouse. I 
> think that the people who marketed and wrote software were hunt-and-peck 
> typists, and probably correctly assumed that the people who purchased 
> the software were as well. The people who had to use it, not so much, 
> back then.
> 

Once there was a "rumor" that the company that owned WordPerfect... 
actually *lost* the source code for it!!!   The whole source code for 
the program had to bw re-written.

-- 
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

On Sunday, March 18, 2018 at 12:48:05 PM UTC-6, Lynn Wheeler wrote:

> In June 1991, Wang started reselling IBM computers, in exchange for IBM
> investing in Wang stock. Wang hardware strategy to re-sell IBM RS/6000s
> also included further pursuit of UNIX software.

Recently, I learned about the Wang VS systems, which resembled the IBM 360 
mainframe, although they were not identical. I wonder if this had something to 
do with Wang being accepted as an IBM reseller - or, in fact, with them becoming 
interested in becoming a reseller, since in this way they could make money from 
their existing customer base without designing new computers.

John Savard

On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 18:35:23 +0000, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>
> On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 12:46:46 -0500
> Dave Garland <dave.g...@wizinfo.com> wrote:
>
>> WordPerfect was very popular with 
>> business in the US, in part due to their exceptionally good telephone 
>> support and aftermarket add-ons for the medical and legal professions. 
>> The F-key orientaton slowed me down, but I never used it for 
>> production typing.
>
> 	Wordperfect (5.1 anyway) was pretty good provided the keyboard had
> function keys to the left in a block, it was a disaster with function keys
> in a row over the top.

I wonder if it also had the WordStar Diamond. From what I found you could
program a macro in Wordperfect to emulate the WordStar Diamond.
-- 
Andreas

My random toughts and comments
https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> writes:

> On Sunday, March 18, 2018 at 12:48:05 PM UTC-6, Lynn Wheeler wrote:
>
>> In June 1991, Wang started reselling IBM computers, in exchange for IBM
>> investing in Wang stock. Wang hardware strategy to re-sell IBM RS/6000s
>> also included further pursuit of UNIX software.
>
> Recently, I learned about the Wang VS systems, which resembled the IBM 360 
> mainframe, although they were not identical. I wonder if this had something to 
> do with Wang being accepted as an IBM reseller - or, in fact, with them becoming 
> interested in becoming a reseller, since in this way they could make money from 
> their existing customer base without designing new computers.

Wang VS was a great system.
The OS was nothing like anything from IBM.
I was working on it for a while before I stumbled onto one of the
Wang's IBM-isms.  Even then, a little of IBM, a lot of great Wang stuff.

So, I'm editing a COBOL program and the editor allows me to run
a test.  I think I've submitted a job and that's it, but a message
comes back to my screen telling me I have a S0C7 (IBM speak for invalid
data).  Unlike anything from IBM,
it shows me the send and receive fields and their contents.
Also, it lets me type new data into either or both fields.  Or it offers
to take me to the offending line in the COBOL program.

Of course all you get from IBM, is watch the job until it ends, then
read a huge dump.

Using Wang VS made it so clear how bad IBM software was.

The Wang hardware was a bit different too.
Their systems spanned a huge range of power.
The VS 5 was a $12,000 system.  Way lower priced
than anything in the IBM mainframe lineup.

When I connected from home using a Wang terminal the OS
loaded a micro-program into my terminal.  I think it did that
with all it's peripherals.  Seemed like a good idea to me.
The host really did control it's devices.

-- 
Dan Espen

On 2018-03-19 18:46, Dave Garland wrote:
> On 3/19/2018 10:09 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
> 
>> WordStar on the other hand was designed for touch typists. But they
>> undid that when they designed new versions with different keys (wordstar
>> 2000?)
>>
> I personally thought WordStar 4 was the acme of perfection for PCs,
> though the Displaywriter was better. WordPerfect was very popular with
> business in the US, in part due to their exceptionally good telephone
> support and aftermarket add-ons for the medical and legal professions.
> The F-key orientaton slowed me down, but I never used it for production
> typing. In the Windows era all of them deteriorated, and required taking
> your hand off the keyboard to (which slows touch typists down a lot, and
> occasionally resulted in entire paragraphs of gibberish due to their
> hand ending up one key off of where it should be) to use the mouse. I
> think that the people who marketed and wrote software were hunt-and-peck
> typists, and probably correctly assumed that the people who purchased
> the software were as well. The people who had to use it, not so much,
> back then.

Wordperfect 5.x was wonderful. It was the first one I had that handled 9
pin printers perfectly. The page size was correctly calculated even if
it contained photos or images. It had a mode to display what would be
the result graphically. This rendering was not specially fast. All the
wordstar variants I used previously made errors.

Later I had to use Windows based word processors. I remember one, what
was it... Abipro? amiword? Amipro?  The last one does exist in the
wikipedia. I don't remember. But all the windows based wordprocessors I
tried (except WP) were terrible with pin printers, minutes per page,
because they printed graphics instead of letters.

But the Windows Word Perfect was not good enough, they did not design it
well. It was slow, it crashed, it failed, different interface IIRC...

There was a MsDOS word processor that was intended to write math texts
properly. I don't remember the name, but I found it difficult to use. A
friend of mine used it a lot, said it was the only choice for math. Now
he uses Tex.

-- 
Cheers, Carlos.

On 2018-03-19 19:35, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 12:46:46 -0500
> Dave Garland <dave.g...@wizinfo.com> wrote:
> 
>> WordPerfect was very popular with 
>> business in the US, in part due to their exceptionally good telephone 
>> support and aftermarket add-ons for the medical and legal professions. 
>> The F-key orientaton slowed me down, but I never used it for 
>> production typing.
> 
> 	Wordperfect (5.1 anyway) was pretty good provided the keyboard had
> function keys to the left in a block, it was a disaster with function keys
> in a row over the top.

There was a plastic or card with holes that would be placed on the
keyboard around the function keys that facilitated usage a lot. Possibly
there was a sample file with the layout, both for functions on the left
or on the top. I made mine with paper.


-- 
Cheers, Carlos.

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 12:46:46 -0500
> Dave Garland <dave.g...@wizinfo.com> wrote:
> 
>> WordPerfect was very popular with 
>> business in the US, in part due to their exceptionally good telephone 
>> support and aftermarket add-ons for the medical and legal professions. 
>> The F-key orientaton slowed me down, but I never used it for 
>> production typing.
> 
> 	Wordperfect (5.1 anyway) was pretty good provided the keyboard had
> function keys to the left in a block, it was a disaster with function keys
> in a row over the top.
> 

Everything is a disaster with the function keys across the top.

-- 
Pete

On 3/19/2018 2:41 PM, Charles Richmond wrote:
> On 3/19/2018 12:46 PM, Dave Garland wrote:
>> On 3/19/2018 10:09 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>>
>>> WordStar on the other hand was designed for touch typists. But they
>>> undid that when they designed new versions with different keys 
>>> (wordstar
>>> 2000?)
>>>
>> I personally thought WordStar 4 was the acme of perfection for PCs, 
>> though the Displaywriter was better. WordPerfect was very popular 
>> with business in the US, in part due to their exceptionally good 
>> telephone support and aftermarket add-ons for the medical and legal 
>> professions. The F-key orientaton slowed me down, but I never used 
>> it for production typing. In the Windows era all of them 
>> deteriorated, and required taking your hand off the keyboard to 
>> (which slows touch typists down a lot, and occasionally resulted in 
>> entire paragraphs of gibberish due to their hand ending up one key 
>> off of where it should be) to use the mouse. I think that the people 
>> who marketed and wrote software were hunt-and-peck typists, and 
>> probably correctly assumed that the people who purchased the 
>> software were as well. The people who had to use it, not so much, 
>> back then.
>>
> 
> Once there was a "rumor" that the company that owned WordPerfect... 
> actually *lost* the source code for it!!!   The whole source code for 
> the program had to bw re-written.
> 
I don't know about that, but they did not make the jump to Windows any 
better than WordStar did (for one thing, Windows monopolized some of 
the function keys). And then the company was sold to Novell. Microsoft 
may have played some of their notorious tricks to break it since MS 
had a competing product (Word). And it was all pretty much downhill, 
ending up being owned by Corel.

On 2018-03-20, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 12:46:46 -0500
>> Dave Garland <dave.g...@wizinfo.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> WordPerfect was very popular with 
>>> business in the US, in part due to their exceptionally good telephone 
>>> support and aftermarket add-ons for the medical and legal professions. 
>>> The F-key orientaton slowed me down, but I never used it for 
>>> production typing.
>> 
>> 	Wordperfect (5.1 anyway) was pretty good provided the keyboard had
>> function keys to the left in a block, it was a disaster with function keys
>> in a row over the top.
>
> Everything is a disaster with the function keys across the top.

Different strokes for different folks.  I prefer the function keys on top.
I had the Amiga version of WordPerfect, complete with a little card that
fit perfectly into the slot on the A1000 keyboard above the function keys.

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
 X   Top-posted messages will probably be ignored.  See RFC1855.
/ \  HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored.  Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

On 2018-03-19, Dave Garland <dave.g...@wizinfo.com> wrote:

> On 3/19/2018 10:09 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>
>> WordStar on the other hand was designed for touch typists. But they
>> undid that when they designed new versions with different keys (wordstar
>> 2000?)
>
> I personally thought WordStar 4 was the acme of perfection for PCs, 
> though the Displaywriter was better. WordPerfect was very popular with 
> business in the US, in part due to their exceptionally good telephone 
> support and aftermarket add-ons for the medical and legal professions. 
> The F-key orientaton slowed me down, but I never used it for 
> production typing. In the Windows era all of them deteriorated, and 
> required taking your hand off the keyboard to (which slows touch 
> typists down a lot, and occasionally resulted in entire paragraphs of 
> gibberish due to their hand ending up one key off of where it should 
> be) to use the mouse. I think that the people who marketed and wrote 
> software were hunt-and-peck typists, and probably correctly assumed 
> that the people who purchased the software were as well. The people 
> who had to use it, not so much, back then.

Most software these days seems designed to force your hands back and
forth between keyboard and mouse.  This is a pity for us touch typists,
for whom a mouse click takes about the same time as 10 keystrokes.

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
 X   Top-posted messages will probably be ignored.  See RFC1855.
/ \  HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored.  Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 10:46:50 AM UTC-7, Dave Garland wrote:
> I personally thought WordStar 4 was the acme of perfection for PCs, 

Indeed. 3.3 didn't have undelete or embedded ruler lines. 5.mumble moved
away from the slightly warmed over text file format (i.e., you could no
longer PIP a document [Z] to turn it into a text file).
-- 
roger ivie
roger...@gmail.com

On Sunday, March 18, 2018 at 2:24:46 PM UTC-4, Dave Garland wrote:

> DisplayWrite was their attempt to recreate that experience for a PC. 
> It was pretty klunky, and having what was usually a crappy keyboard 
> and a monochrome monitor (CGA for WP would rot your eyeballs out) that 
> couldn't handle the symbol characters didn't help. IBM obviously 
> didn't know what to do when they no longer had control over the 
> hardware. WordPerfect did things much better (aside from the tendency 
> to assign functions to F, shift-F, ^F, and alt-F keys in what seemed 
> to be random order).

IBM had multiple word processing products, and there were 
many others, too.

We used IBM's Assistant Series.  I don't think they were as popular,
but IMHO they were very good.  "Writing Assistant" was a powerful
but easy to use tool.

IMHO, the original IBM PC was too underpowered to properly support
word processing, or indeed, much else.  The 286 onward was a lot
faster and thus easier to use.  A lot of early programs obviously
worked on the original PC, even with just floppies, but they ran
slowly.

On 2018-03-23, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com <hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:

> On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 1:43:54 AM UTC-4, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>
>>> Also the "personal computer" boom started in the 80s.
>> 
>>      Mid '70s.
>> 
>>      IBM joined in after the market had been established.
>
> IMHO, the personal computer market was a niche specialty field
> with _relatively_ few units sold until the IBM PC hit the streets
> _and_ was accepted by the business community.

Those three magic letters are what made it acceptable to the
business community.  Personally, I found it a big yawn.  It
wasn't enough to coax me away from my IMSAI, and the Z80B-powered
TurboDOS boxes I was working on at the time blew the doors off the
original IBM Personal Computer.

It wasn't until the Amiga came out that I got excited enough to
move to another computer.  Too bad Commodore bungled it so badly.
Someone once said that if Commodore sold sushi, they would market
it as "cold dead fish".

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
 X   Top-posted messages will probably be ignored.  See RFC1855.
/ \  HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored.  Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

On 3/23/2018 2:36 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Sunday, March 18, 2018 at 2:24:46 PM UTC-4, Dave Garland wrote:
> 
>> DisplayWrite was their attempt to recreate that experience for a PC.
>> It was pretty klunky, and having what was usually a crappy keyboard
>> and a monochrome monitor (CGA for WP would rot your eyeballs out) that
>> couldn't handle the symbol characters didn't help. IBM obviously
>> didn't know what to do when they no longer had control over the
>> hardware. WordPerfect did things much better (aside from the tendency
>> to assign functions to F, shift-F, ^F, and alt-F keys in what seemed
>> to be random order).
> 
> IBM had multiple word processing products, and there were
> many others, too.
> 
> We used IBM's Assistant Series.  I don't think they were as popular,
> but IMHO they were very good.  "Writing Assistant" was a powerful
> but easy to use tool.

Writing Assistant was pretty clearly a rebadged version of pfs:Write. 
There was a suite of pfs: products, and I think that the other 
"Assistant" programs were also versions of those, not written by IBM.

> 
> IMHO, the original IBM PC was too underpowered to properly support
> word processing, or indeed, much else.  The 286 onward was a lot
> faster and thus easier to use.  A lot of early programs obviously
> worked on the original PC, even with just floppies, but they ran
> slowly.

Underpowered? Perhaps if you insist on WYSIWYG, but I don't think 
anything common did that at the time. I felt the original IBM-PC was 
slow and klunky compared to a decent CP/M machine, though it did have 
a very nice ("IBM quality") keyboard. I was a 100wpm typist, and could 
do that on a Morrow MD-3 (CP/M, 4MHz Z80) with an LSI ADM-20 (? badged 
Morrow) terminal and WordStar. Or a Leading Edge Model D (PC clone 
with a HDD, nice). Don't remember what the WP software there was, but 
I mostly ran Quattro Pro on that machine. Couldn't type that fast on 
an Osborne, that keyboard was too crappy, though I did know a few 
people in nonprofits who used them to do grant proposals and such (the 
eyestrain must have been severe).

On Fri, 23 Mar 2018 12:36:27 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

>On Sunday, March 18, 2018 at 2:24:46 PM UTC-4, Dave Garland wrote:
>
>> DisplayWrite was their attempt to recreate that experience for a PC. 
>> It was pretty klunky, and having what was usually a crappy keyboard 
>> and a monochrome monitor (CGA for WP would rot your eyeballs out) that 
>> couldn't handle the symbol characters didn't help. IBM obviously 
>> didn't know what to do when they no longer had control over the 
>> hardware. WordPerfect did things much better (aside from the tendency 
>> to assign functions to F, shift-F, ^F, and alt-F keys in what seemed 
>> to be random order).
>
>IBM had multiple word processing products, and there were 
>many others, too.
>
>We used IBM's Assistant Series.  I don't think they were as popular,
>but IMHO they were very good.  "Writing Assistant" was a powerful
>but easy to use tool.
>
>IMHO, the original IBM PC was too underpowered to properly support
>word processing, or indeed, much else.  The 286 onward was a lot
>faster and thus easier to use.  A lot of early programs obviously
>worked on the original PC, even with just floppies, but they ran
>slowly.

The machine was not too slow.  It worked fine with Word Perfect,
Multimate, and Word.  It didn't work very well with Wordstar because
the developers did a half-assed job of porting it.

On 3/23/2018 2:32 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 1:43:54 AM UTC-4, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
> 
>>> Also the "personal computer" boom started in the 80s.
>>
>>       Mid '70s.
>>
>>       IBM joined in after the market had been established.
> 
> 
> IMHO, the personal computer market was a niche specialty field
> with _relatively_ few units sold until the IBM PC hit the streets
> _and_ was accepted by the business community.
> 
> 

IMHO your HO is not worth much.  Apple sold quite a good number of 
computers *before* the IBM PC.  Radio Shack did so well selling their 
computers that they were opening Radio Shack Computer stores.  In May of 
1980, I bought a Radio Shack Color Computer at one of these computer 
stores. The Color Computer had a Motorola 6809 processor in it.

-- 
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 7:09:04 PM UTC-4, Dan Espen wrote:

> Wang VS was a great system.
> The OS was nothing like anything from IBM.
> I was working on it for a while before I stumbled onto one of the
> Wang's IBM-isms.  Even then, a little of IBM, a lot of great Wang stuff.
> 
> So, I'm editing a COBOL program and the editor allows me to run
> a test.  I think I've submitted a job and that's it, but a message
> comes back to my screen telling me I have a S0C7 (IBM speak for invalid
> data).  Unlike anything from IBM,
> it shows me the send and receive fields and their contents.
> Also, it lets me type new data into either or both fields.  Or it offers
> to take me to the offending line in the COBOL program.
> 
> Of course all you get from IBM, is watch the job until it ends, then
> read a huge dump.
> Using Wang VS made it so clear how bad IBM software was.

The latest IBM mainframe COBOL has improved somewhat on debugging
aids in case of an abend.


> The Wang hardware was a bit different too.
> Their systems spanned a huge range of power.
> The VS 5 was a $12,000 system.  Way lower priced
> than anything in the IBM mainframe lineup.
> When I connected from home using a Wang terminal the OS
> loaded a micro-program into my terminal.  I think it did that
> with all it's peripherals.  Seemed like a good idea to me.
> The host really did control it's devices.

What happened to the Wang Company?

On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 8:36:43 PM UTC-4, Peter Flass wrote:

> > 	Wordperfect (5.1 anyway) was pretty good provided the keyboard had
> > function keys to the left in a block, it was a disaster with function keys
> > in a row over the top.

 
> Everything is a disaster with the function keys across the top.

In IBM 3270 days, it was common to use the PF (function keys) for
various tasks, such as scroll forward/backward.  In earlier days,
there were also "PA" keys.  This differed in that PA keys did not
send data, while PF keys did.

On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 9:01:19 PM UTC-4, Charlie Gibbs wrote:


> Most software these days seems designed to force your hands back and
> forth between keyboard and mouse.  This is a pity for us touch typists,
> for whom a mouse click takes about the same time as 10 keystrokes.

A lot of mouse functions still can be performed pretty quickly by
keyboard shortcuts.  For instance, alt+F,S often saves a file.
CNTRL+arrow selects text, and CNTRL+V pastes.  (Usage varies
by program.)

On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 12:09:19 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

>On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 7:09:04 PM UTC-4, Dan Espen wrote:
>
>> Wang VS was a great system.
>> The OS was nothing like anything from IBM.
>> I was working on it for a while before I stumbled onto one of the
>> Wang's IBM-isms.  Even then, a little of IBM, a lot of great Wang stuff.
>> 
>> So, I'm editing a COBOL program and the editor allows me to run
>> a test.  I think I've submitted a job and that's it, but a message
>> comes back to my screen telling me I have a S0C7 (IBM speak for invalid
>> data).  Unlike anything from IBM,
>> it shows me the send and receive fields and their contents.
>> Also, it lets me type new data into either or both fields.  Or it offers
>> to take me to the offending line in the COBOL program.
>> 
>> Of course all you get from IBM, is watch the job until it ends, then
>> read a huge dump.
>> Using Wang VS made it so clear how bad IBM software was.
>
>The latest IBM mainframe COBOL has improved somewhat on debugging
>aids in case of an abend.
>
>
>> The Wang hardware was a bit different too.
>> Their systems spanned a huge range of power.
>> The VS 5 was a $12,000 system.  Way lower priced
>> than anything in the IBM mainframe lineup.
>> When I connected from home using a Wang terminal the OS
>> loaded a micro-program into my terminal.  I think it did that
>> with all it's peripherals.  Seemed like a good idea to me.
>> The host really did control it's devices.
>
>What happened to the Wang Company?

The short version is An Wang put his kid in charge, the kid screwed
up, then An Wang died.

On Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 1:51:12 AM UTC-4, Charles Richmond wrote:

> > On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 1:43:54 AM UTC-4, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
> > 
> >>> Also the "personal computer" boom started in the 80s.
> >>
> >>       Mid '70s.
> >>
> >>       IBM joined in after the market had been established.
> > 
> > 
> > IMHO, the personal computer market was a niche specialty field
> > with _relatively_ few units sold until the IBM PC hit the streets
> > _and_ was accepted by the business community.


> IMHO your HO is not worth much.  Apple sold quite a good number of 
> computers *before* the IBM PC.  Radio Shack did so well selling their 
> computers that they were opening Radio Shack Computer stores.  In May of 
> 1980, I bought a Radio Shack Color Computer at one of these computer 
> stores. The Color Computer had a Motorola 6809 processor in it.

I still maintain that before the IBM PC, personal computers were
still a specialty niche market.  Yes, there were Radio Shack
and Apple computers out there.  But in _relative_ terms, the
number of users was still very small.

There was certainly an automobile world before Henry Ford came 
along with the Model T.  But I think most people would agree that
the Model T's low price, durability, and widespread availability 
was what revolutionized the automobile field.

I knew a lot of early purchasers, and many of them bought machines
for hobbyist or experimental reasons.  That is, many business users
got them with the attitude, "well, computers are neat, so let's see
what this can do for us."  Some business users made very good use 
of them--I knew a few who ended up evolving from a retail store
into being a computer consultant for other businesses.  But other
business users ended up with a machine that sat on a shelf, perhaps
being slightly used for one small application.

As others mentioned, the magic letters "IBM" added a great deal
of cachet to the personal computer market.  I would also submit
that the wide variety of software and specialty hardware developed
for the IBM PC helped sales (we bought such a unit for a specific
data communications application).  In addition, I would submit
that the discount priced clone market, which seemed to sprout
up awfully fast, also contributed to the boom.

As an aside, it seemed to me most IBM PC's came with CGA, the
coarse color monitor.  I thought it looked like crap and hated
using it.  I only saw a few units with a monochrome screen, but
they looked a lot better.  VGA greatly improved things.

FWIW, at the supermarket, the modern scanner/register has a
screen and for whatever reason, the typeface and style looks
just like the DOS screen of the old days (in large characters.)

On Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 4:26:06 PM UTC-4, J. Clarke wrote:

> >What happened to the Wang Company?
> 
> The short version is An Wang put his kid in charge, the kid screwed
> up, then An Wang died.

I believe that is what happened to RCA, too.  Sarnoff put his kid
in charge and the company declined.

I haven't made up my mind on Tom Watson Jr.  On the one hand, the
company certainly did very well and S/360 was an enormous hit.
But would this have happened even without him?  Would someone
else did a better job?  When one reads Father, Son & Co, one
gets mixed impressions.

On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 13:31:43 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

>On Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 1:51:12 AM UTC-4, Charles Richmond wrote:
>
>> > On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 1:43:54 AM UTC-4, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>> > 
>> >>> Also the "personal computer" boom started in the 80s.
>> >>
>> >>       Mid '70s.
>> >>
>> >>       IBM joined in after the market had been established.
>> > 
>> > 
>> > IMHO, the personal computer market was a niche specialty field
>> > with _relatively_ few units sold until the IBM PC hit the streets
>> > _and_ was accepted by the business community.
>
>
>> IMHO your HO is not worth much.  Apple sold quite a good number of 
>> computers *before* the IBM PC.  Radio Shack did so well selling their 
>> computers that they were opening Radio Shack Computer stores.  In May of 
>> 1980, I bought a Radio Shack Color Computer at one of these computer 
>> stores. The Color Computer had a Motorola 6809 processor in it.
>
>I still maintain that before the IBM PC, personal computers were
>still a specialty niche market.  Yes, there were Radio Shack
>and Apple computers out there.  But in _relative_ terms, the
>number of users was still very small.

ALL computers were a specialty niche market at the time.  Mainframe,
mini, micro, embedded, most people never knowingly interacted with
one.

<hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 1:51:12 AM UTC-4, Charles Richmond wrote:
> 
>>> On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 1:43:54 AM UTC-4, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>>> 
>>>>> Also the "personal computer" boom started in the 80s.
>>>> 
>>>> Mid '70s.
>>>> 
>>>> IBM joined in after the market had been established.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> IMHO, the personal computer market was a niche specialty field
>>> with _relatively_ few units sold until the IBM PC hit the streets
>>> _and_ was accepted by the business community.
> 
> 
>> IMHO your HO is not worth much.  Apple sold quite a good number of 
>> computers *before* the IBM PC.  Radio Shack did so well selling their 
>> computers that they were opening Radio Shack Computer stores.  In May of 
>> 1980, I bought a Radio Shack Color Computer at one of these computer 
>> stores. The Color Computer had a Motorola 6809 processor in it.
> 
> I still maintain that before the IBM PC, personal computers were
> still a specialty niche market.  Yes, there were Radio Shack
> and Apple computers out there.  But in _relative_ terms, the
> number of users was still very small.

The Apple looked like what it was - a machine for hobbyiests. The multiple
ribbon cables coming out of the case, ant the floppy drives in separate
boxes, looked like h@ll and added a lot of vulnerability to the system.
Many places I saw left the cover off for easy access. The machines got a
lot of business use, but they never appeared  to be business machines.

> 
> There was certainly an automobile world before Henry Ford came 
> along with the Model T.  But I think most people would agree that
> the Model T's low price, durability, and widespread availability 
> was what revolutionized the automobile field.
> 
> I knew a lot of early purchasers, and many of them bought machines
> for hobbyist or experimental reasons.  That is, many business users
> got them with the attitude, "well, computers are neat, so let's see
> what this can do for us."  Some business users made very good use 
> of them--I knew a few who ended up evolving from a retail store
> into being a computer consultant for other businesses.  But other
> business users ended up with a machine that sat on a shelf, perhaps
> being slightly used for one small application.
> 
> As others mentioned, the magic letters "IBM" added a great deal
> of cachet to the personal computer market.  I would also submit
> that the wide variety of software and specialty hardware developed
> for the IBM PC helped sales (we bought such a unit for a specific
> data communications application).  In addition, I would submit
> that the discount priced clone market, which seemed to sprout
> up awfully fast, also contributed to the boom.
> 
> As an aside, it seemed to me most IBM PC's came with CGA, the
> coarse color monitor.  I thought it looked like crap and hated
> using it.  I only saw a few units with a monochrome screen, but
> they looked a lot better.  VGA greatly improved things.

CGA was terrible for text, but looked really good with simple graphics like
Lotus-1-2-3. Short of having two monitors the Hercules cards represented
the best compromize.

> 
> FWIW, at the supermarket, the modern scanner/register has a
> screen and for whatever reason, the typeface and style looks
> just like the DOS screen of the old days (in large characters.)
> 

-- 
Pete

hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com writes:

> On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 7:09:04 PM UTC-4, Dan Espen wrote:
>
>> Wang VS was a great system.
>> The OS was nothing like anything from IBM.
>> I was working on it for a while before I stumbled onto one of the
>> Wang's IBM-isms.  Even then, a little of IBM, a lot of great Wang stuff.
>> 
>> So, I'm editing a COBOL program and the editor allows me to run
>> a test.  I think I've submitted a job and that's it, but a message
>> comes back to my screen telling me I have a S0C7 (IBM speak for invalid
>> data).  Unlike anything from IBM,
>> it shows me the send and receive fields and their contents.
>> Also, it lets me type new data into either or both fields.  Or it offers
>> to take me to the offending line in the COBOL program.
>> 
>> Of course all you get from IBM, is watch the job until it ends, then
>> read a huge dump.
>> Using Wang VS made it so clear how bad IBM software was.
>
> The latest IBM mainframe COBOL has improved somewhat on debugging
> aids in case of an abend.

Last time I checked, still quite cumbersome to use.

Wang VS presented a unified system.
At the time I was using my own editor so it tried to
return me to their editor.  I did a little checking
and found out what I needed to get the same stuff to work
with the editor I wrote.

>> The Wang hardware was a bit different too.
>> Their systems spanned a huge range of power.
>> The VS 5 was a $12,000 system.  Way lower priced
>> than anything in the IBM mainframe lineup.
>> When I connected from home using a Wang terminal the OS
>> loaded a micro-program into my terminal.  I think it did that
>> with all it's peripherals.  Seemed like a good idea to me.
>> The host really did control it's devices.
>
> What happened to the Wang Company?

PCs.

-- 
Dan Espen

J. Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> writes:

> On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 12:09:19 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>
>>On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 7:09:04 PM UTC-4, Dan Espen wrote:
>>
>>> Wang VS was a great system.
>>> The OS was nothing like anything from IBM.
>>> I was working on it for a while before I stumbled onto one of the
>>> Wang's IBM-isms.  Even then, a little of IBM, a lot of great Wang stuff.
>>> 
>>> So, I'm editing a COBOL program and the editor allows me to run
>>> a test.  I think I've submitted a job and that's it, but a message
>>> comes back to my screen telling me I have a S0C7 (IBM speak for invalid
>>> data).  Unlike anything from IBM,
>>> it shows me the send and receive fields and their contents.
>>> Also, it lets me type new data into either or both fields.  Or it offers
>>> to take me to the offending line in the COBOL program.
>>> 
>>> Of course all you get from IBM, is watch the job until it ends, then
>>> read a huge dump.
>>> Using Wang VS made it so clear how bad IBM software was.
>>
>>The latest IBM mainframe COBOL has improved somewhat on debugging
>>aids in case of an abend.
>>
>>
>>> The Wang hardware was a bit different too.
>>> Their systems spanned a huge range of power.
>>> The VS 5 was a $12,000 system.  Way lower priced
>>> than anything in the IBM mainframe lineup.
>>> When I connected from home using a Wang terminal the OS
>>> loaded a micro-program into my terminal.  I think it did that
>>> with all it's peripherals.  Seemed like a good idea to me.
>>> The host really did control it's devices.
>>
>>What happened to the Wang Company?
>
> The short version is An Wang put his kid in charge, the kid screwed
> up, then An Wang died.

Those Wang green screen terminals acted as word processors too.
(Part of the microcode the host downloaded.)
I remember hearing that Wang was going to work out how to
integrate their stuff with PCs.  Never happened.

-- 
Dan Espen

On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 18:46:52 -0400, Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>J. Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 12:09:19 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>
>>>On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 7:09:04 PM UTC-4, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>
>>>> Wang VS was a great system.
>>>> The OS was nothing like anything from IBM.
>>>> I was working on it for a while before I stumbled onto one of the
>>>> Wang's IBM-isms.  Even then, a little of IBM, a lot of great Wang stuff.
>>>> 
>>>> So, I'm editing a COBOL program and the editor allows me to run
>>>> a test.  I think I've submitted a job and that's it, but a message
>>>> comes back to my screen telling me I have a S0C7 (IBM speak for invalid
>>>> data).  Unlike anything from IBM,
>>>> it shows me the send and receive fields and their contents.
>>>> Also, it lets me type new data into either or both fields.  Or it offers
>>>> to take me to the offending line in the COBOL program.
>>>> 
>>>> Of course all you get from IBM, is watch the job until it ends, then
>>>> read a huge dump.
>>>> Using Wang VS made it so clear how bad IBM software was.
>>>
>>>The latest IBM mainframe COBOL has improved somewhat on debugging
>>>aids in case of an abend.
>>>
>>>
>>>> The Wang hardware was a bit different too.
>>>> Their systems spanned a huge range of power.
>>>> The VS 5 was a $12,000 system.  Way lower priced
>>>> than anything in the IBM mainframe lineup.
>>>> When I connected from home using a Wang terminal the OS
>>>> loaded a micro-program into my terminal.  I think it did that
>>>> with all it's peripherals.  Seemed like a good idea to me.
>>>> The host really did control it's devices.
>>>
>>>What happened to the Wang Company?
>>
>> The short version is An Wang put his kid in charge, the kid screwed
>> up, then An Wang died.
>
>Those Wang green screen terminals acted as word processors too.
>(Part of the microcode the host downloaded.)
>I remember hearing that Wang was going to work out how to
>integrate their stuff with PCs.  Never happened.

I understand that they kind of sort of did, but it took so long that
an insurance company got fed up and had a clone written that pretty
much killed Wang's word processing market.  This is something I did
not know until this weekend--I need to tell my boss on Monday because
(a) we've been fighting an "innovation" battle internally and (b) that
insurance company was us, and it's good to have this kind of
ammunition.

On 3/24/2018 3:31 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 1:51:12 AM UTC-4, Charles Richmond wrote:
> 
>>> On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 1:43:54 AM UTC-4, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Also the "personal computer" boom started in the 80s.
>>>>
>>>>        Mid '70s.
>>>>
>>>>        IBM joined in after the market had been established.
>>>
>>>
>>> IMHO, the personal computer market was a niche specialty field
>>> with _relatively_ few units sold until the IBM PC hit the streets
>>> _and_ was accepted by the business community.
> 
> 
>> IMHO your HO is not worth much.  Apple sold quite a good number of
>> computers *before* the IBM PC.  Radio Shack did so well selling their
>> computers that they were opening Radio Shack Computer stores.  In May of
>> 1980, I bought a Radio Shack Color Computer at one of these computer
>> stores. The Color Computer had a Motorola 6809 processor in it.
> 
> I still maintain that before the IBM PC, personal computers were
> still a specialty niche market.  Yes, there were Radio Shack
> and Apple computers out there.  But in _relative_ terms, the
> number of users was still very small.
> 

What you should say is... widespread use of microcomputers in the 
*business* sector did 8not* occur until the IBM PC.  It even took thw 
slow-witted business managers *years* to realize they could ge much 
better computers for less money... by purchasing IBM PC clones.

That said, the "killer app" for the Apple II was Visicalc... it caused 
many to buy the Apple II just to run Visicalc.  Visicalc does *not* 
sound like a hobby program to me.  :-)


-- 
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 22:46:36 -0500, Charles Richmond
<nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:

>On 3/24/2018 3:31 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>> On Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 1:51:12 AM UTC-4, Charles Richmond wrote:
>> 
>>>> On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 1:43:54 AM UTC-4, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> Also the "personal computer" boom started in the 80s.
>>>>>
>>>>>        Mid '70s.
>>>>>
>>>>>        IBM joined in after the market had been established.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> IMHO, the personal computer market was a niche specialty field
>>>> with _relatively_ few units sold until the IBM PC hit the streets
>>>> _and_ was accepted by the business community.
>> 
>> 
>>> IMHO your HO is not worth much.  Apple sold quite a good number of
>>> computers *before* the IBM PC.  Radio Shack did so well selling their
>>> computers that they were opening Radio Shack Computer stores.  In May of
>>> 1980, I bought a Radio Shack Color Computer at one of these computer
>>> stores. The Color Computer had a Motorola 6809 processor in it.
>> 
>> I still maintain that before the IBM PC, personal computers were
>> still a specialty niche market.  Yes, there were Radio Shack
>> and Apple computers out there.  But in _relative_ terms, the
>> number of users was still very small.
>> 
>
>What you should say is... widespread use of microcomputers in the 
>*business* sector did 8not* occur until the IBM PC.  It even took thw 
>slow-witted business managers *years* to realize they could ge much 
>better computers for less money... by purchasing IBM PC clones.
>
>That said, the "killer app" for the Apple II was Visicalc... it caused 
>many to buy the Apple II just to run Visicalc.  Visicalc does *not* 
>sound like a hobby program to me.  :-)

While it was very capable, on the screen it _looked_ like a hobby
program and the number of rows and columns it could address were very
limiting.

One would have expected actuaries to love it, but they didn't start
moving away from APL until well into the 32-bit Excel era.

On Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 2:31:44 PM UTC-6, han...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

> I still maintain that before the IBM PC, personal computers were
> still a specialty niche market.  Yes, there were Radio Shack
> and Apple computers out there.  But in _relative_ terms, the
> number of users was still very small.

The IBM PC definitely boosted the popularity of the microcomputer.

But before the IBM PC, a *lot* of small businesses were using CP/M systems to 
perform accounting functions. The Kaypro, for example, was not obscure or a 
niche product. Apple II computers were in widespread use in schools.

And a lot of people, not just a few adventurous hobbyists, had either a 
Commodore 64 (or a PET or VIC-20), a TRS-80 (or a Radio Shack Color Computer), 
or an Atari 400 (or 800).

The IBM PC didn't vastly increase the popularity of microcomputers, but it did 
quickly become the standard, particularly after cheap clones became available so 
that people with a Commodore 64, considering perhaps an Atari ST, could instead 
get on the bandwagon.

So the businesses with CP/M machines got IBM PCs, and the home computer users 
with Commodore 64s or the like also got machines compatible with an IBM PC, even 
if they didn't spring for an IBM PCjr.

That did mean that the IBM PC architecture had a wider pool of users than 
anything before it. But it consolidated what was there to a large degree, as 
opposed to increasing the adoption of microcomputers. That would have happened 
in any event, since the need and desire for computing power was there, and 
microprocessors were making it available more cheaply.

John Savard

On 3/24/2018 10:46 PM, Charles Richmond wrote:

> 
> What you should say is... widespread use of microcomputers in the 
> *business* sector did 8not* occur until the IBM PC.  It even took thw 
> slow-witted business managers *years* to realize they could ge much 
> better computers for less money... by purchasing IBM PC clones.

It was spreading among small businesses earlier. It was the corporate 
world that needed the crutch of the IBM label.

> That said, the "killer app" for the Apple II was Visicalc... it caused 
> many to buy the Apple II just to run Visicalc.  Visicalc does *not* 
> sound like a hobby program to me.  :-)
> 
Yes. And mostly buying it for business purposes. Farms, garages, other 
small operations that didn't have bureaucracies.

And soon after, for CP/M it was the software bundles. Osborne would 
sell you a computer with WordStar, SuperCalc, dBaseII, a PERT prog, 
some interpreters and maybe compilers, other odds and ends (the 
particular mix seemed to vary). "Everything you need!" Print ads 
showing woman in business suit swinging an Osborne like a briefcase 
(must have been an empty case, as it weighed as much as a sewing 
machine) and striding through the doorway spilling light from the 
future. Kaypro then sold the same sort of package, with a better 
screen and keyboard. Morrow did the same as desktop, with a decent 
terminal.

My main (word processing) client bought an Osborne to run 
spreadsheets, I played with it after hours. Nice. I bought a Morrow. 
Client complained that the user group people didn't speak English, 
only Osborne, and I started selling services 
(consulting/repair/handholding). Other small businesses were buying 
them, small nonprofits, authors, and others, mostly for the word 
processing and spreadsheet.

On 2018-03-24, J  Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 12:09:19 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>
>>On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 7:09:04 PM UTC-4, Dan Espen wrote:
>>
>>> Wang VS was a great system.
>>> The OS was nothing like anything from IBM.
>>> I was working on it for a while before I stumbled onto one of the
>>> Wang's IBM-isms.  Even then, a little of IBM, a lot of great Wang stuff.
>>> 
>>> So, I'm editing a COBOL program and the editor allows me to run
>>> a test.  I think I've submitted a job and that's it, but a message
>>> comes back to my screen telling me I have a S0C7 (IBM speak for invalid
>>> data).  Unlike anything from IBM,
>>> it shows me the send and receive fields and their contents.
>>> Also, it lets me type new data into either or both fields.  Or it offers
>>> to take me to the offending line in the COBOL program.
>>> 
>>> Of course all you get from IBM, is watch the job until it ends, then
>>> read a huge dump.
>>> Using Wang VS made it so clear how bad IBM software was.
>>
>>The latest IBM mainframe COBOL has improved somewhat on debugging
>>aids in case of an abend.
>>
>>
>>> The Wang hardware was a bit different too.
>>> Their systems spanned a huge range of power.
>>> The VS 5 was a $12,000 system.  Way lower priced
>>> than anything in the IBM mainframe lineup.
>>> When I connected from home using a Wang terminal the OS
>>> loaded a micro-program into my terminal.  I think it did that
>>> with all it's peripherals.  Seemed like a good idea to me.
>>> The host really did control it's devices.
>>
>>What happened to the Wang Company?
>
> The short version is An Wang put his kid in charge, the kid screwed
> up, then An Wang died.
>
Wang was famous this side of the pond with an ad that said something
like, "Join the Wangkers"

the system puzzled me because, although many companies had Wang
systems, there was very little information (books) about it.


-- 
greymaus.ireland.ie
Just_Another_Grumpy_Old_Man

On 3/24/2018 2:09 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> 
 >    [snip...]       [snip...]       [snip...]
> 
> What happened to the Wang Company?
> 
> 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories#Final_years

-- 
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 22:46:36 -0500, Charles Richmond wrote:
>
> On 3/24/2018 3:31 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>
>> I still maintain that before the IBM PC, personal computers were
>> still a specialty niche market.  Yes, there were Radio Shack
>> and Apple computers out there.  But in _relative_ terms, the
>> number of users was still very small.
>>
>
> What you should say is... widespread use of microcomputers in the
> *business* sector did 8not* occur until the IBM PC.  It even took thw
> slow-witted business managers *years* to realize they could ge much
> better computers for less money... by purchasing IBM PC clones.

What is with the Osborne and the office software coming along with it?
Since WordStar and other could run on any Z80 (8080) I assume that at
least small businesses used it a lot.
-- 
Andreas

My random toughts and comments
https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

On Sun, 25 Mar 2018 17:50:12 -0400, Andreas Kohlbach
<a...@spamfence.net> wrote:

>On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 22:46:36 -0500, Charles Richmond wrote:
>>
>> On 3/24/2018 3:31 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>>
>>> I still maintain that before the IBM PC, personal computers were
>>> still a specialty niche market.  Yes, there were Radio Shack
>>> and Apple computers out there.  But in _relative_ terms, the
>>> number of users was still very small.
>>>
>>
>> What you should say is... widespread use of microcomputers in the
>> *business* sector did 8not* occur until the IBM PC.  It even took thw
>> slow-witted business managers *years* to realize they could ge much
>> better computers for less money... by purchasing IBM PC clones.
>
>What is with the Osborne and the office software coming along with it?
>Since WordStar and other could run on any Z80 (8080) I assume that at
>least small businesses used it a lot.

I was finally able to remember/discover online, the name of the Amiga
word processor software: Final Writer. it was great, until I tried
printing. Then it was incredibly slow.

On 3/25/2018 6:44 PM, JimP wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Mar 2018 17:50:12 -0400, Andreas Kohlbach
> <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 22:46:36 -0500, Charles Richmond wrote:
>>>
>>> On 3/24/2018 3:31 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I still maintain that before the IBM PC, personal computers were
>>>> still a specialty niche market.  Yes, there were Radio Shack
>>>> and Apple computers out there.  But in _relative_ terms, the
>>>> number of users was still very small.
>>>>
>>>
>>> What you should say is... widespread use of microcomputers in the
>>> *business* sector did 8not* occur until the IBM PC.  It even took thw
>>> slow-witted business managers *years* to realize they could ge much
>>> better computers for less money... by purchasing IBM PC clones.
>>
>> What is with the Osborne and the office software coming along with it?
>> Since WordStar and other could run on any Z80 (8080) I assume that at
>> least small businesses used it a lot.
> 
> I was finally able to remember/discover online, the name of the Amiga
> word processor software: Final Writer. it was great, until I tried
> printing. Then it was incredibly slow.
> 

There was a word processor sold by Mark of the Unicorn software. The 
word processor was called FinalWord.  I used it at a PPoE on a Harris 
800 computer; the company had a daisywheel printer in a noise housing.

The license for using the word processor cost a lot IMHO...

-- 
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

On 3/25/2018 9:35 PM, Charles Richmond wrote:
> On 3/25/2018 6:44 PM, JimP wrote:
>> On Sun, 25 Mar 2018 17:50:12 -0400, Andreas Kohlbach
>> <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 22:46:36 -0500, Charles Richmond wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 3/24/2018 3:31 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I still maintain that before the IBM PC, personal computers were
>>>>> still a specialty niche market.  Yes, there were Radio Shack
>>>>> and Apple computers out there.  But in _relative_ terms, the
>>>>> number of users was still very small.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What you should say is... widespread use of microcomputers in the
>>>> *business* sector did 8not* occur until the IBM PC.  It even took thw
>>>> slow-witted business managers *years* to realize they could ge much
>>>> better computers for less money... by purchasing IBM PC clones.
>>>
>>> What is with the Osborne and the office software coming along with it?
>>> Since WordStar and other could run on any Z80 (8080) I assume that at
>>> least small businesses used it a lot.
>>
>> I was finally able to remember/discover online, the name of the Amiga
>> word processor software: Final Writer. it was great, until I tried
>> printing. Then it was incredibly slow.
>>
> 
> There was a word processor sold by Mark of the Unicorn software. The 
> word processor was called FinalWord.  I used it at a PPoE on a Harris 
> 800 computer; the company had a daisywheel printer in a noise housing.
> 
> The license for using the word processor cost a lot IMHO...
> 

Craig Finseth was a programmer at Mark of the Unicorn software.  Finseth 
has a book _The Craft of Text Editing_ on writing text editors available 
as a pdf file:

https://www.finseth.com/craft/

-- 
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

On 3/25/2018 4:50 PM, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:

> What is with the Osborne and the office software coming along with it?
> Since WordStar and other could run on any Z80 (8080) I assume that at
> least small businesses used it a lot.
> 
If you're asking why buy a computer with bundled software instead of 
just buying the software for the computer you already had, mostly the 
buyer didn't have a computer already. At least not one available to 
the buyer. (At my PPOE, accounting had just bought a mini, but that 
was only for accounting and nobody else touched it, including the 
boss.) Osborne's marketing gimmick was, "everything you need except a 
printer is in the box, you don't need to know anything about 
computers". Buying software retail wasn't cheap. The original price 
for WordStar was $495 plus $40 for the printed manual; Visicalc 
(similar to the SuperCalc spreadsheet bundled with Osbornes) was 
around $100; I can't find a price for MBASIC (CP/M computers mostly 
did not have BASIC in ROM). But Osborne's price at $1795 included all 
that, and even better it was already configured to go with the 
hardware. CP/M hardware was not standardized except for the CPU chip, 
you couldn't just buy software and load it in, because every company 
used a different format for floppies. (I had a program named UniForm, 
that could read/write/format around 100 different formats, but that 
was only for soft-sectored disks, not for drives where the floppies 
were hard-sectored.) And even if you could read the disks, it probably 
wouldn't work well without telling it things like the escape sequences 
to move the cursor on the screen, do a highlight, etc. Bundling turned 
out to be a very successful marketing strategy, and was copied by the 
competition (other stand-alone single-board CP/M computers like Kaypro 
and Morrow). (Prices in 1983-ish dollars, multiply by 2.5 for today's 
dollars.)

On 2018-03-24, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com <hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:

> On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 9:01:19 PM UTC-4, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> Most software these days seems designed to force your hands back and
>> forth between keyboard and mouse.  This is a pity for us touch typists,
>> for whom a mouse click takes about the same time as 10 keystrokes.
>
> A lot of mouse functions still can be performed pretty quickly by
> keyboard shortcuts.  For instance, alt+F,S often saves a file.
> CNTRL+arrow selects text, and CNTRL+V pastes.  (Usage varies
> by program.)

Yes, I've learned a lot of keyboard shortcuts.  Most users don't, though.

The one that really drives me nuts is when people use the mouse to
reposition the cursor a short distance in a text editor, where a few
taps of the arrow keys would do the job more quickly and accurately.

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
 X   Top-posted messages will probably be ignored.  See RFC1855.
/ \  HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored.  Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

On Sun, 25 Mar 2018 18:44:02 -0500, JimP wrote:
>
> I was finally able to remember/discover online, the name of the Amiga
> word processor software: Final Writer. it was great, until I tried
> printing. Then it was incredibly slow.

That might depend on the printer used. Or that Final Writer is rendering
the output on the fly and it takes a while to print. Was an ASCII file
sent from a text editor to the printer faster?
-- 
Andreas

My random toughts and comments
https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

On Mon, 26 Mar 2018 01:16:35 -0500, Dave Garland wrote:
>
> On 3/25/2018 4:50 PM, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
>
>> What is with the Osborne and the office software coming along with it?
>> Since WordStar and other could run on any Z80 (8080) I assume that at
>> least small businesses used it a lot.
>>
> If you're asking why buy a computer with bundled software instead of
> just buying the software for the computer you already had, mostly the
> buyer didn't have a computer already. At least not one available to
> the buyer. (At my PPOE, accounting had just bought a mini, but that
> was only for accounting and nobody else touched it, including the
> boss.)

You could buy an Apple 2 or TRS-80 before the Osborne. They didn't come
with much software other than the OS and may be a game or two. But no
business software.

> Osborne's marketing gimmick was, "everything you need except a printer
> is in the box, you don't need to know anything about computers".

Not sure about "you don't need to know anything about computers". That
was probably more what the Coleco Adam and the Amstrad PCW advertised.

[...]
-- 
Andreas

My random toughts and comments
https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

On 3/26/2018 4:31 PM, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Mar 2018 01:16:35 -0500, Dave Garland wrote:
>>
>> On 3/25/2018 4:50 PM, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
>>
>>> What is with the Osborne and the office software coming along with it?
>>> Since WordStar and other could run on any Z80 (8080) I assume that at
>>> least small businesses used it a lot.
>>>
>> If you're asking why buy a computer with bundled software instead of
>> just buying the software for the computer you already had, mostly the
>> buyer didn't have a computer already. At least not one available to
>> the buyer. (At my PPOE, accounting had just bought a mini, but that
>> was only for accounting and nobody else touched it, including the
>> boss.)
> 
> You could buy an Apple 2 or TRS-80 before the Osborne. They didn't come
> with much software other than the OS and may be a game or two. But no
> business software.

True, and that's where Visicalc was born. And suddenly small business 
people began buying Apples because they wanted that spreadsheet.

> 
>> Osborne's marketing gimmick was, "everything you need except a printer
>> is in the box, you don't need to know anything about computers".
> 
> Not sure about "you don't need to know anything about computers". That
> was probably more what the Coleco Adam and the Amstrad PCW advertised.
> 

Just a lesson not to trust claims made by marketers. (I don't recall 
if Osborne claimed that explicitly, but it was certainly implied.)  I 
made my business filling that gap. The buyers were usually "appliance 
operators", they weren't interested in computers per se, but it did 
something they found useful, and that was generally the spreadsheet or 
the word processing. For a number of years, the owner of that original 
Osborne had me come and erase files for him. He didn't know how, he 
didn't want to know how, if he could tweak his spreadsheets and write 
rough drafts to hand hard copy to a typist, that was all he was 
interested in.

On Monday, March 26, 2018 at 2:16:41 AM UTC-4, Dave Garland wrote:

> If you're asking why buy a computer with bundled software instead of 
> just buying the software for the computer you already had, mostly the 
> buyer didn't have a computer already. At least not one available to 
> the buyer. (At my PPOE, accounting had just bought a mini, but that 
> was only for accounting and nobody else touched it, including the 
> boss.) Osborne's marketing gimmick was, "everything you need except a 
> printer is in the box, you don't need to know anything about 
> computers". Buying software retail wasn't cheap. The original price 
> for WordStar was $495 plus $40 for the printed manual; Visicalc 
> (similar to the SuperCalc spreadsheet bundled with Osbornes) was 
> around $100; I can't find a price for MBASIC (CP/M computers mostly 
> did not have BASIC in ROM). But Osborne's price at $1795 included all 
> that, and even better it was already configured to go with the 
> hardware. CP/M hardware was not standardized except for the CPU chip, 
> you couldn't just buy software and load it in, because every company 
> used a different format for floppies. (I had a program named UniForm, 
> that could read/write/format around 100 different formats, but that 
> was only for soft-sectored disks, not for drives where the floppies 
> were hard-sectored.) And even if you could read the disks, it probably 
> wouldn't work well without telling it things like the escape sequences 
> to move the cursor on the screen, do a highlight, etc. Bundling turned 
> out to be a very successful marketing strategy, and was copied by the 
> competition (other stand-alone single-board CP/M computers like Kaypro 
> and Morrow). (Prices in 1983-ish dollars, multiply by 2.5 for today's 
> dollars.)

In addition to purchasing the hardware and software, there was also
the need to train everyone who would operate the computer.  Today,
we take computer operation for granted since almost everyone knows 
it, but back then, computers were totally new to most people and
they needed training on how to do every little thing.  Anyway, 
just the lost time of employees going to training and then getting
up to speed was an expense in itself.  I don't know if the computer
retailers back then offered training as part of the sale, or if that
was another cost.  (Yes, some users were pretty smart and could
figure out things for themselves, but most weren't like that
and needed to be taught things like how to save data, backup data,
and hit the return key after typing a line.)

There was also the cost, sometimes considerable, of typing in all of
the existing manual records into the computer.  Conversions are rarely
easy.


Until about the early 1970s, IBM bundled operating and application
software with its computers and tabulating machines*.  To fend
off anti-trust efforts, IBM decided to unbundle and sell software
separately.  This resulted in an explosion of software products.  
It seemed that every data center used SYNCSORT instead of the IBM
sort, for instance.

IBM had a detailed accounting package for hospitals, dating
from the 1401 era, and revised for S/360 and later.  AFAIK, it
was quite popular.

* For tabulating machines, IBM had an application description,
with suggested wiring of boards to accomplish various purposes.
For instance, in the 1930s, they had a very sophisticated
accounting system design for railroad needs.  It handled things
like freight car accounting and station revenue and expenses,
even handling things like the station agent selling newspapers
and candy, and rent from rented space.