On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, Tony Duell wrote:
> I liked LDOS (nicest of the Z80 OSes that I've used -- a lot better than
> CP/M for example), but I liked OS-9 (on the CoCo) even more.
Will LDOS run on other Z80 machines, and does OS-9 run on any other
systems? Back when I was deciding on my first computer (ok, well, my
first digital computer... I had one of those Radio Shack "computers"
with slide switches and light-bulbs, that one programmed by connecting
wires to the switches years earlier---BTW, I found the original
box-top for it in the basement several months ago!), I'd narrowed my
choices to three machines: a Commodore 64, Radio Shack Color Computer
(CoCo) and a Texas Instruments 99A. I came very close to purchasing
the CoCo, but I think it was out of stock, or somesuch. Then, I
re-read an article in Popular Electronics (or was it Popular Computing
by then? I'll have to check.) that went into detail about the
circuitry in the C-64 and it's video and sound chips; a fascinating
article (I'm guessing that many others here may have read it as well).
The most fun that I had with the C64 was with a sound-synthesis
program, but loading programs to, and saving them from, cassette tapes
was somewhat of a pain towards the end, but fun at first. :-) ...I
wonder if that tape is still readable if I can find it.
Over time, and after finding it a pain to do all that PEEKing and
POKEing, and tiring of BASIC, I'd wished that I'd bought the CoCo
instead.
> And yes, MS-DOS was inferior to LDOS. I particularly liked the SET and
> FILTER commands in LDOS -- it made interfacing homebrew hardware to the
> standard applications so easy.
That's what more computers need. Of course, I don't think that large
companies really want lots of people, such as beginning electronics
hobbyists and others with minimal electronics knowledge, to have an
easy way to perform hardware hacking and learn more about it; the more
difficult it is---or at least appears, and the more difficult it is
for people to buy reasonably priced things to hack with in local
retail stores, the better for them, as they can sell more
mass-produced, and annoyingly engineered, rubbish---where they
eliminate good features that would make a noticeable difference in the
product's usefuleness just to keep costs down so they can sell the
product for less, or else sell it for a ridiculously high price and
have a large profit margin.
Just my 2-cents worth of ranting and grumbling. :-)
RDD
--
Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals:
All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature &
rdd_at_perqlogic.com 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such
http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.
Received on Thu Apr 26 2001 - 20:26:25 BST