What if,... early PCs (was: stepping machanism

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Sun Apr 11 13:07:48 1999

On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, Richard Erlacher wrote to Allison:
> The principal complaint I heard about the M1 was the principal complaint
> about the M3. It was a paper tiger until you opened the box and added a
> bunch of stuff/mods.

While I agree, I kinda doubt that Allison has EVER plugged in ANYTHING
before she "opened the box and added a bunch of stuff/mods". So, she
might not see that as quite the negative that you do :-)

> The same, to lesser extent, perhaps, could be said for
> the Apple. The Apple was made easy-to-open. The RS boxes were not.

While velcro is certainly extraordinarily convenient, particularly to
those bothered by screwdrivers. But, as an occasional professional auto
mechanic, I hardly felt that half a dozen screws made something hard to
open. But it is true that RS had a very bad attitude about it. They
actually had anti-tamper paint on one of the screws! One of the local RS
technicians had an interesting slant on that: Since RS's policies
apparently didn't explicitly mention modifications, only that the tamper
seal must be intact, he would happily do the various warranty mods (there
were SEVERAL for the early EI), IFF you provided him circuit sketches for
all mods, and put a dab of the anti-tamper paint (he would provide it) on
the screw after you made the mods. He said that if the store manager
balked at seeing additional stuff through the slots of the "unopened"
case, just start talking about "building boats in bottles". Apple's
attitude of "go on in!" was much more refreshing.


> When I saw my first PC in a commercial environment, it was running CP/M-86
> because that had the software the business owner was using previously on his
> Z-80. I often wondered what motivated him to switch. I also saw a couple
> of people's Apple-II running CP/M-86, and was awed by the fact they'd run an
> OS that was slower than the previous and better-endowed (with software)
> CP/M-80 in the same basic environment.

Interesting. What after-market system were they running to do CP/M-86 on
the Apple?

> IBM really performed only one major service to the microcomputer world:
> They lent it its own trade name, which was its legitimacy.
"PC" was in moderately common usage around here before IBM's entry.
IBM always considered "PC" to be a shortened description, NOT a trade
name! They did NOT trademark "PC". They never even trademarked
"PC-DOS"!! OTOH, "MS-DOS" IS a registered trademark.

> Having done
> that, the behemoth was overrun by smaller, more adept innovators.

Like a handful of fleas on an elephant.

One fellow referred to Compaq's "challenge" of IBM as "a mouse running up
the elephant's leg with intent to rape".
Received on Sun Apr 11 1999 - 13:07:48 BST