Stupid CP/M question

From: D. Peschel <dpeschel_at_u.washington.edu>
Date: Sat Jan 9 01:47:08 1999

> D. Peschel said...
> |
> |You can use wildcards * and ? to specify the file on B:. They work the same
> |way as in DOS (unfortunately). If you specify one file on B:, you can give
> |it a different name on A: by adding the name before the equals sign.
>
> No, Dos works the same way as CP/M, unfortunately.

Apparently I was unclear.

You can use wildcards * and ? to specify the file on B:. They work the same
way as in DOS. So you can type

PIP A:=B:*.COM copies all .COM files
PIP A:=B:???.COM copies all .COM files with three-char names
PIP A:=B:*A.COM copies all .COM files (surprise!)

Obviously we agree on this part.

If you specify ONLY ONE file on B:, you can rename it on A:.

PIP A:DEBUG.COM=B:DDT.COM copies B:DDT.COM to A:DEBUG.COM

By "one" I meant "only one", not "each".

Does that help? Did you think I wrote something entirely different?

> CP/M was OK for its time, but DOS really should
> have been better. And it might have been, had a
> certain Mr. Gates not snookered its developer &
> sold the thing to IBM...

Yes, it should have. And the more MS waited to improve DOS (because there
was no incentive since they already had a monopoly, or because they were
sloppy programmers, or for backward-compatibility reasons) the more
excruciating the thought of improvements which would break old programs
became. If they had just ripped off a better OS, that might have been nice
as well. Something with long file names, or multitasking, or whatever.
And OSs of the time DID have long file names. I don't know about
multitasking (maybe OS/9 or FLEX were around when DOS was born?).

There was a column in, I think, _MacWeek_. It went roughly like this:

Steve Jobs, in a fit of angst, wishes the Mac had never been born. A
guardian angel (a la _It's a Wonderful Life_) grants him his wish. We read
about the Apple corporate headquarters (with a big "Microsoft South" sign
out front), as well as an Internet cafe.

The cafe only has a few people, typing away on clunky monochrome PC clones
(running DOS 15.5). Jobs says, "Those people look like math professors!"
"They *are* math professors!" (obvious, I guess). With no fancy graphics
or GUI, only a math professor would want to use the Internet. :)

Of course the column was self-serving of Apple, glossing over the things
Apple has inflicted on the computer industry. But it does make the point
that incentives to quality are necessary, especially where Microsoft is
concerned.

-- Derek
Received on Sat Jan 09 1999 - 01:47:08 GMT