Hi,
> please see embedded comments below
Richard, could I ask you to please edit out the irrelevant parts of the
messages you reply to? Embedding comments the way you do makes your messages
difficult to follow, on numerous occasions I've missed important points
you're been making due to this....
>....I just can't convince my self that there's much in common between
>MSDOS and CP/M.
I only used CP/M on a daily basis for about two years back around 1980/81,
but I felt right at home when I started using MS-DOS.
However, the point of this message is that if you look into the inner
workings of MS-DOS you'll find that the similarities are much more than
superficial.
In fact, the first releases of DOS (1.00, 1.25) are compatible with CP/M
right down to the system calls. This was a deliberate move to make the
porting of software from CP/M to MS-DOS as easy as possible. It wasn't until
MS-DOS 2 and 3 that they started moving away from this - and is the reason
why so much software specifies DOS 3.x as the minimum it needs to run on.
> The one thing I see them having copied from the MAC is the reputation
>for routine crashes. I'm not sure it's warranted....
Try supporting a site running a couple of hundred machines loaded with M$
software and you'll change your opinion in short order!
OTOH I only have two Macs here (a Plus and a Classic II) and I've NEVER
known them to crash....unless they were running "M$ Works" at the time
anyway....
I realise this is a small sample, but compared to my PC running Win'95
they're rock solid.
> I don't think anyone denies that both IE and Netscape were based,
>at least in part, on the work done in NCSA MOSAIC, particularly v2.0.
Which explains why I despise both Nutscrape and InterNet Exploder....MOSAIC
was the first web browser I ever used, on my Classic II around 8(?) years
ago. I hated it with a passion then, and I still do.
>....They improved on almost everything they "copied" or bought, and
>brought it to market....
Personally, I don't consider bloated, buggy, slow software to be an
improvement....
>....The fact that some of their practices have come into question
>indicates they're not too different from other companies.
No, but it does indicate that they've been way too arrogant and
pushy....they though they were untouchable, they were wrong.
TTFN - Pete.
--
Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer.
Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC)
peter.pachla_at_wintermute.org.uk | www.wintermute.org.uk
--
Received on Sat Apr 08 2000 - 10:50:25 BST