> Over the years I've worked on a number of systems that were sold as "word
> processors". They were all "computers" in the sense that they had the
> standard complement of CPU, memory, mass storage and the programming was
> loaded at boot time, as opposed to being in ROM.
My Diamond's the same - the ROM only contains enough to load whatever's on the
system disk. I have various floppies that were labelled as having contents
other than the standard wordprocessing application software, so although the
machine was sold by the manufacturer solely as a wordprocessor there were
obviously 3rd parties who produced other software for it.
If your definition of computer means that the OS has to be seperate from the
running application, then no, it doesn't qualify (but that knocks out most 80's
home micros that would drop straight into BASIC)
I'd say that a wordprocessor that *looked* like a typewriter probably doesn't
qualify as a computer though; it's just a microprocessor-controlled typewriter.
cheers
Jules
=====
Backward conditioning: putting saliva in a dog's mouth in an attempt to make a bell ring.
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Received on Sat Aug 30 2003 - 04:02:01 BST