OT? The latest bare-bones from Fry's, Windows-free

[Anthony Fremont]

I can remember when the PC in the Software Lab had an external 10 MB drive
attached.

Did you ever see a real IBM PC running CPM from 8" floppy drives. I did
until MS finally released DOS.

 

[The Real Andy]

Here's a link:
http://shop4.outpost.com/product/4714029?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
but yesterday's Fry's ad supplement in the noosepaper has it listed at
$189.99.

But the thing that caught my eye was the very last item in the "Detailed
Description": Operating System: Linspire 5.0 .

I am really keen to have a look at linspire. MY test is to get several
peices of hardware, get a stooopid user to plug it in and make it
work. If the stooopid user passes the test, linspire passes the test.

 

[Pooh Bear]

Boy! Does anybody remember when 40 MEGAbytes was a lot?

My first HD had only 32 of them ! And that was simply an RLL version of 20MB
drives.

Graham

 

[Pooh Bear]

Did you ever see a real IBM PC running CPM from 8" floppy drives. I did
until MS finally released DOS.

No retail IBM PC used 8" floppies.

Graham

 

[Sjouke Burry]

Rich Grise wrote:




My first HD had only 32 of them ! And that was simply an RLL version of 20MB
drives.

Graham

Our first pc's had the 186 and 10 MB harddisk,
a cluster of 5 with ibm network

 

[Anthony Fremont]

No retail IBM PC used 8" floppies.

I didn't say they were "retail". They were the machines that the US
govt (the ones I saw were purchased by the USAF) bought by the
thousands. IBM couldn't warehouse them, so they delivered them. They
were sitting around doing nothing so "someone" devised the hardware to
connect Shugart 8" drives so CPM could be run on them. When DOS finally
came out, the 8" drives and associated i/o cards went by the wayside.

 

[Anthony Fremont]

Our first pc's had the 186 and 10 MB harddisk,
a cluster of 5 with ibm network

The only vendor that I know of that sold machines with 80186's in them
was Radio Shack.

 

[Pooh Bear]

I didn't say they were "retail".

Why didn't you say that before then ?

They were the machines that the US
govt (the ones I saw were purchased by the USAF) bought by the
thousands. IBM couldn't warehouse them, so they delivered them. They
were sitting around doing nothing so "someone" devised the hardware to
connect Shugart 8" drives so CPM could be run on them. When DOS finally
came out, the 8" drives and associated i/o cards went by the wayside.

Hardly a typical IBM PC !

Amstrad's PCs shipped with CP/M too ( and GEM ) btw ( on 5 1/4 ) .

Graham

 

[Pooh Bear]

Our first pc's had the 186 and 10 MB harddisk,
a cluster of 5 with ibm network

No IBM IIRC used a '186. A few clones did though.

Graham

 

[Anthony Fremont]

Why didn't you say that before then ?
wayside.

Hardly a typical IBM PC !

Amstrad's PCs shipped with CP/M too ( and GEM ) btw ( on 5 1/4 ) .

At the time, they were the only IBM PCs that had been delivered to
anyone. I think that qualifies as typical at the time. ;-)

 

[Ian Bell]

Boy! Does anybody remember when 40 MEGAbytes was a lot?

I remember when it did not exist. My first PC was an Amstrad 1640 and I
bought a Western Digital filecard (hard drive in an ISA slot) for it. I
remember dithering over whether to get the 20 MByte one or the 32 Mbyte. I
could not envisage ever needing that much storage but in the end I plumped
for the 32 meg.

Ian

 

[Anthony Fremont]

No IBM IIRC used a '186. A few clones did though.

At the time, AT&T was producing PC clones that had dual CPUs so that the
outputs could constantly be compared. Apparently, they were slightly
over concerned with reliability. I guess that after they saw the
quality of microsoft's work, they felt that the hardware was the least
of their problems. :-D

 

[Paul Burke]

Amstrad's PCs shipped with CP/M too ( and GEM ) btw ( on 5 1/4 ) .

The GEM ran with DOS IIRC. It was next to useless. I can't remember the
CP/M disks, only the DOS ones, but I thought I was in heaven with the
DUAL floppy drive (no hard disk till later). Yes, dual drives and a
Zorland C compiler, got some pretty serious work done with that. I can't
remember where the cross assembler came from though (6803 and 6809
mostly then).

Paul Burke

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

At the time, AT&T was producing PC clones that had dual CPUs so that the
outputs could constantly be compared. Apparently, they were slightly
over concerned with reliability. I guess that after they saw the
quality of microsoft's work, they felt that the hardware was the least
of their problems. :-D

The only "AT&T" IBM PC clones I saw were built by Olliveti in Italy.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Anthony Fremont]

The only "AT&T" IBM PC clones I saw were built by Olliveti in

Italy.

AIUI, these were not for general consumption. They were suppose to be
used in unattended, high-reliability operations. I saw this circa 1981
at a dog and pony show when I was in the USAF. I have no idea how much
we heard was really in production vs. being vaporware.

 

[Ken Smith]

Boy! Does anybody remember when 40 MEGAbytes was a lot?

I remember when 10M was the size of a washing machine and was considered
huge.

But then: I was working with Babage until we got our funding cut because
that mousey girl he was fooling with turned out to be the earl of
something's daughter.

 

[Pooh Bear]

The GEM ran with DOS IIRC. It was next to useless. I can't remember the
CP/M disks, only the DOS ones, but I thought I was in heaven with the
DUAL floppy drive (no hard disk till later). Yes, dual drives and a
Zorland C compiler, got some pretty serious work done with that. I can't
remember where the cross assembler came from though (6803 and 6809
mostly then).

It shipped with CP/M 86 as well as DOS. I recall using PIP ( for curiosity's
sake )


Graham

 

[Keith Williams]

The only vendor that I know of that sold machines with 80186's in them
was Radio Shack.

IIRC there were a few others, though nothing with a '186 was 100%
IBMPC compatible (BIOS IRQs were all messed up).

 

[Keith Williams]

I remember when 10M was the size of a washing machine and was considered
huge.

But then: I was working with Babage until we got our funding cut because
that mousey girl he was fooling with turned out to be the earl of
something's daughter.

Are you saying that Babage was screwing around with Ada? Does the
DOD know?

 

[Rich Grise]

Our first pc's had the 186 and 10 MB harddisk, a cluster of 5 with ibm
network

There were PC's with 186's? The only 186 I've worked with was the embedded
version of the 8086 - it included real-time clocks, address decoders, I
think an interrupt controller - a bunch of peripherals on-chip - I'm
pretty sure that it was intended to be the embedded version of the 8086.

Thanks!
Rich