From:  "Jennifer Usher" <jennisuzan@earthlink.net>
Date:  15 Jan 2005 08:48:39 Hong Kong Time
Newsgroup:  news.alt119.net/alt.support.srs
Subject:  

Re: Correction

NNTP-Posting-Host:  null

"Jazlinn's Sugir"  wrote in message
news:41e7d166$1_3@alt.athenanews.com...

> The original PC gave a choice of MSDOS, CPM-86 and
> something else. Can't remember.

Ew!  Ew! Ew!  I know!  I know!  It was UCSD p-System.  One of the most
kludged up pieces of crap to ever be marketed.  I did some major development
work with it back around the mid-Eighties.  I was working for an attorney
who wanted to go into the software business, and he was led to believe that
p-System was the way to go.

For those unfamiliar with this OS, it was developed at the University of
California, San Diego, was supposed to be a universal operating system that
would run on any computer (versions were also available for the TI 99/4A,
the Apple II, and IBM DisplayWriters).  And, in theory, a program written,
and compiled, opn one system would run on another...provided that nothing
unique to one computer was used.  In another words, you could not write
anything remotely useful.

Oh, and for those who don't remember the DisplayWriter, it was a huge boat
anchor of a system that was designed for word processing.  The ironic part
was, it used the 8086 processor but was totally incompatible with the PC.
In the end, IBM made this terribly expensive and difficult to use system
obsolete when it introduced the PC.  Apparently one division did not know
what the other was cooking up.  The DisplayWriter was old style IBM.  Very
closed architecture, very secretive about the internal workings, and a pain
to use.

Ah, those were the days.

-- 
Jennifer Usher