"Jennifer Usher" wrote in message news:34r6cmF4d12clU2@individual.net...
> "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.
Right.. That's what I thought but hazy.
> 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
>
>
>
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