Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 20:43:25 -0500 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: Bob Willcox <bob@immure.com> Cc: chat list <freebsd-chat@freebsd.org> Subject: OFR (Was: How did the MSFT monopoly start?) Message-ID: <15216.39229.89700.679362@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <20010807191721.A62228@luke.immure.com> References: <20010806142544.A64348@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <15214.52633.581653.632317@guru.mired.org> <20010807145112.C39962@luke.immure.com> <15216.25797.153039.786261@guru.mired.org> <20010807183116.D53464@luke.immure.com> <15216.33324.9869.833842@guru.mired.org> <20010807191721.A62228@luke.immure.com>
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Bob Willcox <bob@immure.com> types: > On Tue, Aug 07, 2001 at 07:05:00PM -0500, Mike Meyer wrote: > > My CP/M-80 box from that era - 256K of ram and a pair of 320K drives - > > did things the IBM mainframe I had access to couldn't do. Ditto for > > the Unix and the VMS system I was using then. Mostly, it was that my > > box was mine, so I could install all the tools I needed. The > > institutional systems weren't mine, so while the tools they had were > > better than I those I could afford, none of them had all the tools I > > needed. Things haven't really changed in that respect, it's just that > > my tools are now *much* better than they used to be. > As I remember, the main thing that I missed on my original PC was a full > screen editor. I was familiar with the various full screen editors on > the mainframes (using 3270s) and it took some adjustment to get used to > edlin (which I despised). Later, on the Microport AT system, I learned > vi (which took some time to do). I have been using vi ever since. That's actually amusing. The IBM box was running MVS with TSO for timesharing, and only had a few 3270 attached to it. I don't think I ever used a fullscreen editor on it. On the other hand, I had a commercial ersatz emacs - MINCE - for the CP/M-80 system. It came with full source in C so I could customize it to my own tastes. Only Unix had better tools for C software development - at least initially. VMS later added a reasonable C compiler, and I still prefer the VMS "run" facility to make, at least for small projects. I managed to install a C compiler on the IBM, but it was pretty pitiful. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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