My first computer was a PET - then I got an Apple ][+, then a ][gs, then I went into the PC world.
Sean Rector, MCSE -----Original Message----- From: Raper, Jonathan [mailto:jra...@eaglemds.com] Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 4:56 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: [OT][Humor] AOL Ok, so I'm WAY late on this one, but I have to chime in... My first computer was a Commodore 64, but I remember my dad tinkering with a PET. We also had the portable version of the C-64 that had about a 4-5" CRT display built in, along with a 5.25" floppy. The keyboard snapped over the display and floppy... Also, I remember getting ours to talk - really cool for the early-mid eighties. We were members of TCUG (Triad Commodore User's Group), based in Greensboro, NC. Where COMPUTE! Publications was based. Now for the REALLY interesting tidbit...the corporate headquarters for my company, Eagle Physicians, is located at 324 West Wendover Avenue, Suite 200.... The SAME EXACT address where COMPUTE! Publications was based before it started going by the wayside. I was still getting some mail (because I was the only IT guy at the time) back in 99 and 2000... Jonathan L. Raper, A+, MCSA, MCSE Technology Coordinator Eagle Physicians & Associates, PA jra...@eaglemds.com www.eaglemds.com -----Original Message----- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2009 1:00 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: [OT][Humor] AOL On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 12:28 AM, Steven M. Caesare<scaes...@caesare.com> wrote: > Indeed. Too bad they never thrived after transitioning > to the x86 world, as they obviously had some amazing > coding talent. Yah. That. A lot of that. > -virtual memory of sorts Oh, yah, I forgot about that. PC/GEOS had memory swapping, too. Not true "virtual memory", since that would require an MMU, and the 8086 didn't have one of those. No memory protection, for the same reason. Their code crashed less often than MS Windows does *with* an MMU, though. :) But I did have things blow up on me on rare occasions. The state restore came in *real* handy then. > -bank memory switching (unmapping the native c64 ROM to expose 16K additional RAM) That kind of thing was less important on the PC, of course. You had a whopping 640 KB there. ;-) PC/GEOS might have supported EMS and/or XMS, though. I can't remember. > -a pseudo pre-emptive OS (no multiple apps, but the OS could preempt the app) Yah, I don't know how they did preemption on the 8088, since there was no hardware support for "real" processor tasks. I assume something driven off the timer interrupt. > -programming environment w/ interactive resident debugger That didn't come with the "regular" GeoWorks product. I suppose their must have been an SDK of some kind somewhere. > -office apps including word processor(with mail merge from the database), spreadsheet(with charting), database, and page layout Sounds similar. The PC flavor came with GeoWrite (word processor/basic page layout), GeoCalc (spreadsheet), GeoDraw (vector graphics), GeoFile (database), and GeoComm (modem/terminal). And AOL. > And a bunch of other stuff. All in 64K, which > meant the kernel had to be _REALLY_ compact. Yah, that's way more impressive than even 640 KB. 64 KB is *tiny*. > http://lyonlabs.org/commodore/onrequest/geos.html Neat. It's amazing they did all that on a C64! Heh, it even supported Klingon! :-D Hey, I found a page on PC/GEOS: http://www.geocities.com/originalravinray/geos/history_contents.html That backs up my claim that the AOL GUI was originally done by including the PC/GEOS core with AOL. It also mentions an early beta which included UI drivers (we'd call them "themes" today) for Motif, OpenLook, DeskMate, and IBM CUA. And, holy crap, there appears to be a company still maintaining and selling PC/GEOS! http://www.breadbox.com/ It doesn't look like the apps have changed much. I'm tempted to download the trial just to check it out. It was pretty fast even on my 8088; I can't imagine it would be slow in a VM on my Core 2 Duo. :-) -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ Any medical information contained in this electronic message is CONFIDENTIAL and privileged. It is unlawful for unauthorized persons to view, copy, disclose, or disseminate CONFIDENTIAL information. This electronic message may contain information that is confidential and/or legally privileged. It is intended only for the use of the individual(s) and/or entity named as recipients in the message. If you are not an intended recipient of this message, please notify the sender immediately and delete this material from your computer. 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