| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392918 is a reply to message #392903] |
Thu, 09 April 2020 14:53   |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8402
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On 08/04/2020 23:21, Dan Espen wrote:
>>
>> Actually Linux is one of the few OSes that let you get near those
>> naked blinkenlights.
>
> AIUI the 64 bit processors no longer boot as 16 bitters,
> which counts out MSDOS as an option.
>
> How proud I was in 1986 to have the book,
> "Advanced MSDOS" by Ray Duncan, and how
> passe it is today!
>
>
Sort of an oxymoron now.
--
Pete
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392919 is a reply to message #392904] |
Thu, 09 April 2020 14:53 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8402
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> On 08/04/2020 23:21, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>
>>> Actually Linux is one of the few OSes that let you get near those
>>> naked blinkenlights.
>>
>> AIUI the 64 bit processors no longer boot as 16 bitters,
>> which counts out MSDOS as an option.
>>
>> How proud I was in 1986 to have the book,
>> "Advanced MSDOS" by Ray Duncan, and how
>> passe it is today!
>
> Hmm, MSDOS annoyed me from day 1.
> What I wanted was a Unix flavor.
> DOS fell short in so many ways.
>
Yes, I never understood why they didn’t do something closer to unix.
--
Pete
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392920 is a reply to message #392907] |
Thu, 09 April 2020 14:53 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8402
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> On 09/04/2020 12:02, Dan Espen wrote:
>>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 08/04/2020 23:21, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > Actually Linux is one of the few OSes that let you get near those
>>>> > naked blinkenlights.
>>>>
>>>> AIUI the 64 bit processors no longer boot as 16 bitters,
>>>> which counts out MSDOS as an option.
>>>>
>>>> How proud I was in 1986 to have the book,
>>>> "Advanced MSDOS" by Ray Duncan, and how
>>>> passe it is today!
>>>
>>> Hmm, MSDOS annoyed me from day 1.
>>> What I wanted was a Unix flavor.
>>> DOS fell short in so many ways.
>>>
>>
>> DOS had two different ways of accessing disk files,
>> both the CP/M way and also the UNIX way.
>
> Sure, and .BAT is exactly equivalent to .sh.
>
>> I have no quasi-religious attitude to any language
>> or OS. I've used several of each in my time and
>> when I get around to them, I have my own ideas for
>> both (QV).
>
> Religious, why are you going there?
> I just didn't want to use junk.
>
> So, DOS had 2 characters to end each line.
> Completely ridiculous. Then I seem to remember
> ^Z would sit at the end of your file even though the
> system knew the file byte count.
>
> I once decided to become expert at using the display on DOS.
> I bought a rather thick book on VGA.
> I'd previously decided IBM 3270s were crap due to unwarranted
> complexity.
I loved 3270s and all,the stuff they can do. Of course I started from TTYs.
>
> The hundreds of VGA modes showed me exactly how bad a display design
> could be.
>
> If I remember DOS and it's TSRs, there was no way to wait for keyboard
> input, you just kept polling the keyboard for input.
> What a POS.
>
>
No, I think you get a key-press interrupt.
--
Pete
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392921 is a reply to message #392919] |
Thu, 09 April 2020 16:42 |
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Originally posted by: J. Clarke
On Thu, 9 Apr 2020 11:53:48 -0700, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
wrote:
> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>>> On 08/04/2020 23:21, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Actually Linux is one of the few OSes that let you get near those
>>>> naked blinkenlights.
>>>
>>> AIUI the 64 bit processors no longer boot as 16 bitters,
>>> which counts out MSDOS as an option.
>>>
>>> How proud I was in 1986 to have the book,
>>> "Advanced MSDOS" by Ray Duncan, and how
>>> passe it is today!
>>
>> Hmm, MSDOS annoyed me from day 1.
>> What I wanted was a Unix flavor.
>> DOS fell short in so many ways.
>>
>
> Yes, I never understood why they didn’t do something closer to unix.
Well, the developer hating Unix might have something to do with it.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392922 is a reply to message #392910] |
Thu, 09 April 2020 16:55 |
Dan Espen
Messages: 3867
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
> On 09/04/2020 15:35, Dan Espen wrote:
>>
>> So, DOS had 2 characters to end each line.
>> Completely ridiculous.
>
> If it was CR & LF, then they were control
> characters for the Teletypes that were extant
> for many years.
And as I said, that's a completely ridiculous reason to use
CR/LF as a line ending in files.
Some of those Teletypes you had to send nulls after the CR/LF
to give the printer time to restore the carriage before you could send
more data.
--
Dan Espen
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392923 is a reply to message #392919] |
Thu, 09 April 2020 16:59 |
Dan Espen
Messages: 3867
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>>> On 08/04/2020 23:21, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Actually Linux is one of the few OSes that let you get near those
>>>> naked blinkenlights.
>>>
>>> AIUI the 64 bit processors no longer boot as 16 bitters,
>>> which counts out MSDOS as an option.
>>>
>>> How proud I was in 1986 to have the book,
>>> "Advanced MSDOS" by Ray Duncan, and how
>>> passe it is today!
>>
>> Hmm, MSDOS annoyed me from day 1.
>> What I wanted was a Unix flavor.
>> DOS fell short in so many ways.
>
> Yes, I never understood why they didn’t do something closer to unix.
Because they correctly saw, they couldn't monopolize the market with
an OS so clean that it can be reproduced by competitors.
--
Dan Espen
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392925 is a reply to message #392922] |
Thu, 09 April 2020 18:55 |
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Originally posted by: John Floren
Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> On 09/04/2020 15:35, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>
>>> So, DOS had 2 characters to end each line.
>>> Completely ridiculous.
>>
>> If it was CR & LF, then they were control
>> characters for the Teletypes that were extant
>> for many years.
>
> And as I said, that's a completely ridiculous reason to use
> CR/LF as a line ending in files.
>
> Some of those Teletypes you had to send nulls after the CR/LF
> to give the printer time to restore the carriage before you could send
> more data.
How many DOS machines were ever connected to Teletypes, anyway? It's
before my time, but I'd assume that graphical terminals were pretty
common by the time they wrote MS-DOS. I can see an argument for
maintaining compatibility with text files from other, earlier
microcomputer operating systems, but given the tiny memories of these
early systems I'd also be pretty eager to claw back one byte per line of
text.
john
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392926 is a reply to message #392925] |
Thu, 09 April 2020 19:58 |
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Originally posted by: J. Clarke
On Thu, 09 Apr 2020 16:55:24 -0600, John Floren
<jfloren@eternal-september.org> wrote:
> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>>> On 09/04/2020 15:35, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> So, DOS had 2 characters to end each line.
>>>> Completely ridiculous.
>>>
>>> If it was CR & LF, then they were control
>>> characters for the Teletypes that were extant
>>> for many years.
>>
>> And as I said, that's a completely ridiculous reason to use
>> CR/LF as a line ending in files.
>>
>> Some of those Teletypes you had to send nulls after the CR/LF
>> to give the printer time to restore the carriage before you could send
>> more data.
>
> How many DOS machines were ever connected to Teletypes, anyway? It's
> before my time, but I'd assume that graphical terminals were pretty
> common by the time they wrote MS-DOS. I can see an argument for
> maintaining compatibility with text files from other, earlier
> microcomputer operating systems, but given the tiny memories of these
> early systems I'd also be pretty eager to claw back one byte per line of
> text.
QDOS was originally written to be a stopgap until CPM/86 came out. It
was aimed at S-100 machines, not the IBM PC. And a lot of S-100
machines were connected to teletypes. It wasn't a Microsoft
development--Microsoft bought and renamed it and made minimal
modifications.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392927 is a reply to message #392904] |
Thu, 09 April 2020 22:00 |
Robin Vowels
Messages: 426
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 9:02:10 PM UTC+10, Dan Espen wrote:
> Gareth Evans <h......@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> On 08/04/2020 23:21, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>
>>> Actually Linux is one of the few OSes that let you get near those
>>> naked blinkenlights.
>>
>> AIUI the 64 bit processors no longer boot as 16 bitters,
>> which counts out MSDOS as an option.
>>
>> How proud I was in 1986 to have the book,
>> "Advanced MSDOS" by Ray Duncan, and how
>> passe it is today!
>
> Hmm, MSDOS annoyed me from day 1.
> What I wanted was a Unix flavor.
> DOS fell short in so many ways.
DR DOS was better.
Unix was crummy. It had documented bugs,
that were never going to be fixed.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392928 is a reply to message #392910] |
Thu, 09 April 2020 22:05 |
Robin Vowels
Messages: 426
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 12:46:18 AM UTC+10, Gareth Evans wrote:
> On 09/04/2020 15:35, Dan Espen wrote:
>>
>> So, DOS had 2 characters to end each line.
>> Completely ridiculous.
>
> If it was CR & LF, then they were control
> characters for the Teletypes that were extant
> for many years.
Of course it was CR LF.
And it was not only for Teletypes and teleprinters.
A number of vendors had band printers going at 300 cps,
and there were even faster daisywheel printers, etc.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392929 is a reply to message #392915] |
Thu, 09 April 2020 22:09 |
Robin Vowels
Messages: 426
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 3:30:00 AM UTC+10, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Gareth Evans <h......@yahoo.com> writes:
>> On 09/04/2020 15:35, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>
>>> So, DOS had 2 characters to end each line.
>>> Completely ridiculous.
>>
>> If it was CR & LF, then they were control
>> characters for the Teletypes that were extant
>> for many years.
>>
>
> Indeed, but only one of the two characters are necessary
> to terminate a line;
True, for keyboard input.
> both just waste space.
And how do you suppose a file sent to a printer such
as as a Teletype or one of the many different kinds of
serial printers will print unless it has CR and LF in it?
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392930 is a reply to message #392916] |
Thu, 09 April 2020 22:12 |
Robin Vowels
Messages: 426
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 3:42:26 AM UTC+10, Gareth Evans wrote:
> On 09/04/2020 18:29, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>> Gareth Evans <h......@yahoo.com> writes:
>>> On 09/04/2020 15:35, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> So, DOS had 2 characters to end each line.
>>>> Completely ridiculous.
>>>
>>> If it was CR & LF, then they were control
>>> characters for the Teletypes that were extant
>>> for many years.
>>>
>>
>> Indeed, but only one of the two characters are necessary
>> to terminate a line; both just waste space.
>>
>
> With the Teletypes, ASR / KSR 33/35 CR,
Don't forget the ARS 38 [upper and lower case]
> carriage return
> brought the printing head back to the start, the left hand side
> of the line but did not move the paper up to the next line, which was
> the function of LF, line feed.
>
> With just CR, you could overtype the line.
Indeed, for underlining or for double printing a character
for simulated bold face.
> There's difference between a text file to be shipped out
> to your local Teletype, and the organisation of files
> in the OS.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392931 is a reply to message #392917] |
Thu, 09 April 2020 22:17 |
Robin Vowels
Messages: 426
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 4:21:29 AM UTC+10, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Gareth Evans <h......@yahoo.com> writes:
>> On 09/04/2020 18:29, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>> Gareth Evans <h......@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>> On 09/04/2020 15:35, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > So, DOS had 2 characters to end each line.
>>>> > Completely ridiculous.
>>>>
>>>> If it was CR & LF, then they were control
>>>> characters for the Teletypes that were extant
>>>> for many years.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Indeed, but only one of the two characters are necessary
>>> to terminate a line; both just waste space.
>>>
>>
>> With the Teletypes, ASR / KSR 33/35 CR, carriage return
>> brought the printing head back to the start, the left hand side
>> of the line but did not move the paper up to the next line, which was
>> the function of LF, line feed.
>
> I used one. Every day for three years.
>
>>
>> With just CR, you could overtype the line.
>>
>> There's difference between a text file to be shipped out
>> to your local Teletype, and the organisation of files
>> in the OS.
>
> Dos, of course, had a TYPE command which was designed specifically
> to format data for display. It could easily have added the CR
> (if LF was the line terminator) or vice versa.
>
> Unix predated DOS, so there was precedent for using LF as a record
> terminator.
And Teleprinters and Teletypes predated Unix by some 50 years
so there was a precedent for using CR LF.
> There is no need to store both characters on every line in a text file.
There was, because of the need to copy a file to a teleprinter
or other serial devices.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392932 is a reply to message #392922] |
Thu, 09 April 2020 22:22 |
Robin Vowels
Messages: 426
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 6:55:22 AM UTC+10, Dan Espen wrote:
> Gareth Evans <h......@yahoo.com> writes:
>
> And as I said, that's a completely ridiculous reason to use
> CR/LF as a line ending in files.
No it isn't. You've missed the point.
> Some of those Teletypes you had to send nulls after the CR/LF
> to give the printer time to restore the carriage before you could send
> more data.
It was necessary to give the CR first, as the
carriage could not return in the time of a single character.
The LF coming after the CR meant that the carriage could return
in time for the following character.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392933 is a reply to message #392925] |
Thu, 09 April 2020 22:29 |
Robin Vowels
Messages: 426
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 8:55:26 AM UTC+10, John Floren wrote:
> Dan Espen <d......@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Gareth Evans <h......@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>>> On 09/04/2020 15:35, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> So, DOS had 2 characters to end each line.
>>>> Completely ridiculous.
>>>
>>> If it was CR & LF, then they were control
>>> characters for the Teletypes that were extant
>>> for many years.
>>
>> And as I said, that's a completely ridiculous reason to use
>> CR/LF as a line ending in files.
>>
>> Some of those Teletypes you had to send nulls after the CR/LF
>> to give the printer time to restore the carriage before you could send
>> more data.
>
> How many DOS machines were ever connected to Teletypes, anyway?
Probably most.
Are you aware that the serial keyboard/printer attached to a DOS machine
could be used as a terminal? The keyboard of the DOS machine
could be reassigned to the keyboard/printer, thereby obtaining
not only what was typed at the keyboard, but the interleaved
responses from DOS.
> It's
> before my time, but I'd assume that graphical terminals were pretty
> common by the time they wrote MS-DOS.
Sure, but graphical terminals were fairly expensive, whereas
teleprinters could be obtained for a few dollars.
> I can see an argument for
> maintaining compatibility with text files from other, earlier
> microcomputer operating systems, but given the tiny memories of these
> early systems I'd also be pretty eager to claw back one byte per line of
> text.
Inconsequential.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392934 is a reply to message #392786] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 00:51 |
Robin Vowels
Messages: 426
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 2:31:31 PM UTC+10, Dave Garland wrote:
> On 4/9/2020 9:00 PM, r......@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 9:02:10 PM UTC+10, Dan Espen wrote:
>>> Gareth Evans <h......@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 08/04/2020 23:21, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > Actually Linux is one of the few OSes that let you get near those
>>>> > naked blinkenlights.
>>>>
>>>> AIUI the 64 bit processors no longer boot as 16 bitters,
>>>> which counts out MSDOS as an option.
>>>>
>>>> How proud I was in 1986 to have the book,
>>>> "Advanced MSDOS" by Ray Duncan, and how
>>>> passe it is today!
>>>
>>> Hmm, MSDOS annoyed me from day 1.
>>> What I wanted was a Unix flavor.
>>> DOS fell short in so many ways.
>>
>> DR DOS was better.
>
> A bit.
A lot better.
For one, it was possible to edit a previous command,
something that MS-DOS never did, and you could not do until
in DOS under a much later Windows.
> Or MSDOS with 4DOS enhancement. (Norton sold a "NDOS" that was
> an OEM version of 4DOS.)
>> Unix was crummy. It had documented bugs,
>> that were never going to be fixed.
> To be fair, all the micro OS had bugs
No they didn't.
> (as do all OS even today). Not
> all of them documented. I don't think the real UNIX ever ran on
> microcomputers. The problem with its clones (and the reason I didn't
> get an *IX) was cost. IIRC the options were all hundreds or thousands
> of dollars, where MSDOS was reasonable (or free, if you took
> liberties). BSD did exist, but they had legal problems with ATT and it
> wasn't clear they'd survive that. As a one man shop, I couldn't afford
> to gamble.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392935 is a reply to message #392786] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 01:35 |
Jorgen Grahn
Messages: 606
Registered: March 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Fri, 2020-04-10, Dave Garland wrote:
....
> IMHO, the LF/CR/CRLF thing is a bogus issue, and mostly always was. It
> was an arbitrary standard. Yes, CRLF used one character per line more.
> Maybe if you only had 8K RAM that was an issue. But it wasn't an issue
> for CP/M-80 with 64K memory, and it's unlikely it ever unduly
> constrained DOS. And today, who cares? A .docx file with a single line
> of text is 4217 bytes, nobody will notice if it grows to 4218 bytes.
Bogus in terms of file size, yes, but it still, in 2020, steals
time for me and the rest of the team.
/Jorgen
--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392936 is a reply to message #392921] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 06:35 |
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Originally posted by: Gareth Evans
On 09/04/2020 21:42, J. Clarke wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Apr 2020 11:53:48 -0700, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 08/04/2020 23:21, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > Actually Linux is one of the few OSes that let you get near those
>>>> > naked blinkenlights.
>>>>
>>>> AIUI the 64 bit processors no longer boot as 16 bitters,
>>>> which counts out MSDOS as an option.
>>>>
>>>> How proud I was in 1986 to have the book,
>>>> "Advanced MSDOS" by Ray Duncan, and how
>>>> passe it is today!
>>>
>>> Hmm, MSDOS annoyed me from day 1.
>>> What I wanted was a Unix flavor.
>>> DOS fell short in so many ways.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, I never understood why they didn’t do something closer to unix.
>
> Well, the developer hating Unix might have something to do with it.
>
Was it not a bought in product for Microsoft? Originally QDOS
The Quick and Dirty Operating System just kludged together
in a hurry to give what were essentially CP/M facilities but
on a 16 bit X86 processor?
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392937 is a reply to message #392922] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 06:46 |
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Originally posted by: Gareth Evans
On 09/04/2020 21:55, Dan Espen wrote:
> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> On 09/04/2020 15:35, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>
>>> So, DOS had 2 characters to end each line.
>>> Completely ridiculous.
>>
>> If it was CR & LF, then they were control
>> characters for the Teletypes that were extant
>> for many years.
>
> And as I said, that's a completely ridiculous reason to use
> CR/LF as a line ending in files.
>
> Some of those Teletypes you had to send nulls after the CR/LF
> to give the printer time to restore the carriage before you could send
> more data.
>
No more ridiculous than using an 8 bit byte to store 7 bit
ASCII, wasting, a bit at a time, enough space to store another
character every 7? If your argument is that computer programs
can intervene to fettle the text between reading the file and
sending to the teletype, then successively extracting 7 bits
at a time from a binary stream is a trivial matter.
And then, what of Unicode? Encoding some of the rarer ASCII
characters in more than 8 bits? How wasteful is that?
But really in today's system, with mega-oodles of RAM
and tera-oodles of disk space, is it really a realistic
argument to complain about CRLF sequences?
You do have a point, though, and that is, if encoding text,
then a single character should suffice as an end-of-line
marker. But you couldn't have a single character for
stream-encoded binary because your end-of-line character
might be part of that binary and you'd have to resort to
multi-character escape sequences, such as the use of
HDLC's 01111110.
As to multicharacter markers in text files, do you
object to the \n end of line convention in the C language
because that takes two characters! :-)
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392938 is a reply to message #392925] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 06:49 |
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Originally posted by: Gareth Evans
On 09/04/2020 23:55, John Floren wrote:
>
> How many DOS machines were ever connected to Teletypes, anyway? It's
> before my time, but I'd assume that graphical terminals were pretty
> common by the time they wrote MS-DOS.
At the tome of fomenting a 16 bit machine, the mid 1970s, Teletypes were
still common. (And were only just getting
succeeded by the Decwriter).
What a noisy beast is the DecWriter today, yet at the time
we marvelled about how quiet it was compared to the Teletypes!
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392942 is a reply to message #392937] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 09:54 |
Dan Espen
Messages: 3867
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
> On 09/04/2020 21:55, Dan Espen wrote:
>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>>> On 09/04/2020 15:35, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> So, DOS had 2 characters to end each line.
>>>> Completely ridiculous.
>>>
>>> If it was CR & LF, then they were control
>>> characters for the Teletypes that were extant
>>> for many years.
>>
>> And as I said, that's a completely ridiculous reason to use
>> CR/LF as a line ending in files.
>>
>> Some of those Teletypes you had to send nulls after the CR/LF
>> to give the printer time to restore the carriage before you could send
>> more data.
>
> No more ridiculous than using an 8 bit byte to store 7 bit
> ASCII, wasting, a bit at a time, enough space to store another
> character every 7? If your argument is that computer programs
> can intervene to fettle the text between reading the file and
> sending to the teletype, then successively extracting 7 bits
> at a time from a binary stream is a trivial matter.
>
> And then, what of Unicode? Encoding some of the rarer ASCII
> characters in more than 8 bits? How wasteful is that?
>
> But really in today's system, with mega-oodles of RAM
> and tera-oodles of disk space, is it really a realistic
> argument to complain about CRLF sequences?
>
> You do have a point, though, and that is, if encoding text,
> then a single character should suffice as an end-of-line
> marker. But you couldn't have a single character for
> stream-encoded binary because your end-of-line character
> might be part of that binary and you'd have to resort to
> multi-character escape sequences, such as the use of
> HDLC's 01111110.
I think I'm not following. Finding CR/LF in binary data is
possible too. If you're going to encode binary data, you have
to rely on something more complicated than special characters.
> As to multicharacter markers in text files, do you
> object to the \n end of line convention in the C language
> because that takes two characters! :-)
Nope, don't care that backslash is used by C to denote special
characters.
My point is that the file system has no business emulating the
requirements of a particular printer type. There were flavors of that
printer type that had even more bizarre print requirements. Why isn't
that in the file system.
You did touch on the checking for 2 bytes issue. We all know how that
can complicate code.
--
Dan Espen
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392944 is a reply to message #392937] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 12:11 |
scott
Messages: 4272
Registered: February 2012
Karma: 0
|
Senior Member |
|
|
Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
> On 09/04/2020 21:55, Dan Espen wrote:
> As to multicharacter markers in text files, do you
> object to the \n end of line convention in the C language
> because that takes two characters! :-)
>
You do, of course, realize that '\n' translates into a single
byte, right?
The fact that you need two characters to represent LF in source
is irrelevent. Note that you need four for CRLF (\r\n).
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392945 is a reply to message #392927] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 12:12 |
scott
Messages: 4272
Registered: February 2012
Karma: 0
|
Senior Member |
|
|
robin.vowels@gmail.com writes:
> On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 9:02:10 PM UTC+10, Dan Espen wrote:
>> Gareth Evans <h......@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>>> On 08/04/2020 23:21, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Actually Linux is one of the few OSes that let you get near those
>>>> naked blinkenlights.
>>>
>>> AIUI the 64 bit processors no longer boot as 16 bitters,
>>> which counts out MSDOS as an option.
>>>
>>> How proud I was in 1986 to have the book,
>>> "Advanced MSDOS" by Ray Duncan, and how
>>> passe it is today!
>>
>> Hmm, MSDOS annoyed me from day 1.
>> What I wanted was a Unix flavor.
>> DOS fell short in so many ways.
>
> DR DOS was better.
>
> Unix was crummy. It had documented bugs,
> that were never going to be fixed.
Nonsense, Rod Speed.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392946 is a reply to message #392931] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 12:13 |
scott
Messages: 4272
Registered: February 2012
Karma: 0
|
Senior Member |
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robin.vowels@gmail.com writes:
> On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 4:21:29 AM UTC+10, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>
> And Teleprinters and Teletypes predated Unix by some 50 years
> so there was a precedent for using CR LF.
Not in file storage, Rod.
And the machines using those teleprinters and teletypes had
device drivers that handled the device requirements.
>
>> There is no need to store both characters on every line in a text file.
>
> There was, because of the need to copy a file to a teleprinter
> or other serial devices.
Nonsense, Rod.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392947 is a reply to message #392944] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 12:52 |
|
|
Originally posted by: Gareth Evans
On 10/04/2020 17:11, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>> On 09/04/2020 21:55, Dan Espen wrote:
>
>> As to multicharacter markers in text files, do you
>> object to the \n end of line convention in the C language
>> because that takes two characters! :-)
>>
>
> You do, of course, realize that '\n' translates into a single
> byte, right?
>
> The fact that you need two characters to represent LF in source
> is irrelevent. Note that you need four for CRLF (\r\n).
>
Dan was discussing space taken up by text files, of which
source files are an example.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392948 is a reply to message #392945] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 13:35 |
Dan Espen
Messages: 3867
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
|
Senior Member |
|
|
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
> robin.vowels@gmail.com writes:
>> On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 9:02:10 PM UTC+10, Dan Espen wrote:
>>> Gareth Evans <h......@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 08/04/2020 23:21, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > Actually Linux is one of the few OSes that let you get near those
>>>> > naked blinkenlights.
>>>>
>>>> AIUI the 64 bit processors no longer boot as 16 bitters,
>>>> which counts out MSDOS as an option.
>>>>
>>>> How proud I was in 1986 to have the book,
>>>> "Advanced MSDOS" by Ray Duncan, and how
>>>> passe it is today!
>>>
>>> Hmm, MSDOS annoyed me from day 1.
>>> What I wanted was a Unix flavor.
>>> DOS fell short in so many ways.
>>
>> DR DOS was better.
>>
>> Unix was crummy. It had documented bugs,
>> that were never going to be fixed.
>
> Nonsense, Rod Speed.
Nonsense, but all of a sudden, these posts by Robin Vowel make sense.
Thanks.
--
Dan Espen
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392950 is a reply to message #392949] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 14:15 |
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Originally posted by: J. Clarke
On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 17:51:57 -0000 (UTC), Jim Jackson
<jj@franjam.org.uk> wrote:
> On 2020-04-10, robin.vowels@gmail.com <robin.vowels@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hmm, MSDOS annoyed me from day 1.
>>> What I wanted was a Unix flavor.
>>> DOS fell short in so many ways.
>>
>> DR DOS was better.
>>
>> Unix was crummy. It had documented bugs,
>> that were never going to be fixed.
>
> Good job I wasn't drinking I'd have sprayed the keyboard. What a bozo!
Amen. I tried DR DOS. It didn't do anything that MS-DOS didn't do,
and there was stuff that wouldn't run on it that I used (that was a
long time ago, so don't ask me what), so any claim that it was
"better" needs some factual support.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392951 is a reply to message #392947] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 14:42 |
scott
Messages: 4272
Registered: February 2012
Karma: 0
|
Senior Member |
|
|
Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
> On 10/04/2020 17:11, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>> On 09/04/2020 21:55, Dan Espen wrote:
>>
>>> As to multicharacter markers in text files, do you
>>> object to the \n end of line convention in the C language
>>> because that takes two characters! :-)
>>>
>>
>> You do, of course, realize that '\n' translates into a single
>> byte, right?
>>
>> The fact that you need two characters to represent LF in source
>> is irrelevent. Note that you need four for CRLF (\r\n).
>>
>
> Dan was discussing space taken up by text files, of which
> source files are an example.
>
A C source file of 4000 lines might have one or two escaped characters
in it (or fewer, or more, but it's irrelevent to using CRLF as a
line delimiter). One or two extra backslash instead of 4000 useless carriage returns.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392952 is a reply to message #392951] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 14:53 |
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Originally posted by: Gareth Evans
On 10/04/2020 19:42, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>> On 10/04/2020 17:11, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>> On 09/04/2020 21:55, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>
>>>> As to multicharacter markers in text files, do you
>>>> object to the \n end of line convention in the C language
>>>> because that takes two characters! :-)
>>>>
>>>
>>> You do, of course, realize that '\n' translates into a single
>>> byte, right?
>>>
>>> The fact that you need two characters to represent LF in source
>>> is irrelevent. Note that you need four for CRLF (\r\n).
>>>
>>
>> Dan was discussing space taken up by text files, of which
>> source files are an example.
>>
>
> A C source file of 4000 lines might have one or two escaped characters
> in it (or fewer, or more, but it's irrelevent to using CRLF as a
> line delimiter). One or two extra backslash instead of 4000 useless carriage returns.
>
4000 lines ???? That's 50 pages and a file of that size could
only have been produced by a computing incompetentismo.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392953 is a reply to message #392952] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 15:07 |
scott
Messages: 4272
Registered: February 2012
Karma: 0
|
Senior Member |
|
|
Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
> On 10/04/2020 19:42, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>> On 10/04/2020 17:11, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>> > On 09/04/2020 21:55, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > As to multicharacter markers in text files, do you
>>>> > object to the \n end of line convention in the C language
>>>> > because that takes two characters! :-)
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> You do, of course, realize that '\n' translates into a single
>>>> byte, right?
>>>>
>>>> The fact that you need two characters to represent LF in source
>>>> is irrelevent. Note that you need four for CRLF (\r\n).
>>>>
>>>
>>> Dan was discussing space taken up by text files, of which
>>> source files are an example.
>>>
>>
>> A C source file of 4000 lines might have one or two escaped characters
>> in it (or fewer, or more, but it's irrelevent to using CRLF as a
>> line delimiter). One or two extra backslash instead of 4000 useless carriage returns.
>>
>
> 4000 lines ???? That's 50 pages and a file of that size could
> only have been produced by a computing incompetentismo.
>
Evasion noted.
We have well over two millions lines of C/C++ code, and several files are
in the 2 to 4 thousand line range, even without counting header files that
are generated. And there is no "computing incompetentismo" involved.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392954 is a reply to message #392929] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 15:35 |
Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5354
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
|
Senior Member |
|
|
On 2020-04-10, robin.vowels@gmail.com <robin.vowels@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 3:30:00 AM UTC+10, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>
>> Gareth Evans <h......@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>>> On 09/04/2020 15:35, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>
>>>> So, DOS had 2 characters to end each line.
>>>> Completely ridiculous.
>>>
>>> If it was CR & LF, then they were control
>>> characters for the Teletypes that were extant
>>> for many years.
>>
>> Indeed, but only one of the two characters are necessary
>> to terminate a line;
>
> True, for keyboard input.
>
>> both just waste space.
>
> And how do you suppose a file sent to a printer such
> as as a Teletype or one of the many different kinds of
> serial printers will print unless it has CR and LF in it?
A properly-written driver can take care of that, as well as
inserting enough NULs to give the print head time to get back
to the left. (Ever seen a Teletype scatter characters backwards
across a line because it had no NUL padding?)
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392955 is a reply to message #392953] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 15:41 |
Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5354
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
|
Senior Member |
|
|
On 2020-04-10, Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> On 10/04/2020 19:42, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>
>>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 10/04/2020 17:11, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>> >
>>>> >> On 09/04/2020 21:55, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>> >>
>>>> >> As to multicharacter markers in text files, do you
>>>> >> object to the \n end of line convention in the C language
>>>> >> because that takes two characters! :-)
>>>> >
>>>> > You do, of course, realize that '\n' translates into a single
>>>> > byte, right?
>>>> >
>>>> > The fact that you need two characters to represent LF in source
>>>> > is irrelevent. Note that you need four for CRLF (\r\n).
>>>>
>>>> Dan was discussing space taken up by text files, of which
>>>> source files are an example.
>>>
>>> A C source file of 4000 lines might have one or two escaped characters
>>> in it (or fewer, or more, but it's irrelevent to using CRLF as a
>>> line delimiter). One or two extra backslash instead of 4000 useless
>>> carriage returns.
>>
>> 4000 lines ???? That's 50 pages and a file of that size could
>> only have been produced by a computing incompetentismo.
>
> Evasion noted.
>
> We have well over two millions lines of C/C++ code, and several files are
> in the 2 to 4 thousand line range, even without counting header files that
> are generated. And there is no "computing incompetentismo" involved.
A couple of my source files have grown to over 10,000 lines.
Not by design, but changing requirements, plus a compiler that
can handle it. A single source file makes the makefile smaller.
Small modules are a sign of a short attention span. :-)
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392957 is a reply to message #392953] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 16:32 |
|
|
Originally posted by: Gareth Evans
On 10/04/2020 20:07, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>> On 10/04/2020 19:42, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>> On 10/04/2020 17:11, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>>> > Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>> >> On 09/04/2020 21:55, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >> As to multicharacter markers in text files, do you
>>>> >> object to the \n end of line convention in the C language
>>>> >> because that takes two characters! :-)
>>>> >>
>>>> >
>>>> > You do, of course, realize that '\n' translates into a single
>>>> > byte, right?
>>>> >
>>>> > The fact that you need two characters to represent LF in source
>>>> > is irrelevent. Note that you need four for CRLF (\r\n).
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> Dan was discussing space taken up by text files, of which
>>>> source files are an example.
>>>>
>>>
>>> A C source file of 4000 lines might have one or two escaped characters
>>> in it (or fewer, or more, but it's irrelevent to using CRLF as a
>>> line delimiter). One or two extra backslash instead of 4000 useless carriage returns.
>>>
>>
>> 4000 lines ???? That's 50 pages and a file of that size could
>> only have been produced by a computing incompetentismo.
>>
>
> Evasion noted.
>
> We have well over two millions lines of C/C++ code, and several files are
> in the 2 to 4 thousand line range, even without counting header files that
> are generated. And there is no "computing incompetentismo" involved.
>
You're very aggressive, so little point in continuing this. I
have expressed correct views and you other views and clearly
we are not going to agree.
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392958 is a reply to message #392952] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 17:04 |
Dan Espen
Messages: 3867
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
|
Senior Member |
|
|
Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
> On 10/04/2020 19:42, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>> On 10/04/2020 17:11, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>> > On 09/04/2020 21:55, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > As to multicharacter markers in text files, do you
>>>> > object to the \n end of line convention in the C language
>>>> > because that takes two characters! :-)
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> You do, of course, realize that '\n' translates into a single
>>>> byte, right?
>>>>
>>>> The fact that you need two characters to represent LF in source
>>>> is irrelevent. Note that you need four for CRLF (\r\n).
>>>>
>>>
>>> Dan was discussing space taken up by text files, of which
>>> source files are an example.
>>>
>>
>> A C source file of 4000 lines might have one or two escaped characters
>> in it (or fewer, or more, but it's irrelevent to using CRLF as a
>> line delimiter). One or two extra backslash instead of 4000 useless carriage returns.
>>
>
> 4000 lines ???? That's 50 pages and a file of that size could
> only have been produced by a computing incompetentismo.
Well, I guess we are talking about C, but 4000 lines for COBOL
is very common.
With C, I've seen a few that size. Big complicated applications require
that. I've seen attempts to break big applications into dozens of
called modules. You end up with a nest where you can't find anything.
(Even with the help of TAGS.)
A few decades back I got temporary ownership of a huge C module.
Even though the code was all in one module, it was still hard to find
your way through the code.
So, I looked for ways to use separate called modules and there was
plenty of called modules, but so much shared stuff that the module
resisted my efforts.
So, I took a few hours and renamed all the called subroutines using
COBOL rules. It looked pretty weird, C code like this:
int b100_findstuff(int num, char* dta) {
x100_getzip();
}
I then went through the prefixes (like b100,x100) and made them reflect
the calling hierarchy.
Then I moved all the code into alphanumeric order.
Then I fixed the reason I was in the code in the first place.
The other developers with years of C said they loved it.
--
Dan Espen
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392959 is a reply to message #392955] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 17:13 |
Dan Espen
Messages: 3867
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
|
Senior Member |
|
|
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
> On 2020-04-10, Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
>
>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>>> On 10/04/2020 19:42, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>>
>>>> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>> > On 10/04/2020 17:11, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >> Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>> >>
>>>> >>> On 09/04/2020 21:55, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> As to multicharacter markers in text files, do you
>>>> >>> object to the \n end of line convention in the C language
>>>> >>> because that takes two characters! :-)
>>>> >>
>>>> >> You do, of course, realize that '\n' translates into a single
>>>> >> byte, right?
>>>> >>
>>>> >> The fact that you need two characters to represent LF in source
>>>> >> is irrelevent. Note that you need four for CRLF (\r\n).
>>>> >
>>>> > Dan was discussing space taken up by text files, of which
>>>> > source files are an example.
>>>>
>>>> A C source file of 4000 lines might have one or two escaped characters
>>>> in it (or fewer, or more, but it's irrelevent to using CRLF as a
>>>> line delimiter). One or two extra backslash instead of 4000 useless
>>>> carriage returns.
>>>
>>> 4000 lines ???? That's 50 pages and a file of that size could
>>> only have been produced by a computing incompetentismo.
>>
>> Evasion noted.
>>
>> We have well over two millions lines of C/C++ code, and several files are
>> in the 2 to 4 thousand line range, even without counting header files that
>> are generated. And there is no "computing incompetentismo" involved.
>
> A couple of my source files have grown to over 10,000 lines.
> Not by design, but changing requirements, plus a compiler that
> can handle it. A single source file makes the makefile smaller.
>
> Small modules are a sign of a short attention span. :-)
10K is way out there, I've seen that size with COBOL but it wasn't pleasant.
If there is any pattern to that 10K of source code perhaps a code
generator can condense some of it.
I've taken good line counts out of Assembler and C buy writing macros.
--
Dan Espen
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392960 is a reply to message #392932] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 17:56 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8402
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
|
Senior Member |
|
|
<robin.vowels@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 6:55:22 AM UTC+10, Dan Espen wrote:
>> Gareth Evans <h......@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>> And as I said, that's a completely ridiculous reason to use
>> CR/LF as a line ending in files.
>
> No it isn't. You've missed the point.
>
>> Some of those Teletypes you had to send nulls after the CR/LF
>> to give the printer time to restore the carriage before you could send
>> more data.
>
> It was necessary to give the CR first, as the
> carriage could not return in the time of a single character.
>
> The LF coming after the CR meant that the carriage could return
> in time for the following character.
>
No, I wrote a TTY handler for CICS, and I experimented to see how many NULs
I needed, IIRC I think 3 at 10cps
--
Pete
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392961 is a reply to message #392933] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 17:56 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8402
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
|
Senior Member |
|
|
<robin.vowels@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, April 10, 2020 at 8:55:26 AM UTC+10, John Floren wrote:
>> Dan Espen <d......@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Gareth Evans <h......@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 09/04/2020 15:35, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > So, DOS had 2 characters to end each line.
>>>> > Completely ridiculous.
>>>>
>>>> If it was CR & LF, then they were control
>>>> characters for the Teletypes that were extant
>>>> for many years.
>>>
>>> And as I said, that's a completely ridiculous reason to use
>>> CR/LF as a line ending in files.
>>>
>>> Some of those Teletypes you had to send nulls after the CR/LF
>>> to give the printer time to restore the carriage before you could send
>>> more data.
>>
>> How many DOS machines were ever connected to Teletypes, anyway?
>
> Probably most.
>
> Are you aware that the serial keyboard/printer attached to a DOS machine
> could be used as a terminal? The keyboard of the DOS machine
> could be reassigned to the keyboard/printer, thereby obtaining
> not only what was typed at the keyboard, but the interleaved
> responses from DOS.
>
>> It's
>> before my time, but I'd assume that graphical terminals were pretty
>> common by the time they wrote MS-DOS.
>
> Sure, but graphical terminals were fairly expensive, whereas
> teleprinters could be obtained for a few dollars.
Only a while after graphical terminals go cheap. A real Teletype was a
pretty expensive piece of gear.
--
Pete
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| Re: Epson printing problems? [message #392962 is a reply to message #392786] |
Fri, 10 April 2020 17:56 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8402
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
|
Senior Member |
|
|
Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> wrote:
> On 4/9/2020 9:00 PM, robin.vowels@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 9:02:10 PM UTC+10, Dan Espen wrote:
>>> Gareth Evans <h......@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 08/04/2020 23:21, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > Actually Linux is one of the few OSes that let you get near those
>>>> > naked blinkenlights.
>>>>
>>>> AIUI the 64 bit processors no longer boot as 16 bitters,
>>>> which counts out MSDOS as an option.
>>>>
>>>> How proud I was in 1986 to have the book,
>>>> "Advanced MSDOS" by Ray Duncan, and how
>>>> passe it is today!
>>>
>>> Hmm, MSDOS annoyed me from day 1.
>>> What I wanted was a Unix flavor.
>>> DOS fell short in so many ways.
>>
>> DR DOS was better.
>
> A bit. Or MSDOS with 4DOS enhancement. (Norton sold a "NDOS" that was
> an OEM version of 4DOS.)
>
>>
>> Unix was crummy. It had documented bugs,
>> that were never going to be fixed.
>>
> To be fair, all the micro OS had bugs (as do all OS even today). Not
> all of them documented. I don't think the real UNIX ever ran on
> microcomputers.
PDP-11,so the LSI-11.
> The problem with its clones (and the reason I didn't
> get an *IX) was cost. IIRC the options were all hundreds or thousands
> of dollars,
AT&T licensing was ridiculous, unless you were a college.
> where MSDOS was reasonable (or free, if you took
> liberties). BSD did exist, but they had legal problems with ATT and it
> wasn't clear they'd survive that. As a one man shop, I couldn't afford
> to gamble.
>
--
Pete
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