This brings me back to the code I wrote in Paradox (an early 80s database, I used the version Borland put out just after buying the company that wrote it) for our family music shop rental billing.
For some reason my 16 year old brain thought the Dec Rainbow was a cool machine so we bought one despite the awful shopping experience that DEC provided for non large enterprises.
It was a cool machine in that it could run both CP/M (what Paradox would run on) and MS-DOS because it had a z80 as well as some early x86 variant. The drives could also read both formats too.
MarkusWandel · 1h ago
Two things that might still be fun with CP/M to this day, though neither is in that image and would have to be obtained separately.
1. MBASIC. A nice time capsule of BASIC programming in that era, more serious and less quirky than Microsoft BASIC on other old emulated computers such as C64.
2. Wordstar. That has a bit of a learning curve, but it's frankly more bang for the (compute) buck than absolutely anything since. I came late to the CP/M party with an inexpensive (for the day) surplus Intertec Superbrain in 1984 or so, but I ended up using Wordstar for quite a while for document preparation. Of course getting it to output to a modern printer would need going deep under the hood. Most CP/M systems came with source code for the BIOS for a reason. I hacked mine to turn an obsolete LAN type interface on it (a Compustar M30) into a Centronics-compatible parallel printer port and wrote my own BIOS glue to drive it.
pacman128 · 57m ago
Fun fact, George RR Martin still uses the MS-DOS version of Wordstar for his writing.
cyberax · 13m ago
Given his (non-)performance, perhaps he should switch to something else?
SirFatty · 1h ago
I don't have memories of Wordstar being fun.
MarkusWandel · 59m ago
Most first-rate tools aren't meant to be fun. WS was very effective once you memorized the more common keybindings.
jsight · 54m ago
It was fun in much the same way that vim is fun.
MarkusWandel · 52m ago
Whose (vi) keybindings I learned in 1987 on a SunOS system where it was simply the best editor available stock (about 1/2 of the user population in those days used emacs instead but you had to install that). And I can still use them to this day! Whereas I've forgotten the WS ones.
rickcarlino · 1h ago
It is great to see good HN content getting mirrored on Gemini://.
ascorbic · 35m ago
My first programming was on an Amstrad PCW that ran CP/M and had BASIC and Logo. I was very young and don't remember much about it except that I enjoyed it enough that I'm still doing it ~40 years later.
jmclnx · 1h ago
Very nice, I will try it out!
Back then I was an operator (now called admin) and at the time I thought these micros were "toys" since I was on a "real" computer.
Little did I know these little systems would kill the systems I worked with and end up pretty much running the world. I think the only place mainframes rule now are in very high Financial Transaction Systems.
FWIW, very glad to see the article published in Gemini, I have moved my site to Gemini a year ago.
Eldodi · 1h ago
Is this an ancestor of MCP?
EvanAnderson · 1h ago
It's an operating system used on 8-bit microcomputers (8080 and Z80-based). It's (sort of) an ancestor (API inspiration, really) to MS-DOS.
jandrese · 50m ago
MS-DOS was more of a clone of CP/M. The sort of thing that was mostly possible because CP/M is so minimal that one person can rewrite/port it in a just a few weeks. MS-DOS also cleaned up some of the rough edges of CP/M, like soft locking the system if you tried to access an non-existent drive.
macintux · 1h ago
Interesting look at the controversy surrounding Microsoft, IBM, and CP/M.
For some reason my 16 year old brain thought the Dec Rainbow was a cool machine so we bought one despite the awful shopping experience that DEC provided for non large enterprises.
It was a cool machine in that it could run both CP/M (what Paradox would run on) and MS-DOS because it had a z80 as well as some early x86 variant. The drives could also read both formats too.
1. MBASIC. A nice time capsule of BASIC programming in that era, more serious and less quirky than Microsoft BASIC on other old emulated computers such as C64.
2. Wordstar. That has a bit of a learning curve, but it's frankly more bang for the (compute) buck than absolutely anything since. I came late to the CP/M party with an inexpensive (for the day) surplus Intertec Superbrain in 1984 or so, but I ended up using Wordstar for quite a while for document preparation. Of course getting it to output to a modern printer would need going deep under the hood. Most CP/M systems came with source code for the BIOS for a reason. I hacked mine to turn an obsolete LAN type interface on it (a Compustar M30) into a Centronics-compatible parallel printer port and wrote my own BIOS glue to drive it.
Back then I was an operator (now called admin) and at the time I thought these micros were "toys" since I was on a "real" computer.
Little did I know these little systems would kill the systems I worked with and end up pretty much running the world. I think the only place mainframes rule now are in very high Financial Transaction Systems.
FWIW, very glad to see the article published in Gemini, I have moved my site to Gemini a year ago.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/did-bill-gates-steal-the-heart-of-...