Don't count on any reply at all. I asked them why their new redesign still isn't valid HTML (seemed a valid question, considering they're part of the group that *defines* valid html.
It's going on a week now without a reply (beyond the automated "we got your message and we're going to read it Real Soon Now").
And the dozens of different machines which all ran CP/M don't count? Or the numerous CP/M luggables that showed up after the Osborne? Kaypro? Otrona Attache? Or all the S-100 bus machines?
The idea of software which could run on many different brands of hardware, all running the same OS, was bouncing around the computer industry for years; it wasn't something which just suddenly sprang out full-grown from the brow of Compaq.
Before MS-DOS hit the streets, darn near any machine available to us consumer types had a closed architecture with a closed OS.
Can it be that I'm the only one who remembers CP/M?
Closed architecture computers were the exception, rather than the rule, in the days before MS-DOS. I built expansion cards for the old Apple II, no closed architecture there. And once you pulled the Apple II out (what passed for an OS on it was indeed proprietary, but considering you could pick up annotated source listings easily, or books like "Beneath Apple DOS" readily, it could hardly be called closed) the majority of machines ran CP/M, an OS from a company which didn't sell CPUs.
The idea that MS-DOS somehow opened up the microcomputer is either revisionist history or ignorance, I'm not sure which.
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Don't count on any reply at all. I asked them why their new redesign still isn't valid HTML (seemed a valid question, considering they're part of the group that *defines* valid html.
It's going on a week now without a reply (beyond the automated "we got your message and we're going to read it Real Soon Now").
And the dozens of different machines which all ran CP/M don't count? Or the numerous CP/M luggables that showed up after the Osborne? Kaypro? Otrona Attache? Or all the S-100 bus machines?
The idea of software which could run on many different brands of hardware, all running the same OS, was bouncing around the computer industry for years; it wasn't something which just suddenly sprang out full-grown from the brow of Compaq.
Before MS-DOS hit the streets, darn near any machine available to us consumer types had a closed architecture with a closed OS.
Can it be that I'm the only one who remembers CP/M?
Closed architecture computers were the exception, rather than the rule, in the days before MS-DOS. I built expansion cards for the old Apple II, no closed architecture there. And once you pulled the Apple II out (what passed for an OS on it was indeed proprietary, but considering you could pick up annotated source listings easily, or books like "Beneath Apple DOS" readily, it could hardly be called closed) the majority of machines ran CP/M, an OS from a company which didn't sell CPUs.
The idea that MS-DOS somehow opened up the microcomputer is either revisionist history or ignorance, I'm not sure which.