good free PCB software - Page 5

 

Robert,


I've used Wordstar on a CP/M machine and, yeah, it was quite impressive for
the time, but I distinctly remember that there were plenty of 3-5 second
pauses depending on what you were doing while the program went and loaded an
overlay, loaded the next section of your file, etc.  I think there have been
significant productivity gains with modern word processors like Word of
OpenOffice Writer.


It's kinda a resource thing... gas is cheaper in the U.S. than in other
countries, so we drive bigger cars... memory is dirt cheap everywhere, so
people write bigger programs... :-)

 

On Fri, 01 Dec 2006 09:25:38 -0800, Joel Kolstad wrote:

I once worked as a programmer at some outfit that had MP/M 8-16 -
essentially, multi-user CPM. (dual processor - 1 ea. 8085 and 1 ea. 8086.)
I was one of about five users; we each had a dumb terminal. Everybody used
WordStar (which actually was kinda pleasant to use), but it bogged down so
bad that the boss started calling it "WordHog."

Cheers!
Rich

 

 

 
I also started with Wordstar on CP/M. The delay was quite apparent on
floppies, but disappeared when I upgraded to hard disks. Two Seagate ST412,
10 megabytes each. They held everything needed to run a small business -
accounting, engineering, inventory, billing, customer correspondence, and
plenty of room left over for growth.

Over two decades later, we now need 1 gig of ram, 2 gigs of hard disk
space, and 1 GHz cpu just to install the operating system.

And the word processor still works as if you were using floppies:)

Regards,

Mike Monett

Antiviral, Antibacterial Silver Solution:
 http://silversol.freewebpage.org/index.htm
SPICE Analysis of Crystal Oscillators:
 http://silversol.freewebpage.org/spice/xtal/clapp.htm
Noise-Rejecting Wideband Sampler:
 http://www3.sympatico.ca/add.automation/sampler/intro.htm

 

Hi Mike,


I never had the luxury of hard disks with CP/M... first hard disk I
encountered was on a PC, and also 10MB.  (And the first non-PC I had with a
hard drive was an Amiga, with an ST296N... 80MB... seemed limitless!)


Sure, but the price has dropped substantially... you can get a respectable PC
for <$500, complete, these days!

BTW, nice web page you have on crystal oscillators and SPICE.

---Joel

 


  >> Over two decades later, we now need 1 gig of ram, 2 gigs  of hard
  >> disk space, and 1 GHz cpu just to install the operating system.

  > Sure, but  the  price  has dropped substantially.  You  can  get a
  > respectable PC for <$500, complete, these days!

  So true.  I bought a bunch of IBM XT's when they came  out.  I think
  they were  something  like  $7,500 each. But  that  got  rid  of the
  Selectrics.

  Our biggest  problem  was   when   a  secretary  accidentally loaded
  command.com into Wordstar, then followed our strict  instructions to
  save everything before exiting the program.

  Command.com formatted  in  Wordstar doesn't work.  They  would burst
  into tears  thinking  they were going to be fired  for  wrecking the
  computer.

  > BTW, nice web page you have on crystal oscillators and SPICE.

  Thanks very  much.  I plan to add a lot of new stuff  on  Pierce and
  overtone oscillators, but haven't had much time lately. I'll  post a
  note when I finally get around to doing it.

  BTW, if  you have a web site and find you are wasting a lot  of time
  uploading files one by one, try Free FTP Manager:

    http://www.download3000.com/download_10986.html

  This was  originally open source but was removed from the  web. Then
  some company  grabbed  it  and   added   a  spyware  program  to the
  installation program.

  You can  just  stop  the installation  of  the  spyware  program and
  continue with  Free FTP manager. The installation will  complain but
  still allow  you to do it. Then erase the spyware directory  and you
  now have a free ftp sync program.

  Works like a charm, especially on web sites that limit the number of
  users so you have to keep hammering until you finally connect.

  > ---Joel

  Regards,

  Mike Monett

  Antiviral, Antibacterial Silver Solution:
   http://silversol.freewebpage.org/index.htm
  SPICE Analysis of Crystal Oscillators:
   http://silversol.freewebpage.org/spice/xtal/clapp.htm
  Noise-Rejecting Wideband Sampler:
   http://www3.sympatico.ca/add.automation/sampler/intro.htm