We would not be here were it not for DTSS

The draftsmen that used it didn't like it much, and if you did something el se for a couple of days there was apparently a tendency to forget what you had to do to get it to work. More recent layout programs are a lot more use r-friendly.

Disagreeing with you isn't evidence of psychopathology, even if you want to think that it is. The problem is that you get stuff wrong from time to tim e, and don't like it when the errors get pointed out, which does happen to be a pathological reaction, or at least a lot less than constructive.

NT is the kind of narcissist who thinks that anybody who doesn't take him seriously has some kind of mental defect. Since he presumably gets told that he's a narcissist at pretty regular intervals, it is the insult that comes to his mind most easily.

The correct way of dealing with him would be to ignore him but he posts such tempting fatuities that this can be difficult.

Self modifying code doesn't work well in ROM. And the TI9900 could be particularly vexing if its program counter register ended up in ROM.

There were comparatively few early machines where you could swap the soldered in ROMs or had spare sockets for additional ones. The BBC Micro was one such and ISTR there were optional BCPL, Forth, Lisp, Logo & Pascal ROMs available as well as drivers for FD/HD and IEEE.

Software available in those days was actually expensive stuff. Shareware and FTP hadn't been invented. Most hobby stuff resided on cassette tape.

In the early days of the Mac is was a commercial advantage bar none if you had one. Laser printed professional looking DTP business proposals stood out when everyone else's was on scraggy dot matrix printout.

I think it was probably 6502 CPU based kit of all brands that holds the record for largest share of home computers and biggest hobby influence.

CPM and 8080/Z80 held sway in small businesses for a while but they were priced well beyond what most hobbyists could afford. Early FORTRAN compilers on such platforms were very strict language implementations and "portable" code from mainframes wouldn't always compile without some adjustment to remove the extensions unwittingly used by the author(s).

That wasn't the only option. Byte published a long article on using an IBM golf-ball typewriter as a computer-controlled printer, and I think that there were other formed-character printers that did as well.

Cheap high resolution ink jet printers started showing up around 1990 for the consumer market.

Bill Sloman wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

What the f*ck are you mumbling about, boy?

There were hundreds of small businesses that could not afford UNIX based CAD worksations that were the thing at the time. AutoCAD was one of the first, and also one of the early regular CAD packages that could be fashioned to do PCB layer layouts and artwork on large pen plotters.

Still mumbling, I see.

Still mumbling. Once the user interface was learned, it worked quite well for our purposes and we had our own camera so could send the PCB houses ready to go films and gerber files.

No shit. Here I was thinking that they stagnated like you did.

I have used many of the PCB layout packages over the years.

Except it isn't just me. And yes, your behavior in this group does have indicators of such a determination.

You have a serious problem. You make presumptions, and when you get called on it, you fail to admit that you made yet another retarded presumption.

You'll need to actually point one out before I'll have no problem admiting it. Your problem is that you make stupid presumptions about people and you are too stupid yourself to even see your glaringly blatant flaw. This thread is a perfect example.

Martin Brown wrote in news:r1dv3m$1k9l$ snipped-for-privacy@gioia.aioe.org:

Do not forget that the Z80 was also embraced by the arcade game industry in pinballs and upright video games before they started using just about all the others too. But a LOT of Z80 implementations.

Bally, Midway, Williams, Stern... Chicago Coin...

I think they are actually not as recognized as they should be for their position in computing coding for control (pinball) and sound (pinballs and games) and graphics (sprite based gaming) etc.

They even coded for the first 100% frame specific index encoded optical disc based memory retrieval during live gameplay paradigms.

snipped-for-privacy@decadence.org wrote in news:r1e8nh$11mq$1 @gioia.aioe.org:

IOW, early AutoCAD was easy, punk.

snipped-for-privacy@decadence.org wrote in news:r1e987$14c8$1 @gioia.aioe.org:

Actually should mention also that large piano companies, such as Baldwin used them in their earliest electronic pianos, organs and kayboard equiped synth offerings.

Then of course there was MOOG, but I am not sure if his stuff had any processing in it. It was pure anaolg manipulation, no?

It might have been after you'd be trained up on it, but our draftsmen did complain that it was easy to forget the training.

The Commodore 128 could run CPM, along with C64 mode.

The MacPaint application, on the other hand, was easy to use, intuitive, and could get an image pixel-level edited. I was making printed circuit boards with it, when the PostScript laser printers first came available; the combination of printer-directed magnification adjustment and easy image composition made a usable ink-on-paper negative that could be transferred to Kodalith and you're ready to burn boards.

There's still a box of Bishop Graphics tapes and stickers in the closet, which is also intuitive enough for naiive use... as long as it's not a big project, 'cuz it's not clear how a modern printed circuit shop would be able to produce from that.

I used an original IBM PC in 1983 to write my first commercial shrink-wrapped software product (a personal filing system called Wot), using a C compiler that required swapping the floppy discs several times per source file. I still have the source code of that product.

During that year we got the first copy of MS/DOS 2 into Australia (couriered by DHL overnight from the launch event in Seattle) - and now could put files into sub-directories instead of all files in the root dir. Combined with a 5MB hard drive it became a properly workable machine!

Clifford Heath.

No, the capability was very common, eg: Commodore 64 could do it via an external connector.

Simtel started in 1979, and later grew to include PC software. The hard bit was getting acess to the internet.

It's not like Apple invented the desktop laser printer.

No, but because all Macintosh computers had serial ports that could join a multidrop twisted pair network (AppleTalk/LocalTalk), their desktop printers were inexpensive to network. The LaserWriter II was a more intelligent item than most PCs, and it was very popular. HP copied the network hardware for their laser printers, and optioned the PostScript to be competitive.

The 'desktop' feature wasn't what sold 'em; it was the office cluster of high-res printers.

Clifford Heath wrote in news:VLH_F.77279$ snipped-for-privacy@fx05.iad:

Just don't try out the OS by typing in format C:

There was a root file/directory count limit and a per directory limit too IIRC.

I don't think it was all that common. I never did anything with a C64. The only Commodore I ran into was the PET and only then to acquire its external hard disk drive control protocol for our IEEE interface.

ISTR the TI99/4 had cartridge slots too. But they were the exception rather then the rule. ZX80, Spectrum, QL and various knock offs were all hardwired BASIC ROM interpreters. Jupiter ACE was a notable exception to the rule being a Forth based unit (not a great commercial success). It had better performance and a B&W display but was predictably hell to program. About 10x faster than a typical basic interpretter of the day.

Good for realtime work but Forth is very much a write only language.

ISTR it was still called EPSS back then. A few people had accounts on it but you couldn't really do much apart from log on to very remote sites.

The point was that their DTP environment was precise WYSIWYG something which Microsoft have yet to master. Mickeysoft Word documents almost never look the same on screen as they do when when printed out on different physical devices. It is pretty much pot luck even today.

All the 8 bit Commodore 6502 family based computers after the PET had cartridge slots: Vic 20 C64 SX64 B128 C128 C16

and another one or two sold before the went to the Amiga an IBM clone markets

of operating systems.

syndrome. He has to post something negative about nearly all posts.

He is missing the big picture with BASIC for sure. BASIC isn't about him. It is about allowing computer programming to be taught to students rapidly and exposing many, many people to a programming language they would otherw ise have never seen. While BASIC isn't required for doing anything, it all ows many to do something they would have otherwise not had the time to lear n. The video talks about that and anyone who grew up in the 70s or 80s wou ld know early home computers were all about BASIC leading many to enter the computing field who otherwise would not have.