"Don Y" wrote in message
...
On 9/30/2015 2:48 AM, Robert Green wrote:

stuff snipped

I didn't run "IBM-badged" hardware. OTOH, I didn't run "Peoples' Computer
Factory #2733" UNBADGED machines. When my friends were paying ~2K for
a machine, I was paying 8K. But, I never called anyone at 3AM complaining
that a $3K CAD program "was misbehaving". Or, that my "discount" disk
drive's geometry wasn't supported in the machine's BIOS, etc. Or, my
(UN*X) coprocessor card was incompatible with the DOS driver it loaded
"under" the UN*X OS for "hardware services".

As someone said in a movie once, "A man's got to know his limitations."
Would I try to run a leading edge graphics program on a clone? Probably
not, but I also saw plenty of people with legit IBM's and MACs go through
some serious tsuris trying to get things to work. The SW of that period had
extensive "complexity" issues exacerbated by a rapidly evolving HW base.

I had more problems with programs that used copy protection (like Lotus)
that required key disks or that secret sectors be written to the hard disk.
those programs invariably caused serious backup problems.

I believe that CopyLok or some such nonsense actually caused several of the
software companies that used that or similar technologies to go under.
People learned what happened to Copy-locked programs after the first system
restore and shopped elsewhere. I believe Borland began eating Lotus' lunch
over the copy-protection issue. There's poetic justice in a convoluted
scheme to protect against software copying that ignored real-world
consequences to users bringing a whole software company to its knees.

--
Bobby G.