OK, I'll admit to creeping senility. We went to an estate sale Friday
and I bought a "fat mac" Macintosh from 1984 for the magnificent sum of
$1.

I'd planned on making a "Macquarium" out of it, but just for the heck of
it I plugged it in. It came up and beeped with an icon of a floppy with
a question mark. How about that.

Now I'm intrigued. I did some research and found it uses 400K 3.5"
floppies in some strange format which a PC disk controller can't write.
I also found that Apple has no interest in supporting anything that old.

I did find some disk images of various O/S releases, but they do me no
good because I can't write them in Mac format.

I'm going to look for Macintosh newsgroups as soon as I get through
here, but I've seen such a wide range of interests and expertise on this
group that I thought I'd give it a try too.

Does anyone have the fat mac software and the ability to copy it and
send it to me? I'd pay a few bucks to cover expenses, but obviously
don't want to put a lot of money into a $1 obsolete computer :-).

By "Fat Mac", I assume mean you got a 512K, the second Mac? The early ones are
starting to get valuable, as far as older computers go. Good find. Don't chop
it up for an aquarium.

It uses 400K, single-sided disks. Same media as the 800K (or 720K for PCs). It
was the first coomputer to use "modern" Sony floppy diskettes. PC makers didn't
catch on for another few years.

If you can give me some time, I can find and copy most of my original System
disks. I have about 50 vintage computers, mostly Apples and Apple Macs. That
includes an original 128K with a 337 board serial number. I could have sold
that for $1000 a couple years ago when the Japanese collecting market peaked.

GTO(John)

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 09:48:02 -0700, Larry Blanchard wrote:

Does anyone have the fat mac software and the ability to copy it and
send it to me? I'd pay a few bucks to cover expenses, but obviously
don't want to put a lot of money into a $1 obsolete computer :-).

I have 'em. Just sent you an email from a disposeable account.
--
"Keep your ass behind you"

"Clif" wrote in message
link.net...
I know they work fine, they are GREAT and unparalleled when it comes to
graphics and that has never been a question, it just that I find it
incrediblyt difficult to believe that they do not have MORE Software like
the PC's.


Let me make it easier for you to understand why there is not more software
for the older Apples and basically why Apple bassicly failed.

Apple was stingy in the beginning years and insisted that they would be the
only ones to sell software or peripherals for the Apple computer. Since IBM
did not discourage other makers of computers and software writers to make
software for their style computers the PC naturally flourished.

Kinda like comparing a Socialist economic system to a Capitalist economic
system.

Leon wrote:


"Clif" wrote in message
link.net...
I know they work fine, they are GREAT and unparalleled when it comes to
graphics and that has never been a question, it just that I find it
incrediblyt difficult to believe that they do not have MORE Software like
the PC's.


Let me make it easier for you to understand why there is not more software
for the older Apples and basically why Apple bassicly failed.

If 8 billion dollars a year is "failure".

Apple was stingy in the beginning years and insisted that they would be
the
only ones to sell software or peripherals for the Apple computer. Since
IBM did not discourage other makers of computers and software writers to
make software for their style computers the PC naturally flourished.

Except that the CP/M community was even more open and IBM killed them dead.
Is _any_ company that started out making CP/M machines still in business?

IBM was successful mainly because of brand recognition, not because of the
superiority of their product or their policies toward developers.

Kinda like comparing a Socialist economic system to a Capitalist economic
system.

I think that's quite a stretch.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...

Let me make it easier for you to understand why there is not more
software
for the older Apples and basically why Apple bassicly failed.

If 8 billion dollars a year is "failure".

When it could have easily been in the trillions. Yeah a failure, and had
Microsoft not bailed them out, probably the path of the Comodore. I wonder
what the Net profit is? Sales mean nothing if the cost is equal or greater.


Except that the CP/M community was even more open and IBM killed them
dead.
Is _any_ company that started out making CP/M machines still in business?

Still they were much more effective at marketing.

IBM was successful mainly because of brand recognition, not because of the
superiority of their product or their policies toward developers.

Did anyone dispute this? I do not recall reading that IBM was more
successful because of a better product. They were simply superior at
marketing. Hence, Apple fell way behind.


Kinda like comparing a Socialist economic system to a Capitalist
economic
system.

I think that's quite a stretch.

Socialism by definition,

Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means
of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a
centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

Basically Apple had the theory or system that produced, distributed and
controlled its goods by itself.

Capitalism by definition,

An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are
privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the
accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.

IBM used this method.

Again, only a comparison that describes why Apple got stomped by the PC
economy.

Let me make it easier for you to understand why there is not more software
for the older Apples and basically why Apple bassicly failed.

Apple was stingy in the beginning years and insisted that they would be the
only ones to sell software or peripherals for the Apple computer. Since IBM
did not discourage other makers of computers and software writers to make
software for their style computers the PC naturally flourished.

After IBM's first few models, they were hurt _bad_ by all the cheap clones that
came out. They went from being "the company" to just the most well-known one,
and a rather expensive one at that.

Apple chose the company over wider platform distrubution. When Apple did get
into allowing clones in the mid '90s, they almost got IBM'ed. The clones were
cheaper and sometimes faster, though not usually the best quality. Apple nearly
went under, and when they brought Mr. Steve back he whacked the clones. Apple
still got to keep their niche markets, sales went up, so the company survives.
Recently they've really big ignoring the education market, and that has me
worried. Used to be nearly 100% Apple user base.

GTO(John)

In article , Larry Blanchard
wrote:

OK, I'll admit to creeping senility. We went to an estate sale Friday
and I bought a "fat mac" Macintosh from 1984 for the magnificent sum of
$1.

snip

As a matter of interest all the specs for it are he
http://www.lowendmac.com/compact/512k.shtml

--
http://doit101.com

"p_j" wrote in message
...
Leon wrote:

Again, only a comparison that describes why Apple got stomped by the PC
economy.

If you ask me, the reason Apple got stomped was the lack of a capitalist
system in America.

???


MS doesn't even market that well.

Apparently they do as market well as "most" every computer has their product
on it. They did in deed bring their product to the market place and have
been rewarded for it.

They manipulate and litigate well. If they had real consequences for their
crimes, they
probably wouldn't exist.

What crime is that?

Yea what ever. Why is it windows haters like yourself always compare a
proprietary hardware vender to a generic runs on anything OS. Bill wasn't
competing in the same market. Apple got stomped from the Steve Jobs elitist
overpriced marketing blunder
thinking the "total package" would capture the market. Anyone that was
involved in computers in those days knows half the geeks... (like me) were
down in the basement soldering together bits and pieces from Heathkit and
Team electronics... all we needed was an operating system and some cassette
tape. Bill knew exactly who he was marketing to.





"p_j" wrote in message
...
Leon wrote:

Again, only a comparison that describes why Apple got stomped by the PC
economy.

If you ask me, the reason Apple got stomped was the lack of a capitalist
system in America. MS doesn't even market that well. They manipulate and
litigate well. If they had real consequences for their crimes, they
probably wouldn't exist.

p_j wrote:

Leon wrote:

Again, only a comparison that describes why Apple got stomped by the PC
economy.

If you ask me, the reason Apple got stomped was the lack of a capitalist
system in America. MS doesn't even market that well. They manipulate and
litigate well. If they had real consequences for their crimes, they
probably wouldn't exist.

Uh huh. Now _who_ sued _who_ over user interface look and feel?

MS made one very good business decision. The sold to IBM at the price IBM
wanted to pay. Once that deal was done they'd have had to screw up pretty
bad to avoid becoming the predominant OS vendor for personal computers.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

C'mon Leon success in the peoples state of the USA "IS" becoming a crime.
The gov't doesn't want law abiding citizens they want people they can
control with more law and charge 'em for it.

Sorry Ayn Rand Rant off....

EJ

LOL I had failed to look at it that way.



"Eric Johnson" wrote in message
...
C'mon Leon success in the peoples state of the USA "IS" becoming a crime.
The gov't doesn't want law abiding citizens they want people they can
control with more law and charge 'em for it.

Sorry Ayn Rand Rant off....

EJ

Larry.

Larry Blanchard wrote in message ...

Now I'm intrigued. I did some research and found it uses 400K 3.5"
floppies in some strange format which a PC disk controller can't write.
I also found that Apple has no interest in supporting anything that old.

I did find some disk images of various O/S releases, but they do me no
good because I can't write them in Mac format.

I believe you need a program called "rawrite" which is a PC program
that writes raw binary data to a floppy without trying making it PC
formatted. This should create a useable mac-formatted system disk that
will boot up your old machine. (You might want to troll around the
linux boards - rawrite was usually used for creating Linux-formatted
bootdisks, back in the day before everyone had CD-R drives).

I predict you'll boot it, realize how brutally slow it is, squint at
the tiny screen, and wonder why you went through the trouble!. Good
luck with the macquarium, it sounds like a cool project!

-Marc-

Larry.

Larry Blanchard wrote in message ...

Now I'm intrigued. I did some research and found it uses 400K 3.5"
floppies in some strange format which a PC disk controller can't write.
I also found that Apple has no interest in supporting anything that old.

I did find some disk images of various O/S releases, but they do me no
good because I can't write them in Mac format.

I believe you need a program called "rawrite" which is a PC program
that writes raw binary data to a floppy without trying making it PC
formatted. This should create a useable mac-formatted system disk that
will boot up your old machine. (You might want to troll around the
linux boards - rawrite was usually used for creating Linux-formatted
bootdisks, back in the day before everyone had CD-R drives).

I predict you'll boot it, realize how brutally slow it is, squint at
the tiny screen, and wonder why you went through the trouble!. Good
luck with the macquarium, it sounds like a cool project!

-Marc-

"p_j" wrote in message
...
Leon wrote:

!!!

MS doesn't even market that well.

Apparently they do as market well as "most" every computer has their
product
on it. They did in deed bring their product to the market place and
have
been rewarded for it.

What about marketing? You're talking about other things.

You might want to check th definition of marketing out.


They manipulate and litigate well. If they had real consequences for
their
crimes, they
probably wouldn't exist.

What crime is that?

Actually, many of their manipulations were crimes. Additionally they
committed a variety of other crimes.

According to what law in particular, and why has no one Microsoft down if
this is true?

What I found extremely funny about this whole thing was when Netscape was
whining about IE being included in the OS package when Netscape was also
free? I always thought that what was good for the goose was also good for
the gander. I recall Quicken, Netscape, and AOL all being free.

J. Clarke wrote:
Leon wrote:


"Clif" wrote in message
thlink.net...

I know they work fine, they are GREAT and unparalleled when it comes to
graphics and that has never been a question, it just that I find it
incrediblyt difficult to believe that they do not have MORE Software like
the PC's.


Let me make it easier for you to understand why there is not more software
for the older Apples and basically why Apple bassicly failed.


If 8 billion dollars a year is "failure".


Apple was stingy in the beginning years and insisted that they would be
the
only ones to sell software or peripherals for the Apple computer. Since
IBM did not discourage other makers of computers and software writers to
make software for their style computers the PC naturally flourished.


Except that the CP/M community was even more open and IBM killed them dead.
Is _any_ company that started out making CP/M machines still in business?

IBM was successful mainly because of brand recognition, not because of the
superiority of their product or their policies toward developers.


Kinda like comparing a Socialist economic system to a Capitalist economic
system.


I think that's quite a stretch.

Uh....Radio Shack.....(remember the TRS-80?)

PHilski

In article .net,
Clif wrote:

it just that I find it incrediblyt difficult to believe that they do
not have MORE Software like the PC's.

Unfortunately, too many people believe that. If you go to
http://guide.apple.com/index.lasso and click on the link I've written
below, you will find more programs than you'd ever need in *ANY* field
of work.

Software
Browse the software section for over 18,000 Macintosh applications and
software titles.

There is *NOTHING* you can do on a PC that you cannot do on a Mac.

Gerry used and taught both platforms for years and became more and
more of a Machead as the years progressed

Greetings and Salutations.
On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 14:22:12 -0500, (p_j) wrote:

Leon wrote:

Again, only a comparison that describes why Apple got stomped by the PC
economy.

Well, for what it is worth, my take on it is that Apple was a
company of hardware and software geeks who were focused on making the
coolest systems and software. They were pretty clueless when it came
to the business world.
M$ has always been a marketing giant. I have to say that I
DO admire Gate's ability to build up a frenzy of excitement over his
product, and get folks to buy it. He might not be that great a
geek, but, he can sell snow to an Eskimo.
So...you put an apple system and a PC next to each other...
The apple had a lot of strengths (great graphics support from day one,
ease of use, shallow learning curve) but cost $3000 or so.
The PC was really cheap, and, did most things "well enough".
Americans will, more often than not, go with cheap over quality, which
gives the PC an advantage.
Also, of course, there was the flood of PCS on the market. It
was, and still is, kind of a challenge to find a place that sells
Apple hardware and Software. However, it is hard to walk more than a
block without passing a clone shop or some other source of PC stuff.
Market penetration, adequate value, aggressive marketing
all work together to take over 85% of the market.

If you ask me, the reason Apple got stomped was the lack of a capitalist
system in America. MS doesn't even market that well. They manipulate and
litigate well. If they had real consequences for their crimes, they
probably wouldn't exist.

Look at the roll-out of Windows 98. That was so hyped and
pushed that it had folks who did not even OWN a computer asking me
if they should buy a copy. Now THAT is marketing.
Of course, as the judge said...M$ may have gained its monopoly
legally, through aggressive marketing, but, they used that power to
illegally maintain that monopoly...and by definition, a monopoly
makes it very hard for competition to grow.
It is a tough world out there.
Regards
Dave Mundt

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:18:21 -0400, "G.E.R.R.Y."
wrote:

There is *NOTHING* you can do on a PC that you cannot do on a Mac.

run autocad?

p_j wrote:

J. Clarke wrote:


Again, only a comparison that describes why Apple got stomped by the
PC economy.

If you ask me, the reason Apple got stomped was the lack of a
capitalist system in America. MS doesn't even market that well. They
manipulate and litigate well. If they had real consequences for their
crimes, they probably wouldn't exist.

Uh huh. Now _who_ sued _who_ over user interface look and feel?

There have probably been hundreds, if not thousands of lawsuits against
Microsoft. Do you have a point?

Given a more capitalist legal system, Microsoft probably wouldn't exist.

I see. So they successfully defend themselves against attacks by litigation
and that makes them bad guys. That makes perfect sense if you believe that
the way to success is to use the legal system to destroy your competition.
Is that what you believe?

MS made one very good business decision. The sold to IBM at the price
IBM
wanted to pay. Once that deal was done they'd have had to screw up
pretty bad to avoid becoming the predominant OS vendor for personal
computers.

They sold something they didn't own.

What did they sell that they didn't own?

How about that? Maybe you think all
the other lawsuits against Microsoft were without merit, but many very
conservative judges disagree.

You can find "many conservative judges" that disagree with just about
anything for certain values of "conservative". But that is beside the
point. Microsoft in general does not try to litigate their competition to
death.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

marcj wrote:

Larry.

Larry Blanchard wrote in message
...

Now I'm intrigued. I did some research and found it uses 400K 3.5"
floppies in some strange format which a PC disk controller can't write.
I also found that Apple has no interest in supporting anything that old.

I did find some disk images of various O/S releases, but they do me no
good because I can't write them in Mac format.

I believe you need a program called "rawrite" which is a PC program
that writes raw binary data to a floppy without trying making it PC
formatted. This should create a useable mac-formatted system disk that
will boot up your old machine. (You might want to troll around the
linux boards - rawrite was usually used for creating Linux-formatted
bootdisks, back in the day before everyone had CD-R drives).

Nope. Doesn't work. I don't recall what was different about the Mac
hardware but there was something--the only way you could write a
Mac-formatted disk on a PC was to use a Central Point Software Deluxe
Option Board which provided the necessary hardware.

I predict you'll boot it, realize how brutally slow it is, squint at
the tiny screen, and wonder why you went through the trouble!. Good
luck with the macquarium, it sounds like a cool project!

Some people collect old machines for reasons having nothing to do with
current utility. I suspect that 20 years from now that machine's going to
be worth a lot more working than it will as an aquarium.

-Marc-

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

philski wrote:

J. Clarke wrote:
Leon wrote:


"Clif" wrote in message
rthlink.net...

I know they work fine, they are GREAT and unparalleled when it comes to
graphics and that has never been a question, it just that I find it
incrediblyt difficult to believe that they do not have MORE Software
like the PC's.


Let me make it easier for you to understand why there is not more
software for the older Apples and basically why Apple bassicly failed.


If 8 billion dollars a year is "failure".


Apple was stingy in the beginning years and insisted that they would be
the
only ones to sell software or peripherals for the Apple computer. Since
IBM did not discourage other makers of computers and software writers to
make software for their style computers the PC naturally flourished.


Except that the CP/M community was even more open and IBM killed them
dead. Is _any_ company that started out making CP/M machines still in
business?

IBM was successful mainly because of brand recognition, not because of
the superiority of their product or their policies toward developers.


Kinda like comparing a Socialist economic system to a Capitalist economic
system.


I think that's quite a stretch.

Uh....Radio Shack.....(remember the TRS-80?)

OK, one, and I guess if we count Zenith that makes two. But both were
successful businesses before personal computers, neither abandoned their
other markets to pursue computers, and both have gotten out of computer
manufacturing--Radio Shack is a DECPaquard outlet but doesn't make or sell
their own anymore, while Zenith went back to televisions. Are any of the
myriad companies that sprang up to manufacture CP/M machines still around?

And if there's anybody to blame it's Digital Research--if CP/M-86 had been
delivered on time then Seattle DOS would never have been written and
Microsoft wouldn't have had a product to sell to IBM.

PHilski

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

"G.E.R.R.Y." wrote in message
.. .


There is *NOTHING* you can do on a PC that you cannot do on a Mac.

You can still put a floppy in s a new PC. :~)

Greetings and Salutations...

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 13:50:51 GMT, "Leon"
wrote:


"G.E.R.R.Y." wrote in message
. ..


There is *NOTHING* you can do on a PC that you cannot do on a Mac.

You can still put a floppy in s a new PC. :~)


Hum...depends on what you call "new". It has been
about a year now that if I wanted a floppy drive on the systems
I have built that I have to specifically request it. The days
when 1.4 meg was big enough for almost anything are long
gone. While it is still possible to put some documents
and such on a single floppy, so many of them bloat out to
several meg so quickly, it is not even funny.
As an example...I ran into a 2 page newsletter (front
and back of ONE sheet of paper) that was in Publisher format
(ok...ok...I KNOW it is M$ and therefore by definition bloated).
The files for the various issues ran from a small size of over
5 meg up to 15 meg. Now, while they did have a bunch of images,
that seemed a bit big to me. When I converted them to PDF
format, they DID shrink down to under a meg, in most cases...
but that still would leave one newsletter per floppy only.
With the massive price drop in CDRW drives and media,
it only makes sense these days to drop the floppy and go with
CD. Zip drives used to be useful too, but, again...limited to
250 meg (a great improvement, but still tending to fill up quickly).
Regards
Dave Mundt

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 21:23:47 GMT, Leon wrote:

Let me make it easier for you to understand why there is not more software
for the older Apples and basically why Apple bassicly failed.

Yawn. Apple has been "failed" for well over 20 years now.

Apple was stingy in the beginning years and insisted that they would be the
only ones to sell software or peripherals for the Apple computer.

This is why the cover of the Apple2 was user-removable and aftermarket
cards and software were widespread? I think your history is skewed.

Since IBM
did not discourage other makers of computers and software writers to make
software for their style computers the PC naturally flourished.

No, I'm _sure_ your history is skewed.

Kinda like comparing a Socialist economic system to a Capitalist economic
system.

Well sure, if you can make up your facts as you go along, no problem.

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:18:21 -0400, G.E.R.R.Y. wrote:

There is *NOTHING* you can do on a PC that you cannot do on a Mac.

Well now, that's not true. Since I bought my Mac 2 years ago, I've
not once been able to honestly complain that a crash has taken any of
my data with it - in fact, haven't been able to make it crash at all,
so I think that's two things.

"Dave Hinz" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:18:21 -0400, G.E.R.R.Y.
wrote:

There is *NOTHING* you can do on a PC that you cannot do on a Mac.

Well now, that's not true. Since I bought my Mac 2 years ago, I've
not once been able to honestly complain that a crash has taken any of
my data with it - in fact, haven't been able to make it crash at all,
so I think that's two things.


I can honestly say that with the exception of when the dog kicked the surge
protector switch in 1985, I have not lost any data either on a PC.

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 09:33:27 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:
*snip*

Nope. Doesn't work. I don't recall what was different about the Mac
hardware but there was something--the only way you could write a
Mac-formatted disk on a PC was to use a Central Point Software Deluxe
Option Board which provided the necessary hardware.

What was different about the Apple/Macintosh floppy drives
were that they were variable RPM drives whereas PCs simply spun
the floppy disk at a fixed RPM. This design decision was made, IIRC,
because Jobs wanted to not "waste" floppy disk space and to
simplify the electronics needed to read and write data to the disk.
Without telling you EVERYTHING I know, on a constant
RPM disk, the surface velocity of the media is rather greater
at the outer edge than at the inner edge of the writable area. Now...
this means that the read/write circuitry needs to be more complicated,
so as to be able to do its thing reliably both at the outer and inner
sections of the disk. Jobs went with simpler read/write circuitry,
and instead varied the RPM of the disk, slowing it down as the heads
moved out towards the outer edge. This meant that the surface
velocity of the media stayed "constant" no matter whether the heads
were at the center of the disk or the outer edge. It not only
makes the timing circutry simpler for determining where the bits are
at, but, eliminates some power control circutry that controls how much
electricity gets pumped through the heads.

I predict you'll boot it, realize how brutally slow it is, squint at
the tiny screen, and wonder why you went through the trouble!. Good
luck with the macquarium, it sounds like a cool project!

Some people collect old machines for reasons having nothing to do with
current utility. I suspect that 20 years from now that machine's going to
be worth a lot more working than it will as an aquarium.

Yea...I, for one, would LOVE to have a working IMSAI 8080 for
my (admittedly small) collection. However, every time they appear,
they seem to go for well over $1000...which is too much for me to
spend on a whim.
To continue the drift a bit, one of the things I really liked
about my CP/M system (a z80 based, COmpuPro system named helen), was
that it was really the last computer that I truly felt "in control"
of. I was able to keep a picture of the internal workings of the OS
and BIOS in my head, and, was able to re-program it to work the way
*I* wanted it to work. Although it is a trivial thing these days,
it was an exciting moment for me when I was able to re-write the BIOS
(in assembler, by the by) to change the keyboard input from a polled
system that came "standard" to an interrupt driven system. It worked
like a charm and made my life a LOT happier.
That was a good system and still runs, although it is so
limited that I really don't use it any longer, and, probably could not
program a simple serial IO routine in assembler any longer. Actually,
had some business decisions been made differently, I suspect that CP/M
would not only still be around, but, it would have evolved much as
PC/MS-DOS changed. There were extensions that were exploring the idea
of a hierarchical filesystem when it was drowned by the flood of
machines from IBM.
Regards
Dave Mundt

"Larry Blanchard" wrote in message
...

C'mon guys. I made a simple request for some old Mac software and
you've started the Apple vs Microsoft wars again.

At least start your own off-topic thread instead of hijacking this one
:-).


Start a wood related topic and we will go to that. ;~)

In article ,
wrote:

run autocad?

Yes.

In article ,
wrote:

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:18:21 -0400, "G.E.R.R.Y."
wrote:

There is *NOTHING* you can do on a PC that you cannot do on a Mac.

run autocad?

There's no reason to. Superior products are available for MacOS, like
Vectorworks. Autocad tags are largely supported, as I understand it;
it's been a couple of years since I did the comparisons.

The success of Autocad is one of those mysteries parallel to the
success of Microsoft, Novell, and others: "Wow, I have to hire THREE
more geeks to run this, so it must be better!"

Autodesk isn't in the software business; they're in the upgrade and
support business. They charge an arm and a leg for the product, then
four arms and six legs for the support (which really isn't optional).
Not to mention several testicles for specialized libraries. It's one
helluva business model!

But unless Autocad requires a hardware dongle, there's no reason you
can't run it on a Mac. VirtualPC handles Windoze programs nicely,
albeit much slower than on native hardware, or Mac equivalents on Apple
hardware.

Kevin

In article , Leon
wrote:


You can still put a floppy in s a new PC.

And a Mac. If you really want to.

USB floppy drive.

In article , Dave Hinz
wrote:

Yawn. Apple has been "failed" for well over 20 years now.

Yeah. They can't even figure out how to spend the $4 billion cash they
have.

Idiots...

djb

Dave Mundt wrote:

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 09:33:27 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:
*snip*

Nope. Doesn't work. I don't recall what was different about the Mac
hardware but there was something--the only way you could write a
Mac-formatted disk on a PC was to use a Central Point Software Deluxe
Option Board which provided the necessary hardware.

What was different about the Apple/Macintosh floppy drives
were that they were variable RPM drives whereas PCs simply spun
the floppy disk at a fixed RPM. This design decision was made, IIRC,
because Jobs wanted to not "waste" floppy disk space and to
simplify the electronics needed to read and write data to the disk.
Without telling you EVERYTHING I know, on a constant
RPM disk, the surface velocity of the media is rather greater
at the outer edge than at the inner edge of the writable area. Now...
this means that the read/write circuitry needs to be more complicated,
so as to be able to do its thing reliably both at the outer and inner
sections of the disk. Jobs went with simpler read/write circuitry,
and instead varied the RPM of the disk, slowing it down as the heads
moved out towards the outer edge. This meant that the surface
velocity of the media stayed "constant" no matter whether the heads
were at the center of the disk or the outer edge. It not only
makes the timing circutry simpler for determining where the bits are
at, but, eliminates some power control circutry that controls how much
electricity gets pumped through the heads.

FWIW, the Victor 9000 did the same thing for the same reason. Eventually
they came out with a new diskette controller that could read and write PC
disks. IIRC it involved replacing a circuit board on the drive itself--I
installed a couple of them but that was a long time ago and I don't
remember the details now, and neither of my 9000s have the mod.

Good example of an MS-DOS machine that was not PC compatible.

I predict you'll boot it, realize how brutally slow it is, squint at
the tiny screen, and wonder why you went through the trouble!. Good
luck with the macquarium, it sounds like a cool project!

Some people collect old machines for reasons having nothing to do with
current utility. I suspect that 20 years from now that machine's going to
be worth a lot more working than it will as an aquarium.

Yea...I, for one, would LOVE to have a working IMSAI 8080 for
my (admittedly small) collection. However, every time they appear,
they seem to go for well over $1000...which is too much for me to
spend on a whim.
To continue the drift a bit, one of the things I really liked
about my CP/M system (a z80 based, COmpuPro system named helen), was
that it was really the last computer that I truly felt "in control"
of. I was able to keep a picture of the internal workings of the OS
and BIOS in my head, and, was able to re-program it to work the way
*I* wanted it to work. Although it is a trivial thing these days,
it was an exciting moment for me when I was able to re-write the BIOS
(in assembler, by the by) to change the keyboard input from a polled
system that came "standard" to an interrupt driven system. It worked
like a charm and made my life a LOT happier.
That was a good system and still runs, although it is so
limited that I really don't use it any longer, and, probably could not
program a simple serial IO routine in assembler any longer. Actually,
had some business decisions been made differently, I suspect that CP/M
would not only still be around, but, it would have evolved much as
PC/MS-DOS changed. There were extensions that were exploring the idea
of a hierarchical filesystem when it was drowned by the flood of
machines from IBM.
Regards
Dave Mundt

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

p_j wrote:

J. Clarke wrote:

Again, only a comparison that describes why Apple got stomped by
the PC economy.

If you ask me, the reason Apple got stomped was the lack of a
capitalist system in America. MS doesn't even market that well. They
manipulate and litigate well. If they had real consequences for
their crimes, they probably wouldn't exist.

Uh huh. Now _who_ sued _who_ over user interface look and feel?

There have probably been hundreds, if not thousands of lawsuits against
Microsoft. Do you have a point?

Given a more capitalist legal system, Microsoft probably wouldn't
exist.

I see. So they successfully defend themselves against attacks by
litigation and that makes them bad guys.

Go ahead and keep your "so" conclusion. MS has done their share of
litigating. They have also lost many, many lawsuits.

That makes perfect sense if you believe that
the way to success is to use the legal system to destroy your
competition. Is that what you believe?

I would say that that is part of what MS believes. I believe that a
legal system should be there as a neutral arbiter of justice, not the
system in place now.

MS made one very good business decision. The sold to IBM at the price
IBM
wanted to pay. Once that deal was done they'd have had to screw up
pretty bad to avoid becoming the predominant OS vendor for personal
computers.

They sold something they didn't own.

What did they sell that they didn't own?

DOS.

I'm not sure what point you think you're making here. You seem to be trying
to imply that they did not have the right to sell MS-DOS to IBM. The guy
who wrote it seems to disagree with you, and quite honestly I think he
knows a Hell of a lot more about that topic than you do.

How about that? Maybe you think all
the other lawsuits against Microsoft were without merit, but many very
conservative judges disagree.

You can find "many conservative judges" that disagree with just about
anything for certain values of "conservative". But that is beside the
point. Microsoft in general does not try to litigate their competition
to death.

Well, I think you will find many who would disagree with them and their
panoply of predatory practices. They have availed themselves of the
legal system whenever it suited their purposes.

Judges, many of them conservative, have found merit in many, many
lawsuits against MS. There wouldn't have been those lawsuits if MS had
not engaged in those activities.

I see. So every time someone brings a suit that's proof positive that
whoever they sued did something wrong. Then I guess that James Randi was
wrong about Uri Geller.

Regardless, you're clearly not rational on this topic.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 20:26:09 -0600, Dave Balderstone
wrote:

In article ,
wrote:

run autocad?

Yes.


but only if you forst run windows in some emulation mode. no thanks.
one operating system at a time....

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 02:26:44 GMT, Kevin Craig
wrote:

In article ,
wrote:

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:18:21 -0400, "G.E.R.R.Y."
wrote:

There is *NOTHING* you can do on a PC that you cannot do on a Mac.

run autocad?

There's no reason to. Superior products are available for MacOS, like
Vectorworks. Autocad tags are largely supported, as I understand it;
it's been a couple of years since I did the comparisons.

The success of Autocad is one of those mysteries parallel to the
success of Microsoft, Novell, and others: "Wow, I have to hire THREE
more geeks to run this, so it must be better!"

Autodesk isn't in the software business; they're in the upgrade and
support business. They charge an arm and a leg for the product, then
four arms and six legs for the support (which really isn't optional).
Not to mention several testicles for specialized libraries. It's one
helluva business model!

But unless Autocad requires a hardware dongle, there's no reason you
can't run it on a Mac. VirtualPC handles Windoze programs nicely,
albeit much slower than on native hardware, or Mac equivalents on Apple
hardware.

Kevin


the virtual video card apple uses for it's virtual machine to run
windows on really sucks. why would I want to buy an overpriced mac to
poorly emulate windows on when I can build my own PC that will stomp
the pants off of it for a fraction of the price?

In article ,
wrote:

but

No buts... The straight answer is "yes, you can run AutoCad on a Mac"

;-)

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 23:20:15 -0600, Dave Balderstone
wrote:

In article ,
wrote:

but

No buts... The straight answer is "yes, you can run AutoCad on a Mac"

;-)


way back when- in a version before I ever used autocad- there was acad
for the mac. if that's what you mean, it's not going to work for me.
but I don't think that's what you mean. I think you mean emulating
windows on the mac and running acad on that. life's too short for such
exercises in redundancy...

In article ,
wrote:

the virtual video card apple uses for it's virtual machine to run
windows on really sucks. why would I want to buy an overpriced mac to
poorly emulate windows on when I can build my own PC that will stomp
the pants off of it for a fraction of the price?

You wouldn't. But I was responding to the notion that it couldn't be
done.

If you're devoting a machine to Autocad, then it would be silly to
start with a Mac. But if you're using a Mac for other reasons, and you
come across a particular PC-only program that you *must* use, then
emulation is cheaper than buying another machine.

Kevin