[Info-vax] OT: Computing Experience, What brought you to VMS?

[Paul Sture]

On 2014-02-06, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
> On 2014-02-06 12:34, Roger Ivie wrote:
>> On 2014-02-06, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
>>> Rainbow was a IBM-PC sortof-compatible machine.
>>
>> Rainbow was not compatible. It ran MS-DOS, but did not have the
>> ROM BIOS and hardware that software began to expect from a PC.

That's the very problem that Compaq solved by writing their own.  Who would
have thought at the time that that inspiration would have eventually led them
to the position they would buy DEC?

> As it could run MS-DOS, it was compatible with the IBM-PC on that level.
> The problem was that back in that day, many programs didn't use the
> system calls to invoke system functions. Since there was no memory
> protection, and people knew at what address a specific routine sat, they
> called the routines directly.

I remember seeing examples of such code in PC magazines and officially
recommended manuals, and thinking "Yuck!".

On a slightly different tack a friend I met in the late 80s had been a
partner in a PC business in earlier days.  His claim was that early
versions of DOS were "quirky" and his solution had been to use
Ashton Tate's dBASE to isolate himself from that

> And the Rainbow did not have the same memory layout as an IBM-PC. Oh
> well. Code written by the same people who used loops to waste and
> measure time. Code which then totally failed when you got a faster CPU.

Again a FOR/NEXT loop was the recommended way to do a wait in various
PC BASIC manuals I came across.  Circa 1984 our payroll folks complained
of "lumpy" response times on their VAX and it turned out to be a programmer
using such loops "to stop a screen scrolling too quickly".

The generation of schoolkids who were lucky enough to learn BBC BASIC
were taught to do that, and according to the school book a friend's daughter
was using GOTO was undoubtedly one of the finest instructions ever invented.

I see a similar education initiative is starting out in the UK.  Watch this
video if you want a good laugh.  Apparently you can write a web site in an
hour*

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7x7GYItzS4>

* now if you'll excuse me I've got to write a replacement for Wordpress by
lunchtime :-)

--
Paul Sture