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Cyhist Jun 08 1997 B
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Date: Sun, 8 Jun 1997 18:30:57 -0400
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: "A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security"
<PADGETT@HOBBES.ORL.MMC.COM>
Subject: CM> IBM "open"
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
>>>vs Apple. Had Apple freed up its proprietary grasp of the hardware, well, things might have been very different. But IBM published freely the spec's, and here we are today.
>>
>>Actually, to be fair, I don't think the open PC design that we have today was IBM's idea.
Not sure who is doing what and with which and to whom but can point to the incredibly detailed technical manuals (including BIOS assembly code) that IBM used to put out (when PC-DOS 3.0 came out they suddenly shrunk drastically in size & content).
Do know that when the PC came out, Charlie carried around great stacks of software which came about because of the open architecture. At the same time the Microsoft Press was pumping out data on MS-DOS (Ray Duncan's "Inside MS-DOS" comes to mind). True, there were a lot of "undocumented features", but from day 1 people were writing assembly code that worked. After all DEBUG came with just about every PC and it contains both "assemble" and "unassemble" commands.
Similarly BASIC compilers quickly became available and cheap. My 1983 Columbia even came with MASM as part of the bundle but wrote many programs just using DEBUG. Then would run the .COM through DASM31 or SOURCER to generate compilable code which I would massage with WORDSTAR.
Was there a Macintosh equivalent ?
Warmly,
Padgett
______________________________________________________________________
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: "A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security"
<PADGETT@HOBBES.ORL.MMC.COM>
Subject: CM> IBM "open"
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
>>>vs Apple. Had Apple freed up its proprietary grasp of the hardware, well, things might have been very different. But IBM published freely the spec's, and here we are today.
>>
>>Actually, to be fair, I don't think the open PC design that we have today was IBM's idea.
Not sure who is doing what and with which and to whom but can point to the incredibly detailed technical manuals (including BIOS assembly code) that IBM used to put out (when PC-DOS 3.0 came out they suddenly shrunk drastically in size & content).
Do know that when the PC came out, Charlie carried around great stacks of software which came about because of the open architecture. At the same time the Microsoft Press was pumping out data on MS-DOS (Ray Duncan's "Inside MS-DOS" comes to mind). True, there were a lot of "undocumented features", but from day 1 people were writing assembly code that worked. After all DEBUG came with just about every PC and it contains both "assemble" and "unassemble" commands.
Similarly BASIC compilers quickly became available and cheap. My 1983 Columbia even came with MASM as part of the bundle but wrote many programs just using DEBUG. Then would run the .COM through DASM31 or SOURCER to generate compilable code which I would massage with WORDSTAR.
Was there a Macintosh equivalent ?
Warmly,
Padgett
______________________________________________________________________
