Re: Attention: Mitchell Spector

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article bjblackbear@ibm.net (B.J. Major) writes...

>>Paul:  I am a Mac user by choice, but I have had to contend with Wintel
>>machines in the workplace since 1985.  I have had to both use them on a
>>daily basis, and do troubleshooting on them.  That having been said,
>>there is a *lot* of software out there, especially old 5.25 floppy disk
>>programs, that will NOT run on today's Pentiums--for one reason or
>>another.  Personally, I hate the architecture of those machines and I'm
>>not going to interest myself in trying to figure out the whys and
>>wherefores since I'm perfect content with my Macs and have no interest
>>in Wintel machines.
>
>I entirely agree -- one of the most disappointing things about the PC I
>bought a couple of years ago was discovering that it wouldn't run a lot of
>late DOS, graphics heavy games, especially some MicroProse war games I was
>rather looking forward to. At least, they wouldn't run without a
>mind-numbing heap of configuration work on Win 95's DOS preferences, which
>had to be different for each game. Frankly, I couldn't spare the time --
>unlike some people I don't really like configuring PCs. In my experience,
>the backward compatibility of PCs is a crapshoot.
>
>Steve Ballantyne

>Mitchell:  I hope this satisfies your insistence that today's PCs can run all
>of yesterday's software.

    The only thing it satisfies is my belief that you lack any sort of
creditibility or solid comprehension on the subject of IBM PC's. There
are even gaps in your knowledge about the Apple II and Macintosh based
on what you've been stating as "fact" over the past few weeks. You are
misinformed on a wide variety of subjects; that is okay though, as you
can of course be corrected and _learn_ from your mistakes. What is
irrating me though is that you act stubborn and refuse to listen each
time your corrected. If you cover your eyes and ears you'll never
learn, but I can't force you -- and that will be your loss, not mine...

    The person above does not even state the games won't work, he just
says they will not run without proper configuration. For all I know,
he probably does not have a DOS memory manager program installed, such
as EMM386. I love his comment, "I don't really like configuring PCs."
If you play helpless and just stare blankly at your screen it won't
get you very far. I don't know why Macintosh users feel boasting they
do not understand (or have the need to understand) how a computer
functions is a good thing. Since when is ignorance something to be
proud of? MS-DOS was never friendly in the first place, and if you
play really old games, having to fiddle with EMM (and base addresses,
IRQ's and DMA channels for sound cards) may very well come up. If you
understand how things operate it may be a pain having to spend a few
extra seconds to configure things but they _will_ run. You do however
need more knowledge than how to move a mouse and how to click radio
button options.

    The end point is they _will_ run on a Pentium. Let me repeat it,
the latest IBM's *are backwards compatible* with the oldest IBM's.
That is no more a debatable than the fact that the earth is round
(although I'm sure if Apple said otherwise, you might start to
question that ;). Why do you keep bringing this up? You are the
first person I know to claim today's PCs are just not backwards
compatible. Your also the first person I've heard claim PCs cannot
do true multitasking. Is everyone is the world wrong except you?

    One last thing, I find it kind of rude sticking a person's name
in the subject line of a post. If you want to be sure I read your
messages you can set your newsread to forward a copy to by mailbox.
There is no other reason to have my name in the subject otherwise,
unless it is a poor attempt to humiliate me somehow. 

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca