Re: A Tale of Two Apples

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

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

>To make an analogy that's a bit more realistic, the current crop of PC's
>can't run the oldest PC software--or very old versions of DOS.  

    Could you give some examples of old PC/XT software that will not
run on a Pentium system? All the old 8088 titles I have seem to run
just fine on my 486 and my brother's Pentium.

>The modern architecture of the machine simply won't permit it.  PC's also
>haven't shipped with 5.25" floppy drives for some time, and there is
>still a lot of older 5.25" PC software floating around.  Yet I see no
>one like yourself running around and complaining to the masses about
>this.  

    That is because unlike a Macintosh, what your PC "ships with" is 
not what it is stuck with. If I have a need to run old software on 
a 360K 5.25 floppy disks, I just have to install a 5.25 drive into
on of my free external bays (the same built-in motherboard controller 
that operates the 3.5 drive will also operate 5.25 drives). Also, the 
data on those floppy disks are not fixed to run from them, they can 
easily be copied to a 3.5 disk, or better yet, to your hardrive. 

    I don't bother with 5.25 disks on my PC (in fact the same is true 
of my Apple IIgs) though it is extremely simple if I wanted support for
that disk format. My brother has a large collection of old PC software
on 5.25 disk, so he still keeps a 5.25 drive installed in his Pentium
towercase.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca