Re: A Tale of Two Apples

[bjblackbear@ibm.net (B.J. Major)]

Mitchell Spector <spec@vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:

> 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.

Naming examples of software would be meaningless to you because the
titles I am referring to are developed for a particular line of business
and not available to the general public.  
  
> 
> >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. 

Is is possible for you to respond to any message without making
derrogatory statements about Macintosh???!

> 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. 

You have to have a 5.25 disk drive before you can do any copying to
either 3.5 disks or a hard drive.  Newer machines just don't come with
the 5.25 drives.  My point stands that floppy drives for PCs are very
hard to come by these days (except for used ones), as are 5.25 disks
themselves.

-- 
--bj    Auto reply will not work; please remove "black" to reply.
Proud owner/user of Apple Computers since 1984.  
"None of my computers do Windows."