In article , John Kasupski
writes:

Good satire, John! I wonder how many will think that is a real
rant? :-)

Are you sure that it wasn't?

Yes, quite sure. :-)

As one who still "has an interest" in personal computers, I built
my first one (Southwest Technical Products Company) 6800 uP
system in 1976 when the only "DOS" available was the Intel
development system using 8" floppy disks affordable only by
industry...and the just-beginning CP/M (Control Program,
Microprocessors) that was "standard" for a while. Having access
to an HP network analyzer in 1974, I've even had to manually
toggle in the initial loader for the P-tape "bootstrap" program to
bring the HP 2116 minicomputer heart of the analyzer up to
loading its main P-tape program. :-)

The Apple ][+ purchased in 1980 was much easier to use than
the tape cassette "mass memory" storage of the SwTPc 6800
and it did use a DOS of sorts (final version 3.3) for the fantastic
143 KBytes of 5" floppy storage (one side, drive easily modified
to R/W from the other side). Got so "interested" I joined the
A.P.P.L.E. group (Apple Puget Sound Program Library Exchange)
and became a contributor to Call-A.P.P.L.E., their monthly mag.
With the Big Mac (macro Assembler plus Disassembler) I worked
out how the Applesoft numeric routines worked and learned 6502
instructions and independently disassembled their DOS 3.3 in
order to access certain features of it. Fun thing to do, intellectually
stimulating.

That led to an interest in FORTH, also a fun interpreter using RPN
notation that the HP pocket scientific calculators used. I'd already
joined the HP program library exchange and contributed a dozen
HP-67 programs to it. Harder to do since the number of program
steps were limited to 224 in that calculator. A local FORTH
interest group met once a week to trade ideas and programs.

The first of the "big" PCs was the "IBM" and I bit the bullet to get
one of those, coincidentally using only DOS-level commands. That
allowed the final version of LINEA released as shareware in 1993
(frequency domain circuit analysis) and the first of the LCie
sharewares (L-C filter design). Both LINEA and LCie are now
freeware, still operate at DOS level since I didn't bother to upgrade
to high-level programming in C++ or Windows (Windows wasn't yet
available when I got the first PC). LINEA and LCie were both done
with MS FORTRAN 5.1, long since dropped by MS.

Windows 3.3 was my first fenestra into GUI, later upgraded to Win95,
then to Win98, and finally Windows XP in the current PC box HD.
Microsoft DOS is still accessible in WinXP but MS did remove a few
niceties from the original which my FORTRAN developed programs
could no longer access. :-) Rewrite was needed and that required
some extended search and explore and to use MASM to write some
Assembler routines to make them fit...which required learning the
Intel instructions...completed only for LCie, the other four will have
to wait in the time-share queue...:-)

A rather long time ago I was doing HF communications transmitting
the old-fashioned way...manually, on tube equipment. HF radio
changed but lots of olde-tymers couldn't. I began in personal
computing via microprocessors and programmable calculators a
quarter century ago and that changed. Dramatically. I know one
PC olde-tymer who is still slogging along at DOS level, refusing to
change to any form of GUI even though much younger than I and
got into it later than I. Can't understand that.

Is there a relationship between DOS v. Windows on PCs and
the all-manual, hold to morsemanship-at-all-costs-amateurs? Yes.
I see it, have seen it.

Ergo, I rate your little message as a wonderful satire, John, good
work at that. :-)




"When I was young we made our own ICs, whittling them out of
wood!" - [anon. tagline]

:-)