Quote:
Originally Posted by vienna
Predating both Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel was Multiplan, a very early spreadsheet; it was the first PC spreadsheet I used and it was bit of a struggle to make it really workable; the first project I created was tax depreciation schedules for a utility company:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplan
Also, predating MS-Office, was a Lotus product called IBM Lotus Symphony, an all-in-one suite of software, which later morphed in what is now OpenOffice:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Symphony
The utility company I mentioned above got me the Symphony package after I solved a problem of not having a word processing application (it was either get Multiplan or get a word processor, not both) by using 1-2-3's macros to program a rudimentary word processor, so I could handle inserting large blocks of text into the spreadsheets...
I recall the transition to Office and Windows; I accepted a project and was told the company used MS-DOS, WordPerfect, and 1-2-3, all of which I was well familiar; when I got to the site, I found out they actually used Windows 3.1 and MS-Office, neither of which I had ever used; it was a real "in at the deep end" situation, but I was able to suss out how it all worked and complete the project. Ah, the "Good Old Days"...
<O> |
I was sure someone would fill in the area before Word Perfect, and Lotus 1-2-3.
Those were the earliest that I remembered...
My Mother had several jobs that included transferring older records/files to MS Office.
Some as far back as an early '60s OS (Unix maybe?) when everybody decided to update to PCs.
I remember using the old mainframe/dumb terminal at the local library to find books that I wanted (on submarines and planes mostly
).
Then the library switched to a PC/web site based search system, I couldn't find ANYTHING I wanted, no matter how I searched.
I went to using the 'cards-in-the-small-drawer' file to find the books I wanted (I forget what the actual term is).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
Shivers, I still feel uncomfortable when hearing the sound of that.  The OS before that I was familiar with, was Amiga DOS. LOL. The migration was not really smooth, not really without enormous difficulties, and in the end not really successful. I hated it, although later, still at university, I learned to hate SPSS 6 for Win95 even more. |
A family friend had an Amiga 500, played "A-10 Tank Killer" on it once, also "F-117A".
"Babylon 5" space scenes were rendered on the Amiga model directly preceding the 500, and the 500 as well, for season 4 or 5.
I have all 5 seasons of this, plus the Spin-off/continuation "Crusade". Awesome Shows.
Amiga's had excellent graphics capability when IBM compatibles were on CGA/EGA.
If Amiga could have held on a little longer, I have a feeling that they would be the "gaming" machine of choice, or we would all be running "Amiga" video cards!
(This is just a thought, nothing to say they could do it, but if we look at the pace of development shortly after Amiga went under.... seems plausible.)
hmm, just think, Amigas running Unix/CP-m(?,the MSDos predacessor)/Linux...
Now I have to find an Amiga 500, and find a version of Linux to run on it....
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins
I remember as an Apple II with Visicalc guy going to a sales session for the Tandy of the time with Microsoft pre-Excel, what was it? MULTIPLAN! That's was the ticket!
The instructor was up there telling us what to type into the machine and I found a few other Apple guys. "Type sum(a5...a8) and press Enter! And the machine went zoom zoom, as every time you entered a formula the floppy disk ran like a washing machine.
Us Apple guys just laughed and laughed. "You mean every time we enter a formula we have to wait for the stupid machine to run the floppy drive for ten seconds? Hashahahahahahahahahahahahaha!" We were amazed how much better VisiCalc was than Multiplan, and maybe our Apple IIs over the Tandy.
But we knew crap when we saw it and that was pure crap! The instructor/sales dude wasn't amused.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
Imperfection with fascination.to day, more visual perfeciton in games, butn the thunder, the magic, the fascination is somewhat gone. Is perfection really always worth it? Food for thought. Time was good to me, and those were good times for sure, at least for me. Sometimes, I remember them. And then I miss them. To much perfection today, and gettin abused for questionable casue, and paid for with new, other imperfections.
Very well. Now I talked myself sad. Well done, Sky.
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I typed this in reply to RR's comment, but it also seems to apply to Skybirds, so I moved it down, as I can't split it to make any sense!!!!!
Must have been a model before the 1000RL (RLX had a hard-drive), but it did access the drive anytime you ran anything because there was only one 3.5" floppy...
But if you were running a command from the "C:\" ROM, it skipped the floppy.
This one had Dos 3.1, upgraded it later to Dos 3.3...
Put a 40MB (yes that's MEGA-Byte) hard drive in it, and it didn't check the floppy for anything unless you were accessing A:\.
Only 768K of ram, but it was a very cool little PC, boot time on the ROM was under 4 seconds. One the HDD, about 5-6.
The Double Density 720K floppies, and the 768K of RAM were the biggest limiters.
But I did "game" on this PC for several years, then jumped to a 386 SX/25, then a 486 SX/25. Switching between the 2 because the 486's Game Port didn't work.
Sometime between 2010 and 2014, I found an old 486 DX/33mhz CPU and dropped it in the Socket next to the SX/25 processor... Played on that thing for the next few days.
Still works, has Win95 installed.
BUT, Command; Aces of the Deep works on it. WITH voice commands!
Skybird, you've done it to me too!!!
OK, I'm moving on now...
Barracuda