Fwd: Re: So Linux isn't ready for the desktop yet, eh? (fwd)

[hjpsmith at earthlink.net (Henry Smith)]

Sent this direct to Mark only by mistake so forwarding it to the list
  
Henry

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
Subject: Re: So Linux isn't ready for the desktop yet, eh? (fwd)
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 11:53:31 -0400
From: Henry Smith <hjpsmith at earthlink.net>
To: "Mark J. Dulcey" <mark at buttery.org>


On Saturday 18 August 2001 10:13 am, you wrote:
> I don't know if the PDP-8 ever got used as a word processor in
> the modern sense. It was certainly used a a text editing system
> by people who had access to them, however. Back in those days,
> text editors weren't visual like the ones we have now; you had to
> have a mental picture of what you were doing.
>
> The PDP-8 would not have been a good choice for a word processor
> for a couple of reasons. First, most of them didn't have any
> high-quality output devices attached to them, just Teletype
> terminals or perhaps a line printer. Second, the native character
> set of the system was a 6-bit one (the better to fit in the
> 12-bit words), which could only handle upper-case letters and a
> limited set of punctuation.

Yes it was not a very good word processor but it did have a version that
was more or less "modern".  Based on the PDP8 chip Dec had developed it used
a color CRT (IIRC) with 8" floppies for everything, (ours had 2 drives, OS on
one and the other for data etc.)  Output was on a daisy wheel printer, noisy
little beasts! <VBG>

This box could do rather fancy scientific-math word processing which was why
we bought it.  Surely they did not use 6-bit characters for this but I
never did try to find out what was actually done to hold the characters. I
suspect the did some extension to the full 12 bit word, but dunno for sure.

It was certainly limited but while it did do a pretty good job for its day,
it couldn't compare with what's available today, that's for sure. We were
glad to have it though and it did good work for us for several years.

Cheers

Henry

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