Yes, getting PC Support to work under WFW wasn't too bad. Compared to Windows 3.1 which you could do, and even connect to the AS/400 using a Twinax card in your PC. PC Support believed that it was the only thing running on your PC in those days (which seemed common for any IBM software at that time), and it was not an easy beast to make share the PC. Seems to me once we solved the Windows 3.1 issues, WFW was much easier. I was even able to do my development using a programming editor named Brief, all the while with PC Support running. I was programming in PL/1 with embedded SQL on the AS/400!
Mark Murphy
STAR BASE Consulting, Inc.
mmurphy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----"Paul Nelson" <nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: -----
To: "'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Paul Nelson" <nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 07/01/2013 02:25PM
Subject: RE: The Future of IBM ..
WFW. There's a trip down memory lane. I remember the fun we went through
getting PC Support to work with WFW. It wasn't until I managed to connect
with an NT developer at Microsoft that I found the solution. He told me to
connect to his personal bulletin board (remember those?) and download a
handful of files. Once I did that, the connectivity issue was resolved.
I told the PC Support guy in Rochester about it, and he asked me to send him
those files. They eventually were packaged up into the next version of PC
Support. I brought a pile of diskettes with me to the next COMMON
conference, and they were gobbled up at the PC Support/WFW session that he
was presenting.
Those were the days.
Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 512-392-2577
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mark Murphy/STAR BASE
Consulting Inc.
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2013 12:47 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: The Future of IBM ..
My first employer, in my IT career anyway, was a dyed in the wool true blue
IBM shop. They bought all their hardware from IBM, and when they started
buying PC's, the decision to use OS/2 or Windows was a real one that started
with OS/2. But Windows for Workgroups was coming out as well, and the
choice was an operating system that supported networking out of the box, or
one that required you to purchase networking tools separately. You could
order IBM PC's with windows for Workgroups, or with OS/2 for about the same
price. Only problem was that if you chose OS/2, you couldn't connect it to
the network without spending another couple hundred bucks. So Windows won.
And eventually the company moved toward non-IBM hardware as well.
Mark Murphy
STAR BASE Consulting, Inc.
mmurphy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Dan Kimmel <dkimmel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: -----
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Dan Kimmel <dkimmel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 07/01/2013 10:17AM
Subject: RE: The Future of IBM ..
The real reason Windows succeeded and OS/2 didn't: Microsoft gave their
devkit away, IBM wanted something like $6000 for theirs.
I was fairly well established as a software developer when Windows and OS/2
first came out. For some reason, probably because I had a yellow pages
listing under Software Development, I started receiving complete pre-release
versions of the Windows devkit in the mail every couple of weeks as they'd
work through new versions. The decision as to which environment to learn was
simple. I already had machines that would run either of them. I got plenty
of cards in the mail from IBM, offering to sell me their devkit. So once
again, the difference was MARKETING.
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jon Paris
Sent: Sunday, June 30, 2013 10:49 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: The Future of IBM ..
To my memory Jerry this is the wrong way round.
IBM wrote their OS/2 components in C/C++ for portability to future hardware
platforms. Microsoft continued writing their pieces in assembler despite
having agreed earlier to use C/C++. They claimed that it was a performance
issue - but there were rumours that keeping Intel sweet by effectively tying
themselves to the Intel platform was part of the picture.
MS were supposed, as part of the OS/2 agreement, to stop development on
future versions of Windows. They didn't.
On 2013-06-29, at 6:49 PM, Jerry C. Adams <midrange@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
OS/2 was written in Assembler, which is not, well, very transportable.
At the same time that Microsoft was working on it, they were coding
Windows in C or C++, which is highly portable. [At least, that's what
I heard while at a conference at the Palisades conference center eons
ago - which, by the way, had OS/2 PCs in every room.]
Jerry C. Adams
IBM i Programmer/Analyst
Queen Victoria loved _Alice in Wonderland_ and requested a copy of
Lewis Carroll's next book. It was _Syllabus of Plane Algebraical
Geometry_.
--
Jon Paris
www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com
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