Not so mobile ereader in 1935

[ApK]

Originally Posted by dwig

Back then, ebooks were simple ASCII text files and vastly smaller than today's bulky formats with their relatively huge cover art. The floppies on the Tandy 1000 would hold 10, or so, of the ebook files of the day.

1K of 8bit ASCII is about one page of neatly typewritten text.
Those 360K floppy disks would have held one good size novel, unless it was compressed. (PKZIP, anyone!)

They would, however, hold dozens of these:
http://www.asciiworld.com/-Womens-.html

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by ApK

1K of 8bit ASCII is about one page of neatly typewritten text.
Those 360K floppy disks would have held one good size novel, unless it was compressed. (PKZIP, anyone!)

In those days the file compressor of choice was ARC.

[sabredog]

Oh yes!

ARC and ARJ, the precursors to PKZIP

I downloaded a free GUI DOS front end that allowed use of all the variety of compression programs available.

This was back in the day when the Shareware Association used to release CD's full of great (and not so great) software on a regular basis and there were whole monthly mags dedicated to shareware.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by sabredog

Oh yes!

ARC and ARJ, the precursors to PKZIP

I downloaded a free GUI DOS front end that allowed use of all the variety of compression programs available.

This was back in the day when the Shareware Association used to release CD's full of great (and not so great) software on a regular basis and there were whole monthly mags dedicated to shareware.

In the days of 360K floppies, who on Earth had a CD-ROM drive??

I remember dreaming about a 5MB external hard drive...it was something like $2000...

I vaguely recall ARC and ARJ! Wow...

[sabredog]

1989.

The Western Australian Institute of Technology had a PC with one specifically dedicated to the software disc.

Fantastic resource.

But yes, I remember even the 8.25" floppy discs. The receptionist on the private company I worked for had a dual 8.25" floppy system with green screen monitor. That was even during early 1990.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by sabredog

1989.

The Western Australian Institute of Technology had a PC with one specifically dedicated to the software disc.

Fantastic resource.

But yes, I remember even the 8.25" floppy discs. The receptionist on the private company I worked for had a dual 8.25" floppy system with green screen monitor. That was even during early 1990.

Sounds like a Wang Word Processor.

[sabredog]

I thought it was IBM, but you may well be right.

I unsuccessfully argued with the company's director for purchase of a 720Kb 3.5" FDD to augment our 5.25" drives. Cost for that one drive was AU$1200

[twowheels]

Originally Posted by sabredog

But yes, I remember even the 8.25" floppy discs. The receptionist on the private company I worked for had a dual 8.25" floppy system with green screen monitor. That was even during early 1990.

I think that you mean 8"... nobody, to the best of my knowledge, made an 8.25" size.

[sabredog]

Yeah, that would be it. Nearly 25 years go now.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by sabredog

I thought it was IBM, but you may well be right.

IBM had one, too:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc/pc_8.html

Their line lasted longer than Wang's but it didn't peak anywhere near as high as the Wangs. Then again, they didn't crater like Wang, either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories

Yet another example of a business failing to understand what their real "product" was and failing to adapt to tech-driven change.

[sabredog]

I had a better PC, running AutoCAD and road design software. An ultrafast 286 8Mhz, 640Kb RAM, crisp EGA, massive 40Mb HDD and efficient MS-DOS 3.22

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by sabredog

I had a better PC, running AutoCAD and road design software. An ultrafast 286 8Mhz, 640Kb RAM, crisp EGA, massive 40Mb HDD and efficient MS-DOS 3.22

Uh-huh. Great stuff for the era.
We had a PGA card in our secure computing PC; an AT/370 that had a mainframe CPU coprocessor card to run downloaded mainframe code.

Fun times.

I got dragged into the whole PC revolution when word got around the office that I had a home computer and the Division Chief called me in one day to tell me the Division Offices were getting a Wang Set-up with all the trimmings for the secretaries and to ask what I thought of it.
I was dubious about the deal and pointed out that for far less than the $30K price of the Wang setup (dot matrix impact printer, no less) they could've bought 5 PCs and one of the New-fangled Laser printers, plus the Wang for PC software suite.
(Which was apparently what he wanted to hear. He was very much into tools and productivity boosts.)

The Wang was being paid for by the higher ups so he had no control but a few weeks after the system was installed the facilities folks shut down the A/C for a weekend in august. Come Monday morning, the Wang system was dead as a doorknob. The two PCs (one AT and one AT/370) we had worked fine.
It took a week to get the Wang back up and the Powers To be heard all about it from him.

Next Fiscal Year, we had a separate Tools and Computing budget and we sarted building up an independent computing capability of our own.
Within 5 years we went from relying on centralized mainframes and terminals to a fully integrated network of PCs and UNIX Workstations that gave us CRAY-level compute power on the desktops and the boss was routinely showing it off to his peers and superiors. Productivity went up by literally a couple of orders of magnitude and we started getting entire projects at the expense of other groups.

This did not endear us to the Centralized IT crowd when the IBM sales folk started quoting us as an example of how much better their RISC gear was.

That was a time of rapid change and we were lucky to have a boss who saw the disruption as an opportunity to grow his empire rather than as a threat to "the way things are done".

It pays to get in front of tech change instead of fighting it.
But not many organizations understand that; they see the threat instead of the opportunity.

[curtw]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Hmm, is it adjustable if you want to recline? If not, then that's a bust.

If you want to recline, there's this option (from circa 1958)...