[Ham-Computers] Re Upgrades Windows 98 And Spell Check

[Philip Atchley]

Duane et al,

Actually, the floppies was one of the advantages of the Singer machine 
(An English company if I recall) and why so many of us at General 
Dynamics bought them.  While other machines still had limited floppy 
storage, Singers had the ability to record more than a MB on a single 
double sided  5 1/4 floppy, while still being able to  read/write 
floppies that were compatible with other CPM machines etc.

Incidentally, this particular machine was bought/financed through the 
company I worked for at the time.  General Dynamics in Pomona.  They 
were  having a hard 'push' to get all their Engineers computer 
literate.  To encourage this, they put on a large computer Exposition 
with all computer manufacturers invited.  Then they offered Interest 
free financing for any engineer who bought a computer.  The only 
criteria was that it had to be a full blown machine, NOT what they 
considered to be game machines like the Atari, Commodore etc. 

Although IBM DID have offerings at the show, they weren't yet the "PC 
standard" in the industry, and 'most' of the companies that were at the 
exposition touted CPM as the "Standard".  Singer was one of the few who 
offered both CPM and an upstart called "DOS" in the package (which few 
of us used).  

This brings up another point.  At the Most of the companies represented 
at the Exposition offered the Engineers complete package "deals" at 
prices significantly lower than if you were to buy them elsewhere or 
after the Exposition .  Probably because it was being sponsored by 
General Dynamics and they were pressing for large sales.  Guess you 
could say that this was the predecessor of the "Computer Expositions" 
that make their rounds of the Fairgrounds etc now days!

73 de Phil  KO6BB

Duane Fischer wrote:

>Phil did not tell you that 16K was standard on most machines, 640K was the
>maximum, the floppy drives were 90K and nobody wanted a modem running at 110 or
>300 baud. Besides, unless you sent tiny bits of data to a friend, you didn't need
>one. Although some did use them to play with a BBS. How things have changed!
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