August 1989; Volume 8, No. 3; Whole No. 71

CFOG's PIP, August 1989, Volume 8 No. 3, Whole No. 71, page 26

Z-System, CP/M, and MS-WS: Some Thoughts from CFOG's Antelope Freeway Remote Access System

[I accumulated these messages from our computerized bulletin board as a taste of what's going on there for those who don't have -- or don't use -- a modem. These conversations started only a few weeks ago: the earliest of these messages is dated July 20th and as I write this it's only August 9th. A word of caution: there is more than one thread of messages here, but the are somewhat intertwined so it's hard to separate them out. -- bhc.]

Msg #2662

by Steve Cohen
to Carson Wilson

I am not defending the folks who say "CP/M meets all my needs." I am simply pointing to the intractible reality that even of those exposed to Z, most of the remaining CP/M users do not wish to make this upgrade. To be perfectly fair about it, much of the anti-IBM feeling so prevalent in the Z-community derives from the fact of people resisting the calls to spend more and more hard-earned bucks on the latest flim-flam when what they had was good enough. Why with just "a little" tinkering we can develop a whole slew of new tricks that IBM never dreamed of. Unfortunately for Z-system, however, that same logic can be turned against Z, and has, if you read the message train on Lillipute. We had that discussion, too.

There is just too much talent gone into Z for the paucity of monetary reward it produces for the programmers who do it. They have to then be in it for its own intrinsic fun value, education, whatever. Not a formula for stability.

Msg #2674

by Steve Cohen
to Carson Wilson

What you say is true. But there are people who experience no problems with the limited work they do and therefore don't care. Richard was telling me about someone he knows who runs his small business accounting system on a Kaypro 2 (2Mhz). Every morning the secretary comes in, puts the disk with (Accounting Package) in drive A: and turns on the computer. It auto boots into the Accounting Package, she puts the data disk into drive B: and away they go. That's ALL they do with the computer. It works just fine. Whatever slowness is inherent in that system is unknown to them because they have no experience with anything else and don't care to. I suggest that there are many more of this type of CP/M user than the sort that frequents bulletin boards such as Lillipute or this one.

Msg #2678

by Benjamin Cohen
to Steve Cohen

I went over to see a guy who is a writer who has an Osborne Exec. Actually, this was about two years ago, but he's probably still there. He had the thing for two years with the original BIOS which would time-out the printer whenever the buffer filled up. So every page or so he had to press "N" to tell it not to unassign the printer. This went on for two years until I got there with the new BIOS. I also gave him a word count program and a 1K directory program and showed him how to run it from the main menu of WordStar. I set up an autostart routine to get WS to log on drive B:. He was in heaven: wordcount, no more lost files because of full disk errors (he had no way to figure out how much space was left on the disk), and auto log to B:. He wasn't interested in learning anything about his system, or even in doing anything faster. It was great as far as he was concerned. He has written several books with the system. I'm convinced most users (numerically speaking) are at that level, or not much above it. You'd have to give them Z and set it up for, them.

Msg #2682

by Carson Wilson
to Steve Cohen

No doubt there is a lot of CP/M equipment serving as "dedicated" systems of one kind or another. I wouldn't advocate changing ANYTHING in such circumstances. But I still feel there are a lot of people with little or no contact with Z System who would probably embrace it if they knew a more about it and how to get help with it. I don't know this empirically, but we put out so little in the way of advertisement or even generally available information on packages like NZCOM or ZSDOS (almost ALL of it comes via modem) that it seems improbable that we have actually contacted even half of those potentially interested.

Msg #2695

by Steve Cohen
to Benjamin Cohen

And after you'd set it up they would run it just like they ran CP/M.

Msg #2697

by Steve Cohen
to Carson Wilson

Well what are you telling me? Are there now 200 customers and there are potentially 200 more who you have not reached? Would the costs of reaching these folk with advertising be worth the returns? It seems to me that the essential premise of the Z-System and Echelon and Z-News and Frank Gaude et al. was that CP/M could be improved radically enough to interest a large number of users in it to the extent that they would avoid the switch to IBM compatible systems. That has proven to be false. It is not all the fault of the Z-community. Forces were at work too powerful for our puny forces to handle. Perhaps more than anything else it was the emergence of the clone marketplace and cheap peripherals that made it impossible. When an IBM PC cost $5000 (I am not talking XT folks) it made sense to keep your Kaypro or osborne or whatever. When an XT clone could be purchased for under a grand complete with a 20-Meg hard drive it was a little harder to justify.

Compared to those sorts of inducements a radically improved BDOS and CCP paled to a lot of people. So what we are left with unfortunately are people who enjoy tinkering with BDOSes and CCPs. Which is fine fun, but dead in the water commercially.

Msg #2698

by Gerald Pine
to Charlie Kestner

Just to update your information, I have installed Z on my Xerox, at least part way. ZSDOS is next. My excuse? Money. What else is new? I have to admit that NZ-COM was a disappointment, however. The process of installation was entirely too easy. I was just getting warmed up and found that the full system was installed. Just glancing through the manual and some of the programs makes it clear that making use of it will, in contrast, be a full time effort. Now I can finally try some of the ideas that Rick Charnes has been presenting in TCJ.

Msg #2717

by Bill Kuykendall
to ALL

It's interesting to see the same arguments against upgrading to newer hardware applied against Z system. It's also short sighted.

This period in history is often compared to the advent of the automobile, and the comparison is a good one. If someone had predicted in 1910 that the day would come when horseless buggies would be considered absolute necessities by the vast majority of adults in our society -- and that the average price of such an appliance would be $14,000, he'd have been called a fool. But then, those horseless carriages didn't add the capabilities and convenience of modern autos -- they were pretty much direct replacements for horses, much as the computer is displacing the typewriter now.

The biggest arguments against upgrading one's computing environment seem to be cost and the time expense of the learning curve of a new system. Those are good arguments, given that one's needs never change.

"Needs" do change, however. Another parallel to the computer in history is the telephone. It would be impossible to conduct business in today's society without one, largely because everyone else has one. As computers gain more power and new designs, they will be used in ways that we only see a glimmer of now, and those of us with no close ties to the Amish community (folks I envy in some ways, by the way) *will* need and want those new capabilities. At the present rate of development, that day is probably less than 10 years distant.

Some things that have already materialized in the crystal ball include the video telephone that was dreamed of in the '50s, the ability to use your TV set to scan the news services interactively, home security and device management, and of course, robotics. Try to imagine what computers will do for you in the future, and I guarantee your imagination will fall as far short of the mark as our grand and great-grandfathers did when they dreamed of our society 70 years ago (but our future will be here much sooner!)

Given the learning curve involved in every new thing, the question I ask is, "Can I afford *not* to stay as current as possible with computers?" I'm not talking about Z system vs 'DOS. Moving to MS-DOS so that you can use a different wordprocessor to do the same things is not progress. I'm certain that some of the Z hackers will find themselves more literate in some respects than most of the folks who moved on. On the other hand, the Z80 and its progeny are not likely to have the raw computing power necessary to support the high degree of video and communications integration so certain to dominate the systems we'll all be buying in the next decade or so.

The direction of most software development should be alarming to groups such as ours. The level of complexity of software, and the profit to be made from it is creating a barrier between developers and end-users that isolates the "knowledge haves" from the "havenots". There is nothing sinister in this -- do you know how your phone works? How about your fuel-injected car engine? It's highly unlikely unless you work in one of those industries.

My point is that we, as declared computer enthusiasts, should be challenged to ensure that we are not *forced* into being mere users of the new technology, by falling so far behind the Iearning curve that we can never catch up.

It's something to think about, anyway.

Msg #2721

by Gerald Pine
to Bill Kuykendall

Your comments remind me to some extent of the changes in electronics and the painfulness of those changes to ham radio enthusiasts. First, the replacement of tubes by transistors caused a furious debate. That was nothing compared to the changes brought about by IC's. To a purist in the old school from vacuum tube or even early transistor and discrete component days, we already became users of devices like modern radios and computers (even the 6502 or Z80 variety) when we changed from discrete components and flip-flops, etc. to large scale integrated circuits like the Z80. The Z80 is a relatively simple IC by modern standards, but do you really understand what's inside? Most of us know at best what its responses are in the black box sense.

A second point -- except for the committed hackers among us, the lack of a need to understand what's in the box and how to create patches to make our programs work is probably viewed as a blessing. It allows the "User" to apply his creativity to "more productive" endeavors than playing with his computer. A transparent appliance is the ideal for most people. Finally, isn't the cost of new "computer appliances" what really keeps most of us hobbyists from switching -- especially the costs in comparison to the marginal benefits (for me at least) in pleasure that can be obtained from practicing the hobby on an expensive computer as compared to practicing it on an Osborne, Kaypro, or other old computer? I would expect that the hobbyist will always trail slightly behind the state-of-the-art except for those people who roll their own strictly because of financial considerations. Ham radio has certainly gone this route. There are a few pioneers who design circuits with the latest components and actually advance the communications state of the art. Most, however, use 15-30 year old technology to talk with friends across town, maybe even learning something about the old technology in the process. Before any hams out there jump on me, I am also a ham and I like the hobby, but I think that the characterization is correct.

Msg #2725

by Bill Kuykendall
to Gerald Pine

That guy at the Tribune would be a lot more effective if he would read more and write less. Per Intel -- the i486, i586, and i686 chips will all be 100% binary compatible with the i386. They will all be 32-bit chips with new instructions added for the sole purpose of allowing optimization to the chip on the fly. The i486 has six (count'em, _6_) instructions not found in the i386, and those primarily take advantage of the RISC pipelining of the chip... Since it isn't clear from my earlier wording, let me restate my second sentence: code written for the newer chips is guaranteed by Intel to also run on the i386. They also guarantee that the '286 is not included in their future plans.

Msg #2726

by Bill Kuykendall
to Gerald Pine

I read you loud and clear, Gerald, and I find no fault with your hobby. A great many auto enthusiasts aren't the least interested in new cars, either.

My point is simply that, for those of us who are eagerly awaiting the toys that the future will hand us shortly, now is not a time for complacency. Sure, a morse key does the job, but it will be nice to know how to plug in a microphone when they become available, if I can borrow your metaphor.

Msg #2731

by Bill Kuykendall
to Gerald Pine

Yup. And my guess is that the tenacity of MS-DOS will surprise even a few CP/Mers, before it's over. MS-DOS will not be vulnerable in it's declining years to the one valid argument against ZP/M. The largest library of applications in the world will continue to run on those chips just as well as they do now.

Msg #2732

by Bill Kuykendall
to Gerald Pine

Ah, but *which* computer will be the last one you want to replace that morse key with?

Verily, verily, I say unto you, that there shall come a time when thy Xerox hath more in common with the morse key than the computer...

Msg #2824

by Steve Cohen
to Carson Wilson

Oh, I absolutely agree with you there. MS-DOS did not succeed because it was better, rather it is "better" because it succeeded. Its success is entirely due to the market power of IBM, and that is a shame. But I don't know what can be done about that.

Msg #2840

by Carson Wilson
to Steve Cohen

As they say, "nothing succeeds like success," but I think there is still a role for "unsuccessful" software, especially that of the calibre of Z System. I know it has raised my standards when it comes to computers; I know now that it's possible to program carefully and conscientiously. I'm not fooled by enormous and sophisticated yet poorly designed or executed programs, and I doubt anyone who has experienced the power and freedom of Z system will be. So Z System may now function as sort of a computer "counter-culture," largely free of the influences which shape more mainstream systems. I don't think there needs to be a huge volume of users for Z System to be an effective force in shaping the evolution of modern software. If it alters the perceptions of only a few professional computer programmers like yourself, its influence can be far-reaching.

Msg #2844

by Charlie Kestner
to Al Grabauskas

Try looking at 4DOS. (It's here on the DOS board.)

It's as near ARUNZ as it can be, and maybe a bit more. Also, a bit less, since it won't let you do: alias=alias=alias verb.

But that's about ALL it won't let you do.

Ward C[hristensen] was recommending CED and TreeView to Phil Newman. I think 4DOS beats CED (it's newer, and W.C. probably isn't aware of it's existance), but have not seen TreeView.

4DOS not only combines all the great features of ARUNZ, but it tosses in a lot of fancy SD-type stuff to boot. (Neat stuff like adding a 40-char descriptor note to each file, which comes up when you have it DIR in a certain manner.) [There's a review of 4DOS elsewhere in this issue. -- bhc]
Heck, I'm feeling all dressed up, and nowhere to go. I purchased a NEW copy of FastCad (speedier than AutoCad, and only slightly less-powerful) at a flea market for $150 -- and they sent me the latest upgrade FREE! I just got done getting Smart, which is an integrated WP-DB-SS program that I'd used, and liked for a mere $150 (store was blowing them out).

Now, all I can do is gnash teeth while I accumulate a bit more compubux so that nice 386 is setting here, instead of trusty old 4mhz Actrix

I think this is going to be a real mind- blow, going from a 4mhz CP/M box with the blazing throughput of floppies to a 25-33mhz 386 w/22ms hard drives. It'll make my leap from 300bps to 2400bps look tame by comparison.

Msg #2851

by Steve Cohen
to Carson Wilson

Yes, I agree with that. I have only contempt for those who think they have "grown up" because they have put away their CP/M toys and believe that more RAM is the key to every problem. And it is absolutely because of the contacts I made through the Z-System and all that they taught me that I was able to land the job I did without any prior professional experience. The guy who hired me was very impressed when I showed him a piece of my code that began

FALSE EQU 0
TRUE EQU NOT FALSE

I was amazed, because for sure I did not think of that and assumed everyone knew that trick. But my boss, who wrote an entire application in 8086 assembler and maintains it thought that a novel brilliancy and was kicking himself that he did not think of it himself. I just wish I could afford the time I used to spend on Z, but I can't.

Msg #2667

by Carson Wilson
to Steve Cohen

Well, there is SOME monetary reward for those of us who show the most tenacity in working things through and making them usable for others. Not a LOT, mind you, but SOME, and I think there could be more. I really feel much safer with Z System than I would using straight CP/M 2.2. There are just too many blind alleys in CP/M 2.2 that aren't a problem any more with Z. Function 38, for example, or the requirement to always reset disks with ^C first.

I think one problem is that users generally don't take their machines very seriously, even though they are entrusting 100's of hours of work to the system software and hardware. Generally things work as they are supposed to, hiding the immense complexity of what's going on behind the scenes until suddenly something doesn't work and there isn't a clue as to what went wrong. And at that point of course it's too late for Z System to solve the problem.