Hi Guys: A bit about myself. I am an old fart, having worked with computers since 76. Was a certfied unix admin in 81. Did some pc based process control stuff in the early days, liked making hardware talk to each other so much that I ended up specializing in networking and communications systems. I've done very version of DOS, CPM, Windoze (exept for ME, what a bunch of crap), GEM (anyone remember that one?, apple killed them) etc etc. You get the picture. Been working mostly in the widoze world since then. I am a bit new to the MAC world, about 1 year. Love OSX (heck BSD unix with a nice front end.) I orderd a Mac mini duo 1.66 with 100gb 7200rpm hd and 1gb ram and just got it, did the boot camp thing and tried parallels. (I have to see how windoze runs in this environment (intel MAC), break it, fix it etc etc) For a beta, y'all did a heck of a job. This is one of the smoothest instals and setups I have done. I was so damn impressed with how this worked that I went ahead and pre ordered. So far the XP systems works without major issues (typical office types apps, etc). I even changed the virtual partition drive size and used Partition magic 8 to add to the default disk space and it was a smooth as silk. There are a few things I would like to see but having read the wish list, it seems that most of my suggestions have already been covered. My current setup is a windoze xp 1.6Ghz P4, a G3 souped up with a 1ghz powerlogix processor that just flies with OSX Tiger, and the mac mini duo 1.66. When I run XP in parallels, it is so neat, the system sees all the computers on the network, the G3 sees the mac mini and the virtual xp on the mini, along with my windoze machine seeing everything. So far file access has not been much of a problem. I have 6 computers total networked here in my house. Like I said earlier, your product has just blown me away. Mike V. 30 years of this stuff and counting.
Jeesh Mike, You sound a little like me. I had lunch with ol what's his name from Seattle Computer Products (the original owner of MSDOS) long before Bill Gates stole it from him. Later about 3 months before the PC came into being I had lunch with Bill himself (and about 20 other folks... Quiet reserved kind of guy... Little did anyone know he would own the market someday.) I met Jobs once at the West Coast Computer fair when they were pushing the Apple I. I didn't buy one... I wanted for the Apple II. Since that time I've been in CPM, MSDOS, I even had an Apple Lisa... Anyone remember that? I cut my teeth on a Crememco Z80 box with 8" floppy drives. Later I worked in Unix and probably one of my favorites was Xenix. It actually was a MS product for a while then Santa Cruz Operation some how got it. It was good stuff for a single user *inix type of thing. Then MSDOS, Win3.1, Win95 I also had a Mac IIci. So I've been around too. I remember going to Comdex in Las Vegas when Novation announced their 1200 baud half duplex modem for the Apple II. What a hit that was. (Those were the old booth bunny days too!) I remember seeing tons and tons of Hayes Smartmodem 300s and having to get software to work with them.
Hi Mark: snipped for brevity Well, you were a bit luckier than me, since I was stuck here in the east coast. Worked for a company called Systems Engineering Labs (then became Gould Computer Systems, then became Oncore, then died!) They built 32bit super mini's to do real time data aquisition, telemetry, and simulation (they ran the simultator for Boeing, McD, Lockheed, etc). Modems, $1 a bit when I got involved!. Interesting the experiences that you had, a bit similar to mine. I never really cared much for Apple till I saw what OSX was, then decided to take the plunge and get one to play with. I also like linux (unix by another name with some twist.) They both have their place, but Apple really makes it easy for the novices compared to Linux. The story behind Xenix is rather interesting. AT&T (aka Bell Labs) owned the license for Unix, and when they went to market with it, one of the requirements was that as a reseller of the OS, you had to call it something else, you could not call it Unix, hence HP-UX, AIX, Sun OS, BSD etc. Microsoft bought a license and ported the OS to the micro platforms in my guess looking for a small workgroup multi user systems (pre LAN days.) Alas the old 8088/8086 just did not really have the oomph to do that so, they sold it to SCO. What Microsoft did get from Unix was the concept of sub directories. My first PC was a clone from Columbia Data Products with a whopping 10Mb Hard drive. With Dos 1, you were limited to 315 (or there abouts) number of entiries in the fat table and then you were hosed. Dos 2.0 with sub directories helped get around that limitation so you could fill up the whopping 10Mb hard drives that were the rage in that era. MMost was another interesting critter for CPM. Televideo really went to town with those systems doing small workgroup systems. Man, I'm dating myself here! Mike V
Yes I know Mike... I remember getting in to the local ComputerLand where I worked at the time a Corvus 5MB (yes that's 5 MEGA BTYE) hard disk. The thing was as big as the older LaserWriters and HP LaserJets. It had a gigantic cable that went from it to the Apple. Then on my PC system we used Davong 10mb hard disks that were external. That was before the so called XT (extra technology!) I actually found SCO Xenix to be a kick. It worked, it had enough umph to get through single station stuff. But what a different OS X is! I remember OnCore though we never dealt with them. We sold a number of Corvus Concepts - now there was a box ahead of its time! A GUI display and a monitor that could rotate? It was based on the motorola 68000. I had two Televideo terminals. One was color to work off my Xenix system. God dating is right!
Histories Well this has been an interesting read, and trip down memory lane for me as well. MY timeline: Around 1980: Built a heathkit H89 in highschool, did a lot with CPM Bit later: Apple II's in school as well, Sinclare ZX81 at home Commodore VIC 20 Commodore 64 Mac plus PC's <- started professional career here servicing them Commodore Amiga at home. Nobody else has mentioned this one yet, but what a nifty cool thing. PC's again, Job moved to systems support at a large company. OSX draws me back to the mac. Been here ever since. Now employed at Sweetwater sound as support person. We're an entirely mac shop with a few linux servers. What a cool job. Parallels kicks butt, my core duo mini at home is my dream machine. Kevin.
