From: thewises@enter.net   
      
   > SOFTWARE   
   >   
   > 1.     TRSDOS 2.0 and TRSDOS-II were slow and stable but not   
   >      remarkable, nor were the applications, most of which were   
   >      targeted at business users.   
      
   Yep. No games=no fun=no emulator.   
      
   > 2.     TRSDOS-16 aka "Bowling Ball DOS" was a disaster.  No attempt   
   >      should be made to bring it back in any form.   
      
   Reminds me of MS-DOS 4.0, another OS that deserves to burn in Hell.   
      
   > 3.     Some versions of CP/M and LS-DOS were also reasonably nice   
   >      operating systems on these systems, but as with TRSDOS, few apps   
   >      were meant for consumers.  Is there anybody out there today   
   >      who wants to run a accounts payable package written in COBOL   
   >      with absolutely no "clicky-pointy"?   
      
   You'll hear lots of people get nostalgic about playing Donkey Kong on an   
   Atari, but not so many get nostalgic about running Wordstar on CP/M.   
   OTOH, back then you could use a word processor without being assaulted   
   by grinning paperclips.   
      
   > 4.     XENIX - particularly version 3.2 and later -  was good   
   >      but was also for business or very advanced programming types.   
   >      In this day you can get a far better UNIX environment   
   >      with full networking support and paged memory management   
   >      on any PC running at 20MHz or faster.   
      
   Nothing that hasn't been avaliable on any computer since the 90s.   
      
   > SOFTWARE & HARDWARE TECHNICAL DETAILS   
   >   
   > 5.     Tandy was somewhat reluctant to publish many technical details   
   >      of the Model II/12/16/16B/6000 hardware, and highly resistant   
   >      to releasing details about the TRSDOS/TRSDOS-II operating   
   >      systems.  There were a number of reasons for this and few   
   >      made sense even back then, but the result was a chilling   
   >      effect and the number of third party add-on hardware devices   
   >      and software applications not specifically contracted by Tandy   
   >      was low compared to what existed on the Model I/III/4/4D/4P   
   family.   
      
   Yes, a lot of the early microcomputer companies didn't want to release   
   any programming information for their machines. That was what   
   contributed to the popularity of the Apple II (and later the IBM PC),   
   having an open architecture.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)