and cut a clever fed deal in the early Clinton years standardizing all fed agencies in document generation using MS products solely

Then why is the FBOP still using Word Perfect?

I have no problem with the "early" Gates. I have no problem with the "not so late " Gates. But the "late" Gates 9 billion for Vista is a problem. It should have been a Quad Squared Binary Base Multicore Adaptable Non-Harddrive Flash Eprom based OS.
JJK

Jetdv, FBOP (Federal Bureau of Prisons ) you mean internal documents, not reports and budget reports transmitted electronically going to the Justice Department that is going to the Hill?. WordPerfect was very popular with lawyers and with many individuals in the executive branch,( I still like WordPerfect picture handling ) but around 93, in the name of cost management, executive branch started to require a standardized format for document's electronically submission. The DOJ was the first, using the AD-Judges( the executive civil trial system--- ie tax courts---not fed courts), to require all parties(gov or civilian) to submit regulations, claims, protests,etc in a MS doc electronically.

About the FBOP, its a very small agency( in terms of office personnel) with unique needs. I'm guessing, but it just probably delay the conversion by claiming lack of resources for retraining and document conversion. Personally, the Wordperfect picture handling in 90's was vastly superior to Word and I doubt Word would match the performance under any conditions. Just guessing about docus, but most internal docu's would contain pics of the "quests" and the medical records required pics of the injuries...etc..

While we're strolling down memory lane, here is my 2 cents (2K, perhaps?)

How about the Tandy 100? I used one while on the road in the mid-80s. I got it as a tour bonus from a forward thinking muscian boss. I used it to connect to CompuServe to check on things like airline schedules and pay bills. Even kept an address book on it! And, I could program it! How cool was that? As I remember, it had a 300 Baud modem - screamin'!!

Oh, how about the "portable" Kaypro?

Ahhh, how far we've come.

Kevin

Tho, the Z80 was not made by Intel, it help the Intel X86 line survive the M6800 line intro.

That's a good way to look at it. I never thought of it that way, but I think you're right!

And if the geniuses at Zilog hadn't had the fatal idea to "improve" on the compatibility by changing the parity bit in one of the 78 olde 8080 instructions to a vastly more useful overflow flag for 16-bit arithmetic, they would have been the new Intel.

Because of that tiny difference that never hurt anyone in practice, Intel was able to sow FUD that it wasn't fully compatible, and Zilog was relegated to selling controller chips, which they do to this day.

The future of a company for one status bit....

I remember when Ralph Zimmerman came to my office in 1977, and pulled a chip out of his pocket (an early Z80). "This will revolutionize micro-computing," he said. Since Zilog was a no-name at that time, I had my doubts.

A few years later, they were really cranking, and Charlie Bass, their Development VP, came to visit. My boss was given the honor to pick him up at the airport, and got so excited he went and bought a new suit for the occasion. Suitably dressed up, with shiny black business shoes, he went straight to the baggage claim area and waited. The passengers for that flight arrived and streamed by him, but nobody who seemed a fit... Finally he was alone with a longhaired guy in a white T-shirt and a Ralph's plastic grocery bag. Hmmmm. It couldn't possibly...

But it was.....

:O)

We had a blast with Charlie, and did a lot of fun development. I almost went to work for them, but fortunately I got an incredible offer from Compucorp in Santa Monica, another maker of proprietary workstations.

And Prime. Wasn't it "Pr1me"?
Was the OS really written in Fortran?

It wouldn't be impossible per se. I did performance optimization on a Z-80 based SODAR system with large parts written in Fortran. This system was for airports, showing wind direction at all altitudes up to 10,000 feet over the airport on a 19" color monitor(!). Getting these calculations done and doing the measurements done in real time were only just barely possible with the horsepower available.