He, the father of the iMac, iPhone, iPad and of course the Macintosh, has annouced to step back as a CEO for Apple. I read some people arguing on the web, that he can't buy health for all his money. Yes, thats true. But what people don't understand is, that it was for him not about the money. Steve loved what he was doing. He always invested 150% of his energy into his product and added all of his passion. Thats why his products have been that successful. I was never a big Apple fan, but they did a good job by most of their products. On the wintel side, you can't find anything designed with passion. Its just economic which rules. Too many manufacturers still have to understand, that these days the people looking for more than just simple functionality and the "ability to do the job". 100 years ago, it was enough for a car to 4 wheels and an engine. It would drive. But then the people, after getting used to cars, they looked for the special plus. Apple understood that.

I just can hope the worst will not happen, Steve's health improves and we are not losing the biggest (and last) IT visionary of our time.

Emulatoren sind wohl die Programme, die eine Vielzahl von neuen Möglickeiten zu eröffnen scheinen, aber eher eine Vielzahl von neuen Enttäuschungen hervorrufen. Über Sinn und Zweck von Emulatoren wurde auch schon viel Diskutiert, der der Programmieraufwand und somit der Preis ist kein geringer. Hier soll nun, nach erscheinden des "C64 Emulators" und des "Transformer" , die ganze Thematik nocheimal kritisch betrachtet werden.

Der Transformer
Bei Erscheinen war wohl begeisterten MS-Dos Fans schon nach kurzer Zeit klar, das mit 0.18% der Original PC-Geschwindigkeit, die er erreichte, nicht gerade für einen Geschwindigkeitsrausch reichen würde. Dennoch wäre es schön gewesen, wenn das von Commodore viel gepriesene Produkt...

Diese Zeilen schrieb ich für die Mai/Juni Ausgabe 1989 der AMIGA Spezial. Emulation war auf den AMIGAs der damaligen Zeit ja ein spannendes aber eher ernüchterndes Thema. So hab ich mir sozusagen den Frust vom Leib geschrieben.
Damals ende der 80ziger und den frühen 90zigern habe ich ein paar Artikel für die AS geschrieben und einiges an Software getestet. Ich möchte hier Scans von zwei Artikeln einfach mal auf meine Webseite legen. Vielleicht mag der Eine oder Andere ihn ja lesen. Wobei es sich bei dem Zweiten eher um ein Listing handelt. Vermutlich wird es bald eine Rubrik "Publikationen" einführen und es werden sich noch ein paar mehr Scans aus der Zeit dazugesellen.

	Amiga Spezial 5-6/1989 - Emulatoren 41 KB PDF Format (deutsch/german)
	Amiga Spezial 3/1989 - Copper Spielereien 350 KB PDF Format (deutsch/german)

(This is an article related to my publications in the german magazine AMIGA Special, where I wrote in 1989 - 1991 a  few articles for.)

Once upon a time, in the Valley of Silicon, the two headed Wizard of Apples went for a walk. The two heads, both of which were named Steve, looked around, and spied a beautiful PARC.

"This is truly a beautiful PARC~ Steve exclaimed.

Yes, it is' agreed Steve. "It is very graphic. And do you see how happy the mice are!" For indeed, the joyful Indents scampered about, running in and out of windows, around icons, and leaping over the garbage cans.

"Do you think we could make a PARC as beautiful as this?" Steve asked.

"Nay", said Steve. Not a PARC, but perhaps we can let this inspire us to build a woman and we could call her, Gertrude.

And so they fashioned their woman, but instead of Gertrude, they called her Lisa and she, too, was nice to mice. But alas, the User rejected Lisa, for it was said her price was too high

"But this will never do," the User cried. "Do you understand me, Mack?

And when his two heads heard that word, the Wizard of Apples smiled 'Of course," the Steves exclaimed in unison, "we must make a Mac"

Now as the Wizard of apples worked on his Mac, two things happened. First of all, The Wizard grew a third head, which was called the Skull of E. And second, the Gates Keeper, whose minions were both micro and soft, was in to look at Mac, son of Lisa and grandson of the PARC.

Now the Gates Keeper was a man whose tastes were most basic. But when he saw the Mac he was pleased, and he said to the Wizard of Apples, "You too, I see, have seen the wondrous PARC"

And the three heads of the Wizard of Apples looked at each other, and they all said, "PARC! What PARC?".

The Gates Keeper turned his head toward the window. But he did not see the PARC or Lisa, or even the Wizard's parking lot. No, he saw only the window, and it too, was nice to mice.

On the day that Mac was brought forth for the whole world to admire, people laughed, and people cried, and a woman threw a sledgehammer through a large TV screen. For the User could now draw, and paint, and like john Wayne, all he need do is point and shoot.

But though the User was interested, he was still suspicious, and he asked if Mac had anything soft to wear. And lo, the Gates Keeper stepped forward and clothed Mac in words and numbers.

And the Wizard of Apples was most grateful to the Gates Keeper. But then the Gates Keeper cried out upon the User, "Behold, for I have opened the Window, and you need not Mac to get your hands on GUI." But the User looked though the Window, and saw that it made the world move slow.

By this time, the Skull of E had grown quite large on the shoulders of the Wizard of Apples, and the two Steves had been removed. The Wizard had gone down to the Adobe Village where all letters end in a postscript. The Wizard liked what he saw, and he told Mac that he could write a postscript, but that one must never appear on his face.

Now the world of the User had speeded up, so that it no longer looked quite as slow through the Gates Keeper's Window. The users all looked through the Window again, and said that perhaps the Wizard of Apples was no longer needed. And besides, the Gates Keeper was promising to Manage Presentations.

The Wizard of Apples looked upon this and was sore annoyed. He cried, "No one shall take what I stole from the PARC" and he opened his dungeon, and from there emerged a hideous and enormous lawyer. The Wizard pointed a glowing joystick at his lawyer and gave the incantation:

Eye of mole and feet of eel;
Go bring back my look and feel!

When the Gates Keeps saw the giant lawyer approach, he was afraid and angry. And he went down to his own dungeon and let his own lawyer out. The two clashed and the Valley shook!

The Wizard of Apples went up onto a mountain top to
watch the battle, and there he saw the Gates Keeper. 'The two greeted each other warmly, and the Wizard said, "While my lawyer fights your lawyer, shall we not go together to the Adobe Village, and see what we can steal there?

Now, while all this was going on, the ZearOx, whose job it was to guard PARC had slept. But such beasts are often woken bythe sotmds of lawyers fighting. And the ZearOx looked out upon the valley, and rubbed his sleepy eyes, and asked the User what was going on.

The User told him that the Wizard of Apples had let loose his lawyer against the Gates Keeps, claiming that only he had the right to the GUI interface. This annoyed the ZearOx, who cried that the Wizard "had no right to be gooey in my face"

So the ZearOx returned to his PARC, which he found be in disrepair. The mice were gone, the windows were boarded up, and the garbage can had not been emptied in years. And the ZearOx cried, this is the work of the wizard of Apples! He must pay!" And he called forth his own lawyer, who was more hideous that the others, and set him to attack.

The Wizard of Apples was deep in discussion with the Gates Keeps when he saw the ZearOx lawyer. He called forth his own lawyer, but alas, his monster was on the ground, where the Gates Keepers attorney was standing on his chest. The Wizard of Apples turned to the Gates Keeper and cried, let my lawyer go, so that I may defend myself" But the Gates Keeper doubled up in laughter.

The Wizard turned to the ZearOx and cried, "You would not dare attack me, for the User dot love me! Don't you, User?" But the User had, of late, been hearing the seductive cries of the Window, the Presentation of Managers, and seemingly hundreds of flavored Eunuchs, and he was sore confused.

Thus the Wizard of Apples found himself friendless, hopeless, and surrounded by lawyers. And the moral of this story is:

Recenty I stumpled multipe times upon a certain name. It was Gary Kildall. Gary was the one, who founded Digital Research. The company who was well known for its operating  system CP/M, designed for smaller computers. In a time where mainframes were more common, than a personal computer. Some people might rember DR DOS, which was an interesting alternative to MS Dos. Many people called in wrongly Digital Research. The company who was well known for its operating  system CP/M, designed for smaller computers. In a time where mainframes were more common, than a personal computer. Some people might rember DR DOS, which was an interesting alternative to MS Dos. Many people called in wrongly Dr. Dos, because they never heard about a company named Digital Research.

I have learned a lot about Micrisoft and Apples history, but never looked into the history of CP/M and the company and people who created it. After some webresearch I found an interesting episode of the TV show Computer Chronicles. It was a Gary Kildall special, which was broadcasted after his sudden death and gave an voerview about his life and all his achievements.
 Computer Chronicles and Archive.org are already quite interesting finds. I never used Archive.org before. There are tons of ancient episodes of Computer Chronicles. It was exciting to see reviews about C64, AMIGA 1000 or the Apple II. A lot of celebrities from the Bits & Bytes world have shown up at Computer Chronicles. So its a must see. Gary was always a part of Computer Chronicles as being the co-host. He was one of the most important inventors in Computer history. But most people don't know him.

For Gary, it was not easy not to be recognized for his work from the world. Especially because others did a lot. One of them of course still is Bill Gates. When Gates started the deal with IBM, selling MS-Dos to big blue, he basically sold a 1:1 copy of CP/M. I knew that a copy of the CP/M manual from Radio Shack, was the germ cell of QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), which Gates sold as MS-Dos. What I didn't kew was, that MS-Dos 1.0 was binary compatible to CP/M! At that time and maybe even later, Gary didn't complain about that. That Microsoft was able to get QDos, all credit goes to the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Yes, its not only Gates who made Microsoft.

Later Microsoft was not excited about DR Dos. So they successfully managed to put some obstacles into Digital Resarchs way. They integrated a "bug" into Windows 3.1/3.11, to ensure that Windows can't run in it's 386 extend mode, when its launched from DR Dos. Gary was this time willing to fight for his right in court. It took years to finally win, but it was too late for Digital Research.

I was motivated to look at this ancient CP/M stuff again and my Commodorer 128D is quite a good system for that. Fun to play around with CP/M and really old software.

Thats how it looks, when my C128D is booted into CP/M 3.0 in 80 column mode.

This disk was shipped with every Commodore 128. It was a low density flip disk. On side A the basic system, on B the utilities.
There is an enhanced Version of this disk available called "ZP/M". Its Z80 instead of 8080 coded and runs faster. You can find it with other Commodore CP/M stuff here.

Its not difficult to find CP/M software on the web. Like MS Cobol, Turbo Pascal, Algol and other programming languages here. But not only programming languages, you can get there Wordstar, Dbase or other business related stuff as well.
If you are curious and don't own some CP/M hardware, don't worry. Emulator with ready made harddisk images are available.