[Coco] Re: RS-DOS blows??? The hell it does!!

[Rogelio Perea]

"Neil Morrison" wrote:

> OS-9 is easier to understand if you've learnt Unix. I have thought for a
> while that teaching computing students OS-9 on a 6809 system similar to a
> Coco would be a good way to give them training that they could not otherwise
> get.

I guess I can say I was lucky enough to get started in the computing fun with the CoCo, since the beginning (I actually started of on a TRS-80 model I & III at school but that is another story that predates the CoCo for less than a year). Had a minor brush-in with MS-DOS based Word Perfect version... mmm... I believe it must have been 2 or something like that, it was 1989... probably it was even WordStar... hazy details now. By the time I REALLY got into using the Intel based computers, probably 1990 or so, I had already sort of tamed the basic gyrations of OS9 Level II in my CoCo 3 setup at home; MS DOS was appalling to use and MS Windows 3.0 even more so, but WE HAD to use these two because there was a nifty graphics editor called Corel Draw that would only run in certain freshly unpacked 80386 PC at the office. Being trained in the tight environment of OS9 LII with the CoCo made me better understand the shortfallings of MS-DOS and its Windows shell, thus making it less painful to work around. Went fully into Linux when RedHat was barely entering its 3.x distribution... I liked Linux from the start and could see all the similarities with OS9, the growth path just clicked naturally.

Up to this day and age, I still trumpet the virtues of OS9 and the simplicity of the CoCo environment, and I still keep getting that "really? naahhhh" face from colleagues brought up in the MS-DOS/Windows be-all/end-all doctrine.



-=[ Rogelio ]=-