• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Hypothetical: Could a 5150 be viable today if not for GUI/Graphics?

L

lyonadmiral

Veteran Member
Joined
Jun 3, 2009
Messages
2,431
Location
Peru, New York
I remember a few years ago, a co-worker in IT challenged me to downgrade my system to a Celeron running Windows 95 and Office 97. I told him I could do it, he didn't believe me. I ran it for a month and I was able to do every business function on that system; word processing, spreadsheet, e-mail, and even remote desktop.

Do you agree/disagree and why, that a 5150/60 could be viable today if you exclude graphics and GUI's? I think it could be especially if you can get a NIC.
 
I'd argue you probably could but it would depend what you do on a day to day function. If all you do is listen to music then perhaps not although there was MIDI gear back then so I suppose one could still compose music. Web browsing can be text based but that does put some assumption that the websites aren't full of clutter and junk to obscure the site. If the site is well designed then text browsing is pretty fast and nice. You wouldn't be able to edit most documents sent to you but you could certainly edit documents in txt, or other formats.

Is this all theoretical or would you be actually assessing if there's an email client that would work on today's systems? (Not much reason why one couldn't be written though, at least if things follow the proper protocols) for pop3/imap.

Memory and storage space are about the only restrictions besides perhaps a lack of some common tools of today. At my job if they allowed imap access to our email server I could get mail, I generally remote into other systems to work on those but a remote cmd session I can do most things or I guess a really low resolution vnc client (Mike Chambers I think was working on one for shiggles a while back) or RDP and ssh client would cover most of what I'd need. From there the commands get run on the other system so resources aren't an issue.

Might be a stretch but I'd like to think it'd work. And probably keep us better on task/track with a lack of multitasking and websites off to the side while we listen to music and wait for things to install, configure, etc.
 
Sure, for word processing and spreadheet in the business area. The thing that will hold you back is the exclusive use of floppy disks, although a NIC might relieve some of the reliability problems. You could certainly run small business apps (AR, AP, etc.). Don't know how well payroll mgiht work, with all of the changes that have occurred over the years.

Most POS terminals are scarcely more powerful than a 5150.
 
barythrin said:
Is this all theoretical or would you be actually assessing if there's an email client that would work on today's systems? (Not much reason why one couldn't be written though, at least if things follow the proper protocols) for pop3/imap.
Click to expand...

Mostly theoretical since I have to sell my 5150, but someday I'd like to try it... do production work with a 5150.
 
I don't think so, especially if you have to read files from other people (nothing of DOS vintage will read files created with any software of the last 5 years or so). Not too many people have printers that still have parallel interfaces, everything is networked or USB. Even if you could use Lotus 123 on a 5150 you would run into RAM limitations doing anything serious, same with databases.
 
Your PC or XT from the mid 80s can still:

  • Run Lotus 1-2-3 or Microsoft Multiplan just fine
  • Do word processing using a large number of programs
  • Print to a printer. (My recent Brother workgroup laser print has USB, parallel, ethernet and WIFI connections and understands ASCII, PostScript and PCL.)
  • Be used as a terminal to a larger, more capable system (usually running some form of Unix).
  • Do limited text based browsing using a browser like Lynx for DOS.
  • Send and receive text based email.
  • Etc ...


All of the basic functions people did 25 years ago are still possible. The problem you would run into is inter-operating with current software and standards. A Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet from 25 years ago does not have any of the formatting or embedded objects that people expect from Excel today. You could do word processing using WordStar or even WordPerfect, but might not be able to send those files to other people. Email often has attachments and formatting that make it too big for an old machine to display in one pass. (You get the idea ...)
 
I'm fairly certain I could, as I'm someone that does mostly IRC, office documents, email and forums, which can all be done from a text-only mode.

However, life becomes a lot easier when you cheat and use an upgraded 5150 (or maybe even a XT?). A V20 brings some more features, a VGA card adds some slightly higher resolutions, and for the few people that have one, a 286 upgraded system, the XT I have is currently running with a 12 MHz 286 upgrade.
 
Fun article (finally read the full thing last night). He (Benj Edwards) also did one for the Commodore and seems to have a selection of other vintage computing articles. Anyone know if he's a member here or elsewhere? He seems to have a nice collection with the number of disks he has for each system.
 
I remember reading that article posted here by someone last year... still, a fun read, and I enjoyed revisiting it.

That said, IMO, it's cheating to use a remote PC *in your home/office* as a serial/parallel bridge to the modern world. When you're simply using the 5150 as a dumb terminal in your home to print, etc, it seems to me that it would kind've defeat the purpose of the experiment to see if it could be usable today. I guess that, to me, there's a difference in seeing if a machine from yesteryear can be usable today, and in MAKING it usable today with hardware and connection types that didn't exist back in the day.

As for my purposes, I'd like to think that I could use a stock 5150/5160 and be productive today in my work environment, but I'm afraid that I couldn't. At least not for about half of my job.

Sure, I can use DOS commands to push and pull email via pop/smtp (I believe that Ole Juul posted about this early last year) - but, as mentioned in the article, this can quickly become a bear when one starts considering attachments and the latter that can also come with the email message text. I can (thanks to some great programming by Mike Brutman and others) use my PC/XT to relatively easily FTP and SSH into Linux servers and Cisco routers/switches/uBRs, which covers another aspect of my job.

But Word Processing? Spreadsheets? Collaborative computing? That's all out. Web-browsing? Out - the sites that I have to access for my job require a gui. Printing? Out - network printing, and AFAIK, DOS doesn't support that (though someone please do surprise me if I'm wrong!!). These aspects are also integral parts of my job, and while I could technically use 1-2-3, EasyCalc, As Easy As, WordStar, WordPerfect, etc,etc,etc to accomplish the necessary word processing and spreadsheets that I have to work with daily, I couldn't share this data with others, nor could they share work with me - and in my job, that's a must-have feature.

These machines can still do a lot of day-to-day work. I honestly think that people forget exactly how much they're capable of! but their time has passed us by.... The only people that use these things now are people like us who enjoy the challenge/hobby of MAKING them useful, and people like the US Meteorologist Service, who have customer software and equipment needs that are too dear to replace.
 
I've never used it for printing, but I thought that MS LANMAN for DOS provided both access to file shares and printing.

And if you want to network print directly, you can do it with DOS and Netcat if you have a capable printer. My recent Brother workgroup laser printer (under $160) can handle LPR, and HP JetDirect over the network. I've used Netcat from DOS to send files to the printer on the JetDirect port. Some details can be found here:

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/freedos/index.php?title=Netcat

The printer handles "BrotherScript" (PostScript), PCL, and some form of ancient Epson printer emulation, so nearly any DOS program ever written can format output that will print on it. Print to a file, use NetCat to send the file to the printer, and you should get something that looks like toner burned onto thin slices of dead tree.

Not all printers are created equal. If you have a printer that only works with Windows, this trick is probably not going to work. (Which is why I chose the Brother - besides the three languages it supports it also has USB and parallel port connections, so I can physically hook up a DOS machine if I am really desperate.)
 
I'd have no problem using my expanded Apple IIgs for day to day tasks. Modern software gives it TCP/IP capabilities and its built in Appletalk makes networking a breeze via my localtalk-to-ethernet bridge. A challenge would be to use an 8-bit Apple II, but the experience would be very similar to the 5150 in that it is mostly text. They can run Contiki though, which gives the platform native TCP/IP apps as opposed to running a terminal emulator.
 
Maverick1978 said:
These machines can still do a lot of day-to-day work. I honestly think that people forget exactly how much they're capable of! but their time has passed us by....
Click to expand...

One of my favorite "computer history" books is my autographed copy of iWoz, in it Woz says, you have to keep looking forward never look backwards, but I have mixed feelings about that. I think you have to know where you are from to figure out where you are going and that is why some of us hang on to the things we do, and in this case, the 5150.
 
Woz wrote that or the book says that? That sounds very much like what I would imagine Apple's mantra to be since they don't seem to appreciate their history like other companies sometimes do.
 
This was directed at people still using 5250 terminals but the same applies here.

green-screens-to-web2.gif


Business doesn't like using old hardware, especially in public.
Generally I prefer the response "We didn't become a national corporation after we upgraded to windows 95 now shut up and use your Lotus 123."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top