SANE Normalized
Volume Number: 6
Issue Number: 1
Column Tag: XCMD Corner
By Donald Koscheka, Ernst & Young, MacTutor Contributing Editor
Note: Source code files accompanying article are located on MacTech CD-ROM orsource code disks.
Ten years makes a big difference. When I started engineering school in 1973, I
wanted to learn everything I could about the nascent microcomputer technology. For
several years after graduation, however, I had trouble securing meaningful
employment as a microcomputer engineer. With the exception of Silicon Valley and an
instrumental little hotspot in Texas, there wasn’t much calling for people who knew
about microcomputers. Employers were intrigued by my background, but they
regarded the microcomputer as not much more than an interesting toy. They argued
that micros didn’t have enough memory to do real work, they couldn’t do real number
crunching, and so on.
I found myself apologizing for these shortcomings. Realizing that I would
probably have to beef up my computer experience, I enrolled in graduate school in
1980 at the University of Illinois. At the time, the school used yet another derivative
of the IBM 370. You can imagine my reaction when I discovered that this behemoth
was running an operating system called CMS (Conversational Mode System or some
such). The entire goal of this operating system was to transform this monolithic hunk
of iron in hundreds of “virtual personal computers”. The same people that were
pooh-poohing my microcomputer training were spending vast amounts of effort trying