Funny quotes from a computer shop.

[JLRodgers]

I remember seeing somewhere back then that the math coprocessor was needed on some computers to make it accurate because of a glith in the processor in like the 16th decimal point place or something (something that only scientists or math people needing that precision would need) -- that was fixed, and made moot shortly after.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Many of the poorly coded programs on the Apple //e could only be exited by rebooting.

Fixed for accuracy.

I mean come on, I had a (very basic) programming course for the apple //e and one of the first things taught was how to code an exit command!

What was the point of having an exit command when you had to reboot from a different disk to run a program? In those days, disk space was precious and extra coding like exit codes was omitted so program content could be put in. Those were the days of tight coding.

[Chromatix]

The first Pentium (60 & 66MHz) had to be recalled and replaced because the FPU was buggy. But they didn't put a coprocessor on top, just replaced the whole CPU.

Probably the right response would have been "It's not called a coprocessor any more, it's an FPU. And yes, it does have one of those."

[LostMyMind]

What was the point of having an exit command when you had to reboot from a different disk to run a program? In those days, disk space was precious and extra coding like exit codes was omitted so program content could be put in. Those were the days of tight coding.

You have to remember, back in those days there wasn't one set of OS. Every app/game company had their own tweak version of the OS. So when you switch from one app/game to another, you had to reboot. We're talking about days before "disk space", there was no personal hard-drives. Hard-drives were size of dishwashers with big heavy disks that you carefully swap in and out.

[lordlundar]

What was the point of having an exit command when you had to reboot from a different disk to run a program?

That's circular reasoning there. You actually didn't HAVE to reboot, simply get to the command prompt, which is hard coded into the machine's ROM. The only reason you would have to reboot from a different disk was if the disk was being consistently read, and if that was the case, then there was a bug in the code.

The reboot setup was actually one of the first designs for lazy people. This way, they didn't have to input the command sequence to start it or to stop it. Just start up the machine with the disk in and let the machine do the work.

Personally, I hated it. Still do in fact, because it's the spiritual, if not literal predecessor to crap like AoL and Windows Vista.

[earl colby pottinger]

The only one

Actually, TI-99/4A require reboots between apps.

Of all the machines we sold, the TI99 was the only one I never personally used.

[LostMyMind]

I like the TI-99. It was the one and only one that I've used that allowed direct editing of character map. In other words, you can change what the 4x8 square (I think it was 4x8) looks like for any character. Making sprite games for TI-99 was really easy, because you just had to do text output after changing all the text to look the way you wanted it to look. All you had to do to animate a char was change the char display info, you didn't have to re-output it.

Damn, I'm too old.