Amix was Re: Aztec C

[Jules Richardson]

Brent Hilpert wrote:
> Richard wrote:
>>     "Ethan Dicks" <ethan.dicks at gmail.com>  writes:
>>> TCP/IP took a while to trickle down from
>>> Workstations to Micros.
>> Agreed.  I think it was the web browser that pushed the adoption and
>> integration of TCP/IP.
> 
> Although chronologically they're pretty close, I'd say it was the opening of
> the internet to general public access circa 1989/90 that pushed such adoption
> (the final battle in the protocol wars). At that point TCP/IP became mandatory
> to connect to the "information highway" (remember that quaint phrase?), any
> system that didn't provide TCP/IP wasn't going to receive much attention, and
> all those competing/proprietary protocols (DECNET,SNA,OSI,etc.) became
> superfluous (specialised capabilities notwithstanding).

I think I'd agree there - after all (at least in the UK) lots of home micros 
from 1980 onwards had the ability to network with each other, so users were 
reasonably familiar with what a network was (even if they didn't connect their 
machine *to* one; it was still a system selling point). It was only when 
public Internet access took off (early on for academia, probably not until the 
mid-90's for "home" use) that TCP/IP became the accepted norm.

On the web front, all the web browser ever did was encourage the use of the 
wrong tool for the job ;-)