Lack of 8-bit threads (was Re: Linux question)

[Jim Leonard]

Warren Wolfe wrote:
>     Imagine my surprise when DisplayWrite would not even run.  Seven
> million for a study, and they didn't bother to even set it up.  Sheesh.
> Anyway, I ended up talking to Mort Myerson, the V.P. of EDS within a few
> minutes, and I explained the situation to him.  He said he would take
> care of it.  In the meanwhile, I was using a debugger to try to find out
> what actual problem was causing the failure.  It turns out that
> DisplayWrite checked the BIOS ROM, and if it did NOT find "IBM" it shut
> down.  I figured we would get IBM to change the program...  but, no.
> Within a couple of hours about five Bell Labs techs showed up asking for
> me, and got to work on the BIOS.  I explained what I had found, and they
> verified it.  They then re-assembled the BIOS with a nonsense trademark
> notice about IBM, and started cranking out copies of the new chip.
> DisplayWrite then found "IBM" in the BIOS, and was happy.

Hopefully you're not blaming the AT&T 6300 for that mess... I think the 
"IBM-string-in-the-BIOS-check" by the software is completely arbitrary 
and the real dunce of the story...
-- 
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org)            http://www.oldskool.org/
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