Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors 467

Nick Maclaren

In my recollection, it worked okay on HDX IBM terminals like the 2741, I don't recall having a favorable impression of it on TTYs, but that may be just random memory failure. In any case, I was contrasting 3270's with early CGA which somewhat supported graphics.

I wouldn't say that the CMS command language was too bad, compared to DOS. Pipes and redirection were the major features lacking. Now, of course, they've cluttered up the language with lots of incompatible syntax for stuff like SFS commands. I don't understand why everyone tries to invent their own "standards" rather than following along with what already exists -- it's worse than unix! OTOH, Rexx eliminates the worse deficiencies of shells, but wasn't available at that time.

We don't fix anything anymore. Something broken? Wait for the next release and hope. Remember that VM-CMS was one of the original "open source" projects. The code was easy to read, understand, and fix if necessary.

I think it was intended for developers, and indeed got some use. I believe Melinda Varian at Princeton made good use of it. I think the opposite -- it was too much too late. If they'd stripped out all the unnecessary features to get it to run well in a small machine they'd have been better off. The missing features could have been added back later as memory sizes got bigger. DOS would run in a 64K machine initially, and the max memory size of a PC was 384K. I would think a system that ran well in 256K would have hit a sweet spot in the market, as Lynne indicated the original CP67-CMS did. As others have said, it was the licensing that end it. DOS was being bundled with the hardware.