ancient version compatibility

Sat May 11 13:00:46 PDT 2019

I remember the Deskmate version of filePro as "The Project from Hell". It
was the first time that we attempted to move DOS/UNIX keyboard-oriented
filePro to mouse and menu land. It was painful, difficult and mostly a
waste of time costing us about 2 years of effort. (I don't think that we
sold many copies at all. Financially, it was a total bust. Shortly after we
had a finished product, Radio Shack had it on the shelves for a few months,
then we saw Deskmate filePro in the discount bin with all of the other
Deskmate software) The big boss was constantly pushing us to finish. Asking
us "what would it take?" for us to work harder/faster/longer hours and give
him a finished product. I guess he thought that we were dragging our feet.
He just didn't understand the complexity of the project even though we
tried to explain it to him many times. Ken and Ron got new computers for
the project. I think that they were 286 CPUs. Being a woman, I didn't.
(Everybody knows that women can't program, so what would *I* need a better
computer for?)  I added memory and another hard drive to my existing
computer so that I could run the help system compiler needed for my part of
the project and be able to alpha test Desktop filePro. Ken gave me my first
lesson in hardware. Up until that point, I had zero clue about what was
inside the case and how to fix or upgrade anything in it. I went to college
and had a BS in computer science, so I was trained in software. When it
came to hardware, I could name the parts and what they did, but nothing
more. The hard drive was MFM (pre-dating IDE by several years). The extra
ram was on a large card that I pulled from another computer that I found in
the basement. (We had a hardware guy who had an area in the basement, but
he left for greener pastures. The parts and tools were still there). I
managed to cobble together the parts and pieces without burning something
up by plugging it in backwards.

Ken taught me the following rules.

First rule: Make sure that the computer is unplugged before you start
adding or removing parts.
Second Rule: That red stripe on the ribbon cable was not just a decoration.

Ignoring either of these rules will release the magic smoke and your
computer will die.

Good rules. I never released the magic smoke.

The closest I came to that is when a customer gave me a computer to fix
around 15 years ago. I plugged it in and turned it on to see what worked
and what didn't since the customer's description of the problem was rather
vague. The phone rang, so I turned my back on the computer to answer the
phone. One of my kids comes by to ask me for something, sees smoke coming
out of the computer and tells me "Mommy, is the computer supposed to be
smoking?". The power supply had smoke coming out of it. I pull the power
cord on it and open the door and windows. No flames, but lots of
excitement. Ken, the rest of the kids and the dog have to come over and see
what the fuss was all about. After I let it cool down, I removed the power
supply and put in a new one. It booted up just fine. I think I found the
problem lady! Of course Ken and the kids had to tease me for a while,
asking me if I set anything on fire lately.

Laura Brody

On Sat, May 11, 2019 at 12:27 PM Scott Walker via Filepro-list <
filepro-list at lists.celestial.com> wrote:

> Deskmate Operating Enviornment
>
>  Initital Release = November 1984  (35 years ago)
>
> Last Release =  1992 (27 years ago)
>
> So about a quarter of a century ago.  WOW!
>
> Some people don't like to upgrade too often :-)
>
>
> Regards,
> Scott
>
> Scott Walker
> scott.walker at ramsystemscorp.com
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Filepro-list
> [mailto:filepro-list-bounces+scottwalker
> =ramsystemscorp.com at lists.celestial.
> com] On Behalf Of Laura Brody via Filepro-list
> Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2019 7:48 AM
> To: Brian White <bw.aljex at gmail.com>
> Cc: Laura Brody <laura.k.brody at gmail.com>; filePro Mailing List
> <Filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
> Subject: Re: ancient version compatibility
>
> As I recall, the data files would be totally compatible with the
> DOS/Windows
> version of filePro. I am pretty sure that the screens would be too.
>
> Wow, that was a long time ago....
>
> Laura Brody
>
> On Sat, May 11, 2019 at 5:33 AM Brian White via Filepro-list <
> filepro-list at lists.celestial.com> wrote:
>
> > Here's a good one.
> >
> > Someone on a facebook vintage computer group has a bunch of data in a
> > Deskmate version of fp.
> >
> > Anyone know if the files would be directly usable by a dos/win
> > version, or would they need xfer like if you were going from win to
> linux?
> >
> > --
> > bkw
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