Re: Theo Quoted by ZDNet?

[Tobias Weingartner <weingart@natasha.tepid.org>]

On Saturday, March 16, Lars Hansson wrote:
> 
> Actually, 10 years ago Microsoft did hardly have a TCP/IP stack of their own.
> The stacks everyone was using back then was from TCP Software in DOS and
> Trumpet Winsock in Windows.

Wow, that brings back memories.  We had several labs booting diskless into
WfW31 (and other, earlier windoze things).  However, we ended up having a
small problem with WfW31, and took it upon ourselves to get some help from
the M$ people.  Over the course of 2 weeks we were passed up the chain, with
each link roughly going like:

Ok, so you are, wait a minute?  You have no HD in that machine?  That does
not work!  That can't work.  You are doing what?  Booting diskless?  Wait,
I need to talk to someone for minute...  (wait 5 minutes)  Ok, I'm gonna
pass you on to this particular "engineer", he should be able to understand
what is going on...

30 seconds later we'd be repeating things, only to have the engineer promise
to look into it, and get back to us.  After several days we'd phone back to
him/her, and the cycle would repeat.  Funny thing was, when they did not
believe us, we'd always invite them down to have a look for themselves.  They
never did take us up on the offer...


> Oh, and Microsoft didnt realize the internet was a good thing until after MSN
> failed somewhere around late '95, early '96. In fact, Gates himself had put 
> the Internet down numerous times saying it had no future.

M$ did not even have a clue what diskless meant.  Cripes, they don't know what
simple separation of data and code is.  Much less the separation of user and
system data.  We ran that network (on a Vax VMS back-end no less) far longer
than most would have thought possible...  Too bad it went the way of the dodo,
it had some nifty things in it.


Anyways, enough off-topic stuff...

--Toby.