forward thinking about the UI

[Michael Haney]

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 9:44 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Serenity Systems offers the rather expensive eComStation, which is
> essentially an updated OS/2 Warp 4.5. I've tried it, briefly. It is
> OS/2, but poor old OS/2 is just ridiculously past-it by modern
> standards, alas.
>
> I was a keen OS/2 user in the early 1990s. I gave up when I couldn't
> get OS/2 3 to drive my screen or sound hardware in my laptop - my only
> PC back then - whereas a late beta of Windows 4 "Chicago" just worked,
> first time. Windows 4 was released as Windows 95, of course.
>
> I could never even get Slackware to fully boot on that machine, mind.
> I had an IDE boot HD & SCSI external, plus a SCSI CD-ROM, a
> combination the developers just had not thought of, back then, AFAICT.
>

How long ago did you try eComStation?  I checked their site and
they've released a new version in August of this year.

I've also seen a site that sells an updated Amiga OS that runs on x86
hardware.  The Amiga was pretty ahead of its time when it was out.
Long before the idea was given a name the Amiga easily handled back
then what would later be called Multimedia.  A unique part of the
Amiga was its sound chip, which is now easily emulated in software.
It spurred on the Module Music Community.  I still have my collection
of old .mod, .s3m, .it and .xm Module music files and a software
player that can play them (ModPlug Player from www.castlex.com).

For those who have no clue about Mods, essentially they're compressed
files that contain sequencing data, newer formats can have MIDI
sequence data in them, and compressed WAV samples.  Essentially, Mods
are portable Wavetable music files that contain their own sound
samples.  Most of the Mod Music Community have either left the scene,
gone professional or moved on to MP3 and don't release Mods anymore.

-- 
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
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