sdb@shark.UUCP (10/14/83)
I picked up my copy (one of only two in this area) this morning. Evidently they are spreading their first production thinly around the U.S. Some initial observations: It definitely supports timesharing. I have a second COCO with a COLORCOM/E cartridge and my old modem (not to mention two phone-lines) and I have been experimenting with using the thing in two-user mode with one of them being 300-baud dialups. The manual is extensive, well produced and absolutely riddled with errors. It looks like some really good manual writers were given absolutely minimal possible support by the programmers who should have proof-read the suckers... That is truly unfortunate - it may scare some people away when the examples don't work. By the way, as I use it I get more enthused by the minute. You folks will DEFINITELY hear more from me later on this. No sigh of BASIC09 yet, and I haven't started messing with the assembler, I am still figuring out the opsystem. One strange observation: The password file they provide has five entries in it for the super-user and four fictional users named "USER1", "USER2" and their two older brothers. Stupidly, the root entry has neither account name nor password. This means that if you answer the "login:" prompt with a carriage return, you log in as superuser. I will give odds that half or more of the people never figure this out and leave it alone. Anyone want to bet me? More later... Steve Den Beste