[net.micro] Columbia PC and IBM PC compatibility

chenr@tilt.UUCP (04/25/84)

A while back, I asked for compatibility information about the Columbia PC,
one of the many IBM-PC clones out on the market.  The consensus seems to
be that the Columbia, along with the COMPAQ, is about as compatible as a
machine can get.  The only thing that was different was that if you want
to run the BASIC interpreter, you have to use the Columbia DOS because their
BASIC isn't in ROM, the way IBM's is.  (I don't know about compiled BASIC.
IBM may have done something cute and built farcalls to ROM into the compiled
code, who knows?  Oh, well, who uses BASIC anyway?)  Basically, (no pun
intended), any program that follows the rules about DOS interrupts, etc.
seems to fun fine, including the Microsoft Flight Simulator.  People
also wrote in saying that the Columbia people seem to have taken special
pains to make sure that business software runs on their machine.

That's it, folks.  My thanks to all those who responded...

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