[HN Gopher] Windows 2 for the Apricot PC/Xi
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Windows 2 for the Apricot PC/Xi
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 67 points
Date : 2025-12-27 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ninakalinina.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ninakalinina.com)
| bitwize wrote:
| One of my childhood computers was a Tandy 2000. This was a
| 186-based PC-incompatible computer available from Radio Shack. It
| was more performant than an AT, could access more base memory
| (due to a disk-based rather than ROM BIOS), and available at a
| lower price so it was a real contender before it was clear that
| the IBM standard would be used by everybody.
|
| Not only _could_ it run Windows 1.0, Microsoft used the Tandy
| 2000 internally for Windows development because in the early
| 1980s it was the only x86 machine out there that could do hi-res
| (640x400) color graphics. So, getting Windows 2.x backported to
| the 2000 is definitely feasible.
| nkali wrote:
| Hi, the article's author here~
|
| I just checked the Tandy 2000 Windows pre-installation - it has
| the drivers unpacked, which means you can just get the Slow
| Boot Windows 2.0, and put the drivers from this floppy to it.
| And the fonts, of course. Definitely do not check this bad
| pirate website that has it:
| https://winworldpc.com/product/tandy-2000-ms-windows-pre-Ins...
| lysace wrote:
| I used some (pirated) software that included a bundled Windows 2
| runtime on an Amstrad PC1512 with CGA (but enhanced to 16 colors
| in 640x200 to make GEM look good in the sales brochures) in the
| late 80s. The Windows app ran in mono 640x200.
|
| This unlocked some memories.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| I wish I'd been able to "acquire" one of the ACT Apricots that my
| dad's old work had. They were "portable" in the sense they had a
| handle very firmly attached, and I think the keyboard (which had
| a little strip of hotkeys with an LCD screen above - waaay ahead
| of you, Apple) clipped into the bottom of the unit.
|
| The Apricot F1 was another cool one, about the size of a shoebox
| with a trackball rather than a mouse - when no-one else had any
| kind of pointing device!
| nkali wrote:
| The model I have is exactly like this, with a handle and a
| clip. You can still get one! :)
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Yours is the later one with the hard disk, the ones that my
| dad had at work were beige with two floppies. They also had
| some Sirius 1s, one of which had a hard disk.
|
| Probably all gone in the skip now, the factory is sitting
| closed and empty.
| xuhu wrote:
| Why are the Shift and Caps Lock keys shaped like that ? Is it
| because those wide keys cannot be pressed from the ends ?
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| I have no idea, but I do have a PC/AT keyboard with
| similarly-shaped keys. They have the usual "square horseshoe"
| / "anti-roll bar for Matchbox cars" arrangement underneath so
| they don't rock when you press the end.
|
| I think it's just what they did in the 80s.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| I believe you're right. From my limited memory of that
| period, it was a mechanical constraint.
|
| Keycaps tended to be molded with a hollow cylinder or stalk
| on their base, which fitted through a round aperture on the
| keyboard base and pressed against a spring or other
| restraint. Pressing the key down against the spring actuated
| a pcb-mounted push-switch (or bridged a pair of adjacent
| connectors on the pcb) that provided the keypress signal.
| Pressing a wide key off-centre would cause the plastic stalk
| to bind against the enclosing aperture. Forcing the user to
| press direcly above the stalk mitigates this.
|
| There is a stack exchange question about this at [1].
|
| As to why the shift keys were wider to begin with, I'm not
| sure. Perhaps a consequence of the lack of the mechanical
| constraints that forced typewriter keyboards into a strict
| grid. Although some keyboards, notably the Commodore PET,
| didn't use wide shift keys [2]
|
| It is worth noting that keyboards in that era were machine-
| specific, and often hard-wired to the main system box. Afaik
| standardisation didn't happen until rs232 and, later, ps2
| keyboards were introduced.
|
| [1] https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/16471/
| why...
|
| [2] and let me just say here that the PET keyboard was truly
| awful, even by 80s standards. Just shamefully terrible.
| bboreham wrote:
| Amazing achievement.
|
| I did some work for Apricot at their Glenrothes factory around
| 1985-87. In my memory they went heavier on GEM than Windows. I
| never saw an Apricot running Windows prior to the PC-compatible
| models.
| rjsw wrote:
| The initial Apricot model came with GSX, I don't think there
| was a GEM driver for the 800x400 screen.
| nkali wrote:
| There are two now; one from GEM 1.2 and one from FreeGEM.
| nkali wrote:
| That's what I've heard, too! But apparently there even was an
| effort to port Windows 2.11 to XEN, though I have no idea
| whether it was ever completed.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Nina is a ledge, you should follow on mastodon.
| dekuNukem wrote:
| I really enjoy the brief period just after the release of IBM PC,
| where manufacturers could see where things were heading, but were
| still trying different things to set themselves apart.
|
| Sirius 1 had the weird floppy drive and unusal high-res graphics.
| Apricot had Display-in-keyboard and compact form factors.
| Olivetti had charming italian design and the strange upside-down
| motherboard (when battery leaks it drips down instead of eating
| the PCB, talk about ahead of its time!)
|
| All ran MS-DOS but not "PC compatible", so none of them really
| took off. Then everyone started to do 100% compatible clones, and
| it was a race to the bottom.
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(page generated 2025-12-27 23:00 UTC)