Most difficult game ever

[JCitron]

I

Unfortunately John N3V don't update the wiki as they should. There are so many dead ends that often it becomes quite a task to find the answers that you are looking for. Documentation including digital format has become a dirty word in today's environment, sadly.

Many years ago I made the jump from 8bit to 32 bit assembler on an ARM processor. The documentation did not come as standard and had to be paid for separately, but the cost was worth it. The detail was superb and progamming without it would have been very difficult.

Today I think software companies fail to see that good and detailed documentation is still important to many an end-user. Unfortunately N3V are stuck in the middle here trying to please everyone from the game kiddies to the more serious hobbyist. Keeping a good profit level is obviously important to every business but it just seems that there are so many unfinished tasks in Trainz that they are unable to dig themselves out their hole. The wiki is part of this hole and is now left to end users like PWare and others to maintain through trial and error of Trainz. The forum and knowledgeable users are a godsend, without it the Trainz product would die.

The thing that annoys me immensely is that the updates fix bugs (that is a good thing obviously), but bugs are not created by end-users but introduced by programmers and bad or sloppy design. System documentation should be referenced when coding and memory not relied upon. Of course I am assuming that system documentation exists. As an ex-professional it saddens me to see standards slip.

I hear the arguments from some that the code has many thousands of lines of code and that N3V are a small company and not in the same league as Micro$oft or Adobe$$$, very true indeed but they are only developing, maintaining and suporting a single product. We all love Trainz or we wouldn't be here would we, but it does get very frustrating these days. Graphically the game is excellent these days and with future improvements to come it looks very promising, just wish the tasks were finished and to a better standard.

Anyway, I'm just glad for the people on the forum and the help given, without which I would probably still be on Trains 2009 or Railsimulator.

Keep the knowledge flowing people it's good to see.

John

I agree with you on the poor documentation updates. N3V said that it's left open for the community to update. While this is all well and good, like everything else in Trainz as you said and so have I, nothing is ever finished and like everything else the enthusiasm and goodwill spreads pretty thin in a short time.

In part their programming mess is, I think, due to lost history. They had many good programmers working there in the past and all are gone now. The previous Brew Crew knew the product and the code, and knew the pitfalls. The new crowd coming in has no clue and are going on the code they have. This introduces all kinds of errors when this is bolted on to previous code that's already in use. What doesn't help is the developers do not use the product to understand where the flaws are and only go back after there are complaints. To use an analogy, it's like a chef making an elaborate dinner but never tasted any of it until the customers complain that the meal tastes putrid. In the olden days, Greg Lane made programmers build test routes to try out the tools they were creating. The routes didn't have to be works of art, but they served the purpose. As quirky as Trainz 1.0 through TS12 is, the program worked pretty well all things considered and we wouldn't be where we are today without that legacy.

I too wish they would slow down the development of new pretty and fancy things and go back and fix the leaky roof and put the wallboard up in the dining room, but unfortunately, putting in a swimming pool and landscaping a fountain garden is more fun, referring to my old metaphors and analogies.

 

[JCitron]

At least you actually used your computer for work.
All I was doing was playing S.D.I.

I remember that game. I never played it though. We eventually got the 800 XL, a much cheaper machine, after my sister broke the 800 and I got the floppy drive for it because it beat loading programs from cassette. We then got Load Runner and other cool games. For cartridges, our favorites were Joust and Defender.

In the early 80's, I was repairing V-1050s, and Visual Commuters, along with terminals and their old Ontel Systems all the while taking programming and EE classes at a local community college. The timing was perfect because the V-1050 allowed me to write programs on it and hand them in to class easily. Instead of using the Z-80 equivalent of Edlin, I used WordStar in non-document mode to enter in my code. This made writing so much easier because I could see everything instead of viewing separately and inserting one line painfully at a time. Once the program was written, I would compile it with the Z-80 assembler and run it using Z-Sid. Z-Sid was the equivalent to debug in MS-DOS. CBASIC was a compiled BASIC. Write the code in WordStar non-document mode, run the compiler afterwards and then run the com file. I did some interesting things in BASIC back then, that I'd probably never be able to do today. My brain was a lot more pliable I think and less full of junk.

I learned a lot in those days and because of it I have a lot of respect for programmers and engineers. I went on to become a tech instead of remaining in the engineering side of things because my patience level wasn't and still isn't there even though I was told I have a knack for it. The constant debugging cycle and testing got really annoying and boring for me and fixing stuff was more fun. At the time, troubleshooting a Hawk drive assembly, or logic board for an I/O Microprocessor board was a lot more interesting and really is still today. Because of my hardware background, I have found that many of the issues we have today are mostly the same as I saw nearly 40 years ago.

 

[boleyd]

How would you have dealt with the large engineering drawings I had to use. My first computer was a Univac-I. 800 volts for the vacuum tubes, warm mercury for the memory and a teletype machine for the console. The console was a work of art with about 3 dozen switches and a four way joystick that operated four switch actions. Water cooled and space inside for somebody who was not intimidated by 800v. Never programmed it since my head was always in the Tektronix scope. My first solid state computer was a pair of Univac-494s. I fixed them, managed the maintenance crew (3 shifts), moved to programming and eventually kept a full OS listing at my bedside (2 inches thick). My wife was not thrilled. Moved to management of the Corporation's world-wide voice and private line teletype network (THE forerunner to email). Lots of international travel. Filled the passport and the extra pages glued in it by Passport, NY. It was well into the PC evolution before I regained an interest in computers. By the way our first Corporate personal PCs were Apple's. Later moved to IBM. That created a DUMPSTER FULL OF APPLES behind the building. I ain't kidden. As they say, those were the days.

Now let's get some Docs...

 

[JCitron]

How would you have dealt with the large engineering drawings I had to use. My first computer was a Univac-I. 800 volts for the vacuum tubes, warm mercury for the memory and a teletype machine for the console. The console was a work of art with about 3 dozen switches and a four way joystick that operated four switch actions. Water cooled and space inside for somebody who was not intimidated by 800v. Never programmed it since my head was always in the Tektronix scope. My first solid state computer was a pair of Univac-494s. I fixed them, managed the maintenance crew (3 shifts), moved to programming and eventually kept a full OS listing at my bedside (2 inches thick). My wife was not thrilled. Moved to management of the Corporation's world-wide private line teletype network (THE forerunner to email). Lots of international travel. Filled the passport and the extra pages glued in it by Passport, NY. It was well into the PC evolution before I regained an interest in computers. By the way our first Corporate personal PCs were Apple's. Later moved to IBM. That created a DUMPSTER FULL OF APPLES behind the building. I ain't kidden. As they say, those were the days.

Now let's get some Docs...

Cool stuff. I would've been right at home with that equipment. The voltages are a bit scary though.

You might like this YouTube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/@UsagiElectric

He's restoring Centurion computers and other old computers. His Bendix vacuum tube computer uses drum-memory.

 

[boleyd]

"Our" drum memory was a silver coated piece of 2ft diameter sewer pipe with about 15 heads on a horizontal bar that allowed travel horizontally. I cleaned (mid-night shift) that surface periodically with a cleaning fluid that was banned when it was later discovered to be a carcinogen. We were young and cancer was mostly unknown with little publicity.

By the way -anyone caught grabbing an Apple from the dumpster was subject to immediate dismissal. That dumpster was piled quite high with Apples. An amazing site from our office.

Another piece of interesting equipment were the printers for the new Univac model 494 "transistorized" computers. A steel drum with the alphabet, 0>10 and appropriate specials. There was a transistor managed hammer for each circle of columns (24 print columns) embossed on it. The sound was literally deafening. To adjust the timing for keeping the rows of printing absolutely horizontal it was necessary to lean into the printing (screaming) cabinet. It would have taken OSHA minutes to shut us down. It printed at 600-lpm.

I'll add in a later item. The Internet was under conceptual design but AT&t had set up a digital connection to the new Internet network for experiments. We were given a circuit to the hub downtown, and a modem. Imagine the thrill when we finally stumbled on a connection to a library in Czechoslovakia. My very first contact on the web. Oh, almost forgot AT&T also gave us a connection from Pittsburgh to NY for the first videophone network. The only application we had on it was the Corporate Aircraft schedules so the big-wigs in NY and Pittsburgh could schedule their trips real-time. I was able to fly several of those high class junkets. Shear Lear comfort.

 

[martinvk]

...

I too wish they would slow down the development of new pretty and fancy things and go back and fix the leaky roof and put the wallboard up in the dining room, but unfortunately, putting in a swimming pool and landscaping a fountain garden is more fun, referring to my old metaphors and analogies.

That might be a way to get better quality but in today's market it will also get you sidetracked PDQ. It's the shiny new bling that moves product for the majority of buyers. And since most of them think a tie is something grandpa wore around his neck and not what keeps the rails at the correct gauge, they wont know the difference anyway.

 

[JCitron]

That might be a way to get better quality but in today's market it will also get you sidetracked PDQ. It's the shiny new bling that moves product for the majority of buyers. And since most of them think a tie is something grandpa wore around his neck and not what keeps the rails at the correct gauge, they wont know the difference anyway.

Yup it's S&M at it again. ;-)

The problem is this push for new without fixing the infrastructure makes for what I call hollow products. Products that are nothing but pretty shells without stability or substance inside. This apparently is much like a lot of things these days including expensive meals at restaurants where no matter where we go it all tastes the same.

 

[JCitron]

"Our" drum memory was a silver coated piece of 2ft diameter sewer pipe with about 15 heads on a horizontal bar that allowed travel horizontally. I cleaned (mid-night shift) that surface periodically with a cleaning fluid that was banned when it was later discovered to be a carcinogen. We were young and cancer was mostly unknown with little publicity.

By the way -anyone caught grabbing an Apple from the dumpster was subject to immediate dismissal. That dumpster was piled quite high with Apples. An amazing site from our office.

Another piece of interesting equipment were the printers for the new Univac model 494 "transistorized" computers. A steel drum with the alphabet, 0>10 and appropriate specials. There was a transistor managed hammer for each circle of columns (24 print columns) embossed on it. The sound was literally deafening. To adjust the timing for keeping the rows of printing absolutely horizontal it was necessary to lean into the printing (screaming) cabinet. It would have taken OSHA minutes to shut us down. It printed at 600-lpm.

I'll add in a later item. The Internet was under conceptual design but AT&t had set up a digital connection to the new Internet network for experiments. We were given a circuit to the hub downtown, and a modem. Imagine the thrill when we finally stumbled on a connection to a library in Czechoslovakia. My very first contact on the web. Oh, almost forgot AT&T also gave us a connection from Pittsburgh to NY for the first videophone network. The only application we had on it was the Corporate Aircraft schedules so the big-wigs in NY and Pittsburgh could schedule their trips real-time. I was able to fly several of those high class junkets. Shear Lear comfort.

That's amazing stuff and even more amazing that it worked at all. That 2ft diameter core sounds about right. The Centurion has one of those and I think the Bendix from 1957 has one as well. The Bendix is nearly 100% vacuum tubes too, which is fascinating given the amount of power required to run this system with its minimal amount of memory, storage and CPU logic. The logic here too was done in vacuum tubes as well.

It's too bad the employees weren't given the option to purchase or be given the old Apple computers. It's a shame to see old but working hardware just thrown away. It's because of that, that I have a few Sun workstations. All are operational and run three different versions of Solaris. I got two from Polaroid and one from someone at Merrimack College who found out the college was ditching some for some equipment upgrade. I learned a lot using these.

Those impact printers are noisy. I used to work with the DEC LP-27s in a computer room full of VAXs and some Sun servers. I could tell what was being printed by the sound and rhythm of the banner and reports being printed. Since the reports were printed in the same order every night, I knew when it was time to start putting reports away and start cleaning up the servers after running the batches. At that time, I was working for Infinet, a company that made modems for ISPs, banks, and big companies. They eventually got bought up by Teleglobe and Memoteq from Canada and are gone today. I worked on their hardware prior to moving to MIS which I actually l really liked. In the end I got to write some batch jobs and build some database queries in Datatrieve 32.

 

[amigacooke]

And since most of them think a tie is something grandpa wore around his neck and not what keeps the rails at the correct gauge, they wont know the difference anyway.

And of course they’d be right, a sleeper keeps the rails at the correct gauge

 

[pware]

And of course they’d be right, a sleeper keeps the rails at the correct gauge

... and its not a Caboose, its a Guard Van. A "Caboose''' sounds like a "can of moose"

 

[ricomon35]

Yup it's S&M at it again. ;-)

The problem is this push for new without fixing the infrastructure makes for what I call hollow products. Products that are nothing but pretty shells without stability or substance inside. This apparently is much like a lot of things these days including expensive meals at restaurants where no matter where we go it all tastes the same.

These words remind me of 1st and 2nd year development/patching and feature addition in Cities: Skylines.

Here's to hoping that V2 get's some more filling in the pie, so to speak.

Rico

 

[ricomon35]

I remember that game. I never played it though. We eventually got the 800 XL, a much cheaper machine, after my sister broke the 800 and I got the floppy drive for it because it beat loading programs from cassette. We then got Load Runner and other cool games. For cartridges, our favorites were Joust and Defender.

In the early 80's, I was repairing V-1050s, and Visual Commuters, along with terminals and their old Ontel Systems all the while taking programming and EE classes at a local community college. The timing was perfect because the V-1050 allowed me to write programs on it and hand them in to class easily. Instead of using the Z-80 equivalent of Edlin, I used WordStar in non-document mode to enter in my code. This made writing so much easier because I could see everything instead of viewing separately and inserting one line painfully at a time. Once the program was written, I would compile it with the Z-80 assembler and run it using Z-Sid. Z-Sid was the equivalent to debug in MS-DOS. CBASIC was a compiled BASIC. Write the code in WordStar non-document mode, run the compiler afterwards and then run the com file. I did some interesting things in BASIC back then, that I'd probably never be able to do today. My brain was a lot more pliable I think and less full of junk.

I learned a lot in those days and because of it I have a lot of respect for programmers and engineers. I went on to become a tech instead of remaining in the engineering side of things because my patience level wasn't and still isn't there even though I was told I have a knack for it. The constant debugging cycle and testing got really annoying and boring for me and fixing stuff was more fun. At the time, troubleshooting a Hawk drive assembly, or logic board for an I/O Microprocessor board was a lot more interesting and really is still today. Because of my hardware background, I have found that many of the issues we have today are mostly the same as I saw nearly 40 years ago.

Yeah, I've always been an end user. A computer for me is a creative tool, albeit a fun and interesting one. Its' appeal lies in what things I can do with it, that parallel or enhance my general interests.

For example, I didn't buy a computer for doing work until some years after the Mac Plus came out. I bought it mostly for word processing and games. I fiddled around with HyperCard, but what I could make with it wasn't very interesting for me. I also became really interested in desktop publishing, and then printing in general. I thought I would enjoy working in the professional printing world, like you did, @JCitron, but no one would hire me because I didn't have any experience, and entry level trainee type positions were just not a thing back then.

I still have a strong interest in printing, and love to read about the tech, old and new, but my real interest lies mostly in creating 3d models in Sketchup or Pepakura, exporting to and coloring/shading in Photoshop for final print output as a buildable paper/card stock model. Or, scanning in and re-coloring (skinning) in different livery or scheme and then printing to build. Not really done much in that vein as the hobby has exploded and there are gazillions of free and paid models of just about anything you can think of available, many rivaling the quality and detail of traditional media model kits. This hobby is how I learned more about 3D modeling, and has lead my to working in Blender as well.

So, bout the time AOL and chat rooms were a new thing, I moved up to a mac 6400, but still mostly played games. When Bryce came out, I was immediately hooked on 3D modeling, and soon I was pirating all sorts of modeling apps, and painting programs, looking for that magical app that would allow me to learn quickly and then try to pursue a career in 3Dmodeling and image editing. Carrara, Painter, Strata 3D, then I messed with Lightwave, Cinema 4D, and 3DS Max. All were just too complex for me to learn without some real live instruction in a classroom.

At the same time, I was studying Architectural Drafting (by hand, no CAD) and working as an Interior Designer and sort of off-on doing ok in those fields.
In 1990 I was looking for work, and because I had developed an interest in creative cooking, I snagged a job as a line cook at a swanky riverside restaurant in Lake Oswego, Oregon.
I stayed with that career for many years, (16) moving up to Kitchen Manager/Sous Chef positions, all the while fiddling at home with new Macs, on up to a G4. The machines then got way too expensive, my interests were still in gaming and 3D, but all the fun stuff was happening in other OSes, so when Win 7 came out, I jumped ship, bought a bulletproof server unit with Win 7 and have stayed in the Windows world since.

At the same time, 3Dtech was advancing at rate I could not keep up with, and any chance of getting into a career in the field became more and more intangible, as the field became increasing technical, to the point of needing big bucks to attend a compressed study degree program at Full Sail, The Art Institute in Chicago, or Gnomon in Seattle. Those programs were 75-200k USD to complete, and still are insanely expensive.
I even looked into an apprenticeship program in film and animation. Just so far out of my league financially.

I did apply to and got accepted to The Art Institute in Portland, some years ago, just before Laika Studios opened up near me (2002-ish?) and the center for 3D design and development there opened as well.
I chickened out as I felt I was going to fail, and didn't want that 75k debt hanging over me if that were to happen. I suppose if I were still young and full of myself, that wouldn't have bothered me, but I was 42 at the time, and seeing myself as getting too old for such a major new undertaking, and the massive life changes that would follow.

Trainz in my outlet now, and creative apps like Cities: Skylines, Occupy White Walls, and any game map editors I get interested in.

Rico

 

[JCitron]

I grew up in the graphics industry and my first job was when I dumped a bottle of India ink on the carpet in the living room where my dad had his desk. I was about three at the time and he, as I was told many times by him he was in the middle of a rush job and had to "borrow" some ink from his cousin to finish off the illustration. In the mid-1980s, my dad's company grew and he was interested in getting a typesetting system. After looking at Compugraphics, ITEK, Monotype, and Varityper, we settled on Varityper's Epics 20/20 system. I ended up typesetting on the Epics, after going to typesetting school to learn how to use the equipment. When the techs came in to do some adjustments, they brought in Visual Commuter Computers to use as terminals! We had a laugh and talked tech stuff when I showed them my own system. Having a tech background helped because when the unit died, I was able to troubleshoot the problem over the phone with the tech and even replace parts they sent us, saving service calls. This gig lasted until the great recession of 1991. The firm was growing rapidly with projected income in 1989 of 250K or more, but that came to an abrupt halt and the fun was over. During this time, I had my 2nd job as a computer operator running the Dec 11/780s and the Sun servers. That ended in 1992 when they were carted up to Montreal. The family business had moved on from the Varityper since the lease was up and everything was moving to desktop publishing by that time. They invested in an ECRM VR-30 imagesetter and we did some beta-testing for ECRM. We were the only all PC site running COPS-Talk to connect to the Apple-Talk drivers running on the RIP. Someday, I'll talk about all this hardware on both systems. It's pretty fascinating.

In 1992 I ended up as a computer operator for an insurance company, and that came to an end when I took a hiatus from MIS, computer rooms, and the super high-tech world in 1995 to 1998. I had gone from the computer room to hardware tech support and dealt with a OCD coworker, ended up getting physically ill and getting blamed for not being a company team player! I resigned, took a trip to Halifax, NS to visit my uncle's family and came back recovered more or less. I had a job a few days later, paying the same as what I made working in Boston without the stress, working for a consulting firm that sold training programs for the plastics industry. Using 3d-studio R4 for DOS, models of injection molding machines, molds, and parts, animations were done to show how everything worked. Combined with live footage, the programs were assembled into the training programs using some proprietary software that utilized feedback loops to pick up specific points in the videos to replay the answers. The software was buggy, but like anything else you figure it out pretty quicky and work around the quirks. I figured out how to enable different configurations for playback hardware and do other things no one thought of, and when I visited the software developer for another issue, they wanted to hire me on the spot!

Anyway, this was my introduction to 3d modeling. While I didn't do a lot for the job, I did some on my own and some of my still models were used in some videos on PLLs and other circuits for some other training videos. During this time, I met Michele Bousquet of Many Worlds Productions who consulted there. In addition to consulting, she worked for Autodesk, later Discreet, and also 3d Magazine. She taught me a lot about modeling and while that remained a hobby for me, it never went very far. I ended up getting Animatek's World Builder, initially from her to try, then on my own when I purchased my own license. I got involved in their beta for one of the releases and I still have WB 4.x, and it works under Windows 11.

My brother though ended up getting Electric Image and did a lot of work with that until the Mac hardware got too expensive. His hardware and software requirements were north of $10K and Apple had just dumped support for the G-series Macs. Like you, he moved on to PCs, and I discovered Bryce and other programs too and did some beta testing with him on Amapi Pro and used Strata 3D, Hexagon, and Carrera.

I made a few things for World Builder. My single asset, the now built-in strip mall is all I made for Trainz. I have done some reskins for my own use. I enjoy making worlds now and viewing them from the ground view. It's not that I don't have the interest. It's the fact that I'd rather build whole worlds instead of little pieces.

It's unfortunate that education is so expensive. A career costing $200K or more is beyond imaginable. Out of all of this, my intent was to work for a year to save up to go to school for music. I ended up working for 38 years before I did a year at UMASS-Lowell as a piano performance major. I ended up leaving after a full year because... I ran out of money. Even with student loans, I still had to pay a mortgage too. From there I ended up back in IT when the jobs came back in 2010 and was force-retired in 2012.

 

[pcas1986]

In defence of the Trainz WiKi there is good information there if you know how to use the WiKi and know what to search for. But its not written like a book and most people, at least from my generation, would probably like a book approach with chapters and chapter descriptions. Our younger members want a video. On Trainz Discord I often see requests for a video rather than a description. Maybe reading is hard work for some!

For the record my first computer was a Texas Instruments TI99/4 followed by the 4A version. Had some nice graphics for the time (late 1970s). My first work computer had removable hard disks about 12 to 15'' in size and 9 1/4" floppy disks. To start it you had to input octal (base 8) code with switches and then press an IPL (initial program/process load?) switch. My first programming job was about two years assembly code doing data capture on a milspec computer.

Despite getting on a bit in years I love computing technology and especially all the neat stuff coming out continuously for computer graphics. For example, I'd love to do some VR modelling for Trainz. I know that Chris from N3V is/was keen on it but it is a bit of a jump from where Trainz is now.

 

[boleyd]

One thing that N3v is TOTALLY insensitive to is this forum. A smart possible buyer would always check the vendors forum to see the condition of the product. These forums do nothing to enhance sales and are a sales impediment. TRAINZ is contrary to the naval axiom that A Bitc___ Crew IS A Happy Crew.

 

[martinvk]

I would use the word "tolerant" instead. Unless you blatantly violate the CoC, I find this is a very free flowing forum where all sorts of opinions can be expressed from the most over-the-top fan-boy post to the most anti-Trainz and everything in between. I don't think I would stay in a forum that was subject to heavy handed moderation, where a dissenting opinion can get you banned or have the post deleted.

 

[pware]

These forums do nothing to enhance sales and are a sales impediment. TRAINZ is contrary to the naval axiom that A Bitc___ Crew IS A Happy Crew.

I agree with Martinvk's response to your post. The forum is a great source of information, as well as misinformation but that is more a symptom of our "social media" era.

I would ignore the forum if it was just a tool of N3Vs marketing dept and simply promoted the good points of the product.

As for being contrary to the old naval axiom, Greg Lane the founder of Auran (which became N3V), once remarked that the fact that Trainz Users often complained about the product but displayed their loyalty by sticking with it was a good sign. The complaints meant that they did care.

 

[boleyd]

That's amazing stuff and even more amazing that it worked at all. That 2ft diameter core sounds about right. The Centurion has one of those and I think the Bendix from 1957 has one as well. The Bendix is nearly 100% vacuum tubes too, which is fascinating given the amount of power required to run this system with its minimal amount of memory, storage and CPU logic. The logic here too was done in vacuum tubes as well.

It's too bad the employees weren't given the option to purchase or be given the old Apple computers. It's a shame to see old but working hardware just thrown away. It's because of that, that I have a few Sun workstations. All are operational and run three different versions of Solaris. I got two from Polaroid and one from someone at Merrimack College who found out the college was ditching some for some equipment upgrade. I learned a lot using these.

Those impact printers are noisy. I used to work with the DEC LP-27s in a computer room full of VAXs and some Sun servers. I could tell what was being printed by the sound and rhythm of the banner and reports being printed. Since the reports were printed in the same order every night, I knew when it was time to start putting reports away and start cleaning up the servers after running the batches. At that time, I was working for Infinet, a company that made modems for ISPs, banks, and big companies. They eventually got bought up by Teleglobe and Memoteq from Canada and are gone today. I worked on their hardware prior to moving to MIS which I actually l really liked. In the end I got to write some batch jobs and build some database queries in Datatrieve 32.

Contract with Apple to not release the discarded Apples, which would have had a negative effect on sales.

 

[martinvk]

You mean the discarded Apples were that competitive with the then latest models? Where I worked, they had a 3 year replacement policy on laptops and employees could buy the old ones at a discount, better than dumping them in the trash. While they were business models, they were just fine as secondary home laptops to browse the Internet, email, etc.

 

[boleyd]

Sorry, I did not offer some time frame. This was very early in the Apple product. Our President was an engineer who was tapped into the computer industry. So he thought Apple was a major step forward but in our commercial office they did not do well. We even tried a fancy new Sun work station but it also did not have the software for business apps. Our division was the business computing operation of the Westinghouse Electric Corp.