Re: Mildly OT: dBASE IV

From: Frank Hamersley <terabitemightbe_at_bigpond.com>
Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 09:04:43 GMT
Message-ID: <LUTeg.356$ap3.192_at_news-server.bigpond.net.au>


x wrote:
> "Frank Hamersley" <terabitemightbe_at_bigpond.com> wrote in message
>

>> My poison was Clipper Summer 87 and then 5.01 from Nantucket (the 2 gold
>> releases).  When Foxpro came out it was seen more as a clone of the
>> dBase user environment while Clipper was a *woo hoo* compiler (well sort
>> of)!  I ended up using Foxpro on SCO for an app that lasted for 15 years
>> before it was retired.  It was fast and quite reliable.

>
>> When M$ bought FoxPro and Nantucket went off with VO - soon followed by
>> CA slurping Nantucket up, the future was writ large on the wall.

>
> In highschool when I learned Pascal (I think it was Turbo Pascal on CP/M) in
> a camp, some colleagues learned DBase. I don't know the version number or
> the OS. I remember one from my class modified the boot floppies to display a
> message directed to the instructor of the DBase class (a pretty student
> girl).

Prolly dBase III+ - this was the version that made the big spondulaks for AT.

> Lots of FoxPro for DOS accounting/inventory applications are still in use
> here in Novelia. Clipper 5.01 ones also.

Must be rare now though - and running in DOS Compatibility mode I guess.

> What I did not liked about FoxPro, were the errors I've kept stumbling on.
> I'm born on 13, what can I say . :-)

These are not limited to FoxPro....that said on SCO we had a version 2.1.2d that was the only one capable of running all day without running out of memory etc. Once we nailed it down it ran for 15 years.

Cheers, Frank. Received on Tue May 30 2006 - 11:04:43 CEST

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