_{Cover of the February 1985 issue of PC World}

PC World was one of the most popular magazines dedicated to IBM PC and compatible computers. I thrived in the 1980s and 1990s and survived well into the second decade of the new century. However, like pretty much all computer magazines, this one eventually died as a result of the Internet. The February 1985 issue includes:

Getting Started

Strategies for Sharing Resources - A multi-user system with multiple terminals or a LAN may be a better alternative to simply buying more PCs when your business needs to expand.

Community

The Organization LAN - The necessity of networking when dealing with a multitude of PCs.

Review

Six Leading LANs - A comparison of the six leading Local Area Network solutions, including Netware/S-Net (Novell), EtherSeries (3Com), Omninet (Corvus Systems), PLAN 3000 (Nestar Systems), PCnet (Orchid Technology), and Net/One (Ungermann-Bass).

The Multiuser Dimension - An alternative to a LAN was a multi-user system with IBM PCs basically used as smart terminals. This article looks specifically at the North Star Dimension which supported 12 workstation, ran a custom OS and was compatible with MS-DOS 2.11.

_{Table of Contents from the February 1985 issue of PC World}

PCjr World

Color on Command - A look at the Palette command provided on cartridge BASIC for the IBM PCjr. This was a command designed to allow for easily changing colors or even doing simple animations.

A Drive to Succeed - The PCjr was limited in a variety of ways compared to the PC. However, there were several add-ons that were made by third parties to improve the situation. This article looks at one such product, the "Drive Two Enhancement Package" from Rapport. This package includes a second disk drive, a parallel printer port, a clock/calendar with battery backup, and an optional 128K-384K memory expansion. It also increases compatibility with PC software.

State of the Art

A New Focus on Data Management - A look at PC/Focus, a "fourth generation" computer language (Focus) for the PC. It's main advantage seems to be making data management easier.

Hands On

Untangling Networks - A guide to finding the Local Arean Network product that will work best for you.

_{Table of Contents from the February 1985 issue of PC World (continued)}

Departments

Davin Bunnell - An interesting story in which a user planted stolen credit card numbers on a BBS without the sysops knowledge. The phone company somehow discovered this through its own BBS snooping software and notified the police. The poor guy who ran the BBS had is computer confiscated (stolen) and was charged as an accessory to the crime. An argument is presented here as to whether the BBS operator is equivalent to a newspaper publisher or simply providing a communications medium. This argument has come up more recently with social media but as you can see, it's nothing new.

Letters - Letters from readers about indexes of old articles, a tip for entering a date in Lotus 1-2-3 that auto updates, the PCs chess playing skills, Sargon III, and more.

PC World View - Microsoft debuts the Microsoft Press International Publishing Consortium through which it will publish various books around the world; the usage of personal computers in political campaigns increased greatly in 1984...most of the time, those using computers won; a prototype IBM PC AT was stolen from an IBM lab in Palm Beach County, Florida. The thief was not caught; IBM announces its own local area network product; and more.

The Help Screen - Questions answered about using RAM disks.

_{Back cover of the February 1985 issue of PC World}

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Books I am reading or have recently read:

The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
The Templars by Dan Jones
Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch

Great article looking back at 70s and 80s computing. I was watching the show, Halt and catch fire, put me right into that era. Although this was a bit more corporate.

But the advent of LAN and computing back them make me guess what type of processes where they running or demanding as most of the software was essentially terminal based and CRUD tasks.

Computing in offices haven't change really that much nowadays as most of it is also data processing, maybe to more inefficient ways as right now most file formats and construction of data became more clumsy.

Think for example the huge zoom sessions and virtual meetings without a way to find information, let alone present it to the reviewer. Something was said by someone at some point in a pile of gigabytes of video data.

That said I'm curious to see these fourth generation languages and what could they do. Specially a language design for networking programming.

Sort:

jza last year

darth-azrael last year

I watched Halt and Catch Fire when it first came out and really liked it. It's one I'd like to re-watch at some point.

I hate how organization of data has gone from hierarchical to just throw it somewhere and rely on searching. This is made even worse by switching to different products every few years. For example, Zoom to Teams or Google Docs to Microsoft (Teams again really). I use those particular examples because we've done exactly that where I work. Finding stuff is a pain.

0.00 VYB

poshthreads last year

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PC World (February 1985)