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I also wonder how much the difficulty of sharing files between different systems due to different disk formats played a role in its failure.

You could run p-system on a lot of machines - Apple II, IBM PC, TI-99/4A, PDP11... but how would you (and why would you) distribute your code across machines with such different storage media?



Oh, people found ways to transfer files. BBSs were one way, the Kermit program another, NNTP newsgroups, etc.

I transferred files from my PDP-11 (8" floppies) to my PC (5.25" floppies) using Kermit.


Maybe it was more of a problem of not being able to think of a use case for running a pCode program meant for a 512K PDP11 on a 48K Apple II+. A bit ahead of its time.


It was definitely ahead of its time, but I and others tried to use it. It was just too slow, and you couldn't make competitive products with it.




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