How was it like to WORK 8 hours on a retro computer?

[Casey]

While I did not do it for 8 hours a day, my first job which I was still in high school was at the public library in my town.  At that time, the library had an Apple IIe for patrons to use, but the library's circulation database was managed by an IBM PC XT with the green phosphor monochrome monitor.  Transaction backups were written to floppy disk every 30 or so transactions.

 

At some point we got a new version of the database application and it just could not run well on the XT.  The interactive part was ok, but when it would do the transaction backup to floppy disk, that would take up to 20 minutes instead of the 30 seconds from the previous version.  The XT was then replaced with an IBM PS/2 386 (with monochrome VGA monitor) and the XT was relegated to the back office where it was used to create card catalog cards, book spine labels, and it would write those records onto a floppy disk that we could take over to the PS/2 to import into the database.  Since the machines were not networked (no network at all in the library), this was how we interchanged information between them.

 

Years later, I was given that PC XT...  I wish I still had it.

[MrMaddog]

7 hours ago, zzip said:

There were different VAX models, some were small "MicroVAX".   To me it was always some mysterious piece of hardware locked away in a back room somewhere that I rarely ever saw.  We just interacted with it through DEC terminals.   I was never a huge fan of VMS (the typical VAX OS),  so I can't say I'm particularly nostalgic for them ?

Thanks for the nice read, it was great to "relive" the VAX days...

 

Anyways, it was very rare to find any 8-bit micro used for business purposes unless it was some person who lugged in their own machine because they prefer using Atariwriter over WordStar.  There were stories of 8-bits being used for home and even small businesses but otherwise it was all PC clones and before that either mainframes or CP/M machines.

 

I had an Atari 8-bit growing up but once I entered college in the early 90's, I knew I would be working with more serious computer setups like the VAXs and UNIX servers.  So I got a computer that can allow me to remotely dial in the school's computer lab and work on my program projects.  The PC's were primary used for clerical work like word processing and spreadsheets while Macs were for desktop publishing.  Amigas and ST's were still fine for home use in addition to non-console gaming.

 

But Windows had completely taken over not only businesses and schools but also home computers so that's what everyone had to move to without getting left behind.  Especially with the introduction of the World Wide Web...

 

[zzip]

14 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

I had an Atari 8-bit growing up but once I entered college in the early 90's, I knew I would be working with more serious computer setups like the VAXs and UNIX servers.  So I got a computer that can allow me to remotely dial in the school's computer lab and work on my program projects.  The PC's were primary used for clerical work like word processing and spreadsheets while Macs were for desktop publishing.  Amigas and ST's were still fine for home use in addition to non-console gaming

I think my ST worked fine in my college days,  it could dial-in and interact with the VAXes, but also exchange disks with the PCs since it used the FAT format.  The PC labs were often crowded at crunch time, so I could write papers on my ST, and take them down to the lab for printing.

 

Also in college my roommate became a very early adopter of Linux (early 90s).   He installed it on his computer and suggested I wire my ST up as a 'terminal'.  We did.   I wasn't sure what to do with Linux at first,  but then I got an idea.   It had always annoyed me that my ST didn't have a battery-backed up clock, so it's time would always reset at boot.   So I wrote a program that logged into his linux server, checked the time, and set the ST clock accordingly and had it run at boot.   I think it annoyed him though, that his awesome linux machine was being used for such a trivial task :) 

[JamesD]

Before micros, I remember my family getting utility or other bills that were printed by computers. 
Whenever there was a mistake it was always a "computer error", though I'm pretty sure someone mistyped something.
Some of the bills came with a card that must have had the account number encoded on it with punched holes for return with the payment.
I think someone at the local office would enter the payment info onto that punch card, and they would all be sent off for processing at a central location.

The first micro-computers came out about when I was in jr high school.  I saw a Model I at a county fair but that's the only one I remember.
Our school got one micro-computer as part of a grant from the gifted student program in 1979.  A Model I.
Around that time, a local gas station used a Data General with custom software to keep track of all his inventory/sales.
That was the first time I saw a disk pack.  It looked like this, though it was on top of the actual computer.  The owner seemed really proud of that machine.  I can't remember how much he said it cost for sure ($34,000?), but it was a lot.


For work study, I wrote some software for my high school to track their accounts on a TRS-80 Model III which was also used to type correspondence in the school office.  It paid $2/hr.
By the time I finished high school, a few people were using 8 bits as word processors, running Visicalc, or some accounting software. 

Around that time a large local mailorder business had a few Model IIs for word processing, but most of the work was done via terminals. 
They used COBOL and RPG, though I don't know the timeline on when they started using those.
Pretty sure RPG was for order entry/handling, and was still used till they sold out a few years ago, but they had transitioned a lot of code to Java.

Local libraries started keeping track of books in custom software that ran on the Apple II in the mid 80s.
They would type in the info, then the program would print the Dewey Decimal sticker, and store it in the database.
When you checked out a book, the computer kept track of it, and could generate late notices/fees.
I think a local village library still uses an 8088 PC running off of floppies to do this.  It works, and they'd have to retype everything if they upgraded.
I can't be sure but it appears to be written in either UCSD Pascal or an MS-DOS Business BASIC compiler that uses a custom disk format and a bytecode interpreter.

When I was in college they tried to get me to write some software on the Apple II for their ag lab that would log data, and plot results.  I opted to make money another way that paid more per hour.
The college still used terminals attached to a mini-computer, but they also had labs with Apple IIe and IBM PCs.  Still just floppy drives. 
The dean of the CS dept showed us a dialup connection to The SOURCE.  300 freakin baud.
We also connected remotely to the university's Cyber CDC something mainframe via a hardline. 
We somehow had email via ARPANET or something like that.  We could remote into other computers across the country from the Cyber if we had accounts.

I transferred to a university that had CP/M machines in some labs, AS400, IBM PCs, Apple IIe's in a few places, and various Unix boxes.  My Unix/C class was taught on a box with a 68012.
Mac labs sprung up in the dept of education, there were some video production labs with Amigas equipped with video toasters, etc...
They sold Macs in the campus store.  I remember the first PowerPC Macs selling there cheaper than the local dealer.
DEC Alphas replaced a lot of the larger machines by the time I left.

I developed software for the Amiga for a while as a partner in a small company. 
We also made external disk drives for the Amiga.

My first consulting job (late 80s) had me developing in C, and assembly for an embedded system with a 68020 and 5500 DSP. 
This was the first system I ever saw using an FPGA.  Bleeding edge stuff.
I was using an 8088, the guy next to me had a 286, and the lead had a new 386.  They had *me* doing the integration builds. 
Full builds took 45 minutes till I ran across the manual for the motherboard in the PC I was on.  I hard jumpered it for 12MHz and that dropped to around 20 minutes.

In the early 90's I worked for a company making data logging equipment based on the 64180 (the basis of the Z180).  
8 bits were already relegated to small embedded devices.
This was the first time I ever saw Flash memory which was the basis for a custom solid state data pack.  No flash cards existed yet. 
I developed the external drive that let you read or write from/to the data packs with a PC.  It was connected via serial interface.  No USB yet.
 

*edit*
I was still attending college part time during the last 3

 

Edited December 8, 2021 by JamesD

[jhd]

On 12/7/2021 at 12:35 PM, zzip said:

There were different VAX models, some were small "MicroVAX".   To me it was always some mysterious piece of hardware locked away in a back room somewhere that I rarely ever saw.  We just interacted with it through DEC terminals.   I was never a huge fan of VMS (the typical VAX OS),  so I can't say I'm particularly nostalgic for them ?

 

When I started University (1988), my Department operated several MicroVax for internal e-mail and as file servers. Most everyone had access to DOS PCs (WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, and some other specialized software), but a few of the faculty did heavy number-crunching and analysis, and so they needed the Vax hardware. When I eventually got to see the actual system (we just used terminals to access), I was shocked how very small it was. 

 

VMS was definitely cumbersome and verbose. Fortunately, a friend was a CS major at another school, and he helped me learn my way around the system.   

 

I fondly remember the naming conventions. Our cluster was named Earth (faculty e-mail and file server), Moon (student e-mail), and Stars (data analysis). Another local university named their cluster after trees (e.g. Pine, Maple, Oak, etc.). 

[IntelliMission]

@JamesD Thanks! I wish I could have tried all those machines. Anyway and not to nitpick, you only answered one of the questions (model of computers used). So... what was your experience using one of them for 8 hours? Did you grow some "love" for them? Did you manage to run any games on them or connect to any "pseudo-Internet"? Were some of them more comfortable to use due to the keyboard or screens? ?

 

I could add a fourth question to the initial post: After years/months/weeks using these machines for serious stuff at work, was any of you guys nostalgic enough to buy one for yourselves 20 years later or emulate it to play games (or do other stuff)?

Edited December 9, 2021 by IntelliMission

[zzip]

23 minutes ago, IntelliMission said:

I could add a fourth question to the initial post: After years/months/weeks using these machines for serious stuff at work, was any of you guys nostalgic enough to buy one for yourselves 20 years later or emulate it to play games (or do other stuff)?

Not really.   I don't miss VAX/VMS very much, as for Unix systems I've used (HP/UX, Solaris, AIX, SCO),  I'd rather use Linux since the tools are more robust than the System V-based stuff.   I did get installation CDs for SCO and Solaris x86 at some point but I don't think I ever installed them.

 

[krslam]

55 minutes ago, IntelliMission said:

@JamesD

I could add a fourth question to the initial post: After years/months/weeks using these machines for serious stuff at work, was any of you guys nostalgic enough to buy one for yourselves 20 years later or emulate it to play games (or do other stuff)?

I did buy a Kaypro at a thrift years later, but it sits mostly unused. Actually tried firing it up last night but can't find the boot disks...

 

Would have picked up an HP9825 if I'd ever found one cheap, but I don't know what I'd do with it.

[JamesD]

1 hour ago, IntelliMission said:

@JamesD Thanks! I wish I could have tried all those machines. Anyway and not to nitpick, you only answered one of the questions (model of computers used). So... what was your experience using one of them for 8 hours? Did you grow some "love" for them? Did you manage to run any games on them or connect to any "pseudo-Internet"? Were some of them more comfortable to use due to the keyboard or screens? ?

 

I could add a fourth question to the initial post: After years/months/weeks using these machines for serious stuff at work, was any of you guys nostalgic enough to buy one for yourselves 20 years later or emulate it to play games (or do other stuff)?

Rambling mode enabled.

I have nostalgia for the Model I/III since that's what I first learned on, but I never program on them.
The Tandy CoCo was my first machine, and I occasionally do some programming for that for fun but I usually use an emulator.
I've spent time programming in assembly for the Tandy MC-10, VTEC VZ200, Apple II, Oric, Atari, Plus/4, Acorn Atom, Coleco Adam, etc...  
I didn't have any of these machines back in the day, but I guess I just wanted to play with them.

The only word processing I did on an 8 bit was on the CoCo.  VIP Writer which used graphics to display text so I could type in upper & lower case, preview page layout, etc... 
I had to assign keycodes to certain keys on the keyboard to print Italics, superscript, subscript, etc... on the printer because it wasn't standard.  I created labels for the sides of the keys to show which ones did what.
Things didn't just work out of the package with my printer, but after the customization it worked really well.
VIP Writer was probably better than a lot of the word processors out there at the time.
Spell checking required constant disk access.  I was writing a final term paper for an English class, and started spell checking it at 4 a.m.  The power in the dorms glitched and I lost EVERYTHING!
With only 150K per disk and backups requiring swapping disks if you had a single drive, you tended to skip it.  I took the F, retook the class the next year and got an A, but backups were step #1 from then on.
Frankly, floppies were a huge improvement over cassette, but they weren't as reliable as hard drives.
Cassette on the CoCo was 1500 baud.  That was pretty fast for cassette, but saving to tape over and over as I made progress on a BASIC program took too long and I ended up with 60 or 90 minute tapes with dozens of saves.
I wouldn't have wanted to even try word processing with cassette.

I don't really miss the mainframes or mini computers. 
Most machines had different commands for the same thing and typing at terminals wasn't my idea of a good time.
I think I'd call that minimal functionality by today's standards.
If I were to use one now it would be like yep... that's what I remember and that would be the end of it.
If the machine went down, it went down for everyone, and it was usually at a bad time.  You couldn't just reset the machine to kill a runaway program, you had to ask an admin to kill it.
I don't miss the MS-DOS days or the 8088-80386 years at all. 

Workstations were pretty reliable and you could do work locally just like with a PC.  More reliable than PCs even in the Pentium years.
In the early days, only one or two programmers worked on a project for 8 bits or PCs. 
Programming with a large group suddenly became common once you were on workstations.
You check out the code, make changes, build, unit test, then check the code in.  There is an integration build, integration testing, etc... to see that everything works together.
That's how things are still done to this day, but the tools have improved.
Compile times have improved, but the code size has exploded to the point where it can take longer to build a project now than when I was doing the integration builds on the 8088.
I use an AMD 3900X with 64GB of RAM these days, and I have a RAM cache on the NVMe drives I develop on at home. 
That kinda cuts down compile times, but employers love to give developers PCs better suited to word processing than development.

I spent many years developing under Unix, and I still do development under Linux.  It's one of the most productive environments for development there is, but I have a dual boot PC because... not everything runs on Linux.
Unix hasn't really changed much from the command line for a lot of what I do, but the UIs are light years better than the first ones I used.  I could have never used a workstation for word processing back then.
The Amiga was THE most productive development environment I worked under, and I miss the OS for that reason, but the display wasn't as sharp/crisp/whatever as PC's from EGA onward. 

Editing a BASIC program with the standard editor that came with 8 bit machines sucks compared to more modern text editor. 
The TRS-80s have line editors.  You had to type EDIT # to change a line, and there were a bunch of commands you had to know.
The Apple II, C64, etc... have screen editors where you can list the program, then use cursor keys to go up and make changes to a line without special commands.
VI kinda sucks on Unix. I avoid it these days.
Editors on mainframe/mini computers sucked.  Like VI only worse.  Some only allowed a certain number of characters per line.

The first time I ditched BASIC for a compiler in college I said "this is how things should be done". 
That was Fortran and I thought it was great. 
Then I learned Pascal and said this is how code should be formatted, and Fortran sucks.  
Then I learned C and said I hate Pascal.
To this day I still prefer C, or C++.  Well, maybe a subset of C++.  Modern C++ is feature creep by committee.

When I first started programming on the Amiga, I was using floppy drives.  I had 1.  I had to kick off a compile, then come back and swap disks, swap disks, swap disks... it was horrible.
I'd kick off a compile, go to bed, wake up and listen for the floppy drive running and if it had stopped, I knew it was time to swap disks.
If there was an error, I had to fix it and start the evil over again, but to be honest, at least it was possible on the Amiga.
The first big step was getting additional drives so I didn't have to swap disks for the compiler. 
The next big step was a RAM expansion for the 1000 I was using that let me copy a lot of the files the compiler needed to a RAM disk so that compile times were a lot faster.
I switched to a 2000, bought my first 80MB HD and a 2MB RAM + SCSI controller.  I could kick off a compile, edit code, and do other stuff at the same time.
This was light years ahead of MS-DOS, or anything else I'd previously used. 
Computers had reached a turning point.  Some CoCo fans will point out they could run multiple programs at a time on OS-9 at the same time before the Amiga existed, but I skipped that.
It wasn't until Windows 95 that PCs started to get some of the features like the Amiga had, and Windows 98 was the first PC GUI I really liked.
I still used an Amiga 3000 for some things up till the year 2000, but more and more of what I did at home was on the PC.

The advancement in computers from 1979 to 1989 was massive from a usability standpoint, and the shift from BASIC, to Pascal, to C was just as massive for development.
Switching from a dedicated command line where you couldn't do anything else to full multitasking using multiple windows running at the same time completely changed the experience.
Now I even type in BASIC programs in a text editor on the PC and paste them into the emulator for testing.
Assembling code for any 8 bit is always done on a cross assembler, never on the original machine.
Debugging assembly using an emulator is so much easier than doing it on the machines themselves it's not even funny.

•  

[JamesD]

FWIW, using any of those machines for 8 hours was okay at the time. 
I just wouldn't want to do it now.  Actually, as each improvement came along, I didn't want to go back to what came before.
My first access to a computer network from home was Compuserve at 1200 baud. 
Uploading or downloading took forever.
Even 56K modems sucked because by the time things got to that point, everything was bigger.

[zzip]

11 minutes ago, JamesD said:

VI kinda sucks on Unix. I avoid it these days.

Yet it amazes me how many people still use it, especially people who don't know Unix/Linux that well.   There are much more intuitive editors available even in text mode..   I get that VI and Vim have power-user features that a certain subset of users swear by,  but most of the people I've seen use it are not using those features.

 

15 minutes ago, JamesD said:

Then I learned Pascal and said this is how code should be formatted, and Fortran sucks.  
Then I learned C and said I hate Pascal.

I hated that they taught us PASCAL in school.  They taught us that it was a 'teaching language' and not used for real work.   I wanted to learn C instead since it seemed more useful.

 

But then my first job out of college?  Porting a real-world Pascal application from one platform to another ?

[+Cafeman]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

I hated that they taught us PASCAL in school.  They taught us that it was a 'teaching language' and not used for real work.   I wanted to learn C instead since it seemed more useful.

 

But then my first job out of college?  Porting a real-world Pascal application from one platform to another ?

 I also was taught Pascal in college, it was a data structures course. I have never again encountered Pascal. Or Ada.  But I've come full circle, my current job is all Ibm Jcl, Cobol, and natural. And Quikjob, if you've ever heard of that.

[zzip]

1 minute ago, Cafeman said:

 I also was taught Pascal in college, it was a data structures course. I have never again encountered Pascal. Or Ada.  But I've come full circle, my current job is all Ibm Jcl, Cobol, and natural. And Quikjob, if you've ever heard of that.

They taught us Modula-2 in our Data Structures course.   Modula-2 was basically Pascal with the equivalent of #include statements added (import) 

[JamesD]

6 hours ago, zzip said:

I hated that they taught us PASCAL in school.  They taught us that it was a 'teaching language' and not used for real work.   I wanted to learn C instead since it seemed more useful.

 

But then my first job out of college?  Porting a real-world Pascal application from one platform to another ?

Oddly enough, I was recently made aware of a potential job opening that requires Pascal.  The guy that has been maintaining the code for 30 years or so is talking about retiring.

[JamesD]

6 hours ago, JamesD said:

Workstations were pretty reliable and you could do work locally just like with a PC.  More reliable than PCs even in the Pentium years.

One thing I'd like to add about this.
I wrote an application for a major internet company that let customers update their credit card payment information without having to a customer service agent.
This application saved the company over $25,000 per month!
The system I had to communicate with to get current account info was running Windows NT.
The Windows box was set to reboot at 3 a.m. every day so it wouldn't lock up, and it STILL locked up.
My java ap ran on a Sun Workstation.  It never failed.  Never!!!
 

[IntelliMission]

That gives me an idea for another thread...

 

 

[mr_me]

In the mid 1990s I worked for a company that sold software and computers.  All the sales people had a DOS PC with wordperfect and a networked customer management database system.  It had a messaging system for interoffice messages that nobody used.  If someone needed to talk to a coworker they got up and walked to their office. The technical staff that provided customer support and training were not issued computers, if you can believe that.  They taught classes without having a computer themselves.  I don't remember having much free time to waste, lots of work to do, maybe reading manuals.  It wasn't long before the transition to internet, windows 95, email etc.

 

On 12/4/2021 at 3:30 PM, IntelliMission said:

Yeah, I've actually only seen this once.

Tetris by Spectrum Holobyte had a boss key.  It would pause the game and put a Lotus123 looking spreadsheet on the screen.

Edited December 10, 2021 by mr_me

[+davidcalgary29]

I know that I'm not the only one who used a 130XE and Atariwriter 80 to write university essays into the early '90s, and I certainly had to sit at the machine for entire days doing this. I believe that I typed my last essay on the A8 in '93. 

 

I think people forget how terrible it could be working on '90s peripherals that we take for granted today. When I was a T.A. at university, I was asked to hand scan eighteenth century novels and collate the results into a database. It was excruciatingly slow busywork.

[+LS650]

The first 'serious' job I had was deploying and supporting these for a large government agency:

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portable_386

Back in the day (late 80s) these were some seriously skookum machines.  I've often thought of picking one up from eBay just for nostalgia.

 

[+OLD CS1]

@ls650 Bonus points for the word "skookum."  I have a favored YouTuber who uses that word... look over to the left... yup, he is from BC, too.

[potatohead]

One kind of work I did was CAD.  Back in the day, I was running wireframe 3D CAD on 386 boxes with 8 to 16Mb of RAM, hard disk, some nice monitor, usually VGA, and sometimes better than 640x480. 

 

Had an idea for a program to run inside that CAD system that would help some industry specific people knock out models faster.  Needed my own machine, and the ones I had were not up to the task.  I had an Atari 800XL, Tandy CoCo 3, and a well equipped Apple 2 with 80 column card and an external modem. 

 

One day, I scored some Amstrad thing and it had a Hard Card in it!  Was just enough to run the CAD, and I could write my program and so I did!  Was a month or so running pretty big software on a pretty small computer!

 

The things I remember:

 

Having duplicated files on various floppies to reduce the need for shuffling them around.  Making backups of backups.  Kept my source on a few at a time and would roll them all up into a master each week. 

 

That Hard Card filled up fast.  CAD system took most of the drive.

 

CGA was the bare minimum, and I was viewing it on a shitty CRT.  That 15Khz signal got burned into my ears. 

 

Scored a co-processor chip for the Amstrad and it made a big difference!

 

Everything was slow, but kind of exciting at the same time.  Mostly this meant being able to ignore the slow an just focus.  No real task switching.  When I figured out I could boot the CAD, then drop to a shell inside the CAD, it made a huge difference.  Suddenly, I could write, compile test and repeat without the long startup and slowdown cycles.

 

Keyboards were great!  Even kind of lousy ones. 

 

On my Apple, I would dial up to use USENET in somewhat slow 80 column text.  Moved that to my PC and enjoyed colors!  Spiffy.

 

There were not as many features as we have today.  One had to plan out a workflow and then do it.  This often meant launching something, do something, save off the data, close, launch something else, do something else, perhaps use that data, maybe just type it in again, save it off, close.   Wash, rinse, repeat a lot.

 

Often, I could think quicker than the computer.  Was always waiting for it.  Today, that is rare, though it does happen.

 

At work, on the 386 machines, we would sometimes switch monitor cables to mess with colors.  One guy would go through and adjust them all, and we would switch them back, lolol

 

640x480 seemed roomy after dealing with the 200 and 300 line displays from before.  SVGA and friends took those 386 machines up to a 1024x768 pixel display.  In my mind, this was workstation class visuals.  Doing that cost $$$

 

Utilities were a bigger fact of life.  File managers, terminal emulators, various little programs I wrote in BASIC to get things done, like format G-code, generate it, perform calculations.  Boot menus were a thing too.  Rather than an OS with some program manager, dock, start menu, people would just boot their machine, get to their boot menu and then select the program or task and do it, then reboot again.  Sometimes one could exit a program and just run the booter again. 

 

It was important to know more about the computer.  Adding cards required understanding the machine and configuring to work.

 

No sounds but the crappy PC speaker.  Early work computing looked a lot like running an Apple 2.  Sound was considered non essential for working.

 

Don't forget to clean that mouse ball!

 

 

[IntelliMission]

Just to provide some context to non-Amstrad conoisseurs, the Amstrad thing he scored was an Amstrad PC 1512, not an Amstrad CPC or Amstrad PCW (the most successful models). I checked the specs a couple of years ago and it was basically a PC with a couple of "improvements" to the CGA mode.

[zzip]

9 hours ago, potatohead said:

640x480 seemed roomy after dealing with the 200 and 300 line displays from before.  SVGA and friends took those 386 machines up to a 1024x768 pixel display.  In my mind, this was workstation class visuals.  Doing that cost $$$

It's amazing that we were able to get by with 640x480 or 800x600 displays on single 15" or so CRTs!   These days, I work on dual 24" 1080p monitors and there still isn't enough screen space many times.   I guess there are way more apps we need to juggle now.

[+Cafeman]

On 12/10/2021 at 8:09 PM, davidcalgary29 said:

I know that I'm not the only one who used a 130XE and Atariwriter 80 to write university essays into the early '90s, and I certainly had to sit at the machine for entire days doing this. I believe that I typed my last essay on the A8 in '93. 

You are not alone.  I used my 1200XL, AtariWriter cart,  and the 1027 letter quality printer to write all my later high school and college reports and essays.  Worked great but I wouldnt go back to that ancient and limited technology.  I had another A8 word processing software program on disk towards the end which was much more flexible and powerful , though I forget the name. 

[+davidcalgary29]

7 minutes ago, Cafeman said:

You are not alone.  I used my 1200XL, AtariWriter cart,  and the 1027 letter quality printer to write all my later high school and college reports and essays.  Worked great but I wouldnt go back to that ancient and limited technology.  I had another A8 word processing software program on disk towards the end which was much more flexible and powerful , though I forget the name. 

The First XLent Word Processor? That one was pretty good.