Captain Cozmos Posted December 16, 2022 Share Posted December 16, 2022 I read somewhere in a galaxy far far away that either Amiga or Coleco was sued over the rights to the blinking cursor. So, before I start OR'ing my cursors or whatever, does anyone have any thoughts on this. Everything must have been settled because even the prompt I am writing this is blinking. In any case, I now have a working parser, line feed all 40 columns that loads in at $0000. I ordered some IDE flash drives on the cheap which I can start testing access to them. I have several expansion cards to work with including a parallel, 256k, IDE, a language card, the MIB 238. I even have a 64k that's in a box. It was packed with an ADAM I bought off EBAY If someone wants to come up with a USB card then I will see what I can do. I really would like this as expandable as possible. I also have a language card that I planned on dumping but ADAM refuses to boot with it in so I am waiting for my 40 pin clip to come in so I can wire it to my EPROM reader. If that doesn't work I'll de-solder the chips then dump them. Add to the ADAM environment. CC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted December 16, 2022 Share Posted December 16, 2022 I don't recall hearing about the blinking cursor lawsuit, but any such patent is long since expired, since US patents max out at 20 years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted December 16, 2022 Author Share Posted December 16, 2022 47 minutes ago, Tursi said: I don't recall hearing about the blinking cursor lawsuit, but any such patent is long since expired, since US patents max out at 20 years. Someone remind Disney of that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted December 16, 2022 Share Posted December 16, 2022 6 hours ago, Captain Cozmos said: Someone remind Disney of that Copyright is not the same system as Patents. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
else Posted December 16, 2022 Share Posted December 16, 2022 Never heard of blinking cursor lawsuits either. Got any links where we can read about it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted December 16, 2022 Author Share Posted December 16, 2022 My new toy came in. Part of the 4 gigabyte Mass Storage ADAM DOS Project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted December 16, 2022 Share Posted December 16, 2022 39 minutes ago, else said: Never heard of blinking cursor lawsuits either. Got any links where we can read about it? Quick check brings up a blinking cursor from '67: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3531796A/en Maybe also thinking of the XOR cursor patent? https://patents.google.com/patent/US5471570A/en Almost certain there are others. Computer patents are notoriously overlapping Captain - is that an M-Drive? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
else Posted December 16, 2022 Share Posted December 16, 2022 Those are patents, not lawsuits. Either way, looks like there was a lawsuit against Amiga in the early 90s over XORs. Doesn't seem very relevant to anything here. Besides, there's other ways of blinking a cursor besides doing an XOR, even if the patent hadn't expired (which it did back in 2011). On the Coleco, just alternate between two characters to blink it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted December 16, 2022 Share Posted December 16, 2022 I don't have to do all your research for you. The XOR patent lawsuit wasn't about blinking, but that's the one I remember and OP mentioned OR, so... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted December 16, 2022 Author Share Posted December 16, 2022 (edited) 2 hours ago, Tursi said: Captain - is that an M-Drive? 4 gig (PATA) compatible SSD. Also a very small footprint. I don't necessarily want to use an old Microfox IDE connector either. I am researching all kinds of options in case I run into issues. Another problem is that the MIB card is an excellent piece of hardware. People are moving to from local storage to WIFI which I personally consider overkill for this piece of equipment. So, if I can make ADAM perform like a reasonable DOS computer of the day then maybe people will start writing applications for it. When you look at old PC's or something like the TRS business type models they were easier to write software for than the ADAM was. CP/M was brought in to sell to the business community and then everything went phooey. I am not naive to think that ADAM will catch on again but this is my small contribution and I won't need a license. So if my version of DOS performs and has a library of graphic and sound commands in C or C++ then everyone wins. We have that already but meant for the colecovision and not in a very to easy manipulate environment. My goal is to bring up My DOS, load an IDE like Turbo C... Write, Compile, and run. In 40 columns natively or 80 columns with the Phoenix or whatever comes along. Personally I would rather have 80. It is my 100% intent to replace OS7 and EOS with modern programing. But who knows, maybe I'll get bored after 6 months and go fishing instead. Edited December 17, 2022 by Captain Cozmos 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
else Posted December 17, 2022 Share Posted December 17, 2022 1 hour ago, Tursi said: I don't have to do all your research for you. The XOR patent lawsuit wasn't about blinking, but that's the one I remember and OP mentioned OR, so... Never asked you to do any research, now did I. My question was for OP, naturally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cozmos Posted December 17, 2022 Author Share Posted December 17, 2022 (edited) I know it does not look like much but here is my DOS parser working on a real ADAM, loaded into $0000 Edited December 17, 2022 by Captain Cozmos 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zyzzle Posted December 18, 2022 Share Posted December 18, 2022 A "blinking cursor" is much too basic a thing to copyright, just as the concept of "a window" is. Microsoft's lawsuits of the '80s failed to argue that the very concept of opening / closing a window on the screen could hold up legally in court. As far as I remember no damages or IP-rights were awarded in those lawsuits. The concept of a blinking cursor or even of a cursor itself is even more basic than that of a window, so how could you be "violating" any copyright rules there? Even if patents were applied for, they'd have long, long expired by now. So, blink your cursor away, and don't worry about such nonsense. Your project looks outstanding so far. A new DOS sounds fantastic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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