MacOzzie: Osborne One Emulator for Macintosh

MacOzzie is the latest release from InfernoSoft's ever-increasing line of abysmal software. This offering fully simulates Adam Osborne's love child and gainer of notoriety, the Osborne One.

The Osborne One was a revolution in its own lunch time, appearing in 1980 with a Z80 microprocessor, two 92kByte floppy disk drives, a built-in monitor and 64kBytes of memory. It was bundled with barely adequate software: WordStar, SuperCalc, two incompatible flavors of Basic, and CP/M to attempt to tie it all together. Why InfernoSoft would design a system to simulate this machine on the Power Macintosh is anyone's guess. Nevertheless, they have achieved their goal successfully.

When installed in the Mac desktop, the MacOzzie icon is a rendition of the Osborne One. When you activate MacOzzie, a single oblong window is created. The original Osborne had an old-fashioned white-on-black display capable of showing 24 rows of 52 columns on a 5" diagonal measure screen. MacOzzie faithfully reproduces this, right down to the tiny glowing letters stating, "Place system diskette in drive 'A' and hit RETURN." Next to the representation of the Osborne is a picture of a strange-looking case. Its purpose baffled me until I clicked the mouse on what looked like a latch. The case opened to reveal a number of diskettes. I 'grabbed' one diskette, moved it to the 'A' drive, and dutifully hit the return key. A red light appeared under the 'A' disk drive, making me wonder whether I had made some error. But all was fine when the screen proudly displayed a flying 'O,' then replaced it with the WordsTar opening message. (I suspect that some joker at InfernoSoft 'bundled' their MacOzzie with not quite the correct software.)

WordsTar worked perfectly. That is to say, it did the same things it does on a PC clone: mangle documents and infuriate he user.

Another diskette proved to contain the usual CP/M operating system software. I hauled out an old manual to check up on DDT, the oh-so-cleverly named Dynamic Debugging Technique, and used it to poke around in the 'system.' To my complete surprise, MacOzzie simulates an entire Osborne One memory scheme. To test this theory I rummaged through the diskette bin and found a communications program. This seems to have been written by InfernoSoft for the express purpose of downloading files from RCPM systems and infuriating the user. Steeling my breath, I used 'OzzieBlabber' to copy some old CP/M software onto a 'diskette.'

My copied copy of Louts 187 worked perfectly: it used confusing and mutating menus to create a useless and unworkable spreadsheet, as well as infuriating me. Apparently MacOzzie contains a complete CP/M emulator suitable for running all kinds of CP/M software. To test my hypothesis, I copied over a working copy of Borderline (A subsidiary of InfernoSoft) Piston Pascal, an old fashioned Pascal compiler used for trying to write working applications programs and infuriating the user.

I wrote a few simple procedures to test the compiler: a vector-to-raster converter for a dot-matrix printer, a fractal mountain simulator, and an electronic bulletin board. You may laugh at the simplicity of these tests, but my purpose was to test the MacOzzie application. Remember also that CP/M supported only 64kBytes of main memory! I had the test applications written and debugged in the better part of an afternoon, transported them via the communications program to another CP/M computer, a Morrow lent to me by Jerry Richnelle.

(As an interesting sidelight, no sooner had I debugged the bulletin board than I had to deal with ten hackers trying to break in! I made it clear it was a simple test system and contained no new software, and they left soon enough.) I loaded the programs into the Morrow and checked them out one by one. The code size was appropriate to the task; the programs actually ran perfectly. MacOzzie is a fully functional CP/M simulator. I just can't help wondering, though: Why would anyone write such a thing, and what infernal thing are those programs I created going to do to the Morrow? Well, it's only 64kBytes, so the damage can't be too costly.