[geeks] Microsoft Surface...

[Mike Meredith]

On Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:52:04 -0500 (CDT), Lionel Peterson wrote:
> >From "On The Edge" I learned that a Japanese engineer started the
> >standard, but worked with MS, and on Wikipedia in the second
> >sentence calls it "Microsoft-led" [0]

Well it isn't unknown for Wikipedia to make mistakes! As it happens
they have a link to an interesting site in the article which steers
slightly away from "Microsoft-led" ("presented by ASCII and Microsoft in
1983") :-

http://www.bazix.nl/msxa.html

(The Wikipedia link is to the oneChipMSX system)

It's difficult to find information about the origins of the MSX
standard and ASCII Japan given that most of the information is in
Japanese. But I doubt Microsoft "led" the MSX effort given that the
whole thing worked by ASCII licensing the design to numerous Japanese
(and other) manufacturers.

I've seen somewhere (I can't find it again :( ) a narrative of how the
"engineer" behind the original concept worked ... leading Microsoft to
believe that the M in MSX stood for Microsoft, leading Sony and
Matsushita to believe the M&S stood for their names. Microsoft had a
great deal of influence over the firmware (and probably *some* over the
hardware) given the BASIC was a variant of Microsoft BASIC, but "led" ?
I don't believe so.

-- 
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
 "Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?"
 "Because we use vi, son, and they use emacs."