I hate to be the "BBC Model B" guy :) But anyway, back in the mid 80's I wrote a ton of dBase II code (using WordStar as my editor - I think it was v2), for my

I hate to be the "BBC Model B" guy :) But anyway, back in the mid 80's I wrote a ton of dBase II code (using WordStar as my editor - I think it was v2), for my employer and at the time couldn't afford a full blown PC (I owned a BBC 'B') so he let me borrow a Torch Z80 co-processor which ran a variant of CP/M called CP/N. It worked like a treat. It used the Beeb's "Tube" interface that basically turned the BBC micro into an I/O device - not unlike the Commodore effort. John, now sadly gone from our mortal coil, was an official BBC/Acorn outlet, so we got to play with a lot of toys. I don't remember the mechanics of getting my code to and from the office CP/M PC's at the time; even under Torch CP/N I seem to remember that BBC drives weren't compatible with real CP/M/MS-DOS PC's - I think I may have transported my code through the medium of floppy disc and used a BBC Micro in the office to squirt my code to/from via serial cable and some XModem/Kermit type of affair, which was no biggy because we already moved data between DG mini's (John was also a Data General broker) to/from PC's anyway. This was all before the joy of ethernet, though we did have a bunch of machines that ran a thing called SageNet(?) which was a kind of network. It's a long time ago, my memories are fading now :) As a final tangent, we initially had a NEC PC8800 and a NEC Advanced Personal Computer - which were lovely bits of kit for their day. We eventually moved to a bunch of PC "clones" (one made by Ferranti which was a really odd thing). I have other stories, but that'll do for now.