Re: Ideas that didn't come off

"Scout" <Toothpaste@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:MPG.1fefc2effb2252d9897a0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I guess I'm asking to hear from others that have come up with bright
ideas, to admit their failure, and tell us what, why and how.


I came up with a couple of 'bright ideas' in the 80's - a TSR terminal
emulator and a fast floppy disk copier. I fully implemented both using the
excellent TopSpeed Modula-2 development system.

The TSR terminal emulator came about because the main application I was
developing for my employer ran on Unix and VMS systems as well as MS-DOS /
Novell systems. Most of the Unix users had PCs for other work, so they were
able to use the terminal emulator to access the Unix app and just hotkey
between Unix and DOS. We sold a couple of hundred copies to our existing
users but I was unable to convince my employer to market it as a standalone
app.

The fast floppy disk copier was one of those 'necessity is the mother of
invention' ideas. Our systems were shipped on something like 10 - 20
floppies, all of which were copied manually on a PC. Duplicating a disk
using DiskCopy was quicker than copying individual files from the hard disk
to a floppy so that is what we did. Unfortunately duplicating a disk took
the same amount of time no matter if there was one 1k file on it or 10 100k
files. My idea worked by only copying sectors that were actually used. It
could speed up the copy of some disks from minutes to seconds.

I had written the diskcopy program in my own time and had the idea of
selling it myself. I completed the documentation, disk labels etc. and got
as far as registering a business name. However, at that point I got cold
feet - without the Internet it was so much more difficult to get small apps
like that out to an audience. I had to wait (impatiently) for another ten
years before I eventually established the company that provides me with a
living today.

--
Chris Burrows
CFB Software
http://www.cfbsoftware.com/gpcp



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