At 02:04 PM 7/3/97 -0700, you wrote:
>of the fun is sharing it with other TI users. And part of the fun of
>having this old computer is that there are other people bucking the
>trend along with me. In other words, we have a TI computer user
>community, and that is a very hefty reason for sticking with the TI
[...]
>exciting new "modern applications" or attracting new people to adopt a
>simple machine that can perform "common everyday household computing
>tasks" that they DON'T need a Pentium to do.
[...]
>hoping to create a dialog for HOW to do this, particularly strategies to
>attract people to join the community, and to share technology of "modern
>applications" that one community may have successfully achieved and
I am facing a similar situation in the Atari community. I have to admit
that I gave away my 600XL in favor of the ST long before the thought of
collecting computers ever hit me. Similarly, my ST's and Falcons are pretty
much dedicated to studio stuff (and I don't get to "play" with that much
these days) and I use my windows laptop almost exclusively (6-16hrs/day).
Nonetheless, I am president of ABACUS, the Atari Bay Area Computer Users
Society, and probably will continue to be for a long time. Atarians are
somewhat lucky in that there is a reasonably strong vendor market, good user
groups, and wonderful emulation options.
Still, ABACUS has been experiencing a seriously declining membership
recently as people traded in their ST's for PC's. We talked about it, and
decided that what even the PC people didn't want to lose was the "family" we
had built up in the club. There are lots of PC user groups, but none with
the character of ABACUS. (How many clubs have a Land Rover owner, a waffle
collector, and a 76 year old newsletter editor?)
So we changed a bit to meet the new focus of the club members. We now have
a "PC SIG" and demo PC software and hardware at the meetings, along with ST
stuff. We feature general interest (computer) articles in the newsletter
(such as my never-ending part 2<x> of my 3 part series on building web
pages) as well as humour and general commentary. We continue to support the
ST/Falcon folks as we expand to service the new interests of members.
This lets members move on to newer things (graphical web browsers (yes, we
know about STiK/CAB, but it's not netscape), CD-ROM's, etc.) while still
keeping the ST alive.
But, we've not done much about getting new members (either PC or ST). Your
message has gotten me thinking, though. Every now and then I get a call
>from someone who's got an ST for sale, and I have to tell them there's just
not much market for them here. Perhaps we could set something up to get
those machines into the hands of someone who could use them and is otherwise
unable to afford them. (Goodness knows we've got enough kids with no $
around here!)
The biggest hurdle facing the general public in putting older computers to
work is the lack of support. (P.S., Cliff Stoll is an idiot sometimes.)
They can buy a PC at Circuit City and half their neighbors will be able to
set it up for them or answer questions. (Etc.) Not so with machines not
quite so mainstream.
But if user groups made the effort to become known and to support these
computers, they could do a lot of good. Maybe even working with teachers or
youth programs to make the computers available, and the kids *WILL* use
them. I've seen it happen and I know it makes a difference. (My living
room is loaded with older Macs -- until school starts again.)
Anyway, sorry to blather on so long, but I think that "obsolete" computers
are still useable, valuable, and beneficial. So lets talk about turning
people on to them!
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
sinasohn(a)crl.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
At 10:36 PM 7/3/97 -0700, you wrote:
>people to follow suit. Most people would rather use the latest and greatest.
A lot of people would rather use the latest and greatest, but a lot more can
only afford a pinto.
>Not likely. There's no money in it. Why spend all your time and energy
>writing non-saleable TI apps when you can be writing million dollar
>peecee games?
But there are already TI (or other) apps out there that make the TI a very
useable machine. From the user side of things, those million dollar peecee
games still cost $39.95, as much as a complete TI and software sometimes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
sinasohn(a)crl.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
At 10:54 AM 7/4/97 -0700, Uncle Roger wrote:
>But, we've not done much about getting new members (either PC or ST). Your
>message has gotten me thinking, though. Every now and then I get a call
>from someone who's got an ST for sale, and I have to tell them there's just
>not much market for them here. Perhaps we could set something up to get
>those machines into the hands of someone who could use them and is otherwise
>unable to afford them. (Goodness knows we've got enough kids with no $
>around here!)
>
Due to an accident(broken arm) with my then 5 week old daughter, about a
month ago, I spent two days in the local childrens hospital. She is fine
now, but at the time, my two sons ages 6 and 3 were bored to tears. On my
way back to the room, I noticed a room with an old apple, and some other non
computer items. I asked a nurse, and she mentioned that they would love to
have some more computers for the kids to use. There were kids in there that
were really sick, and I'm sure that there are times where they are bored to
tears as well. My point to this whole rant, is that old "obsolete"
computers with some fun software would make some happy kids who are in a
really bad situation. Any spare computers I run across will be making the
trip to the local childrens hospital. I would encourage anyone else who
gets calls and doesn't know what to do with these extras to check out their
local scene. Who knows, these kids might be able to turn out some really
good software.
Isaac Davis | Don't throw away that old computer, check out the
idavis(a)comland.com | Classic Computer Rescue List
indavis(a)juno.com | http://www.comland.com/~idavis/classic/classic.html
I posted a message a day or two ago, and I wanted to thank Sam Ismail for
responding. I am wondering if anyone else might have one of these Laser 50
computers available (Sam wasn't able to part with any :-( ??
Some more information on this computer. It was manufactured by V-Tech
(Video technology Ltd.) in the mid 1980s. It was a small, white, lap-top
size computer. It had a single line LCD display and was marketed as a
childrens education or beginner's computer. You could expand this 1.5k
system by buying cassette recorder, two different printers, and a memory
expansion cartridge.
OH, yes... you could save up to 9 different programs internally on the
computer. Now I also remember it ran on batteries though you could hook up
a DC converter to plug into the wall.
Had a full-feature BASIC programming language built in, including sound
commands... although it didn't have any graphics capabilities (that I know
of) it was a fun little computer.
Anyway, what I am asking is if anyone out there has one of these or knows
where I might be able to find one.... PLEASE let me know. I used to have
one (lost it YEARS ago) and I would like my children to be able to use it
a bit... plus it's kind of a piece of my computing history that I would
like to bring back to my collection!
Thanks a lot, and I hope someone has an inkling obout this machine. P.S.
This isn't an Apple or IBM close.
Best Wishes,
CORD COSLOR
//*=====================================================================++
|| Cord G. Coslor P.O. Box 308 - 1300 3rd St. Apt "M1" -- Peru, NE ||
|| (402) 872- 3272 coslor(a)bobcat.peru.edu 68421-0308 ||
|| Classic computer software and hardware collector ||
|| Autograph collector ||
++=====================================================================*//
> I am facing a similar situation in the Atari community. I have to admit
The HP calculator community (just about the only main-ish-stream one that I am
involved with) has much the same problem. People tend not to join user groups,
alas, any more. They expect to buy pre-packaged solutions, and if they don't
work they expect the manufacturer to fix it. The idea of experimenting, of going
a little further, seems to have died out.
[...]
> had built up in the club. There are lots of PC user groups, but none with
> the character of ABACUS. (How many clubs have a Land Rover owner, a waffle
> collector, and a 76 year old newsletter editor?)
Why on earth do you need to edit a 76 year old newsletter? What's it stored
on - Wheatstone Telegraph Tape? (Sorry, couldn't resist).
And I guess the answer to your question is 'About as many as calculator clubs
with a PERQ fanatic and a classic car enthusiast as members, and a Polish
chairman' :-)
> But, we've not done much about getting new members (either PC or ST). Your
> message has gotten me thinking, though. Every now and then I get a call
> from someone who's got an ST for sale, and I have to tell them there's just
> not much market for them here. Perhaps we could set something up to get
> those machines into the hands of someone who could use them and is otherwise
> unable to afford them. (Goodness knows we've got enough kids with no $
> around here!)
An idea. Sell them the machines cheaply, and then allow them to attend your club
meetings for (say) one year free of charge. Having been involved with many user
clubs, I realise that the membership money does go to good use, and that it
costs a lot of money to produce and print the newsletter. But a lot of people
don't see it that way. It costs nothing extra to have a few extra people at
meetings, and (a) they will get support for their new toy (thus keeping it
running) and (b) may find how useful the club is and will thus join.
> The biggest hurdle facing the general public in putting older computers to
> work is the lack of support. (P.S., Cliff Stoll is an idiot sometimes.)
Absolutely. And for that reason, expecting a new user to start on a classic
computer is (IMHO) totally unrealistic.
> Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
-tony
[...]
> As a broad collector it is difficult to use all of your machines. Just
> collecting a wide range of machines sucks up huge amounts of time. Some
> people are a little more focused and actually collect partly to use
> the machines.
I collect machines for a lot of different reasons :
a) I want to use them (for whatever purpose). The PDP's, PERQ, and some of the
CP/M machines come in here. They have interesting features, and are plain fun
to program (elegant instruction set, nice bus for homebrew hardware, etc).
b) I got them because they're historically important. I may not care for the
Apple ][ hardware design, but it is an extremely important computer
historically. I don't tend to use this class of machine too much.
c) I got them because if I hadn't they'd have been lost for ever. Either "We're
throwing out this <whatever>, do you want it" or buying a machine that would
otherwise have gone as scrap metal. These machines get restored, and (often)
then end up in group (a)!
> Not everything everyone does is to make money. Some of us do things
> because they are fun, help others, kill time, impress women (or men), etc.
Quite a lot of people need something to occupy their mind in their spare time.
Some people do crossword puzzles. I prefer to figure out how some strange
machine really operates. It's probably about as useful :-) (NO FLAMES!).
Seriously, while solving crossword puzzles must improve your vocabulary,
battling through a schematic or ROM source does improve your computer and
electronics knowledge - something that is useful to me.
And it's fun :-)
> --pec
[...]
> I guess I should have started out with my ulterior motives.
Aha... That makes a lot more sense, and I hope I can make some useful comments.
>
> For a computer to survive as anything more than a relic, it has to have
> a user community. Now, I suppose I could use my TI for "typical home
> computing tasks" with the software I already have whether there was
> anyone else in the world using a TI or not. And I suppose I would, too.
> But for other jobs I wanted done that my computer COULD do (even if
> being a Web browser is NOT one of them), I would either have to program
> it myself, or find someone else to do it. And if I did it myself, most
> of the fun is sharing it with other TI users. And part of the fun of
> having this old computer is that there are other people bucking the
> trend along with me. In other words, we have a TI computer user
> community, and that is a very hefty reason for sticking with the TI
> computer.
>
> In fact, the TI community is shrinking, and as the members of the
> community observe it shrinking, some are inclined to bail out ("rats
> abandoning a sinking ship"). Given that trend, the community will
> waste away to a few hardcores unless there is new life added, either in
> exciting new "modern applications" or attracting new people to adopt a
> simple machine that can perform "common everyday household computing
> tasks" that they DON'T need a Pentium to do.
I hate to say this here, but I would _not_ recomend a classic computer (any
classic computer) as the only system for a non-computer-literate user. IMHO
such a user will quickly become disapointed when they find that the things that
_they_ can do with the machine are somewhat limited, and that nothing from the
local computer store will be of any use to them.
I can have advanced video on one of my older machines because I am prepared to
write drivers, solder up interfaces, read technical manuals, patch existing
programs, etc. OK, I enjoy it. But to suggest that a PERQ 2 driving an I2S
image processor and a homebrew GPIB -SCSI interface would be a good machine
for the average home user to view his photo-CDs on would be nothing short of
insane. Yes, it _could_ be done, but for such a user, a normal, boring,
PC-clone would be much more suitable.
Even I don't use a classic machine (or at least, what _I_ consider classic) all
the time. Earlier this week I needed to write some letters. I could have used
a classic-PERQ and printed the results on a Versatec V80. I could have used the
paper tape editor on my PDP8/e to punch a tape containing the correct postscript
commands and then printed it to my laserprinter using a serial-interfaces paper
tape reader. In fact I used something non-classic - a much hacked PC/AT running
Linux. I used LaTeX to format the text, and then printed it on said (fairly
modern) laserprinter. There are plenty of other things that would have been just
as good, but that's the one I chose.
The people who (IMHO) we should be trying to attract to classic computers -- and
in fact the ones I've had some success in attracting -- are those who are
already computer literate to some extent. People who already can write simple
programs and want to understand exactly how a system operates. I think it's a
lot easier to understand many classic computers (minis and micros) than modern
PCs, and the educational value of such machines should not be overlooked.
There are (IMHO) at least 4 different types of tasks that can be done with
computers :
1) A standard application for which software (commercial, GPL'd, freeware,
shareware, whatever) already exists. In which case you pick whatever machine
the software runs on. If it runs on more than one system, you choose between
them using whatever criteria matter _to you_ (hence me picking a classic
computer for its better documentation over a modern PC since both can carry out
the tasks I want to do)
2) An existing embedded system. Although it's possible (and sometimes common) to
'modernise', say, a control system based on a minicomputer, there are still a
lot of PDP8's and PDP11's running machinery, etc. Provided the old machine works
reliably and support/spares are available, it's fine to keep on using it.
3) A new 'embedded' system. Although my example of the I2C chip tester was, I
agree, slightly contrived, I was simply pointing out that if you are making a
single-purpose machine _for youself (so you can maintain it)_ there's no reason
not to use a classic. There's probably no reason not to use something modern
either.
4) Education. This includes 'writing programs for fun', understanding how
computers (hardware and software) works, etc. This is IMHO the main use of
classic computers to the average person these days, and the way we'll attract
more people into the hobby. I've said before that you can learn more about
processor operation by spending a couple of days with a minicomputer CPU, the
schematics for it and a 'scope than by sitting through most lecture courses on
the subject.
And, I can fully understand the joy that comes from getting a computer to do
something that is widely claimed to be 'impossible'. When the CoCo was current,
it was normally claimed that you couldn't have PMODE 4 graphics and Semigraphics
4 blocks on the screen at once. I did it, and totally amazed the staff in the
local Tandy store. Since it's easy to do most things on a fast PC (you don't
really have to save every last cycle, etc), it's more of a challenge to do them
on an old home micro. Again, we may be able to attract people because of that.
It may be worth looking at how (say) classic car clubs keep their membership.
They may well have similar problems - why would you drive (say) a pre-war car
when you could have a modern one. Rationally it probably makes very little
sense...
> My previous remarks about mainframes, which were interpreted as saying
> that they are not "home computers", were made from the point of view
> (and perhaps in ignorance) that, while C64s, Atari 8-bitters, TIs,
> CoCos, and other "home computers" that were sold FOR THAT PURPOSE in
> K-Mart and other department stores DO (or at least did) have a user
> community, sharing programs, encouraging other users, forming User
> Groups, publishing Newsletters, etc., other machines (such as the
> PDP class of mains, minis, etc. and maybe Altairs and S-100 bus
> computers) do NOT have this aspect to their existence. I guess I
I will have to disagree with you there. The larger machines that I am involved
with have very active user comunities who offer a lot of help and support to
newcomers. To give a couple of examples :
PERQ : When I was trying to add a printer to my PERQ, I had a few questions. The
result was that other owners dismantled their own machines, 'buzzed out' cables,
e-mailed me wirelists, and talked me through the whole thing. That's not an
isolated incident - a person who was having monitor problems got other owners
to pull the covers off their monitors and measure voltages, etc. This is just
about the only machine where this level of support still occurs over 10 years
after the entire line was discontinued.
PDP11. The user community here is split (IMHO) into the professional users who
need to keep the machine running, and who can afford DEC diagnostics,
replacement boards, etc, and the home hackers who debug everything with a logic
probe and printset, rebuild modules and even repair dead fans. I am certainly in
the latter category here. But again, questions get answered. People will dig out
manuals for obscure hardware and look up pinouts and jumper settings. Newcomers
will get answers to introductory questions.
BTW, I'm not flaming the support that other user communities give. I'm sure it's
excellent, but I've never experienced it, since I don't (in the main) use those
machines.
> do know about DECUS; don't know if something like that existed for
> PDP-11 owners or not, or even if professionally-oriented thing like
> DECUS would be applicable here. I certainly did not mean to imply that
The UK chapter of DECUS is pretty useless for home hackers. I am told that other
chapters are a lot better in this respect.
> * David Ormand *** Southwest 99ers *
-tony
In a message dated 97-07-03 05:38:55 EDT, you write:
<< Does anyone know of any listing or directory of IBM top level part
numbers? Every so often I come across a whatzit from IBM that only has a
little aluminum square with "IBM" and a four digit number. A listing
would be very handy.
>>
I have access to all IBM FRU numbers, which will always tell you what you
have; NNLNNNN where n=number and l=letter but that four digit number means
nothing AFAIK.
david
>Why spend all of your time and energy collecting old computers when you can
>be writing million dollar peecee games.
I know you can get some classic stuff for free, but unfortunatly, as with
every hobby we love, it costs money. and here is an interesting idea- to
beat microsnuff, write as many competeing programs that work BETTER than
billy's ( not hard to do), and sell them. and with that cash, you can get
more machines! <G> and remember, billy also writes MAC software, that for
some reason are worse than you can get for IBM... so we support IBM and MAC,
as well as your favorite classic, the more platforms supported, the better
it is for everyone! :)
