I just picked up a RCA Ascii keyboard. Does anyone have the pinout
for it's connector?
---------------------------------------------
I got this email today ( I think it's classic computer related), but
I can't read Spanish. Can anyone help this person?
<With the current battle between RISC and CISC, MIPS now really is
<"Meaningless Information Provided by Salesman". Technically, by the
<current philosophy, an 8080 is a CISC processor. Go figure.
Actually it's a partial indicator of execution speed and only a partial
indicator of an systems capability.
8080 is CISC, instructions are complex(some are) and are expected to
take many clock cycles. RISC by definition is at most two clock cycles
to execute a given instruction. Generally RISC machines can perform
several arithmetic/logical operations in one instruction making them look
CISCier. They are also generally weak in addressing data as there are
few addresing modes and rely on lots of registers for pointers. The
problem with RISC is that compilers have to work hard to use the full
capability of the cpu. VAX is CISC to the max with an extremely rich
instruction set and addressing modes. FYI the VAX inherits most of the
base instuctions from the PDP-11 which is the also very CISC.
Now all this is nice when instructions are executed one at a time like
the 8080 or 6502 did. This became meaningless with later VAXen that
were more piplined so that current instruction execution overlapped the
next. The 8088 also does this albeit weakly. With the RISC machines also
doing super pipining the number of clock cycles became less meaningful
and the "MIPS" did as well. Adding things like caches complicates this
more as a cache flush or processor lock can really tie things up for long
periods of time affecting performance.
VAX VUPs are a more subjective standard as they are a measure of the
system rather than the bare cpu SPECint92 is similar in that respect as
doing real work generally makes the system a slave to outside influences
like the disk system data rates and memory system size. A good example
of this is that 6mhz Z80 can execute instructions at or about 1mips but
IO to the average floppy is slow enough to make that cpu wait about 1-2
seconds for 16k of data. The disk systems for machines like Vaxen are
designed to supply data at 20-1000 times that data rate. So if you
sorting data (say a data files that is 16mb in size) the disk systems are
also a big factor no matter what the system as the data and program will
not for in local memory. Even with huge memories in the 100s of megabytes
it's not always efficient(or possible with multitasking) to copy from disk
to ram and sort then copy it back.
Just a peak under the hood.
Allison
> I haven't seen a mag card reader of any 'stripe' in many years.
Several HP calculators used 'em for awhile. The HP-41C had a motorized
reader, while the -75 and (later) the 71B of fond memory used hand-pulled
strips. I bought my 71 in '87, iirc.
Hey -- I just realized -- it's a classic! Makes me feel OLD.
At 04:47 PM 1/8/98 -0800, you wrote:
>I got this email today ( I think it's classic computer related), but
>I can't read Spanish. Can anyone help this person?
I can't read spanish, but I can pass on this URL:
<http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/>
which lets you enter either a bunch of text or a URL and it will translate
it for you. Pretty neat, although far from perfect. Can at least get you
an idea of what that german/spanish/french classic computer page is talking
about.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
At 01:51 PM 1/8/98 -0500, you wrote:
>> I got an e-mail from InnFoGraphics Warehouse Liquidation, of a sale
>
>I plan on going down from Seattle on Saturday morning. Anybody else going?
I can't make it (a bit far from San Francisco), but I'd be happy provide you
with a shopping list. 8^)
(Actually, it's pretty simple: any portable computers smaller
large-laptop-size or smaller, $10 or less. 8^)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
At 01:28 PM 1/8/98 -0500, you wrote:
>I think the inner city schools would have a better use for these machines,
>or maybe special afterschool programs, or even donating them to under
>priveledged kids locally.
a lot of local programs certainly have *need* for them, but they would
probably see more *use* overseas. The problem with older (and certainly
very viable and useful) equipment in this country is getting it into
operation, maintaining it, and putting it to work with software other than
what one buys at CompUSA.
I'd be happy to discuss this further (I am somewhat involved in this sort of
thing myself) but I think it best kept to private e-mail (or the various
newsgroups/mailing lists about the subject.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
I'm starting to wonder about how common the C-64c is. I have yet to see
one, I picked up the manuals when a favorite bookstore had a set a few
months back. Then last weekend I was at the bookstore and they had like 3
or 4 sets of manual. But like I said I've never seen an actual computer!
Functionally are they any different from a standard 64?
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)ix.netcom.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| For Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| see http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
| For the collecting of Classic Computers with info on them. |
| see http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/museum.html |
To quote the good doctor "it lives".
Finally I've gotten linux (slakware V3) to install on the 386, I finally
stripped the disk of the semifunctional version that wouldn't boot and
installed it fresh and it seems to run properly. More importantly it
boots properly on power up. Right now X-win is not installed as 8meg
is all it's got. One annoying thing is the autoprobe for CDrom, it's
slow. Generally the speed is good.
What has me fully baffeled is there is now clue what I've done different
since the last three times.
Now the next task is getting SLIP or PPP going so that it can access the
internet. Then I want to get x-windows and it's related tools going.
I also have to get an IP stack going on the dosbox to share files. Any
experts out there?
Allison
At 09:26 AM 12/1/97 -0600, you wrote:
> I'm interested in the classic Macs mailing list (I have a Plus).
>Where do I sign up?
Okay, so I'm inefficient and disorganized... 8^) I was going through some
old mail and realized I never forwarded the info about the classic macs
list. So, here it is:
-----------------------------------------
To subscribe to Classic Macs,
send e-mail to <Majordomo(a)hitznet.com>. In the body of the message write
subscribe classics
You will be added within a day.
_______________________________________________________
If you are new to the list, please take time to visit the Classic Macs
archives. Many, many common questions have been asked already and you may
find what you seek in previous posts. This will save the list members much
time in not having to pore over frequently asked and answered questions
many times.
The Classic Macs Archives are found at:
http://www.zws.com/classicmacs/
Thanks to Lewin A.R.W. Edwards for maintaining and hosting the archives.
_______________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
