> But Allison does NOT make those kinds of errors. That's part of what
> makes it so notable and what makes it so irresistable to chide her when
> she does make a typo.
She ?
?
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
>Ah, but for those of us with a documentation deficiency, no experience,
>and a brand-new interest in DEC, this is pure gold. Keep in mind that my
>first "real" computer, when I was a kid, was an Atari 800XL (not counting
>the Vic20 I played around with when I was 6)...
Point taken...
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
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>> I think this shows that organising a UK-VCF would be a bad idea at the
>> moment. And for me to organise one, losing all the money I'd have to put
>> in would be a very bad idea.
Just ask Salam about his profits (please don't tell anybody, but
a friend of a friend of my uncle told me that Salam will buy out
Bill Gates soon and then declare himself ruler of the world)
>> Oh well. It would have been an interesting idea.
> Yeah, and given the geographic spread of the people that did reply, even a
> pub meet would be out of the question.
Jep, just for 3 hours would be a bit short - I'll think
you have to change your horrible pub opening hours.
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
< Is mhz == MegaHertz or is mhz == milliHertz?
< If so, that could be why this machine seems SO slow.
MegaHz 10^6, milliHz 10^-3. aka typo. however part of standard usage
would dictate MHZ and mhz being the same unless the context was extremely
slow events.
Now if it were MHy and mHy the assumption would be 10^-3 as a million
Henry inductor is very unlikely. Things like this tend to be somewhat
self checking.
Actually 386sx/16 is pretty speedy of the memory bus is wide. I have a
DELL 316sx that runs Minux like gangbusters.
Allison
< Coax cables with velocity factors of 0.66 are in wide use. And in
< some very specialized areas - especially the world of delay lines -
Right. I was thinking antennas... don't ask!
< coaxial cables with velocity factors of less than 0.10 are used.
< These cables are extremely expensive and somewhat fragile, as their
< center conductor is a coil around a ferrite core,
< rather than a plain copper wire.
Over the years I've made my own delay lines for various projects. Tedious
but saves a bundle!
Common use was delay for vertical on O'scopes, radar (calibration!)
and dram timing.
Allison
My point was that only recently has it become so that there is nothing
more than an Alpha or an PII. There are many parallel implementations,
but nothing like the difference between an Altair and an S/360. Yes, I
know there are many computers way more powerful than CompUSA desktops,
but the point is that they're just parallel implementations and there
isn't so much of a class distinction.
>Irrelevant to the discussion for two reasons:
>
>1) No one has made mainframes out of discrete transistors since the
>late 60s.
>
>2) Almost all modern mainframes are based on monolithic
microprocessors.
>
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> Wait...all matter resists current, and all matter can be forced to
> emit light, so any item is a 'Light-emmitting resistor'.
One of the early April 1 issues of BYTE (1975? More likely 1976)
has the specs for a "noise emitting diode". If I remember the
definition: "When connected across high voltage, makes a large
noise (once)."
When did LED's begin wandering out of the solid state physics labs
and into commercial products? I remember individual LED's in the
very early 70's, and by the mid-70's they were everywhere in the
form of 7-segment displays.
Is there some landmark "first commercial use" of the classic T1-3/4
individual LED package that's so common today? Were there early
LED packages that just completely disappeared?
Tim.
>MegaHz 10^6, milliHz 10^-3. aka typo. however part of standard usage
>would dictate MHZ and mhz being the same unless the context was extremely
>slow events.
Yeahbut the same people who put "mhz" in ads are the same folks who
talk about the "ASC-2" character sets and "DB-9" connectors. Just
because they're common errors doesn't mean that I'm going to repeat them.
(Reminds me of Bill Kavanagh at Caltech, who pointed out the
silliness of the phrase "partial vacuum" repeatedly... I'll completely
leave out the concept of "vacuum leak"!)
Tim.
Well, that's just what I was asking about. What do you mean by
'user friendliness'? A built-in debugger is not high on my list of
user-friendly features. Also, how is the TOPS base 'stronger' than
UNIX? Does it have more calls, or what?
>> [Why is TOPS-20 so much better than Unix?]
>>
>> Umm... It runs on a PDP-10?
>>
>> Seriously, now, I like the idea of being able to DETACH CONTINUE
something,
>> log in from elsewhere, re-attach my job, and continue without
stopping the
>> job (Unless is tries to do TTY I/O, then it has to wait).
>
> Well, to be technical, there is a program for Unix to do this called
>`screen'. It's actually pretty nice in that it gives you 10 virtual
>terminals, allowing you to switch between them (Ctrl-A <number>) and
>cut-n-paste as well (defaults to using vi keybindings---use Unix enough
and
>you'll get used to it). You can also detach the session and reconnect
to it
>later (and the program will continue to run even if it does TTY I/O).
>
>> And, Unix doesn't
>> have ^T. This gets Status. If you think your program has hung or
something,
>> pressing ^T does a line like this:
>> 07:49:28 MM IO wait at .TEXT1+17 Used 0:00:21.8 in 2:34:21, Load
0.80
>> (I just pressed ^T into MM and retyped what it printed)
>> This means that MM is waiting on I/O at .TEXT1+17 (which is a label
defined
>> in the program. If you wrote the program, this is significant.)
>> You also get the used CPU and connect times, and the system load.
>> Unix doesn't do this, and I wish it did...
>
> That's more a function of the shell than anything else. I think
there is
>a Unix shell that will do that (or could be told to do that). Granted,
if
>you're in some other program it won't work.
>
>> Also, if you suddenly decide you want to go poke at your program's
interior,
>> you and ^C^C it and say DDT, and (provided you know how to operate
DDT) it
>> will snag the program you just stopped and let you play with it. Or,
if you
>> do this accidentally, you can say CONTINUE and it will go along like
>> nothing happened.
>
> Now that is a nice feature, and it might be possible to munge that
into
>Unix as well. But that's the main problem with Unix---all these
features
>are munged onto a pretty weak base and people have gone so long without
>these features that Unix weenies tend to dismiss them as breaking the
>`simplicity' of Unix (brain death is more like it 8-)
>
> I think what most people lament is that 20 years later, Unix still
doesn't
>have the user friendliness of TOPS-20 nor are we likely to see anything
like
>it any time soon.
>
> -spc (Yea yea yea it could be done, but doing it right (or even
reliably)
> under Unix is a real pain ... )
>
>
>
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>> So did you take the non-UK replies out ? Even if the english
>> like to ignore it, Europe is just a short hop away :)
> You were the only non-UK reply and you were one of the five.
Oops. Not much of an audience ...
Sad - so, lets fix the pub hours.
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
