test-drb November 1998

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

185 participants
940 discussions

by franke＠sbs.de

>>> Yes the iMac will be collectable because it is taking a lot of new >>> people into the land of computerdom. It is a revolutionary device, the >> Apple used that trick before. It was called the Macintosh. > I think the parallel is with the Lisa. The Lisa had expansion slots. > iMac owners will bitch about the > lack of floppy, so Apple will make an iMac 2 with built-in floppy drive > and offer a free upgrade to existing iMac owners... and a new collectible > is born. Apple (or to be correct all Apple dealers) in Germany are ofering th iMac in some kind of bundle with a Superdrive external USB disk drive, able to read/reite 1.44M and 120M disks. I don't think there will ever be an included floppy, maybe a CD-RW or similar, but no floppy. Gruss hasn -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

25 years, 8 months

Future Collectables

by franke＠sbs.de

> Good day all, I have been following this thread and would like to add > another item from the late 70's. Have any of you heard of the Digital Group > computers? I have a few examples of this line which was developed as a true > hobbyst machine. I know its shortcommings just like many of the other early > machines. I also can tell some rather amusing stories about this machine. > Bill Risch PLEASE do so - I just aquired a Digital Group Z80 at VCF this year (still many thanks, Chuck) and I'm eager to get more information. Gruss hans -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

25 years, 8 months

Altair Speculation

by franke＠sbs.de

>> The latest victim paid $4060 for a mere "turnkey" (no blinkenlights): >> http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=39333791 > If you take a look at the bidding, you will see only four people bid on it, > with two of them having zero feedback ratings. Sounds like the best > advertising strategy for ebay is to simply say something is *very* rare. Maybe, but zero feedback isn't realy a thing to rate - I did a lot of eBay transactions within the last year (>20) and have still a feedback of Zero - I don't care. Gruss hans -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

25 years, 8 months

Future Collectables

by franke＠sbs.de

> Any collector will tell you that a lot depends on rareity. An item produced in > the millions is less valuable than one produced in the thousands. Prototypes > of popular machines will be very valuable. Machines that bombed in the market > will be valuable. Accessories and documentation that disapears readilly will > be valuable. Just depending. Even #1 all time sales items can be more valuabel than a lot rarer and more interesting speciemen of the same time - just think about the VW (Beatle), a car built in more units than almost any other car in the world, build over a timeline longer than most oter car (especialy longer than all other mass market car) but he outclasses all compareable cars when it comes to the $$$ peaople are ready to pay to get one. A bit like the APPLE II - maybe in 10 years they will be like a Kaefer. Or take the Altair a computer clearly never realy too be considered rare but the prices just outrun any other old computer (only the Apple 1 will perform higher, but it is also a lot more rare). > Yes the iMac will be collectable because it is taking a lot of new people into > the land of computerdom. It is a revolutionary device, the thought of > unpacking it from the box, plugging it in and going to work is very attractive > to new computer users. The only new thing is a brute marketing. No new idea at all. Wasn't the Mac itself the same thing ? And unpack'n'go is not new at all. Even in the x86-PC world a lot of ready to use machines are available. Nobody is willing to try something real new (Or do I just see it to pesimistic?). (OT: I guess the usual iMac owner would also like to drive a new beatle :) > How many computers of today will survive when crashes > become totally unacceptable. iMac still crashes like any other Mac ... > It will be 20 years though, before it gains value > as a collectable. Any limited edition iMac that Apple may make will be > collectable. This is going to be the first computer for millions of people. Possible - but still the PC is leading also here. For every new iMac first time computer user a dozend of PC ones grew up. I just remember having heard all this once upon a past timeline... Gruss H. (OT2: I belive Apple had the strange luck to define three times a new world: - the Apple II as a modular expandable all in one Computer, - the Mac as ready to use consumer GUI system, - and the Newton as first usable and real 'pad' orientated pen device. And they did screw it up all tree times. - killed the II with every way they could - avoided at any cost placing the Mac als general consumer product - and stoped the Newton just when it was finaly ready to use. eventualy this will make all Apple products it on topic again) -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

25 years, 8 months

487 and Marketing Breakthroughs (was Re: 486DX/SX (was:

by Marty＠itgonline.com

When customers used to ask me to explain the difference between a SX and DX processor, I'd give the standard spiel (386SX is basically a souped up 286 with same data path using 32 bit addressing, 486SX is a coprocessor neutered DX) then tell them the easy way to remember is that DX stands for DELUXE, SX stands for SUCKS. Well, it works for me..... Marty ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: 487 and Marketing Breakthroughs (was Re: 486DX/SX (was: Re: Author: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu at internet Date: 11/7/98 1:07 AM "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh(a)ix.netcom.com> wrote: > As for a Math CoPro for the 486, I'm not sure I ever saw a 487 chip, but I > always figured that they took the chips that didn't cut it as a normal > processor but had a good Math CoPro, and sold them as 487's. No. The 487 is a *fully* functional 486DX, and it has to be, because when you plug it into a 487 socket it disables your 486SX completely and takes over. The 487 is NOT a "math coprocessor". It's a "Marketing Breakthrough" (*), or so they had hoped. The made the pinouts of the 486 and 487 slightly different, so that you couldn't take out your old 486SX and simply install the 487 in its place, which would leave you with a spare 486SX to give to a friend, i.e., less sales of new chips for Intel. Part of the reason it didn't work out in practice is that 486DX chips were generally available for less money than the expensive retail-box 487. Cheers, Eric (*) If you're not familiar with the concept of a Marketing Breakthrough, see this advertisement which appeared in newspapers nationally a few years ago: http://www.milk.com/wall-o-shame/dish.html Note that every statement in the advertisement is literally true; they even utilize italics to emphasize the fact that the product is nothing special. I didn't buy their antenna, but I offered to pay them up to $20 for a large poster of the advertisement. Unfortunately they never replied. ------ Message Header Follows ------ Received: from lists5.u.washington.edu by smtp.itgonline.com (PostalUnion/SMTP(tm) v2.1.9i(b5) for Windows NT(tm)) id AA-1998Nov07.010745.1767.76113; Sat, 07 Nov 1998 01:07:45 -0500 Received: from host (lists.u.washington.edu [140.142.56.13]) by lists5.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW98.06) with SMTP id WAA13734; Fri, 6 Nov 1998 22:05:39 -0800 Received: from mxu4.u.washington.edu (mxu4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW98.06) with ESMTP id WAA44546 for <classiccmp(a)lists.u.washington.edu>; Fri, 6 Nov 1998 22:04:11 -0800 Received: from brouhaha.com (ruckus.brouhaha.com [209.185.79.17]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.9.1+UW98.09/8.9.1+UW98.09) with SMTP id WAA283 32 for <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>; Fri, 6 Nov 1998 22:04:11 -0800 Received: (qmail 517 invoked by uid 342); 7 Nov 1998 06:04:21 -0000 Message-Id: <19981107060421.516.qmail(a)brouhaha.com> Date: 7 Nov 1998 06:04:21 -0000 Reply-To: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu Sender: CLASSICCMP-owner(a)u.washington.edu Precedence: bulk From: Eric Smith <eric(a)brouhaha.com> To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers" <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Subject: 487 and Marketing Breakthroughs (was Re: 486DX/SX (was: Re: Classic != IBM AT)) In-Reply-To: <v0401170bb2696bd1e812(a)[192.168.1.2]> (healyzh(a)ix.netcom.com) References: <v0401170bb2696bd1e812(a)[192.168.1.2]> X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 beta -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN

25 years, 8 months

Cauzin

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 10:39 AM 11/7/98 -0500, cswiger wrote: > >'Byte's early years were fun for hardware hackers - I wonder if >anybody actually got their 'barcode' software publishing scheme >to work. They had a few issues with pages of barcodes you were >supposedly able to read in with a wand. It's spelled "Cauzin". Back in 1996 I e-bumped into Dick Balaska <dick(a)buckosoft.com> <http://www.buckosoft.com/~dick/resume.html>, one of the engineers who worked at Cauzin. Below are several messages from earlier in 1998 about this topic, and a related technology. Anyone want to make a jillion dollars? Re-typing URLs is a pain. OCR is a pain and impractical for small bits of text. Reciting addresses is a pain. I think we need a pen- or credit-card-sized device that can read barcodes. While I'm reading a magazine, I see a URL I want to visit later. I scan the barcode. Later, I transmit my pen's contents to my PC, maybe via IrDA. It's scalable from give-away keychains to smarter devices, it's embeddable. Make a PostScript font with the barcode. Allow one-to- one ASCII-to-barcode, upsell software to checksum it or auto-inject barcode text in any app's documents. Make a modem-like variation that can emit a few hundred bytes of info while held to the mouthpiece of a phone, as well as receive a few hundred bytes when held to the earpiece. Presto, a way to transmit your name and address to someone else. Sell the $100 thermal-label-printer version to corporate America. - John >To: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu >From: John Foust <jfoust(a)threedee.com> >Subject: Re: [getting old punched cards read] > >Here's another twist in the archive problem, related to our previous >discussion: <http://www.paperdisk.com/> makes software that prints >data in a highly compressed form on paper. It looks like they're >getting 2 to 4 megs of data per 8.5x11 page, printed with a laser >printer, and retrievable with a scanner. > >If tapes and CDs aren't reliable, perhaps paper is better. (Search >www.dejanews.com for "Dead Media Working Note paperdisk" to see a >longer article about this.) However, I'd say that laser-printed >output has its own archival problems related to the properties of >toner plastic, in that it can re-melt or stick to adjacent pages, >and that it's sensitive to vapors from out-gassing plastics >such as those in binders. > >Cauzin SoftStrips for the 90s and beyond! I have some friends who once >worked for a Wisconsin company that had a similar gizmo that worked with >a record-player-like device. > >- John >Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm> > Below is a description of the "paper floppy disk" as given by an old friend of mine, Dennis Adams <DAdams(a)etcconnect.com>, who once worked on this technology. - John The "Paper Floppy Disk" Newslog International (aka Lab1) developed technology for recording up to 30-50K of data on a printed piece of cardstock approximately 6" x 4". The data was recorded with error detection and correction information (Reed-Soloman, I believe), as well as redundant groups, so it could withstand misprints, marks, holes, and other flaws. This was all pre-CD, and the cost was very cheap. One of the names for them was TDB's for Transportable Databases. They were intended for software distribution, database updates, games on the back of cereal boxes, etc. Each track was a portion of a circle (about 1/10 of the circumference). The reader had a large (approx. 14") spinning wheel, and supported variable track pitch and data bits per inch (so different quality paper and printing processes could be supported), and could track media that was not cut square by skewing the tray that held the media (since there was no physical or optical "center" on the media -- it had a virtual movable "hole" to spin on). It used a Z80 microprocessor (running extremely tweaked assembly language by Al Jewer) and interfaced to a computer via "high-speed" RS-232 (9600 bps). I did demo software on a variety of hosts, including the Storm operating system (multi-user CP/M OS by Ron Fowler, also the author of the popular MEX communications software), Commodore 64, and IBM-PC XT. We had a Coleco Adam computer that we briefly considered writing something for, but it never stayed running long enough to evaluate. We did a multi-month trial of a large database update for a large company based in Moline. We sent out three months of updates to a 13M database. Each update was a half-dozen or so cards that could be scanned in any order and then the update was applied to the database. This was run at three dealerships that could retrieve up-to-date database information much faster than their microfiche system which was always out-of-date. It also displayed additional textual information that was on other microfiche or books and not usually referenced. This was circa 1985, and was quite impressive to the people who used it. So much so that the actual media technology took a back seat to the database system itself (an interesting lesson to be learned there). Newslog / Lab1 ran out of money before the technology could be completely finished and sold or marketed. Not that they didn't try. I learned a lot about "demos" and "demospeak" while I worked there. I still have some media around, but alas no reader. I'm willing to bet it could be read by a modern high-res scanner. An energetic soul could probably even write a reader emulator that fed the bits that it peeled radially from the high-res scan into the actual Z80 reader code to decode it. The best anecdote I recall regarding the technology was in the "camera" software that generated the film original used for duplication: the base unit of measurement was derived from the bits-per-track and camera wheel speed and other factors I've forgotten. All of the internal calculations were based on this "tick", which varied in actual length, but was approximately 1mS. The camera system's author was Bill Whitford, and the unit of measurement henceforth became known as a "willisecond." Bill's code ran on a much larger processor with a lot of memory (I think it might have been a 4Mhz Z80 with 64K of memory), so he development in C.

25 years, 8 months

Collectable PCs

by Marty＠itgonline.com

Does your Columbia list it as having been made in Columbia, Maryland? I believe their early pc's were made in Columbia, Maryland, later they moved to Florida. Marty ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Collectable PCs Author: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu at internet Date: 11/8/98 5:58 PM Earlier there was a discussion of what PC stuff might be collectable and valuable. The other day I ran across an original Columbia PC. This one is a good collectable. It was as it came from the factory with the original Floppy and Hard drive. It also had the original keyboard with it. It was very clean and had not been abused. It worked. In my 1983 Bytes they were asking $5000 for it. I paid $6 at goodwill with the intention of putting it on ebay just to see what it will bring. I am retireing from collecting but if I were going top sit on a piece of equipment this would be a good example. My reasons in order of priority: 1) first popular clone, 2) all the original -parts (including screws), 3) Clean with no scratches, the type on the keyboard showed no wear, 4) Works (not essential - i bought it without testing it - $6 is not a great gamble), 5) Rareity - Most of these go directly to scrap and have for years. However it will be many more years before it is truly valuable, but I bet it will be! Paxton ------ Message Header Follows ------ Received: from lists4.u.washington.edu by smtp.itgonline.com (PostalUnion/SMTP(tm) v2.1.9i(b5) for Windows NT(tm)) id AA-1998Nov08.175845.1767.76263; Sun, 08 Nov 1998 17:58:48 -0500 Received: from host (lists.u.washington.edu [140.142.56.13]) by lists4.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW98.06) with SMTP id OAA15250; Sun, 8 Nov 1998 14:56:34 -0800 Received: from mxu4.u.washington.edu (mxu4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW98.06) with ESMTP id OAA52802 for <classiccmp(a)lists.u.washington.edu>; Sun, 8 Nov 1998 14:56:25 -0800 Received: from imo26.mx.aol.com (imo26.mx.aol.com [198.81.17.70]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.9.1+UW98.09/8.9.1+UW98.09) with ESMTP id OAA12 625 for <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>; Sun, 8 Nov 1998 14:56:24 -0800 Received: from Innfogra(a)aol.com by imo26.mx.aol.com (IMOv16.10) id JYRTa02301 for <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>; Sun, 8 Nov 1998 17:56:07 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <eee98475.36462187(a)aol.com> Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1998 17:56:07 EST Reply-To: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu Sender: CLASSICCMP-owner(a)u.washington.edu Precedence: bulk From: Innfogra(a)aol.com To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers" <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Subject: Collectable PCs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 beta -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN

25 years, 8 months

Amiga 2500 Manual??

by danjo＠xnet.com

Any one have a Amiga 2500 Manual? My Sis needs it. She has Workbench 1.3??? Any one know either online sources or hardcopy?? Now she is talking about AREX??? I hate the Telephone 8-) BC

25 years, 8 months

OT: General power supply question

by rigdonj＠intellistar.net

At 03:44 AM 11/9/98 -0800, you wrote: > >Time for an Electronics for Dummies question... > >If I have a center negative power supply (the diagram shows that the >negative is in the center of the connector) does that mean the center of >the connector on the device to be powered should be connected to the >ground plane? > Not necessarialy. It could be grounded or it could be floating. But as long as the connector supplies power and the return path (two wires supplying + and -), you should be able too leave it disconnected from ground with no problem. Circuits are grounded for two reasons; (1) to provide a power return path through the chassis and saving the cost of a wire or (2) for safety reasons. Reason 1 is a poor practice since chassis grounds aren't very reliable and cause galvanic corrosion. Reason 2 is generally only required in high voltage (> 100 Volts) crcuits. Joe

25 years, 8 months

Sun mouse pad Re: need some parts

by grant＠anachronism.sol.co.uk

A friend at a placed I used to work showed me a postscript file he had downloaded from somewhere for printing your own optical mouse mats for a Sun (his had a bad scratch accross it). As a temporary stopgap it _might_ work (need a colour printer though!). Dunno where he downloaded from though, but contact your friendly neighbourhood seaqrch engine!

25 years, 8 months

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test-drb November 1998