Woops... sorry, I didn't include my e-mail address, name, etc., on
the header of my first e-mail here. Again, problems with my mail
software and just some tempory settings.
I'm really not anonomous, just appear to be on my last e-mail.
Thanks,
CORD COSLOR
archive(a)navix.net
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<Which reminds me of a hardware question: I can get lots of nice LCD
<displays very cheap. How hard is it to convert one to a VGA display (or
<even to convert an old laptop with built-in VGA controller to something
<that will accept VGA input)?
Reduce the number of variables and we may have a shot... I have one
>from a dell laptop. It's rather interesting to drive and it ain't
VGA or even mono!
Allison
What IS up with them? I don't get "their" reference to themselves
in plural. Was it really a group?
>On Thu, 11 Jun 1998, Francois wrote:
>
>> Well, "If I Recall Corectly" that's what it means.
>
>BTW, whatever happened to lisard/communa? The consistency with which
>"they" used pronouns was impressive: IIRC -> iwrc.
>
>-- Doug
>
>
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
<BTW, as a bit of trivia, a friend of mine who worked for the CIA in
<Vietnam had the job of actually grinding off all the oxide on retired
<disks and drums, so there would be no possibility of recovering data
Along the same lines the A6 aircraft in the Vietnam era used a drum based
computer for the bomb targetting computer... a 10g turn could really mess
up the computer.
Allison
How does this soft-microcode thing work? Doesn't it imply that there
is some kind of "sub-microcode" needed to load and process the soft
one? Or was there a completely separate storage subsystem that booted
first (which would essentially make it two computers)?
Also, where was the microcode stored? Could you upgrade special
"microcode cache" to store more complex microcode? Sounds pretty
unusual!
>and with a somewhat interesting design.
>
>The PERQ 1 was first sold in 1979 for (I think) $30000. For that you
got
>a personal computer (!) with about 1MIPS of computing power. You also
got
>a megabyte of memory, a bitmapped display (768*1024 points, portrait),
>a blitter, a 20 bit CPU, a Z-80 based I/O processor, a hard disk, a
>pointing device (normally a Sumagraphics bit pad 1), etc. Options
>included networking (ethernet came out pretty soon after the first
>machine) and a laser printer.
>
>All 'classic PERQs' (everything apart from the PERQ 3a) have a
>soft-microcoded CPU that loads the microcode (and hence the instruction
>set) from disk when the machine boots. Writing your own microcode is
fun.
>The PERQ 1a introduced the 16K CPU board with 4 times the control store
>and other improvements (multiply/divide support, indexed addressing of
>the _registers_) over the original 4K board.
>
>The PERQ 2's all had a revised I/O board with an extra serial port,
>battery-backed real time clock and ethernet as standard. The
multitasking
>I/O software was only present on these boards AFAIK. You could add the
>same I/O option boards to the PERQ 2's, so in theory you can have a
PERQ
>2 with 2 ethernet ports.
>
>Older PERQs were 20 bit. The rare PERQ 2T4 was 24 bit.
>
>If you're interested in finding out more, look at Bob Davis's PERQ web
>page (a web search should find it). There's a number of text files
there
>which explain a few things. There's also a somewhat dead Usenet group,
>alt.sys.perq, which would love some on-topic messages again :-).
>
>> here on the rebellious side of the Atlantic? (I know _nothing_ of
>
>They were a USA machine (3 Rivers Computer Corporation). But some bits
>of the design were done by ICL in the UK, and they were sold by ICL.
>They were also one of the standard machines supplied to UK
universities,
>which may explain why they're more common over here.
>
>> these machines beyond your messages, if I saw them advertised the
>> references went into brain cells that have been foully murdered).
>
>> Ward Griffiths
>
>-tony
>
>
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Auction services have their place, but I think that we on the list
should be given the "right of first refusal". If one of the list members has
something to sell, give the others a first crack, with some time limit (like
a week), before listing it on eBay or Haggle.
Just my $0.02.
Rich Cini/WUGNET
<nospam_rcini(a)msn.com> (remove nospam_ to use)
ClubWin! Charter Member (6)
MCP Windows 95/Windows Networking
Preserver of classic computers
============================================
On Thu, 11 Jun 1998, Doug Yowza <yowza(a)yowza.com> wrote:
] That used to be one of my interview questions for Unix programmers: your
] buggy program just created a filename with {control characters, leading
] dash (-), leading slash (/), '*', etc} in it. How do you delete it?
Oh shoot. And I thought I was Unix-competent.
I thought the only way to put a slash in a filename was with a
low-level filesystem hack. I mean, the OS calls themselves will
take "a/b" to mean file "b" in directory "a", right? It isn't up
to your program to parse the filename that way. That isn't
something you can get get around, even with any ordinary sort of
bug. Is it?
Of course, given root permission, you could run the appropriate
disk utility, open /dev/root as a file, find the directory block,
and put anything you like in a filename. But then you would have
to do the same thing to access that file or get rid of it, wouldn't
you? How could 'rm' get around that?
ObCC: I just noticed /dev/drum on a Dec here. Now I *know* there
is not a drum on this thing, so this must be a holdover from some
earlier implementation of some Unix. True? Were filesystems on
drums managed the same as those on disks? I don't see any reason
why they wouldn't be, offhand. But I thought drums died out before
Unix appeared. Does anyone still have a functional magnetic drum
memory? That would be one _awesome_ peripheral. :-)
Bill.
> ObCC: I just noticed /dev/drum on a Dec here. Now I *know* there
> is not a drum on this thing, so this must be a holdover from some
> earlier implementation of some Unix. True? Were filesystems on
> drums managed the same as those on disks? I don't see any reason
> why they wouldn't be, offhand. But I thought drums died out before
> Unix appeared. Does anyone still have a functional magnetic drum
> memory? That would be one _awesome_ peripheral. :-)
No, no functional drum, but I own _parts_ of a drum from
an SIEMENS 2002 - this wasn't a storage drum like later
on, this computer stored the (working) REGISTERS on the
drum (Background: the 2002 was the first fully transistorized
computer). Thats prior to core memory tek.
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
I just received the H-11a manuals that I ordered last week from
the Heathkit's manual replacement service and I just wanted to let
any one who is looking for old Heathkit manual know how I made
out.
I'm very happy with the manuals I received!
First I ordered just the Assembly and the Operations manuals. One
was $35 (I think) and the other was $45. After I hung up I realized
that I had not asked about any schematics or illustration booket that
usually comes with these manuals. (By the way, I asked about any
EC-1 manuals and she said I was the fifth person to ask about those
in the last week, no they don't any manuals for the EC-1)
I received the Assembly manual and the Illustration Booket xeroxed
DOUBLE sided on 11"x17" paper (also folded but not stapled). The
Assembly manual did not have the traditional brown jacket, but I could
take one off an old color TV assembly manual.
I also received one schematic of the chassis power supply, front panel,
and backplane on what seen to be about 20"x25" paper. (It does not
look like it's been reduced in size).
The Operation manual is about 3/4" thick and most likely came
originally in a loose leaf binder. It is xeroxed again double sided
and on 8 1/2" x 11" paper. (You can see were the 3 holes were punched)
In their letter with the manuals they state that the manuals are
nonreturnable but they will "attempt to correct any problem with the
quality of the copy".
I found they friendly, helpful, and fast. Their number is 616-925-5899
The only problem I've seen so far is with thw xray views of the circuit boards,
the RED circuit traces on the foil side of the board do not xerox at all.
=========================================
Doug Coward dcoward(a)pressstart.com
Senior Software Engineer
Press Start Inc.
Sunnyvale,CA
Curator
Museum of Personal Computing Machinery
http://www.best.com/~dcoward/museum
=========================================
On Jun 11, 23:25, Doug Yowza wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Jun 1998, Pete Turnbull wrote:
>
> > And "rm -i *" prompts even with "-f".
>
> Not on Linux, at least.
>
> > AFAIK, all rm's have -r.
>
> I know -r is a fairly recent addition to "cp", but you may be right about
> "rm". Anybody have a V1 system they can test on? :-)
I wish :-)
"-r" certainly was an option to "rm" in 7th Edition, and IIRC (see other
thread :-)) "-i" overrides "-f" there too.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
