test-drb January 1999

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

189 participants
897 discussions

OT? On Programming (was: Re: Computers for children)

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jan 16, 3:05, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote: > > Remember, C has a goto statement, although I don't think in my nearly 10 > > years of C programming I've ever used it, although on certain rare > > occasions it seemed the easy way out to a sticky coding problem. I think I've used it once -- and then removed it again. > Perhaps it's my own biases here (coming with 9 years of solid C coding) > but if you have more than one conditional test in an `if' or `while' > statment, you may be doing something wrong. Also, if you're so deeply > nested that you need a `goto' to get out of trouble, then again, you may be > doing something wrong. If you are nested about four levels deep in a > function, you may be doing something wrong. Don't be afraid to use lots of > functions, each doing one thing and one thing only. This applies to any > language really. This is definitely off-topic (who was that said I was single-minded?) but for a fine example of bletcherousness, try the source to the pine mailer (here also known as pain, or Pain In Neck Email). Find the 70K source file that handles the main mail stuff, and try 'grep goto' - and watch three or four screenfulls scroll by. All in one function (the 70K file is almost all one function). -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

25 years, 7 months

PS/2 Mouse drivers

by kurtkilgor＠bigfoot.com

Does anyone here know where I can get drivers for using a PS/2 mouse with DOS programs like a normal serial mouse? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Max Eskin | kurtkilgor(a)bigfoot.com | AOL: kurtkilgor

25 years, 7 months

Computers for children (soldering)

by kurtkilgor＠bigfoot.com

> Nowadays, of course, it's difficult to > get many of the books or raw materials we used back in the Sixties. Actually, I have a small packet on how to build a 'sugar rocket', which I ordered for something like $20 a few years ago. I never built anything, but sometime, I ought to try. The same company also has a full-blown book on making rocket engines.

25 years, 7 months

Stupid CP/M question

by drbilling＠ucdavis.edu

At 08:03 PM 1/15/99 +1, you wrote: > ... >> The first hard disk was made by IBM around 1956, and I assume it didn't >> take them much longer to write a DOS for it, but I don't know when they >> did or what it was called. > >Didn't they already use the term DOS ? The first commercially available IBM disk system was the IBM 305 RAMAC, but I believe the disk was just a peripheral device like a tape drive, not a system disk like we view it today. There certainly was no operating system stored on the disk and I doubt they even stored a program on the disk. It was pretty small electronically although it was physically huge, and incredibly slow because it only had one read/write head that had to be moved >from disk platter to disk platter. Since all IBM computers of the era, the 700's and 7000's were punch card fed machines, the programs were stored on punched cards and loaded each time they were to be run. Tape drives held intermediate results and input and output data, but not programs. At some point the the 7000 series life I believe there was a primitive "Tape Operating System", or TOS, developed so that once a program was debugged, the compiled binary version could be stored on tape, and a punch card "IPL" program could read that tape, load the program and then the machine would continue on just as if it had read the program from punched cards. After the 305 RAMAC was designed, a disk drive that I believe was called the 2305 was developed and it was hooked to the 7000 series machines. At some time around 1964 IBM coupled a 2305 to a 7044 which had a Direct Couple interface to a 7094 and used the 7044 to stage and control program loading on the 7094. A primitive "DOS" was developed called IBSYS, but all it did was que programs and data on the disk to be run on the 7094, one program at a time. This greatly minimized operator setup time and kept the very expensive 7094 humming. I don't think it was until the delivery of the S/360, in the 1968 time frame, that IBM had an operating system that they called DOS, but maybe there is an IBM expert in the group that could comment. -- db =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Dean Billing Phone: 530-752-5956 UC Davis FAX: 530-752-6363 IT-CR EMAIL: drbilling(a)ucdavis.edu One Shields Way Davis, CA 95616

25 years, 7 months

paper -> HTML (and The First PC)

by sinasohn＠ricochet.net

At 01:49 AM 12/30/98 -0600, you wrote: > 1) do a color scan to grab images > 2) clean up images > 3) resize based on guess at a good size and res for web pages Don't think you can do much about these steps. I usually shoot for 320x240 pixels for web images -- on most monitors that's about 4" by 3" or so. It used to be (not sure if this is still true) that the default width for netscape on the mac gave you 400 pixels across; I believe on the PC it was 480? (I'll have to dig up that article again.) Also, that's a manageable size for downloads. Anyway, on a 640x480 screen, you lose some width for scroll bars and all; plus you need a border/margin... Sure, you can design your web pages for 800x600, if you don't care that most people won't be able to see it all at once. > 4) scan again as B/W line art > 5) OCR > 6) clean up OCR > 7) create HTML combining OCR'd text and images > >I don't much like PDF for web docs, so an HTML solution would be best. It >looks like the "pro" version of Xerox's OCR software might automate the >task somewhat. Any recommendations? Well, your main issue is getting the text into machine-readable format. My current belief is the best way (especially for lower quality originals) is to read them into a word processor using dragon dictate or similar. Once you've got a text file, there are several options to get them HTML'ized, including things like MS Word, and HTML editors. (I prefer doing it manually.) Depending on what you're doing, a CGI program that reads/formats text files, inserting images as necessary, might be the way to go. (See http://www.sinasohn.com/clascomp/index2.htm) for an example.) --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.sinasohn.com/

25 years, 7 months

Stupid CP/M question

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<While I realize that it would not have been possible to make <their graphics part of the standard OS for a PDP-11, I <was led to believe that the PR0 350/380 had access to <their bit mapped screen displays. While doing such <manipulations was likely discouraged, is that a true POS did have a color and somewhat graphical display (menus on color screen) that was far from being graphics like most describe. Also the Graphical part was really not inherent to the basic OS, IE: no mouse or other object linking or support. The PRO350 also was contemporary to the PC XT making it a mid life PDP-11 based system. While -11s were used for graphics most of the serious work really required specialized hardware and programming support not generally available at the time. <Also, I understand that the first RT-11 was released about <1973. >When was the first CP/M released? 1974 (late) and was based loosely on Tops10, RT-11 and OS/8 (DEC Command line styles). > And the first DOS? Before 1970! Dos for PC was 1981ish. TRSdos was '78ish, NS* dos was late '76. DOS used to be a generic as well for "disk operating system". Allison

25 years, 7 months

Stupid CP/M question

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<As I recall, some of original Star War's movie graphics were done on a <PDP11. I don't think so. They used masks and other film tricks. someone else can comment. Though the -11 had graphics. It was more that any graphics were not supported by the OS and the hardware to do that was likely as big as the machine itself and not anywhere near real time. Graphics need lots of ram and lots of disk neither of which where common then nor cheap. Allison

25 years, 7 months

selling a blank floppy disk

by eric＠brouhaha.com

For my very first eBay auction, I managed to sell a single blank floppy disk for $22.00: http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=51510929 Of course, it wasn't your average, run-of-the-mill diskette; it was a classic, or I wouldn't be talking about it here. :-) Happy New Year! Eric [If I hear one more person joking about partying tonight like it's 1999, I think I may go postal.]

25 years, 7 months

TI99: Re: SCSI devices

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<I was going under the assumption, probably a false one, that all <"parallel" ports that were able to talk to a printer w/ a centronics <connector, conformed to a standard, and that a parallel zip drive <needed nothing above and beyond that to work. Of course figuring out how <to talk to the drive is another story as well. Severely untrue. PCs use a simple port with little to no hardware handshaking, however many other use hardware hand shaking so there are few if any readable lines for data return. Few non pc system implement a bidirection or EPP port and that is not require to do basic centronics interface. Allison

25 years, 7 months

Dapple computer

by Marion.Bates＠Dartmouth.EDU

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25 years, 7 months

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test-drb January 1999