Either in 1978 or around 1980 or 81, I recall reading
an article on AI-based image recognition with a micro
like the Altair or IMSAI. All in machine code, of course,
toggled in.
The guy called it Legion, because it was based on a
bunch of cells all making decisions. I think it may
have been a 5x5 grid of cells, each with its own algorithm
for voting yes or no. He would then show it a shape
(enter some data 8^), and Legion would, based on the
vote, tell him something (I forget what). Then he
would tell Legion the real answer. The cells that
voted correctly earned points, those that voted
incorrectly lost points.
As a cell lost points, it would eventually cross 0,
at which point it was a failure, and was cast out.
A different cell (algorithm) would take its place.
The idea was that hopefully, the cells would eventually
populate with algorithms with a high success rate.
He miscoded a test, though, and only the cells that
hit 0 exactly were cast out (into pigs, perhaps),
but those that jumped from +1 to -1 kept voting. A
program dump showd that some of these cells had
actually been performing a good service.
Anyone recall (much less have) this article? It was
very well written (a bit tongue in cheek)...
-Miles
OK, I give up! Since the list is no longer plain text,
will someone familiar with Eudora Pro 4.0 PLEASE tell me
how to configure Eudora it so that formatting like this:
****************** START PASTE *************************
------=_NextPart_000_0004_01BE3A7A.7073A200
Content-Type: text/html;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
***************** END PASTE ****************************
Doesn't cause the rest of the digest to look like this:
***************** START PASTE **************************
------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 21:35:15 -0600 From:
"Paul Braun" To: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu Subject: RE: Kim-1 Computer
Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Date sent: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 06:57:41 -0600
(CST) Send reply to: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu From: Doug Yowza To:
"Discussion re-collecting of classic computers" Subject: RE: Kim-1 Computer
Originally to: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers > Mine is a
late model S/N 6176, postage cancled on May 18, 1977. > >From the few data
points so far, I'd say we've got monotonically > increasing serial numbers
starting with 1. (Of course, if they were C > programmers, then the first
one is S/N 0.) > > -- Doug OK. I had to look. My second KIM is #1051 with a
Rev. A board. It has the white ceramic MOS chips. This one shows plenty of
wear, however. It's mounted on a piece of masonite with a socket for the
one edge connector, a little bracket for a couple of 1/8" phone plugs (tape
connections), an expansion port (Centronics-type, I assume this is where it
was cabled up to a modified Selectric) and a terminal strip for power. The
LED's have had sockets installed under them, since I assume the originals
burned out. The 6502 also is socketed. This KIM was used by Stan Ockers and
Jim Butterfield while writing the "First Book of KIM". Stan would take it,
in the little briefcase he gave me along with it, to a computer club
meeting in Chicago where a guy had an IBM Selectric that he had modified to
work as a printer. Stan would load the programs he, Jim, and their partner
(sorry -- don't have my FBOK in front of me and the other name escapes me)
had written, and then print them out on the Selectric. These printouts were
then cut and pasted into the layout for the book. Is the bottom numbe on
the die cover the date code? If so, my 6502 is dated 1576. The thing is,
regardless of how much they sell for on e-pay, it means so much more to me
that Stan sat down and talked to me for an hour and a half about the book
and computing in those days and then gave me his KIM that I couldn't think
about selling it. Paul Braun NerdWare -- The History of the PC and the
Nerds who brought it to you. nerdware(a)laidbak.com www.laidbak.com/nerdware
********************* END PASTE *******************
THANK YOU VERY MUCH
=========================================
Doug Coward
Press Start Inc.
Sunnyvale,CA
=========================================
-----Original Message-----
From: Miles O'Neal <meo(a)netads.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Saturday, 9 January 1999 18:42
Subject: Re: new to the list
>I've a good mind to send a gaggle of RTs to your door!
You can send them to mine if you like, I don't have one, and I'd love
geniune Big Blue RISC machine of my very own..... Do they come with an
O/S?
:^)
Cheers
Geoff Roberts
Computer Room Internet Cafe
Port Pirie
South Australia.
netcafe(a)pirie.mtx.net.au
> > Well now that we are on the subject of Kaypro...What ever happened to
Alan Kay ?
> > Is this guy still around ?
> You mean Andy Kay? Yes, he is still around.
Alan Kay is also still around and quite active in the Squeak community,
Squeak being a portable revival of Smalltalk. He's now at Disney, believe it
or not.
Which leads to the question... anyone on this list have any Xerox Stars
(running Smalltalk, of course)?
Cheers,
- Joe
----- Original Message -----
From: Alan Kay <alank(a)wdi.disney.com>
To: <squeak(a)cs.uiuc.edu>
Sent: Saturday, January 02, 1999 4:51 PM
Subject: Re: How difficult is multiple inheritance?
>Folks --
>
>There is a cooler and most interesting way to approach all this. Much of
>the seminal work was done around the late 70s in PARC Smalltalk by Ira
>Goldstein and Danny Bobrow -- it was called PIE: Personal Information
>Environment -- and they have been written up as PARC Blue Books (as noted
>by Mike Klein previously to the Squeak list) ; *and* they can sometimes be
>obtained from PARC.
> The basic idea is to have an object made up of multiple perspectives
>e.g. a given object could have the perspectives of being an employer, an
>employee, a father, a son, etc., *and* the perspective of being an object.
>The internal representational strategy they used was to let a logical
>object be made of as many Smalltalk instances as were needed, especially if
>the perspectives were disjoint enough to give fits to simple-minded
>mulitple inheritance schemes.
>
>I have been a big fan of this general approach since Goldstein got it
>running. There are also a wealth of other terrific ideas in their papers.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Alan
jpero(a)pop.cgocable.net said...
|
|Is those RT's that bad? is there will be a problem if I tear it
|apart for its parts, the shipping and trying to selling would be a
|problem except no problem shipping parts except for case.
RTs were pretty bad. They were s l o o o o w w w...
And they had the most bastardized version of anything
daring to claim any kinship to UNIX that you can imagine.
The manuals were terrible. I suspect that if you were from
an IBM mainframe world, being forced at gunpoint to consider
PCs and UNIX and such, they were heaven-sent. But to
those of us already working with workstations and micros,
they were the Red Menace that Senator McCarthy warned the
world about - they just happened to be Blue.
|If you're really using the classics and using it as tables or
|something, protect them from spills, bumps etc..
Quick vignettes...
1) I contracted for IBM here in Austin for a while. There
was an RT on the austin.ibm.com network named "doorstop".
AFAIK, about all it was being used for was to answer the
pings for "doorstop".
2) At PSW, Frank King (the IBM upper manager who more or
less built the IBM workstation division) had just been
installed as president when we took him on a tour of the
premises. As we escorted him into the secure lab, his
eyes lit up as he saw an RT.
``An RT! Wonderful! What do you use this for?''
Tom Stewart pushed it in front of the door to hold it open.
``A doorstop? What else?''
3) During the time I was at IBM (14 months) I saw rooms and
rooms full of RTs. I kinda have to laugh, thinking about
what they were paying for space. One of the graphics labs
had about 30 linear feet of wall space, 10 feet high, just
stacked with the processor boxes, because they were running
out of other places to put them. I never figured out what
they were doing with them - whether they couldn't give them
away, or were afraid to, or what.
If I had one, I would probably protect it. If I had two, I
would protect one. For the other, I would have an auction.
The high bidder would get to step out back onto the rifle range
(why have 5 acre sin Texas without a rifle range?), and put a
7.62mm bullet into the RT's evil, beating heart.
And in Austin, there would be *lots* of bidders. I might not
make $6,818.00, but I'd make enough to pay my ISDN bill for
a while...
-Miles
Nah, I'm sure there are 3rd world countries that would take them.
But after they had them a while, they'd be even more pissed at
the US than they are now... 8^/
At 07:10 PM 1/8/99 -0800, you wrote:
> ... he said it was the first one he ever
>owned, which was a kit he bought thru Popular Science for $99. His name
>was Dennis. Is there a Dennis lurking on this list?? :)
And the computer was ....
You guessed it the COSMAC Elf! And IIRC, the article was "Build a COSMAC
Elf for Less than $100"
Anyone got the issue date?
--Chuck
At 11:48 PM 1/4/99 -0500, you wrote:
> o *DATA* - what about all those data files which have been
> recorded over the years? What form was date stored?
Working on a work-around at the moment wherein we need to store 5 digit
numbers, but the database (deployed at nearly 400 stores around the western
US) has only 2 bytes for this field. Unfortunately, COBOL only allows
values up to 9999 to be stored in a two byte field, even though 2 bytes can
(in theory) hold numbers from 0 to 65535 (or -32766 to 32767 or so).
So we need 4 bytes for COBOL to be able to deal with the new data. But, to
roll out a database change like that to the stores would take 5-6 months
(can't just muck around with live production systems, you know, and you
can't do anything while the stores are open (i.e., taking in $$$).)
Interestingly, the numbers we need to deal with are all less than 32000, so
they will fit in 2 bytes. So the work-around will be to store the data as
two character bytes and convert that within the program into a temporary 4
byte field. So what happens when the numbers get bigger than 32K? Well,
I'm sure the system will have been replaced by then... 8^)
(Actually, it will have; the new, replacement system was supposed to have
been finished by now. We're just patching the old system until it's done.)
>There are going to be more and more failures as we get closer. Last
>year, there was a report that an insurance company which normally
>issued 3-year policies could only do two-year. If they haven't
>fixed the problem, they're probably down to one year now...
In the late 1980's, I worked with a company that wrote software for leasing
companies. Companies that leased big computers and heavy equipment. In
addition to getting to know amortization tables intimately (I used to know
the formula to compute payments/periods/rates/etc. by heart!) I got to know
the y2k bug pretty well -- most of the leases were 10 year leases. We had
a y2k version out by '90 or so.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
Hey, check this out! KayPro is still in business:
www.kaycomputers.com
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Always being hassled by the man.
Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0
See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
[Last web site update: 12/27/98]
Janet Morehouse in Baltimore has a Kaypro II that she is willing to give
away to whoever wants to come and pick it up. Whoever's local, give her a
jingle at MorehouseJ(a)dhmh.state.md.us.
Richard Schauer
rws(a)ais.net
-----Original Message-----
From: Charles E. Fox <foxvideo(a)wincom.net>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Saturday, 9 January 1999 0:50
Subject: Re: Americans (was: Re: Message formats)
>At 01:12 PM 1/7/1999 +0000, you wrote:
> The country is fine, but we always manage to elect nincompoops to govern
it.
You don't have a monopoly on that. We seem to have the same problem.
It's probably due to the fact that mostly nincompoops run for office.
Cheers
Geoff Roberts
Computer Room Internet Cafe
Port Pirie
South Australia.
netcafe(a)pirie.mtx.net.au
