On 2001-01-05 classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org said to kees.stravers(a)iae.nl
>Another reason I still like using Pine under a Unix shell account to
>read my ASCII mail. VT100 emulation. The data stream *is* the
>content. Hardware requirements: VT-100 terminal, a modem that can
>dial a POTS line, and the aformentioned line itself. Nothing more.
>Classic Bliss.
How about Nettamer? A wonderful all-in-one DOS program to read mail
and news, do ftp and a little bit of web surfing. Built in PPP, no
external drivers needed.
Any attachment just stays in the body of the message and is easily
decoded or deleted. Works on any old PC with a modem, very safe.
www.nettamer.net
As a rule I delete any received binary file that I was not told about
beforehand by a trusted source. God knows what garbage might have
been in all those animated christmas cards.
Kees.
--
Kees Stravers - Geldrop, The Netherlands - kees.stravers(a)iae.nl
http://www.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/ My home page (old computers,music,photography)
http://www.vaxarchive.org/ Info on old DEC VAX computers
Net-Tamer V 1.08.1 - Registered
I have actually worked for three companies where paper tape was actually
used every day. The nice thing about paper tape is that you can visually
inspect the output and know what was on it. There were commonly two ways to
store it, fan folded or rolled.
1. 1974 when I worked in a microbiology lab the SMAC Automated
chemistry analyzers produced paper tape that contained the results from the
blood chemistry results. The paper tape was then fed into a IBM 360/50
where the lab reports were generated. The reports compared the individual
patients results to the predicted normal ranges. The real experts could
patch/splice paper tape to correct a result or for a repeat. They didn't
run the IBM 360/50 at night while the lab samples were processed. Each
analyzer had its own ASR-33.
2. 1975 graduate school, where the PDP 8's were booted by toggling in
through the front panel the bootstrap loader and then the actual OS was
loaded via paper tape read on an Teletype ASR-33.
3. 1978 McDonnell-Douglas where the programs loaded into individual
missiles were punched onto Mylar paper tape and a copy stored in a vault for
positive verification of the program that was loaded.
Mike
mmcfadden(a)cmh.edu
From: Richard Erlacher <edick(a)idcomm.com>
>
>As I've often heard, Altair had the reputation that nothing they ever
>shipped worked as shipped, often either requiring one pay for a service
of
>modifying it at the plant before it was shipped, or to fix it or have it
>fixed once it had arrived. From a historical perspective, an Altair
that
>actually works is an anomaly. That explains why they're all different.
Not quite. the 8800B was a solid machine and worked well.
The early 8800s were flakey but they did run. The most common
problems were they tended to crash for apparently no reason
and moving the boards on the bus affected this.
Their problems were obvious if you think on it.
CPU clock was 2mhz crystal TTL gate OSC driving oneshots for the
non overlaping two pahse clock... Poor.
The bus and frontpannel if assembled "by the book {reads phamplet}"
were interconnected by 18" wires! Can you say ringgggggg.
The bus (original 4 slotters) were made singel sided with light ground
and a but too thin material!
The transformer was too light and slighly undervoltage. Filter caps
and rectifiers were too small for the load beyond minimum.
The 8800A version fixed the most obvious (listed) and many more
subtle problems.
The key thing was compared to the more robust IMSAI, NS* and
later machines it was flimsy and it's reliability was poor.
Allison
From: Richard Erlacher <edick(a)idcomm.com>
>So ... you're of the opinion that Altair computers shouldn't have a
disk?
>MITS built them with a disk, didin't they? I can't imagine how the
Yes they did! The floppy was two boards as a controller.
>My recollection was that the original Altair had no I/O devices at all.
To
Incorrect. Mine arrive in january 1975 with MITS 88-PIO and MITS 88-ACR
(audio casette via modded modem board and SIO card pair!) and by summer
I had the 2SIO board. Still ahve and use the SIOs and one of the
programmers
is based on the PIO.
>me that didn't suggest it was complete without them, but it did suggest
it
>was a work in progress when it appeared on the mag cover in '75 or
whenever.
>It's going to take a couple of days for me to get my head around the
concept
>you seem to project.
Almost true. that cover was shot in September to make the Pop'Tronics
schedule, by December it was reality.
>I have always thought it was a mistake to refer a computer with
>non-MITS-original hardware as an Altair. I kind-of see folks calling it
a
>FORD if it says FORD on it, even if the engine is from a Chrysler and
the
>transmission is from a DeSoto.
It's a ford of the body and chassis is ford. Most Altairs were MITS box,
CPU and some amount or ram and IO but rarely pure.
Allison
From: Rob Kapteyn <kapteynr(a)cboe.com>
>The historically interesting thing about the ALTAIR has how insanely
>primitive it was when it became the
>sensation that sparked the PC revolution.
It was actually more advanced than it's immediate predecessor and
many times cheaper than commercial systems based on microprocessors.
>Putting a disk on an ALTAIR is kind of cool, but it misses the point of
how
>primitive they really were.
Not really, disks were the expensive peripheral but the design neither
negated nor favored their presence.
>Yes, parallel logic is much more consistent with the Altair era.
>My keyboard is 8-bit parallel, my paper tape reader is 8-bit parallel.
Not really, people use parallel AND serial as available.
>The only common serial devices were Teletype machines (because of their
>evolution from the telegraph).
>Teletypes were the most common "terminal" in use back then.
Not really save for they could be gotten cheaper. the microcomputer
revolution was not about capability, it was about cost!
In spring of 1975, H1000 terminal, ADM1, VT05 to name a few could
be found. My favorite was SWTP CT1024 board modded for 64Char
by 16 lines and lowercase.
>Do you even know what paper tape is ?
>I think that every ALTAIR had to deal with paper tape at some point.
>Magnetic media were too unreliable.
Irrelevent. I had reliable magtape by the summer of 1975.
>I have a cute little optical paper tape reader that has a row of 9 LEDs
and
>a corresponding row of photodiodes.
>It sends data as eight bits in parallel.
Yep, did that too.
>To load BASIC, you entered a tiny loader program through the front panel
>switches.
Rom was expensive and EPROM even more so but by summer of '75
people were using it to get away from the costly and often flakey front
pannel.
>This program just looked for the tape reader's clock bit, delayed a
little,
>then read the rest of the byte and stored it in memory.
>When you loaded Bill Gate's BASIC, the first data loaded was a more
robust
>checksum loader.
Same as the magtape version.
>By the way, in the beginning, ALTAIR BASIC WAS the "Operating System".
>Through PEEKs and POKEs executed from your BASIC programs, you could
>control all of your hardware.
MITS Programming Package I/II gave you editor, assembler, debugger.
>I also have a "VDM-1" video display card. We converted an old TV work
>with this.
Have that too, used a commercial video monitor (used).
>After BASIC was loaded, we add a "patch" for this through the front
panel
>switches.
PT supplied it.
>That was another interesting thing about the ALTAIR, you could always
take
>control of your computer through the front panel switches.
>There was no "reset" button to hit when your system crashed, your just
went
>in and looked at what happened.
Yes there was! the procedure was STOP, RESET, RUN.
>Usually, you went to location 0 and hit "run" to get out of a crash.
Like I said...
>A "nasty" crash was when an loop overwrote your memory.
>This happened fairly often too.
Usually due to processor mistiming ro plain old noise.
>It was always kind of interesting to look at the patterns that appeared
in
>the memory when these crashes occurred.
Caused by the execution of repeated FFh (RST 7).
>I have always thought that if I wanted to be able to easily "boot" my
>ALTAIR to show it off, I would construct
>a box that would let me load and save my programs to a modern PC through
>this parallel port.
A PROM worked killer in 1975.
>I hate to think that as an "original" Altair owner, I am, myself, a
museum
>piece :-)
>I am only 39 years old.
Really kid... I was 22 when I built the first one.
Allison
From: Sellam Ismail <foo(a)siconic.com>
>> FWIW, I think all of the Altair disk subsystems were spawned after
Percom
>> bought MITS. IIRC, ICOM made a third-party disk subsystem for the
Altair,
Nope! the first 8" floppy system was all MITS, the later ICOM/PERCOM
stuff was better if only because it was later.
Allison
In a message dated 1/5/01 3:22:26 PM Eastern Standard Time,
pete(a)dunnington.u-net.com writes:
> On Jan 5, 7:34, Bruce Lane wrote:
> > All listmembers: It should be obvious that you do NOT, under ANY
> > conditions, want to execute the file that got spammed to the list.
>
> It doesn't run too well under IRIX, anyway ;-)
Or Linux, or BSD, or SCO, or HPUX or Ultrix either :-)
On Jan 5, 7:34, Bruce Lane wrote:
> All listmembers: It should be obvious that you do NOT, under ANY
> conditions, want to execute the file that got spammed to the list.
It doesn't run too well under IRIX, anyway ;-)
> I've tracked the spammer [...]
> The spam is already on its way to them with
> a request to crater the account responsible.
>
> You're welcome. ;-)
Thank you!
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
G'day,
I have one of these beasties sitting around - they're a mid-late 1970's
design I believe (the only date I can find on it however is the copyright on
the PCB for the powersupply - 1971).
At first glance, it does appear to work - powers up and screen glows a
wonderfull cliche green. Serial cord connected and send data to it... no
effect. :(
So, has anyone ever setup one of these things to work as a terminal to a
common garden PC (linux user I am)? Might the screen have burnt out and it
simply is unable to display anything I send to it anyways? Does it need a
straight-through or null-modem serial connection? Do I need to send an
initialisation string to it before it'll accept and display any data?
None of these things I know, and trial and error problem solving can be
frustrating, especially if other problems prevent them from being solved
that way! ;)
btw, I have a few cheap webcam shots of the thing, and can get them on a
webpage, if anyone is interested in seeing the thing.
.../Nemo
--
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-=- The real trouble with reality is that there's no background music! -=-
