>"Bill Sudbrink" <bills(a)adrenaline.com> wrote:
>> The University Of Maryland had something called ZMOB or
>> Z-MOB in the early 1980s, which (if memory serves) was
>> 256 4MHz Z80s, several Megs of bank-switched memory, etc.
>> I never got to actually play with it or even see it,
>> only heard about it. Frank McConnell may know more.
That was an inspired design. I modeled it somewhat with a 4/Z80
S100 crate back in '81. I learned alot about parallelism, process
sharing and multi-CPU task building and scheduling. In the end
one 16mhz z80 can and will blow the doors off of 4 4/mhz Z80s
generally. The complexity of supporting multiple CPUs makes
it hard to get significantly improved performance without application
tailoring.
Allison
Chad Fernandez wrote:
> I just went to a local computer show today. I was happy to find that a
> few vendors had components available from disassembled computers or
> whatever. I picked up a 3com 3C905-TX PCI ethernet card, an ATI Mach64
> video card, and a very nice Sound Blaster 16, all used of course.
Keep an eye on the ATI. I've seen lots of cases where they exhibited weird
behavior when used with non-Intel-chipset motherboards.
> The
> Mach64 had "Monitor" written in marker on the slot cover. Do office
> people really need to remind themselves where to plug the monitor in? I
> have also seen a 3.5" floppy drives marked "hard drive a:" and the 5.25"
> floppy, marked, "floppy drive b:". What's the deal?
I put printed labels on every system I sell, whether it's one I built, or a
used machine I took in on trade. I used to use labels with icons printed
on them but too many people didn't understand them. The printed labels cut
support calls by at least 50 percent. I still get calls from people who
can't figure out how to connect the AC power cable from the system to the
wall outlet.
All the recent ATX motherboards and expansion cards I've seen use the
"Colorful PC99" standard, wherein the VGA port is blue, the audio output is
light green, etc., but labels work best.
It's always amusing to hear the system box referred to as the "modem" or
"hard drive." On dual FDD systems, the 3.5" drive is the "hard drive,"
since the disks are "hard," not "floppy." About once a month someone comes
in asking about buying a "computer with Microsoft on it."
I love my customers ;>)
Glen
0/0
On August 27, Adrian Vickers wrote:
> >> >You mean you _don't_ write self-modifying code? Odd....
> >>
> >> It was drilled into me from a very early age that self-modifying code was A
> >> Bad Thing.
> >
> >As I said, I am not a programmer, so I don't worry about such things.
>
> :) It plays havoc with your designs.... Imagine a circuit that could
> reconfigure itself at will...
That's a whole different issue. Sorry, but I have to butt-in here.
Self-modifying code is a time-proven technique frequently used by
history's most clever programmers. Now in the face of RISC-y things
like out-of-order instruction execution and such, it's generally not
possible, but on stuff like PDP10/PDP11 machines it was commonly
employed with much success.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Laurel, MD
On another list, there has been a long thread about SO's and room for
the hobby. Does anyone else keep their collection set up and
functioning? Does your SO understand? I'm luck in that I have a large
room to set mine up. I currently have up and running:
NeXT TC slab, 17" Trinitron, laser printer, SCSI box, flatbed scanner
Sgi Indy, 20" Trinitron, SCSI box, Lexmark Optra with PS support
Sun Sparc 5, 20" Trintron
Mac Performa 631CD,DOS board, now just a 15" since the 20" Radius died,
StyleWriter 2500, LaserWriter II-NTX, ImageWriter II with LocalTalk
board
NeXT Cube with Dimension, 17" mono, ext CD rom, laserprinter, soon 21"
NeXT Hitachi on the Dimension
WinTel machine, 21" Mitsubishi, 19" CTX on Dual Head, Epson AL1000,
Epson Stylus 1500, Kurta digitizer, flatbed scanner
Commodore 128D, 14" RGB, MPS-803, 2 1571's running CP/M
Intel box booting BeOS, 17" monitor
Other printers and stuff: Calcomp 1043GT plotter("E" size), Zericon
PC3610 plotter ("D" size), HP LJ4si, HP OfficeJet R60, Canon BJC-4550,
Canon BJ-230, Tandy DMP-2100, Epson LQ570 (2 of them), Epson AL-1500's
(2 of them)
This doesn't even count the servers in the closet. I just took down an
Amiga 3000 that I'm selling. I also have been selling all of the Apple
II's ,Tandys and other machines that I collected. Besides, I don't want
to keep a lot of boxes in storage, they need to be used and ran.
I've told my wife she is kind of lucky. At least I don't collect
mainframes.
James
http://home.texoma.net/~jrice
Ok, my interests haven't really spread to anything HP, so I'm not sure if
this is usable or trash. First thing is a tape cartridge, about 5.5"x4",
and it says it is 600' long, has 16 tracks, and is for use with HP 9144A
and compatibles. It has the following label:
: HP9000 Series 300 and 400 Cart 1 of 1
: HP-UX UPDATE
: DONATED TurboVRX and PersonalVRX DEMONSTRATION
: Software Contributed from
: a variety of sources
: p/n 98735-12000 Rev. 1.1
: COPYRIGHT (C) HEWLETT-PACKARD Co., 1990.
Does anyone want this? It's yours for the cost of shipping.
--
Jeffrey S. Sharp
jss(a)subatomix.com
On August 26, Tony Duell wrote:
> Or you can make a 40*25 text display in about 3 chips (all of them
> easy to obtain) that will drive the RGB inputs on a normal TV set.
What sort of circuit, using which chips, did you have in mind here
Tony? I was thinking about the TMS9918, but it requires a bank of
4116s and is hard to find.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Laurel, MD
Tony Duell said:
> I've not tried this, but David (? maybe Vincent) Gingery has written a
> book on DIY injection moulding. Although the machine descibed will only
> do small parts (<10g or so), it would seem it could do switch levers,
> etc. I think scaling it up would be difficult, as the mould is not
> heated, so the plastic would most likely solidify before the mould was
> filled.
It's Vince Gingery. I have this book.
http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/inject/index.html
Dave Gingery did the line of foundry books and the
7 book set "Build Your Own Metalworking Shop from Scrap".
(Makes me feel like a kid again).
All of it is at Lindsay Books
http://www.lindsaybks.com/prod/index.html
every book you need to rebuild the world
after the apocalypse.
Regards,
--Doug
=========================================
Doug Coward
@ home in Poulsbo, WA
Analog Computer Online Museum and History Center
http://www.best.com/~dcoward/analog
=========================================
Hello !
I am looking for informations about MINISCRIBES MODEL : 3085
Does anybody know its physical parameters (heads, cylinders, sectors)?
Thank you
ve2qcg(a)globetrotter.net
