test-drb April 2002

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

280 participants
1162 discussions

Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

6bits was the "byte" size for the PDP-8 (swap acc halves). 9bits was the byte size for the PDP-10, I believe IBM360 and CDC6600 12 bits was link-8, PDP-8 and PDP-12 (likely others). 9/18 the pdp7 (first home of unix). -----Original Message----- From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc(a)conman.org> To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Date: Monday, April 22, 2002 12:34 AM Subject: Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format) >It was thus said that the Great Ben Franchuk once stated: >> >> Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote: >> >> > As for using non-8 bit byte based CPUs? Not really; I don't think I've >> > ever even come across any 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, 60 or 66 bit systems >> > *anywhere* and I'm one of the few programmers I know that's even *heard* of >> > such CPUs. Most programmers I suspect are only aware of the x86. >> What computer systems did you have in mind? >> 9 bit ???? >> 12 bit ???? > > I might have gotten a bit confused there. I know of systems that have had >9 bit characters, and some that have 12 bit address spaces but I'm sure that >if there were indeed, such things as a nine bit or twelve bit computer, >they'll be mentioned soon enough 8-/ > > -spc (But I do want to say the PDP-8 was a 12 bit system for some reason ... ) > > >

22 years, 8 months

ScanPlus Gray 300 scanner - what type of interface?

by Arno_1983＠gmx.de

Thanks for this first info. The scanner does not bear the Plustek name or logo, but their web site lists a "Scan Plus Color 3000" (possibly color variant of mine), for which they still have a driver. The bottom of my scanner has a label on it with two checkboxen, "ScanPlus Gray 300" next to the checked and "ScanPlus Color 3000" next to the unchecked one, so obviously the used at least the same housing. Unfortunately, they only describe setup procedures for parallel port scanners (which have a second connector for the printer cable) and USB scanners, so I'm still lost as to which kind of interface I need to connect mine. I had already found and downloaded the files from the Italian site. Sincerely yours Arno Kletzander Arno_1983(a)gmx.de -- GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet. http://www.gmx.net

22 years, 8 months

Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 21, Richard Erlacher wrote: > You can get the same software for UNIX, if you don't mind the $250K pricetag. > You won't get the source code there, either, of course, but I doubt you'd > expend 200 man-years developing a piece of software at your expense and then > give away the source code. If you did, your shareholders would tar and > feather you. Most of the software in use in the UNIX world is free. Of course there ARE commercial packages, but...with very few exceptions, for every commercial package there's at least one free one that does the job as well or better. It's possible that I'm preaching to the choir here, but one of the common misconceptions that really bugs me is the notion that "unix == expensive", when in reality it's just the opposite. (The same goes for "pc vs. real computers" in the "I use a PC because I can't afford a Sun or an Alpha" case...) > People like the software for FPGA's and CPLD's because it's either free or > under $100 US. There are so many high-quality 805x compilers that are FPGA and CPLD stuff are some of the exceptions that I mentioned in my paragraph above. For that stuff we're pretty much stuck with Windows due to the shortsightedness of the vendors. There's nothing we can do about that at this point, as far as I can tell. :-( I curb that problem by using Windows (under an emulator of course) ONLY for the stuff that I can't run under a real OS. > "freeware" or "shareware" that I can't see any reason one would want one of > the $2000 types, unless he was convinced he could make his work easier by > spending that money. If people would keep after the producers of the > purportedly faulty software, it would get fixed. Vendors of shoddy software > rely on the fact that people buy their products under the mistaken notion that > it will do their work for them, knowing that, when the end-user finds out it's > not so, he'll be too embarassed to complain that the product doesn't work any > better than the comparable freeware product. I agree 100%. Needless to say, we're trashing this compiler after this project. :-) The fancy GUI is nice, but frankly I can be more productive with xemacs and make. > There is a demo version of nearly every high-cost ($2000 isn't that high, btw, > though the Windows environment has made it so.) Get a comparable product for > UNIX, and you'll get no improvement, nor will you get source. All you'll get > is a bigger bill. Not necessarily...I've used at least four FREE 8051 C compilers under UNIX, nearly ten years ago! $2000 *is* high, when most of the 8051 compilers I've used cost $0. -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

22 years, 8 months

Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

by blacklord＠telstra.com

Hi Richard, > were not great, but at least they were adequate. Frankly, if one > considers the competition, the Commodore people picked the video > toy market to > play in rather than the home computer market, because they > couldn't compete > with Apple and Radio Shack, though they attempted to compete with > RS' low-end. So just what is it that classifies the C64 as a "toy" computer ? When it was released, it was far more capable than the existant Apples, Ataris & Radio Shacks (& a damn sight cheaper too). Indeed, out of all the machines then in production, which one still in use now is still capable of (more or less) doing what modern machines can ? cheers, Lance ---------------- Powered by telstra.com

22 years, 8 months

Call for Chapters for Microscopy book

by micro＠formatex.org

Dear colleague This letter is to remind you that if you are interested in submitting a chapter for our forthcoming edition "Science, Technology and Education of Microscopy: an Overview" the deadline for submitting them is JUNE 30, 2002. Please note that a first list of accepted proposals/chapters has been also posted on the Call for Papers' website: http://www.formatex.org/micro2002/callforpaper.htm For any enquiry or suggestion, please contact us. Best wishes from Spain. J.A.Mesa Gonzalez Formatex Secretariat A.Mendez Vilas Physics Department University of Extremadura Avda. de Elvas s/n 06071 Badajoz SPAIN E-mail: amvilas(a)unex.es Editor

22 years, 8 months

Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: R. D. Davis [mailto:rdd@rddavis.org] > reliable and less troublesome. One of them told me that there was no > difference between BSD and Linux, and he firmly believed that BSD was > based on Linux! Another one insisted that I switch to M$-Word from I had a cop-rogrammer at one point who insisted that MacOS was based on MS-DOS. :) Needless to say, he didn't rogramm very well, and was fired eventually. Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

22 years, 8 months

Vax 3100/80 among other things.

by cvisors＠carnagevisors.net

Hi All again. I have to say the Vax I got last week has been heaps of fun, picked up a couple of bits for it today, like about 20 backup tapes (unfortunatly not TK50 tapes) And a Nice VT420 Terminal. Anyway decided to let VMS wait for a little before I try and learn this odd but interesting system, (I am going to be joind decus so I can get new VMS media as the machine didn't come with any) so I have had a look at the other avalible OSes that are avalible for the VAX. A quick question was ULTRIX ever avalible for the uVAX 3100/80? The two "free" operating systems that seem to be avalible for the 3100/80 are NetBSD and OpenBSD (there seems to be a version of linux but it seems to be quite imature.) I now have had a play with both (and If anyone ever needs a hand setting up either of these just give me a yell.) The NetBSD install was realy easy, I booted the vax via the network, and then did a [ctrl] + [z] and then using ftp pulled the .tgz files to the vax and installed the os from the local hard drive. The only issue was that the NetBSD install was sparse to say the least, and after compiling a couple of things (which was quite slow, but no where as slow as my first linux pc ;) I decided to give OpenBSD a go. OpenBSD is great, still it doesn't have all that I want, but has a lot more than NetBSD. The install is a little hairy in places, and it took me a while to configure the FreeBSD i386 box I am using for a boot server (the OpenBSD net boot process is a little differnt that NetBSD) but the install went painlessly. To sum up, and sorry if this is a little off topic. If anyone is looking for something other than VMS to run on their Vaxes, I would reccomend OpenBSD over NetBSD. I Hope I havent bored you too much.... Benjamin

22 years, 8 months

Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) [mailto:cisin@xenosoft.com] > Have you noticed some of the really odd structures in the > DIRectory of the > early Mac formats? > (linked list table (MICROS~1 calls theirs a F.A.T.) made up of 12 bit > entries!) Could that be coincidence? No. just a severe shortage of > competent systems programmers resulting in a number of programmers and > ideas in common. Atari's TOS wasn't based on MS-DOS either, and it used the exact same filesystem. To answer your rhetorical question, actually, I hadn't noticed. I did notice that it was significantly different from ODS-2. :) Perhaps I need to be more clear here -- this guy really thought that somewhere underneath the Mac GUI, there was a copy of MS-DOS on every Macintosh. He had nothing to offer as proof, except that no computer could possibly function without it. (I'm really serious here...) Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

22 years, 8 months

Mark-8 Starter Set for sale

by MTPro＠aol.com

This set includes the circuit boards reproduced (actually produced-retro) >from the original plans, and the front panel with lettering, and the red lens. I purchased these directly from the man who produces them and he has assembled a number of Mark-8's in the past and is very knowledgeable on their assembly. He includes an excellent CD with reprints of the original Radio Electronics articles and his own very helpful notes. Here are a couple of pictures: http://www.classiccomputing.com/mark8.html Here is more info: The First Hobbyist Computer! The remarkable Mark-8 computer was described in the July 1974 issue of Radio Electronics. A landmark in computer history, it was the first hobbyist computer. At this point in time, most engineers didn't, or couldn't believe that a real computer could be constructed with the new fangle Intel chips. But Jon Titus proved them wrong with the affordable Mark-8 computer. The Mark-8 is a .5 Mhz 8008 based computer that preceded the Altair 8800 by about 6 months. The 8008 was Intel's first 8 bit processor and was developed along with the world's first processor, the 4004. Only plans and pcb boards were available from the creator, Jon Titus, everything else had to be provided by the builder. More on the CD from the creator: Also included is a CD that I put together containing a copy of the original Radio Electronics article and supplemental 47 page construction article; a 50 page manual I created detailing my experience and hints debugging this computer (with many photos and full scans of completed boards); aboueers informed before Byte came out, its a treasure chest of historical information about the Mark-8 and other early computers, the January 1975 issue is especially interesting, this is when the Altair was introduced) I paid $180 for this set and I have come to realize that I do not have the talent needed to do the precise soldering, testing, etc. and there is the task of locating the remaining parts for the computer. This is over my head I believe, so I want to pass these on to someone else. $150 plus shipping, an excellent deal. Don't miss your chance to build this classic kit. Best, David Greelish Classic Computing www.classiccomputing.com "classiccomputing" on eBay

22 years, 8 months

open "dumpster" event in New Haven, CT

by mythtech＠mac.com

>> 1 HP LaserJet IIID, w/ duplex >Covet covet. > >*sigh* I'm in Qu?bec. That is sitting in the back of the van sitting in my driveway :-) In the morning I will see what it's status is (Dave believes it works, but doesn't know 100%... worst case, I will probably canabalize my LJ 2 to get the IIID running) Sorry, had to rub it in (isn't often I have toys others want) -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

22 years, 8 months

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test-drb April 2002