test-drb April 2002

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

280 participants
1162 discussions

by dquebbeman＠acm.org

> At 09:50 PM 4/24/02 -0400, Doug asked: > > > > > > >Where will I buy water wetter? > > E-bay. > > >Where will I buy Nitonol wire? > > E-bay. > > >Where will I buy flock paper? > > E-bay. > > >Where will I buy cheap assortment of lab glassware? > > E-bay. > > >Where will I buy an ultrasonic cleaner? > > E-bay. > > >Where will I buy a good Chinese microscope? > > > E-bay. > > > >and so on... > > Take a guess! Joe- I am not rich enough to be able to take E-Bay into the bathroom with me... Having an Edmund catalog kept me >from having to resort to National Geographic... ;) -Douglas Hurst Quebbeman (DougQ at ixnayamspayIgLou.com) [Call me "Doug"] Surgically excise the pig-latin from my e-mail address in order to reply "The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away." -Tom Waits

23 years, 1 month

new server status and RFC on problem tracking database for al l classic OS's

by alan.pearson＠cramer.com

GNATS is a pretty good bug tracking system (we use it here), easy to search etc too. What would be really useful IMHO is a means to sort the classiccmp archives, since a great many "FAQs" are answered there somewhere... finding the answer isn't that easy though :-) Googling for whatever I'm looking for and including "classiccmp" in the search list is the best I've come up with so far, anyone found a better way? BTW if nobody's working on a searchable archive I'd be happy to take the work on? Cheers Al.

23 years, 1 month

FREE STUFF! (Well almost)

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

I spotted this in the CPM news-group. It looks like a good deal for somebody. From: Gerald Pine <gdpine(a)pacbell.net> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.os.cpm Subject: Liquidating collection of CPM (and some other) machines Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 59 NNTP-Posting-Host: 32.101.253.40 X-Complaints-To: abuse(a)prodigy.net X-Trace: newssvr13.news.prodigy.com 1019533029 ST000 32.101.253.40 (Mon, 22 Apr 2002 23:37:09 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 23:37:09 EDT Organization: Prodigy Internet http://www.prodigy.com X-UserInfo1: [[PAPDCAOXW[B^LX@JJDM^P@VZ\LPCXLLBWLOOAFQATJUZ]CDVW[AKK[J\]^HVKHG^EWZHBLO^[\NH_AZFWGN^\DHNVMX_DHHX[FSQKBOTS@@BP^]C@RHS_AGDDC[AJM_T[GZNRNZAY]GNCPBDYKOLK^_CZFWPGHZIXW@C[AFKBBQS@E@DAZ]VDFUNTQQ]FN Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 03:37:09 GMT Xref: cyclone.tampabay.rr.com comp.os.cpm:20184 Hello, I have sold cpm machines from my collection to several of you in the past. I am finally running out of time to disperse my collection of machines before my house is officially sold to its new owners. The machines are in La Grange, Illinois, a southwest suburb of Chicago. My wife is going to include whatever is not left in a garage sale that she is holding next Saturday (the 27th or whatever date is a Saturday about then--no calendar in front of me). If someone can pick up the machines before then, or have a friend pick them up, they can be had for a VERY attractive price. In fact, we'll let you name what you think is reasonable. The more you take, the cheaper the better we'll like it. I don't want to dumpster these if I can avoid it, and I doubt that the local thrift store will be interested in them. Among what I have are: Multiple Osborne I's --at least one I know is working. Some have developed glitches sitting around for the last few years, and I think that they could easily be made to work, but no guarantees. I do have at least boot disks for most, but you might have to sort through some diskettes to pick them out. Take them all and your job is easier. Multiple Xerox 820-II's: 1 dual 8-inch floppy, 8-inch hard drive; 1 dual 8-inch floppy. 1 dual 5 1/4 inch floppy; some home made 8-inch drive cabinets. Have software (much) for these, and even have one pretty complete set of manuals and original diskettes, including a technical manual, CPM and operating manuals of various types, and MS-DOS manual, a CPM-86 manual, a graphics manual, wordstar, and probably some that I'm not remembering. I'd like to get a few bucks for the manuals especially. A Sanyo MBC-1000(?) not sure of the number, but it is a single floppy drive Z80 machine with boot disks and some software that I've transferred. Almost new condition. An Altos 580 and an Altos 8000: The 580 is in fine working condition with CPM and MPM system disks and some software for CPM that I've transferred from other formats. The 8000 needs a new power supply. A Mac LC-II. Machine was working, but keyboard stopped responding except for click noise. Haven't had time to diagnose it. A Data General 1 portable MS-DOS machine (8086 or 8088, not sure which). Works and comes with expansion docking station and external 5 1/4 inch drive. No software for docking station, unfortunately. A Vic 20 with lots of goodies. A TI-99. Not sure what;s with it. A Columbia PC, PC compatible luggable, similar to Compaq original portables. A IBM XT with hard drive and CGA monitor. 4 Televideo terminals, 3 925's and a 950. Also one copy each of service manuals and several operating manuals. A Sperry terminal. An Apple IIc with color and monochrome monitors and lots of software. Wordstar 4 for CPM and for MS-DOS in original boxes. SuperCalcII for Osborne. Lots more software, getting too tired to list. Send me your email address and I'll give you details about where it is and how to arrange to see it. Please help me to keep from dumpstering this. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to pack and ship it, so local pickups only. Gerald Pine

23 years, 1 month

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

by alan.pearson＠cramer.com

> Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 18:35:26 -0400 > From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch(a)30below.com> > : > [no room on the puny 6G HD for Linux, tho... it's fully Linux certified as > well...] LOL, you're kidding, right? :-) If not, contact me off list and I'll be more than happy to forward instructions for installing a very useful Linux setup onto an even punier 420Mb hard disk! Cheers, Al.

23 years, 1 month

new server status and RFC on problem tracking database for al l classic OS's

by GOOI＠oce.nl

> Thanks a MILLION to all who have donated parts and/or money > so far to get a separate dedicated classiccmp server. > ... > Decisions decisions.... if anyone still wants to donate to > the cause, my paypal id is jwest(a)classiccmp.org Ok, I will truncate the last digits in my account for you. - Henk.

23 years, 1 month

Anyone Care About RT-11

by GOOI＠oce.nl

> >Ethan Dicks wrote: > > > > By the way, for myself, I would VERY much appreciate > > > being in touch with all individuals who have a copy of the > > > RT-11 Freeware CD V2.0 so that we might exchange > > > information about RT-11. Tim Shoppa felt that he might > > > be violating privacy concerns if he made the names, of those > > > who ordered the CD, available. > > I can appreciate Tim's discretion, but I don't mind it being known > > that I ordered a copy from him. > > Jerome Fine replies: > > Is that OK just for myself or among others who are like minded? > If the latter, then RT-11 announcements will be sent to all 4 or 5 > of you at the same time - makes it easier. I think Tim said he sold > about 40 of the RT-11 Freeware CD, so many more names to go. I did also buy a copy of RT-11 (1 CD) and RSX11-M (2 CD's) from Tim. - Henk.

23 years, 1 month

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

by mtapley＠swri.edu

On April 21, Richard Erlacher wrote: >BTW, when the NEXT boxes first came out, we had a few of them sitting around >for people to look at and play with. I personally was not impressed. They >were EXTREMELY low on gigaflops per picobuck and, aside from the OS, I don't >remember any applications that didn't have the same look and feel as a small >mono-MAC costing ~1/10 as much. Finally gored my ox - but it's on-topic! Yee-hah. Nice things created on NeXT systems: * the WWW (or rather the html protocol underlying it) by Tim Berners Lee (sic?). * Mathematica - though probably is not useful to the work you do, it's indispensable to some of mine. * Zilla, the fore-runner of most of the distributed-computing, grid-computing, commodity CPU projects buzzwording around today. Distributed as an example application on NeXT 3.3 and used to crack several outstanding mathematical compute-intensive problems. * Attached sound and graphics files in email. Hmm, maybe this is not good. Basically, a lot of the computing technologies you now rely on first appeared on NeXT systems. They may not have impressed you then, but they should now. You are right about the Flops rating - that was only a bit higher than Macs/PC's and well behind Sparc's, Alphas, etc. But Flops/dollar is not the best metric of a general-purpose computer. If you think it is, buy yourself a used (Sony) PS/2 and we'll all be happier. For many kinds of work, developer time to a working solution is the dominant metric, and NeXT was very near the good end of that scale. >The problem with these machines, as borne out by the market, is that they >weren't what the home user wanted. Quite right - the home user wanted applications, rather than the ability to develop applications, and the corporate user wanted Flops - which meant Suns and Alphas. There were not enough developers to float the market for the hardware. But note, the NeXT company did *not* fail - it successfully moved its software to Sun, PA-Risc, and x86 platforms, where it maintained a serious business niche until it eventually was bought out by a higher volume hardware player - Apple. The same software is now the second-best-selling (? am I right in claiming this?) OS on the planet. There's a NeXT on my desk at work right now, running Mathematica and perl tasks, websurfing, backing up my portable .... its utility (to me) exceeds that of any Windows machine I've seen. Count me in with James Rice - if you see a working NeXT of any sort under $20 or so, and *particularly* if you see a cube hooked up to a color display, I'd take it most kindly if you'd notify me, or at least someone on the list. It ain't junk to everyone. Best contact for me is at the above email address. - Mark

23 years, 1 month

"Toy" computers (was Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers)

by mythtech＠mac.com

>> > An easy way to spot a product intended for the toy market as opposed to >> > one intended to be seen as a computer, is that the disk drive interface >> > is external. >I would propose that the label "toy" might be suitable for machines that >have external disk controllers _and_ an external network interface Woah... my PS/2 is a 'real' computer? It has internal storage (built in DVD drive, and 2 user upgradable RAM slots), AND has built in network interfaces (2 USB ports on the front which can be used for connecting 2 PS/2's together, and a proprietary expansion slot on the back for the recently released network/modem connector for connecting your PS/2 to the internet.. which I would classify as built in, since it connects to the single body unit, and was intended pretty much for this network box, and really is more of an optional part). Glad to know I didn't spend $300 on a toy. Oh... and the GameBoy is a real computer to. It has built in storage (game card slot), and built in networking (head to head port). I could probably go on with more examples... I could even narrow it down to ones that have built in floppy drives (to fade off the non "disk" drive concept, although I think claiming to need a floppy drive excludes an awful lot of other legit storage mediums, like all those systems that only use tape). There is a V-Tech kids learning "computer" that comes to mind that used 3.5" floppies (although, it might have lacked the required network port, but I think it had a serial port, but probably didn't support a "network" protocol). -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

23 years, 1 month

Apple-1 Auction conclusion

by vcf＠siconic.com

In case anyone is interested, the Apple-1 sold for $14,000, right at the reserve price. A low number by my estimation, but respectable considering the overall circumstances. :) -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *

23 years, 1 month

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

by mythtech＠mac.com

>The same software is now the >second-best-selling (? am I right in claiming this?) OS on the planet. Actually, recent reports say that more copies of OS X are selling off the retail shelves than Win XP... so looking at best *SELLING* OS, one might argue it is the #1 best seller. (of course, XP beats it out by a long shot when looking at most copies moved when included in bundles with the computer... but again, one could argue it is the computer you are buying then, and not the OS) -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

23 years, 1 month

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test-drb April 2002