test-drb April 2002

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

280 participants
1162 discussions

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

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Dave McGuire [mailto:mcguire@neurotica.com] > 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 > Compared to what? I can support this particular one of Dick's comments, given that the performance of the M68K-ish chip in the NeXT boxes was generally accepted at the time to be lower than that of, for instance, MIPS, and probably M88K. OTOH, the systems (from my personal experience) were (are!) more than fast enough to be wonderful desktop machines, and I can't relate at all to his comparing the GUI to a Macintosh. Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

22 years, 2 months

One-upsmanship

by Lee.Davison＠merlincommunications.com

And talk about power usage: the building has a 2 megawatt line coming into it. We have two 10 MW lines here, does that count? 8^)= Lee. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- This email is intended only for the above named addressee(s). The information contained in this email may contain information which is confidential. The views expressed in this email are personal to the sender and do not in any way reflect the views of the company. If you have received this email and you are not a named addressee please delete it from your system and contact Merlin Communications International IT Department on +44 20 7344 5888. ________________________________________________________________________ This e-mail has been scanned for all viruses by Star Internet. The service is powered by MessageLabs. For more information on a proactive anti-virus service working around the clock, around the globe, visit: http://www.star.net.uk ________________________________________________________________________

22 years, 2 months

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

by Andreas.Freiherr＠Vishay.com

Well, it's been some years ago, and I've only done a pretty small amount of assembly-language programming on the DEC-10 (or PDP-10) besides much more FORTRAN, but the reason for me to learn MACRO-10 was byte handling, so let me tell you... Allison wrote: > > 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). One of the more interesting features of PDP-10 architecture was that there is no fixed byte size. The instructions dealing with bytes (e.g., ILDB = Increment and LoaD Byte) address part of a 36-bit word by using a so-called "byte pointer", which is a (36-bit) word that defines the address (18 bits) and size (6 bits, IIRC) of the bytes being handled. This way, the same ILDB instruction can handle 5-bit bytes while reading old paper tapes as conveniently as 8-bit bytes when handling multinational character sets. Common byte sizes were 6 (for the SIXBIT code, a reduced character set for use in the file system and other places to encode identifying names) and 7 (for ASCII, parity not being stored). The 7-bit bytes left you with one bit unused, and 5 (yes, five!) characters could be stored in a word. This confused many FORTRAN-IV programs: they relied on handling strings in INTEGER arrays, and assumed the INTEGER*4 data type to be able to store four characters in 32 bits... A typical example was the FLECS translator: to port this from a 32-bit Siemens system to the 36-bit DEC-10, I had to rewrite the string manipulation routines as well as all the DATA statements that contained strings (regroup from four to five characters per INTEGER word). Later, replacing two FORTRAN routines with MACRO-10 made the translator run at about 2.5 times the original speed. If anybody wants to know more about this machine, let me know: what memory doesn't serve right any more will happily get looked up in "the Gorin", something like the bible for MACRO-10 programmers. I still have it, and you'll not find mine at eBay as long as I can read it myself. -- Andreas Freiherr Vishay Semiconductor GmbH, Heilbronn, Germany http://www.vishay.com

22 years, 2 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] > Which is why I use FreeBSD and Solaris. There also appears to be a > certain Linux versus anything else attitude, including Linux vs. other > UNIX-like, and UNIX flavors. It wasn't too long ago when most people > who wrote free software for *NIX systems made an attempt to make it as > portable as possible, so that it could be compiled on most *NIX-like I'm not sure. I think that -- in my experience -- most people who write, or have written, software for Unix, don't particularly care to test it on multiple platforms. Generally I try at least five or six with my own code, but I don't think that's common. (For the curious: Linux Intel, NetBSD/SPARC, IRIX/MIPS, HP/UX/HPPA, SunOS 4/SPARC, AT&T Unix/MC68k) ... and no, I have not so far actually released anything. Mostly this is just stuff for my own use. > platforms. Many of the Linux hackers, however, it appears, tend to > write their software for Linux, and only Linux, systems, ignoring the Perhaps that's all they've got, and they don't care to install anything else? It's certainly their spare time, to do with as they please. Not that I'm saying it's the correct thing to do, but I won't automatically fault them for it. > fact that they wouldn't have their Linux software to play with if > other *NIX hackers hadn't written portable code. For example, the > Free Software Foundation from which Linux snatched most of it's > utility programs, etc. GNU software is often incredibly portable, but I blame this on the fact that the code is ported by other individuals than those who wrote it. At any rate, this is getting even further off-topic. Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

22 years, 2 months

Specifications Sought for 7-Track Tape Heads

by dquebbeman＠acm.org

> John Foust wrote: > > > Or for that matter, the seven "heads" could be displaced > > along the path of the tape, and the software would handle > > the realignment of the time domain. Or you could read > > less than 7 tracks at a time, and reassemble in software. > > Nope --- I would guess a 7 track head is needed, as you only get one > time to read the tape. Ben- watcha mean? I've shoeshined 9-tracks to death on one drive, then handed them to someone else who read them first pass on a different drive. Maybe 7-track tapes from 1961, but so far I've got nothing older than about 1972... -dq

22 years, 2 months

Network Finds

by jrkeys＠concentric.net

I hope to start hooking up a mix of hardware very soon and have over the last week picked up a Linksys Fast Ethernet 5-Port Workgroup Hub model FEHUB05W ($2.92), a Linksys EtherFast cable/DSL Router model BEFSR41 ($20), and a Katron 10BASE-T Ethernet hub 8 Plus model Hub/8 ($10) and now have tofigure which to use?

22 years, 2 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] > Just talk louder and be more persistent; they'll reach a point where ^^^^^^ More loudly ;) > they'll either listen or fire you; it the later, no great loss since > it doesn't sound like they're worth working for. Actually, aside from having no clue how to run their computer systems, they're really good people, and I like them. That's my dilemma. I put up with them because I really do like my job, and especially in the current market, that makes me very lucky. > > agreed to follow their rules, and will have to do that > until they make > > more sane rules. > Why? I'm at a loss as to how I can make things any more clear. :/ Sorry. > > In other words, when I took their job, I gave them > > my word. > You gave them your word that you'd act like a good little obedient > dimwit? Why would anyone promise to do that? I suggest that you > run emacs and invoke doctor ("M-x doctor") to get some help. ;-) Actually, I prefer the stand-alone eliza program. > One can always refuse to work with that Micro$oft rubbish. Perhaps you The other option is to do the best you can with the crap that they already have, and if (when!) that's ever not good enough, to explain exactly why. > could educate your employer's clients; tell them all about the big > mistakes that they're making by wanting to use that Micro$oft > virusware which is broken, and otherwise annoying, by design. Don't > mince words, tell it like it is, and tell them that no reasonably > intelligent computer hacker would work with that rubbish unless it was > as part of a project to change over to a UNIX system, or VMS, or even > CP/M... that is, changing over to a system that doesn't destroy data I have made it extremely clear in the past (... and yes, I used just these words) that "we'd be much better off using CP/M." I'll probably make that statement many more times, and I don't really expect they'll change anything because of it. Perhaps I can have some kind of influence on new projects during the initial design stage by voicing my objection to the use of any microsoft product. Again -- this time to them -- I have no idea how I can make it any more clear. > and do other peculiar things with files. Ask them why they like > operating systems that molest data... someone needs to make an "Eddy > Electron" like film, that's Monty Pythonish, called "Pfe$ter, the > Micro $oft Mole$ter," showing him doing strange things with bits of > data as they flow through the computer. Sort of an "educational" film, like "Data Flows Red on The Hard Disk?" Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

22 years, 2 months

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

by dquebbeman＠acm.org

> > > > 9bits was the byte size for the PDP-10, I believe IBM360 and CDC6600 > > > > > > Na, the /360 was a plain 8 Bit/Byte machine, but I think you're > > > right about the CDC. AFAIR there was a Bull machine using 9 Bit Bytes, > > > and 18 Bit integers. > > You sure about the CDC-6600? The complete word length was 60 bits, and I > > seem to recall that for the purposes of characters, there were 10 6 bit > > characters stored per word. http://www.scd.ucar.edu/computers/gallery/cdc/6600.html > The PPUs were 12 bitters. > > Sorry, yes, I should think before writeing. Of course, > the CDCs used weired 6 Bit teleype codings for character > representation. The CDC 6000 Series and its follow-ons were machines that had a Central processor with a 60-bit word and Peripheral & Control Processors that had a 12-bit word (ignoring the 64-bit word and 16-bit words of the 180 Series). As most definitions of "byte" revolve around it being a basic unit of *storage*, I would point out that 12-bits was the smallest unit of storage that could be manipulated without shifting & masking. Its *character* size, therefore, being 6-bits, was different from its *byte* size... This made implementing a C compiler a large headache, I'm told... -dq

22 years, 2 months

Network Hub selection help needed

by tim＠snowgoons.fsnet.co.uk

Pete Turnbull wrote: >On Apr 21, 2:34, Chad Fernandez wrote: >> I'm finally going to work on hooking up a home network, so I guess I >> need a hub. What should I look for? I don't know much about networks >> yet. I have potentially 7 computers that I'd like to have connected. >> It'll need to be 10Base-T, but 100base-T may be involved too. I >> thought >> I'd look for something on Ebay, hopefully, not too expensive. Maybe >> something commercial grade, However. I thought about something >> from IBM >> or 3Com, any suggestions?? > >Go for autosensing 10/100baseT. If you're going to spend any amount of >money, you want to protect your investment by including 100baseT >capability >even if you don't need it right now. > >If you see a decent modern 3Com hub or switch, that's fine but most >of the >second-hand stuff I've seen is 10baseT only. I wouldn't bother >looking for >IBM. Baystack, 3Com, HP, Cisco are the ones you're likely to see. And >Netgear, which is almost entirely unmanaged kit, but quite good quality. My two pence worth... I'd not touch 3Com with a bargepole if I were you, particularly if it's "commercial grade" you're after. 3Com decided commercial customers weren't worth their bother some time ago. This is only a direct problem if their crock-of-!"?% CoreBuilder/SuperStack boxes bring down your entire network on a regular basis of course. And only a major problem if one of said boxes going down automatically crashes the so-called redundant failover. Unfortunately, 3Com equipment has satisfied both the above criteria too many times for my liking. That rant over with, more important piece of advice: If you go for a used HP switch, and it's advertised as 100Mb/s, make sure it is actually 100baseT you are getting. HP had their own standard (100VG) that will not work with 100baseT kit (at least some are 100VG only - they won't even downgrade to 10baseT.) If it's "commercial" stuff you're after (which I generally interpret as meaning 19" rackmount kit with redundant failover options and a whole host of SNMP security holes to close down before you can actually put into service,) then I'm afraid Cisco are a good bet. Other than that, I've got a Netgear hub at home that has never caused me a day of trouble. And it fits my criteria of being in a metal box :-). (IMHO, if the case is made of cheap plastic, then what's inside probably is as well...[*]) Alternatively, you could try building yourself a Teddy Borg: http://draco.mit.edu/teddyborg/ Cheers, Tim. [*] Cheap, that is. Not necessarily plastic. But probably ;-). -- Tim Walls at home in Croydon - Reply to tim(a)snowgoons.fsnet.co.uk

22 years, 2 months

One-upsmanship

by Robert_Feldman＠jdedwards.com

Well now, I just saw the NCSC at Urbana. Each air handler there (there are 2) is about the size of 4 semi trailers parked side-by-side. And talk about power usage: the building has a 2 megawatt line coming into it. -----Original Message----- From: Jay West [mailto:jwest@classiccmp.org] Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 10:01 AM To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org Subject: Re: One-upsmanship I think that certainly one of the criteria should be the HVAC required... "My computer requires more tons of AC cooling than yours" Jay West

22 years, 2 months

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test-drb April 2002