test-drb February 2005

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

97 participants
129 discussions

Top-posting shenanigans (was: Re: ASR33 $1000+ And Counting...)

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

> > On Fri, 25 Feb 2005, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: > > > In Outlook, yes, it's a righteous pain. In PINE, as you might know, > > CTRL-J fixes most messed up quoted paragraphs. > > Eh?! Oh, you mean the pico editor! Too many brain cells pre-wired for > vi here. The mental case who picked ^J for that needs to be LARTed. Problem is, ^J is linefeed and if you happen to hit return on entering pico before it sets the terminal driver to raw mode, it'll justify the first paragraph of your file for you. If it happens to be a mail message you're replying to, then the '>' characters at the start of each line will mean the entire file is taken as one paragraph (no blank lines to mark the end of the paragraph) so you get a total mess. Yes, I understand 'J' for 'justify', but.... -tony

21 years

long term computers

by bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca

Mike wrote: >On Saturday 26 February 2005 11:53, woodelf wrote: > > >>Ronald Wayne wrote: >> >> >>>TTL going the way of the dodo?! Does this mean that I have to learn >>>about electronics now or I'm going to be stuck figuring out those many... >>> >>> >>They've mutated now - hundreds of pins sucking up your power and hogging >>all the ground. >> >> > >http://d116.com/spud/ > > That's a potato BUG ... not a real computer. :D

21 years

long term computers

by appleto＠gmail.com

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 12:49:19 -0500, Mike <kenziem at sympatico.ca> wrote: > http://d116.com/spud/ > this one was referened on the theregister recently Ah yes, somebody was showing me rfPICs last year. Just imagine a wireless webserver the size of a match head. :) I remember thinking at the time, 'how does this thing compare to an Apple II?' Of course the guy showing it to me didn't have the slightest idea because he didn't know what a 6502 was. So perhaps I should ask here: how would your typical 2005 vintage PIC compare to a early-1980's vintage 8-bit microprocessor? From what little I could gather the interface with the outside world is terribly limited (something like four lines on the chip I was looking at, one of which was special purpose) but that is slightly negated by the thing having an, albeit miniscule, amount of memory on chip.

21 years

[OT]Homebrew PCB fabrication

by jdboyd＠jdboyd.net

On Sun, Feb 20, 2005 at 05:13:07PM -0700, woodelf wrote: > PS the homebrew computer using CPLD's is going to need a far bigger > board than demo PCB software gives. Why CPLDs over FPGAs? -- Joshua D. Boyd jdboyd at jdboyd.net http://www.jdboyd.net/ http://www.joshuaboyd.org/

21 years

Age

by pat＠computer-refuge.org

Doc Shipley declared on Saturday 26 February 2005 02:29 pm: > Doc Shipley wrote: > > O. Sharp wrote: > >> Nico de Jong wrote, in part: > >>> It could be interesting to know the age"spread" of thist list > >>> contributors, > >>> and how long we've had the computer virus under our skin. 23 years old, born in 1981. Interested in "big computers" ever since I got a 1970s computers textbook from the local library's used book sale. Sadly, I don't have the book anymore (my parents threw it out ):, but I still have the interest. I've been on the list since before I could (legally) consume alcohol. ;) Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCS --- http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

21 years

Age

by tpeters＠mixcom.com

On the BoatAnchor net (ham radio stuff) they live by this: REAL radios GLOW IN THE DARK. (And keep the shack warm.) At 02:17 PM 2/26/2005 -0500, you wrote: > > >I am now self-employed and hoping I don't put myself out of business ;-) > > > > > > > > Well you can allways go back to TUBE audio ... as hobby :) Now is a > > good time for I think > > to go back to tube amps if you build your own hardware and you don't > > already have a system. > > Ben alias Woodelf. > >I suppose I could. I wouldn't hate it. There seems to be a resurgence in >glass audio. Some claim it sounds better (I always thought it did). Not >to brag, but I was talking to <really famous rock-star> who lives in the >next town over. He was saying he wants to get some old tube guitar amps >fixed. I didn't think of it at the time, but maybe I could get my foot >in the door of the rock tech support field. Hmmmm... multi-hundred watt >amplifiers and hot women. A geek's dream. [Commentary] War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting, whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull. --Twain --... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -... tpeters at nospam.mixcom.com (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio) "HEY YOU" (loud shouting) WEB ADDRESS http//www.mixweb.com/tpeters 43? 7' 17.2" N by 88? 6' 28.9" W, Elevation 815', Grid Square EN53wc WAN/LAN/Telcom Analyst, Tech Writer, MCP, Cisco Certified CCNA

21 years

IBM mainframe goes for 99 cents

by pat＠computer-refuge.org

JimD declared on Thursday 24 February 2005 10:58 pm: > Patrick Finnegan wrote: > >On Thu, 24 Feb 2005, Computer Collector Newsletter wrote: > >>Who else on this list owns a mainframe? What the heck do you DO > >>with it? > > > ><SNIP> > > Talk about a mainframe, well actually a real big farm, take a look at > this. > http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=64031&item=5754 >425731&rd=1 Still listed in the top 500 supers. Battell surplus. zero > bids, $12,500 starting bid. > Jim Davis. > I would get it, if I had free power. Despite what the seller claims, it's definately too slow to be on the top500 list. When I looked into it, I found out it was last on the list in June of 2002, and wasn't very high up (low 300s). The machine is (or was, with all of the frames, which the seller doesn't seem to have in the auction listing) only 512 processors of 120/135MHz processors. They're not horribly slow, but definately not computationally worthwhile. The ~900 processors of IBM SP (375MHz POWER3) we have at work (well, we've got 320 now, soon to add another 576) won't even make it onto the TOP500 list this next time around I'm pretty sure. As far as memory and disk space go, you'll probably be using up a good chunk of the disk space per node for OS and software; and the memory is evenly distributed between all the nodes. Having a large amount of contiguous memory and disk (like what you can with an IBM p690) is much more interesting from an HPC standpoint. :) One rack of the SP system would be sort of cool to have, but having that many frames just doesn't make any sense no matter how I try to look at it. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCS --- http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

21 years

server maintenance

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Looks like I have the mailing list running on the new server. Please send any problems to me offlist at jwest at classiccmp.org Of course, to do this, I had to pick if I moved web or list services first. I chose list services. Any classiccmp websites I host gratis - if they have their own domain they should be ok, otherwise (they are tied to the classiccmp.org domain), they are down till I get them moved. This will likely be a longish process. I apologize for the inconvenience. I'll email again when all seems to be done. Jay

21 years

Many things

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

vp(a)cs.drexel.edu (Vassilis Prevelakis) wrote: > Since this was running Unix V7 (or smth close), I am > sure you can get a postscript viewer running on it (or a tiff viewer > for that matter), while you'd have no chance in hell of getting > Acrobat Reader for it. This is very close to my original point. > Which gives me a nice excuse to repeat my favorite line: I use open > source software not because it is free, but because I get to keep the > code (so I do not depend on the code author to port the software to > newer/different/stranger platforms). I'm getting a feeling that der Mouse is about to remind us again that one can use GhostScript instead of Acrobat Reader... The problem with GhostScript is that porting it to a Very Vintage platform will likely be more difficult than rewriting it from scratch. I once thought about building it under 4.3BSD-Quasijarus (so I won't have to log into a Linux machine on the other side of the planet to convert PDF to PS), but one cursory look at the code was enough for me to scrap the idea. Open source is of no help when it's unusable. I have pretty much given up on using any software not written from scratch by me. It's almost always easier to write the program I need than to port an existing one. MS

21 years

More info Re: Digital Data Syatems / SETASI memory card for PDP11

by jim＠g1jbg.co.uk

>in my PDP11/45, the originla core and bipolar memory has been replaced by a Hex height Digital Data Systems inc. / >SETASI memory card (placed in the 1st SU - the original Fastbus memory slots are now unused). I know the system ran >like this, as it is documented in the local handbook. > >Does anyone have any information on these cards? Especially the settings of the jumper and the DIP switches! After looking at the paperwork a bit more, it seems the module may have the designation UFUM Jim.

21 years

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test-drb February 2005