I really don't get what all this fuss is about; the 10 year rule has apparently
not been in effect for some time and I haven't noticed any sudden flood of
questions about WinXP, so why suddenly these demands to have it or some
other rule (re-)instated? Seems to me until this present time-waster things were
going along pretty well.
When I tell my "normal" friends about the current discussion here and show
them some of the messages, they can't believe they're meant seriously;
talk about confirming the stereotype of computer geeks with too much time
on their hands.
Even though much of the traffic was of little or no direct relevance to me,
I've enjoyed this list for five years or so because for the most part it was
informative and interesting; any chance we could get back to talking about
computers instead of rules any time soon?
mike
It's a little bit ON-topic because I would never have discovered this if I
wasn't playing with my C64's modem.
Btw, for 6551 ACIA hackers, I seem to be having some trouble detecting
carrier with my SwiftLink. I know that in the cartridge it is always tied on
with pull-ups so that the 6551's receiver stays on, and so Dr Evil Labs/CMD
directed DCD to come over DSR instead (this is internal to the cartridge).
But all I get is the DCD "phantom" always-on bit when I check the register,
even if I get a successful connect -- I never see the DCR line come up. Are
there DB-25 to DE-9 cables that just don't connect DCD?
While I was testing this out, I dialed the local AOL access number just to
get something with a carrier so that I could watch the 6551 status register
when it connected. Besides the DCD/DSR chachacha above, I got an interesting
prompt (X'ed out the naughty bits)
Level 3 Comm nasXX.XXXX UQKT2
Username:/login:/Login:
Not your typical POP. I know who Level 3 is, and I do have an AOL login. It's
interesting, however -- I was just expecting 8-bit "garbage" and not an actual
prompt. I disconnected immediately since I wasn't interested in raising
anyone's blood pressure at Level 3's security centre. What kind of protocol
might this use (besides AOL's internal one, of course)?
--
--------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ ---
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- Excellent guess, Kreskin. Wrong, but excellent. -- Space Quest 6 -----------
Hi,
Someones signiture (the "real programmers
get confused as Oct 31 = Dec 25") reminded
me about Octal.
I have heard of it, and know it's still used
on the Calculator program on Windoze (2K),
on the computers at work, but unlike Hex,
Dec and Binary I have no idea what it could
be used for, and why it would still be used
today. Anyone care to fill in the gaps, please?
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
>
>Subject: Re: Octal
> From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell)
> Date: Sat, 02 Sep 2006 00:36:59 +0100 (BST)
> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
>
>> Seven segment displays are also ergonomic disasters - the military
>> found it is far easier to read a seven segment display incorrectly
>> than just about every other method.
>
>Does anyone else remmeber the 8 and 9 segment displays used by (IIRC)
>Sharp in the early 1970s. They were vacuum flourescnet, single digit to
>an envelope, made by Itron (IIRC). The segments were curved, and you got
>much more natural-looking digits than from a 7 segment straight-bar
>display. Of course the problem that 2 rapidly alternating digits can look
>like something totally different remains.
>
>-tony
I have two 12 digit bottles, 4 individual digits and a 40x2 bottle of
the VF type and a working Sharp calc that uses said VF disply.
Allison
At 15:34 -0500 9/1/06, Evan wrote:
> >>>> So how about, "If it's a computing device of some sort that isn't made
>anymore, nor is there any commercial support to be had for it. Oh, and if
>the computing device is capable of running Windows 95 or better, it's still
>off topic."
>
>>>>> -spc (I would think that would cover most of the complaints)
>
>Perfect! It shall be known as Conner's Law and supplants the 10-year-rule.
>
>Oops, that is for Jay to say. But I like it. :)
As the new owner (well, I'm actually over 40, but you know what I
mean :-) ) of a CoCo3, and being in possession of the Cloud-9 Website
URL
http://www.cloud9tech.com/
I'm not so sure I like this proposal. Granted, Cloud-9 is not
fulfilling orders at the moment, but previously and in the future (I
hope!) they sold systems, repairs, upgrades, and software for the
Tandy Color Computer.
Likewise, for my NeXT, there are
http://www.channelu.com/NeXT/Black/ and
http://www.blackholeinc.com/
At the very least, I propose the modification, "...nor is there any
commercial support *other than third-party* to be had for it..."
(satisfied customer of all of the above, no other relation)
--
- Mark
Cell Phone: 210-379-4635
office: 210-522-6025
woodelf wrote:
Chuck Guzis wrote:
> It's very useful for counting whilst hanging by your thumbs.
> Cheers,
> Chuck
I need my thumbs to grab bannanas, I hang by my toes. :)
Did any of the classic computers display in octal 0-7
rather than 3 lights per digit? Also what was the display
device?
---------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, virtually all the Control Data systems displayed octal. The devices
were varied, from projection displays (1604) to CRT vector drawn (6600).
Some, such as the 8090 and 8092 had optional front panels to display either
binary or octal.
Octal use continued at CDC up through the 1700 machine, which was hex.
Seymour finally went to hex on the Cray series.
Here's a question for the list - how many still have and use the TI
calculator that could be used in octal or hex?
Billy
Hans wrote:
> Well, yes, you got me nailed down there. I was only thinking
> in the area of low volume embedded system - classic machinery
[ ... ]
> Would it be better phrased if I said: Pentums and alikes are
> by now the majority of new x86 based embedded systems?
LOL! Yes, I couldn't fault you for that :-)
Tek scopes and ATMs come to mind, but there are others, I know.
--
Pete
> I've never actually met Doron, although his name tends to crop up an awful
> lot. I think he's possibly up at our museum next Friday
He's in California right now, spending some time with us at CHM.
Very nice guy, who is excited about my work in software preservation.
This isn't strictly on-topic, but I believe it's important to many
people here. I just learned about this on another list.
HP developed an OCR engine called Tesseract that is supposed to be
pretty good. They released it to the open-source world, and Google has
picked it up and started working on it. The code itself is available
via SourceForge. Here is the announcement:
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2006/08/announcing-tesseract-
ocr.html
With all the document preservation activities going on these days, in
our circles as well as others, this may be a significant development.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Cape Coral, FL
Well, I didn't find the 8-bit VGA card that another list member was looking
for, but did find some other stuff. Maybe some of you folks could help me
figure out what I have here and what it might be good for, or even help
relieve me of some of it...
Got one 8-bit card here that also has an internal edge connector and I'm
guessing it's a floppy interface -- there's a crystal, one big chip labeled
Zilog Z765APS and what I'm guessing is a data separator chip socketed, looks
like UM8326, and a bunch of LSTTL glue logic.
Got one which is an 8-bit card only there's a little sticker near the card
edge connector that says "pls plug into the 16 bits slot only" -- why would
they do that? This one has a DB25M on the metal bracket, which is also
labeled "Scanner Interface", is this supposed to be some kind of crude SCSI?
There are a couple of chips labeled "SPOT" (a logo actually), and
silkscreened on the board it says "SPOT Fototak 2E-Card". The note on the
bag says "Parallel port" but I'm not sure that means anything. About four
chips on the board (2 of which look like RAM) and a jumper block, 2x3 with 2
on there.
The next one is labeled (in the foil) "ICS2110 Demo Board Rev. A" and sure
enough there seems to be a square socketed chip labeled ICS2110 in there. An
array of eight of what I'm guessing are RAM, some LSTTL, two 8-pole DIP
switches, and four jumper blocks with one jumper on each. A TDA1545
("Stereo Continuous Calibration DAC"), a couple of NE5532 op amp chips, a
whole mess of capacitors, two trimpots (?) and two of what appear to be
audio jacks at the metal bracket. This one's a 16-bit card.
The last one is also a 16-bit card. On the metal brack is a 50-pin connector
(same thing you'd see on an Adaptec 1520, 1540, etc.) and on the opposite end
is a 4-pin "drive power" (like in any PC) connector for power to apparently
be supplied_to_ the card, a small button ("tac" switch), and a 2x5 pin
shrouded connector. And across the top of the card is a big 2.4 ohm 10W (!)
power resistor, not the sort of thing I'm used to seeing on "PC" hardware.
This one's all surface mount, and the one square chip in there is marked
"Altera", not a name I'm at all familiar with. No other markings on the
board except a sticker hiding under that big resistor with a barcode and a
rather long number on it.
Anybody know what these are, any of them?
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
