>
>Subject: Re: *updating* 8088's
> From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
> Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:27:41 -0800
> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>On 21 Nov 2007 at 18:11, Jim Leonard wrote:
>
>> Could you quantify "lame"? I used a 386sx-16 for years and it was
>> always faster (visibly, not just via benchmarks) than the 12MHz 286 I
>> had access to.
>
>My own experience was the opposite. I had a 16 MHz 386sx that was
>visibly *slower* than a 12MHz 286 that I also had. It was very
>cheap and eventually just quit working reliably all on its own.
>Perhaps that was an artifact of early SMT. OTOH, I still have a
>couple of 386DX systems that have worked flawlessly since the day I
>bought them. One uses DIP for memory; the other uses SIPPs.
I have a SIIG 3000 Is a 3x4x12" box with VGA, RS170 video, 2 serial,
1 printer port and one slot for modem or NIC. IT's 386sx1/6 and
my only beef with it is it maxes out at 5mb (1mb installed and 4mb
of simms). Runs good uses wall wart for power and makes a killer
linux router/nat box with a 400mb drive and 3.5" floppy.
Beside being a good router it's small, a good reason to keep it.
Allison
>
>So, perhaps my own was a victim of bad design. I never was even
>tempted to purchase another, so bad was my experience.
It's short life and bad design may be an indicator.
Allison
>
>Cheers,
>Chuck
And don't forget Lego Mindstorms! Doesn't teach the hardware but it is much more fun than I ever had in LOGO back in the fourth or fifth grade ... I forget which.
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Lee <mikelee at tdh.com>
Subj: Re: Teaching kids about computers...
Date: Wed Nov 21, 2007 11:17 am
Size: 3K
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
This is actually one of the topics I'm most interested in. I gear my
collection towards teaching and showing kids, as well as the nostalgic
adults. Over the years, I've been surprised by some of the reactions,
so I found it best to adapt to the interest level of the audience.
For fundamental computing and electronics, it seems to be best to go
back to the basics. A lot of the books available either go too much
into the history of computing, or get into topics/details that quickly
lose the interest of a kid. It seems to be best to relate something
they are used to in modern day and work back to the origins. For
example, a xbox, it's basically a computer, it has a CPU, hard drive,
memory and then other "blocks" such as graphics processing, networking
etc. Those are easy to relate back to "how it works." Basic I/O, what
is actually on the game disk, how and what makes "online" work, and what
the machine is doing in the background. This easily then can lead to
small projects and some programming. From there it can be basic logic
functions (AND/OR/NOT) and the simple concepts of programming and making
things happen. Depending on the interest and geek level of the kid,
there are many hobby books that explain this well. I don't know if
"vintage" computers is the best way to start as I found a lot of kids
(esp. 9yo) are turned off by "it's just old crap" But can easily lead
into more of the origins.
Something "new" is good to start. There are a good number of hobby kits
like the BASIC STAMP now that can teach both the electronics and
computing aspect, which then can lead into other things. A little
simple micro-controller kit, with a little instruction on logic,
electricity and electronics can go a long way. Making stuff, and making
stuff happen is always a plus, so a soldering iron lesson with an
interesting kit always works too. But once again, all depends on the
interest level.
Mike Lee
Geek Museum
A funny story with where things might lead: I got a rotary dial phone
in my collection to use with an acoustic coupler. A four year old sees
this, and has no problem with the phone, nor the rotary dial. He
understood the concept it's just a different user interface, but what
got him was that it was wired down. He had never seen a phone handset
with a cord attached. So this lead to interesting show and tell about
telephone technology to a four year old.
Jules Richardson wrote:
>
> So the boy (9yr. old) was asking last night about how computers
> work... any recommendations for good books for learning the basics
> from? I think I started out with a Sinclair Spectrum and its BASIC
> manual, but I really don't recall now where I found out about the
> fundamental building blocks of [typical] computers and how a CPU
> worked. There must be a good 'classic' "how computers work" type of
> book which avoids going on about PCs and Xboxen...
>
> I figure I should find him one of those kids electronics projects kits
> too (I think that was where I got my first exposure to logic gates
> from at about the same age) and also some old 8-bit machine to play with.
>
> I can get a Spectrum / BBC micro shipped over in a few months, but
> something US-built might be better; any thoughts? I did wonder about a
> C64, but maybe it'd be better to start with something a bit more
> simple? i.e. probably something Z80 or 6502-based (just because
> there's more resources devoted to them), generic cassette data
> storage, basic video abilities etc.
>
> (You know, I don't recall seeing a 'how to introduce kids to vintage
> computing' thread on here before :-)
>
> cheers
>
> Jules
>
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2007 21:59:02 +0000 (GMT)
From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell)
Subject: Re: "intelligent" disk drives
<snip>
>As an aside, IMHO one of the worst mistakes commodore made was that the
>8050 could not at least read the disks of the earlier drives.
>-tony
--------
Sort of unavoidable because to get the 500MB/side they went to 100TPI drives.
Not as big a problem then as it may be today, because the high price of
the 8050/8250s tended to put them into a different market, mostly business
and institutional, where price and compatibility with the smaller and cheaper
units wasn't usually an issue. And of course the IEEE bus was compatible
so you could easily convert among drives (until the serial versions came
along) as long as you had one of the (also expensive) IEEE<>IEEE cables.
m
woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote:
> der Mouse wrote:
>
> > I don't recall seeing a computer keyboard that *is* lowercase, ever.
> > Modern keyboards are generally connected to systems that map alphabetic
> > keystrokes to uppercase and lowercase depending on other state, and
> > have keys ("Shift") designed to provide that state, but the keyboards
> > themselves have only one case of alphabetic key, and in every case I
> > can recall seeing, that case is upper.
>
> I stand corrected ... the only keyboard without a shift key I have seen
> is a TTY's.
>
> > /~\ The ASCII der Mouse
> > \ / Ribbon Campaign
> > X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
> > / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
> >
You are a bit mistaken. TTY's DID have shift keys. On the five level machines
(28, 32, etc.) there was a LETR and FIGS shift. On later machines, like the 33
and 35, there was an actual key labeled 'SHIFT'. While it didn't make upper
and lower case letters, it did take the alternate graphic on the keyboard. On
the 33/35 machines, it used a "bit paired" sequence where the difference
between the 'shift' and 'unshifted' code was 0x20. This led to some weird
pairings like '+' and ';'. Some shifts were locked out (zero might have
shifted to be space, and vice versa, but they were separate keys.
Later model devices, Teletype 37 comes to mind, had both upper and lower case.
Many early CRT terminals didn't have upper case letters either. The ADM-3 had
lower case as an option. Some of the portable Silent 700's (I remember having
one) didn't have lower case. Those that had lower case used 'miniature
letters' not ture lower case.
I'm sure there are other examples.
Keypunches are another catagory.
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>
>Subject: Re: *updating* 8088's
> From: woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca>
> Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:39:49 -0700
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>Chuck Guzis wrote:
>
>> Well, there's clock speed and then there's "apparent clock speed".
>> Let's see, a 16MHz 80386sx is equivalent to what, a 10MHz 80286?
Actually it's teh other way around the 386 was more efficient than
286 for the same clock speed.
>So what speed does the memory run at is my question and how wide?
The SX narrows teh bus bandwidth so the memory is cycled either
faster to make up for it or has fewer idle states (bus availability).
that meant using 60ns 30pin simms.
>Playing around with homebrew micro design I am working on, a 500 ns
>memory cycle ( 2Mhz ) is about as fast as you can go with standard
>parts about 150 ns access time. My limiting factor is not memory
>speed but EEPROM and I/O chips dead slow speeds.
Those speed limits are consistant with pre 1978 parts for ram
and even in 1979 I had some semistatic rams that were 200ns.
Eproms were always slow and didn't break the 250ns barrier until
around 82 but the mask roms were quite a bit faster.
I build with 6 and 10mhz z80s and 12mhz 8085s I have and theres
little problem with finding static rams and Eprom (and EEprom)
that can keep up. I say little problem as I can find plenty of
parts that way too fast in non-DIP formats. If I need faster
I can easily find CMOS static rams in the under 25ns range
(486dx used 32kx8 and even 64kx8 15ns parts for cache) and
larger EE/Flash/Eproms in the sub100ns range.
Even back in 1982 I could get power hungry 2147(4Kx1) and 2167(16kx1)
parts in the 45ns range. Drams even first out 4164s were under Tcy
of 300ns. Old Eproms in the pre8K sizes (2716, 2732) were never fast
but 27C256s that do 150ns are really old parts and 27C010s I have
are 150ns for the slow parts.
Zilog peripherals can be found still at 4mhz and the 8085/8088
(82xx) parts were good to 5mhz with later ones (82Cxx) good to
125ns.
Allison
>> Cheers,
>> Chuck
>
>
Message: 16
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:23:49 -0500
From: Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Windoze reqs
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Message-ID: <4744BE05.3090903 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Fred Cisin wrote:
>>> There was Win3.0 (prolly same requirements)
>> 3.00 would (and did) run on 8088. One of the font editors that I used
>Not only that, it worked properly with a CGA.
>Peace... Sridhar
--------
And the much higher def monochrome graphics cards commonly
installed in the clones (no colour of course).
m
We've all seen different varieties of 8088 to 80286
upgrades. A few at least plug into the 8088's socket.
I saw a '286 to '486 upgrade (must have been similar
in that respect) at a show a while back (didn't buy
it). We also know about OverDrive products. What would
happen if you pig-piled all these things in an old
8088 machines? What would happen? Cataclysmic
explosion?
Were there ever 8086 to 80286 upgrades for the few
machines that used them?
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>
>Subject: Re: VAXmate for Windows
> From: Adrian Graham <witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk>
> Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:51:54 +0000
> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>On 19/11/07 06:54, "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote:
>
>> At 9:23 PM -0800 11/18/07, David Griffith wrote:
>>> I have seven 5.25" floppies labeled as RX33K which contain:
>>>
>>> VAXmate MS-Windows v1.03 (two disks)
>>> VAXmate Info System v1.1
>>> VT240 Emulator Update
>>> VAXmate S/A Install v1.1
>>> VAXmate MS-DOS v3.10
>>>
>>> All of these are labeled "For VAXmate operating environment v1.1".
>>>
>>> I don't remember where it came from, but there's been some recent talk
>>> about VAXen. Who wants these?
>>
>> I assume these will only run on a VAXmate? I've only seen one
>> VAXmate and that was nearly 10 years ago. How good was the VT240
>> emulation?
>
>I never tried the full graphics side of things on the emulator, but as a
>terminal it was great, a novelty in those days to have a black-on-amber
>display too!
>
>We have 2 VAXmates at Bletchley Park so if those floppies could wing their
>way across the pond that'd be great! I keep meaning to drag them out of
>their storage room and set at least one up to exhibit, we're building an
>Electronic Office exhibit that the VAXmate should be a part of really.
If the VAXmates have the optional hard disk box mind the cooling if RD32
(ST250? 40mb) as it ran very hot and tended to fail. The RD31 (st225 20mb)
was lower power, cooler and far more reliable.
If you make it operational the VAXmate was a PCSA(Pathworks) terminal
with Ethernet access to shared and private files on VAX/OpenVMS. The
result made it a very useful system. Typical VAXmate had 2MB of ram
some had 4, back then that was a large amount.
Allison
>--
>Adrian/Witchy
>Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
>Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer
>collection?
>
I've been chastised off-list for forgetting to change the subject header
on a few recent posts from its digest default; for anyone else whom
I've inconvenienced, my apologies and I'll be more careful in future.
mike
Perhaps not right now, but the biggest "leap forward" I had from books
was looking at the 8080/Z80 microcomputer design and operation books
(such as Ciarcia's "How to Build Your Own Z-80 Computer" and
"Microcomputers and Microprocessors" (8080, 8085 and Z-80) from the
hardware standpoint. Probably not a good book until Junior High or High
School, though.
When I was learning S/W, I remember starting with Logo in 4th grade and
using Brainpower ChipWits at home. the ChipWits manual had a small
section on programming theory, perhaps I can find it. That's a good
game if you have an older Macintosh around (I had issues on machines
with over 1MB of RAM - it was written for the 128K, 512K and XL per the
disk. Some other people don't seem to have the issues, perhaps there
was a revision). In middle school we moved on to BASIC (because it was
in the ROMs of Apples). Perhaps not the ideal progression, but nowadays
students in the elementary schools don't seem to be learning
programming at all- it's more "how you use application software on the
computer".
In the early '90s Macworld had a 3-part article on how computers work
that wasn't too in depth. If you want I can find it and scan it., but
it's probably not too much more in depth than David Macaulay's "The Way
Things Work" in the new edition. (actually it is)
