I've been working on getting things cleaned up in the
basement - and part of that involves putting these
devices I have into racks. Unfortunately, the devices
and the racks rarely find me at the same time, and as
such, I wind up with devices with rails bolted to the
side of them, and racks with no rails. But, since
rails consist of two parts, the rails on the devices
are useless, since I don't have the mating rails. I
want to rack up a Cipher drive, and my newly accquired
Fujitsu Eagle, and I also have a shelf meant for two
CDC sabre drives, that will work to hold another CDC
drive I have (non sabre, the older one, 9" platters),
it should hold the weight. But, none of the rails I
have match up, and the CDC shelf uses a special
bracket.
I have a couple modern PC clone and Sun servers with
full railsets, and I tried borrowing rails from them,
but of course the holes don't line up with the holes
in the devices. And the Dell rails might have worked
if they were meant to mount to a standard rack - I
have no idea what this square clip/hole thing is
supposed to mate with.
So, basically, is there a standard for these things
at all? Any hole spacing or rail size standard, or did
every manufacurere just make their own? On the two
Cipher drives I have, the same model, have totally
different rails. So that would suggest that there was
at least a device bolt hole standard at one point.
But, I am sure this is going to be another case of how
wonderful standards are - there are so many to choose
from... Is there some designation I should look for
when hunting rack rails on eBay? The modern rails
don't seem to line up with the device holes at all -
are there differnt classes or rails for different
weights, or am I just lookig too far into this?
-Ian
--------Original Message:
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 07:48:41 -0400
From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
Subject: Re: ftp archives disappearing?
<snip>
....
>I'm just an intolerant pain in the ass
....
----------------------------------
At last, something we can agree on...
m
I know that Windows 9x is a terrible kludgy beast, but I'm looking
for a good telnet server to run on a Win9x box. Any suggestions?
The ones I've tried usually have such a long character echo
turnaround that using them is excruciating.
The reason I'm doing this because I'm fooling around at the port
level with an ISA card that I'm still trying to figure out. On one
system, I'm doing my head-scratching; on the Win9x box, I actually
have the card and am doing I/O port fiddling via DEBUG over telnet.
If I crash the Win9x box, no biggie--just hit reset.
If this doesn't work, I suppose that I can run a terminal emulator on
the first box and just boot DOS and ctty to COM1 and hook the two
boxes together via RS-232C. But using a serial terminal with MS-DOS
does have its own problems.
What I'm using now is TelnetXQ from DataWizard on an old PR300 box
running 98SE.
Suggestions welcome.
Cheers,
Chuck
Dave McGuire wrote:
Yes, most definitely, I agree. The manufacturer, then, needs to
keep their definition of "obsolete" to themselves.
If I hear "You fool, why are you using that old thing, it's
obsolete!" from its manufacturer, it almost definitely translates to
"You know, I work on commission, and I'd really like to make a sale
today."
[snip]
No, you misunderstand my position, or I have misrepresented it.
The point I was trying to make was about the notion of "forced
obsolescence". If the manufacturer stops selling something long
before demand runs out, and doesn't release something substantially
better in its place, then THAT is a problem.
[snip]
It simply boils down to "who says it's obsolete". If it's the
manufacturer, and the user disagrees, I see that as a huge
problem...especially if there is pressure involved, which there
frequently is. I guarantee you the 20-something vendor rep with the
power tie and the slicked-back hair who just showed up in your
building is NOT standing there worried about whether or not you're on
the cutting edge of technology or whether he makes your job easier.
THAT is where "forced obsolescence" comes from. It is fake, a lie,
and needs to be recognized and ignored when encountered.
That is, unless one actually enjoys being bilked for every last
dime and having an equipment turnover interval measured in months.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
Billy responds:
You seem to have a very harsh viewpoint of the manufacturers. I have to
protest your first statement that the manufacturers should keep their
definition to themselves. Why? They have as much right to stating facts as
you do. Your definition of obsolete is not the only one, we both agree. So
why can't other people express their definition?
The other points you make seem to be in the class of the manufacturers are a
bunch of crooks out to bilk their customers. (I've never heard an OEM call
a customer a "fool".) How about the benefit of the doubt here - that they
are business men trying to make a profit for their employees and stock
holders. If a product, no matter how good, can no longer be made
profitably, they do not have an obligation to continue to produce it. And
if the market has shrunk, there may be no follow on product even though a
few users still need it or a similar product.
Forced obsolescence is NOT always a fake and a lie. There are usually very
valid reasons for it that have nothing to do with bilking customers. It
costs a lot of money to develop and roll out new products. But the reality
is that consumers are fickle. They demand change, they demand the new. If
a company sticks with its mature established products and foregoes
development, it usually dies.
In my field, disk drives, we would absolutely love to keep making 9GB or
better yet, 100MB drives. They would be easy to build, not cost any R&D,
overhead would be zip. Problem is no one would buy them. The model
turnover measured in months is hell to keep up with; we would love to go
slower. But all our competitors who slowed down went out of business. Most
recently Maxtor and Cornice; Hitachi is bleeding money right now and may be
next.
We don't have the luxury of waiting until demand runs out. If demand falls
below the profit level, forced obsolescence is the only way to survive. I
think you are missing something unique to the electronics industry: the
customers expect constant price cuts. Demand may still be strong, but at a
price level where the product is not profitable. Most electronic products
have a very low profit level, usually 2-5%. It's rough to stay alive.
Think about it - in actual dollar amounts, TV sets sell for about the same
as they did in the '50s. But cars, houses, clothes, energy, food have all
been victims of inflation. Compare the current prices of computers to 5,
10, 15 years ago. People demand electronics to constantly get cheaper. So
if a manufacturer wants to meet this demand, he has to find ways to cut
costs. A legitimate tool often used is to come out with new models (lower
cost) and make obsolete the current product that can no longer be sold
profitably.
You expect the lower costs - a current 320GB drive costs a fraction of the
cost of the 8" floppies when they were new. And the dollar has inflated and
lost buying power since then. If the consumer won't pay a profitable price
for a mature product, why should a manufacturer be expected to continue to
build it?
>From my viewpoint, planned obsolescence is necessary to meet the outrageous
demands of the consumer. This is the only marketplace I know where the
buyers absolutely demand products get cheaper while having more
capabilities. If you applied the price/value curve of electronics to cars,
a new car would be in the $5-10 range. And everyone on this list would
still be able to buy nickel glasses of beer.
Billy
The other day I received a 2MB ATI Graphics Ultra Pro video card from a seller on ebay (one of the best 2MB EISA video cards that works with OS/2). My current system is a 486DX50 with a 1MB S3 based EISA video card. When I removed the S3 card and Installed the ATI one the machine would not boot, just beeped. I checked the jumper settings on the ATI to make sure it was VGA enabled and then tried setting the address for the card and still nothing. I put the old S3 in and all was fine.
Now my problem is I get a EISA Inoperable message even with the s3 video card, the EISA configuration software I have finds the cards installed but gets a write error when trying to write the configuration to the battery backed chip (Dallas DS1225Y-200). So basically I can only boot to floppy (I have an ISA I/O card with floppy connected), while my 9GB HD connected to the EISA Adaptec card does not show up.
Has my Dallas chips battery finally died on me (I had to replace the other Dallas RTC chip when I purchased the board last year, it still keeps time fine)? Did my installing of the ATI damage the Dallas chip by chance? Did I get a defective video card?
I need to figure out what's up before I buy another EISA backup chip $15 and wreck it, and decide what to do about the ATI from ebay.
Any ideas?
Old terminals
In the UK in the early 1970's I worked for a (then small) UK
company called Newbury Labs.
We made VDU's or video terminals. The early types used eight bit
parallel shift registers as screen memory.
The model number was 2480 i.e. 24 Rows of 80 Characters. They came in
steel enclosures (painted blue!!)
The screen was a 12" tube as used in mono portable TV's.
We used to spend half an hour on each one fixing up the screen geometry
with small magnets.
The newer ones used a crude stored program system made out of TTL ie no
Microprocessors.
Rod Smallwood
-----Original Message-----
From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Richard
Sent: 16 March 2007 00:28
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: old terminals...
In article <45F8EAD6.9070607 at jetnet.ab.ca>,
woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> writes:
> Richard wrote:
>
> > The weirder terminals don't use a CPU at all. They use SSI/MSI TTL
> > logic.
>
> I thought the weird ones used Delay lines and/or Core Memory.
No, those aren't the weird ones. Those are the unobtainable ones.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for
download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
The teletype model 43 appears much more often on Ebay than the ASR33
(which I've never seen there). Is there anything about the model 43 to
make it worth acquiring?
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
On 3/16/07, Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com> wrote:
> >>> Do you think it'd be a good idea for me to, over time, pull them out
> >>> and read their ROMs for archival or reconstructive purposes?
> >>
> >> I'd be happy to host images not already
> >> there. See particularly the "Wanted!" list in that directory :-)
> >
> > Oh my, well that saves me a lot of case-cracking! :) I will see if I
> > can add a few to your archive.
>
> Great! Contributions are welcome :-)
>
Is there already a non-DEC controller firmware archive somewhere? If
not, do you have any interest in adding relevant non-DEC controller
firmware?
For example I've had an Emulex QD21 Q-bus ESDI controller for a while
that was dead. I recently pulled and read the EPROM and found it
appeared to be almost completely erased. I eventually got another
working QD21 and copied its EPROM into the dead one and now it works
fine too. I would have been out of luck with the dead one if I
couldn't find a good firmware image for it.
-Glen
I've run out of address to try for Fred van Kempen...
does anyone have an idea where he is nowadays? I know he dropped
off the net once before, and I'm afraid he may have done so
again. Unfortunately he has an old PDP11 disk of ours and I
need to talk to him to decide what to do about it. Email me
his current address please, or pass on to him that I'm trying
to contact him please, if you're in touch with him.
Thanks
Graham Toal (Edinburgh Computer History Project)
<gtoal at gtoal.com>
On Thu, 15 Mar 2007 at 22:54:55 Gordon JC Pearce <gordon at gjcp.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 16:09 -0500, Graham Toal wrote:
> > I've run out of address to try for Fred van Kempen...
> >
> > does anyone have an idea where he is nowadays? I know he dropped
> > off the net once before, and I'm afraid he may have done so
> > again. Unfortunately he has an old PDP11 disk of ours and I
> > need to talk to him to decide what to do about it. Email me
> > his current address please, or pass on to him that I'm trying
> > to contact him please, if you're in touch with him.
>
> We were discussing this in the IRC channel recently. I don't know what
> became of the attempts to contact him.
>
> > Thanks
> >
> > Graham Toal (Edinburgh Computer History Project)
> If you're stuck for PDP11ish bits, I'm just a short drive along the M8 from you ;-)
> Gordon
I wouldn't bet on that :-) I'm actually based in Edinburg, Texas; and the
drive is wherever Fred is in the Netherlands. But it sounds like Henk is liable
to bump into him tomorrow at the Hamfest, so we could be in luck.
What I may be looking for, however, is someone to read a very old RK05 that
hasn't been spun up in 30 years. And someone to bring it back from .NL.
(My old Dad took it over the first time on his bicycle! But he's had a
small stroke since then and although he still cycles I wouldn't like to
send him off on a long trip like that on his own again...)
Graham
