Hi cctalkers,
The 6094 LPFK has been discussed on this list before (see thread "IBM
6094-020 Lighted Program Function Keys").
I notice that there's a bulk lot of 19 of them on ePay (see
180215874744) - now, I don't want 19, but I'd like one. I'm sure there
are others on this list who would as well.
Who else is game? This seller will only ship to the US, so someone
within the US (I'm not) would need to receive them and reship - I'll
happily pay a few $ on top of the onward postage for the trouble.
Any volunteers?
Ed.
I stumbled across this today, if you can get past the light stuttering,
it's a fascinating watch.
There are some notes here:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dyson05/dyson05_index.html
If you want to download this, copy the url below and feed it into
keepvid.com. :)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=KRBR4W8ft2g&feature=user
Added: April 18, 2008 (Less info)
Google Tech Talks
April, 9 2008
ABSTRACT
New Light on the Dawn of Digital Computing, 1945-1958
The digital universe consists of two kinds of bits: differences in space
and differences in time. Digital computers translate between these two
forms of information--structure and sequence--according to definite
rules. Sixty-three years ago, at the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, NJ, John von Neumann and a small group of nonconformists
launched a project to do this at electronic speed. The resulting
architecture and coding has descended directly to almost all computers
now in use.
Von Neumann succeeded in jump-starting the computer revolution by
bringing engineers into the den of the mathematicians, rather than by
bringing mathematicians into a den of engineers. The stored-program
computer, as conceived by Alan Turing and delivered by John von Neumann,
broke the distinction between numbers that *mean* things and numbers
that *do* things. Our universe would never be the same.
With a mere 5 kilobytes of random access memory, von Neumann and
colleagues tackled previously intractable problems ranging from
thermonuclear explosions, stellar evolution, and long-range weather
forecasting to cellular automata, genetic coding, and the origins of
life. Programs were small enough to be completely debugged, but hardware
could not be counted on to perform consistently from one kilocycle to
the next. This situation is now reversed.
Speaker: George Dyson
Category: People & Blogs
Tags: google techtalks techtalk engedu talk talks
googletechtalks education
I'm sure that the UHH is old news to folk hereabouts.
When I was a baby geek, I remember reading about this seminal text, a
distillation from a long-active mailing list called UNIX-HATERS. Now,
it's available for free:
http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/unix-haters.html
(Yes, I know. Don't hold the URL against it.)
It's a good & enjoyable read. I'm nearly at the end of it now.
It's interesting to look back at this 1991 (-ish) book from the
perspective of 2008. How many of the criticisms levelled against Unix
were stuff that users of then-older OSs thought was deranged.
Today, the same sort of rivalry exists between Unix and Windows
people; the stuff before them is nearly forgotten now. I mean, I've
been in this business for some 20y (and another 5-10y before that as a
hobbyist) and I've never seen TOPS or MULTICS or ITS or anything like
them.
What I'm wondering is, how many of the criticisms levelled against
Unix (and thus, by association, Linux) in this book from 17y ago are
still current or valid today. I've been using Linux for 11-12y now,
but I still regard myself as something of a beginner, whereas I've
known Windows since it was 2 and can make it jump backwards through
flaming hoops.
A lot's changed. Hardware is much more homogeneous - a modern personal
computer is either an IBM-compatible x86 box or something much like
it; even later PowerPC Macs, Acorn-compatible RISC OS machines, Amiga
clones and stuff like that are very PC-like in many ways. They use the
same slots, buses, interfaces, RAM, disks and so on.
The old problems that plagued Unix 1980s & 1990s Unix - incompatible
keyboard layouts & terminal control codes, untrustworthy filesystems,
lousy performance, all sorts of things - have gone away now,
obliterated by advances in hardware and software design, increasing
consolidation and standardization of the computer industry, and the
simple progression of Moore's Law. Once, "Eight Megs And Constantly
Swapping" was pejorative; now, an app that uses only 8MB is positively
svelte.
If you don't already know it, give it a read.
I am not really a Linux expert - maybe a power user or competent
sysadmin, at best. I do have lots of comparative OS knowledge, but
most of it is of systems that came along long after Unix. I'd be
really interested to know the thoughts of modern Unix gurus on how
much of the criticism in the UHH is still valid today.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com
Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508
Ah, no biggie--I have other Exabyte drives that will handle 8205
tapes. The 8200 that I have isn't a bare drive--it's in a
"Contemporary Cybernetics" external box, complete with linear PSU and
2-line LCD display. The display seems to be controlled by what looks
to be an 8051 connected via a 3-wire cable to the drive. It's
interesting--lets you know, for example, how much tape you have left
as you're writing, how many MB you've written and the current
operation.
However, on the subject of compression and 8200/8500 drives, I found
the following thread on the Sun Managers list from 1992:
http://www.sunmanagers.org/archives/1992/0017.html
which mentions external third-party compression modules for the
Exabytes. This is the first time I've heard of this--does anyone
know anything about it? Nothing like being 16 years behind the time.
:)
Cheers,
Chuck
any thoughts on vintage chess games?
I used to have one for my original Tandy 2000. Dang
thing caused a memory parity error right in the middle
of a game once. Luckily it was the parity chip that
got zonked. I was so proud of myself after I fixed 'er
back up.
____________________________________________________________________________________
You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.
http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com
Exabyte (now Tandberg Data) still has firmware images
for the various drives that support firmware updates.
I went there, and grabbed some images for the 8505XLS,
in order to fool it into thinking it is an 8200.
Be warned: The "EXPERT FOR DOS" utility, for updating firmware
has a glitch in it which may leave you with an unuseable drive,
if you choose the wrong update the first time around.
The program greys-out the "Firmware update" button on drives
that don't support firmware updates, such as the 8200.
So, if you flash your 8505 with 8200 compatability firmware,
EXPERT FOR DOS will read your drive as an 8200, and won't
let you re-flash the firmware a second time !
EXPERT will politely show you the HARDWARE model number
of your drive to be an 8505, but relies on the ID string that
the drive returns, to determine if your drive is a model
that supports flashing.
A very stupid oversight on their part.
So now I have an 8505, that is "sort of" flashed as an 8200,
but not with the features I need.
What's that you say? Simply re-flash the firmware, using
the "special cable" that connects to the back of the drive?
Easy enough if you have a 4-pin connector on the back.
It's standard RS232.
Of course, I have to have the older 3-pin model,
which is TTL, and needs a leveling adapter. . .
It's cheaper and easier for me to buy a different drive,
than it is to assemble the required programming to fix the glitch.
T
> Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:33:41 -0800
> From: Brent Hilpert
> What's the app?, does it really have special requirements? So many op-amp
> types have been produced over the years. Perhaps I exagerrate, but they
> seem like transistors in that a dozen modern types could cover
> substitution for the entire range of types.
The audio folks get very picky about brands of op-amps and swear
there are audible differences between brands of the same op-amp.
My response to those who say "just listen, you can tell" is usually
"What?"
Cheers,
Chuck
For you 8mm tape fans out there, is the Exabyte 8205 drive simply an
8200 with different firmware--or are the electronics completely
different? In other words, can I upgrade an 8200 to an 8205 without
changing the PCB out?
More of an item of curiosity now--I've got a bunch of Solaris tapes
written on an 8205, but they're written in 8200 mode, so it doesn't
really matter.
Thanks,
Chuck