>>> I only questioned the expectation of licensing and control given the original distribution medium and terms
As far as the owner and creator am concerned, the original terms were: "This is cost-free to read and to quote for fair use, and I reserve the right to change these terms by making an announcement."
"Fair use" doesn't mean "make available wholesale to the world" ... that's one of the (few!) things I think the courts got right about file sharing, for example.
Later, I removed it from my site and announced about it.
Message: 20
Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 17:58:50 -0000
From: "Robert Jarratt" <robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com>
Subject: RE: Powering up a 20-year old MicroVAX II
<<Do you mean that it will be difficult to fix, even if I can find someone who
really knows what they are doing?>>
*Yes, it'll be difficult (but not impossible) to fix. You're probably better off finding another working one. Or trying to find an electronics buff.*
<<I only have a basic multimeter so I don't know if I would have had the
necessary equipment to do this, do you have any advice on the minimum
equipment needed?>>
*You don't have the necessary equip. And, No, I don't, because teaching you how to be an electronics technician is a whole other subject and beyond my means. *
<< Now that there has been some damage is it sensible to replace the blown capacitors and any other ones that don't measure well?>>
*Not for you to replace them, no. It needs knowledgeable attention at this point.*
<< I looked up variacs but there seem to be an awful lot of different ones,
again any recommendation as to the minimum I would need?>>
*You choose them according to your voltage and amperage needs. I use a 5 amp one for small electronics and computers, 10 amp for larger computers (like my own Microvax). Again, though, unless you already know what you're doing with one, please take the time to learn prior to blowing stuff up.
*
<<By the way, I am aware that PSUs can be very dangerous to meddle with when
you have limited knowledge.>>
*
Yep! They remain dangerous even when you have knowledge.
*
<< How long should I leave the PSU between any tests to allow the capacitors to discharge? The label on the PSU says to leave it 5 minutes, I suspect it should be longer.>>
*Honestly? Don't use time as a safetly measure. Assume the caps are always fully charged. Then test them and discharge them if needed. Again, because you don't know this, you need to get the knowledge or let someone else handle it before meddling with the PSU.
Proceed carefully.*
On Feb 22, 2009, at 3:33 PM, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
>
>> I have to say, for all the talk of failing caps in power supplies
>> I've only ever seen one electrolytic cap fail *ever*, and that was
>> last week in a one-year-old graphics card that has hardly ever been
>> powered off...
>
>
Gordon, you don't mention how many caps you've looked at or tested, or
how you've done so, but I encounter them constantly. Not so much in
the 1980's vintage DEC equipment YET, but it's no myth that AEC's are
electrochemical vats that have a lifespan. The lifespan varies widely
depending on many factors, heat being the big one.
jS
Jim writes:
> If this were a commercial work then I would obviously see it
> differently.
Not evaluating it from a commercial sense, but from an academic sense,
Evan's work (not just the web page but all the effort and research
and deep context behind it) puts it at the top 1% of anything I've
ever seen done in the "history of technology" realm.
It's far more than a picture of a bunch of old stuff, and it's far more than
just scans of old documents. It's truly original work of top-notch caliber.
I believe that in a world that is dominated so heavily by the current winners
in brand-names that having a deep look at the outfits that may not be
current commercial players (but whose ideas did eventually win) is
very important.
How such deep looks might become commercial ventures of their own...
harder for me to say. There's clearly lawsuits flying back and forth
about technology where examples of prior art or experts in
prior art have value. And there's clearly coffee table books. But
there are probably ways to succeed that I've never thought of.
Tim.
Given the close connection between Wirth and PARC, perhaps it would be
useful to examine the Alto SLOT card? Together with Alto microcode,
this drove a very early Xerox printer.
(Personal bias: The Alto microtasking is SUCH a clever idea... The SLOT
ran fairly high as I recall in the tasking priority...)
>>> if it's something you're going to make commercial, stop giving it away for free.
I did stop. This is legacy infringement. :)
Also: big thanks to everyone for the genuinely helpful replies. I really appreciate it.
>>> VCF East 6.0 is Sept. 12-13.
> Is this going to be held in the same location as last year?
Yes. InfoAge Science Center, Wall, N.J.
Did you go last year?
Every year we make a little more progress on the "nice-ification" of our buildings and grounds. Recently we got central HVAC for the computer museum wing.
I think it's pretty much a given that anything that hits the web may appear days or months or years later in some form, either an exact mirror or hacked up and without attribution to original sources. I'm pretty sure that what you see was not actually cloned and included by an actual person but by some sort of web-mirror-bot whose purpose is to drive search engines to a site to rack up some clicks and earn some bucks.
I've seen some of the stuff that I've written or synthesized get translated, garbled, or even quoted by patent examiners. (The patent examiner thing is weird... what he quoted from my Usenet post has absolutely no applicability to the actual patent. But my words are somehow backing him up even though I actually disagree.)
Maybe my years in academia have twisted me, because I still strongly feel that any citation (even cloning or mangling) is in some way a form a citation that will somehow help me get my next job even though that hasn't been true for a long time.
I think it's also true that sometimes we get too wrapped up in what we ourselves have done, and sometimes can lose track of the big picture of the larger classic computer community, some of which is not so able at writing or running websites or giving attribution where it is legally needed or just morally deserved. Certainly you are at the top 1 percent at coming up with original work on the subject and making it available; the top 10 percent is good at taking pictures of their stuff and putting it on the web; the rest of us are just sort of plowing through the research others have done. Just being at the top of the heap makes web-cloning inevitable, and I think you should take it as a compliment.
And even more... I think that we often forget that the web is "just the web" and someday will seem minor and inconsequential compared to whatever new technology comes down the pike. If you've ever heard the BBC's production of the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy I'm trying to intone in the same voice as Deep Thought when he tells everyone that his work is truly minor compared to the work that will have to be done by the computer that actually computes The Question. Really we're pretty minor compared to The Ancients (the ones that actually constructed the classic computers) and compared to The Future (the ways in which the web will be superseded by something we can't even imagine.)
I'm sometimes surprised that the web has been around as long as it has and still is kicking along so well and dominately. I think that someday some little guy in some obscure corner will come up with the next wave, and it won't look AT ALL like Web 2.0 or "The Cloud" or anything that is getting money today.
Tim.
>>> I do find myself wondering had been on http://israelipda.com with all
the supporting text in Hebrew, if there would have been such a screaming
about it ;-)
Very funny ... you should see the debates I have with Sellam ... It's not enough that my opinions are mainstream American "left"; he wants extreme. :)
>
>Subject: Re: 8088 vs. 80c88
> From: "bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca" <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca>
> Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 18:54:49 -0700
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>Chuck Guzis wrote:
>> On 21 Feb 2009 at 15:09, Les Hildenbrandt wrote:
>>
>>>> The problem with the V20's 8080 emulation was that it was buggy (I
>>>> have a few MicroNotes on the subject and can even claim to have
>>>> discovered one of the bugs).
>>> I wonder if it was only cetain chips. I ran cp/m 80 on a v20 for years.
I also ran it on V20 inserted in the Leading Edge model D, not only did it help
dos level stuff by a few percent it ran every thing 8080 I'd thrown at it.
>> Try running a program in CP/M with JRT Pascal 1.0 on a V20. CPU bugs
>> can be very subtle.
Your kidding tight? ;)
JRT pascal was fairly buggy itself and it was till arond V3 that it stopped being
noticalbly so.
Allison
>Well what are the bugs?
>
>> Cheers,
>> Chuck
>>
>>
> The problem with the V20's 8080 emulation was that it was buggy (I
> have a few MicroNotes on the subject and can even claim to have
> discovered one of the bugs).
I wonder if it was only cetain chips. I ran cp/m 80 on a v20 for years.
