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101090 discussions

Starting from Scratch (was Re: OT: Modern college educa

by franke＠sbs.de

>>> Where is my copy of '101 basic games' ? >>Probably same place mine went: loaned, not returned. I still have ":More >>BASIC Computer Games: 84 Fabulous Games for Your Personal Computer", >>though. > Small world. One summer home from college, I loaned mine to the > kid brother of a girl I liked. A few weeks later I saw their > step-father who told me his wife had just left him and taken > the kids with her. Never saw any of them (the kid, the girl > or the book) again. Hard to loose a beloved one - and always about girls :) SCNR Hans -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

27 years, 10 months

More thoughts on building a Z-80 (64bit!!!)

by allisonp＠world.std.com

< > I know that Track get very touchy at 900Mcyc speeds but, I also knew t I've done RF, at that very touchy part starts at around 50MHz, by 100-200MHz coils are simple lengths and at 470mhz anything longer than 1/4" becomes significant. I did a power amp at 512mhz and the whole tuning and interconnect was all carefully calculated lengths of tracks. Even the board material and thickness was critical! I was lucky with the RF I could use one whole side as a ground plane! Oh, and quarter wave lines at operating clock speeds is a real nasty. < It helps to have some idea of RF and microwave design before attempting < to build a 1GHz circuit. Otherwise you are wasting your time. This is no < something you can fiddle with until it works unless the underlying < design and layout is sound. Like Tony said, guessing will have you making whole new baords for small changes. Allison

27 years, 10 months

eBay (aka: ePay, eVay, oyVay, etc...)

by franke＠sbs.de

> It sounds like this is a "bad" thing. Is it? If so why? It would seem that > eBay is making a market for older computers that before didn't exist. Now > is it that the 'old timers' who were used to picking up C64's at a garage > sale for $1 will now have to pay $25 are grumbling? Doesn't this > potentially increase the value of your own collection many fold? Isn't that > a good thing? As a matter of nature, I don't care for the monetary value of my collection. What I care is to get new exciteing finds. > Traditionally there is a rush of "collectible fever" (if > you've ever dealt with collectibles, and my Dad has for many more years > than I) where lots of people rush in an buy anything that may be > collectible hoping to get in at the bottom of the next "beanie" craze, then > there is a rush of junk dealers who prey on those bozos and come in and > sell them a bunch of "L@@K! R@RE!" Commodore 64's or 486SL machines for > over market prices, and then there is a general "crash" of the market as > the bozo's leave and prices go back to more rational levels (but usually > higher than they were before the "collectible" craze hit) and then, if they > are truely collectable (and there are many properties of things that make > them so) then the price begins to reflect actual rarity, condition, and > that imponderable "desirability." Actual rarity ? Hmm so lets see - a PET is more rare than a KIM ? Or a Apple I five hundret times rarer than a NASCOM-I ? Come real prices beside the usual 1 to 100 USD are just rubbisch. Just follow Jim about his Intellec/Altair thing. For shure, the Intellec is a nice thing, but everybody just looks at the Altair. I have to stay on swap meets and garage sales - and maybe I find an Apple 1 :))) Gruss H. -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

27 years, 10 months

eBay (aka: ePay, eVay, oyVay, etc...)

by franke＠sbs.de

>>As long as there are people willing to shell out the bucks for the item >>they "demand" there will be someone else there to "supply." > Correct, in the USA the 'worth' of something is what some buyer somewhere > will pay for it, assuming you can notify said buyer that it is available > for sale. What's it worth to me to buy a poorly made bean bag animal? Not > even a dollar, but said animals sell at auction regularly for over $50 each. Short note - there's a quote in Germany: Jeden Tag steht ein Dummer auf, Du musst ihn nur finden. Literaly: Every day a dump person gets up, you just have to find him. > Hans made some comments on 'rare' versus 'desirable' too. The fact is that > 'desirable' often translates to those items that were perceived as being > significant in the history of the discipline in question. The Intellec > isn't percieved as being as historically significant as the Altair, hence > the price difference. The Apple 1 is seen as being the birth of a company > that is still significant today, VIC20's are seen less so. TRS-80's are > often seen as the first 'computer for the masses' (even though I would > argue the Apple ][ fit that role as well). Same with me. I realy would like ti get the Intellec, especialy see him running, but Jim has a price in mind, witch is (maybe cut by half) possible to get via eBay, but way out of my reach. The sad thing is that the buyer might only want parts for display, ("look what a nice old machine I have there in my hall" - "Oh, "what is is?" - "Just read, ts written there: Intellec" - "God help, how could they compute with only some lamps and switches?") and will eventualy take the whole configuration apart. > The education process will happen, and probably several people on this list > are in a position to write the books that appraisers and future shoppers > will live by. Consider the person who is born today, and will be in their > 30's in 2033. They get the urge to collect 'historical pre-millenium > computers.' and they will need help. They didn't "live the revolution" as > many of us have, so we have yet another chance to influence things in a > positive way. How could you just sound so positiv ? :) Gruss H. P.S.: I orderes a nice acrylic case this morning. -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

27 years, 10 months

eVay

by dogas＠leading.net

A broken IMSAI 8080 has shown up on eBay in case anyone is interested... Mike:-dogas@leading.net

27 years, 10 months

Now quite OT: Re: ePay

by david_a._vandenbroucke＠hud.gov

Aaron says: >>I personally *hate* the proxy bid idea. At least how it works on eBay....The whole fun of an incremental auction is the small jumps in bidding and that soul-searching question you have to ask yourself each time you're outbid: "Do I really want to go a buck higher on that [insert item here]?" << Ah, well, there you go. I don't see auctions as something fun, particularly. I see them as a way to buy things, either things that I can't easily get any other way (such as old computers), or at a price below what I'd pay if I bought it retail. The process isn't a form of recreation for me. I'd prefer that eBay was either sealed auction or restricted to one bid per person, with the high bid being set as now, at an increment over the second highest. --Dav david_a._vandenbroucke(a)hud.gov

27 years, 10 months

64bit data 128Bit address...Re: Building a Z-80 (64bit!

by franke＠sbs.de

>> "Max Eskin" <maxeskin(a)hotmail.com> wrote: >>> No application _requires_ any number of bits > 1. It's a question of >>> performance. After all, a Z80 could have 512M RAM, just not >>> contiguously (and would probably require a lot of hardware to access >>> it). >> >> OK, then the Z80 system will require 19 bits of address. Sure, >> some of those bits aren't coming directly out of the CPU, but >> they're coming from somewhere. > Actually the figure is 29 bits (it was 512M not 512K) but I agree with you > 100% in principle. > The way I look at it is this: [...] > I therefore see address buses growing at 16 bits every 30 years. That's > just over a bit every 2 years - slower than I expected but not much. > Someone (I forget who) said that memory chips double in capacity every 18 > months. This would give 16 bits in 24 years. Interesting szenario, especialy when connected to the Mores Law (didn't he tell this regarding integration ?). > I claim that the assertion that we'll see even 64-bit address spaces being > used anything like up by 2003 is unfounded. According to that growth rate > above, we will start hitting the limit of 48-bit addressing - 256 TWord - > in the '20s, and the limit of 64-bit addressing, 16 exawords (or exabytes, > possibly), in the '50s (or '40s at 1 bit per 18 months). Many of us will > probably still be alive then (I shall be celebrating my 83rd birthday in > March of 2050 ) Hmm I will have my 88th by then - jets join :) > - and I for one would like to see what sort of technology > will be used to store 16 exabytes in a space smaller than a mountain! The size isn't the real problem - you already get 16 Gig in less than 320 cm^3 (using hard disk technology) which is more than 100 Meg per cm^3, which gives us 100x100x100x100 Meg or 100 Tera per m^3 (Only heat will be a problem, but if we assume that this will shrink by the factor 2 within the next few years, we get enough space for cooling without developing a new technology). 100 Tera are 100x2^40 Bytes so, for 16 exabytes you need 10x2^18 m^3 or 64x64x64x10 m^3 - just the size of a ordinary 160 store skyscraper. Nothing real big - isn't it? - and especialy not a mountain. and if we assume a increasing density by 10 within the next years, it is less than a warehouse. This is all just (near) todays technology - the real problem is the access time .... A wire could come up to 100m between a starage device at the perhipherieal area and a 64 Bit computer in the middle - 100m thats just 1/3.000.000s or 333ns traveling time ... seams we have created some kind of piplineing prior to the CPU :) So, calulating a 1 us round trip time, we just could runn a 4 MHz Z80 ... hmm didn't he ask for 64 Bit Z80 ? (I just left the disc acces time out of calculation, but acording to any information availabel from disk manufacturers the internal caches will eliminate this almost to zero :) Gruss Hans P.S.: for 128 Bit address range we just have to enhance the building by a bit more than 1.000.000 in each direction. Giving a size of 5x128.000.000x128.000.000x128.000.000 m^3 or 5x128.000x128.000x128.000 km^3 compared to volume of earth 20.000x 20.000x 20.000 km^3 (just my memory) And dont forget the traveling time of signals of something like .6 seconds across the cube. -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

27 years, 10 months

ePay

by franke＠sbs.de

> Aw, that guy on the single board computers was slow... he bid a whole 11 > seconds before the end! Yesterday, I had somebody come in 6 seconds before > the end (luckily he didn't outbid, but he cost me money, dammit). Hey, do you want to get a laughter on me ... grrr. :) > We have a saying here in America... "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em". Now, > I never enter a bid until the last possible moment. Not possible at high traffic times over here. Also, I don't need this kind of auctions - eBay would be a real nice idea without snipeing. Gruss H. -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

27 years, 10 months

Heathkit Advanced weather station backlight problem?

by jimw＠agora.rdrop.com

Greetings all; I've got the Heathkit 'Advanced Weather Station' (it fits the charter: its old and has a Z-80 running it! B^} ) which (still) seems to have the classic problem of blowing fuses (and other things) once or twice a year as the fluorescent tube used for the LCD backlighting ages. There was a rumour that Heath had developed a mod for the power supply to deal with this, but this was also right around the time that Heath was bailing out of the kit business and closing their retail outlets so the staff at the time was much less than interested in trying to track down this information. I've finally got annoyed enough at this recurring ritual, that it is either time to find a fix, or off the thing in favour of a 'Davis' unit (or similar) Anyone out there have the information on this mod? (or can confirm that it never existed?) Thanks; -jim --- jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174

27 years, 10 months

ebay

by jim＠calico.litterbox.com

How to get what you want on e-bay 1. Bid more than anybody else through proxy bidding. This way when somebody else bids, the system will bid you up (to your max) automatically when someone else bids. If you want it bad enough, you can get it, but it may cost you. 2. Learn the fine art of sniping. I live with a longtime e-bay user (my wife) who has the distinction of a 0 second snipe - it came in and was recognised some fraction of a second before the auction closed. She did it manually too. :) There IS sniping software, apparently, too. 3. My wife assures me that EVERYTHING comes around again, btw. Especially computers. She suggests patience. 4. Finally, to avoid heartache from being sniped, don't assume you have a thing until you get the notification you won. Until you get that, the thing isn't yours. -- Jim Strickland jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Vote Meadocrat! Bill and Opus in 2000 - Who ELSE is there? -----------------------------------------------------------------------

27 years, 10 months

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