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101090 discussions

UK VCF (Was: Re: Any *really* homebrewing going on?)

by franke＠sbs.de

>> I think this shows that organising a UK-VCF would be a bad idea at the >> moment. And for me to organise one, losing all the money I'd have to put >> in would be a very bad idea. Just ask Salam about his profits (please don't tell anybody, but a friend of a friend of my uncle told me that Salam will buy out Bill Gates soon and then declare himself ruler of the world) >> Oh well. It would have been an interesting idea. > Yeah, and given the geographic spread of the people that did reply, even a > pub meet would be out of the question. Jep, just for 3 hours would be a bit short - I'll think you have to change your horrible pub opening hours. Gruss H. -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

27 years, 10 months

Units of measure (Was: discrete transistors

by allisonp＠world.std.com

< Is mhz == MegaHertz or is mhz == milliHertz? < If so, that could be why this machine seems SO slow. MegaHz 10^6, milliHz 10^-3. aka typo. however part of standard usage would dictate MHZ and mhz being the same unless the context was extremely slow events. Now if it were MHy and mHy the assumption would be 10^-3 as a million Henry inductor is very unlikely. Things like this tend to be somewhat self checking. Actually 386sx/16 is pretty speedy of the memory bus is wide. I have a DELL 316sx that runs Minux like gangbusters. Allison

27 years, 10 months

discrete transistors

by allisonp＠world.std.com

< Coax cables with velocity factors of 0.66 are in wide use. And in < some very specialized areas - especially the world of delay lines - Right. I was thinking antennas... don't ask! < coaxial cables with velocity factors of less than 0.10 are used. < These cables are extremely expensive and somewhat fragile, as their < center conductor is a coil around a ferrite core, < rather than a plain copper wire. Over the years I've made my own delay lines for various projects. Tedious but saves a bundle! Common use was delay for vertical on O'scopes, radar (calibration!) and dram timing. Allison

27 years, 10 months

discrete transistors

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

My point was that only recently has it become so that there is nothing more than an Alpha or an PII. There are many parallel implementations, but nothing like the difference between an Altair and an S/360. Yes, I know there are many computers way more powerful than CompUSA desktops, but the point is that they're just parallel implementations and there isn't so much of a class distinction. >Irrelevant to the discussion for two reasons: > >1) No one has made mainframes out of discrete transistors since the >late 60s. > >2) Almost all modern mainframes are based on monolithic microprocessors. > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

27 years, 10 months

Odd Meas. Units

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

> Wait...all matter resists current, and all matter can be forced to > emit light, so any item is a 'Light-emmitting resistor'. One of the early April 1 issues of BYTE (1975? More likely 1976) has the specs for a "noise emitting diode". If I remember the definition: "When connected across high voltage, makes a large noise (once)." When did LED's begin wandering out of the solid state physics labs and into commercial products? I remember individual LED's in the very early 70's, and by the mid-70's they were everywhere in the form of 7-segment displays. Is there some landmark "first commercial use" of the classic T1-3/4 individual LED package that's so common today? Were there early LED packages that just completely disappeared? Tim.

27 years, 10 months

Units of measure (Was: discrete transistors

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>MegaHz 10^6, milliHz 10^-3. aka typo. however part of standard usage >would dictate MHZ and mhz being the same unless the context was extremely >slow events. Yeahbut the same people who put "mhz" in ads are the same folks who talk about the "ASC-2" character sets and "DB-9" connectors. Just because they're common errors doesn't mean that I'm going to repeat them. (Reminds me of Bill Kavanagh at Caltech, who pointed out the silliness of the phrase "partial vacuum" repeatedly... I'll completely leave out the concept of "vacuum leak"!) Tim.

27 years, 10 months

TOPS-20

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

Well, that's just what I was asking about. What do you mean by 'user friendliness'? A built-in debugger is not high on my list of user-friendly features. Also, how is the TOPS base 'stronger' than UNIX? Does it have more calls, or what? >> [Why is TOPS-20 so much better than Unix?] >> >> Umm... It runs on a PDP-10? >> >> Seriously, now, I like the idea of being able to DETACH CONTINUE something, >> log in from elsewhere, re-attach my job, and continue without stopping the >> job (Unless is tries to do TTY I/O, then it has to wait). > > Well, to be technical, there is a program for Unix to do this called >`screen'. It's actually pretty nice in that it gives you 10 virtual >terminals, allowing you to switch between them (Ctrl-A <number>) and >cut-n-paste as well (defaults to using vi keybindings---use Unix enough and >you'll get used to it). You can also detach the session and reconnect to it >later (and the program will continue to run even if it does TTY I/O). > >> And, Unix doesn't >> have ^T. This gets Status. If you think your program has hung or something, >> pressing ^T does a line like this: >> 07:49:28 MM IO wait at .TEXT1+17 Used 0:00:21.8 in 2:34:21, Load 0.80 >> (I just pressed ^T into MM and retyped what it printed) >> This means that MM is waiting on I/O at .TEXT1+17 (which is a label defined >> in the program. If you wrote the program, this is significant.) >> You also get the used CPU and connect times, and the system load. >> Unix doesn't do this, and I wish it did... > > That's more a function of the shell than anything else. I think there is >a Unix shell that will do that (or could be told to do that). Granted, if >you're in some other program it won't work. > >> Also, if you suddenly decide you want to go poke at your program's interior, >> you and ^C^C it and say DDT, and (provided you know how to operate DDT) it >> will snag the program you just stopped and let you play with it. Or, if you >> do this accidentally, you can say CONTINUE and it will go along like >> nothing happened. > > Now that is a nice feature, and it might be possible to munge that into >Unix as well. But that's the main problem with Unix---all these features >are munged onto a pretty weak base and people have gone so long without >these features that Unix weenies tend to dismiss them as breaking the >`simplicity' of Unix (brain death is more like it 8-) > > I think what most people lament is that 20 years later, Unix still doesn't >have the user friendliness of TOPS-20 nor are we likely to see anything like >it any time soon. > > -spc (Yea yea yea it could be done, but doing it right (or even reliably) > under Unix is a real pain ... ) > > > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

27 years, 10 months

UK VCF (Was: Re: Any *really* homebrewing going on?)

by franke＠sbs.de

>> So did you take the non-UK replies out ? Even if the english >> like to ignore it, Europe is just a short hop away :) > You were the only non-UK reply and you were one of the five. Oops. Not much of an audience ... Sad - so, lets fix the pub hours. Gruss H. -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

27 years, 10 months

Mainframes vs PCs (was Re: discrete transistors)

by backofene＠hotmail.com

I don't know what they had at the Cape, but a reliable source once told me that the onboard computer had only 48K of RAM since it was considered too expensive to go to 64K. Eileen > >Back to classic computers, it has been said, perhaps apocryphylly(sp?), >that "My laptop has more computer power than NASA used to put men on the >moon." While it may be true, I've never actually seen a description of the >computer resources available to NASA between 1962 and 1969. Does anyone on >the list have that information? > >--Chuck > > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

27 years, 10 months

discrete transistors

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>Signal propagation in cables is less than speed of light (c) and can be >as low as 75% in some coax style cables. Coax cables with velocity factors of 0.66 are in wide use. And in some very specialized areas - especially the world of delay lines - coaxial cables with velocity factors of less than 0.10 are used. These cables are extremely expensive and somewhat fragile, as their center conductor is a coil around a ferrite core, rather than a plain copper wire. Tim.

27 years, 10 months

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