test-drb

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101090 discussions

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

An anecodote: Today, two teachers from my school went to Micro Center to get some stuff fixed, and took me with them. This was the first time I have ever been in a tech service room. There was one tech, a woman in her 40's, multitasking. She was only able to fix our printer, which wouldn't formfeed due to a gob of glue. She "solved" the other two problems with updates from Apple's site. Anyway, while she was busy with us, a guy walked in with a Mac Plus mouse. She told him that the only thing that could be done is to order a new one, if they're still in stock. One the bright side, she didn't sell him a DB-9 Intellimouse but I think the only reason a mouse should be replace is if the case is smashed or it just sucks (Zenix?). How do you expect classics to survive in active use if they're thrown away without an attemp at fixing them? By the way, what's the difference between DB and DE connectors? ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

28 years, 2 months

CP/M

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<I wonder if implemented if it would be necessary to let the read <electronics know which sensor it was reading to compensate for the <rotation positional difference. Or whether when reading the flippy <side it would simply wait longer to read the sector header. < < - don No, the relative position is the same as the index hole occurs and you start formatting there. What that means is sector 1 is displaced about 1/3 of a turn from the "normal" unflipped position. Allison

28 years, 2 months

CP/M

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jun 18, 18:29, Tony Duell wrote: > > >holes and putting the disk back in the jacket. Problem is resealing the > > >edge of the jacket which I've opened. > > > > Tape works well! > > No it doesn't! 99% of all the tapes out there fail after a couple of > years (at most) leaving a somewhat sticky residue behind. 5.25" (and 8") > floppies were rarely (if ever) assembled using adhesives - a thermal > welding process appears to be what was done. > > > Joe You could try tetrahydofuran, as found in Vinyl Weld adhesive. Noxious stuff, but it works on a lot of "difficult" plastics and you only need a very small amount. I mostly use it for making custom ribbon cables. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

28 years, 2 months

What is the first computer?

by franke＠sbs.de

>>I'd give the honours of 1st computer to the Zuse Z1 - a relay machine >>between the Wars, I think. But some mechanical calculators at that date >>were quite sophisticated. Comments, anyone?? > Well, I'd give computer credit to Babage's machine, ca. 1896, IIRC. He is, > after all the one who coined the phrase "computer." Babbage died 1871 :) The Analytical Machine was never build and had never worked. Even the 1991 'replica' of the National Museum of Science and Technology in London was only build after his plans _and_ additions 'known' at this time. A neat (english) description of the Z1 and Z3 could be found at http://www.zib.de/prospekt/zuse/zusez1z3.html (Hard code documentation) or http://bang.lanl.gov/video/sunedu/computer/z1z4.html (soft :) The first programable general purpose computer is for shure the Z1. And the first electronic computer is the Z3 since the Z1 was just mechanical. Also both are the first binary floating point computers (Babage used decimal wheels). Servus H. P.S.: The first calculatin machine might be the one of Wilhelm Schickard from 1623. -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

28 years, 2 months

Quarter classics (was: Big Iron Was:RE: Backwater areas Wa

by franke＠sbs.de

>>Speaking of big iron, if anyone runs across any arcade machines in my >>general area, like within 300-400 miles, I WILL pickup. Looking for mostly >>80's era games, like the old Atari vectors (Tempest, Asteroids, Battlezone, >>etc.) but will take just about anything. > And if you know of a robotron in the SF bay area available for cheap, > 4-6hours of sleep per night is way too much anyway... 8^) Robotron ? Talking about the East German Computers ? :) H. -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

28 years, 2 months

Baby's birthday... Web Page on BBC

by gim＠hitec-uk.com

Yes,onlyone was made [well, two,if you count the remake. It was the predecessor to the Mark One, which was, in turn the predecessor to the Feranti Mark One, which claims to be the first comercially available computer. Other interestinf firsts from Manchester... the first use of virtual memory... Grant. Philip.Belben(a)powertech.co.uk on 06/18/98 06:20:10 PM Please respond to classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers" <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> cc: Subject: Re[2]: Baby's birthday... Web Page on BBC [Manchester SSEM] > That's pretty neat. Let me know if all the lights in town dim when they > turn it back on! > > Any idea how many of those were sold and what they cost? Um. Yes. AFAIK, none were sold, and they (it) cost a lot. :-) But they probably didn't track the cost accurately, since the machine was continually being extended - it (i.e. the physical hardware, not just the design) was used as a basis for the next couple of Manchester machines (including the mark 1, I think). Philip.

28 years, 2 months

Pen Windows 2.0

by higginbo＠netpath.net

Which needs at least a 286 and 2mb to run. This is a V20 here. I need the older version of GeoWorks. At 10:45 PM 6/17/98 -0400, Josh Spatz wrote: >Geoworks is no longer developing PC-GEOS, but it was licensed by a >company called New Deal, which has a downloadable version of New Deal >Office (the new name for PC-Geos) on their website at >http://www.newdealinc.com - - john higginbotham ____________________________ - webmaster www.pntprinting.com - - limbo limbo.netpath.net -

28 years, 2 months

What is the first computer?

by Philip.Belben＠powertech.co.uk

William Donzelli quoted Tony Duell as having written: >> Agreed. You can understand an ASR33 or similar by turning it by hand and >> tripping linkages, etc. I did it years ago. Doing the same to a video >> terminal, even a simple dumb terminal, is a lot harder (Done that as well!) > > I have actually done that with a chunk of one of these computers - the > turn of one gear would cause a hundred others to move. > >> The other nice thing is that, with the possible exception of custom cams, >> it's generally pretty obvious what broken parts should be like. And then >> it's possible to make them without too much equipment. But a dead custom >> chip is almost impossible to figure out, and hard to reproduce. > > That is very true - a stripped gear is a stripped gear is a stripped gear! Ooh! Not so fast! Is it straight, helical, worm or hypoid? Or an eliptical gear even? But yes, a gear is easy to rconstruct from its wreckage. Some cams and levers, though, have quite tight tolerance spikes and notches which it is quite difficult to get right from seeing the bent/broken ones. > Fixing one of these mechanical computers, however, is completely different > from the familiar digital ones. In the latter, all problems (except video) > are go/no go. In the former, problems manifest themselves in the outputs > giving out-of-spec or erroneous results (except with a catasprophic > failure!). Bearing in mind Tony's, Sam's and others' comments on intermittent faults and the like, yes, up to a point. Video is not the only exception, though - other things (e.g. disk drives) can suffer similarly. And finally, remember digital mechanical computers do exist - I have a Facit mechanical calculator with some quite sophisticated algorithms (optimised multiplication, non-restoring division) done digitally, entirely with mechanical parts. (The only electrical bits are a motor and a switch.) Philip.

28 years, 2 months

What is the first computer?

by jeff.kaneko＠ifrsys.com

<Stuff about stripped gears and mechanical computing engines SNIPped> > > You've never had a marginal timing problem, or a pattern-related data > problem? I am suprised. > > Put it this way. I had a 1793 that, when it was warm, would not gerenrate > a data request bit if (I think) the last 2 bytes loaded were both FF. > Something totally crazy like that. Took a long time (and a lot of > corrupted disks) to track that one down. > > Ditto for marginal timing that fixes itself when the machine is cold, or > hot, or when you wave your hands over the CPU board, or whatever. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Tony, Tony, Tony, don't you know? That's a free added option that's built into many kinds of electronic equipment! It's called the TPD (tm). A.k.a., the "Technician Proximity Detector". There's a ton of them installed out there. Looks like one innovation that goes back even to Babbage's time . . . . Jeff > > -tony > > > >

28 years, 2 months

Couldn't be more OT if it tried! Re: (OT, in a way...)

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

In a message dated 98-06-17 20:42:34 EDT, you write: << >hey, Hey,HEY! ps2 machines were announced in 1987 so they should be talked >about rather than destroyed. no matter what anyone says, they were state of >the art. certainly way ahead for their time. You MUST be kidding! Joe >> actually, i'm not. they WERE ahead of their time. expensive and well designed. the first pc type machine with level sensitive interrupts. they can be worked on and disassembled without tools, extensive grounding on the circuits lowered emissions, real plug and play that worked, some machines had IML partition and scsi, hi speed uarts, autoconfig, sharing IRQ's, bi- directional lpt port, the standard keyboard and mouse we use today, so on and so forth. i've got a model 77 with builtin scsi that i know will outlast any other pc of its era. david

28 years, 2 months

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