test-drb

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

101090 discussions

Which boards were changed when upgrading VAX 780 to a 785?

by DSEAGRAV＠toad.xkl.com

I have lots of a 780, and lots of a 785. Which boards were changed when upgrading to a 785? Can I somehow combine the two and get a CPU? If I can, I can get a set of backplanes from ATS, but they're supposed to be spares for the VAX they've already decomissioned. They don't really want to give them to me unless I have a use for them. -------

28 years, 3 months

Fair software pricing

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

I remember asking a while ago, and only a couple of people on the list had a copy >Xenix? Rare? > >> 3)Famous software, like VisiCalc > >Way too much according to what I see some packages selling on the net for >($50-$100). > >> Should these things be expensive? > >Depends. How much do you want to pay? > >> More specifically, and perhaps more to the point, do you think that >> a copy of VisiCalc (black binder/manual c1981) and MS Multiplan are >> each worth $5? > >Not bad. Considering I've seen some fools pay ten times that. > >Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com >------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Ever onward. > > September 26 & 27...Vintage Computer Festival 2 > See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details! > [Last web page update: 05/11/98] > > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

28 years, 3 months

IBM PC DOS 1.00, anybody???

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

I'm sorry if am a little slow, but why is that a curse? > >Remember the old Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times". >-- >Ward Griffiths >They say that politics makes strange bedfellows. >Of course, the main reason they cuddle up is to screw somebody else. > Michael Flynn, _Rogue Star_ > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

28 years, 3 months

Adaptec ACB 4070 Bridge (MFM/RLL to SCSI)

by djenner＠halcyon.com

I have two of these MFM to SCSI adapters up for grabs. They screw onto the bottom of an MFM drive and convert the drive from MFM to SCSI. (It might be RLL instead of MFM.) Complete with cables. I don't have any docs, but it appears that you can get something from the Adaptec FAX number. See http://www.adaptec.com and search for ACB 4070. If anyone wants these for the cost of shipping, please let me know. Dave

28 years, 3 months

cat Xerox | Apple | Microsoft ?

by photze＠batelco.com.bh

>Sure the DOS license was a big initial push, but to say it was solely >responsible for the success of Microsoft is like saying the Model T is >responsible for Ford having the best selling vehicle in America today. Exactly. It's kind of like how scientists can associate one thing with another, such as "Salt increases people's chances of having a heart attack, therefore having little/no salt reduces it". It's not true; see if ANY living being can go without salt. If DOJ's going to punish MS, the LEAST they could to would be to get their facts strait. >Microsoft was a development products company, not an OS company. When I got >here in 1988, I remember seeing a revenue pie chart at the company meeting. >We were at around 60-70% revenue from development products like C++ & >FORTRAN, with a big slice from apps like Word & Multiplan, and DOS revenue >was a tiny slice. In a decade where everything had to be written directly >to the hardware to get any speed out of the 8088, you can hardly say that >the DOS license had much to do with the success of the dev products. I think that you'll agree with me when I say that revenues arn't everything, and in some cases, anything. Take Internet Explorer, for example. I'd imagine that the product (which, BTW, is an excellent browser) doesn't make much, if any money, due to the fact that the only way you pay for it is $5 for a CD or $30 or whatever for Internet Explorer Plus. But still, IE makes up between 30-50% of the browser wars. >Our first, all time most successful Windows app, Excel, that nuked the Lotus >1-2-3 monopoly through ease of use and customer demand alone, was _ported >from the Macintosh_. How exactly could we have leveraged our ownership of >Windows to make Excel successful when it wasn't even written for Windows? Exactly. MS shouldn't be punished for making good desisions or good luck. Now, the ONLY thing that would actually call for an anti-trust hearing would be if the Gov't offered MS money for something. DOJ really doesn't know what they're talking about once they get to computers. That judge was happy to see the IE logo off his computer!!! The disputed files still existed. >If IBM endorsing & bundling an OS makes it a monopoly, why is OS/2 dead? IBM... now, I don't think that they're guilty, but they call for anti-trust hearings. They make their own hard drives, OS's, chips (x86 and otherwise), PC's, mainframes.... talk about BUNDLING... A good point, which I think needs to be made is that the PC industry has reached an odd point. It's at an area where products can be hyped enough for a idiot with some cash to want to get a PC for a couple of reasons. For instance, someone was talking to their sister and was asking me for help on the Internet, and he was concerned that her sister's Mac wasn't a Pentium. All he knew was how the Pentium was hyped. PowerPC was not, except for a 3-6 month Motorola campaign. Seriously, I happen to kind of like Windows. It's pretty easy to use. Now, due to Autoplay in Windows 95, I can get even the most BASIC to install a program. Needless to say, that's something that has considerably lowered my phone bill. ;-) >Kai Don't worry. We're mostly geeks on this list, meaning we want the Government to stay in it's own territory. Hey... anyone think about launching anti-trust hearings against the government/IRS??? They're monopolies.... BTW, what exactly do you do at Microsoft???? Ciao, Tim D. Hotze

28 years, 3 months

IBM PC DOS 1.00, anybody???

by peacock＠simconv.com

From: Max Eskin [mailto:maxeskin@hotmail.com] I'm sorry if am a little slow, but why is that a curse? > >Remember the old Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times". >-- When you are sitting on the customer's computer room floor at 3am, and the paychecks are distributed at 7am, to the 300 angry miners who dynamited cars during the last strike, and that new "interesting" technology isn't working, then you will understand why it is a curse. Jack Peacock

28 years, 3 months

cat Xerox | Apple | Microsoft ?

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 04:57 PM 5/21/98 -0700, Kai Kaltenbach wrote: > >In regard to Windows being a clone of the Macintosh, that's also false. The >intended competitive target for Windows 1.0 was somebody's PC based product >which in turn was intended as a competitor to IBM's TopView. That's not to say, of course, that Windows 1.0 would not have been better had it cloned the Mac. :-) >People think Windows was successful because of some >big Microsoft master plan, which is ridiculous. It didn't sell hardly at >all until it really took off with 3.0, I was one of a handful of guys who wrote a Windows 2.0 illustration program that we sold to SPC that became Harvard Draw. Speaking with that experience in mind, programming for Win 2.0 was hell on Earth. :-) All the fun of 16-bit x86 plus a toddling GUI API. Relax, Kai. Some of us are hoping the DOJ would leave Microsoft alone, and hope they don't go after the next software company. ("Why, I'm shocked, shocked, shocked that one software company would wish another would dry up!" Government officials who accept covert international espionage are surprised by corporate managers playing "us-vs.-them" in blustery memos?) And this wouldn't be the first time a Mac-flavored columnist had a strange spin on the world. At 07:37 PM 5/21/98 -0500, Doug Yowza wrote: >I'm not a Mac >fan, but if you look at something like the Amiga and AmigaOS from 1985, it >was such a clearly better operating system and windowing system PC >environment compared to Microsoft's offering that if Microsoft had to The Amiga's GUI, Intuition, will go down in history as being almost religiously nonconformist and anti-standard - in the first few years, the evangelists seemed in love with the idea that, for example, every program's Open/Save dialogs would be hand-rolled and completely different from the next. By the time they changed their mind about that, it was too late. It didn't track most resources - even Win 1.0 tried to do that. Another great flaw of the Amiga core (on which Intuition relied) was its lack of task-to-task memory protection, indeed, a reliance on free access to all memory by all tasks. The Amiga had great multitasking and a generally clean feel to its "Exec" mainly because the guy who was assigned to write it was wise enough to recognize that he was no expert, and picked up a textbook on OS design. This free access to all memory gave the machine and its custom hardware its lean-and-mean feel, but it wasn't scalable or very portable. That's about it. It inherited all sorts of crud from Martin Richard's B and BCPL languages, for heaven's sake, because Amiga Corp. wasn't capable (given CBM's time and money constraints) of producing an OS to sit on top of the Exec, so they grafted his Tripos OS on it instead. I can say all this only because I devoted many years and much soul to the Amiga. :-) Early Windows suffered the most from the 16-bit legacy of the Intel processor. At least it attempted to abstract the graphics interface, tracked resources, encouraged standard GUIs, etc. - John Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm>

28 years, 3 months

Extreme Geek

by rax＠warbaby.com

Compound emulation, anyone? BeOS emulating MacOS emulating Win3.1 emulating Apple][e to play Dig Dug. http://www.bedope.com/digdug.jpg How far could one go with this cool silliness? R. -- Robert Arnold Managing Editor The MonkeyPool WebSite Content Development http://www.monkeypool.com Creator and Eminence Grise Warbaby: The WebSite. The Domain. The Empire. muahahahahaaaaa http://www.warbaby.com Dreadlocks on white boys give me the willies.

28 years, 3 months

cat Xerox | Apple | Microsoft ?

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<could be made for the Wright Brothers, etc. No invention springs wholly <formed from teh forehead of the inventor, everything builds on previous <innovations. Xerox invented the GUI for all practical purposes. Rather than say "Xerox invented..." I'd say they codified, or otherwise choherently assembled many known concepts into a working system. <planning on inventing an airplane. And besides, the GUI wasn't even a sp <in Apple's eye in 1979, they were just introducing the Apple II+ at that <time! It also forgets the DRI work on GUI kernel (GEM). <The Xerox Star was introduced in May, 1981, and the Apple Lisa 1 wasn't <announced until January, 1983. It shipped in June of that year, more tha <two years after the Xerox. Two years is a freaking LIFETIME in the compu <industry. What is this columnist smoking? agreed! <competitor was Quarterdeck's DesqView, partly GEM too, and some other thi <most people have forgotten like VM/386, not the Mac. Desqview was the leader for a while and rather good as well. <user interface because it was graphical, we did it because it was WYSIWYG <note that the first real Windows app was Aldus PageMaker, a desktop <publishing application. People think Windows was successful because of s WYSIWYG rather than WYGINS (what you get is no surprise) was the driving force. To do that you needed a system that was not bound to hardware and could scale clip and draw or your dead. <interface must be genuinely easy to use and that doing things that way ar <natural. There's this misperception that there's some bad blood between <Microsoft and Apple because they sued us, which couldn't be farther from <truth. When the lawsuit came through, we weren't saying "Those bastards! <we were saying "Huh? Why would they do that to their buddies?" And we I remember the microsoft softcard that was a z80 for Apple that ran CP/M supplied with MS Basic! It was a case of making neat products that worked! If anything it was DRIs lack of agressive drive that made an opening that someone had to fill with DOS and later winders. PS I like most MS products mostly it's their marketing strategies that are a bit suspect and that has little to do with product. Allison

28 years, 3 months

cat Xerox | Apple | Microsoft ?

by kaikal＠MICROSOFT.com

The assertion that Xerox did not "invent" the GUI and that many of the concepts had existed separately prior to their fusion at PARC is both true and completely irrelevant, in exactly the same way that a similar assertion could be made for the Wright Brothers, etc. No invention springs wholly formed from teh forehead of the inventor, everything builds on previous innovations. Xerox invented the GUI for all practical purposes. Likewise, whether Apple was "planning" on implementing a GUI is completely facetious. To return to the Wright Brothers analogy, lots of people were planning on inventing an airplane. And besides, the GUI wasn't even a spark in Apple's eye in 1979, they were just introducing the Apple II+ at that time! The Xerox Star was introduced in May, 1981, and the Apple Lisa 1 wasn't announced until January, 1983. It shipped in June of that year, more than two years after the Xerox. Two years is a freaking LIFETIME in the computer industry. What is this columnist smoking? In regard to Windows being a clone of the Macintosh, that's also false. The intended competitive target for Windows 1.0 was somebody's PC based product which in turn was intended as a competitor to IBM's TopView. I was here in the Windows 2.x/3.0 days, in fact, I was the beta administrator for 3.0, and I can tell you that competing with the Macintosh was the furthest thing from our minds. Nobody in the dev group had worked on a Mac, we didn't have any Macs anywhere in the area, and nobody ever mentioned the Mac as we made product decisions. In those days, our competitor was Quarterdeck's DesqView, partly GEM too, and some other things most people have forgotten like VM/386, not the Mac. We were not trying to compete with or clone the Mac. We were trying to (and this is not a corporate 'line', I'm serious, I was there) 1. make the PC easier to use, and 2. break the '640K barrier'. We didn't do a graphical user interface because it was graphical, we did it because it was WYSIWYG -- note that the first real Windows app was Aldus PageMaker, a desktop publishing application. People think Windows was successful because of some big Microsoft master plan, which is ridiculous. It didn't sell hardly at all until it really took off with 3.0, and that's just because the incredibly small dev team (like 25 including management) just wanted to do some really cool software. Hell, at launch, we all had buttons that said "Windows 3.0 - It's Cool." We weren't, and aren't, Orwellian characters, just folks trying to write software that people want to buy. Gee, I guess it worked! So sue us! Remember that Windows back then wasn't remotely similar to the Mac apart >from it being graphical and using icons. Any similarity to the Mac that grew over time was the result of tons of usability studies with people who had never used a computer before. If implementing features via usability studies makes Windows more like the Mac, that only means that Apple's user interface must be genuinely easy to use and that doing things that way are natural. There's this misperception that there's some bad blood between Microsoft and Apple because they sued us, which couldn't be farther from the truth. When the lawsuit came through, we weren't saying "Those bastards!", we were saying "Huh? Why would they do that to their buddies?" And we never held a grudge either, up to and including our recent financial investments in Apple and our continuing successful software line for the Mac. Kai (my opinions, not my employer's) -----Original Message----- From: Max Eskin [mailto:maxeskin@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, May 21, 1998 4:17 PM To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers Subject: cat Xerox | Apple | Microsoft ? I am curious as to the veracity of the article at http://www.MacKiDo.com/DarkSide/Coates.html It is a criticism of another article, partly quoted. The original article says the Apple got their idea from xerox in 1979, and MS got their ideas from Apple, and now they have copied the Mac w/Win98 The article in the link argues that Win98 is much worse than the mac, which I agree with. I am wondering about its statement that Apple knew all about GUI before 1979 with their Lisa. AFAIK, the lisa is ~1982... The author argues that the other one should get his facts and MS propaganda in check. Is he practicing hypocrisY? ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

28 years, 3 months

Jump to page:

2026

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

test-drb