test-drb

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

101090 discussions

by manney＠lrbcg.com

Just turned up a Commodore 3 1/2" drive -- didn't know they existed! Anyone interested? Also, some strange thing with 4 hand held units with 4 buttons each, which plugs into the joystick port. No software. manney(a)lrbcg.com

28 years, 4 months

[getting old punched cards read]

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 24, 19:55, Bob Withers wrote: The original poster stated that he was passing a NULL POINTER to strcpy. You replied that it should be OK to copy from a NUL STRING. I understand the difference and was trying to casually point out that you were not addressing the question asked. Sorry if I ruffled some feathers. You didn't. I just normally write in that tone of voice (if you see what I mean :-)) -- and I hadn't quite thought it through. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

28 years, 4 months

Osborne 1 for $1000?

by kaikal＠MICROSOFT.com

Somebody's been reading that LA Times article again... Kai -----Original Message----- From: Sam Ismail [mailto:dastar@wco.com] Sent: Thursday, April 23, 1998 12:54 PM To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers Subject: Osborne 1 for $1000? Anyone want to buy an Osborne 1 for $1000? Didn't think so. However, if you're interested in trying to talk this guy down to reality, I have the contact info. Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- Don't blame me...I voted for Satan. Coming in September...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0 See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details! [Last web page update: 04/23/98]

28 years, 4 months

[getting old punched cards read]

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 24, 20:32, Captain Napalm wrote: > It was thus said that the Great Pete Turnbull once stated: > > Yes, but that's not what I wrote. A null string is an empty string (no > > characters). A NUL string would be a string with a single ASCII NUL > > character in it > And what I was talking about was NULL pointers, which strcpy() doesn't > like. > > -spc (and it's a NULL POINTER that strtok() will return, not a NULL > string.) Oops. Too much gin in the tonic water tonight. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

28 years, 4 months

[getting old punched cards read]

by bwit＠pobox.com

The original poster stated that he was passing a NULL POINTER to strcpy. You replied that it should be OK to copy from a NUL STRING. I understand the difference and was trying to casually point out that you were not addressing the question asked. Sorry if I ruffled some feathers. Bob ---------- From: Pete Turnbull[SMTP:pete@dunnington.u-net.com] Sent: Friday, April 24, 1998 7:39 PM To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers Subject: Re: [getting old punched cards read] On Apr 24, 17:10, Bob Withers wrote: > There's a big difference between a NUL string and a NULL pointer. Yes, but that's not what I wrote. A null string is an empty string (no characters). A NUL string would be a string with a single ASCII NUL character in it -- and rather hard to manipulate in C, since NULs mark the ends. Nevertheless, they do exist, though that wasn't what I was talking about. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

28 years, 4 months

Osborne 1 for $1000?

by dastar＠wco.com

Anyone want to buy an Osborne 1 for $1000? Didn't think so. However, if you're interested in trying to talk this guy down to reality, I have the contact info. Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't blame me...I voted for Satan. Coming in September...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0 See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details! [Last web page update: 04/23/98]

28 years, 4 months

Replies to various threads

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 23, 14:33, Allison J Parent wrote: > Subject: Re: Re[2]: Replies to various threads > > <> The PDP-11 architecture has only 7 GP registers (since you can't really > <> the PC for just anything) but that's good for the times, and they reall > <> are interchangable, so I'd be willing to argue that it wins on that. > < > <I'm glad somebody agrees with me on that! IMHO the concept of a GP > <register is a RISC sort of thing. And, Allison, if you think RISC > <should be register-rich, I claim the PDP11 was for its date, and > <certainly was compared to micros of the 1970s. > > Compared to maybe 6800 or 6502, the 8080 had 4 16bit registers (bc, de, > hl, sp). The z80 added a second set and IX/IY. But that was only one > aspect. But you can't easily use both sets of registers at the same time (yes, I know we sometimes do, but it's a fiddle) and the Z80 is very much a single-accumulator type of beast. And as for IX and IY ;-) The original design of the 6502, incidentally, was that all of zero-page be treated as registers. They just happen to be external to the chip, which wasn't completely unknown elsewhere in those days. So in that sense it is possibly the most register-rich design of the era -- but the registers are hardly general-purpose, and the 6502 is also a single-accumulator design. > On the instructions RISC systems of the time and even later didn't have > the addressing modes and often had a distinct register load and store > instruction. The best example of that difference was an ADD (R1),@(r2)+. > Now compare that to the DG Nova and it is of a stark difference. If you count all the ways you can index with registers, MIPS processors have quite a few addressing modes. Not all are used very often, though. > Of all the micros in my collection, none are RISC save for the PDP-8 and > 6502 which in my mind come close. The 6502 has a certain elegance of instruction set. Quite a different philosophy to the Z80, in many ways, but I like them both. We used to say that you had to learn how to use the 6502, and when you did, the code was neat, but on a Z80, you just had to decide what you wanted an instruction to do, and then pick the one that did that. Exaggeration, of course. > I have: 1802, SC/MP, 6800, 6809, NEC D78PG11, 8748/9, 8751, 8080/8085, > z80, z180, z280, z8002, z8001, 808x, 8018x, 80286, 80386, 80486 and the > micro version of minis 6100(pdp-8), 6120(PDP-8+EMA) TI9900, PDP11(T-11, > F11, J-11). Showoff :-) No 8008? I always wanted a 4004 (anyone listening out there, that's a hint) and an SC/MP. Anybody remember Fairchild F8's? > Now something with a MIPS chip, ARM, sparc or some such would be a great > addition of a real RISC processor. Well, I've got all of those, and my favourite is the ARM. I've had to write MIPS assembler, and it's not great fun. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

28 years, 4 months

ansi c (almost on topic) was: [getting old punched cards read]

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 24, 12:38, Paul E Coad wrote: > On Fri, 24 Apr 1998, Captain Napalm wrote: > > It was thus said that the Great Pete Turnbull once stated: > > > > > > On Apr 24, 1:35, Captain Napalm wrote: > > > > strcpy() (at least on my compiler) will crash if any of the > > > > parameters are NULL pointers, > > > > > > That's a compiler (or library, actually) bug. You should be able to > > > copy a null string. > > > > Well, I've tried it across four platforms and five compilers > > (Linux/GCC, Solaris/native and GCC, AIX/native and HPUX/native) and > > three of the five core dumped. > > > The ANSI standard is not completely silent on the matter, but does not > define the behavior. > > "Each of the following statements applies unless explicitly stated > otherwise in the detailed descriptions that follow. If an argument > to a function has an invalid value (such as a value outside of the > domain of the function, or a pointer outside the address space of > the program or a null pointer), the behavior is undefined." Well, whether I think that's sensible or not ('cos I think you ought to be able to copy a null string), if ANSI says it's undefined, then it's not a bug. I take it back. And thanks for checking, which I was too lazy to do :-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

28 years, 4 months

[getting old punched cards read]

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 24, 17:10, Bob Withers wrote: > There's a big difference between a NUL string and a NULL pointer. Yes, but that's not what I wrote. A null string is an empty string (no characters). A NUL string would be a string with a single ASCII NUL character in it -- and rather hard to manipulate in C, since NULs mark the ends. Nevertheless, they do exist, though that wasn't what I was talking about. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

28 years, 4 months

Here's an interesting spam

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 24, 11:53, Don Maslin wrote: > On Fri, 24 Apr 1998, Pete Turnbull wrote: > > On Apr 24, 15:38, Hotze wrote: > > > Reply to the spammers, > > > > Not often a good idea, since the consensus seems to be that responses > > merely confirm that the address they used is (still) valid. > > True! However, in some cases e-mail with a copy of the spam or UCE to > the postmaster of the ISP has been productive. In the case of known spam > centers though, it is likely a BIG mistake. Yes, I should perhaps have mentioned mailing to postmaster@... or abuse@... as several responsible ISPs do follow these things up. I've had two very positive responses from sysadmins, one of whom tracked a spammer who was spoofing via his system, and one from a large ISP. In both cases, the culprit lost their account. It's worth looking at all the "Received: from ..." headers in such cases. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

28 years, 4 months

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