test-drb

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

101090 discussions

by higginbo＠netpath.net

At 10:54 PM 6/24/98 EDT, SUPRDAVE(a)aol.com wrote: >there are only two kinds of mac mouses: 9 pin for plus and earlier and adb for >se and later models. i've never heard of anything else. as for slow booting, Offtopic by about 10 years: We just got in a Motorola 603e StarMax mac clone a few months ago at work. I loved this machine! It had both ADB connectors AND PS/2 style connectors. It also had a standard DB25 serial port connector on it. IMHO, this would have been a good step for Apple to make say about 5 or 6 years ago. - - john higginbotham ____________________________ - webmaster www.pntprinting.com - - limbo limbo.netpath.net -

27 years, 10 months

Macintoshes...

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

there are only two kinds of mac mouses: 9 pin for plus and earlier and adb for se and later models. i've never heard of anything else. as for slow booting, you might want to run disk first aid if you have it on your machine. i think you need to boot off a floppy and run it from there for it to check and fix any problems it finds. those two buttons you found is the programmer's switch. one does a reboot and the other brings you to a system monitor prompt. supposedly useful for those that know what to do. david In a message dated 98-06-24 21:43:32 EDT, megan writes: << Speaking of Mac Mice... At the MIT Flea this past weekend, I picked up a mouse for the Mac Classic I mentioned in other mail... it is the 'original' style of apple mouse. My question is whether this will work correctly with the Mac Classic -- it does seem to plug in, but since I'm not getting much response from the system, I don't know... BTW - another question -- when the Mac Classic boots, it shows the smiley disk and I hear the internal HD working. The screen goes light grey with a pointer on it. This is displayed for a few seconds and then I get the 'Welcome to Macintosh' screen. This remains this way for as much as 10 minutes (I didn't wait longer). Is this normal? Have I simply not allowed the system adequate time to boot to a user screen? (I'm used to an RT system which boots in about 30-45 seconds, depending on amount of memory). Also, there are two buttons on the left side of the case... one apparently does the mac equivalent of the three-fingered-salute on PCs... the other one causes the 'Welcome to Macintosh' screen to go away and be replaced by one which lookes the same (banner background) but with a '>' sign... What is this? >>

27 years, 10 months

Sour grapes (was: principals in online selling?)

by sinasohn＠ricochet.net

At 02:40 PM 6/23/98 -0700, you wrote: >about it. But we invest time and money and passion into this hobby, and I >don't think its wrong to take advantage of a good deal when one comes In the long run, it probably offsets the times we spend more than we should to make sure something important isn't destroyed (including paying for storage units, etc.) --------------------------------------------------------------------- O- Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know." Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates San Francisco, California http://www.sinasohn.com/

27 years, 10 months

new additions, info wanted

by sinasohn＠ricochet.net

At 10:43 PM 6/22/98 -0500, you wrote: >I'll trade it for an Altair and an Apple 1 and most importantly, one of those rare >black AppleIIplus's. Oh sure, I gots lots of those... 8^) >What the heck is a FlatCat (uh oh, me thinks I just set myself up here). Laptop version of the Cat. >It doesn't have cursor keys, or a pointing device. It uses these two 'leap' keys Yeah, that's it. Pretty cool. >Let me know when you get the Apple 1 and I'll dig the Cat out and send it to >you :) Ummm,, you don't mind if there's a little bit of white-out spilled next to where it says "Apple ]" do you? 8^) --------------------------------------------------------------------- O- Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know." Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates San Francisco, California http://www.sinasohn.com/

27 years, 10 months

NeXT cubes or slabs.

by gim＠hitec-uk.com

Who do I have to kill? Are they so black you can see your reflection in them? :) Grant.. Software Engineer, Hitec Aberdeen. Kevan Heydon <kevan(a)heydon.org> on 06/26/98 04:47:49 PM Please respond to classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers" <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> cc: Subject: Re: NeXT cubes or slabs. Speaking of NeXTs, I have just got a lead on some available in the UK. The mail I got is: Unconfirmed reports are that I may be able to lay my hands on, like, TWENTY NeXT slabs for the princely sum of 70 quid each. My mind immediately turns to CamNet and the denizens within as sinks for such wonderful but antique hardware. Note that if you want a 17" colour monitor, then that is at the ultimate ripoff price of another 60 quid. Both figures EXCLUDE VAT at the usual rate, apparently. Machine specs are: TurboColour NeXTStation. 68040/33 / 32MB / 500MB SCSI + Keyboard + Mouse + Soundbox. (as black as, like, the blackest thing - none more black) (1138x932@12bit) Monitors: NeXT MegaPixel Colour Monitors (Black cool case) 17" @ 60 quid 21" @ 150 quid If you are interested then drop me an email and I will coordinate things with the person I got this email from. -- Kevan Old Computer Collector: http://www.heydon.org/kevan/collection/

27 years, 10 months

Mark 8 pc boards

by ddameron＠earthlink.net

Today I found the company, Techniques, Inc. in Englewood, New Jersey, that made the printed circuit boards for the "Radio Electronics" Mark 8 computer. They are in the same location as in 1973. Afaik, they have no web site or email. I called them to ask if they could look for any material, or any information, like how many board sets were made or sold. I found nothing. They first thought that "Mark 8 microcomputer" was the name of another company. I finally found someone who said the company was bought in 1987, and that all information before then was gone. I've also learned that the printed circuit boards were 2-sided, but had no plated-thru holes. This may have caused problems to IC solder connections, making reliability problems. I don't know if this would make buyers abandon them making the numbers larger or smaller than otherwise. -Dave

27 years, 10 months

macs and IDE drives...

by poesie＠geocities.com

this isn't really "classic" per se, but... I grabbed a performa 636cd, w/ a 500mb ide drive. being curious i ripped out the 1-connector ide cable and connected a 2-connector; the mac ide quantum (which specifically says "apple" on it...) was set as master, and i popped a seagate on as a slave. no boot unless i popped in the mac disk tools. if i take off the 2nd ide drive, it boots. being a total mac idiot, is it even possible to use a ATA ide drive on a mac? or is there something else to this that i'm missing? any help would be gratefully appreciated. thanks. -Eric

27 years, 10 months

Early speech board maker?

by fmc＠reanimators.org

John Foust <jfoust(a)threedee.com> wrote: > Here's an excerpt of a posting that triggered my IMSAI smart agent. > Does anyone recognize his name, or the company he's describing? > From: Wirt Atmar <WirtAtmar(a)AOL.COM> Yes. Your next step on the road to enlightenment is to webulate to http://www.aics-research.com/history.html and follow the next-page links through to the end. -Frank McConnell

27 years, 10 months

CoCo III at garage sale...

by poesie＠geocities.com

Found this on usenet, don't know if any of you like that CoCO stuff. just thought i'd pass it along. please reply to him directly. -Eric ><osc1(a)isd.net> > Tandy CoCo sets. One is a box of rare CoCo stuff: books (fiction books > CoCo based, how-to program books, manuals, catalogs etc), connectors (I > don't even recall what half of them are), lots of cartridges (games, > etc), all fairly rare and cool. The other set is a CoCo III, with a > couple of joysticks, and five could game carts... a mini TV included! > Each set is $20. > > > Thanks, > Carty Fox > St. Paul, MN <osc1(a)isd.net>

27 years, 10 months

IMSAI 8080

by Philip.Belben＠powertech.co.uk

>> And anyway, a number of S100 cards included boot ROMs, etc. Those need to >> be backed up. > > Shure, but where ? Just on a disk ? I already have the problem > that I can't read some fd's of the early 80s. Even APPLE II disks, > althrough I always said that a DISK ][ drive could read and write > anything including Bierdeckl (beer mats/coasters). > > So, what to use ? Writable CDs ? They have only a guaranteed > lifetime of less than 15 years. Tapes ? Maybe - I have some > PBS Tapes from 1976 and they are still readable, but they are > 900 and 1600 BpI tapes. Any modern optical and magnetical > medium is less reliable. So printing the hex dump and then try > to scan it back (ocr) when a replacement is needed ? > This sould be reliable, since it is human readable > (Like old magnetic tapes). Paper tape, of course! There is an action on me from this list last year (I think) to investigate the possibility of Tyvek tapes. I still intend to do it, but I don't know when! Philip.

27 years, 10 months

ID select on scsi disks

by mbg＠world.std.com

This past weekend, I picked up a few cases for SCSI disks... they have a device on the back panel which allows one to select the SCSI id by just pushing one of two buttons until the proper ID shows... I've used a VOM to figure out which wires from this thing are what, but the connector it same with is not compatible with the (as far as I can tell) standard of three sets of jumper-width pins. I'd like to button this thing up so I don't have to open it again (except to replace a bad disk) but can't find anything which fits the spacing of these pins... For those for whom this info would be useful in telling the spacing, the disks are RZ35s (from DEC). I don't know who actually produces them. Any help appreciated... My next plan is to try one of the inter-board connectors (one board has a socket and one has pins)... the socket connector seems to have proper spacing, but I've yet to actualy try it... Megan Gentry Former RT-11 Developer +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry(a)zk3.dec.com | | Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg(a)world.std.com | | Digital Equipment Corporation | | | 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | | Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler | | (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg | +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+

27 years, 10 months

Loss of early UCSD P-System materials...

by jfoust＠threedee.com

Here's an excerpt of an e-mail I received recently from an admin at the UCSD computing center, where the UCSD P-System was developed. Ken Bowles was one of the primary forces behind the P-System, and wrote an early popular Pascal text. - John Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm> >Subject: UCSD Pascal > >Damn! I wish I'd known about your museum - last summer I helped clean >out the lab that had been Ken Bowles and we found a bunch of 8-inch stuff, >old tapes, etc. which were trashed because no one wanted them. I'll look >around here and see if there's anything left.

27 years, 10 months

Early speech board maker?

by jfoust＠threedee.com

Here's an excerpt of a posting that triggered my IMSAI smart agent. Does anyone recognize his name, or the company he's describing? - John Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm> Subject: Re: WRQ's @Guard From: Wirt Atmar <WirtAtmar(a)AOL.COM> Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 15:07:56 EDT Message-ID: <3dda660e.358c088e(a)aol.com> Mailing List: HP3000-L(a)utcvm.utc.edu .... Just because something is possible doesn't mean that anybody's gonna want it. The very first business that AICS was involved in was computer-based speech synthesis. Indeed, that's where our name comes from (AICS = artificially intelligent cybernetic systems). The company grew out of something that had previously been just a hobby of mine -- and a potential dissertation project for graduate school: completely host-based speed synthesis, de novo, where an electrical analog of the human vocal tract was commanded to truly synthesize new speech rather than simply play back digitized human speech. In 1976, when I finished school and the company was formed, we actually made a lot of money surprisingly easily and surprising quickly selling speech synthesizers as drop-in boards for Altair and IMSAI microcomputers. That was a time you could sell anybody anything. Every conference was a feeding frenzy of buying. You threw something up in the air and ten people wanted it. In 1976 also, when I became a professor at our local university, several students also continued on with the speech synthesis work. Vickie Kurtz, a person who you actually sort of know because she is more or less single- handedly putting together QCTerm now, did her master's work with me then. For her thesis, Vickie put together the best vowel synthesizer that I ever heard, using voltage-controlled oscillators, controlled by a simple rom-based finite state automaton so as to simulate the mechanical inertias found in the vocal tract. Although her synthesizer didn't have any sort of noise generator in it, so it couldn't form the fricatives (hiss-like sounds) necessary for full speech synthesis, its vowels were the most human-like I've ever heard and were essentially indistinguishable from a baby's babbling or cat-like animal. Vickie finished in 1982. A year or two earlier, Texas Instruments got into speech synthesis in a big way using a technique halfway between digitized speech and speech synthesis, a process that might now be called "smoothed sampling". It worked much better than true synthesis in that its intelligiblity was quite good. Because of that, TI was able to sell a variety of manufacturers on the idea of having talking washing machines, microwave ovens, vaccuum cleaners, etc. The most expensive of these talking machines was the Chrysler LeBaron automobile -- and people (the end-users, not the engineers) found all of this incredibly irritating. The single most requested option on the LeBaron, by far and away, was to have the speech generator deleted. Talking appliances were a technological fad that lasted only about three years, 1979-1982. ... Wirt Atmar

27 years, 10 months

Xerox Daybreak

by fmc＠reanimators.org

Sam Ismail <dastar(a)ncal.verio.com> wrote: > On Tue, 23 Jun 1998, Doug Yowza wrote: > > IIRC, the Star had both a custom microcoded CPU and had an 8080 (or 8085) > > to handle I/O. > > I believe 8080 is correct (remember, the design was started in the 1975 > timeframe, but did extend into 1981 when it was released). The 8085 is > circa 1976. Why didn't I take better notes!? ;) Yeah, me too. But this is where I stopped: it was an 8085. ... The Star presentation was certainly well attended -- it was packed to overflowing! I was out in the lobby watching the presentation on a monitor, and apparently there were other folks watching other monitors in the cafeteria. Anyway, that is why I gave up on notes -- couldn't concentrate on the palmtop keyboard and the monitor at the same time. Afterward a bunch of us did get together outside the auditorium lobby, Uncle Roger tried to make me hold up a classiccmp sign, I tried waving my appendages a bit whenever I saw someone I recognized, and somehow I think we completely missed Rax. Sorry about that, Rax. I will try to plan better next time. So who was there? Roger Sinasohn, Rachel ? (Uncle Roger's girlfriend -- the schoolteacher who is always on the lookout for Macs), Doug Yowza, Doug Coward, Paul Coad, Sam Ismail, Edwin El-Kareh, and y'r humble narrator. Stuff was swapped, stories were exchanged, we moved to the parking lot, yakked some more, then security came around, someone made the mistake of asking me where to go and I suggested the El Paso Cafe in Mountain View. (Hey, I know *I* can get some good cheap eats there.) Notes: (a) At least some of us seem to want to do this get-together thing again. Of course we did not reach any consensus w/r/t time and date as Roger now wants to check and see whether his tap dancing lessons collide. (b) We need to start earlier, 9:00 PM is late for dinner and the El Paso closes at 10:00. Other places close earlier than that. (c) So...fine, here's a time and place for all us Bay Areans to argue over: Second Thursday, 09 July 1998, 7:00 PM, El Paso Cafe, 1407 W El Camino Real, Mountain View. Y'all can flame me about this in public or private, and I'm still open to change, but I want to announce the real time and place on 30 June. -Frank McConnell

27 years, 10 months

IMSAI 8080

by H.Davies＠latrobe.edu.au

At 05:55 PM 24-06-98 -0400, William Donzelli wrote: >CD-ROMs have the advantage that they are far more widespread than any of >the above disks ever dreamed to be. They are world standards, as oppossed >to company-specific standards. With the music industry behind them, >CD-ROMs will be around for a long time. Indeed, and with DVD being able to read CDs you'd expect no difficulty in reading CDs for the next 20 years or so. I'd certainly want to be able to listen to my music CDs for that sort of time-span. In fact, with the number of CDs I have, if I listened to a couple a week, it'd take 20 years :-) Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies(a)latrobe.edu.au Information Technology Services | Phone: +61 3 9479 1550 Fax: +61 3 9479 1999 La Trobe University | "If God had wanted soccer played in the Melbourne Australia 3083 | air, the sky would be painted green"

27 years, 10 months

Macintoshes...

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jun 24, 23:38, Tony Duell wrote: > > > So, how easy is it to crock up a keyboard and mouse for either machine? > > > Can I modify IBM gear to fit the bill? Not for the keyboard, it uses 8 data bits with no start/stop/parity bits and a separate clock; XT keyboards use 8 data bits with 2 start bits, 1 make/break bit, and a stop bit; AT/PS2 keyboards use 1 start bit, 8 data bits, 1 parity bit, 1 stop bit. > > null modem enclosure). The keyboard is Mac proprietary. > > Yes, it's _strange_. 4 wires, +5V, Data, Clock, Ground. The mac end uses > the shift register in a 6522, the keyboard end uses a microcontroller > (8021?). Given a keyboard the protocol is probably hackable with a logic > analyser (future project?), Yes, it is an 8021. The protocol is in "Inside Macintosh", Vol. III pp30-32. It's fairly simple, though it's bi-directional. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

27 years, 10 months

Quarter classics (was: Big Iron Was:RE: Backwate

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

>It certainly has been (and will continue to be) for me... > >But seriously, since my workshop isn't open to the public, and almost >nobody knows who I am, where should %random_person go to find out >about real front panels, forerunners of Windows, etc. If not a science >museum, then where? >-tony The local public library. Get a comfy chair, sit in front of the terminal, call up lynx, get a hotmail account, and subscribe to the mailing list. Of course, if the library has some back issues of computer magazines or computer history books, those never hurt either ;) A museum is generally considered to be a 'fun place' and though it is possible to learn quite a bit, they can't beat reading a good book (though they are a visual compendium). BTW, the Boston Computer Museum has a very good history section. Books like 'A Secret Guide To Computers' also educate quite a bit. Lastly, since you're so worried about this (we all are, I hope) why not just write a book? ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

27 years, 10 months

IMSAI 8080

by franke＠sbs.de

>>>>> And anyway, a number of S100 cards included boot ROMs, etc. Those need to >>>>> be backed up. >>>> Shure, but where ? Just on a disk ? I already have the problem >>> On paper tape, of course. It's reliable (I've never found a tape that >>> can't be read), human-readable, and the automatic readers are simple >>> enough to be repairable... >> Jep. Good choice - I still have some paper tabes from the mid >> 70s in fine condition - but I also know (remembering the past) >> how fast they break... > Paper tapes can be spliced if they break (did I mention I had a splicing > jig and tapes here...). An a good reader shouldn't break the tape anyway. > As an aside, paper tape holes are at 0.1" spacing. You can make a > useable splicing jig by soldering a row of pins to a piece of stripboard > (say at 0.3" spacing), and using those to hold the sprocket track on the > tape. So, what you tellin' me ? I've been in the repair business for these devices some time around 1980 *grin* >>>> So, what to use ? Writable CDs ? They have only a guaranteed >>>> lifetime of less than 15 years. Tapes ? Maybe - I have some >>>> PBS Tapes from 1976 and they are still readable, but they are >>>> 900 and 1600 BpI tapes. Any modern optical and magnetical >>> You can pack a lot of ROM dumps on a 1600bpi magtape.... >> Shure, but 1600 BpI is the first density not readable >> to humans. Again insecure. > But some 1600bpi drives are _always_ repairable. And the format is > sufficiently well documented that a drive could always be made. Almost, yes, and for the formats also yes - but not the media. I had even new taps failing to record. >>>> Or just put it again on EPROMS - with propper handling >>>> EPROMS could survive at least 50+ years - and PROMS >>> Never!. I'd not trust an EPROM to last longer than 10 years. Nor any >>> other chip for that matter. Sure, a lot of them will, but some won't. And >>> if it's the last copy in the world, you've got problems. >> EPROMS are a real lot more reliable than any other media. > I've had EPROMs fail. I've had floppy disks fail. Never had a 9-track > tape fail, though. Never really lost any data because I've had it backed > up... Maybe just our different past - I have seen almost any kind of magnetic media fail but never EPROMS. >> And any magnetic media is crap for long time archival. >> Just ask some (ausio) tape fans about tapes from the 60s. > Oh, I don't know. I've managed to play 1960's reel-to-reel audio tapes > (and early 19790's video tapes, reel and cassette) with no real > problems. If you pick a suitably redundant format for the data I suspect > it'll be OK. Managed to play and recovering all information are different things. And back to CDs (to reunite the two threads): Theres a huge difference between your listed magnetic things and CDs - the music sector - I bet any summ you want that there will be new drives in 20 years from now, able to read a CD made today (if the CD contend isn't damaged of course). I'm not talking about any specific drive of today - your right - its even dificult to get a custom chip just 2.5 years after the drive. Its about drives that are _able_ to read the backup medias. And for Zip - you're also right - I think, like you, that Zip or syquests will be forgotten in less than 15 years (for _new_ installments). Serus Hans -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

27 years, 10 months

New e-mail address

by dastar＠ncal.verio.com

Sorry for this administrivia, but if anyone cares I posted a new e-mail address a short while ago. Please disregard this address. My primary e-mail address still remains dastar(a)wco.com, and you may also e-mail me at sam(a)siconic.com or though the Vintage Computer Festival web pages (http://www.siconic.com/vcf). Again, sorry for the interruption. 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: 06/11/98]

27 years, 10 months

IMSAI 8080

by franke＠sbs.de

> On Tue, 23 Jun 1998, Allison J Parent wrote: >> <Shure, but where ? Just on a disk ? I already have the problem >> <that I can't read some fd's of the early 80s. Even APPLE II disks, >> <althrough I always said that a DISK ][ drive could read and write >> <anything including Bierdeckl (beer mats/coasters). >> Disks on good equipment are as reliable as Magtape. > Better, I think, as with disks you need not be concerned with layer to > layer adhesion or layer to layer transfer. Maybe I shoud take some damaged 5,25" disks to the VCF to show the effects of fd aging. It's a real mess when the magnetic surface is tearing down. I have dozends of deffect _mecanical_ disks and already ruined five drives - and it took me about 6 hours (and one damaged head) to clean one and get it back working. Gruss H. -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

27 years, 10 months

Paper floppy disk

by jfoust＠threedee.com

Below is a description of the "paper floppy disk" as given by an old friend of mine, Dennis Adams <DAdams(a)etcconnect.com>, who once worked on this technology. - John The "Paper Floppy Disk" Newslog International (aka Lab1) developed technology for recording up to 30-50K of data on a printed piece of cardstock approximately 6" x 4". The data was recorded with error detection and correction information (Reed-Soloman, I believe), as well as redundant groups, so it could withstand misprints, marks, holes, and other flaws. This was all pre-CD, and the cost was very cheap. One of the names for them was TDB's for Transportable Databases. They were intended for software distribution, database updates, games on the back of cereal boxes, etc. Each track was a portion of a circle (about 1/10 of the circumference). The reader had a large (approx. 14") spinning wheel, and supported variable track pitch and data bits per inch (so different quality paper and printing processes could be supported), and could track media that was not cut square by skewing the tray that held the media (since there was no physical or optical "center" on the media -- it had a virtual movable "hole" to spin on). It used a Z80 microprocessor (running extremely tweaked assembly language by Al Jewer) and interfaced to a computer via "high-speed" RS-232 (9600 bps). I did demo software on a variety of hosts, including the Storm operating system (multi-user CP/M OS by Ron Fowler, also the author of the popular MEX communications software), Commodore 64, and IBM-PC XT. We had a Coleco Adam computer that we briefly considered writing something for, but it never stayed running long enough to evaluate. We did a multi-month trial of a large database update for a large company based in Moline. We sent out three months of updates to a 13M database. Each update was a half-dozen or so cards that could be scanned in any order and then the update was applied to the database. This was run at three dealerships that could retrieve up-to-date database information much faster than their microfiche system which was always out-of-date. It also displayed additional textual information that was on other microfiche or books and not usually referenced. This was circa 1985, and was quite impressive to the people who used it. So much so that the actual media technology took a back seat to the database system itself (an interesting lesson to be learned there). Newslog / Lab1 ran out of money before the technology could be completely finished and sold or marketed. Not that they didn't try. I learned a lot about "demos" and "demospeak" while I worked there. I still have some media around, but alas no reader. I'm willing to bet it could be read by a modern high-res scanner. An energetic soul could probably even write a reader emulator that fed the bits that it peeled radially from the high-res scan into the actual Z80 reader code to decode it. The best anecdote I recall regarding the technology was in the "camera" software that generated the film original used for duplication: the base unit of measurement was derived from the bits-per-track and camera wheel speed and other factors I've forgotten. All of the internal calculations were based on this "tick", which varied in actual length, but was approximately 1mS. The camera system's author was Bill Whitford, and the unit of measurement henceforth became known as a "willisecond." Bill's code ran on a much larger processor with a lot of memory (I think it might have been a 4Mhz Z80 with 64K of memory), so he development in C.

27 years, 10 months

Macintoshes...

by DSEAGRAV＠toad.xkl.com

This is roundabout. I work at an ISP. I have to figure out how to work a Macintosh, so as to explain to customers how to set theirs up. This sounds reasonable - so the salesguy produces a Mac SE. Unfortunately, it has no mouse or keyboard. SO I go about looking around. Can't afford $90 for a mouse and keyboard that the only-Mac-shop-in-town has, so I go looking for used stuff. I turn up a Macintosh 512K (Sadly abused. The people KEPT IT IN THE GARAGE SO TI WOULDN'T GIVE THEIR VCR A COMPUTER VIRUS.) Unfortunately, it is also missing the keyboard and mouse. So, how easy is it to crock up a keyboard and mouse for either machine? Can I modify IBM gear to fit the bill? As for the virus bit, that is 100% true! Their frind told them it could spread thru the power lines. :) More information on either box would be appreciated... -------

27 years, 10 months

Macintoshes...

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

But a mouse is a mouse, isn't it? I think it is possible to adapt a PC mouse to a mac...not the keyboard, though. There was a site on the net dealing with these things, but I think it might be gone. It would be much easier for the plus, btw, since it doesn't use ADB >Sorry, this is mac! you cant adapt pc stuff for this. the se and >later use ADB, with mini-din connectors. plus and earlier use a db9 >style mouse and phone cord keyboard. i doubt either can be adapted. >id love to find some mac plus keyboards and mouses so i can sell a >bunch of macs i have myself. > >In a message dated 98-06-24 14:05:01 EDT, you write: > ><< Unfortunately, it is also missing the keyboard and mouse. > > So, how easy is it to crock up a keyboard and mouse for either machine? > Can I modify IBM gear to fit the bill? > > As for the virus bit, that is 100% true! Their frind told them it could > spread thru the power lines. :) >> > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

27 years, 10 months

Quarter classics (was: Big Iron Was:RE: Backwate

by franke＠sbs.de

>>like a storage back yard than a museum. Just putin some maybe >>similar things in one space, without any description or system. > The system appeals to kids who enjoy running around and pushing buttons. > The fact that 'the big dig' was next to ship models were next to trains > and cars were next to stuff about DNA does make me wonder... Big dig ? Oh sorry - did I mix up the name ? >>The tragedy is that some are real nice things, but without >>proper integration even the best exhibit is just crap no matter >>if hands on or not. In contrast to the basic exhibitions, special > Has anyone been to the Boston Museum of Natural History? Now _that_ is > well organised and old fashioned. Endless rooms of glass cases with > everything imaginable (The New York one is considerably less > informative). Thank - I put it on my to-do list. Where is ist located ? Easy to find ? Servus Hans -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

27 years, 10 months

Macintoshes...

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

Sorry, this is mac! you cant adapt pc stuff for this. the se and later use ADB, with mini-din connectors. plus and earlier use a db9 style mouse and phone cord keyboard. i doubt either can be adapted. id love to find some mac plus keyboards and mouses so i can sell a bunch of macs i have myself. In a message dated 98-06-24 14:05:01 EDT, you write: << Unfortunately, it is also missing the keyboard and mouse. So, how easy is it to crock up a keyboard and mouse for either machine? Can I modify IBM gear to fit the bill? As for the virus bit, that is 100% true! Their frind told them it could spread thru the power lines. :) >>

27 years, 10 months

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