At 08:13 PM 6/10/98 -0500, you wrote:
>It's not even classic yet:
>
>GRID INTROS FIRST MS-DOS LAPTOP WITH BUILT-IN POINTER
>BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, U.S.A., 1990
>AUG 16 (NB)
> -- Grid Systems Corporation has introduced the GridCase 1550sx, the first
>PC-compatible lapto...
Well, that just means it won't be priced outragiouslt on ebay. 8^)
Definitely significant, though.
>a mouse. I hate mice, and hate track-balls and other stationary pointers
>only slightly less, but I *love* IBM's eraser head. Some people see this
I agree in theory, but disagree with your conclusion. (Can't stand the
eraser.)
>A mouse requires you to remove your hands from the keyboard and switch
[...]
>if I have to move a stupid pointer across the screen, the eraser head
>let's me keep most of my fingers on keys where they belong.
Yes, but so does a trackball or trackpad centered below the keyboard (which
is one of the main reasons I bought my current laptop.) Best of all, IMO
is the tootsie-roll from the Outbound.
Mostly, however, I stick to keyboard commands (my one complaint about the
MacOS -- you can't pull down menus and such from the keyboard). I strongly
feel that anything you want to do should be doable from the keyboard -- if
you're willing to remember how. (Example: in MS Word, there is a keyboard
command to set bold/underline/etc. If I used Word a lot, and used
bold/underline/etc a lot, I would remember it. Instead, for the few times
I do that, I don't mind using the mouse. On the other hand, I can do just
about anything in Eudora without using a mouse-thingie.)
I do use a trackball -- a Logitech Trackman Marble. It's comfortable,
accurate, and simply works great. The advantage of a trackball/other over
a mouse is that on a mouse, when you click, you are also moving (however
slight) the moving part. With a trackball, you can take your thumb
completely off the ball before clicking.
And I'll shut up now lest I get flames for mumbling off-topic too much.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
At 12:57 AM 6/11/98 +0000, you wrote:
>> nice servers for their time, with great cases.
>
>As for the rest.. smile when you say it, some of us still run IIx's and
>IIfx's. :-)
Sorry, what I meant was, at the time they came out, they were
top-of-the-line. Today, with the advances since, they are simply great
servers. (And, when I get the time to set it up, I fully intend to put one
to use as a server for the Macs in Rachel's classroom.)
>Seriously, though, there is an article on one of the MacTimes sites
>which argues for using an older system as a server. Basically, it
Also, if all you're doing is internet stuff, an older IIci or basic '486 is
just fine. But that sort of thing that got a lot of us on this list in the
first place.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
Hej allesammen;
What's a 'bit slice'? Are they served with a twist of lemon?
I suppose a better way of asking that is how is a 'bit sliced' processor
or ALU differentiated from a 'normal' one?
ok
r.
At 10:26 PM 6/10/98 -0400, William Donzelli wrote:
>> Packard Bell: Today's headache, tomorrow's obscure collectible. Hey, you
>> never know: People might start collecting only the badly designed systems.
>> It could happen.
>
>OK, enough Packard-Bell bashing. Send me every PB model 250 you can get
>your hands on - I will even pay shipping (and for the crate).
Heh heh. I thought that comment would flush out a PB person or two. :)
They have actually gotten alot better, but I don't think you'll ever see
any in the Smithsonian like some classic systems.
-
- john higginbotham ____________________________
- webmaster www.pntprinting.com -
- limbo limbo.netpath.net -
Mac XTs where the first as far as I know Mac clones.............
bascailly a Mac in a IBM 5150 case.........
Desie
-----Original Message-----
From: nerdware(a)laidbak.com <nerdware(a)laidbak.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Monday, June 08, 1998 1:47
Subject: Re: Early Mac Clones
Date sent: Sun, 07 Jun 1998 13:46:25 -0400
Send reply to: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu
From: Ward Donald Griffiths III <gram(a)cnct.com>
To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers"
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Early Mac Clones
> Zane H. Healy wrote:
>
> > I think that's the same book I've got a copy of around here.
Interesting
> > reading, but I've basically never seen any of that stuff anywhere.
Though
> > I found it really interesting, has anyone ever seen a Mac Plus or
simular
> > system recased into a PC case? It would be a fun project, but I've got
to
> > many other projects :^)
> >
> > The closest I've got to a Mac clone (I'm writting this on a PowerMac
> > 8500/180) is a Amiga 3000 with emulation software. The Amiga is
actually
> > about as fast as the real thing.
>
> I had a coworker in the late 80s who had his Mac and his Amiga 2000
> recased and rack-mounted, sharing a rack with a lot of _serious_
> video editing gear.
> --
IIRC, NewTek (makers of the Video Toaster) decided that since they were
having some trouble getting the Toaster accepted in the mainstream because
most people thought the Amiga was only a toy, they created an interface card
for a Mac that would allow the Mac user to run the Toaster-equipped A2000
(private-labeled for NewTek) from his Mac, thereby making it 'legit'.
I had to laugh at the thought of paying a grand or more just to see the
Amiga
Workbench come up on a Mac screen instead of the "toy" Amiga screen. Of
course, this 'toy' made multimedia possible before Uncle Bill said it was ok
to
use it.....too many people forget that. Not you guys, though. (I hope.)
One of my other favorite Amiga stories was something I swear I read in
AmigaWorld or Byte -- right after the A1000 came out, Gates had a press
conference to talk about Windows. Some reporter asked him about
multitasking, and Gates replied that multitasking really wasn't possible in
anything under 8 megs of ram. To which the same reporter replied, "But
doesn't
your own Amiga Basic multitask nicely on a 512k Amiga?"
A question which Gates promptly ignored and moved on.........
Paul Braun
NerdWare -- The History of the PC and the Nerds who brought it to you.
nerdware(a)laidbak.com
www.laidbak.com/nerdware
In general, file systems seem to fit into several simple categories.
Let's say UNIX-like, DOS-like, simple (just data), and that's about it
I've looked at Apple manuals, and the Apple ][ format is kinda like
DOS in terms of having an array of blocks and stuff. Except Apple's
is quite a bit more elegant. Since some people here are fond of
praising the VAX, how does its file system work (typically)?
>
>That used to be one of my interview questions for Unix programmers:
your
>buggy program just created a filename with {control characters, leading
>dash (-), leading slash (/), '*', etc} in it. How do you delete it?
>
>Does anybody collect file systems? That would be semi-useful for
somebody
>doing data recovery. I have no idea what the Newton "soup", for
example,
>looks like. One of my favorites was the Regulus (unix-like)
filesystem.
>It maintained a bitmap of free blocks and could easily allocate a
best-fit
>contiguous region for your file (I think they had an option to creat()
for
>contiguity). This made file access *fast* when you needed it. I still
>find fragmentation a nightmare even on Linux.
>
>-- Doug
>
>
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IF you mean the AC adaptor, you can use later ones (powerbook). This
is actually beneficial because later ones are strong enough to power the
machine alone, while the Mac Portable one needed the battery to be
inside and working. I powered my mac portable for a few months w/two
adaptors. The I put the battery in. Happily, it recharged fully from
that high current (it was dead otherwise; I got the portable because it
wouldn't start up because of the battery. I got it to run by hooking the
battery up to mains AC long enough to "recharge" it).
>I was wondering if anyone had a Mac Portable power supply, and wanted
to
>sell it cheap.
> Thanks :),
> Mike Sheflin
>
>______________________________________________________
>Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
>
______________________________________________________
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How do UNIX files work? Is there a header of some sort?
BTW, I think it's an incredible pain that the Mac has no built in
way to change file types. If they get lost, I have to used DiskEdit
or some such thing to restore them.
>
>Even the Mac or its apps seemed to be confused about the nature of
>what should be in the resource fork - some apps stored all their
>data there, using it as a sort of mini-database of tagged chunks
>of data. If there's anything classic about today's computers,
>it's the nearly universal recognition that a file's a file.
>Departures from this are interesting but rare.
>
>The other non-file info such as the filename itself, the date stamp,
>attributes, etc. are treated in an incidental fashion. The Amiga
>file system, for example, had a "file comment" of about 80 characters
>of extra text to describe the file that wasn't always preserved.
>This may have been inherited from Tripos.
>
>And then there's the way something like the effects of Radix-50
>(packing three chars into two bytes) has percolated through the
>years as three-character filename extensions from RT-11 (or
>earlier?) to CP/M to DOS and Windows, which are overused and
>abused in many ways.
>
>One of my latest three-great-ideas-before-breakfast ideas is
>to write a program for Windows that sniffs and identifies files
>in the manner of Unix's "file". That's the problem with files as
>files: you can easily lose track of what's in them, especially
>if you lose that three-char extension, or it gets wrapped in
>an archive format or attachment, etc.
>
>- John
>Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm>
>
>
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Before we go any further, which Packard Bells are we talking about?
I don't know the old ones (I rescued a 286 PB still in the box from a
compactor about a year ago and hid it where I thought it would be
safe; I doubt they will ever get that ceramic off the dumpster's ram),
but the new ones are ugly and had that stupid navigator thing that
looked like screenshots from Myst (do they still?). But, how bad
can a design get (am I asking for it?)?
>You mean there's a difference? :)
>
>Packard Bell: Today's headache, tomorrow's obscure collectible. Hey,
you
>never know: People might start collecting only the badly designed
systems.
>It could happen.
>
>
>-
>- john higginbotham ____________________________
>- webmaster www.pntprinting.com -
>- limbo limbo.netpath.net -
>
>
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
I was wondering if anyone had a Mac Portable power supply, and wanted to
sell it cheap.
Thanks :),
Mike Sheflin
______________________________________________________
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Bit slice processors are designed so that they can be ganged together with
suitable interconnection, making an 8 bit ALU out of 2 - 4 bit units, etc.
Generally good for accumulators etc with more complex instruction decoding
outboard.
My 2 cents...
Kevin
At 02:39 PM 11/06/98 -0400, you wrote:
>
>Hej allesammen;
>
>What's a 'bit slice'? Are they served with a twist of lemon?
>
>I suppose a better way of asking that is how is a 'bit sliced' processor
>or ALU differentiated from a 'normal' one?
>
>ok
>r.
>
>
>
On Jun 11, 3:36, Doug Yowza wrote:
> That used to be one of my interview questions for Unix programmers: your
> buggy program just created a filename with {control characters, leading
> dash (-), leading slash (/), '*', etc} in it. How do you delete it?
Quickest general method is "rm -i *", though you may sometimes need
"rm -i .*" instead/as well.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
Guys:
I would address this to Ward directly, rather than to the list, but
our jerked-around mail system now removes the original senders
address. My apologies.
Ward:
Please e-mail me at: jeff.kaneko(a)ifrsys.com
There's something I'd like to discuss with you.
Thanks!
Jeff
We now return you to our regularly scheduled programme . . . .
At 12:47 AM 6/11/98 +0100, you wrote:
>That makes me wonder if they're going to attempt to rewrite history
>_again_... After all the Altair (it was the Altair, wasn't it) was hardly
Well, possibly, but the optimist in me says that maybe, just maybe, they'll
do it right, what with all that money they have laying around.... (Pardon
me, while I go kill said optimist. Feel free to continue laughing...)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
At 11:18 PM 6/10/98 +0000, you wrote:
>> >Dash '030 from (iirc) 68000 systems. It's an actual Mac II-type
>
>Apparently very popular (at one time, at least) with prepress houses.
Yes; one of mine came from a company called Landor Associates that was
responsible for recent Olympic Logos, Radio Shack's latest logo, Most (if
not all) of McDonald's packaging and branding, and a lot of Microsoft's
packaging/branding.
Great company, and good at what they do. (In addition to the Dash, they
had an outbound running around, but I don't know what happened to it.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
At 02:48 PM 6/10/98 PDT, you wrote:
>Is this device better than a mouse, in your opinion? Is it an ADB
>device?
Is it better than a mouse? Is Ben & Jerry's Phish Food better than a
rotten banana? Is a Jaguar XK8 better than totalled Ford Aspire? Yes,
it's better.
Unfortunately, it's an integral part of the Outbound case, and therefore
not applicable to any other computer.
The outbound, if you're unfamiliar with it, is a Mac Clone laptop. There
are two models; mine sports a 68030, and uses a standard 2.5" IDE laptop
hard drive. Great machine. (If my screen wasn't ferschimmled I'd be using
it all the time.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
At 02:48 PM 6/10/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Actually, the ad was for auctions at Haggle Online, http://www.haggle.com.
(nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more, say no more...) 8^)
For them not familiar with it, Haggle is kinda like ebay, though less
crowded. More importantly, it is also building an online museum of classic
computers. This is probably due to our own Doug Salot somehow being
involved in the whole mess...
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
At 01:37 PM 6/10/98 EDT, you wrote:
>This is NOT a flame, but i'm just wondering the point of posting items that
>have been put up for sale on ebay, et al. all that means is every item will
The point is that you thereby inform a whole passel of people that the
items are for sale, including many who might not otherwise know. Gets the
seller potentially higher prices. And, someone here might find out about
something they really want. On the other hand, it may annoy some folks
here.
btw, it seems to me that prices on Haggle are not quite as wild as on ebay.
(Though I do check ebay regularly too.)
>is announced as being for sale, the subscribers to this group should get
>first crack.
Well, tyhat would be nice, but the collective "we" can't force anyone to do
anything. This has come up before, and the consensus seems to be that it's
a tough decision whether to offer things here (and be a hero) or on ebay
(and get rich.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
At 08:26 PM 6/10/98 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Or the $1500 Lisa 2? That one went from $300 to $1500 in one bid, but it
>only takes one sucker, err, collector.
The auction sites are just like any other web site: you don't
know what's really happening, such as if the transaction actually
takes place at that price. Certainly the auction sites do not
list their failure and debt-collection rates.
I think the auction offers and supposed final bids are interesting
to hear - they're at least as interesting as the brag-of-the-week
>from those lucky Silicon Valley and Redmond thrift-store cruisers
who appear to be filling a U-Haul for $50 every weekend.
On Wed, 10 Jun 1998, Ward Donald Griffiths III wrote:
> Hell, I'd rather fix rams with my teeth the way the old Basque herders
> used to than a Packard-Bell computer.
At least us sheep ranchers understand your jokes.
- John
But there's a difference between a Z-80 running a text-mode interface,
and an 8088 running a GUI. Also, remember that Bill Gates didn't know
very much about operating systems, as opposed to languages. MS Windows
is the only OS MS programmed ground up, something they only started
after the A1000. And, I've never seen Windows multitask under 8MB in the
way the Amiga or a UNIXoid computer can.
>> and Gates replied that multitasking really wasn't possible in
>> anything under 8 megs of ram. To which the same reporter replied,
>>"But
>> doesn't
>> your own Amiga Basic multitask nicely on a 512k Amiga?"
>>
>> A question which Gates promptly ignored and moved on.........
>
>Especially since the TRS-80 Model 16, with the Xenix OS partly done
>by Microsoft, multitasked (and multiusered) quite nicely even with
>only 256K of RAM. Not to mention the Color Computer running OS-9 in
>64K.
>--
>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_
>
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At 10:13 PM 6/10/98 -0400, Ward Donald Griffiths III wrote:
>Hell, I'd rather fix rams with my teeth the way the old Basque herders
>used to than a Packard-Bell computer.
You mean there's a difference? :)
Packard Bell: Today's headache, tomorrow's obscure collectible. Hey, you
never know: People might start collecting only the badly designed systems.
It could happen.
-
- john higginbotham ____________________________
- webmaster www.pntprinting.com -
- limbo limbo.netpath.net -
On Jun 11, 4:20, Ward Donald Griffiths III wrote:
> Unix started with a 14-char filename limit (and allowed [still does]
> characters in filenames tricky to get at from the shell).
I still have two disks with filenames which include DEL and NUL characters.
> I always figured if you couldn't describe
> what a file was for in 14 characters, you should be in a different
> profession. The current fashion for doing things like including
> things like extended version numbers in filenames does not change my
> opinion.
Nor mine :-)
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
Ok you DEC-heads. What baud rate does the Digital DF02 modem jog along
at?
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: 06/07/98]
Hi. I just got a shwrink wrapped copy of this, and wanted to know if anyone
wanted it before I used it...
I'll either sell it or trade it for PC/Apple ][ stuff.
Ciao,
Tim D. Hotze
At 07:14 AM 6/10/98 -0700, you wrote:
>Does "Mac II-type motherboard" mean its a genuine Apple motherboard, or
>do you just mean its similiar to the Mac II motherboards?
Sorry... By "Mac II-type" I meant that size mb. Both that I have use real
Apple motherboards. One is (iirc) a Mac IIx, the other is a IIfx. Very
nice servers for their time, with great cases.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
