On Apr 22, 1:12, Doc wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Apr 2002, Chad Fernandez wrote:
>
> > By commercial grade I just meant that I wanted to avoid the home grade
> > stuff that may not have features, or only a few connections. The type
> > of thing that Best Buy, Staples, or another cunsumer oriented store may
> > carry for your average Windows user.
>
> Amazingly, the home grade stuff that's on the shelves lately really is
> plenty for a home net. The features it doesn't have are next to useless
> on a network with fewer than 25 nodes.
> Stay away from the firewall appliances though. They're notoriously
> easy to get through.
Agreed on both counts.
> > What's the difference between managed and unmanaged?
>
> A serial port, a password, and several decimal points.
That's about it :-)
> Seriously, a managed switch allows you to define which nodes can "go"
> where, force connection parameters - 10Mb or 100, full-duplex or half -
> keep transfer statistics, etc. A really good one will cost over a
> grand. Like I said, I have one, and I prefer my little $70 NetGear
> 10/100 auto-sensing switch.
Unless you're really into networks for their own sake, or have a big enough
one that you need to monitor and manage it remotely, plug-in-and-go is
better.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
On Apr 21, 22:05, Derek Peschel wrote:
> It has been my mission for some time to bring a BBC Micro back from
> England. I would need some way to adapt British plugs to US sockets
> and convert the voltage, and I would also need a PAL monitor. (No, I
> don't want black-and-white NTSC. Yes, I could bring a montior back from
> England along with the computer. I'm not sure if I want to do that.)
Some of the Beeb PSUs have a jumper to change from 220/240V to 110/120.
You probably don't want a PAL monitor, but you probably do want an RGB one
that can handle 625 lines (15.something kHz horizontal and 50Hz vertical).
> Does anyone have experience with these things? I am hoping to save
> money ($500 would be above the top of my price range) but I don't want
> to fry anything either.
>
> Oh yes, and if anyone has an extra Beeb hanging around that would be
> nice too.
They're not uncommon here. I bet one of us Brits could find one cheaply
for you, if we knew when you were coming over and where you'd be.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
On Apr 22, 1:21, Chad Fernandez wrote:
> By commercial grade I just meant that I wanted to avoid the home grade
> stuff that may not have features, or only a few connections. The type
> of thing that Best Buy, Staples, or another cunsumer oriented store may
> carry for your average Windows user.
Ah, well there aren't all that many features to distinguish a dumb hub (or
switch) from another dumb hub (or switch). Number of ports, whether it
supports autosensing 10/100, internal or external PSU, noise level (ones
with internal PSUs often have a fan), colour of the box, and that's about
it. Some low-end devices are more reliable than others, of course.
> > If you see a decent modern 3Com hub or switch, that's fine but most of
the
> > second-hand stuff I've seen is 10baseT only. I wouldn't bother looking
for
> > IBM. Baystack, 3Com, HP, Cisco are the ones you're likely to see. And
> > Netgear, which is almost entirely unmanaged kit, but quite good
quality.
> >
>
> What's the difference between managed and unmanaged?
Unmanaged means a dumb device that has no configuration settings, provides
no stats, and has no address of its own. A managed hub or switch will have
it's own IP (and/or IPX address, rarely DECnet or Appletalk) and will
usually support SNMP (the Simple Network Management Protocol) and/or some
kind of web interface. That will allow remote configuration of things like
IP address, spanning tree settings (if it's a switch), port settings
(enabled or not, half/full/auto/duplex, 10/100/auto, etc), VLANs (if it's a
modern switch), and monitoring and interrogation of internal data
(byte/packet/collision/error counts on ports, port state, MAC address(es)
last seen on each port). The management costs a lot extra.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
Oh, ok. It's late. :)
-Dave
On April 22, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> That's my point, Dave!
>
> Dick
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dave McGuire" <mcguire(a)neurotica.com>
> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
> Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 12:03 AM
> Subject: Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)
>
>
> > On April 21, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> > > Friendlier OS' (e.g. Windows) have equivalent tools that are less onerous
> in
> > > the demands they place on the user. Just ask the typical programmer what
> a
> > > "regular expression" is. Better yet, give him a task requiring the use of
> >
> > Umm, a programmer that doesn't know what a regular expression is, is
> > no programmer at all.
> >
> > Has Microsoft really steered us toward a future full of nontechnical
> > computer programmers?
> >
> > -Dave
> >
> > --
> > Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
> > St. Petersburg, FL -Den
> >
> >
>
>
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
On April 21, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> Those are "nice" but not necessary. I'm happy with the M$ stuff that Bill
> sent me years back. I'm apparently not on "the list" any longer and haven't
Knowing Bill Gates does *not* make you cool in this crowd. ;)
> I'm really not complaining at all. It was he who cast the first stone. I
> just made the observation that thinking of UNIX as appropriate for the era is
> totally off-base and the market has surely vindicated that view. UNIX may be
> fine for some things, but not for personal computing.
Wow, I guess I'd better run out and buy a Windows box. I wonder if
there are any stores open this late. I sure hope so, because all of
my UNIX boxes are probably about to stop performing all of my personal
computing, and I still have a lot of stuff to do tonight.
> Workstations are overrate, if you ask me, though they may have had their day.
> Hardware dedicated to UNIX concepts is just no longer what's wanted. Say what
Not for suits, no. But suits seldom know what's best for even
themselves. You strike me as an intelligent person, which is why I'm
surprised at your viewpoints. I'd think you'd be interested in more
modern technology. To each his own, more power to you.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
On Apr 21, 2:34, Chad Fernandez wrote:
> I'm finally going to work on hooking up a home network, so I guess I
> need a hub. What should I look for? I don't know much about networks
> yet. I have potentially 7 computers that I'd like to have connected.
> It'll need to be 10Base-T, but 100base-T may be involved too. I thought
> I'd look for something on Ebay, hopefully, not too expensive. Maybe
> something commercial grade, However. I thought about something from IBM
> or 3Com, any suggestions??
What do you mean by "commercial grade"? The difference between upmarket
devices and small SOHO devices is mostly that the ones used in larger
commercial networks are managed devices. That means you can configure them
remotely (with SNMP or a web interface), get statistics from them, etc.
You really want a switch rather than a hub. Not many people are making
hubs (repeaters) these days, even at the low end of the market. A switch
will ultimately give better throughput, especially in a peer-to-peer
network.
Go for autosensing 10/100baseT. If you're going to spend any amount of
money, you want to protect your investment by including 100baseT capability
even if you don't need it right now.
If you see a decent modern 3Com hub or switch, that's fine but most of the
second-hand stuff I've seen is 10baseT only. I wouldn't bother looking for
IBM. Baystack, 3Com, HP, Cisco are the ones you're likely to see. And
Netgear, which is almost entirely unmanaged kit, but quite good quality.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
On April 22, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
> -spc (But I do want to say the PDP-8 was a 12 bit system for some reason ... )
For a very good reason...it *is*! ;)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
On April 21, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> BTW, when the NEXT boxes first came out, we had a few of them sitting around
> for people to look at and play with. I personally was not impressed. They
> were EXTREMELY low on gigaflops per picobuck and, aside from the OS, I don't
Compared to what?
> The problem with these machines, as borne out by the market, is that they
> weren't what the home user wanted. They weren't what I wanted either. I
That's it, I've finally figured it out. You work for Microsoft's
marketing department. How nice.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
>> Will a Dayna EtherPrint-T work for connecting, say, a LocalTalk Mac into an
>> EtherTalk network, or does it only work for printers? In other words, is it
>> a true LocalTalk-to-EtherTalk bridge?
>
>I don't think the Mac supports encoding/decoding TCP/IP packets via
>localtalk. From what I understand Ethertalk (what mac compatible
>printers talk on ethernet) is essentially localtalk wrapped with an
>ethernet packet. :-/ TCP/ip is a different protocol on the same
>computer and that is only supported through PPP(remote access) and ethernet.
These are actually two different things.
1: Localtalk bridged to EtherTalk (appletalk over ethernet). That is what
the Dayna box does. It is good only for AppleTalk uses (file sharing,
printer sharing...).
2: TCP/IP over Appletalk. That is known as MacIP. AppleTalk does not
natively carry TCP/IP, so a localtalk to ethertalk bridge will not pass
TCP/IP simply because TCP/IP can't exist on localtalk (well, I won't say
can't, but isn't done with any native Apple hardware). However, you CAN
use MacIP, which is Apple's answer to TCP/IP over Appletalk. That is
TCP/IP wrapped in an AppleTalk packet. That will be passed by a Localtalk
to Ethertalk bridge, simply because the bridge won't know it is not
Appletalk.
The problem you get into with MacIP is you need something to unwrap it on
the other end and pass it to the internet (or whatever TCP/IP application
you are using it for). MacIP doesn't work as straight TCP/IP.
If you are looking to do localtalk with TCP/IP, a much better solution is
to find an old 030 or better box with ethernet (LC2 or 3 works great),
and run Sustainable Softworks' IPNetRouter. They have a MacIP router
built into it. Then, run Apple's LaserWriter Bridge if you ALSO want to
route straight Appletalk using the mac based bridge (IPNetRouter will
only examine the MacIP portion, so it won't pass a regular appletalk
connection for things like Appleshare, file sharing, and printer sharing,
as a result you need Apple's free LaserWriter bridge, which the newest
version (2.??) IIRC will bridge for a full appletalk network and not just
printers).
I would also guess that older versions of AppleShare Server might have a
MacIP router built in. Apple must have offered a solution for it, I can't
believe they would provide all the client end tools and not have some way
of unwrapping it other than depending on a 3rd party program (which is
the only app I have seen that does it, but I am sure there must be
others).
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc(a)conman.org>
>> 8080/z80 and if it was DOS you could bet on 808x. Unix back then
meant
>> MIPS, VAX, PDP-11, SUN/sparc, 68000, Z8000, and a few dozen I likely
missed.
>
> That doesn't make sense. UNIX you state as being easily ported, even
>though as a kernel it has to hit the hardware pretty hard, yet you state
>applications as not being portable at all, because of the underlying
>hardware and processor (which the application shouldn't care about). If
>anything, I would think the opposite would be true.
You forget I guess. All cpus are from intel. At one time unix was on
machines
of different word size and instruction set. So an app while easily
ported to a new
platform, it was not without some problems. Like each version of unix
was not
always the same as another. Some of those were those little things like
the apps programmer needed a target machine and OS to verify on. So
"portable" is not
the same as "ported to".
> Now, speaking as a programmer who's done cross platform programs, I've
>come to the conclusion that writing portable software isn't difficult
and
>with enough experience it becomes quite easy in fact. It's programmers
that
>make unwarrented assumptions about their code or platform that make for
>unportable applications.
I didn't say it wasn't possible only that saying the OS is unix meant it
was
not always a slam dunk and that compliation was often required.
> Granted, on the 8-bit systems you often times had to code in Assembly,
>both for speed and size reasons (and because compilers for such systems
>weren't good enough) but when you get to UNIX the whole point was to
avoid
>assembly in the first place [1]. Therefore, you are writing in a higher
>level, more portable language and then it becomes possible to write code
>that will run across platforms. Heck, I've written a program that has
>compiled across several different UNIX platforms (SGI, Linux on the x86,
>Linux on the DEC Alpha, OpenBSD, FreeBSD) without problems [2] and
you'll
>notice that there is at least one 64-bit architecture listed there. The
>same code was successfully compiled (with one line of code change, plus
a
>few other lines to get the correct header files loaded) under Microsoft
>Windows. Okay, it may not have been optimum code under Windows, but it
>still ran with minimum of changes or fuss.
Thanks for the tutorial, I heard it back it 82 also. Experence however
proved
otherwise in practical terms.
>[2] Okay, one problem---the DEC Alpha port crashed, but it was tracked
> down to a bug in the C library call memchr().
In the past 1983-1988 that was far more commonplace to have incompatable
compilers libraries.
Allison
> Concerning my capacity to provide support, let me steal a quote from
>the Jerry Springer Show.
>
> "Yew don't knoooow me! Yew don't know who Ah am!"
ROFL!!!
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
On April 19, William Donzelli wrote:
> > FWIW the AS/400 is essentially the follow-on to the System/36, to the
> > point of having a highly-evolved software environment allowing S/36
> > applications to run un-modified on AS/400. Supposedly there is some
> > dotted-line relationship to S/38 as well, but I don't have any real
> > information about that.
>
> The other way round, architecturally. AS/400 gained most from S/38 and
> FS. The whole AS/400 family was designed to replace S/32, S/34, S/36, and
> S/38.
The AS/400 grew primarily out of the S/36 architecture but
incorporated many architectural features of the S/38. It has a good
deal of application compatibility with both the S/36 and the S/38.
The S/38 (which came out before the S/36) is otherwise a fairly
different machine from the S/32, S/34, and S/36.
The lineage:
System/3, 1969
System/32, 1975
System/34, 1977
System/38, 1978
System/36, 1983
AS/400 family, 1988
The last model of the System/36 line, the 5363, was "enhanced" (though
I don't know how) and renamed "AS/Entry"...it seems to me that they
followed the numbering scheme, but loosely. I don't have any hard
information about this, but I'm guessing this is how they got to where
they are now. I've put the possible "steps" through the naming system
in brackets below.
...
System/36
AS/Entry
[AdvancedSystem/36]
Advanced36
[AdvancedSystem/40]
[AS/40]
AS/400
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: HeathKit H11 Computer
Date: 22 Apr 2002 01:36:44 GMT
From: jedchilds(a)aol.com (Jed Childs)
Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp11
HeathKit H11 Computer
Complete with manuals DecWriter I/O, paper tapes, punch, reader, cpu and
extra
cards. $500 come and get it. Or write here or email.
Jed
>In case anyone is interested, the Apple-1 sold for $14,000, right at the
>reserve price.
So then that's a 'No' on my offer of $30 + shipping? :-)
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
On April 19, William Donzelli wrote:
> > The do indeed classify the S/390 as a mainframe...because, well,
> > that's what it is. :-)
>
> Not any more - they are all "servers". xSeries, iSeries, pSeries, and
> zSeries (the z's being the S/390 followups).
Umm, I have to disagree with you there...the machines in question are
indeed of a mainframe architecture, and some IBMers were calling them
"servers" many years before the zSeries was even an itch in IBM's
pants.
Regardless of what industry buzzwords the marketroids are trying to
take advantage of...those machines implement the S/390 architecture,
which is a mainframe architecture descended from mainframe
architectures.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
> Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 14:28:35 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Cameron Kaiser <spectre(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu>
> Subject: Dayna EtherPrint-T and AppleShare
>
> Will a Dayna EtherPrint-T work for connecting, say, a LocalTalk Mac into an
> EtherTalk network, or does it only work for printers? In other words, is it
> a true LocalTalk-to-EtherTalk bridge?
I don't think the Mac supports encoding/decoding TCP/IP packets via
localtalk. From what I understand Ethertalk (what mac compatible
printers talk on ethernet) is essentially localtalk wrapped with an
ethernet packet. :-/ TCP/ip is a different protocol on the same
computer and that is only supported through PPP(remote access) and ethernet.
Larry
--
01000011 01001111 01001101 01001101 01001111 01000100 01001111 01010010 01000101
Larry Anderson - Sysop of Silicon Realms BBS (209) 754-1363
300-14.4k bps
Set your 8-bit C= rigs to sail for http://www.portcommodore.com/
01000011 01001111 01001101 01010000 01010101 01010100 01000101 01010010 01010011
>I don't care whether these things sell for a million each. It still won't
>make me want one.
Good one less person to take one away from me :-)
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
>Btw- Did the winner bid against himself? He had the winning bid of $14K,
>but he had an earlier bid (the 2nd highest one) in the 12.5K which look
>like should have won the auction.
Probably because of the reserve price (I didn't watch the auction, but
Sellam did make a quick mention of the $14k being right at the reserve)
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
Hi
I have just return home from a Good weekend, bringing the following
parts with me home :)
VaxStation 4000vlc
Commodore Sx64
3x Commodore A2088 pc cards
Commdore A2500 memory board for A2000A
Commdore A2058 memory board
GVP Gforce 040 acc. card for A2000
Supra scsi interface
Kupke scsi interface
2x a1200 boards
a cdtv mother board
3x Xircom parallel port ethernet adaptors
a ASK lcd display for overhead projectors
a HP Remote bridge RB 28674B ( have no idee what it is)
6 joysticks and some mouse/joystick auto switches
Microsoft windows (c) 1987
Chameleon NFS
Xvision X server for windows
A isa tvcard
a 8ports serial isa card
a sbc 286 and a 586 pc and passiv backplate for them
Xeno link bbs for amiga
Lemmings tribes for amiga
virtual carting2 for amiga
a com21 cable modem
We had only planed for the first two thing, but we found some
extras. Atlast I have my first Vax, but now I have so many other
new things that I wont have time to play with it the first couple
of weeks.
Regards Jacob Dahl Pind
--
CBM, Amiga,Vintage hardware collector
Email: Rachael_(a)gmx.net
url: http://rachael.dyndns.org
On April 21, Sridhar the POWERful wrote:
> > I've done it for twenty years. Most of the stuff I've written runs
> > on 20+ different operating systems...it doesn't run under Windows, but
> > that's irrelevant, because it's one proprietary, non-standards-
> > compliant platform that most people in my industry don't use. (See
> > comments about "our own worlds" above)
>
> I'll bet your software will compile and run fine under Windows using
> Cygnus's stuff.
This is likely...it's an impressive piece of work. Though I can't
help but wonder...why not just use a real OS in the first place? It's
treating the symptom, not the problem.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
On April 21, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> Well, when I want groceries, I go to the grocery store, and when I want
> computer hardware I go to the computer store ... When I want software to do
> what I want my computer to do, I have to go where they sell it.
...and if you take that route, you'll get what you're looking for.
Commercial software. If you're fine with that, more power to you.
> EMACS isn't particularly useful tool for everyday word-processing, either,
> though it certainly can do it. I have a "friendlified" EMACS (really a
> DOS-based EMACS-in-a-shell) that works pretty well for lots of things for
> which one normally would have used EMACS for want of another capable tool.
> Nowadays, I can do all that simple stuff in WORD, like hundreds of millions of
> others.
Of course Emacs isn't good at word processing, because it's a text
editor. It's also not very good at schematic capture, for the same
reason. ;)
> I've gotten software gratis all my life. Even the Microsoft products I have
> were all originally provided, gratis, from Microsoft. I've never been offered
> a single bit of UNIX software, ever, by any Unix software vendor. They even
> charge for providing stuff that they claim to give you for free, and then,
> when it doesn't work as advertised, which it seldom does if it works at all,
> they charge you to make it work, which often costs plenty and results in
> nothing.
You're missing the whole point. "UNIX software vendor". Mainstream
software in the UNIX world is FREE. It's the commercial stuff that's
the oddball in this world.
> I'm not sure what you mean by "network server." I've used a PC
I mean it in the most general of ways.
> as a server right here in the house for over a decade. There's not
You trust your data to a PC? Well, that's your risk, not mine. ;)
> one non-PC machine in my ISP POP either. There's a mix of OS' in-
> cluding LINUX and UNIX, but it's the most generally provisioned
> "small" ISP in the area and has a reputation for fewer breakdowns
> and fewer busy signals on dialups than any other ISP, including the
> muti-billion-dollar guys like AOL, MSN, and Qwest.
I'd say that's pretty unusual...and having been in the thick of the
ISP industry from its beginning, I feel I can say that with some
authority. More power to them, even if they do make...questionable
choices.
And before you take exception to that...if I were to describe to you
a commercial construction firm that made nice buildings and had a good
reputation, but they used Volkswagen Beetles to haul their lumber and
cinderblocks and radio-controlled tanks to do their welding and
riveting, wouldn't you have something to say about that?
> The first thing I'd ask about "writing the software portably" would be,
> "Who's going to do that, and whom are we serving by doing that?"
> The few dozen folks in my market area, worldwide, who'd prefer to
> use UNIX might like it, but would they send any dough our way?
> Probably not ...
Is your work THAT unusual? I'm now VERY curious to know what you do.
EVERYONE I know personally who does electronic design work (save for
maybe two) uses some UNIX variant to do it, except for FPGA stuff we
discussed earlier. That constitutes about twenty people.
I think this very clearly proves the point that we tend to see the
stuff in "our own worlds" very clearly, but the stuff *outside* our
own areas of experience seem very distant or even nonexistant. In my
world, Winodws and PeeCee hardware is weird, overpriced, proprietary
stuff that's difficult to find and not very widely used.
Everyone...and I mean EVERYONE in my peer group runs UNIX of one sort
or another. A few have these esoteric Windows boxes for playing video
games, but not many.
That said, I respect the fact that your experience differs from mine,
and that you have a different point of view...and because of this, I
read your comments with interest, and learn from them.
> Secondly, I have serious doubts that there's a way to write software
> that is both portable and fully functional in all cases. There are
> limitations, I'm sure, and the devil's in the details.
I've done it for twenty years. Most of the stuff I've written runs on
20+ different operating systems...it doesn't run under Windows, but
that's irrelevant, because it's one proprietary,
non-standards-compliant platform that most people in my industry don't
use. (See comments about "our own worlds" above)
> > Linux is a mess no matter how you slice it, mostly thrown together by
> > script kiddies with no experience whatsoever...it's a bad idea to
> > judge the entire UNIX world on the cleanliness (or lack thereof) of
> > Linux, because as even the Linux people are fond of pointing out,
> > Linux isn't UNIX.
> >
> That's probably true, but it's the only realistically inexpensive route
> into the UNIX world for one starting out or starting over.
NetBSD/FreeBSD/OpenBSD, or about twenty different packaged
distributions ("distros" for the kiddies) of Linux. All free, most of
mission-critical quality.
> Last time I checked, the add-on required to extend the file system
> for UNIXWARE (? maybe one of the others) to larger than 2GB cost
> $2K per instance.
...and the people who buy UNIXWARE get what they deserve...screwed.
Support for >2GB filesystems has been standard equipment in modern
free operating systems for something like eight years. What is their
excuse?
> > I'm not trying to be argumentative with you, and I respect your
> > experience...please understand that I'm trying to point out that the
> > world of computers is very different from the world of Windows
> > computers...things are, well, just done differently.
>
> Different, is certainly the case. Better, well, the market thinks otherwise.
Do you honestly think software development for pure profit, where
quality suffers to enhance margins, bugs rarely get fixed, and
developments in technology are largely ignored, where programmers
write the bare minimum to get their paychecks and leave by 5pm, is
"better" just because the suits of the world buy anything that
Microsoft tries to sell them? "Better" is paying through the nose for
products versus getting better stuff for free? I'll tell you
what...YOU pay attention to the "market" and do what the suits tell
you to do...I have work to do, and I'm going to use the best tools
available...regardless of what the "market" thinks I should use.
If any computer on your home network has EVER crashed, lost data,
munged something, or behaved unpredictably for anything other than an
age- or ac-power-related hardware failure, then my point has already
been made for me.
And I really, truly hope I've misinterpreted you.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
Hi Zane,
> V1.3 to
> V3.0, and one thing I always loved was how I could be formatting
> both 3.5"
> and 5.25" floppies while I was editing a document and dialed into
> a BBS.
I can still remember formatting 4 floppies at once on my Amiga 1000,
slight slowdown, but not too bad :-)
cheers,
Lance
----------------
Powered by telstra.com
On April 21, Ben Franchuk wrote:
> > There is a demo version of nearly every high-cost ($2000 isn't that high, btw,
> > though the Windows environment has made it so.) Get a comparable product for
> > UNIX, and you'll get no improvement, nor will you get source. All you'll get
> > is a bigger bill.
>
> LINUX != UNIX. ( But you are right )
What does that have to do with it?
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
I'm finally going to work on hooking up a home network, so I guess I
need a hub. What should I look for? I don't know much about networks
yet. I have potentially 7 computers that I'd like to have connected.
It'll need to be 10Base-T, but 100base-T may be involved too. I thought
I'd look for something on Ebay, hopefully, not too expensive. Maybe
something commercial grade, However. I thought about something from IBM
or 3Com, any suggestions??
Chad Fernandez
Michigan, USA
Yup...I've seen plenty of Zeniths (i386 & i486 models) in Faraday cages.
For that matter, I've seen a bunch of MacIIfx decked out similarly. Tempest
rated boxes. My first job was with a shop (SecureWare) that did high
security versions of Unix for these things. SCO-based for the Zeniths &
A/UX-based for the Macs. The Unix was refered to as CMW (Compartmented Mode
Workstation), was validated as a B1-level system (in Orange Book speak), and
featured a secure window manager based on X (windows have security labels,
and you couldn't do things like cut and paste between windows with different
security labels). Pretty kewl, if you are into that sort of thing.
Ken
From: Douglas H. Quebbeman <dquebbeman(a)acm.org>
>
>My computer dims the neighborhood's lights when I turn it on...
>
>My computer has fewer transistors than yours...
>
>My computer has no transistors, just tubes...
>
>My computer's valves burn out faster than yours...
>
>My computer's got more gears than yours...
Then there is...
My computers daddy is bigger than yours.
Allison
This is probably old news for the flight-simulator crowd on the list,
but I just came across the article in the newspaper. It won't be cheap,
partly because it's serial number 0001 (one).
http://www.707sim.com/
I am building a FPGA ( Field programmable gate array ) computer
in the style of the early computers that had a front panel and
TTY for I/O. While I don't have have a front panel working the
Hardware serial bootstrap does work on my prototype. Since I
have a few LOGIC cells left in my FPGA to play with I was
thinking adding a cassette interface. Does anybody know of
schematics on the web that I can get ideas from.
Ben Franchuk.
--
Standard Disclaimer : 97% speculation 2% bad grammar 1% facts.
"Pre-historic Cpu's" http://www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk
Now with schematics.
> > I think the most beautiful processor I've seen is CPU card of the
> > Symbolics 3645. The wiring and chip layout are really nice. One thing that
> > always impressed me about that machine is that the disk label is in ASCII
> > text! Of course it has a 68000 with a decent amount of ROM space (the FEP) to
> > boot from...
>
> What do you mean by "the disk label is in ASCII text"?
Its been a long time (>10 years) but AFAICR I was able to add a new Saber
drive by using the FEP, The disk label is just plain text in the first block
that is interpreted...
>
> I've played with a Symbolics for maybe half an hour. It has a lot of cool
> software, though it kept trying to connect to a ChaosNet server to download
> all the docs, so there was a lot I couldn't find out. I haven't really
> explored the essence of the software.
1/2 and hour with an incomplete system is not much of a demonstration...
>
> The design of both the software and the hardware strikes me as baroque
> (typical MIT "just keep adding features" hacking). Also the system as a
> whole is not necessarily "self-sustaining". A friend of mine is having
> trouble with his Symbolics -- his disk has bad blocks in the LISP world --
> he doesn't have the "breath-of-life" tape that has to be created for each
> individual disk -- there's no way for the FEP to change the bad block list
> -- the software to create new "breath-of-life" tapes is not available.
> If any of those problems were fixed things might be better, but in the
> current situation there's no recourse (except to pay Symbolics). That's
> what I mean by "not self-sustaining"
I dont think that there was a whole lot there that was not needed. A
tagged architecture 36 bit machine with paged virtual memory, ECC, capable of
executing about 5 million Lisp instructions a second was not trivial to build
in 1985...
>
> I've read the manuals for the Xerox environment but I've never used the
> actual machine. The hardware/software is less baroque but still heavily
> layered (three separate LISP environments running on top of PILOT on a
> variety of machines with a variety of keyboard layouts). INTERLISP's
> comment handling never seemed sensible to me and it has lots of cryptic
> names and messages left over from the TTY days.
The Xerox hardware is less "baroque" because is is not a "Lisp machine" it is
a microcoded 16 bit processor with WCS. The magic is done with (very clever)
microcode but it is _much_ slower than the 36xx
>
> > The Symbolics and the Xerox WS running Interlisp always seemed to be
> > the most "alive" computers I've used, which I think has something to do with
> > how much the command interpreter, shell, etc knows about things...
>
> And how interconnected they are. I would love to play wtih DEdit (or SEdit
> which is the newer version) -- its generalization of "select, then act"
> to multiple selections and its "one man's output is another man's input"
> mentality would be fun. I don't know much about TEdit or the Grapher but
> they seem to have cult followings.
>
> -- Derek
>
You can download a Interlisp/common lisp environment from PARC that will run
under Linux (its actually an application (LFG)) but you can play with SEdit
and Tedit) ...
Peter Wallace
Mesa Electronics
On April 21, Ben Franchuk wrote:
> > To bring this back on-topic: in the years prior to the existence of
> > Micro$oft and it's viruses pretending to be operating systems, can
> > anyone think of any vintage operating system(s) that was (were) known
> > for being poorly designed, annoying to use, and dangerous to data,
> > which was (were) regarded with the same disdain as Micro$oft windows,
> > yet still had loyal lusers who apparently didn't know any better than
> > not to use it (them)?
>
> Users never had a real say in the matter.
Really? Interesting. Was there a law passed that I was unaware of?
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
Hmm...I sense some Microsoftism on the list...
-Dave
On April 20, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> ... and if you're dumb enough to believe that, you'll get what you deserve.
>
> Dick
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "R. D. Davis" <rdd(a)rddavis.org>
> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
> Sent: Saturday, April 20, 2002 7:53 PM
> Subject: Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)
>
>
> > Quothe Christopher Smith, from writings of Tue, Apr 16, 2002 at
> 01:04:18PM -0500:
> > [biz'droids]
> > > Indeed I would tell them if they would listen to me. As it is, I have
> >
> > Just talk louder and be more persistent; they'll reach a point where
> > they'll either listen or fire you; it the later, no great loss since
> > it doesn't sound like they're worth working for.
> >
> > > agreed to follow their rules, and will have to do that until they make
> > > more sane rules.
> >
> > Why?
> >
> > > In other words, when I took their job, I gave them
> > > my word.
> >
> > You gave them your word that you'd act like a good little obedient
> > dimwit? Why would anyone promise to do that? I suggest that you
> > run emacs and invoke doctor ("M-x doctor") to get some help. ;-)
> >
> > > I don't believe I can count on them to fix these problems
> > > on my account. After all, they don't impair my work -- all of our
> > > clients use this junk too. (Sad, but what can you do about it?)
> >
> > One can always refuse to work with that Micro$oft rubbish. Perhaps you
> > could educate your employer's clients; tell them all about the big
> > mistakes that they're making by wanting to use that Micro$oft
> > virusware which is broken, and otherwise annoying, by design. Don't
> > mince words, tell it like it is, and tell them that no reasonably
> > intelligent computer hacker would work with that rubbish unless it was
> > as part of a project to change over to a UNIX system, or VMS, or even
> > CP/M... that is, changing over to a system that doesn't destroy data
> > and do other peculiar things with files. Ask them why they like
> > operating systems that molest data... someone needs to make an "Eddy
> > Electron" like film, that's Monty Pythonish, called "Pfe$ter, the
> > Micro $oft Mole$ter," showing him doing strange things with bits of
> > data as they flow through the computer.
> >
> > --
> > Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other
> animals:
> > All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature &
> > rdd(a)rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify
> such
> > http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.
> >
> >
>
>
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
At 07:07 AM 4/20/02 -0400, Sridhar wrote:
>On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Sellam Ismail wrote:
>> Try MSNBC.
>I find their journalism a bit too yellow too. I tend to watch the BBC
>world news.
I find NPR to be the only sort of OK source of news in the U.S.
They're every bit as imprecise as cnn and msnbc, but at least
they try to be balanced. BBC's world service is much better.
Deutsche Welle is good too.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Carlos E. Murillo-Sanchez carlos_murillo(a)nospammers.ieee.org
We use a Strata XXe phone system in our house, and after working just
fine for many months, it suddenly went completely dead. No phones, no
lights, no power light - nothing. We have checked the power supply,
and none of the 4 breakers or 5 glass fuses seem to be blown. There
was a diode near a bank of large capacitors which appeared to be
shorted - it or something near it had gotten hot enough to blacken the
PC board a bit. Replaced said diode with no change in status. AC is
present on the primary and secondary of the line transformer, but
that's about it. Primary bridge rectifier is fine. Anyone (Sellam,
maybe?) have a schematic for the HPSU-9120 power supply (or a cheap
source for a replacement)? We purchased a downloadable PDF of the
installer's manual some time ago, but it doesn't have schematics. It
indicates that you should try swapping out power supplies and/or
checking the output voltages of the supply and replace it if they are
incorrect. So much for that... Suggestions?
-Bill Richman (bill_r(a)inetnebr.com)
Web Page: http://incolor.inetnebr.com/bill_r
Home of the COSMAC Elf Microcomputer Simulator, Fun with
Molten Metal, Orphaned Robots, and Technological Oddities.
>Will a Dayna EtherPrint-T work for connecting, say, a LocalTalk Mac into an
>EtherTalk network, or does it only work for printers? In other words, is it
>a true LocalTalk-to-EtherTalk bridge?
I think it will work as a true LocalTalk to Ethernet bridge.
However, you may need to change a dip switch on it. IIRC, the Dayna has a
couple of switches on the back that tell it what localtalk address range
to look at, one direction is low addresses (CPUs) the other is high
addresses (CPUs or Printers). If you check your AppleTalk control panel,
you can see what your current AppleTalk address is (1-255, the break in
the Dayna I think was at the 128 point, splitting the addresses in half).
Many Macs auto assign into the lower range, so you might have to flip the
switch to see it.
Of course, I could be thinking either of an older version of the box, or
of the wrong box, so you might want to double check (I think there is
still tech info on Dayna products off Intel's web site.
If you are looking to buy one, and want to know for sure, let me know...
I have a Dayna box at work that I can hook up and test. I have had it
sitting on a shelf since I got it, I have never used it since I have an
Asante one that is half the size. (Don't know if it is the
EtherPrint-T... actually, I think it is not, as I think it only has AUI
and BNC connectors on it... but I am fairly sure it carries the
EtherPrint name, so hopefully the only difference is the RJ-45 connector)
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
Rainbow owners,
I did get a request for the mods to make a Rainbow run with an NEC
V20. Info below is from a reprint from the Rainbow News; unfortunately I
don't have the date or the original issue, only the reprint. The article
does carry the notation, Copyright (c) 1986 by Carl Houseman, all rights
reserved, which means I'm probably about to get myself into potential legal
trouble here. Carl, contact me if you are listening, I'll try to work out
something you are happy with.
Paraphrased heavily, the reprint says there is a 5% speed
improvement overall, with up to 33% improvement (max.) for routines using
the "fast video" firmware options. GW-Basic has a problem with displaying
characters in the medium resolution graphics screen, and a hard disk
diagnostic (test #4, seek time) doesn't work.
There is also a set of problems with booting, but these are
supposed to be fixed by the below modifications to the boot EPROM (though
the article includes the expected YMMV-and-your-machine-may-explode kind of
disclaimers). The EPROM is, for a Rainbow 100B or 100+, a 27128 PROM. If
you install a V20, that EPROM (located between the connectors for the hard
disk option) should be duplicated with the following changes:
Location Data
-------- ----
072F 64
08E6 E8
08E7 17
08E8 36
08E9 90
0B36 20
3F00 51
3F01 B9
3F02 04
3F03 00
3F04 D4
3F05 0A
3F06 E2
3F07 FC
3F08 59
3F09 C3
3FFE EC
3FFF B2
For a PC100A, the Hard disk problem is irrelevant, the EPROM is a 2764, and
the change list is:
Location Data
-------- ----
043F 64
067D 20
1FFE 2B
1FFF 70
Let me know if you try it; I have not. Good luck!
- Mark
On April 20, Sridhar the POWERful wrote:
> > > > It does so! Just the basic unit of nature they picked was not a real
> > > > basic unit - it was the earth! The meter was something like 1/10,000,000
> > > > the Earth's curumfrence going thru Paris and the North and South poles.
> > > > The Kilogram's (derived from the meter ) volume was filled with water
> > > > and thus you got a unit weight.
> > >
> > > <PEDANTIC>
> > > Ahem. Kilograms don't measure weight. Newtons measure weight.
> > > </PEDANTIC>
> >
> > Oh MAN. We could shove charcoal briquets up his butt and make
> > diamonds. ;)
>
> Let's leave your homoerotic fantasies out of this, Dave.
Freak. ;)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
On Apr 19, 20:36, Don Maslin wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Apr 2002, Tony Duell wrote:
>
> > > I've kludged together cables for a PDP-11/34 by using the pins
> > > out of those 4-pin Molex connectors that are normally used on
> > > disk and tape drives. We just stuck the pins in the appropriate
> > > sockets and left it at that! Being careful not to pull on the
> > > wire, of course.
> >
> > Couldn't you get a strip of plastic and drill some suitable (stepped)
> > holes in it to hold the pins? OK, it wouldn't lock to the socket, and
it
> > would probably fit either way up, but at least the pins would be kept
in
> > the right sequence.
> Another possibility, depending on the shape of the receptacle recess,
> might be to encapsulate the pins(?) with RTV. Same caveats as Tony
> cited above.
Yet another revolutionary idea might be to buy a few of the correct
housings :-) They're made by AMP, by the way, not Molex. They're readily
avaialble from any AMP supplier, and very cheap.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
On April 20, Sridhar the POWERful wrote:
> > It does so! Just the basic unit of nature they picked was not a real
> > basic unit - it was the earth! The meter was something like 1/10,000,000
> > the Earth's curumfrence going thru Paris and the North and South poles.
> > The Kilogram's (derived from the meter ) volume was filled with water
> > and thus you got a unit weight.
>
> <PEDANTIC>
> Ahem. Kilograms don't measure weight. Newtons measure weight.
> </PEDANTIC>
Oh MAN. We could shove charcoal briquets up his butt and make
diamonds. ;)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
I would like to identify the book that was my first book on computers, with
which I learned BASIC on a diskless TRS-80 Model II in the fifth grade. The
book was small, about the same size as a TV Guide but maybe twice as thick.
It had a blue cover, I think, with maybe a drawing of a TRS-80 on the front.
Does this ring any bells?
--
Jeffrey Sharp
jss(a)subatomix.com
>
> On April 18, Sridhar the POWERful wrote:
> > > > Except that a real PDP-11 will probably be a good deal more stable than a
> > > > PC. And how are PC's running windows at things like realtime data
> > > > acquisition?
> > >
> > > My computer ( 600 Mhz ?? ) states not to use the seriel port faster than
> > > 9600 because the internal modem uses the irq line. sigh!
> >
> > *shakes head*
> >
> > Pathetic.
>
> Pathetic indeed. The pdp-11/34a that I had when I was in high
> school...I think I babbled about that machine at one point. I had a
> DH11-AD mux in there (16 lines, modem control, DMA...a 9-slot
> backplane full of boards), it had my terminal and another terminal in
> the house, both running at 9600 baud, and a 1200 baud modem for
> dialin...It would keep up with me and two friends using kermit to move
> stuff back & forth, or hacking code (yay Swedish Pascal and DECUS C!)
> with no problems at all...three sessions, two at 9600 baud and one at
> 1200 baud...simultaneously. Without even feeling the bump.
>
> Why do people use PeeCees, again? Pathetic, indeed.
In this case a better question might be, why is he using an Internal modem?
OTOH, it sounds as if he might only have one Serial Port and an internal
modem, now that's pathetic!
Still, I use ethernet a lot more than I do serial ports, though I did toss a
8-port DHV-11 (I think that's the right model) in the PDP-11/23+ I put
together last week, along with the ethernet adapter.
Still PC's aren't all bad, I've got a 1Ghz Pentium III that makes a very
nice PDP-10 and PDP-11, I've had TOPS-10, TOPS-20, RT-11, and RSTS/E all
running on it at the same time.
Zane
Will a Dayna EtherPrint-T work for connecting, say, a LocalTalk Mac into an
EtherTalk network, or does it only work for printers? In other words, is it
a true LocalTalk-to-EtherTalk bridge?
--
----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu
-- Burglar alarms: For the man who has everything! ----------------------------
i'm now in search of anything pertaining to the Bay Networks 16/4 BayStack
Token Ring Hub with Fiber MDA RO/RI, 24port RJ45. Documentation, manuals,
software (it does seem to have a DB9 "console" port on the back)? it is
currently working well on my little network of 3 token ring machines (one
P-III 850, one Athlon 750 and one P-II 350), where i get link, 16M, FRM,
Mgt, etc. steady Green. One thing that bothers me though: WTF is NNM and
DCM and why are they flashing Green? also, is there a way to disable the
MDA module and why is it showing Snpx lit steady Green? there is no
connection to it currently. the hub does, however, link up nicely to the
3Com LinkBuilder FMS TR 12 that i also have through cascade port 1 on the
Bay unit and the internetworking port on the back of the 3com unit. main
goal: to make the P-350 my main linux netowrk server with my own web
hosting at some point and email hosting with dual or possibly quad token
ring going out to the network and having a singular ethernet AMD PC-Net II
(IBM badged) PCI for Ethernet going out to the router and out to the
broadband cable modem. i even went out and found the nifty yellow ethernet
cables (CAT5) that have soft rubber strain relief boots on them (really
nice and professional looking and obtained free). =)
-John
Note: next goal is to toss narrow SCSI into the linux box (it is still
partially built) and maybe have dual 9 gb or quad 4.x gb drives in it.
----------------------------------------
Founder, Lead Writer, Tech Analyst
and Web Designer Boff-Net Technologies
http://boff-net.dhs.org/index.html
---------------------------------------
If interested, you may watch the Apple-1 auction action here:
http://www.vintage.org/special/apple-1/status.php
The auction starts at 8:00 AM PDT.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
On April 19, John Allain wrote:
> > Why do people use PeeCees, again? Pathetic, indeed.
>
> I encoded some family geneology into set of frame HTML
> pages once. It turned out to be something line 600 small html
> files, 300 KBytes or so. When I went to put it on a floppy, it
> took over 30 Minutes to write!
>
> Pathetique!
So everyone's complaining about PeeCees, but some people are still
using them. THIS is what I don't understand.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
On April 20, Sridhar the POWERful wrote:
> > My mistake...it was my impression that z/Architecture is very similar
> > to that of ESA/390, more so than the other evolutionary steps in the
> > S/360->S/390 family architectures.
>
> 64-bit addressing, twice as many instruction formats. That's a pretty big
> change. The change from ESA/370 to ESA/390 wasn't that drastic.
Ok, I must've been thinking of something else. The original point
stands, however, that these are mainframe architectures.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
Hello,
I'm trying to install Warp 3 Connect on my 9577 from floppies. I made
the floppies from the cd-rom, but when I try to install it, I don't get
the network options to choose. It's as if I didn't even have a network
card installed. I have a 3Com 3C529-TP
Does it have to be installed by cd-rom to get network support? The
manual doesn't seem to mention floppies, only the cd-rom.
Help!!!
Chad Fernandez
Michigan, USA
On April 20, Sridhar the POWERful wrote:
> > Umm, I have to disagree with you there...the machines in question are
> > indeed of a mainframe architecture, and some IBMers were calling them
> > "servers" many years before the zSeries was even an itch in IBM's
> > pants.
>
> That's a mighty big itch.
Yes.
> > Regardless of what industry buzzwords the marketroids are trying to
> > take advantage of...those machines implement the S/390 architecture,
> > which is a mainframe architecture descended from mainframe
> > architectures.
>
> Actually, those machines don't implement ESA/390. They implement z/Arch.
> But z/Arch definitely evolved from ESA/390 R4.
My mistake...it was my impression that z/Architecture is very similar
to that of ESA/390, more so than the other evolutionary steps in the
S/360->S/390 family architectures.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
> On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Sellam Ismail wrote:
>
> > Try MSNBC.
>
> I find their journalism a bit too yellow too. I tend to
> watch the BBC world news.
I used to prefer ITN World News, with Daljit Daliwahl,
but lately, it's not being carried locally. And I can't
seem to find the streaming version on their web site...
-dq