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101090 discussions

by retro＠retrobits.com

Hello everybody, I'm a reasonably new member of the list. I've been collecting vintage computers for about a year now, and have decided to put up a web site dedicated to vintage computing. The website is located at: http://www.retrobits.com I'd like to ask for your help in completing a survey. Here are the details: I'm going to launch the first edition of retrobits.com on March 15th. In that edition, I'd like to include an article about collecting vintage computers. It would be helpful to include a wide variety of people's experiences with collecting - therefore, I'm inviting you to fill out a brief survey about vintage computer collecting. If you have the time and can participate, you'd really help me out, as well as helping out other folks who are interested in collecting (or just getting started). If you would like to respond, please send the responses directly to me to avoid cluttering the list (unless you believe others in the list would be interested in your responses, in which case, go for it!). My e-mail address is: retro(a)retrobits.com Note: I will NOT give out your e-mail addresses to anybody, period, end of discussion. If you'd like to be credited by name for your participation in the survey, let me know and I'll be happy to do it. Here are the questions: 1: Why do you collect vintage computers? For instance: nostalgia, programming, historical interest, gaming 2: Where do you collect vintage computers? For instance: thrift shops, garage sales, eBay, other auction sites 3: What advice would you give someone just starting out collecting? For instance: what to avoid, how to restore dirty/broken systems Extra credit: I'd be really interested to hear what computers people collect (e.g., micros or minis, brands, age range) Thanks in advance for your participation! Look for the first results on March 15th. As more responses come in over time, I'll upgrade the collecting area on the site with the additional details! Earl Evans

26 years, 1 month

Kids computers

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<Old Pentium class computers make excellent kids computers. But if you're Whats wrong with an old 386 or 486 box? I have a 386sx/16 running W95 and despite what you might believe it's a decent quick and dirty printserver to a HP4L. Another 286sx/25 has a ISA based logic probe and analog card in it. I have two 486DX2/66 one running NT4/SP4 on 4.3gb and the other running Linux (RH5.2) on 500mb, both are a kick to use and perform surprizingly well. Both support SVGA 1mb, have networking and CDrom. Don't put down those older and often free to cheap 386/486 boxen. When did pentium become the required cpu? Allison

26 years, 1 month

languages

by mtapley＠swri.edu

<several discussions of America's educational system snipped> ....So that's why we home-school, which pretty much sums up *my* opinion. Hmm... what's the ideal home-schooling computer? I want the kids to own the computer, be able to learn languages (Pascal, C++, Forth, open to suggestions, as well as Japanese, Russian, etc.), be able to do science projects with it, be able to word-process but not necessarily spell-check, be able to run good educational software. I'm already biased towards a Mac Plus (and own one), but certainly ready for suggestions. NeXT? MicroVax 3100? Cost, hardware and software, is a factor, of course. I'm *hoping* this is an on-topic question, in as much as classic computers are cheaper and simpler but demand more of the user to make work properly and therefore make better learning tools than current machines; if the answer is a new wintel box or a new iBook, I'd still like to hear it but I'd like to hear it off-list. TIA, - Mark

26 years, 1 month

languages (Teachers)

by edick＠idcomm.com

Allison, I believe you've been sold a bill of goods. First of all, look at what a teacher has to do for his/her education and later for his/her salary as compared, say, to an engineering student. From what I've observed myself, and even more so from what I hear from my boys, both in college, the workload in a typical week for an engineering student adds up to about what an education major does in a semester. Secondly, he doesn't have to look forward to those 7 20-hour-day work-weeks for the next ten years, and he knows that he needn't worry about being fired, laid off, or much of anything else that would rock the boat. Sure, he gets about $45K after ten years, rather than the 60-75K the engineer will get, but he only has to work a 6-hour day, and he only has to do that 183 days a year to get full salary and, ultimately a generous pension. Secondly, look at the quality of those individuals. These are people who didn't do so well in high school, mainly due to lack of ambition and diligence, didn't want to work too hard in college, and, of course, couldn't get into a good college. Fortunately, a good college isn't required. On top of that, he's chosen a niche in which he only has to work a 6-hour day, and he only has to do that 183 days a year to get full salary and, ultimately a generous pension. Of course he's not into it for the money. He doesn't want to work hard enough to earn a lot of money. Dick -----Original Message----- From: allisonp(a)world.std.com <allisonp(a)world.std.com> To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Date: Friday, March 10, 2000 1:38 PM Subject: Re: Re: languages (Teachers) >On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, George Rachor wrote: > >> >>> On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, sjm wrote: >> >>>> lazy (everybody has a teacher horror story to tell). But those who >> >>>> stand out in my mind were the genuine heros. They were IN to what >> >>>> they did. They LOVED the kids. They latched on to us and energized >> >>>> us and really taught us. They made us solve problems, they made us > >True. > >My father was a construction contractor and used to have several teachers >that worked for him during the busy summer months so they could make >what my mother did as a LPN (2years college). > >When I left DEC I looked at teaching, I needed a masters in teaching over >any technical degrees and could expect to make 10-20thousand less a year. >It's pretty sad that that the average teacher has 4-6 years of college >education and makes less than the average person with that kind of time in >a technical degreee. > >Allison > >

26 years, 1 month

languages (Ebonics)

by Hans.Franke＠mch20.sbs.de

> I use dialect in some of my writing, but there are certainly purposes and > occasions where it is inappropriate. In those, I would use standard > English. Here in New England we speak differently, although the > dialect is not as extreme as BEV, an is mostly pronunciational. Notice > how media insists on a standard pronunciation, that's why all our local > tv new readers sound like foreigners. It's really amusing to hear them > try to say Quonnochontaug for the first time. Same her in Germany, but considering the practice in (German) Swiss TV, where interviews are DOUBBED or SUBTITELED in Standard German, we are still on the good side. They realy sub title them ... it's always a strange thing - hearing a person speaking German (Well, Schwitzerduetsch) and tead German subtitles ... Belive it or not, they are not just adding them when guy's from the behind the forest are interviewed, but always. That's Strange! H. -- VCF Europa am 29./30. April 2000 in Muenchen http://www.vintage.org/vcfe http://www.homecomputer.de/vcfe

26 years, 1 month

More Docs available online (including 1960 EI plans)

by af-list＠wfi-inc.com

Hi, A few more things added. I put up the rest of the RT-11 System Reference Manual (Appendix), the RT-11 System Message Manual, and jpeg color scans of the 1960 Electronics Illustrated article "Build An Electronic Computer" in the "Miscellaneous" document section. I have a few more things to OCR, including the RT-11 Software Support Manual, Fortran Notes, etc. In the next few days... www.retrobytes.org Cheers, Aaron

26 years, 1 month

Kids computers

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<Well, wait some more years - my 20 year old is still ok with her K5-100. Gee and I gave in and bought a P166/mmx when my 486dx board died. Still runs dos/W3.1 though. Can't run one of the FPGA tools under W95 so I don't. Allison

26 years, 1 month

The C programming language

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<I've been noticing the same thing when going source diving in the Linux <kernel and lots of other places. I think 5% would be a pretty generous <guess there (unless you count all the copyright crap and credits), most of <the time there isn't a single comment anywhere on the screen I'm looking at Minix a simpler teaching OS that is unix like is likely the most liberally commented code I've seen, maybe 5%, 10 if you wrap the book around it. <If you can lay your hands on unstripped sources to DEC PDP-11 OSes, <they're really nice examples of well-commented assembly language (no I'm <not kissing ass, I haven't seen the full RT sources so I wouldn't even know I have seen RT11 bare and commented. Bare is readable, the commented stuff is something more, much more. It covers the wacky why'd the do that stuff. <that interests me, and even then half the time I just have to fill it with <printfs and recompile to see what it actually does, since I can't figure <out what it's *supposed* to do. I do that with Coldfusion (web server middleware), Qbasic4.5 because the debugers (if they exist) arent able to tell me what I want the way I want it. Allison

26 years, 1 month

Copying directory trees under VMS.

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

> How do I get it to copy the whole *tree* in a directory or on a >disk to a whole other part of the system? COPY DISK$IN:[INDIRECTORY...]*.*;* DISK$OUT:[OUTDIRECTORY...] For doing whole disks, I prefer to use BACKUP. Tim.

26 years, 1 month

languages

by edick＠idcomm.com

The concept of immersion makes sense to me. I came to the U.S. in '52 with nary a word of English under my belt. I was admitted to the local school system in first grade, regular classes, with no interpreter anywhere in the building. That was PS49 in the New York school system. I was later moved to PS20 where even fewer folks spoke German fluently. Within 6 weeks my performance was improving to such extent that my language skills were to a state in which they were not perceived by the teachers to be an impediment. It didn't hurt that there were lots of Yiddish-speaking merchants in the neighborhoods through which I walked to and from school. Yiddish is quite similar to German and certainly makes conversation easier. Note that I said it took 6 weeks to "catch on" and not the seven or eight years it typically takes here with the ESL/ESOL programs. If a person has no reasonable alternative, particularly if that person's young and flexible, and not fet a bunch of SH*T from the community and from the government, he/she can learn enough to get by in school, which is more than what's needed to "get by" in life. I think it's the motivation, not the age, though. If an adult is motivated to communicate effectively, the road isn't long, though it may be harder than for a kid. Dick -----Original Message----- From: Aaron Christopher Finney <af-list(a)wfi-inc.com> To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Date: Thursday, March 09, 2000 3:52 PM Subject: Re: languages > > >On Thu, 9 Mar 2000, Mike Ford wrote: > >> California has made the correct choice in dropping the whole english as a >> second language program in favor of english immersion. The sooner you learn >> english and become proficient, the better students do in general. This >> isn't to say that ebonics or any other cultural language doesn't have >> merit, but points out the peril of "too much" local control in a polical >> setting. This is like offering "creation" as an alternative to "Darwin", >> the problem being once you declare "God created the heavens and earth" you >> have branched off from the next 10 years of scientific education to a path >> that leads to what? > >I don't know...Canada (ok, I'm biased a little being Canadian) allows for >official provincial languages outside of the national official languages, >French and English. It's a neat system, which I think provides a lot of >flexibility for subcultures to preserve their language/history. I'm >definitely not one of the "Speak English or Get Out" crowd. > >As far as evolution/creation (oh boy, here we go), I think the problem >with their original idea of teaching both disciplines fell short right at >the place where they had to rectify the problem you mentioned, which >simplifies to the question of where a "safe" re-entry point was in the >continuum of Science for those who went apostate and chose Creationism >over Darwinian Evolution... >

26 years, 1 month

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