At 09:54 AM 2/6/98 -0800, you wrote:
>Heheh. So true, unfortunately. The other extreme is the
>fat-pud-who-eats-while-he's-hacking stereotype and then the
Ever see "Cloak and Dagger"? Y'know the
fat-pud-who-eats-while-he's-hacking character who gets killed? I got into
a couple of fights because people said that that was me...
P.S., I think real hacking is basically just a strong sense of curiosity,
coupled with a need for adventure. A lot of people go rock climbing or
skydiving or skiing or what-have-you to get their adrenalin flowing, and
some get that same rush from getting a tricky program working (Like that
web page generator I wrote a couple weeks ago) or from getting a circuit up
and running.
I think innovation comes not necessarily from a desire to innovate, but
>from running out of challenges that have been done before. The first time
you write a "hello world" program, it's great. But pretty soon, that, and
G.P.A. average programs and Tetris-clones get to be old hat, and hackers
start looking for new challenges, only there's nothing left they can say
"hey that's neat, I think I'll try and do something like that" and they
have to find something like "Hmmm... what if I used that thing to make
doing this thing easier..." and voila, you've got Visicalc or whatever.
P.P.S. warezloosers are just liquor store robbers in disquise. Doesn't
take much intelligence to copy MSWord on to a CD or upload it to an FTP
site.
P.P.P.S. For them what was interested in my web page generator, I'm working
on documenting it and will put it up on the web Real Soon Now.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.crl.com/~sinasohn/
At 04:55 PM 2/5/98 -0700, you wrote:
>Anyone know where there's a good IBM program and/or doc archive that
>goes back beyond last month? Really into the 80's Looking for original
>PC stuff...
IBM has one -- internally. I was just e-mailed some good info on the IBM
9075 PC Radio's I have in response to form I filled out on their web site.
(Sorry, I don't know where...)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.crl.com/~sinasohn/
I've had my eye on a little toy Panasonic, improved sinclair clone.
Anyone know what's inside? It's silver with a nice keypad, letters with
basic functions, tape port, tv port, etc. and 32k
Can't remember the name off hand.
Just wanted to know before a spend the whole 6 dollars. (yeah, I'm
becoming a bit of a baby).
But I coould pull down the Apple ][ + with a Z80 card....
I'm leaning towards the Z80.... but it's twice the price : -}
-Mike
Well, you need a ProFile interface card :)
That's going to be hard to come by. If you are an extremely persuasive
person, you may be able to get one from Sun Remarketing (www.sunrem.com),
but you'll have to talk 'em into it.
The cable is simply a DB25-DB25 straight through.
Kai
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard A. Cini [SMTP:rcini@email.msn.com]
> Sent: Friday, February 06, 1998 5:41 PM
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
> Subject: ProFile interface/cable needed
>
> I just got a ProFile /// hard drive off of eBay. What is the interface
> card
> that I need for it?
>
> Rich Cini/WUGNET
> <nospam_rcini(a)msn.com> (remove nospam_ to use)
> ClubWin! Charter Member (6)
> MCP Windows 95/Windows Networking
> ============================================
>
>
>
>
I just got a ProFile /// hard drive off of eBay. What is the interface card
that I need for it?
Rich Cini/WUGNET
<nospam_rcini(a)msn.com> (remove nospam_ to use)
ClubWin! Charter Member (6)
MCP Windows 95/Windows Networking
============================================
Is there a difference between a DecStation 3100 and a VaxStation 3100? I
saw some of each today at one of my favorite money pits (escaped for under
$200 today!). Are they Vaxen or something else? I'm not too interested
(I'm an HP 3000 guy).
Anyway, the place I saw them is called HMR Global Recycling. They
basically take a *HUGE* warehouse full of old PC's and Macs and ship them
overseas everyday. But they also sell some stuff to the average joe. It's
mostly as-is, especially for the odder stuff. They have the DEC stuff,
plus some Sparc stuff, misc. Apple (mostly mac) stuff, and the occassional
wierd thing.
Sometimes they have good prices, and sometimes they don't; it depends on
who you talk to and how they're feeling. You go in, look around for what
you want, then find someone to tell you how much they want for it. There
is no set pricing, or anything, they seem to make it up as you go. They're
open to negotiation; I am generally able to talk them down a bit.
Anyway, today I picked up:
4 DB25-Cen50 SCSI Cables (HP) $2.50 ea
5 Mac Mice $6.00 ea
10 Mac Appletalk kits MIB $2.50 ea
4 250MB 3.5" SCSI HD's $17.50 ea
1 6 HH drive ext SCSI case $20.00
1 HP 9114 disk drive $10.00
and the best of the bunch...
1 GRiD Compass 1101 $15.00
Anyway they have a web page (not much, last time I checked) at
<http://www.hmr-usa.com/>, and they're located on 23rd St., just East of
3rd, near Army (or Ceasar Chavez for the tourists.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.crl.com/~sinasohn/
<>> The name hacker has been dragged through the mud for far too long.
<>> There's almost no real record of the 1st and 2nd generation hacks. (1
<>> were the hacks at MIT. 2nd were those at Berkeley and elsewhere, who
<>> adjusted the Hacker Ethic to allow for making money. 3rd are the
<>> present-day warez loosers. [They're here for refrence. Technically,
Being one of the first generation hackers...
Some of my better hacks was blueboxing and using it to call MITS about
hardware bugs. The college dorm pay phone that always gave money back
(the trick was truly hiding the diodes used so TPC didn't find them
easily). Running a VLF (160khz) site, using FM on CB in the early 70s
when it wasn't full of "breaker breaker". Though the three 12v car
batteries used to power the 26v line on G's minuteman missle computer
in the early '70s was pretty crufty. Sending 4800 baud data through a
repeater while a principle engineer from RCA was telling us it couldn't
be done. It can be handy not knowing you can't. ;) Sometimes it was as
silly as putting a speaker to the link lamp of a PDP-8 front pannel and
coding music. By the early '80s hacking was going to disrepute as the
tech wars style came in. Early hacking was serious doing it on zer0
budget, the technically difficult with bailing wire or the subtle
application of brute force. Most of all hacking was doing it with minimum
docs and piecing the picture from it's smoke signals.
that was hacking as I knew it. the last remnents I see todat is people
talking about getting an old PDP-8 or 10 and using a modern IDE disk so
they can power it up and run it affordably.
Allison
I forget who wrote half of this, but here goes:
> Isn't PGA Pin-Grid-Array? (It's probably wrong, but hay....)
[...]
> You sure this isn't PGA?
PGA = Professional Graphics Adapter, as Kip Crosby so rightly pointed
out. When I was at IBM this was called PGC (C = Controller).
FWIW, the PGC was three circuit boards bolted together, the two outer
ones going into adjacent slots of an XT motherboard. It had an 8088 as
graphics coprocessor, and did 640 x 480 x loads of colours.
But back to the original question,
> I'm sure my 3270pc handles a "better" quality CGA. It just looks like
> EGA, thought it was... It was running a version of Norton Utes and it
> was just beautiful turquoise blue set and clear characters.
>
> I'd have to think this was better than CGA, especially since it took two
> coupled long cards to run the video...
>
> -Mike
No, it isn't PGA. (Although most of the chips on the cards are likely
to be PGAs, in IBM custom metal cans, as I recall...)
The IBM 5272, the 3270PC display, was a very nice monitor. I don't know
the pixel resolution, but I'd guess at 800 x 400. Unfortunately, AFAIK,
it only did 8 colours.
The 3270PC display card did TEXT MODES ONLY - it was aimed at emulating
the 3279 terminal. You could buy two add-on cards for it that went in
the slots either side in the motherboard.
1. The PS card. This provided emulation of the Programmed Symbols
option on the 3279. Very nice graphics, but only as a terminal, not as
a PC (although presumably you could have written PC drivers for it...)
2. The APA card. This provided support of the All Points Addressable
modes of the CGA. These CGA modes were displayed in the top lefthand
corner of the screen. And the only 8 colours reduced the capability
somewhat as well.
It looked very good, but AFAIK IBM never supported it properly. Pity.
Later IBM released the 5370 series machines. These included the
3270PC/G and the 3270PC/GX. These had full graphics capability, the G
on a monitor the same size as the 5272 (but with I think more colours);
the GX had a graphics coprocessor (5378) in a box the size of a PS/2
model 30 and a 19 inch monitor (5379) with lots of pixels (1280 x 1024 I
think, but could have been only 1024 x 768) and I don't know how many
colours (but might have been 64).
But your description of the 3270PC sounds like you've got only one of PS
and APA, alas.
Hope this helps
Philip.
<At 11:34 2/4/98 -0500, you wrote:
<>Texas Instruments was naming some of their calculators "SR" (for Slide
<>Rule) up until the mid-80's, at least. My first one was the SR-10...the
<>"wedge". $110, IIRC....Was that TI's first?
Not by a long shot. The first was in late '71 and went for about $140
(8bigit 4banger). I had one going into EE school.
Allison
