<Nice! Why have I never seen an aluminium slide rule?
No idea, here in the lat 60s and early 70s they were one step better than
plastic but not as expensive as the bamboo or mahogany ones.
<Also, for the benefit of us non-Americans, what approximate age is "high
<school"?
approx 15-18 years.
<At school slide rules were the only permitted calculating machines in
<maths classes up to age 16 in my day (academic year 1982-83)
In the late 60s and early 70s slide rules were permitted where the
calculated value was part of the answer for geometry, trig and calculus
90% of a given problem was the work and 10% the actual numeric result.
In the technical (EE world) it'was expected you knew how to run a
slipstick and answers were expected to be accurate to three places
plus correct exponent. I was the first one to bring an electronic
(pocket almost) calc but I still kept a 7" stick for quick trig
functions.
<boot sale - still in box with plate glass cursor. I also have a special
<purpose cardboard one with two slides that is meant to calculate the
<flow of water through pipes of various sizes, materials and gradients.
I still have a few special ones including a plasticized paperboard one
for coil spring design.
The 15" I have is good to 5 places on the left and 4 on the right for
basic finctions, trig and logs were good to 4 and 3 places.
Allison
-----Original Message-----
From: Philip.Belben(a)powertech.co.uk <Philip.Belben(a)powertech.co.uk>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Saturday, February 07, 1998 2:09 AM
Subject: Re: slipping sticks
>>>No, I do not have _my_ high school/college slide rule, which was a
>>>magnificent 12" yellow aluminum Pickett with a hard leather case and a
belt
>>>loop. ...
>
>Nice! Why have I never seen an aluminium slide rule?
Almost ALL Pickett Slide Rules are aluminium.
[snip/snip]
>>>700+ units. Me, I have 30, including a 7 foot long Pickett classroom
rule.
>
>Wow! On a 7 foot rule you should be able to get four sig. figs without
>too much interpolation anywhere along the length. Or are the markings
>too coarse for that?
The 7' rule is simply a blown up version of a 12" rule. Everything 7 times
bigger. Sure, you can estimate a bit better, but you wouldn't really want
to try to calculate with this thing. Its massive!!
PS: Brand new Pickett ES500 rules (quite nice model) can be had for US$25 at
the Gemmary.
Tell them I sent you ;)
Cheers
Andrew
Andrew,
> PS: Brand new Pickett ES500 rules (quite nice model) can be had for US$25 at
> the Gemmary.
Who? Where? Seriously, I've never heard of the Gemmary - can you give
a bit more info?
$25 is reasonable for a nice slide rule, I agree.
Philip.
> My friend (and I, for that matter), would never condone software piracy,
> in all seriousness. However (again, hypothetically speaking of course)
> my friend would have a lot of trouble understanding how posessing and
> running an old, obsoleted version of VMS would bring harm to anybody or to
> any organization. He might also be very disappointed that there were no
> available inexpensive hobbyist licenses available, which, if one existed,
> he would certainly jump at and support with his own hard earned money,
> quite happily.
If your hypothetical friend lives hypothetically in the United State of
hypothetical America, he might, hypothetically, spend some time searching
http://www.dejanews.com/ for the original hypothetical hobbyist VMS
license announcement, which would (hypothetically) include a URL pointing
at a place to obtain a hypothetical CD-ROM distribution. Your hypothetical
friend would then, hypothetically, be reduced to finding someone willing
to copy said hypothetical distribution files to hypothetically blank
TK50s (hypothetically, some extra work would have to be done to build
a hypothetically bootable standalone backup tape as well).
I'd supply the URL, but I don't have it handy and I don't recall it offhand.
Roger Ivie
ivie(a)cc.usu.edu
<Is there a difference between a DecStation 3100 and a VaxStation 3100?
<saw some of each today at one of my favorite money pits (escaped for unde
<$200 today!). Are they Vaxen or something else? I'm not too interested
<(I'm an HP 3000 guy).
DECstations is MIPS (R4000 I think) cpu and VAXstation is VAX powered.
What do they get for the oddball SCSI-68 to SCSI-50 cable
Allison
Uncle Roger <sinasohn(a)ricochet.net> wrote:
>Does anyone know of a MS-DOS (pretend it's a 10yr+ old version) compatible
>backup program that can handle a SCSI DAT drive? I have *not* been able to
>find one. If you know of one, would you know where to find a copy now?
I use a circa 1992 "ASPITAPE.SYS" driver I got from Compuserve to drive
SCSI DAT and Exabyte under MS-DOS. I even had a 'tar' that worked with it.
I'll find them and send to you in e-mail if you like.
It was made by Greg Shenaut. In the docs his e-mail address is listed
as marva4!gks1!greg(a)ucdavis.EDU . Now there's a blast from the past,
if you want to keep this thread on topic and explain e-mail in the Old Days.
<You're in high school right? Is there any chance that when you graduate
<you'll want to come out to California to work for me? I don't know if yo
Hi, I'm interested... ;) Around MA they want a PHD to hack stuff like
that now.
Right Now I'm hacking a DEC vt180 z80/cpm card to run stand alone
(without the vt100 case and power), Z280 design and a PC keyboard to
ascii translator (8749 or 8742) to fit my needs for the z280 system.
Fortunatly it's not a dead skill.
Allison
<Here's a completely hypothetical situation for you:
Here I'll make it simpler. Your can get (US residents currently)
For free a decus basic membership, then get a VMS hobbiest license.
Now, for a modest $30 you can get a CDrom with VMS versions 5.4 though
V6.1 on CDrom for hobbiest use. (Current is either 7.1 or 7.2).
So if you happen to find an old vaxen with VMS and a valid key it's
likely cool. If you need a key for said beast you know where to get
it(www.decus.org). The CDrom would be read/bootable on a vax (VMSfile
system) so a RRD40/RRD50 or scsi compatable CDrom for a VAX is needed.
now if you didn't have said CDrom drive but had the disk someone with
a vax can cut a tape from it or just give you the savesets for any
version from 5.4 through 6.1 and you would use the DECUS provided
hobbiest license key.
<Would anyone care to venture a hypothetical answer? :)
Was the above hypothetical enough.
<Also -- no longer speaking hypothetically! -- let's say that I (myself)
<wanted to get a distribution of NetBSD on TK50 tapes. Is there anyone
<in the group who could send it to me, in exchange for fresh virgin blank
<TK50 tapes? Unfortunately I have no way of writing the available TK50
<images to tape myself, or I would.
Check with the crowd on the PORT-VAX list. (check the NetBSD web page
for help).
Allison
