Ten Year Rule

Well here's something that the last time it was made was around 1993. It's about as classic as you can get. I had an idea to get my old Rainbow based FidoBBs (circa 1986) running again by hooking it up to the net via DECServer200/MC and reverse Telneting into it. I looked round for a copy of FIDO_DEC, found one but NUSQ would not unsqeeze it. Finally I found my way to Tom Jennings (The guy who wrote Fido) website. Total shock and horror!! All of the sources and backups had been trashed in a computer crash around 1993. So most of what he had done from 1983 to 1993 was a heap of smoldering ruins. The sources (or what's left of them) are freely available on his web site. Rebuilding hardware is one thing but software, well that's another! Regards Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell Sent: 24 November 2009 20:45 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Ten Year Rule I have a similar problem looking on E-bay. Eay (at least the UK one) has a category of #vintage computing'. I really have diffuclty classing 72 pin SIMMs and Pentium motherboards as 'vintage'... I would really hate it if this list became a mostly old PC (or Mac) list. IMHO there are better places to discuss such machines (no, I don't know hwere said places are). Another random thought... Some years ago I was a memer of a computer clu which has a 'hardware and old systems SIG'. THose two interests were grouped togther not just because there was one member who hacked hardware and also ran old systems (I wonder who that was ;-)), but also because it was successfully argued that if you wanted to run an old system you pretty much has to know enough about hardware to fix it yourself, and conversely an old system (even then) was something that you _could_ fix properly (you know, with a soldering iron and 'scope...) Perhaps the criterion for classicness should be that the machine is treated at a much lower level than 'The DVD-ROM goes in here and then you click here' sort of thing. 12 (octal) = 10 (decimal) (Sorry couldn't resist, I spand far too much time working in octal, and no I am not missing 2 fingers) -tony