Perhaps not, but the zeal borders on religious - and equally without factual basis. (No disrespect to any religion: the fundamental premise of any religion with which I'm familiar is faith, i.e. belief in that which is not proven.) Fact: CERT reports just about as many exploits for Linux-derived systems as Windows (at least, that was the data I researched back when I was in grad school three or four years ago). There is a lot of argument (again, mostly rather zealous) about which OS has the more "serious" vulnerabilities, but in any event they ARE flaws. Fact: The most commonly seen causation for crashes in either Windows or Linux-derived operating systems is defective device drivers. Interestingly, the two operating systems approach this differently. Windows preemptively crashes: the logic is to return the machine to a known state. Linux tries to keep going, which may result in an inexplicable error later on. One can argue the merits of either approach, and I'm sure many do. Fact: I have a large box filled with 'Software Revision' release publications for RSX-11. (Hey look, I got it back to vintage systems!) Microsoft is not the first operating system vendor to issue patches and patches to patches and.... I'm not sure why it seems more "egregious" with one vendor than another - except that there is a tendency to bash "corporations", despite the fact that the majority of corporations are small, privately held companies. Opinion: I thought Microsoft operating systems were getting better and better, until Vista. I hope they'll get it right with Windows 7 and get back on an upward trend. However, I will say that it wasn't just Vista, but also the poor quality of PC hardware (three motherboards in one year?) that drove me to Macs. I really like my PowerBook G4, not only for its convenience and reliability but also because it's dead sexy. I recently replaced my desktop (supporting four monitors) with two Dual G4s (each running two monitors and sharing the keyboard/mouse through Synergy). Function wins. Disclosure: I worked for Microsoft for a dozen years. (I don't anymore.) When I worked at Microsoft, I did not like Vista and persisted in running XP on my company-issued laptop. In fact, for a while before I left I ran Ubuntu at home, until I grew weary of replacing not-inexpensive PC components and fighting compatibility issues (in a commoditized marketplace!). Now, since I don't work there anymore, no one bothers me about my PowerBook - since I've "taken off the collar", people have stopped expecting me to be an apologist - or seeing me as some kind of heretic. It's just a computer. These days, I've been spending a lot of my time on VMS on a VAX-11/780-5, using CMUIP as the networking layer. THAT will give you a sense of perspective. Hey, backups are done - I need to go finish reassembling this TU56 for a PDP-8/e.... -- Ian

[snip] It's useful to use Linux and its derivatives (Red Hat, Debian, etc.) as a focus point for the conversation, because (a) there is a reasonable amount of information regarding its characteristics and (b) IME it's usually the Linux folks who tout their superiority the loudest. I like Linux well enough, but - well, it really does feel more like religion than technology some days. Maybe that's why I mostly use OpenBSD. :-) We have a TC08 for this one (actually, two units, but I'm short a 725 power supply). Rebuilding its 721 power supply was 'interesting'. DEC was quite 'clever' in the way it assembled it, which meant it was a headache to dismantle and reassemble, especially since I'm shooting for historical authenticity. I have a TU56 and TD8E in my personal collection, but my TU56 doesn't have the G888 encoders. :-( I keep looking... and may just have to make my own one of these days. -- Ian

ISTR it's five of them, one for each data channel. They're a single-height with one IC and some transistors, and traces only on one side of the board. That's old school. :-) -- Ian

Dave McGuire wrote: Interesting, the right transport of my TU56 was acting up last week. I originally thought it was the dual voltage controller, but it was OK on the bench. After trying a couple of times it magically began to work. There was either a bad solder joint or it was a bad connector. After that I went through the adjustments and got rid of all the tape slap on the left drive. I had gotten used to using the right drive because the tape slap on the left was so bad. I agree. So what can you do with a TC08 that you can't do with a TD8e? I would like to have a TC08 also, but with OS/8 it does not gain me much function. Or does it? I would like to get an RTS/8 system running. I have several digital I/O boards and would like to have some analog too, but I haven't come up with a system to control. -chuck

IMHO that's the worst tpye of fault. You can never know a fault has been fixed until you've found the fault and corrected the problem. If it fixes itself, you can't do that (you can't find a fault that's not there at the time),. but it will come back, problably at the least convenient time.. -tony