10 Dec
1998
10 Dec
'98
9:34 a.m.
I have a chance to speak with the designers of some of the machines in my
collection. But other than the basic "when was it intro'd, what are the
specs, what did it cost" stuff, what should I ask? What sorts of stories,
info, etc. should I be trying to preserve?
Thanks...
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.sinasohn.com/
10 Dec
10 Dec
10:18 a.m.
collection. But other than the basic "when was
it intro'd, what are the
specs, what did it cost" stuff, what should I ask? What sorts of stories,
info, etc. should I be trying to preserve?
Ask if they were trying to persue a specific market or application
class? Another may be what were some of the design goals?
Compupro for example made a lot of boards that did DMA on s100 and also
multimastering. This gave them a huge performace advantage (and ieee696
complience).
Allison
1:57 p.m.
On Thu, 10 Dec 1998, Uncle Roger wrote:
I have a chance to speak with the designers of some of
the machines in my
collection. But other than the basic "when was it intro'd, what are the
specs, what did it cost" stuff, what should I ask? What sorts of stories,
info, etc. should I be trying to preserve?
Which machines and what designers?
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Always being hassled by the man.
Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0
See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
[Last web site update: 12/07/98]
11 Dec
11 Dec
9:37 a.m.
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10 Dec
10 Dec
10:57 a.m.
> I have a chance to speak with the designers of
some of the machines in my
> collection. But other than the basic "when was it intro'd, what are the
> specs, what did it cost" stuff, what should I ask? What sorts of stories,
> info, etc. should I be trying to preserve?
Why did you use <insert CPU> instead of
<insert other popular CPU at the
time>? How long did it take to design? What was the indended market? What
was the actual market? Stuff like that.
Are you shure this is interesting ? I doubt. Why X was used
instead of Y has almost no meaning - Stories around - thats
the stuff I like (For example about the orgin of a cigarette
burn in the operator table of the 2002 in the Deutsches
Museum) and stories how they did id, how they fighted the
management, the technic, the supply, etc. (and I guess
these are also the stories that they like more to tell :)
Gruss
Hans
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
11:09 a.m.
One might ask two questions:
What was the largest techincal challange in bringing your device to
market?
What was the largest non-technical challange in bringing you device to
market?
George
=========================================================
George L. Rachor george(a)racsys.rt.rain.com
Beaverton, Oregon http://racsys.rt.rain.com
KD7DCX
On Fri, 11 Dec 1998, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
It was thus said that the Great Uncle Roger once
stated:
I have a chance to speak with the designers of some of the machines in my
collection. But other than the basic "when was it intro'd, what are the
specs, what did it cost" stuff, what should I ask? What sorts of stories,
info, etc. should I be trying to preserve?
Why did you use <insert CPU> instead of <insert other popular CPU at the
time>? How long did it take to design? What was the indended market? What
was the actual market? Stuff like that.
-spc (Wants to know why IBM forgot pull up resistors on the IRQ
controller ... )
11:27 a.m.
It was thus said that the Great Uncle Roger once
stated:
Yes, I think the historical context is important - which machines
did they compete against, who did they believe were their best customers,
what were they wrong about, why did they succeed or fail, and the
all important "Don't forget, at this time, XYZ hadn't been invented
yet."
- John
I have a chance to speak with the designers of some of the machines in my
collection. But other than the basic "when was it intro'd, what are the
specs, what did it cost" stuff, what should I ask? What sorts of stories,
info, etc. should I be trying to preserve?
Why did you use <insert CPU> instead of <insert other popular CPU at the
time>? How long did it take to design? What was the indended market? What
was the actual market? Stuff like that. 
12:13 p.m.
"Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner" <spc(a)armigeron.com> wrote:
-spc (Wants to know why IBM forgot pull up resistors
on the IRQ
controller ... )
Because they stupidly decided to make them
1) edge-triggered instead of level-sensitive
2) rising-edge-triggered instead of falling-edge-triggered
Thus, if they had pullup resistors they would tend to trigger by themselves.
Of course, this doesn't explain why they didn't have pullDOWN resistors,
or why they made those two stupid decisions in the first place.
Ugh! That's yet another reason why even though the IBM PC is technically
within the charter for this mailing list, I still refuse to consider it
a Classic.
Eric
11 Dec
11 Dec
6:22 p.m.
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10 Dec
10 Dec
8:56 p.m.
"Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner" <spc(a)armigeron.com>
Oh, pullDOWN. Okay. Sorry. I'm a software
guy, and it pains me to think
that just about every other computer ever made could share interrupts but
the PC. Makes writing of software just that more complicated.
Yes, but I'm not sure you grasp my point that the resistors are not enough
to solve the problem. They should have made the interrupts level-sensitive;
that is fundamentally what is required to make sharing them practical.
I can't imagine any sensible reason for making them default to edge-sensitive;
the 8259 is very flexible and can be configured either way. I can only
surmise that they had no clue and decided by flipping coins or throwing
darts.
Cheers,
Eric
9361
days inactive
9362
days old
9 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
allisonp＠world.std.com -
dastar＠ncal.verio.com -
eric＠brouhaha.com -
george＠racsys.rt.rain.com -
Hans.Franke＠mch20.sbs.de -
jfoust＠threedee.com -
sinasohn＠ricochet.net -
spc＠armigeron.com