2 Mar
2013
2 Mar
'13
10:21 a.m.
------------------------------
On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 3:45 AM PST Alexander Schreiber wrote:
the answer to what Alex. whether the worm would attack car Commies, Cocos or Sinclairs? I
already know that answer thanks.
On Fri, Mar 01, 2013 at 09:36:24PM -0800, Chris Tofu
wrote:
okay that is a good point. but I'm sure all those were still woefully in the
minority
Well, back then the internet was a much more
open, trusting environment.
And even back then, _proper_ system setup safeguards (limiting access to
rsh/rlogin, enforcing strong passwords, ...) could have severly limited
the spread of the worm.
C: Not to mention that probably every internet host on planet earth was running UNIX.
No. There were plenty of other systems, among them VAXen with VMS and
others. ??? Was the
worm supposed to attack Commie 64s? Coco's? Those vile Timex Sinclairs?
If you'd bothered to read a bit, you'd know the anser. Kind regards,
Alex.
PS: Fix your quoting, having to repair it is annoying.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
2 Mar
2 Mar
3:08 p.m.
Would this thread please die? What we've learned from this interminable,
er, "discussion":
Tony doesn't like RPi. Not surprising, it seems Tony doesn't like much
beyond early HP calculators, and only if misspelled. (Note: what's
generally considered the first "real" spell checker was created in 1971,
on the PDP-10 at SAIL. Early work goes back to the late 1950s/early
1960s. Is that sufficiently vintage?)
Some people are very confused about computer security.
Some people are very confused about computers that don't run MS-Windows.
Really, they exist, and many of them are quite useful. Some of them came
before MS-Windows. I can point you at some books about this. With
pictures, if needed.
And... that seems to be about it. Can we move on, please? -- Ian
5:25 p.m.
Yes, please.
--
Wil
On Mar 2, 2013 6:17 PM, "Ian King" <IanK at vulcan.com> wrote:
Would this thread please die? What we've learned
from this interminable,
er, "discussion":
Tony doesn't like RPi. Not surprising, it seems Tony doesn't like much
beyond early HP calculators, and only if misspelled. (Note: what's
generally considered the first "real" spell checker was created in 1971,
on the PDP-10 at SAIL. Early work goes back to the late 1950s/early
1960s. Is that sufficiently vintage?)
Some people are very confused about computer security.
Some people are very confused about computers that don't run MS-Windows.
Really, they exist, and many of them are quite useful. Some of them came
before MS-Windows. I can point you at some books about this. With
pictures, if needed.
And... that seems to be about it. Can we move on, please? -- Ian
3 Mar
3 Mar
12:37 p.m.
Would this thread please die? What we've learned from this interminable,
er, "discussion":
Tony doesn't like RPi. Not surprising, it seems Tony doesn't like much
That is rather unfari. Note that I have no moaned about it being a single
chip, or the use of USB, or... Just that I can't see what the real point
of it is.
beyond early HP calculators, and only if misspelled.
(Note: what's
That is totally incorrect. On-topic things that I like include old HP
calculators, old HP computers, PDP8s, PDP11s, PERQs, BBC Micros (and
related machines like the ACW), Philips P800 machines, etc, etc, etc.
Off-topic things inlcude Nikon F and F2 cameras, MPP cameras, old
telephones, glassfets, Myford lathes and cats.
generally considered the first "real" spell
checker was created in 1971,
on the PDP-10 at SAIL. Early work goes back to the late 1950s/early
1960s. Is that sufficiently vintage?)
Now all I have to do is find soembody who will give me a PDP10.
-tony
2:11 p.m.
On Sun, 3 Mar 2013, Tony Duell wrote:
That's simply because you hadn't gotten that far yet. I have ZERO doubt
in my mind that you'd get there eventually.
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!
Would this thread please die? What we've learned from this interminable,
er, "discussion":
Tony doesn't like RPi. Not surprising, it seems Tony doesn't like much
That is rather unfari. Note that I have no moaned about it being a single
chip, or the use of USB, or... Just that I can't see what the real point
of it is.
2:44 p.m.
On 03/03/2013 03:37 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
...
You could run simh on a Raspberry Pi..
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
Would this
thread please die? What we've learned from this interminable,
er, "discussion":
Tony doesn't like RPi. Not surprising, it seems Tony doesn't like much
That is rather unfari. Note that I have no moaned about it being a single
chip, or the use of USB, or... Just that I can't see what the real point
of it is. generally
considered the first "real" spell checker was created in 1971,
on the PDP-10 at SAIL. Early work goes back to the late 1950s/early
1960s. Is that sufficiently vintage?)
Now all I have to do is find soembody who will give me a PDP10. 
4 Mar
4 Mar
3:26 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote on Sun, 3 Mar 2013 20:37:31 +0000 (GMT):
The project's creators have told the story many times, but have yet to
reach a wider audience so this is a fair comment. Here is what they
claim:
Comparing the the group of students applying for computer science at the
University of Cambridge in 2005 with those who had applied in 1995 they
noted that there were half as many and that they didn't know how to
program while those in the older group did. This seemed odd given that
the younger generation had grown up in a world where computers were so
much more common, but the cheapest computers in the first half of the
1980s cost $100 and were practically useless for anything except
programming in Basic while the cheapest computers in the first half of
the 1990s cost $2000 and didn't have a built-in language, but did have a
huge software library.
The $2000 PC was a complete system, while the $100 computer was just the
machine itself, but the comparison isn't totally unfair if you could
find the rest for "free" around the house, like a TV set and a tape
recorder. So the point of the Raspberry Pi is to give today's children
what the 1995 group had had and the 2005 didn't and see if they could
reverse the trend they had observed. If they machine is also interesting
to other people and for other reasons, then so much the better. But none
of those other reasons are the point.
A great way of seeing what the project is all about is to read the
magazine dedicated to it:
http://www.themagpi.com/
One great way to miss the point is to focus on technical issues. It
doesn't matter at all that some other boards have better features or
offer a better value. Like the Arduino, this is about the community
around the product much more than about the product itself.
-- Jecel
Tony
doesn't like RPi. Not surprising, it seems Tony doesn't like much
That is rather unfari. Note that I have no moaned about it being a single
chip, or the use of USB, or... Just that I can't see what the real point
of it is. 
5:57 p.m.
New subject: BS about "changes in cost of cheapest machines" (Was: Raspberry
On Mon, 4 Mar 2013, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote:
Comparing the the group of students applying for
computer science at the
University of Cambridge in 2005 with those who had applied in 1995 they
noted that there were half as many and that they didn't know how to
program while those in the older group did. This seemed odd given that
the younger generation had grown up in a world where computers were so
much more common,
but the cheapest computers in the first half of the
1980s cost $100 and were practically useless for anything except
programming in Basic
citation, please
$100 did NOt buy you anything that could run CP/M, MS-DOS, Apple-DOS nor
ANY other operating system.
It could be [and often WAS] argued that the cheapest "usable" computer
in the first half of the 1980s was $2000. Compaq got their start by
advertising $2800 V $3800, other clone companies were pushing
$2000 V >$3K for "name brand".
while the cheapest computers in the first half of
the 1990s cost $2000 and didn't have a built-in language, but did have a
huge software library.
citation, please
My MOTHER was able to find a mass-marketed machine with drive and OS for
$500.
While WE would prefer having language in ROM,
by the 1990s, you could run any languages from disk.
Yes, there were things for $100 in the 1980s that could claim to be a
computer.
NO, there were PLENTY of machines in the 1990s well below $1000
You are comparing bottom-of-the-barrel scrapings of 1980s
with upper-end 1990s. The same identical bottom of the barrel still
existed in the 1990s, and the same $2000 had previously existed in the
1980s.
The CHANGE that you claim to observe is simply that in the 1980s, you were
interested in the $100 machines, but in the 1990s, you ignored them, and
refused to acknowledge the existence of anything less than $2000.
The computer market changed MUCH LESS than YOU did.
OTOH, it IS true that over time, more and more crap has been discarded.
There were no computers on the curb on trash day, and now there are.
If you accept the validity of USED stuff, then I can cobble together used
crap with less looking around now than then.
A friend was desperate for an emergency replacement of his laptop.
So, I got FIVE Dell 5150s for $300. Now there is a suitable "internet
terminal" lying around my mothers house for her, family, and friends to
casually use, and some that can be taken to the beach, etc.
(Note: Dell 5100, 5150, 5160, etc. have ABSOLUTELY no relationship to the
machines of the same model numbers from IBM. Well, "5150" still applies
as "a danger to oneself or others", and is a better sounding model number
than "Section 136 of the Mental Health Act")
The $2000 PC was a complete system, while the $100
computer was just the
machine itself, but the comparison isn't totally unfair if you could
find the rest for "free" around the house, like a TV set and a tape
recorder.
What WE have around the house hasn't changed.
You are basing a comparison on what YOU have lying around.
I had video monitors before the TRS80 came out, and I still do.
I could cobble together a machine from DISCARDS then, and I can do it now.
Saying that there is a qualitative difference between then and now is
absurd.
So the point of the Raspberry Pi is to give
today's children
It's ZX80 time.
You CAN do wondrous things.
Or, you can bemoan the "need" for fancier crap.
WHY can't they just say, "it's FUN! and you can cobble together the rest
of what you need to make it usable from the crap that is lying around"
And THAT is fun, too!
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
6:29 p.m.
New subject: BS about "changes in cost of cheapest machines" (Was: Raspberry
Jeez, buddy, try to keep the YELLING to a minimum. NO, MOTHER, PLENTY. USED, ABSOLUTELY.
Etc. etc.
citation, please
$100 did NOt buy you anything that could run CP/M, MS-DOS, Apple-DOS nor
ANY other operating system.
It could be [and often WAS] argued that the cheapest "usable" computer
in the first half of the 1980s was $2000. Compaq got their start by
advertising $2800 V $3800, other clone companies were pushing
$2000 V >$3K for "name brand".
while the cheapest computers in the first half
of
the 1990s cost $2000 and didn't have a built-in language, but did have a
huge software library.
citation, please
My MOTHER was able to find a mass-marketed machine with drive and OS for
$500.
While WE would prefer having language in ROM,
by the 1990s, you could run any languages from disk.
Yes, there were things for $100 in the 1980s that could claim to be a
computer.
NO, there were PLENTY of machines in the 1990s well below $1000
You are comparing bottom-of-the-barrel scrapings of 1980s
with upper-end 1990s. The same identical bottom of the barrel still
existed in the 1990s, and the same $2000 had previously existed in the
1980s.
The CHANGE that you claim to observe is simply that in the 1980s, you were
interested in the $100 machines, but in the 1990s, you ignored them, and
refused to acknowledge the existence of anything less than $2000.
The computer market changed MUCH LESS than YOU did.
OTOH, it IS true that over time, more and more crap has been discarded.
There were no computers on the curb on trash day, and now there are.
If you accept the validity of USED stuff, then I can cobble together used
crap with less looking around now than then.
A friend was desperate for an emergency replacement of his laptop.
So, I got FIVE Dell 5150s for $300. Now there is a suitable "internet
terminal" lying around my mothers house for her, family, and friends to
casually use, and some that can be taken to the beach, etc.
(Note: Dell 5100, 5150, 5160, etc. have ABSOLUTELY no relationship to the
machines of the same model numbers from IBM. Well, "5150" still applies
as "a danger to oneself or others", and is a better sounding model number
than "Section 136 of the Mental Health Act")
The $2000 PC was a complete system, while the
$100 computer was just the
machine itself, but the comparison isn't totally unfair if you could
find the rest for "free" around the house, like a TV set and a tape
recorder.
What WE have around the house hasn't changed.
You are basing a comparison on what YOU have lying around.
I had video monitors before the TRS80 came out, and I still do.
I could cobble together a machine from DISCARDS then, and I can do it now.
Saying that there is a qualitative difference between then and now is
absurd.
So the point of the Raspberry Pi is to give
today's children
It's ZX80 time.
You CAN do wondrous things.
Or, you can bemoan the "need" for fancier crap.
WHY can't they just say, "it's FUN! and you can cobble together the rest
of what you need to make it usable from the crap that is lying around"
And THAT is fun, too!
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
5 Mar
5 Mar
12:26 a.m.
New subject: BS about "changes in cost of cheapest machines" (Was: Raspberry
On Mon, 4 Mar 2013, Roe Peterson wrote:
Jeez, buddy, try to keep the YELLING to a minimum. NO,
MOTHER, PLENTY.
USED, ABSOLUTELY. Etc. etc.
If I were your buddy, then you would have learned the DIFFERENCE
between yelling and emphasis by now.
EVERY example that you listed was emphasis. <- THAT is emphasis.
LEARN THE DIFFERENCE! <- THAT is yelling.
Single case machines, which were the norm before you were taught
your prissy jingoistic misguided parody of etiquette, could have
been designed to be all lower case, OR ALL UPPER CASE. Do you know
why they chose UPPER CASE?
Will you think that we are yelling at you if we explain it?
Or, do you deign to tell us that emphasis is the same as yelling?
DO NOT TELL US NOT TO YELL!
THAT is the only way to ensure that you will be yelled at.
OB_Irrelevant_Computer_Trivia: What prissy reporting of activities
half a century ago, at the school that I later taught at for 30 years,
were responsible for IBM using the term "planar", instead of
"motherboard"?
Hint: it included some emphasis, but mostly yelling.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
6 Mar
6 Mar
5:33 p.m.
New subject: BS about "changes in cost of cheapest machines" (Was: Raspberry
On 3/5/13 12:26 AM, "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
On Mon, 4 Mar 2013, Roe Peterson wrote:
Is THAT why Teletypes seemed so loud? :-)
I think in addition to cctalk and cctech, we need a third list - ccrant?
-- Ian
Jeez, buddy, try to keep the YELLING to a
minimum. NO, MOTHER, PLENTY.
USED, ABSOLUTELY. Etc. etc.
If I were your buddy, then you would have learned the DIFFERENCE
between yelling and emphasis by now.
EVERY example that you listed was emphasis. <- THAT is emphasis.
LEARN THE DIFFERENCE! <- THAT is yelling.
Single case machines, which were the norm before you were taught
your prissy jingoistic misguided parody of etiquette, could have
been designed to be all lower case, OR ALL UPPER CASE. Do you know
why they chose UPPER CASE?
Will you think that we are yelling at you if we explain it?
4 Mar
4 Mar
6:54 p.m.
New subject: BS about "changes in cost of cheapest machines" (Was: Raspberry
On 03/04/2013 08:57 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
Both wrong. The threshold was not 100 dollars then is was more like 299-399
and then you had a starting point. All the 100$ stuff were limited rom
and ram
SBCs though they could be useful. The key is raw compute horse power it
easily
a 2-4mhz cpu against 300-800mhz or more and 8bits vs 32.
Clones were 1984 and after. The first half of the 1980s was either
Apple, TRS80,
or some flavor of CP/M machine as the IBM PC was not widely available
until 1982
and expensive, oh and slow. Myself I had DEC LSI-11 as well with disk.
FYI in 1981 you could get any number of single board Z80 based cP/M systems
and have build a machine around it for under 1K.
The floor for useful machines
was in the $399 range. At that time 2K
got you
a fairly well loaded 386 or 486box.
Unless your definition was color, and disk must be there. Then 2K
wasn't enough.
Played with a ZX80 and it was a very useful machine for its price and time.
They days toys have USB and Ethernet and run linux.
On Mon, 4 Mar 2013, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote:
> Comparing the the group of students applying for computer science at the
> University of Cambridge in 2005 with those who had applied in 1995 they
> noted that there were half as many and that they didn't know how to
> program while those in the older group did. This seemed odd given that
> the younger generation had grown up in a world where computers were so
> much more common,
I designed my first microprogrammed machine in 1980. What I
see is
the kids have no concept of the underlying hardware. They don't have to
write assembler as even visual basic code is fast enough and ram is not
an issue now. They may be skilled but lack depth of understanding.
but the cheapest computers in the first half of
the
1980s cost $100 and were practically useless for anything except
programming in Basic
citation, please
$100 did NOt buy you anything that could run CP/M, MS-DOS, Apple-DOS nor
ANY other operating system.
It could be [and often WAS] argued that the cheapest "usable" computer
in the first half of the 1980s was $2000. Compaq got their start by
advertising $2800 V $3800, other clone companies were pushing
$2000 V >$3K for "name brand". while the
cheapest computers in the first half of
the 1990s cost $2000 and didn't have a built-in language, but did have a
huge software library.
citation, please
My MOTHER was able to find a mass-marketed machine with drive and OS for
$500.
While WE would prefer having language in ROM,
by the 1990s, you could run any languages from disk.
Yes, there were things for $100 in the 1980s that could claim to be a
computer.
NO, there were PLENTY of machines in the 1990s well below $1000
By 1990 the base
PCxt class was under 1K. There were CP/M systems
for less. No shortage of machine going cheap. If you wanted hard disk
the price went up as the drives were $300 (and up) alone then and the
controller still more. But prices from 1990 to 1994 plunged as in that time
frame the XT (8088) class machine and the AT (286) were passed over by
the 386 and 486 32bitters.
You are comparing bottom-of-the-barrel scrapings of
1980s
with upper-end 1990s. The same identical bottom of the barrel still
existed in the 1990s, and the same $2000 had previously existed in the
1980s.
The CHANGE that you claim to observe is simply that in the 1980s, you were
interested in the $100 machines, but in the 1990s, you ignored them, and
refused to acknowledge the existence of anything less than $2000.
The computer market changed MUCH LESS than YOU did.
OTOH, it IS true that over time, more and more crap has been discarded.
There were no computers on the curb on trash day, and now there are.
If you accept the validity of USED stuff, then I can cobble together used
crap with less looking around now than then.
A friend was desperate for an emergency replacement of his laptop.
So, I got FIVE Dell 5150s for $300. Now there is a suitable "internet
terminal" lying around my mothers house for her, family, and friends to
casually use, and some that can be taken to the beach, etc.
;) cheap still usable
PCs are a dime (often free) a dozen now. its been
that way since about 1998. The generational turnover insured plenty
of used but still good hardware for free or cheap. the only machines
I'd ever bought new were a few EeePCs (701 and 901 running linux)
when they first came out as they were so cheap and oddly I still have
use for them.
(Note: Dell 5100, 5150, 5160, etc. have ABSOLUTELY no
relationship to the
machines of the same model numbers from IBM. Well, "5150" still applies
as "a danger to oneself or others", and is a better sounding model number
than "Section 136 of the Mental Health Act")
Me too,
real high res (for that time) black and white monitors, free as in
salvaged.
The $2000 PC was a complete system, while the
$100 computer was just the
machine itself, but the comparison isn't totally unfair if you could
find the rest for "free" around the house, like a TV set and a tape
recorder.
What WE have around the house hasn't changed.
You are basing a comparison on what YOU have lying around.
I had video monitors before the TRS80 came out, and I still do.
I could cobble together a machine from DISCARDS then, and I can do it now. Saying that there is a qualitative difference between
then and now is
absurd.
If anything cpu horsepower has plain gotten cheaper. PIC cpus for
a few dollars, Audrino, Beagleboard and Raspbury-pi are the low end
the middle is a ARM9 at 700mhz with touchscreen LCD, USB, Ethernet,
and even sound runinning full GUI linux for maybe $499 (and dropping).
$1500 gets you a Macbook pro.
One thing that is really cheap now and maybe what really stands out is
SOFTWARE.
Linux is essentially free, all the applications you'd likely need are there.
That is one difference from 1980, plainly a larger supply of software
free or paid for. But that was growing fast compared to even a year
before, 1979.
in 1981, $100 got you a SBC, $399 a bare bones TRS80/16k, $1000 a minimal
CP/M machine, $2000 a NS* Horizon(z80 4mhz). IBM PC was next year and
3900$
However TI 99/4A was sold out when and cost how much for the full show?
Hint base console was $49, with everything TI sold under $450, that was
with disk, games and even programming packages and various programs
to do real stuff. What year was that? hint (pre 1983).
I'm one of those that was first exposed and played with PDP-8 in 1969,
first on
line for the MITS Altair, and had the first hard disk in my NS* Horizon in
1980 (5MB!). and so on. I was there what was isn't wuite what you
(Jecel)
thought it was. Either that it was different in some remote country.
When I bought the altair as a kit there was no software, save for hand
coded
assembler. In less than a year there was multiple flavors of basic and a
few other
languages and the idea of mass storage was move ahead.
So the point
of the Raspberry Pi is to give today's children
It's ZX80 time.
You CAN do wondrous things.
Or, you can bemoan the "need" for fancier crap. WHY can't they just say, "it's FUN! and
you can cobble together the rest
of what you need to make it usable from the crap that is lying around"
And THAT is fun, too!
I can! Its fun then and still fun now.
Fred, We old folks were there and I can say I had fun and still do.
Allison
8:40 p.m.
New subject: BS about "changes in cost of cheapest machines" (Was: Raspberry
On 03/04/2013 06:54 PM, allison wrote:
;) cheap still usable PCs are a dime (often free) a
dozen now. its been
that way since about 1998. The generational turnover insured plenty
of used but still good hardware for free or cheap. the only machines
I'd ever bought new were a few EeePCs (701 and 901 running linux)
when they first came out as they were so cheap and oddly I still have
use for them.
I splurged around Christmastime and bought my first NEW "barebones" PC
in perhaps 6 or 7 years--I paid $159 for motherboard, memory, CPU and
case and DVD drive. Before that I'd used a castoff Socket 478 system
with 2GB of memory that I got for nothing--all it needed was a simple
motherboard trace repair. The display was a circa-2000 NEC 20" LCD
display, that needed some minor repairs in the PSU--I got that for
nothing as well. In 2000, it would have set you back about $4000.
It was a continuation of a pattern--I used to cruise the alleys for
discarded radios and later, TVs for parts.
All of my keyboards in daily use are surplus Model Ms--the one I"m
currently using says "Wang" on it.
So all told, I had less than $100 in that rig.
The new bare-bones PC is less than impressive to me. It's got a
quad-core 3GHz AMD CPU in it running some flavor of Ubuntu. A
Virtualbox session is loaded with XP for those things that Ubuntu can't
accommodate. It's okay, but I can't claim to be more productive with it
than the old box. I recently splurged for a couple of refurb NEC 19"
($70 shipped) displays, not for "work", but for musical
transcription--I can have a transcription program up on one display and
the other with a manuscript on it near my (MIDI) keyboard.
The point is that there's hardware out there for almost nothing if you
know what you're doing. The main advantage of an RPi is that it's ready
to go and inexpensive. It may not advance your learning much, however.
As others have observed.
Compare that with my first 8-bit "hobbyist" setup--a MITS 8800 kit with
8KB of shaky TI DRAM and no peripherals for $1000 1975
pre-hyperinflation dollars. I was excited to have it, even though my
day job involved working with multi-million dollar supercomputers, to
which I had pretty much unfettered access. That was interesting, but
the little MITS box was interesting in a very different, much more
intimate way. I'd been scheming about how I was going to make an 8008
machine (and before that my own CPU design), had written a
cross-assembler and emulator for one and then had my life changed by the
8080.
Go spend, what $30 on a Digilent 80 MHz PIC32 implementation of an
Arduino board. You've easily got a couple or more orders of magnitude
more processing power than that 8080--and more interesting peripherals
and memory.
Computing has never been so cheap.
Don't like the current architectures? Spend somewhat more and buy an
FPGA devkit and design your own--you don't even have to know how to
solder and the development tools are free.
Computing has never been so easy.
--Chuck
7 Mar
7 Mar
6:06 a.m.
New subject: BS about "changes in cost of cheapest machines" (Was: Raspberry
On Mar 4, 2013, at 8:54 PM, allison wrote:
However TI 99/4A was sold out when and cost how much
for the full show?
Hint base console was $49, with everything TI sold under $450, that was
with disk, games and even programming packages and various programs
to do real stuff. What year was that? hint (pre 1983).
The only time I recall a 99/4A selling for that kind of money was when TI was clearancing
them off to get out of the home computer market. My dad bought one from K-Mart for $310
right before they cut the price on them, and that was certainly not the highest price they
sold the base console for. The PEB and all the peripherals were mad money, considering you
could buy a CP/M machine or perhaps an IBM PC for similar money once you put all the
pieces together.
5 Mar
5 Mar
9:50 a.m.
New subject: BS about "changes in cost of cheapest machines" (Was: Raspberry
Fred Cisin wrote on Mon, 4 Mar 2013 17:57:09 -0800 (PST):
Isn't this what I had said?
but the
cheapest computers in the first half of the
1980s cost $100 and were practically useless for anything except
programming in Basic
citation, please
$100 did NOt buy you anything that could run CP/M, MS-DOS, Apple-DOS nor
ANY other operating system. citation, please
My MOTHER was able to find a mass-marketed machine with drive and OS for
$500.
While WE would prefer having language in ROM,
by the 1990s, you could run any languages from disk.
Was it a Commodore Amiga? Things like that were indeed available, but
were on their way out. So you are right - I was oversimplifying the
situation.
You are comparing bottom-of-the-barrel scrapings of
1980s
with upper-end 1990s. The same identical bottom of the barrel still
existed in the 1990s, and the same $2000 had previously existed in the
1980s.
The CHANGE that you claim to observe is simply that in the 1980s, you were
interested in the $100 machines, but in the 1990s, you ignored them, and
refused to acknowledge the existence of anything less than $2000.
The computer market changed MUCH LESS than YOU did.
That is not entirely true. I designed very low cost computers at the
time and so did pay attention to what was happening in Brazil, the USA
and the UK (with some difficulty). I did not have any data for the rest
of the world (except bits and pieces from Japan).
OTOH, it IS true that over time, more and more crap
has been discarded.
There were no computers on the curb on trash day, and now there are.
If you accept the validity of USED stuff, then I can cobble together used
crap with less looking around now than then.
No, I don't count used stuff. I have no problem with it myself and
several of my work machines were given to me by people who were going to
throw them away. But I have a lot of experience with poor people (an
important part of my intended market) and they prefer to not have a
computer at all than to get something that isn't the very latest. So
while a new $12 computer (an 8 bit Nintendo videogame inside a computer
keyboard) instead of a $20 Pentium 4 PC from 2004 is an amazingly stupid
technical choice, it is the most popular one.
Another issue is the lack of uniformity in used machines. I have been
trying to help in a project to reuse computers siezed by the local
government from illegal gambling rings. Inside the machines are regular
PCs, but with lots of different processors (Pentium II to more modern
stuff), lan cards, disks and so on. Installing a simple Linux on them to
run something like Scratch for the children is a lot of work, and
getting it done on one machine doesn't help much with the next. In the
end, it takes up more than $35 worth of our time.
WHY can't they just say, "it's FUN! and
you can cobble together the rest
of what you need to make it usable from the crap that is lying around"
And THAT is fun, too!
But that is exactly what they do say.
By the way, I should explain to the several people commenting in this
thread that I am Raspberry Pi's *competitor*. So while I think I do
understand them, I obviously don't fully agree with them. And I started
designing computers and processors in the late 1970s while in high
school, so I did participate in some of this history and am not someone
who just read about it years later.
-- Jecel
6 Mar
6 Mar
2:30 p.m.
New subject: BS about "changes in cost of cheapest machines" (Was: Raspberry
> > but the cheapest computers in the first half
of the
> > 1980s cost $100 and were practically useless for anything except
> > programming in Basic
> citation, please
> $100 did NOt buy you anything that could run CP/M, MS-DOS, Apple-DOS nor
> ANY other operating system.
On Tue, 5 Mar 2013, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote:
Isn't this what I had said?
NO. Not in the context of comparing it as "cheapest 1980s" to $2000 as
"cheapest 1990s" for a "complete" machine WITH operating system.
citation,
please
My MOTHER was able to find a mass-marketed machine with drive and OS for
$500.
While WE would prefer having language in ROM,
by the 1990s, you could run any languages from disk.
Was it a Commodore Amiga?
The CHANGE
that you claim to observe is simply that in the 1980s, you were
interested in the $100 machines, but in the 1990s, you ignored them, and
refused to acknowledge the existence of anything less than $2000.
The computer market changed MUCH LESS than YOU did.
That is not entirely true. I
designed very low cost computers at the
time and so did pay attention to what was happening in
Brazil, the USA
and the UK (with some difficulty). I did not have any data for the rest
of the world (except bits and pieces from Japan).
I agree completely that many things were different geographically.
THAT is not the issue being discussed.
No, I don't count used stuff. I have no problem
with it myself and
several of my work machines were given to me by people who were going to
throw them away. But I have a lot of experience with poor people (an
important part of my intended market) and they prefer to not have a
computer at all than to get something that isn't the very latest. So
while a new $12 computer (an 8 bit Nintendo videogame inside a computer
keyboard) instead of a $20 Pentium 4 PC from 2004 is an amazingly stupid
technical choice, it is the most popular one.
That is, indeed, sad.
Another issue is the lack of uniformity in used
machines. I have been
trying to help in a project to reuse computers siezed by the local
government from illegal gambling rings. Inside the machines are regular
PCs, but with lots of different processors (Pentium II to more modern
stuff), lan cards, disks and so on. Installing a simple Linux on them to
run something like Scratch for the children is a lot of work, and
getting it done on one machine doesn't help much with the next. In the
end, it takes up more than $35 worth of our time.
Refurbing can be a fun hobby. It is not particularly practical as a
business venture, unless you have some special deals to take advantage of.
WHY can't
they just say, "it's FUN! and you can cobble together the rest
of what you need to make it usable from the crap that is lying around"
And THAT is fun, too!
But that is exactly what they do say. By the way, I should explain to the several people
commenting in this
thread that I am Raspberry Pi's *competitor*. So while I think I do
understand them, I obviously don't fully agree with them. And I started
designing computers and processors in the late 1970s while in high
school, so I did participate in some of this history and am not someone
who just read about it years later.
You obviously have been there.
However, your claim of cheapest machine shifting from $100 to $2000
reflects a change in focus on which segments of the market rather than a
change within the market.
a few random data points:
1978 TRS80 $400 (however, admittedly more commonly purchased at $600 with
monitor and cassette)
1981 5150 $1280 (or ~$2000 to $3000 with minimal drives, RAM, monitor)
1990s generic CRAP $500 complete, decent quality fading from the scene
2013 Poladroid on Woot for $50 (Android 2.x 8GB tablet), although most
such devices are ~$100 to $150
If we were to compare RPI to machines with case, keyboard, monitor, and
peripherals, then we need to include those costs in the RPI side.
"Have those lying around" can apply to BOTH sides of any comparison, and
needs to be stated as one of the parameters of the comparison.
1979 TRS80 fully functional with drives, etc. $2000
1979 TRS80 with scrounged/third party parts ~$1000
1979 TRS80 bare $400
1981, 5150 complete and functional from IBM was ~$2700
1981 5150 using "have those lying around" (RAM, drives, monitor, etc.) ~$1700
1981 5150 bare $1280
1985 Mac ~$3000
1985 Mac using scrounged stuff ~$3000 - NOT AN OPTION.
1985 Mac bare ~$3000 (Macintosh was not amenable in the 1980s to cutting
any corners on cost)
How did YOU get cheapest 1980s $100/cheapest 1990s $2000?
Citation, or data points, please! Howzbout the specific examples?
The only way that I can see would be comparing completely different
categories of machines while ignoring machines in the other categories,
or concentrating on a market segment that I can't pick out.
WHICH category went up from $100 to $2000?
NOTE: in general, with plenty of exceptions, the price within a category
did not change anywhere near as much as the capabilities.
Price of RAM for a machine didn't change anywhere near as much as
capacity. It seems that 16G now costs what 16K used to.
If the price per unit goes down, the industry is better off increasing the
number of units than lowering the price.
OTOH, hard drives did come down in price ($2000 for 5M V $150 for 2TB),
and keyboards came down from $300 to less than lunch.
But, with speed and capacity increases, Boyle's law says that MS^H^H
system software will expand to fill all available capacity.
Yes, there are additional features - a simple piece of text takes longer
to produce, but now has dancing kangaroos and yodelling jellyfish - very
important for shopping lists, meeting reschedule memos, etc.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
7 Mar
7 Mar
12:43 a.m.
New subject: BS about "changes in cost of cheapest machines" (Was: Raspberry
On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 1:57 AM, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
On Mon, 4 Mar 2013, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote:
1977 for UK ?39.95. I still have mine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MK14 programmed in assembler
Comparing the the group of students applying for
computer science at the
University of Cambridge in 2005 with those who had applied in 1995 they
noted that there were half as many and that they didn't know how to
program while those in the older group did. This seemed odd given that
the younger generation had grown up in a world where computers were so
much more common,
but the cheapest computers in the first half of
the
1980s cost $100 and were practically useless for anything except
programming in Basic
citation, please $100 did NOt buy you anything that could run CP/M,
MS-DOS, Apple-DOS nor
ANY other operating system.
A computer is a computer regardless of OS or otherwise.
citation, please
My MOTHER was able to find a mass-marketed machine with drive and OS for
$500.
Cannot have looked hard
1980 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zx80
1981 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zx81 ?69.95 assembled, 1.5 million,
I call that mass market
Dave Caroline
9:31 a.m.
New subject: BS about "changes in cost of cheapest machines" (Was: Raspberry
>> but the cheapest computers in the first half
of the
>> 1980s cost $100 and were practically useless for anything except
>> programming in Basic
> citation, please
On Thu, 7 Mar 2013, Dave Caroline wrote:
1977 for UK ?39.95. I still have mine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MK14 programmed in assembler
["cheapest computer in the 1990s was $2000"!]
$100 did NOt buy you anything that could run
CP/M, MS-DOS, Apple-DOS nor
ANY other operating system.
A computer is a computer regardless of OS or
otherwise.
citation,
please
My MOTHER was able to find a mass-marketed machine with drive and OS for
$500.
Cannot have looked hard 1980 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zx80
1981 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zx81 ?69.95 assembled, 1.5 million,
I call that mass market
But the Timex would not have been suitable for her as a
word processor.
(Her computer needs are not the same as ours)
and either seems to refute "cheapest computer in the 1990s was $2000"
I still maintain that
"cheapest 1980s $100/cheapest 1990s $2000"
is either comparing two different categories of computers (as time
goes on, our interests do change), OR is looking at some very VERY
odd category of computers! (perfectly reasonable, IFF category is
identified!)
Either bare machine (including RPI) or "full system" are valid
subsets, but comparisons of them require appropriate adjustments.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
1:27 p.m.
New subject: BS about "changes in cost of cheapest machines"
Fred Cisin wrote on Thu, 7 Mar 2013 09:31:25 -0800 (PST):
I still maintain that
"cheapest 1980s $100/cheapest 1990s $2000"
is either comparing two different categories of computers (as time
goes on, our interests do change), OR is looking at some very VERY
odd category of computers! (perfectly reasonable, IFF category is
identified!)
Either bare machine (including RPI) or "full system" are valid
subsets, but comparisons of them require appropriate adjustments.
I agree completely - my original comparison was absurdly unfair. You
mentioned that our interests change over time, but so does what most
people want. In the same way I discounted used computers saying poor
people didn't want them (like all generalizations, I am sure it is easy
to find examples of people who did buy used machines), I also did not
take into account low end computers that were rejected by the general
public.
For example: in Brazil the low end in 1983 to 1985 were clones of the
Sinclair machines. In 1986/1987 these were still available in the
market, but most people who bought them did so due to ignorance (a
parent buying a machine for his kid and having no idea that a Sinclair
Spectrum and an Apple II had any differences, for example) and the real
low end were now the (much more expensive) MSX computers. By 1989 the
MSX were now the cheapest for sale, but people ignored them because they
wanted to run at home the same applications they used at work, and that
meant a PC.
Thanks, by the way, for the other very detailed reply. I should indeed
do a proper survey showing what was available each year and adjusting
the prices to take inflation into account. The bulk of my information
for the USA market in those years were from issues of Computer Shopper
(which I no longer have) and the ads at the back of Byte Magazine (which
I can dig out). I probably won't have time to do this in the next couple
of months, unfortunately.
I like to claim that my first real computer was the university's
Burroughs B6700, but of course that wasn't mine at all. Not counting
programmable calculators, my first few computers were: home built
videogame console with the Signetics 2650 processor (1979), Motorola
MEK6800D2 development kit (128 bytes of RAM, 1980), Sinclair ZX81 (USA
version, 1982), Texas Instruments TI99/4A (1982), home built Apple II
clone (1984), Apple 128K Macintosh (soon expanded to 512K, 1986),
Unitron Turbo Mac 512 clone (1988), generic 386 40MHz PC (1993). I still
have about half of these. There were also the machines I designed
myself, some of which can be seen here:
http://www.merlintec.com/swiki/hardware/album.html
-- Jecel
4 Mar
4 Mar
6:34 p.m.
One great way to miss the point is to focus on
technical issues. It
doesn't matter at all that some other boards have better features or
offer a better value. Like the Arduino, this is about the community
around the product much more than about the product itself.
That's exactly it.
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!
9:43 p.m.
On 3/4/13 6:34 PM, "geneb" <geneb at deltasoft.com> wrote:
+1 or more - Ian
One great way
to miss the point is to focus on technical issues. It
doesn't matter at all that some other boards have better features or
offer a better value. Like the Arduino, this is about the community
around the product much more than about the product itself.
That's exactly it.
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!
6:06 a.m.
On 2 March 2013 23:08, Ian King <IanK at vulcan.com> wrote:
Would this thread please die? What we've learned
from this interminable,
er, "discussion":
Tony doesn't like RPi. Not surprising, it seems Tony doesn't like much
beyond early HP calculators, and only if misspelled. (Note: what's
generally considered the first "real" spell checker was created in 1971,
on the PDP-10 at SAIL. Early work goes back to the late 1950s/early
1960s. Is that sufficiently vintage?)
Some people are very confused about computer security.
Some people are very confused about computers that don't run MS-Windows.
Really, they exist, and many of them are quite useful. Some of them came
before MS-Windows. I can point you at some books about this. With
pictures, if needed.
And... that seems to be about it. Can we move on, please? -- Ian
[Guffaw] Excellent summary. Well put!
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884
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