In all seriousness, people, be careful when moving this stuff, and remember that mechanical physics can be either your best friend or worst enemy. Always plan out the move from beginning to end. In my early days I had one piece get away, but it did not go far, although it did leave a small dent on my van. These days, it can often take me a long time to unload a heavy piece from my trailer, because I move very slowly and carefully. That being said, I will now solicit for help this week end in Schenectady, where I will be unloading three Cybers plus a 400 Hz M-G set. I have already roped one person in, but another would be welcome. Food and drinks on me. -- Will

Curt wrote: Will wrote: I'm beginning to think Sridhar isn't the best schlepper-helper. :) Curt and Will are big. Sridhar is my size, that is, built like a stick ....

I was being nice. Eh, not really.

Evan Koblentz wrote: I'm stronger than I look, and I have a lot of experience with this sort of thing. Peace... Sridhar

On Tue, 12 Jan 2010, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: If I ever need to move a 360, I want the guy with experience.

You and me both. If you decommission it, they will come! -Dave On Jan 13, 2010, at 12:31 AM, Ian King wrote: -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 2:20 PM, William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote: In the woodworking groups, we talk about this stuff all the time. People frequently have wood shops in their basement and have to get new machines down the stairs. The only advice I can offer is what the woodworking people do. Frequently, they disassemble machines as much as possible. They remove motors and cast iron tables and carry the pieces to the basement. The other thing they do is use engine cranes. I have a fold-up engine crane and a flat trailer. I was able to move all of the big machines in my shop in about a day. It's scary seeing a 500lb machine suspended a couple feet in the air, but it works well assuming you've tied it up correctly. And it's only scary because you're risking the machine. You're not actually under it. The only drama I had was my own fault. I didn't realize (seems obvious now) that the 1000lb rating means different things for lifting straps, towing straps, and tie-down straps. I used the tie-down variety to lift an 80 gallon compressor (the size of a fridge). I lifted it onto the trailer, moved it, then lifted it off of the trailer and had it 2 feet from it's intended resting place when the metal part of the strap broke. Luckily, it only dropped an inch to the concrete and let down slowly as the strap unraveled. 10 minutes earlier, it had been 2 feet in the air. brian

Hey, you thought it was cool as well. -- Will

----- Original Message ----- From: "Mr Ian Primus" <ian_primus at yahoo.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2010 11:00 PM Subject: Re: Be careful handling computer racks Probably not, but the disk array would probably have been even more intact :-) Nico

On Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:54:12 -0800 (PST) Mr Ian Primus <ian_primus at yahoo.com> wrote: Two weeks ago I got a serve herniated vertebral disk when moving big piles of old computer magazines. It caused partial paralysis of my right leg. One day later I had some serious surgery. Fortunatelely the paralysis got better, but I still don't have full control back. Most likely the rest will take several months to heal. Full recreation is likely, but still questionable. All of this at an age of only 36 years. Once a friend got a big HP9000 H70 in a full height rack. When he unloaded it, it started to roll away because the rack was on casters. He didn't took this into account when planing unloading. The rack sliped and nearly fell on him. Once I got several nasty pyic inflammations on my hands through litle scratches in the skin. This was caused by working on an old MicroVAX filled with dust puppies. There must have been some nasty bacteria in the dirt inside the MicroVAX. Girls and boys: Be carefull with your body. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

Back when I was a kid, I worked for a computer rental house. We stacked IBM 5160s and 5170s on their side on a rack about 6' off the ground. I was pulling a bunch of them out for a job and dropped one 6' to the concrete floor. I jumped out of the way. The face broke off. But otherwise it was ok. It didn't even bend the case. brian

When I got my VAX 6660, it was on a pallet that was well on its way to being nothing more than kindling. As the poor delivery guy was trying to get it onto the lift gate and down, it listed seriously, and I wondered if we were going to lose either the machine or one of us! We got it down to the ground safely and wheeled it (on a pallet jack) into my garage. When it came time to move it into the house, I surveyed the two steps up from my garage to the basement with dismay. A friend came up with the idea of using a standard appliance dolly to move it. We secured the machine, tilted it over on the dolly's rollers and pushed it into the house on its side. Then came the job of picking it back up! We just could not get enough leverage to bring it up off the floor. Finally, I grabbed a floor jack, placed it under the spine of the dolly and angled the VAX up just close enough to the tipping point that the two of us could bring it the rest of the way up, without dropping it on its feet. Thank God those wonderful DEC casters took over from there.... -- Ian

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 01:29:51PM -0800, Mr Ian Primus wrote: My entry in this competition is when I moved my VAX 11/750 into my apartment. We were two people and had to move the machine up one flight of stairs. We removed blower, PSU and sides and put it on a hand truck. My friend took the handle bars and went first, and I pushed from below. It went very smoothly the first steps but then the stairs took a 90 degree turn it became impossible for me to put any force behind my pushing. Luckily for me my friend is related to the hulk and pulled the VAX _alone_ for the last four steps. I'm very glad he made it, because should he have lost grip, I would have had VAX on top of me. I also have an "anecdote" related to the original topic. In a metal factory where I used to work there was some big industrial machinery being moved. One part was weighing in at about a metric ton, and it too started slipping from a forklift. One of the workers stepped in and said "I got it". Well no one has ever "gotten" one metric ton. This guy was lucky, he only lost one arm. It is better to see a nice piece of equipment smashed than be smashed under it which is something I always try to remember. Cheers, Pontus.

On Wed, 13 Jan 2010, Chuck Guzis wrote: When I needed to find a place to put my SP2 frame I contacted my landlord (for the office in town I rent) and asked him about the floor loadings. He is a pretty nice guy (and, ok, my wife's uncle) and said the subfloor was concrete (even though I'm on the second floor) but it was only rated to about 500lbs/sqft. He then brought me a sheet of 3/4" ply which he put down in the middle of the floor for me - that I then placed the empty SP2 rack on, and slowly built the machine back up to its complete 2200lbs weight. I figure if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me... I guess it's not what you know, but who you know, right? - JP

I am not at all convincced about that. People have a wonderful self-repair system, classic computers tend not to. I'd rather suffer a major injory than loose an irreplaceable classic computer... And I always remember there are many more good hardware hackers (with more being created all the time) than there are of some of the machines we work on (with no more ever going to be produced). -tony

--------------------------------------------- Yeah really! PERSPECTIVE is very important in a hobby like ours. I've seen people get divorced over technical collections; I know one person who committed suicide (he was a slide rule collector -- it ate up his home and caused endless tension with his wife.) How far would I go for an extremely rare / old / valuable computer? Pretty far, but not if it would bankrupt me, cause me to lose my job, or cost me a spouse .... and certainly not if it required major bodily harm!!! Hopefully the previous responder was only joking.

I was not joking. I am deadly serious. I am not convinced about that either.... Even though I collect just about every service manual I can get my hands on, and know the value of good docuemntatinon, I am not convinced it's easier to make the machine f rom the schematics than the scheamtics from the machine. I've traced out schematics of all sorts of devices over the years. For a moderately complex macjhine, using nothing more than pen, paper, multimeter and a good pile of databooks, it takes me a couple of weeks normally. Given the official schematics and programming data for ROMs, etc, it would tkae me a lot longer than that to reconstruct the machine. -tony

FWIW, I have no desire whatsover to be 'normal'. I don;'t have a wife (spending my time with on the lathe or with a soldering irn probably has something to do with that...), I have no desire to have what you call a 'social life' if it's what I think it means. Put it this way, I've met many more _true_ freinds through my eccentric interests than most people seem to have. -tony

On 13 Jan 2010 at 15:57, Brian Lanning wrote: My wife recounts the tale of a friend who collected model airplane engines--and his collection was close to encyclopedic. When he suddenly died, other collectors mobbed his widow, looking for bargains. It so irritated and overwhelmed her that she had the whole collection carted off to the dump. Collectables are worth something only to other collectors of a like mind. And many non-collectors do not understand that mind. At the end of the day, it's just stuff. Be sure to pass it on to others before your personal "use by" date has expired or that you have some framework in place to dispose of it quickly. Your widow will bless your memory. Best regards, Chuck

A question I have asked on this list at least a couple of times, but have not asked in at least five years: How many serious collectors here have a will in place that takes care of their collection? Previous years have been zero - lets see if we can get at least three? A detailed note in your wife's or kid's or friends' possession DOES NOT COUNT. Why? Because that plan fails far too often. WAY too often. Real wills only, please. Everything else will be ignored. Answer on or off list, please. -- Will

I do. I don't see whether it's a "real will" as mattering that much. Just this year, two of the three folks mentioned in my will made noises about giving up (selling off) their collections, and the third publicly stated a lack of interest in acquiring more machines. So I suspect that if (when) I die suddenly, my wife will have just as hard a time getting rid of the machines as if I had just given her a not-quite-as-legal document telling her what I wanted done. There's still a real disconnect between plan and implementation, especially a few years down the road. Better to have some kind of plan than none, though. Vince

Have any of you actually tried to dispose of your collections NOW? If you can't dispose of you collection yourself, how do you expect anyone else to do so? I have a reasonable collection of Qbus PDP-11 systems, but there no longer seems to be any interest, especially in the RL01 / RL02 drives and packs. I am in Toronto. Within 6 months, I must dispose of this stuff or it will have to go to the dumpter. Is anyone interested? Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine

The collection probably fills a tightly packed 10' x 20' room (right now it is spread over 5 rooms. From my point of view, the software is the most important, although that fits on no more than a few DVDs and CDs, as well as an on-line copy that should certainly fit on the 1 TB drive in the PC - I run RT-11 under Ersatz-11 these days. Alas, no one seems interested in enhancements or fixing bugs in RT-11 and TSX-PLUS. I am losing interest in Y3K. Also a Logical Name Handler for RT-11, LN(X).SYS, which would be similar to the VMS Logical Name Search List. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine

That is why I have multiple copies of my website spread around with friends, and usually rip interesting (but of dubious future) sites. If the worse happens, the knowledge goes on.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave McGuire" <mcguire at neurotica.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 10:51 PM Subject: Re: Collections, was: Be careful handling computer racks I think the people with a small collection of large machines have an easier time disposing of collections then somebody like me with 1000's of smaller items. Would probably take a year or two of shipping a dozen items a week to get rid of it (asuming you sold it). I can see why people just junk it all to not have to deal with it, even if the stuff is worth money.

I have significantly >0 interest in anything that will make either my PDP11/04 or PDP11/34 happier :-) But - sadly being in Australia (Canberra) means that there are very very few oportunities to obtain anything. I do have a set of disk packs that may (or may not) have operating sytems on them :-) - Just need to fault find the RL01 drives I have to make them work again - in my copious spare time. At least I am blessed with a wonderful wife who is aware of my need to collect shiny things of all sizes, and hide them im my cave. And she is even happy to help build a carport for the car so it can live out of the rain :-) Doug Jim Brain wrote:

PS. Can one still find quality 8" DS/DD floppies around? Ben. just found this dont know the seller but seems like a fair price http://cgi.ebay.com/MEMOREX-SSDD-8-Flexible-Floppy-Disks-10x-8-inch-NEW_W0Q… $8.08 for a box of 10 sealed new disks + bout $10 shipping

On Jan 14, 2010, at 9:57 AM, Jerome H. Fine wrote: Good heavens. On what planet are SCSI drives rare? And on what planet are they inexpensive? At first (after picking myself up off the floor) I thought maybe you mistyped and meant "SCSI host adapters", which certainly are rare...but since they're far from inexpensive, that couldn't be it. To inject a little reality into this paragraph: SCSI drives are everywhere, while ESDI drives are comparatively difficult to find, and MFM drives are becoming somewhat difficult to find. For DEC machines, SCSI host adapters are rare and expensive, ESDI controllers are a bit more common and less expensive. RQDX3s are as common as dirt, with RQDX2 and RQDX1 boards less so but still not difficult to get. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

This is true. While they may be around, they are much harder to actually get. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Two can live as cheaply as one, for half as long. --------------------------

----- Original Message ----- From: "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:59 PM Subject: Re: small-cap SCSI was Re: Collections Old small IDE laptop drives are also a little hard to find in working condition at a resonable price. I am sure people with old SCSI machines in their collection are finding the drives are dying out, so the spares will be drying up sooner or later. Oddly enough even scrappers seem to want a bunch of money for small old SCSI and IDE drives, for me it is cheaper just to get a whole laptop or desktop with a drive then just the drive itself (same source). One other thing, people in the hobby for a long time (I am new to collecting starting around 2001 or so) will have things in storage they used to trip over that are now hard to find in the wild. If you throw enough money around you can still get anything you need, just makes it harder to do on a budget.

Zane H. Healy wrote: Amazing.. I have a pile of sub 1gb drives like RZ's in the 50-600mb range. Must be a local thing. Allison

At 9:46 AM -0500 1/15/10, Jerome H. Fine wrote: Allison, think about where you live. :-) Except for the stash of NIB RZ25's in my garage they're rare as hens teeth around here. Sort of like how PDT-11's are ultra-rare around here (I do have one), but common for you. Jerome, let me guess, they're out of old Sun workstations? That's where my stash of those is from. These are my primary drive for PDP-11's, but I also have a small stash of 100MB and 200MB drives a load of PS/2's about 12 years ago, but had saved the drives. Sadly/thankfully the swap meet is gone, and *ALL* of my junk dealer contacts have dried up in the past few years. Of course only one of my collection of Alpha's actually came from locally, and a fair amount of my DEC gear was purchased through a dealer. The other thing is, anymore I really don't have the money to spend on this junk. I can't, though I think it would work under Linux. I've used Linux and Solaris for reading PDP-11 SCSI drives. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

On 14 Jan 2010 at 20:34, Cameron Kaiser wrote: Really? Does that include "Macintosh SCSI"? Wasn't 250MB pretty much standard on the Performas? The local recycler must have crushed tons of the the things by now. --Chuck

On 15 Jan 2010 at 0:23, Teo Zenios wrote: Picked a 6200 off of Freecycle about a year ago. Other than scrapping it, what's it good for? The local recycler says they still get them. --Chuck

On 15 Jan 2010 at 1:00, Teo Zenios wrote: Sorry, my fumble-fingers; it's a 6100/60. Came with a 250MB SCSI drive. Probably even slower than the 6200. --Chuck

----- Original Message ----- From: "Cameron Kaiser" <spectre at floodgap.com> To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Friday, January 15, 2010 1:18 AM Subject: Re: small-cap SCSI was Re: Collections I have two 6100's, I like the one with the DOS compatible logo and the 486 PC card inside. Outside of the PC card novelty the early Nubus PPC is not too exciting other then the Radius 81/110 tower clone I have. My 7100/66 has a G3-240? card in it, not exactly a speed demon. You need a good 8500 or so PCI Powermac to make a G3 add-on worth messing with.

It makes a handy doorstop. Seriously, they and their relatives are probably the most unloved Power Macintoshes for many good reasons. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. -- Euripedes ----------------

Well I need real hardware first,how ever 18 bit adressing is ample for me, providing I have mass media that will last a few more years. I know nothing about what software or hardware is for the PDP 11 since it was never marketed as a personal product. Well I would like to get a OS and assember/linker/editor as basic software, but I have no idea cost or legal issues of said items. PDP 8 software I find on the web, PDP 11 stuff I don't think so. I am single user here,small is better. Thank you.

On Jan 14, 2010, at 1:31 PM, Al Kossow wrote: Yeah really. And what does its as-marketed application have to do with what people know about it? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

Jerome H. Fine wrote: I guess what it boils down to is what components you want to farm out to me, if you wish to sell part of your collection. Does the VT103 contain a VT100 terminal? Bookmarked until the next PC crash! How much free space? 48KB? This on my 'round tu-it' list for the spring. From just using a PC at home with XP, automatic updates seem to want you to reboot at least one a week.

I apologize for the SPAM words in the header - my ISP puts them there and I often forget to remove them!! Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine

On Jan 14, 2010, at 8:43 PM, Ben wrote: Why on earth do people use systems like that? Unbelievable. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:47:21 -0700 Ben <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote: Use Windows only for gameing. Use some Unix like Linux or *BSD (or MacOS X) for everything else. Where is the problem? Dual booting a PeeCee is't black magic. I stoped using Windows 17 years ago. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

On Jan 15, 2010, at 4:39 PM, Ben wrote: ??! I use X all day, every day, have for 20+ years...no problems here. WTF? Forgive me, but is this just a "this looks different from what I'm used to so I don't like it" situation? Ok you totally lost me here. Somehow getting some VHS tapes or downloading Linux disk images are mutually exclusive? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

Dave McGuire wrote: Most of them can be tamed by replacing the hordes of leaking electrolytic capacitors (wikipedia: Capacitor Plague) on the motherboard, then wiping the HDD and installing some form of Linux. It's worked three times for me... No guarantees for others, I just use *nix-type OSes because I don't like the swiss-cheese security (if it's even *that* good.. wire mesh probably has less holes) of Windoze. -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 07:57:20AM -0700, Richard wrote: *sigh* Windows isn't VMS, despite the rather obvious similarities between VMS and Windows NT kernel internals. The really annoying thing about Windows security is that Windows has all the fundamental kernel level infrastructure to be far more secure than standard Unix, with much more fine grained security and privilege separation. Only ... as far as I'm aware, this is pretty much unused, even by Microsoft. Probably because properly securing a workstation environment (and that is where most Windows machines are used) without putting it into so much of a straightjacket as to be useless is _hard_. And requires active thought at the design phase of the user land software. Look how long it took for most application vendors to more or less grasp the idea of a multi-user system on Windows ... And so convenience wins over security, again. Regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

Alexander Schreiber wrote: This is gonna be my last post on Windows here, honest. The above is true, at least for Windows up to XP. There was a legacy of code that assumed it had Admin privileges, and would not run otherwise. This caused Microsoft to decide to run users as Admins by default to maintain compatibility (and convenience) which at one time were paramount to security. This just encouraged more software to assume it could do anything, and so the cycle repeats. Windows Vista and Windows 7 are slowly breaking this trend. User accounts are no longer privileged by default. Registry and file accesses are virtualized, so bad apps that want to write to protected areas (like %windir%\system32, or the system registry hive) are told they *can* but the writes/reads are actually done to a different, safe location in the user's profile where possible, or denied where Microsoft has decided to put their foot down. This allows (most) bad applications to continue to run, while allowing the introduction of a much better security model for Windows. The intent is to winnow down the pool of these bad apps over time and eventually turn off the virtualization altogether. (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa965884%28VS.85%29.aspx). That is all, you may return to your regularly scheduled programming now. Josh

In article <20100118201538.GA2588 at mordor.angband.thangorodrim.de>, Alexander Schreiber <als at thangorodrim.de> writes: Right. In other words, it has absolutely nothing at all to do with Windows per se. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

What is it about this PDP-8/L that makes it so valuable, to a few at least? Ebay #230423600012 Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/

Mike Loewen wrote: It's slightly smaller than the PDP-8/I but compared to the e/f/m it offers the small neat flip-chips and lots of blinkenlights. I think that appeals to certain people (like me). Also they are less common than the e/f/m. I would want one, but that is to steep for me :) /P

On 15 Jan 2010 at 13:43, dwight elvey wrote: In today's JTAG/SPI world, how large a market would that be, Dwight? Don't forget that there's money paid up front to USB-IF for a VID: $4K annually (membership) or $2K every two years (non-membership). Not to mention the cost of USB-IF compiliance testing if your device will carry the USB logo. Cheers, Chuck

On 15 Jan 2010 at 14:56, dwight elvey wrote: Certainly. FTDI offers a vendor sub-licensing program for PIDs under the FTDI VID, but it has good and bad points: http://ftdichip.com/Documents/TechnicalNotes/TN_100_USB_VID- PID_Guidelines.pdf On my own devices, I've taken to supplying an RS232 interface and using a USB-to-serial adapter. It's not the fastest, but it's good enough for a lot of things. --Chuck

This is not something hard to do and I've done that many times here. EPROM emulators aren't hard things to do. TTL-Tony-Duel-mode-of-doing: - Bunch of counters on the parallel port, you send a pulse to increase address, send 8 bits of data, pulse wr, keep it going to the end. Release bus isolation and the memory is connected to the bus ?C-Alexandre-mode-of-doing: - Microcontroller connects to the host via serial or USB port, gets address and data, writes the address and releases the mem to the bus. A day worth of work :)

On Jan 15, 2010, at 10:18 AM, Mike Loewen wrote: The fact that it's an 8/L. ;) It's going to go for quite a bit more than its current bid. Dammit. What a time to be broke! -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 10:18 AM, Mike Loewen <mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us> wrote: DEC made about 4000 of those (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/dec-faq/pdp8/section-6.html) - more than some models, less than others. Part of what makes them desirable is that they are now over 40 years old and when found, usually complete enough to run and quite portable. They use individual TTL chips, so they are somewhat easy to repair (I've fixed several), and of them have core memory (unlike later models which might or might not). My first -8 experience was with an -8/L. As I've posted many times about this exact model, in 1982, they weren't expensive (mine cost $35 and some swap goods) because they were "old". Add 28 years of demand going up and the supply going down and you have these sorts of prices (others, perhaps on this very list, had similar experiences with the PDP-8/S a few years before that - same effect, but with more scarcity). The -8/L sold new in 1968 for $10,000 (1968) dollars - it's still cheaper now. -ethan

On 1/16/10 11:25 PM, Philipp Hachtmann wrote: The maintenance manual for the RK05 drive exerciser is now on line under http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/disc/rk05

Just build one from the schematics ;o)

Understanding that I know nothing about DEC gear, I do believe that the exerciser is a passthrough device which disconnects only the signals needed to exercise the RK05. Maybe this is the missing point.

On Jan 17, 2010, at 1:49 PM, Tony Duell wrote: Because Thing B is faster, Thing A is no longer useful? Who are you, and how did you get access to Tony's email account? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

Hmm, maybe. I **do** prefer an original MSX to play nemesis than the best emulation (BlueMSX) avaiable. Also, for running old hardware compatible of course it is preferable! Also, a MSX (or a TRS-80, or a CoCo, or something useful as a computer) is waaayyyy better to teach computer programming and general workings to a child than a core2quad running crapXP with tons of icons and bilions of API calls to learn before you write "hello, (expletive deleted) world" on the screen. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha! :oD

That reminds me of a thought I have from time to time when confronted with statements like "The computer is already x years old, it' getting too slow and must be replaced" -- A computer doesn't get slower with time.....! -- http://www.hachti.de

Every machine I've encountered that runs MS Vista seems to get slower with time! Wiping out Vista and installing Linux seems to resolve that problem though. Toby On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 11:04 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>wrote:

On Sun, 17 Jan 2010, Philipp Hachtmann wrote: Unless it is running an OS that adds additional crap from relatively unknown sources on an ongoing basis, and needs to be reinstalled periodically. But, surely, nobody would be stupid enough to build and market such an OS. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

Dave McGuire wrote: Thanks, I appreciate these clearly on-topic remarks insulting my intelligence. Josh

Dave McGuire wrote: Well, look, I try not to take personal offense to any of it (sometimes I fail in this department, for example, today...). I try to have a fairly thick skin, as is required. But I no longer buy the argument that people are stupid for running a particular operating system, and if they _only knew better_ they'd all be running MacOS/Linux/Workbench 3.1/CPM 2.2/The Hurd/Toggle switches on an IMSAI. You can insult the OS (hey, I do...) but I think it's unfair to insult so many _people_ with such a wide brush. I find it untenable to judge someone based on the *operating system* they choose (or allow) to run on their computer. (I instead judge them by shoe size, it's much easier.) It sometimes bothers me that every other discussion here about old hardware eventually devolves into Microsoft bashing, as if there's some unwritten requirement to occasionally assure everyone that no, they're still not a Communi...er Windows-lover. Look, I used to wear my Operating System of Choice on my sleeve. I was 15. (The OS was Slackware Linux). I also used to write "M$" or "Windoze." I'm not 15 years old any more, name-calling has become rather passe. As far as my OS-alignment, I'm fairly neutral, which is to say I hate all Operating Systems equally. There are things about Windows that make me insane, there are things about Linux that make me want to pull my hair out. Sometimes I want to throw my Sparc IPC through the window. I try to not make my OS choice(s) into a religion. (If I did, I'd have a major spiritual crisis on my hands given the wide variety of machines in my collection.) To bring this back on topic, I guess what I'm trying to say is: This is a classic computing list, not Slashdot. Can we have religious arguments about VMS vs. UNIX instead? :) Also: I wish I had a fortune to spend on that 8/L. (Also the 8/I). And while I'm wishing, a nice climate-controlled barn for them would be nice too. And a pony. Josh

On Jan 17, 2010, at 9:19 PM, William Donzelli wrote: Ahem, I'd not recommend starting that battle, because I'm liable to finish it. $ uname -a SunOS ns 5.9 Generic_118558-37 sun4u sparc SUNW,UltraSPARC-IIi-cEngine $ uptime 9:22pm up 1054 day(s), 22:29, 1 user, load average: 1.22, 2.03, 2.12 $ That's a DNS server. ~300 zones, ~50 queries per second, 24hrs/day. 'nuff said. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 17 Jan 2010 at 21:19, William Donzelli wrote: I view it as evolution (or devolution) of the same argument that's been going on since more than one firm built a computer. DG vs. DEC, IBM vs. (fill in the blank), 6800 vs. 8080; 8080 vs. 6502; 68000 vs. 8086.... Since everyone's using an x86 architecture now, the hardware wars are a little silly, so we've devolved into OS comparisons. If everyone were running the same OS, we'd have a browswer war... Oh, wait... --Chuck

On Jan 17, 2010, at 10:27 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: They are? I'm not. My company isn't. My last three companies didn't. Most of my consulting customers aren't. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

Servers...beyond POWER and x86, what is there? Alpha and MIPS are dead, the Unisys architectures are emulated, Itanium is stillborn, and SPARC is on life support (with Larry reaching for the plug). -- Will

On 18 Jan 2010 at 0:05, Dave McGuire wrote: Now THAT'S religion! Didn't AMD shed their fab sometime recently? Maybe the Chinese will be dictating new architectures in the future... --Chuck

On 18 Jan 2010 at 0:48, Dave McGuire wrote: They call it "spun off", but essentially now owned by Abu Dhabi money. See: http://techreport.com/discussions.x/16505 The fab is now called "The Foundry Company". Cheers, Chuck

Dave McGuire wrote: The sad fact - and I currently admin more than a couple of Solaris servers - Sun is doing everything in its power to alienate its customers and become a casualty in the UNIX wars. Solaris 10 is a misbegotten joke, and Sun has changed the roadmap for the next version too many times for anyone to trust its placement in any large deployment. SXCE is dead as stone, and OpenSolaris is just Fedora with a different kernel and really shitty admin tools. As far as hardware goes, Fujitsu just might save SPARC, but if they do it will be in spite of Sun & Oracle. As stands today, in terms of raw processing power, scalability, power/thermal management, and sane OS development, SPARC is 10 years behind POWER with no clear means of closing the gap. Doc

PKB. :-P (AIX fan since 3.2.5) -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled already. -------------

On Monday 18 January 2010, Dave McGuire wrote: AIX Isn't uniX. Really, AIX is a legacy OS. IBM doesn't seem to be really putting any significant resources into advancing it. Oh, and there's a reason that IBM is putting so much effort into making Linux run on their hardware as well. Like it or not, Linux on POWER is one of the best ways that IBM can make POWER systems competitive with a higher- end x86 box running Linux that are taking over everywhere. (Though the hardware price is still a few times too high it seems..) Thanks to IBM, there's support for things like hotplug CPU and memory that will make it succeed in high-end markets. The one biggest thing that Solaris 10 has going for it is that it's so much more like Linux than earlier versions of Solaris were, and has less legacy UNIX baggage holding it back. ZFS is nice, but not unique to Solaris 10 anymore (though isn't available on Linux due to Sun's asinine licensing), and Domains... well, there's a number of ways to do that on Linux. Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

On Tuesday 19 January 2010, Cameron Kaiser wrote: Stuff like a dependency-based boot process, something like Linux vServer or KVM support (NOT LPARs, but equivalent to zVM or KVM/Xen on x86). I'd also add getting rid of the ODM, but I guess that's what makes AIX, AIX (and not UNIX). Oh, and can you shrink filesystems yet? I'm not sure that smit would be necessary on any other UNIX, once you "know" the platform. On AIX it's pretty much required because of its strange commands, and dependency on the ODM. Mind you, I have IBM RS/6000 and pSeries hardware, and even have AIX installed on some of it, but I don't see why anyone would deploy a new server running AIX when they don't have existing applications for AIX to run on it. Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

Cameron Kaiser wrote: Why do I continue to deploy AIX over Linux? Because Linux is a mess. Peace... Sridhar

Patrick Finnegan wrote: At home, I mostly use NetBSD. I understand that some people don't like using any OS that isn't "ubiquitous", but it's a lot less of a mess than Linux, and I do have the source. I use NetBSD at work too, primarily because it's much easier to track the CERT advisories for it. Most Linux distributions have many per day. I'd have to document that I'm not actually using the default-installed software that's referenced in the advisories. The paperwork would be very time-consuming. Some of my code is in the Linux kernel too, but I still consider it too messy for me. Peace... Sridhar

Dave McGuire wrote: And if you screw something up, you get him to faceplant! I think the entry level for these machines is about $2.5-3K. Peace... Sridhar

On Tuesday 19 January 2010, Dave McGuire wrote: Just under $4k is the cheapest new POWER6 machine I've seen: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/servers/js12/browse.html POWER5 can be had for less, but it annoys me that IBM hasn't stopped selling POWER5 yet. The fact that they keep selling them new isn't helping the used system price deflate enough so that I could justify getting a used one. Even a 1-way 1.5GHz p520 on eBay still goes for like $1500. Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

I'm going POWER6. Heck, by next year I'll have gotten over 13 years of service out of this 200MHz 604e ANS 500. The hardware is getting flaky now and throws an MCHK about once a week, and AIX 4 is really showing its age, or I'd be still running it. A POWER6 should last even longer. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- MOVIE IDEA: E-mailsignaturebusters -----------------------------------------

I never screw up, so I never saw the faceplant. ;-) Probably a p520 Express. I'm thinking the 4.7GHz or thereabouts, and load it up with disks and RAM. It's "just a home server." -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- The optimum committee has no members. -- Norman Augustine ------------------

On Jan 17, 2010, at 11:07 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: Ahhhh. So not "everybody" after all. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

Ben wrote: You want that with or without Javascript support? - Josh

On Jan 17, 2010, at 9:09 PM, Josh Dersch wrote: You and me both! -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

At 08:36 PM 1/17/2010, Dave McGuire wrote: I think it's a testament to what sort of unreliability is tolerable to many people. Compare and contrast to land lines versus cell phones. People cheerfully pay twice as much for a portable phone that is far less reliable than their land line. - John

Dave McGuire wrote: Is it really? I guess I just don't understand why the discussion keeps popping up seemingly out of nowhere all the time. (This topic started on a discussion of the value of a PDP 8/L.) Usability is subjective, and people tend to like what they're accustomed to, so it does seem more like a religious argument there. I've had no stability problems with my Windows machines in years, aside Labs). Then again, I don't administrate high-load servers so I can't comment from the trenches there. There are lots of smart developers at Microsoft. Never underestimate the ability of management to screw with the ideals of developers. (I have had some *really good* managers in my time, but these are offset by the *really bad* ones...) If you're truly needing to reinstall Windows at all often, you're doing something wrong. (Unless it's Windows 95, in which case keep at it, I guess.) I know, old history, but the Morris worm infected what OSes? Written by what smart people? Viruses will always exist as long as humans are writing operating systems and software -- people do make mistakes and buffers get overrun or information gets leaked. Microsoft unfortunately does not have a good track record here (they did not learn from history), and I'm not going to attempt to candy coat it. We do try to make things better, I think for the most part we are heading in the right direction. We still have far to go. Windows 7 runs users as unprivileged by default (about time) and Internet Explorer 7/8 actually runs at even lower privilege than that (it does not have permissions to write to the filesystem or registry except in blessed locations, etc...) so even browser plugins that are vectors can't do any damage (other than possibly crashing the browser process.) (Not that this excuses Windows. Why all user accounts until the middle of this decade were in the Administrators group is beyond me. Well, I can guess -- most software pre-NT assumed a user could do anything since it wasn't written for a networked, multi-user system. Management decreed "thou must be backwards compatible" and so *poof* every user has to be able to do everything. And as a result, most Windows software is written to assume it can do anything (and thus *has* to run as an Admin).) The scarier thing I think, is that a lot of viruses (such as they are) these days are actually trojans or social engineering rather than code exploits. Where I used to work, people would get e-mail attachments -- in *password encrypted* ZIP files with instructions on how to unzip the files and install them -- that contained spyware. Meaning it required real work to get yourself infected. Despite the difficulty of the installation, despite us telling people constantly not to open them, not to run the program, to just delete the mails, we still had to clean peoples' machines constantly. (We eventually got better mail filtering software.) The number of true virus attack vectors (faulty APIs, etc...) in Windows is dwindling, but the social aspect is what is worrisome, and affects every OS as long as it gives unwary users enough rope to shoot themselves in the foot with. (i.e. a mail that asks the user "To see nekkid girls, type "su" at the prompt, type your Ubuntu administrator password, then type chmod u+x "naked-girls-not-really-a-security-exploit.sh" ...) Vista was damned slow. (I'm sorry.) Windows XP or 7 runs snappily on my underpowered netbook. (I know, it's no 486, but then, Solaris doesn't run well on that either :)). Best of luck. Sorry for your pain. Hope none of it is my fault :). (Also sorry for derailing this thread further. If anyone wants to discuss, feel free to mail me offlist...) - Josh

Dave McGuire wrote: I was rebutting your point about *usability* here. Usability (i.e. look & feel, etc.) is subjective. I address stability & performance elsewhere. I wasn't always one of its developers. And it's not like I *know* of every bug in the system and carefully step around them to avoid crashing my personal boxes at home. I work on a very small component of Windows, it's ridiculous to think that I use the vast majority of it any differently than a casual user. Hell, I file bugs against it all the time when testing private builds... Vista was _definitely_ the result of bad management. Can't speak to all of MS's other problems, though. I'd suggest getting a decent antivirus on them (AVG does a good job, as do the Microsoft offerings). If they're falling to pieces for reasons other than malware, then something's very wrong. You said "viruses wouldn't exist," primarily due to "smart people working on software." I pointed out that UNIX had a huge virus, despite many smart developers working on it. That was my only point in saying the above -- viruses will always exist, no matter what. It's always been (if you're talking about the various hives). The registry has also has had its own security model, so bad apps running in low integrity can't read/write stuff they might be able to exploit. Agreed. In my experiences, yes. Machines I'd never have put Vista on if you paid me run it well (I have an 8-year-old Acer tablet running it right now and it's very nice.) Maybe a bit slower than XP. Probably not :) - Josh

On Jan 17, 2010, at 10:50 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: This is the most coherent statement I've seen on this subject matter in a very long time. Actually, ever. I am impressed. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

Yeah, the 3D baby model is hidden in part of Dreamkey 3. Dreamkey is a browser Sega created for their Dreamcast games console. It is based on the Japanese browser, Dream Passport. There are two other 3D models hidden in it too, a girl and a ghost (obake). You see, the browser includes 3D routines which allow HTML-like commands to manipulate the 3D models (set and alter X,Y and Z coordinates, alter light-shading, select textures and run animation data stored on the browser disc). From my experience of using the browser and DreamArena (the Dreamcasts online network back around 10 years ago), they never used the 3D element. For anyone interested, I have a few pages where I altered the code and light sourcing. To fully appreciate them you would have to have the Dreamkey 3 disc in your Dreamcast (or emulated Dreamcast) and go to these pages: http://www.geocities.com/aliensrcooluk/public/dk3_babymodelduo.html http://www.geocities.com/aliensrcooluk/public/dk3_babymodelquad.html http://www.geocities.com/aliensrcooluk/public/dk3_babymodeltri.html http://www.geocities.com/aliensrcooluk/public/dk3_babymodelv2.html http://www.geocities.com/aliensrcooluk/public/dk3_girlmodel.html http://www.geocities.com/aliensrcooluk/public/dk3_girlmodelv2.html http://www.geocities.com/aliensrcooluk/public/dk3_obake_nomotion.html http://www.geocities.com/aliensrcooluk/public/dk3_obakemodel.html Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk PS. Yes, I know Geocities closed, but I have yet to get myself a domain to transfer it to. --- On Mon, 18/1/10, John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> wrote: From: John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> Subject: Re: PDP-8/L value To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Date: Monday, 18 January, 2010, 14:28 Speaking of dancing animations and USA corporate cluster-stupidity, the original versions of the circa 1998 "dancing baby" animation were made with an add-on called Character Studio for 3D Studio Max from Kinetix, a branch of Autodesk. The 3D baby model was made years before by the company I was working for at the time, Viewpoint.? The animation was licensed by another mo-cap company, Biovision.? Viewpoint gave Kinetix the right to redistribute the baby model in exchange for a credit. The dancing baby was popularized by a recurring appearance as a hallucination of the main character of the television series "Ally McBeal". Autodesk PR promoted the fact it was produced in their software, but in fact many of the times it was on the air in the show, the animation was actually produced with a competing product, Lightwave. To top it all off, when Viewpoint intended to give-away a CD at a trade show containing a screen saver with a "dancing baby" animation, Autodesk slapped it with a cease-and-desist. - John

climate-controlled is not necessary. Open the window when the /i is running for longer time. And wear only panties and a t-shirt while working with it :P The 8/L is so handy that you can even put it into the dish washer in one piece (I just haven't a dish washer, so I have to manually wash it in pieces). :-) -- http://www.hachti.de

On Mon, 18 Jan 2010, Tony Duell wrote: You said it much more tactfully than I had done. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On 18 Jan 2010 at 17:12, Charles E. Fox wrote: The big problem that I see with Windows is that any program that's installed insinuates itself throughout the system. It copies DLLs into the system folder, makes changes to the registry and may even spawn system processes. It's like crabgrass in your lawn. I try to keep my Windows systems running with minimum slowdown by putting applications, data and as much non-system related stuff on a different partition when I install. It helps, but a system reload usually entails re-installing everything again. Why the decision was made against "compartmentalizing" the changes that applications make to the system, is something I've never had satisfactory explained. When an application is uninstalled, it almost always leaves a pile of detritus behind in the registry. --Chuck

Chuck Guzis wrote: For those that do use Windows, for whatever reason, you might want to take a look at Symantec's Endpoint Virtualization Suite, particularly the Symantec Workspace Virtualization (SWV) component (formerly, Software Virtualization Solution, SVS). We all know about virtualizing systems, basically done at the OS level using VMWare and VirtualPC, but SWV works at the individual application level, and imposes only a <1% performance penalty, so this works on minimal Win2K or XP systems just fine. The SWV solution basically installs a file and registry redirector deep into the WinNT OS, thus allowing for the creation of independent, but integrated, sandboxes for each of your apps as you install them. The beauty of this is manifold, but a few key benefits are: 1) Installed apps and their offspring are completely 'trapped' inside their sandbox which can be instantly and 100% completely hidden or uninstalled; 2) Installed apps can be 'refreshed/reset' to their initial post-installed 'virgin' state without reinstallation; 3) Apps can be configured as desired, then exported to another box, or held in archive, making for a single-step and more-or-less instant future (re)installation, with all your configurations intact. Symantec of course wants to sell this as part of a whole enterprise management suite, but they do allow individuals like us to use this application virtualization component free of charge. Just go to: http://www.symantec.com/business/endpoint-virtualization-suite and download the trailware. You have to go through a site registration process, but it might be worth it to you to get SWV to play with. I'm not sure if the present download's installation key has an expiration or not ... I use keys from way back that are unlimited. In the spirit of full disclosure, years ago I had a hand in inventing and producing this technology at FSLogic which was later sold to Altiris, which later was acquired by Symantec. This is not a paid product promotion...I am no longer part of this project. This is just a heads-up about some no-cost tools to help maintain a 'virgin' Windows environment over a long period of time. Frankly, the reason I got involved with this project in the first place was as much to get the tools I needed to solve my own personal problems as it was a general commercial venture. So forgive me if this sounds like I'm shilling, I'm not. But I can't imagine working in Windows without it now that I do have it. -- Jared

On Jan 19, 2010, at 10:59 AM, John Foust wrote: When you can send me an instance of OS/360 MVT running in the Solaris/UltraSPARC version of VMware, I'll be interested. (I run several Solaris virtual machines supporting Hercules running OS/390, z/OS and VM/ESA) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 18 Jan 2010 at 23:41, J Blaser wrote: Jared, thank you! I'll give it a try. --Chuck

As a 2GHz pentium 4 core 2 duo will always be. There is something people never put on the equation: The windows OS is more and more bloated on each revision, but also has more features. I'll not discuss the usefullness of these features, but it has more and more indeed.

There is, however, no requirement to keep on upgrading the OS and applications AFAIK. If the machine was fast enough to do your word processing, spreadsheets, whatever when it was new, it should be the same speed today, if you run the same software. The problem comes, of coruse, when you want to interchange files with other people who have upgraded. There is no backwards compatibility. That's another reason I keep well away from proprietary software... -tony

At 10:36 AM 1/19/2010, Dave McGuire wrote: You're saying that old PC133, PC2100, PC2700 RAM is cheaper in equivalent size/stick than today's cheapest RAM? What's your price on a new 1 gig PC133, PC2100, PC2700 stick? At 02:16 PM 1/19/2010, Tony Duell wrote: But that's rarely the case. People like to *use* their computer. They buy or download new software for it. They buy new gizmos that run on startup. Malware gets worse, requiring new countermeasures. Then Microsoft sends them patches. This seems like a tautology to me: "If they never change their computer, it'll stay the same." If my desires never changed, I'd still be drinking chocolate milk with my lunch. Office 2007 easily saves in older formats. - John

At 09:46 PM 1/19/2010, you wrote: New DDR3 1333 memory is about $22 per GB. I have 12GB in my computer, and IE thanks me. : ) 16 windows are consuming about 6GB. Grant

At 12:05 AM 1/20/2010, you wrote: They creep over time. I've had this problem in XP too. It seems memory is never given up. The longer the uptime, the bigger they get. Most of the windows have been open for 20 days.

Grant Stockly wrote: Holy crap man! I've got over 400 tabs open in a firefox session in a Linux VM (including pidgin, several terminals, thunderbird, and a few running gedits) and ALL of it fits nicely in just under 1GB - and mind you that's also what I use to compile and test the Linux version of LisaEm. What the hell is your OS doing? And here I thought windows was horrible when I abandoned it around ~2005 (last version I used for non-work was 2000.)

On Jan 19, 2010, at 2:14 AM, Pontus Pihlgren wrote: Consumers in our society are extremely well-trained. I am regularly offered 2+GHz Pentium-4 machines because it has gotten around that I'm into "vintage computing". Scary. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

David Griffith wrote: First, I hate these comparisons of countries, it's always based on percentage, and not actual numbers. One small country can't be compared against a whole continent. brainwashed would be more accurate Whatever the speed of the newest computer is over time, there's always one constant in this universe. And it's in this little 25yr old cartoon about computer engineers that I hang right above my desk which I saved "It's fast alright, the only thing that goes faster is my paycheck." :) =Dan http://www.vintagecomputer.net/ragooman/