Sad ... but true. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeff Hellige" <jhellige(a)earthlink.net> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2002 9:23 AM Subject: Re: OT: PayPal = payola? came

On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Richard Erlacher wrote: AMEN! I dunno about the Windows version, but NS 6 for Linux is a buggy farce of a resource hog. Netscape was one of the front runners in developing a Linux port of their mainstream application, and the Linux port was always at least as stable as the Windows one. If that's still true, Netscape is headed for the dumper. The quality & stability of the Netscape suite has declined almost since the day AOL bought 'em. "More features! Screw debugging!" I run Mozilla in Linux, and Opera (yes, I even paid for it) in Windows. The two MacOS machines run NS 3.... Doc

I wish my browsing were as fast as the other things I do under Windows! Nearly anything is over before I get my finger off the <ENTER> key. Note that I said key, and not mouse button. Unfortunately, the Windows browser doesn't work as well with keys as the rest of the GUI. One CAN learn to use the keyboard, though. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Owen Robertson" &lt;univac2(a)earthlink.net&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2002 12:21 PM Subject: Re: PayPal = payola? did.

Well, before the release of Win95, I used Mosaic, on which both Netscape and Internet Explorer freely admit they're based. Before that, I used ICOMM, which was a sort of local shell for use with *NIX shell accounts. It also worked just fine, for the time, since there wasn't so much graphic razzle-dazzle. When Netscape was released, it required a third-party "WINSOCK" module that one had to buy from someone, normally "Trumpet" and that P*SSED me off, since I'd previously been able to work with a free version. I did give Netscape a try for a month or three months or whatever the "free trial period" for the Trumpet winsock module was, but that turned out to be a poor choice next to the entirely free and entirely functional Internet Explorer betas that were out by that time. Since I was using a shell account, as well as a full-service account with Netcom, I tried out the Netscape, and the Mosaic, AND the early Internet Explorer, in contrast to NetCruiser, which seemed to work better than any of the others in the context of the Netcom environment, understandably. None of them caused nearly so much trouble as the Nestcape/Trumped combo, and when the Trumped winsock trial expired, I flushed it and didn't look back. The only people I know still using Netscape today are the chronic Microsoft-haters, who couldn't look objectively at the situation if their lives hung in the balance. From where I sit, there are several options in the browser market, the most commonly used of which is Internet Explorer. There are a few others, of which Netscape/AOL appears to be the least satisfactory of the bunch. I'll admit, my position is based on opinion and circumstance, but, before I go to using Netscape, I'd have to look at Mosaic again. Internet Explorer is getting a mite heavy from all the creeping featurism, but maybe some other browser will press the M$ folks to clean things up. I doubt it will be AOL, however. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roger Merchberger" &lt;zmerch(a)30below.com&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2002 1:46 PM Subject: Re: Netscape (was Re: PayPal = payola?) doesn't in the is!

Bryan Pope wrote: I use netscape because the 'other' brand lets too many viruses in. I still like IE 3 best. Tried that once , but the graphics routines has a problem of writing red lines everywhere on my system. -- Ben Franchuk - Dawn * 12/24 bit cpu * www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html

--- Bryan Pope &lt;bpope(a)wordstock.com&gt; wrote: Exactly. MicroSloth didn't provide an IP stack for Winblows until "Windows for Workgroups" and even then, it wasn't loaded automatically; you had to go out and download it from MS seperately (but it was free, providing you knew to go out and look for it). You had to go out and get a Winsock no matter what browser or ftp or telnet client you wanted to use. Either way, though, it was still better than the options under DOS. It's why I always used something else as a last hop to the outside. I installed Trumpet on a number of Win3.1 machines at McMurdo Station in 1995, back when Netscape still had a "Throbbing N". Before that, we used Mosaic. Eventually, we went with WfW 3.11 and the MS TCP/32 "upgrade". It wasn't great, but it was free. I wasn't into Windows dial-up, so I never went that route. I don't dispute that ISPs did that, but I never once used an ISP install disk - I either plugged a VT100 directly into a modem and logged into their terminal server, or I did the same with an Amiga, either with the program "VT100" (original name, no?) or with UUCP (for mail and netnews when I was &quot;erd(a)kumiss.UUCP&quot;) I managed to not have to set up a Windows dial-up until last year! Even when I stopped using the Amiga as my primary point of contact with the world, I didn't switch to a Windows box and a modem - there was always some sort of dial-up router between Windows and the outside - either my SPARCstation 1 running dp or a "WebRamp", dial-up router (which probably cost me $2/day, given how much it cost and how long I used it) My little brother loved Opera and used it exclusively a few years (4?) ago. I seem to recall it didn't support tables or some other kinds of semi-modern HTML. I never loaded it myself, but I did use it at his house. Seemed OK, if it would render your pages at all. -ethan __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Great stuff seeking new owners in Yahoo! Auctions! http://auctions.yahoo.com

I'm not sure you're right about that, since I used Mosaic with some other (non-TRUMPET) WINSOCK that I'd snagged. Further, the Netcruiser that was supplied by Netcom didn't require a third-party WINSOCK, though it was tricky (trickier than I could manage) to use it with other browsers. There were a couple of third-party WINSOCK modules that one could download on a trial basis, and I lived on those up to the point at which MS released Win95's WINSOCK. Making one work with Win32S was not trivial, since they didn't all do that. The ICOMM software went a long way if you had only shell access, though. I provided the appearance of a graphical browser, though it did that by using shell-accessible features at the ISP, though it ran the graphical stuff locally, thereby giving the appearance of a graphical browser. It didn't need a WINSOCK, since it ran the IP stack at the ISP end. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tothwolf" &lt;tothwolf(a)concentric.net&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Friday, January 25, 2002 11:50 PM Subject: Re: Netscape (was Re: PayPal = payola?) me

What the ICOMM software did was to provide a means for providing local graphical presentation for data acquired from the host, not running PPP, but running the shell. You told ICOMM what you wanted and it figured out what to tell your shell interface to do, then it took the data that was returned to you and presented it graphically. There weren't many fancy graphic sites back then, so it wasn't really much better than LYNX, but it did format the stuff so you thought that you had a graphical interface, though it wasn't a real GUI. It showed the user what could be done, though there wasn't much other than text to surf on the web, back then, and the WWW had not been "commercialized" yet, since the gov hadn't yet given its OK for commercial web use. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tothwolf" &lt;tothwolf(a)concentric.net&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2002 12:54 PM Subject: Re: Netscape (was Re: PayPal = payola?)

--- Tothwolf &lt;tothwolf(a)concentric.net&gt; wrote: Ah... didn't realize that. As I said, I was never one to do dial-up. I was putting Windows machines on a LAN with a router to the outside world, one way or another. -ethan __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Great stuff seeking new owners in Yahoo! Auctions! http://auctions.yahoo.com

Hmmmm, my VAX-11/730 weights MUCH more then me. And i have a NOVIX-NC4000 Computer, with no floating point, no multiply, no divide. But my friends do not respect me for this... I think it's time to change friends 8-) ms On Sat, 2002-01-26 at 03:19, Brian Chase wrote: -- Michael Schneider email: ms(a)vaxcluster.de Germany http://www.vaxcluster.de People disagree with me. I just ignore them. (Linus Torvalds)

On 26 Jan, Julius Sridhar wrote: Hard disk? A single hard disk a la DEC RK07? Or a hard disk array? -- tschuess, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz

And thusly Julius Sridhar spake: O!.. Ok.. Do not drop them on your foot. These aren't the ones that are over a foot wide in a clear plastic? case with a handle in the centre to carry or lock them in place? BrYan

That's one of the reasons I always liked the Amiga's OS. Granted, it didn't have all the latest bells and whistles that the Windows and Mac have, or some of the stuff that more mature OS's had, such as VMS and Unix, but for it's footprint size it was quite full featured, especially considering the GUI and the way it intereacted with the underlying kernel. The Amiga OS on a fast 68060 CPU is still quite a capable 'Net machine with much less RAM and a fraction of the clockspeed of current machines. Jeff -- Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File http://www.cchaven.com http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757

Is Jack still alive? I've often wondered who did a worse job running their respective companies...he or Irving Gould at Commodore. Tramiel must be given credit for the early days of Commodore computers though and Atari was already losing loads of money when he took over. As for the ST, my only experience with them was with the 1040ST and MegaST-2. While I've never had the pleasure of trying one of the higher performance ST's, I always thought TOS was simple and speedy on the 68000 powered ones. I never cared for the low-res color output though so I've always stuck to using the SM124 with my Mega. Jeff -- Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File http://www.cchaven.com http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757

At 10:16 AM 1/27/2002 -0500, Jeff Hellige wrote: From Fortune magazine, in 1998: http://www.digiserve.com/eescape/atari/articles/Survival-and-Starting-Over.… "Today Tramiel is basically retired and managing his money. From four residences, he's cut down to one, a palatial house atop a foothill in Monte Sereno, Calif." So he may still be around. Switchboard.com only found five Tramiel in CA but no Jack, and I don't remember his sons' names at the moment, but he had two (?) working at Atari back in the day. Now, is Gould still alive? - John

2311, perhaps? A cool drive, in many aspects. It is a quite early design (1965). I have one of these, but no media (anyone have one? I think it is called a 2316), and it will remain quite braindead, as I do not have the 2841 control unit. The 2311 does almost nothing - very little electronics in the box, other than the read/write amplifiers. Almost everything is in the control unit, including the power supplies. The coolest thing about 2311s is the method used to drive the heads - it is hydraulic. These drives are full of oil lines, a little pump, and even a little cup to catch the leaks. Do you have any parts or information about this drive left? I would be very interested, as I would like to get the thing at least spinning some day. William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

That is probably just the stuff in the drive itself. The real brain, the 2841, was (yes, probably sadly "was") a complicated microcoded box that latched onto a channel, controlled a number of drives and drums, and could run diagnostics offline. Apparently 1130 systems could use 2311s with a control unit located as a feature of the 1131. Must have been a big feature...or maybe IBM cheapened the control unit with said one-shots, delay lines, and other kludges, in order to cram it into the processor. William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

What I meant was that the control for a 2311 in an 1131 is the cheap kludge - one shots, delays, and the like - when compared to the "real" controller, the 2841. This control unit was very complex - probably more so that an entire 1130 system. I have no real engineering data (Big Blue Binders) on the 2841, but it actually would not suprise me is the 1131 or 1800 was the processor inside (or maybe a modified version). William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

It is not "the IBM way". Back in the 1960s and 1970s, IBM strongly tended to have everything clocked, sometimes using rather impressive circuitry. The clock generator of an S/3 is astoundingly complex, and gets around some of the uncertainty involved with one-shots and delays. No, it was a real microcode machine. It could run a set of complicated diagnostics on a disk, without bothering the channel. Real front panel, too. William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

William Donzelli wrote: I do remember a lot of clocks to there. One thing that they may have done is run the raw data from the drives to the main disk controller. Getting a IBM from that running if you had one could be hard because IBM had its own logic chips. They also had computer generated schematic listings too. Likely the price of the CPU to. The IBM 1130 was meant still as cards in/ cards out system. -- Ben Franchuk - Dawn * 12/24 bit cpu * www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html

On Mon, 28 Jan 2002, William Donzelli wrote: With all the talk of IBM systems and docs today, I remembered I had some IBM books put away. I found four 1.5" binders worth, and they all appear to be related to S/370 operations and software. If there is any interest in these, I'd be willing to scan them if I can find a place to host the resulting files. -Toth

On Tue, 29 Jan 2002, William Donzelli wrote: Really? These seem to be ancient, and seem to have been well taken care of. I'll check them later and see what their dates were. I can't imagine them still being in print :) -Toth

On Mon, 28 Jan 2002, Tothwolf wrote: Well, here is a list of what I have. Anyone know if these are still current? If so, I don't think I'll be scanning them. IBM System/370 Principles of Operation Order No. GA22-7000-9 File No. S370-01 IBM VS COBOL for OS/VS Program Numbers 5740-CB1 (Compiler and Library) 7540-LM1 (Library Only) Order No. GC26-3857-4 File No. S370-24 IBM System/360 Operating System: Job Control Language Reference OS Release 21.7 Order No. GC28-6704-4 File No. S360-36 IBM OS Full American National Standard COBOL Compiler and Library, Version 2 Programmer's Guide Program Numbers: 360S-CB-545 360S-LM-546 Order No. GC28-6399-3 File No. S360-24 -Toth

On Mon, 28 Jan 2002, Norm Aleks wrote: I think my copy is actually already -10, or at least updated since -9. It has a Technical Newsletter No. GN22-0683 Dated 12 June 1985 in the same binder. Whoever owned the set never put the pages into place, and simply put the whole bundle in the front of the binder. From the looks of it, IBM does seem to set reasonable prices on their documents. So it sounds like it would be "ok" to scan/OCR everything but the S/370 Principles of Operation manual. I guess eventually I'd be able to scan that one too. I saved all four of these manuals from a recycle bin back in '96 or so. I didn't have any idea at all what I had back then. Anyone else want to comment on this? Anyone know of any past problems related to putting obsolete and out of print IBM manuals online? -Toth

On Tue, 29 Jan 2002, John Allain wrote: Ok. The architecture went like this: S/370 --> S/370-IX --> S/370-XA --> ESA/370 --> ESA/390 --> z/Architecture z/Architecture. Peace... Sridhar

On Mon, 28 Jan 2002, Norm Aleks wrote: Tried to email you directly, but ORBZ is blocking my emails again. I'll try to resend it in a few days after I have a rant session at my isp's email server admins :) -Toth

On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Lawrence Walker wrote: If it's a business-envelope-sized booklet with a yellow cover, then IBM would definitely mind making it available. You can still buy this, and it's not expensive. Peace... Sridhar

On Sat, 26 Jan 2002, Bryan Pope wrote: No, this is about five feet tall, beige, rectangular. Peace... Sridhar

On Fri, 25 Jan 2002, Brian Chase wrote: You mean like a 'cheap model' IBM System 360. The cheaper ones were rumored to handle multiply operations in software (ick!). Interesting, but not something I would really want to do payroll for a large company with - with it taking about a week to figure out all the different tax percentages (especially today..) -- Pat

"Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" wrote: Nope It does add and multiply, not much else however. Slow core memory and serial processing did not make for a fast machine. Add 160 us + 80*D' us. Mult 560 us + 40*D' us + 168*D'*D" us. Most of the instructions are data transfer and I/O conversion and I/O instructions. -- Ben Franchuk - Dawn * 12/24 bit cpu * www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html

On Sat, 26 Jan 2002, Roger Merchberger wrote: You go, Roger! Git 'em! Doc

A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text Size: 438 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/attachments/20020126/82cb8330/at…