At 07:14 PM 5/26/00 +1, Hans wrote: them How about a WT-78? I have one of them that's sitting around taking up room. Joe

On Thu, 25 May 2000, Joe wrote: Hmmm... ok, so you say I've never contributed anything. Hmmmm, let's see, I guess that means that my writing the PERQ general FAQ, starting the alt.sys.perq newsgroups about 8 years or so ago and archiving it until my uucp news-feed went away about 2 years ago, writing the CT-Miniframe FAQ, the "DEC PDP and Music/Sound Synthesis Summary," maintaing an archive of PERQ files (which I should hopefully soon make available again), offering the list some free CDC removeable-pack disk drives a while back, preserving various systems over the past 13 years or so (I'm not new to computer preservation), etc. doesn't amount to contributing anything. :-) Granted, the above are no huge contributions, just my attempts at helping other hackers and preservationists in return for all the help that I've received from others over the years. Note: since no one claimed the aforementioned CDC drives, I removed the boards from them in case anyone needs them. My former employer sold the drives for scrap metal; however, I still have the boards if anyone needs them. Joe, perhaps I went a bit overboard with my flames - I apologize. Let's settle this dispute like gentlemen, and, no, I'm not challenging you to a duel! ;-) I don't take back my opinion that things such as swapping without appropriate testing are good, however. It's no big deal to me whether or not you ruin your Apple Lisa, as that machine doesn't particularly interest me - although it would be, I think, most unfortunate that it isn't preserved so that it can be compared to superior machines of it's era. :-) :-) :-) All kidding aside, it would be most unfortunate, for various reasons, if no working Apple Lisas, like other systems, were left if they could have been preserved. Please consider this: let's suppose there was some machine that you really wanted, that you spend years trying to find, then, you find one... it's owner says "I've got two of them, and you can have one as soon as I fix a little problem with one of them," and he proceeds to do some board swapping, PSU swapping, etc., and, then you learn that he's fried all of the chips in both machines and decides to weld 'em both together, glue a cushon to the top of one of them, and sell it on e-bay as a high-tech ottoman? Perhaps we both jumped to unfair conclusions about each other, and said things that annoyed each other; let's both stop the feuding and divert the energy used for such to something that we both, in our own ways, think worthy of working on (preserving classic computers), and realize lessons to be learned from this litle flamefest. A truce? -- R. D. Davis rdd(a)perqlogic.com http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd 410-744-4900

At 11:36 PM 5/25/00 -0400, R. D. Davis wrote: And then he sold it on eBay with a description that said that "it might be a Cray." - John

On Fri, 26 May 2000, John Foust wrote (to Tony Duell): Oddly, that's sort of what hapened to me. About 10 years ago when looking for a UNIX box, I saw this largish machine with a 19" monitor at a hamfest, but it had already been sold. However... I was given the telephone number of a used computer warehouse where I could find another PERQ. After driving there to purchase it, I was told that I'd have to take away a second T2 chasis at no cost (that was going to be scrapped) in order to be able to buy the other one. To make a long story short, the above experience ended up with me doing a lot of detective work to find out what a PERQ was; couldn't find anyone who'd even heard of one (and that was 10 years ago!) for a while, and eventually got through to Accent Systems in Pittsburgh, the company that had been set up to support the PERQs after their demise, then drove up to Pittsburgh to see what information I could obtain, as well as getting a mouse (Kriz tablet)... ended up learning lots of things not covered in the documentation, like how to format a disk and install the POS and Accent operating systems, how to add a second disk, etc... wow, I'm glad I took a notebook and pen with me! Also obtained some maintenance floppies, etc. that allowed one to format and install a hard disk, that were never part of the OS distributions, which would probably have vanished into oblivion. Learned lots of interesting PERQ history and trivia as well. Fortunately, around that time, I'd learned of a couple of others who had PERQs, and was able to notify them of this discovery (Accent Systems) so they could also get bits for their PERQs; fortunately, one of these people lived in Pittsburgh (if he's reading this, perhaps he'll join in the conversation) and was able to rescue a lot more PERQ stuff from Accent Systems than I could haul back here before it went away, thus preserving much PERQ history; he also did a lot of research into the PERQs and their history and is very knowlegeable about them. Unfortunately, a _huge_ amount of the really good stuff went from Accent to some company in Japan called Rikei (sp?) before we could get any of it; never did find out what they wanted all those PERQs and spare PERQ bits for; does anyone know? All in all, the huge volumes of PERQ-related e-mail, the PERQ mailing list and newsgroup, getting to visit Accent Systems and MegaScan (the MegaScan monitor was a spinoff of PERQ Systems), talking with some some of the PERQs creators, etc. was all great fun! ...not to mention the interesting exercise of printing out the entire source code for the POS operating system. Back in the early 1990's, many people shared quite a bit of their PERQ related knowledge and memories, which made for fascinating reading! Then, there was the PERQ mailing list that someone (a co-conspirator that I won't reveal the identity of - I don't think he was ever on this list) set up, where we automagically subscribed everyone we had the e-mail address of who was known to have knowledge of PERQs. That resulted in the very interesting PERQ-Fanatics vs. CMU PERQ-haters debate. :-) I know, we shouldn't have automagically subscribed all those people to the list, but without doing so, some interesting bits of history may have vanished into oblivion. Had it not been for some hackers in the U.K., one very highly skilled hardware hacker in particular - who may be reading this list and will probably comment on this message :-), much of the information needed for properly repairing and preserving PERQs would not be available - much of it available to us only because of his efforts and hardware knowledge, and had he and others not rescued some PERQ equipment that I couldn't find a way to get shipped over here without spending a fortune, more PERQ history would be lost. Trivia question: does anyone know anything about a software program called "Strawberry Fairchild and the Green Flame" that runs on any other system? It's a work of surrealistic computer art that was written for the PERQs by Dislocated Lady Software. -- R. D. Davis rdd(a)perqlogic.com http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd 410-744-4900

On Fri, 26 May 2000, Tony Duell wrote: However, what I did was the easy part. Ok, do you want to get into a flame-fest over this? I was referring you you. DOn't tell me that you're beginning to believe the bizdroid definition of highly skilled which is "terminally clueless," and the corresponding bizdroid equation where: (terminally clueless) * n = ((highly * n) unskilled) * cq) where cq is the conformity quotient -- R. D. Davis rdd(a)perqlogic.com http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd 410-744-4900

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