----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave McGuire" <mcguire at neurotica.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2012 3:43 PM Subject: Re: Skipware level, late 2012 I guess you never ran into anyone who uses a computer for a living and needs to upgrade every few years to something faster? Some people would rather just keep their data drive (maybe the video card was something special as well) and give a machine away then recycle it or try to sell it when they are done with it.

On 10/13/2012 04:09 PM, Toby Thain wrote: Agreed 100%. But is a 3GHz C2D really eight years old now? Yep. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 10/13/2012 1:45 PM, TeoZ wrote: My accountant has been threatened for two years to upgrade to Windows 7, or he will be denied support for Quickbooks and most of the tax prep programs. I suspect many other people who use packages for mechanical engineering, and other professionals are forced into upgrades. Unlike us, a lot of people are not that capable of going and getting an "oem" or "system builder" copy of windows 7 w/o spending a fortune needlessly and assessing the capability of even a system like the ones described and getting it upgraded on the same hardware. I've got my friend accountant on vmware and he runs both win7 and win/xp jim

On 13/10/12 4:15 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: No - and a sign of how absurd things have become. --T

At 03:59 PM 10/13/2012, Dave wrote: I have a friend who owns a full set of late-1800s broom-making equipment. - John

On Sun, 14 Oct 2012, Liam Proven wrote: The other issue I've begun to notice are companies building their software so that it won't function unless the processor has the SSE2 instruction set. With Intel CPUs this rules out anything pre- Pentium 4, including all the otherwise perfectly usable Pentium M, III, II, and Socket 7 based systems. This also prevents the use of AMD chips such as the Athlon, Athlon XP, any of the K6, etc (anything pre-Athlon 64). One of the worst offenders that I discovered is the Adobe Flash plugin. They "can't reproduce the issue" because they _won't_ test with anything older than a Core Duo. It is just plain pitiful. http://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3161034 http://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3155858 http://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3154276 http://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3158108 ...and I happen to like the Pentium III (the Tualatin -S variants in particular) and Pentium M.

On Mon, 15 Oct 2012, Liam Proven wrote: Debian also dropped support for the Alpha processor in 'squeeze' (6.0). This is something I'm very much planning to do something about, although I'm sure I'll piss off a few Debian developers in the process because "No one uses that old hardware anymore!!!" ... http://www.debian.org/ports/alpha/ I have most of the Alpha gear I'd need to kick it off (although some of it could probably use more memory), just not the /space/ needed to unpack it and set it all up. Note that they can't even seem to maintain their bug tracking database. Apparently until I dug into it, no one had linked these as the same bug. Since I have no admin privileges, I couldn't mark them as duplicates, but at least now there is a lot more information there. If Intel hadn't axed the Pentium III when they did the Pentium 4 would have never caught on in the consumer marketplace, or at least not the Willamette...it sucked. A 1.2-1.4GHz P3 can run circles around a Willamette P4 while drawing a lot less current. It wasn't until Northwood that Intel began to get its act together, but the P4 still always ran far too hot, even Prescott.

On 10/13/2012 03:51 PM, TeoZ wrote: No, not at all! [rolls eyes] So how many people who are such "power users", i.e., somehow NEED to "upgrade" to something faster, for whom a 3GHz C2D is "too slow", work in environments where things are given away via FreeCycle? I'm sure it happens, but in general, that doesn't make much sense. On the other hand, I'm offered PCs that "got slow" or "got viruses" (so maybe I can "use the parts", heh) at least monthly. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 10/13/2012 04:41 PM, TeoZ wrote: Well ok, I can see that scenario. I still have a tough time wrapping my brain around the concept that people sitting on their asses playing video games requires (and consumes) orders of magnitude more processing power than I do while running mathematically-intensive electronic circuit simulations and designing industrial control systems. There's something just so very wrong about that. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 10/13/2012 05:21 PM, Pontus wrote: Yes, it's pretty scary. It's disheartening that a brain-vegetating, time-wasting activity that people should've outgrown by late childhood is the primary driver of computer performance today. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On Sat, 13 Oct 2012, TeoZ wrote: In the EARLY days of the 5150, "BUSINESS" users went with monochrome. Then they came back to "upgrade" to color (to run games, but they would never admit it). To make use of what was there, "256 color accounting" was developed. My publisher (may they rot in pieces) for the early days of XenoCopy reported "numerous complaints" that "Xeno-Copy won't work in color!", because I used white text on a black background. (0x07 and 0x0F). So, I checked the current video mode, (NOT just PRESENCE of CGA or EGA hardware!), and if they were in mode 3, I put COLORED boxes around the "windows" of text V B&W boxes if they were in mode 2 or 7. That solved the "complaints". -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Jules Richardson <jules.richardson99 at gmail.com> wrote: My recollection is that there was a perceptual divide between "serious machines for serious business" and "toy machines for playing around with at home". The following technologies existed abundantly outside of the IBM-compatible PC realm before being adopted one-by-one with the claim (suddenly) that these were "must have" technologies. o Color o Sound o Network Interface o Graphics co-processors o Multitasking OS o Input devices other than traditional 'keyboard' I just remember a lot of "oh... your machine isn't suitable for business computing; it has X and that means it's only good for playing games." Each of those technologies eventually worked their way into the baseline for "the PC" and now, nobody could imagine a "real computer" without it. -ethan

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 12:26 PM, David Riley <fraveydank at gmail.com> wrote: Networking is a bit of a stretch for "home toy machines", but even a 128K Mac came with AppleTalk/LocalTalk from day one. It didn't take off right away, but the support was there for it. I'd say it became a useful, desirable feature once the Apple Laserwriter I came out - a built-in network to share a $5000 resource with every Mac in the room. As for multitasking OS, I'd have to trot out the Amiga in 1985. Completely derided as a "toy machine" by both the PC and Mac crowds, again, from day one, multitasking OS. I can't find a reference to the original quote, but sometime around 1985 or 1986, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were deflecting calls for each of their products to support "true" multitasking (vs the existing "Switcher" or "TSR" mechanisms that let you push one app to the side to run another in the foreground) with claims that you "couldn't do it" on a machine that had less than 2MB (that being more than most people had in front of them at the time). At the time, my interpretation was more along the lines of "it's too hard to wedge our code onto the machines of today, so you'll get it when we get around to doing it and after you buy bigger hardware". The end result was the same - eventually, machines got larger, code got larger, too, but desktop multitasking OSes are the norm. -ethan

On 15 October 2012 18:09, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: The legendary QNX demo floppy? http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html http://onqpl.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/now-on-youtube-incredible-144m-qnx.html Complete OS & multitasking GUI, with desktop, TCP/IP stack, file manager, text editor & complete web browser, /plus web server/, all on a single bootable 1.4MB PC floppy diskette. Boot off the disk, go online, surf. It was pretty amazing. -- 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

On 10/15/2012 01:48 PM, David Riley wrote: Very true. I do multitasking all day long without an MMU, on ARM7s, with (on the big ones) 64KB. Works great here! I see no *real* excuse other than laziness. There were some highly talented programmers back then. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 10/15/2012 02:55 PM, David Riley wrote: True. Suits will ruin everything if given the chance. Thinking people just need to start treating them like the overhead expense that they are. I've not seen that one. I will check it out! -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On Mon, 15 Oct 2012, Ethan Dicks wrote: earliest PC implementations: There was a commercially available (home business?) interface to communicate between two 5150s through the cassette port! Even a Y connector to be able to connect more than two! That product, of course, died a year later when the 5160 came out (with no cassette port) There was even a classroom version! (based on an earlier TRS-80 product?) By 1983, Orchid (and others) were marketing PC networks. AFTER we had performance and reliability issues, we found out that we were the first ones to go 16 or more computers on the "network". TSRs were used by users to implement extremely crude multi-tasking in MS-DOS. What else was INT-28h for? Borland's Sidekick, and the later Central Point PC-Tools. I used PC-Tools for my business telephone log, etc. But, the package intercepted the critical error handler, and IGNORED critical errors, such as disk I/O errors! Rather than an "Abort, Retry, Ignore?" notification of a problem, it would simply report success and LOSE the sector being written! Oh, well. Windoze came out soon after (crude pre-emptive multi-tasking) -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On 15 October 2012 17:26, David Riley <fraveydank at gmail.com> wrote: Multitasking: CamelForth for the ZX Spectrum (& other low-end Z80 machines) could do this in the very early 1980s - indeed it was one of its selling points. I think it also had a very primitive implementation of text-based windows on screen. As with the other 8-bit Forths I heard of - and Chuck Moore's ColorForth to this day - it was/is *both* a programming language *and* an OS. Network interfaces: Econet for the BBC Mico? Localtalk on the original Apple Macintosh? Or even the once-famed "$25 Network" for the PC, which like several other early peer-to-peer LANs in the mid-1980s significantly predated Ethernet's availability as an affordable system. Also see: SAGE MainLAN, whose developer I met at a birthday party earlier this year. -- 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

On 15/10/2012 18:23, Liam Proven wrote: Or the MuPET interface for Commodore PETs around 1980-81. Very short range, using ribbon cables, but good for fileshareing, printer sharing, and with a bit of programming also machine-to-machine ops. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

On Mon, 15 Oct 2012 12:26:57 -0400 David Riley <fraveydank at gmail.com> wrote: Ever played MIDI-Maze on an Atari ST? -- \end{Jochen} \ref{http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/}

Which wouldn't ahve wored without intenral wiring changes (not just a conencotr adapter). The CoCo jopsticks used 3-terminal pots as a potential divider acorss the 5V supply, the slider goes ot ta voltage ADC input on the CoCo. The IBM (and Apple ][) joysticks are variable resistors (2 terminal) used as part of the timing network on a 555 monostable (actually a 558, which is a quad 555, wired in monostable mode only). You would ahve to separate the 'bottom end' of the 2 pots in the joystick for it to work proeperly. Of coruse it's entirely possible that IBM were planning on selling joysticks made by the same company that made the CoCo ones, but wired fro the 5150 adapter. -tony

Yo uahd to unscrew the bottom covver, take it off, snip out a bit of wire [1] and then refit the cover and screww. To change the connector you had to cut off the DIN plug ans solder 5 wires ot a DA15. Seems like it woudl take about the same time. However, is thaerw a gotcha here? The buttons in both the PC and CoCo joysticks return to the ground rail, which is what you're disconnecting wires. But if the core i nthe cable goes to one of the bot terminals (with wires ot the other pot and the button switch), you would have to reoslder the cable core ot the tag o nthe swtich. That would take a little longer. In any case, my point is that you can't simply make up a cable adapter with a 5 pin typ B or 6 pin DIN socket wired to a DA15 plug for this. You have to make intenral modificatiosn to he joystick. [1] The slang term 'Dikes' for diagonal cutters (side cutters) is well-known, but I have always treated it as a slang, colloquial, term. I was therefor suprised to find in the HP9125B service manual the following as part of the 'X axis restringing procedure' "e. Crimp cable clamp securely. This operation can be perfomed with a pair od dikes" Anyway... Some years back I was fooling around wit hthe Vectrex (is that on-topic here? It's not a user-prgrammable computer, but it's over 10 years old, has a 68A09 in it, and is a fun machine). The controllers for that machien conenct usign DE9 connectors, and have a 2-axis joystik and 4 buttons. The joystick inputs are voltge ADCs, liek a CoCo. Anyway, the original controlelrs are hard to find, so I decided to see what else could be used. At the time I picked up some Tandy 'Deluxe Joysticks' for the CoCo. I found 2 ways to use these. The problem was that at least one of the axes was reversed wrt the CoCo -- that is in one case moving the joystick in a particualr direction produced an increasing voltage on the input while the Vectrex required a decreasing voltage. The simpler way for soembody like me was a little circuit using a few op-amps that simply inverted the votlage (and buffered the signal on the otehr axis IIRC). But for those who didn't like soldering, I foudn a way to modify the joystick itself. The problem is that the potentiometers are not conventional compoennts. They're resistive traces on a plastic substrate with cotncts wiping over them. Both pots, and the trim cotnrols, are on the same substrate, there iws no way to reverse the end conenctions to one of them. I think I ended up rotating the plate through 90 degrees -- soemthign that involved a bit of cutting and filing of the plastic housing,m since it was designed to be impossible to assemble wrongly, and then mopving push-on terminals around. It worked, but soldering up the Op-amp circuit was a lot quicker I also made an interface to use a noraml (of the time) PC joystick wit hte Vectrex. This used the pots in the joystick against constant current sinks (Op-amp + trannsisotr) + more op-amps to convert the resulting voltage changes to the Vectrex input specification. Hang on... I've found the docs I produced on this.... Converting a Tandy Joystick to use with the Vectrex =================================================== These instructions relate to the Tandy 26-3123 Deluxe Joystick only. The main problem in converting the joystick for use with the vectrex is that the sense of the vertical axis needs to be reversed. Since the potentiometers in this unit are formed by resistive traces on a plastic plate (the 'Pot Plate'), it's not a simple matter to reverse the connections to one of the pots. Here's how to do it. 1) Remove the 4 screws from the underside of the joystick, and take off the lower cover. Set these parts aside 2) Carefully lift up the 'Pot Plate', and note where the wires are connected. Disconnect the wires. Note that 2 of the connections are linked by a (red) wire. 3) Disconnect the wires on the PCB. Note where the 3 wires (white, red, black) which go to the switches in the joystick handle are connected. Set the joystick cable aside. You'll need to recover the push-on tags from this cable later. 4) Remove the 2 screws, the PCB, and the fire button + springs. Set these parts asside for the moment. 5) Note how the joystick mechanism is assembled. The aim is to rotate the 'Pot Plate' and the sliding contacts counter-clockwise by 90 degrees. To do this, first unclip the 2 return springs from the mechanism 6) Lift out the pivot from the centre of the sliders, and then remove the sliders. Note how they are fitted 7) Remove the plastic base from the joystick mechanism. You need to rotate this through 90 degrees also, so that the sliders will fit correctly. In order to do this, enlarge the hole that will be in the lower right corner using a 7.5mm drill from the side that faces the joystick handle, until the plast base will fit correctly in this orrientation. 8) Now you start reassembling the parts. Refit the plastic base (rotated through 90 degrees), the sliders (metal contacts on the left and top as you look at them), the central pivot, and the return springs (over the top left and bottom right bosses). 9) Slide the fine trim controls off the pot plate _carefully_. Hold the pot plate so that the track side is uppermost, the connection pads are on the top and right sides, and the fine trim controls are on the bottom and left sides. Refit the fine trim controls by sliding them on, takeing care to avoid damaging the contacts. 10) Use the socket end of a Sega extension cable for the connection to the Vectrex. Remove about 4" of outer covering from the cable, and recover 3 clips from the original cable. Do not touch the red jumper lead for the moment. 11) Crimp and solder these tags to the Green (pin 5, Pot0), Blue (Pin 6, Pot 1) and Grey (pin 7, +5V) on the cable. Now cut the red jumper wire complete wit it's tags from the original cable. Solder the white lead from the cable to one tag on the jumper wire. 12) Reconnect the leads to the pot plate in the following way, seen from the track side White + Red Jumper (-5V) / Blue (Pot 1) / / Grey (+5V) / / / / / / +-----####------####----####-----+ Green (Pot 0) | | / | # / | # / | # | | | | | | | | | | Red Jumper | # / | # / | # / | | +--------------------------------+ 13) Now take the PCB you removed earlier. Carefully desolder the slide swtich from it. Also cut the track between the fire button on the PCB and the first connector slot on the edge. 14) Connect 3 more wires from the cable to the holes left vacant by the removal of the slide switch as shown. ^ ^ | Notched edge of board, viewed from component (non-track side) | (Sw3) (Sw4) Orange----o o---- Yellow o o Red-------o o (Sw2) 15) Connect the black lead of the cable (0V) to the far left slot on the PCB. This slot is connected to all the other slots on the left of the fire button. 16) Re-install the fire button, the PCB, and the screws. 17) Reconnect the leads from the joystick handle to the PCB, in the same positions as they were originally. 18) Position the pot plate over the joystick mechanism. Use 2 of the cover screws to hold it in place 19 Plug the joystick into the vectrex, and use the joystick test in the diagnostic ROM to test it. 20 Cut a slot in the left side of the cover to allow the fine trim control to protrude. Copy this slot from the one on the right side, and file down the lower part of the cover in a similar way. 21) Use a couple of cable ties to make a strain-relief to hold the cable in the slot in the joystick body. 22) Remove the screws you fitted to hold the pot plate in place, fit the cover, and secure it with the 4 screws. Interface for Tandy Joystick - Vectrex ====================================== +5V +5V J5 )--------+--+---------+--------------------------------------------( V7 | | | Gy | \ 10k | | / | 10k | \ +----)---/\/\---+ | / | | | | | | |\| | | +----+--|-\ | Pot0 X | | >---------+---------------------------------( V5 J1 )--------)----------|+/ U1a Gn | |/ 1458 / \ 10k 100k / +----/\/\----+ \ | | | | | Y 47k | | |\ | J2 )--/\/\/-)------+---|-\ | Pot1 | | >-----+-------------------------------------( V6 +----------|+/ U1b Bu | |/| 1458 | | -5V / +--------------------------------------------( V9 \ 4k7 W / \ Gnd | 0V J3 )--------+------------------------------+-------------+------------( V8 | | Bk | | SW2 | -+ SW1 | -+ =| =| | -+ | -+ | | Sw1 | +------------( V1 | Br | | Sw2 +--------------------------( V2 R SwA Sw4 J4 )------------------------------------------------------------------( V4 Y SwB Sw3 J6 )------------------------------------------------------------------( V3 Or 6 pin DIN skt 9 pin D skt Theory ------ The switches are simple : The Tandy joystick has 2 fire buttons which ground the appropriate pins (4 and 6) on the connector when they are pressed. Thus, these pins are simply linked to the button 4 and 3 (respectively) inputs on the Vectrex. Two more buttons on the interface (SW1 and SW2) ground the remaining 2 Vectrex inputs. Although the Tnady joystick is proportional, it differs from the Vectrex unit in 2 important ways. a) The output voltage varies from 0 to +5V, not -5V to +5V b) The Tandy joystick output increases for movement to the right and movement down. The Vectrex joystick output increases for movement to the right and movement down. The conversion between these 2 systems is performed by U1, a 1458 Dual Op-Amp. U1a, wired as a non-inverting *2 amplifer, doubles the X voltage without reversing it. The input resistor is returned to the +5V line to provide the required voltage offset. U1b is wired as an inverting amplifier with a gain of approximately 2, which inverts and doubles the 'Y' voltage. The potential divider connected to the non-inverting input of this device provides the necessary offset. Notes ----- 1) Layout is not critical, and any standard technique should work 2) The Op-Amp used was a 1458. Any similar dual Op-Amp should work, but has not been tested. 3) Connection to the Vectrex is best performed by using the socket end of a Sega extension lead. The colours on the circuit diagram are the colours in the cable used for the original design. 4) Connection to the Joystick is perfomed by a 6-pin DIN socket 5) 2 more swtiches (SW1 and SW2) provide the extra 2 vectrex buttons. 6) Distribution and use of this circuit for the benefit of Vectrex owners is encouraged. Please feel free to put it on ftp sites, etc. PC Joystick 1 )--+ | 8 )--+ | 9 )--+ Vectrex | 15)--+----------------------------------------------------------------- R --( 7 +5v 2902(a) 75k |\ 6 )----/\/\/---+--------|+\ | | > --+-------------------------------------- Or --( 6 | +------|-/ | Pot 1 | | |/ | | | | | +---/\/\/-----+ | | 10k | \ | / 15k | \ 20k +--/\/\-----+ | / | | | | 2902(d) | |\ | | | |\ +----|-\ | | | +----|+\ 10k | | >---+------------- Y --( 5 | | | | >---+---/\/\/---+ +-|+/ Pot 0 | | | +-|-/ | | |/ | | | | |/ | | 2904(a) | | | +--------+ | 75k | | | | 3 )-----/\/\/--)-)---+--------------------------)--------+ | | | | 4 )--+ +-)----------------+ | | | | | | | 5 )--+-------+---+----------------)-------------+--------)------------ Bk --( 8 | | | | Gnd 12)--+ | | | | | | | | / | | | 10k \ | | | / +--------------)----------+ | | \ | | | | | | | | | | | | | 2902(b) | | 2902(c) | | | | |\ / | |\ / | +-----+-----|+\ |/ 2N3904 +--|+\ |/ | | | >--| | >--| 2N3904 | | +-----|-/ |\ +--|-/ |\ | | | |/ V | |/ V | / | | | | | 1k1 \ +-------------+ +----------+ | / | | | \ / / | | \ 15k \ 15k | | / / | | \ \ | | | | | | | | | +-----+-------------------------+------------------------ Gy --( 9 | -5V | +----+-------+ | | / \ 1 <==/ \==> 2 / o o \ | | | | 14)-------+------)---------------------------------------------------- W --( 1 | SW0 | 10)--------------+--------------------------------------------------- Bu --( 2 SW1 7 )------------------------------------------------------------------ Gn --( 3 SW2 2 )------------------------------------------------------------------ Br --( 4 SW3 Theory of operation -------------------- The buttons of both an IBM PC joystick and a Vectrex controller simply connect the input pin to ground. Thus the 2 button inputs from the IBM joystick connector (pins 2 and 7) are connected directly to the SW3 and SW2 inputs on the Vectrex. Since most IBM PC joysticks only have 2 buttons, 2 extra switches are fitted on the interface and connected to SW0 and SW1. However, these signals are also connected to pins 14 and 10 on the IBM PC joystick connector to allow the use of 4 button PC joysticks. The analogue inputs of a PC and a Vectrex are quite different. The PC joystick acts as a variable resistor from 0 to 150k with one end connected to +5V, while the Vectrex requires a varying voltage between about -4V and +4V. The interface also has to reverse the direction of the X axis, so the 2 channels are somewhat different in operation. The simpler Y channel will be described first. This channel consists of 2 main sections : a constand current sink to convert the changing resistance into a changing voltage and a *1.5 amplifier to convert the signal level to the correct one for the Vectrex. The +ve (non-inverting) input of section (b) of the 2902 is maintained at -4.5V by the potential divider consisting of the 10k and 1k1 resistors. The action of the op-amp thus maintains the -ve (inverting) input at the same potential and hence stabilises the current through the 15k resistor at 0.5/15 = 1/30 mA. This same current flows through the collector circuit of the 2N3904 (since the base current is negligable), and thus maintains a 2.5V drop across the 75K resistor. The collector circuit is completed by the 150k variable resistor between the joystick. Thus, the joystick drops between 0V (When the resistance is 0) and 5V (when the resistance is 150k), and hence the collector voltage of the 2N3904 varies from +2.5V to -2.5V respectively. This signal is amplified by section (a) of the 2902 (which is connected as a standard non-inverting amplifier with a gain of 1.5) and connected to the Pot 1 input on the Vectrex. The X axis channel operates in a similar way, and consists of a constant current sink, a *1 buffer amplifier and a *-1.5 amplifier to convert the signal level to that required by the vectrex. Section (c) of the 2902 and its associated components form a current sink indentical to the one described above. The output voltage on the collector of the 2N3904 transistor is buffered by section (d) of the 2902, which is connected as a standard voltage follower (unity-gain amplifier). The output of this stage is connected to section (a) of the 2904, which is connected as a standard inverting amplifier with a gain of -1.5. The output of this section is connected to the Pot 0 input on the Vectrex Notes ----- 1) Layout is not critical, and any standard construction method will work. 2) The Op-amp chips used (2902 (quad) and 2904 (dual)) may be difficult to obtain. The circuit will also work with the more common LM324 (to replace the 2902) and LM358 (to replace the 2904) 3) Since the power and ground connections to the joystick are identical to those used in a PC system, any autofire circuits in the joystick should still work. 4) The joystick connector is a standard DA15 socket, and the vectrex connection can be made using the cable from a Sega controller. The wire colours are those found in the cable I used, and are not standard. 5) The op-amp power connections are made to the +5V and -5V rails. 6) This schematic and the documentation are Copyright 1995 A.R.Duell. However, distribution for the benefit of Vectrex owners is encouraged, provided no profit is made. Feel free to upload this document to ftp sites, etc. Somewhere I have a commercial interface to use Atari swtich-type joysticks wit hthe CoCo. It's a few resistors an transsitors to give a midpoint votlage with no swithcs operated and +5V or ground if the approroitate swithce is closed. It;'s a litte plastic box with 2 DIN plugs on flying leads ot conenc to the CoCo (or Dragon) and 2 DE9 plugs for the Atri joysticks. I do not have a scheamtic of that yet, it would not take long to trace out if I could find the darn thing... Since the Apple ][ Joystick interface is very similar to that on the PC, what were Apple][ compatible joyusticks like? Those would presumably have been quite easy to covert for the IBM 5150. -tony

On 10/13/2012 11:35 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: "Brain-vegetating"?! - When did you last play a game? "Outgrown"!? - Where is the fun in that? "time-wasting"!? - ehm.. well, you got me there... /P

On 10/13/2012 08:11 PM, Pontus wrote: When I was a child. I suppose there's the occasional exception of showing my (much younger than I) significant other how to play Zork on a Kaypro, but that's about it. I have a great deal of fun EVERY SINGLE DAY OF MY LIFE. And yet I don't play games. Last night, in fact, I had a lot of fun bringing up a photomultiplier tube and a scintillator crystal, and building a sample-and-hold amplifier to capture its output. This is the beginning of a gamma spectrometer. ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

GOTTA HAVE at least a Cray T94 for Colossal Cave!

On 10/13/2012 04:21 PM, Pontus wrote: I still can't get my head around that, though. Do today's gamers forget that they're playing a game, then? To me a modern 3D game still looks no more realistic than the 2D platforms that were around in the 80s - in that it's still so obviously not "real" that the bells and whistles are pointless - and the level of entertainment extracted from pushing pixels around a screen is no different, so I can't see the logic in spending spending the kind of cash required to run a modern game when all it will ever be is "just a game". cheers Jules

On 10/14/2012 11:21 AM, Liam Proven wrote: The AI side still needs a long way to go. :) No comment about plot improvements yet in games. Computer graphics are best used in traditional cell animation (Japanese) I think, permitting more detail in backgrounds and movement. I would guess hardware are about 5-10 years old because software development time, and rendering is still just a good paint program. Two weeks per 25 minute a episode wide screen TV episode seems right. Ben.

On 10/14/2012 12:21 PM, Liam Proven wrote: Agreed - but my point is, it's still obviously just images on a screen, and hence no different to games of many years ago. More photo-realistic, certainly, but I don't find such things any more "real". And if it's no more entertaining, I can't see the need to have recent hardware to run it. I don't disagree - they're fantastic bits of art. But that doesn't make the game itself better IMHO. cheers Jules

On 10/14/2012 04:34 PM, Jules Richardson wrote: Probably not, maybe that is a goal for some, but certainly not everyone. When DirectX 11 came along (I could be wrong) a feature called "instancing" was introduced. It allowed the graphics hardware to reuse geometry and thereby reduce memory usage on the graphics hardware. In practice it allowed, for example, a strategy game to render hundreds if not thousands of units. Now that is a real boost for that kind of game. Now tell me, should we stop upgrade our hardware now that this limit has been raised? Why should we draw such a line, simply because "it doesn't look realistic enough anyway". Also, shader effect has really brought graphics to a new level. Seeing hot air refract light around a burning tank in World of Tanks adds to the game. Now we are too far off topic, so I'll stop here :) /P

On Sun, 14 Oct 2012, Jason McBrien wrote: The goal of computer golf is NOT watching the grass grow??!?

On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 04:14:21PM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote: I always change oil twice a year to avoid computers getting slow, I don't want to risk the bearings on the processor axle to wear out. -- Eivind

"Rik Bos" <hp-fix at xs4all.nl> wrote: Whale Oil? re, Sander

On Mon, 15 Oct 2012, Rik Bos wrote: Whale oil. 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_!

On Mon, 15 Oct 2012, Rik Bos wrote: purists call for well whale oil

On 10/15/2012 03:07 PM, Jules Richardson wrote: At least it doesn't go rancid.. -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

I also keep my hard disk well inflated. I just take it down to the gas station and connect the hose to the air hole and inflate it to 35psi cold. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? -- Groucho Marx ---------

On Mon, 15 Oct 2012, Tony Duell wrote: If there was not a breather, and if you pressurized slightly, then any leakage would be outwards, keeping dust from entering

However, the Micropolis 1200 certainly has a breather filter. The air holes for it are clearly visible on the top of the HDA. The schrader vavle is on the underside, alongside the motor PCB, brake solenoid, etc. I haev yet to find a convincing reason for it being fitted at all. Any suggestions? I have no idea if the HDA-side of the valve has anything fitted to it (like a filter). I don't have a scrap 1200 to pull to bits to check. -tony

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 5:01 AM, Eivind Evensen <eivinde at terraplane.org> wrote: Be sure to flush your cache every 10,000,000,000,000 cycles to keep your floating points from sticking together. -ethan

^^^^^^^^^^^ First tiem I red it, I red that as 'Compactrons' I am getting old... -tony

A few. Very few. I've run into a whole lot who incorrectly _think_ they need to "upgrade" every few years, though. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On 10/13/2012 09:43 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: Or, you know, bought a laptop and found no need for the big ol' beige box. /P

Just recently, at work, we had three flatscreens which were "dead". I opened them up and saw bulging caps in the power supplies. I resurected one by just replacing that cap. (The others are pending my getting parts; my collection of parts didn't have enough to fix more than the one.) Most people would have tossed them. Heck, work was going to until I said "hey, let me open that up and have a look...". Fortunately, this workplace isn't totally braindead about such things and thought my fixing them was actually a good thing. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On Sun, 14 Oct 2012, Toby Thain wrote: MY workplace objects to repairs. They make a lot of bogus excuses, but the real rweason is, "If you fix it, then we don't get a NEW one!" -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On 10/14/2012 03:24 PM, Toby Thain wrote: If it's old, it's bad, and if it's not new, it's old. Well-trained sheeple, to the utter delight of sales-slime everywhere. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 14/10/12 5:53 PM, TeoZ wrote: Only a couple of the dumpster 10 were in that category, and even those are great for text use. There were several Samsungs, which are the best of the batch by far. Two of which (225bw model) were discarded by my boss (who replaced with new Samsungs). I kept one for my wife's desk and a neighbour scored the other (I got lots of good unwanted parts from him in return - enough to build the aforementioned P4 gaming rig). --Toby

On Sun, 14 Oct 2012, Mouse wrote: Sometimes I wonder if the paperwork, going through multiple people for ordering, isn't more work than the repair would be.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2012 6:52 PM Subject: Re: Dead LCD monitor? - replace $2 worth of caps - Re: Skipware level, late 2012 I assumed they would toss the monitors and you would be allowed to pick them up (after asking). Most large companies have a contract with somebody for ewaste, smaller places give the junk away.

On 10/14/2012 6:49 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: Well *they* do own it, and it may be a law too. The funny thing is you almost never know when a item will be declared *Get rid of it by Yesterday*. Here in Alberta, Canada it is local law is you have to recycle the stuff so it does not go into the dumpster. Lead in solder I guess. Ben.

On 15/10/2012 03:06, Mouse wrote: It probably varies according to location. In the UK, ownership of trash passes to the local council when you put the trash in a designated bin, box or bag on the street for collection. Ditto if you take something to the council-run recycling centre, it becomes their property when you dump it in the designated place. However if you hire a skip (dumpster) and put rubbish/junk in it, ownership generally passes to the contractor when they pick it up, and they have the right to refuse to pick it up if you've put inappropriate or prohibited material in it. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

On Oct 15, 2012, at 10:25 AM, Vincent Slyngstad wrote: My favorite part about that particular line of thinking was when some local politicians decided to make that explicit in legislation (shortly after our local terrorist event ten years ago). Some concerned citizens looked up their home addresses and dug through their trash cans and posted some items online that said politicians felt were not, in fact, public property (despite their fervent legislative positions to the contrary). - Dave

At 12:10 PM 10/15/2012, Fred Cisin wrote: I spent an afternoon with him once, too. He had some interesting stories from the old days. On-topic, I'd have a hard time finding the time to fix all the broken LCD monitors I could be given. Disassembly, finding the right cap, then reassembly - could take a long time, mental energy, and bench space. It's easier to only accept the working ones. - John

On 10/14/2012 08:46 PM, ben wrote: Do they? Or is it the property of the dumpster owner at that point? They normally charge for e-waste around here, but they did have an e-waste recycling "event" over the summer where people could drop stuff off and not incur a charge for doing so - the company behind that was based in a different state, so presumably thought they were going to make some cash if they were willing to come all that way. To my surprise they were happy for me to come along and look through stuff to see if there was anything vintage for me to rescue - evidently they thought all the value was in modern equipment. It also suggests that "ownership" was a bit of a gray area. cheers Jules

On 10/14/2012 10:27 AM, Toby Thain wrote: ALL of my displays came from that sort of failure, with the exception of the last one--a shorted inverter transformer mandated spending about $5 for a "universal" inverter. As far as desktop machines, I'm still running a 2.0GHz Socket 754 Athlon 64 (in 32-bit mode) on Ubuntu. It's more than fast enough for email and browsing (considering that my DSL connection tops out at 1.5Mbps, the fastest available at my location). Why would I need anything faster? Streaming HD video, given my connection speed, is out of the question, pretty much. So is gaming. Most people it seems don't do much more than that, so why the "need for speed"? --Chuck

On 10/14/2012 11:32 AM, David Riley wrote: Okay, a valid, but work-related, reason for having a bunch of computing power on your desktop. But most people don't design FPGAs. I've watched less and less TV as the years have gone by because there basically isn't much that's novel anymore. What's the old saw--there are basically seven plots and every story is a variation on one or more of them? Mostly, I try to keep current, read a lot and hope that I'm not becoming some sort of Count Arthur Strong as I continue my long slog into becoming dirt once again... --Chuck

On 13/10/12 3:54 PM, Zane H. Healy wrote: That's... old? Now you make me feel old. I guess I'm soon due for the dumpster... Also, aren't drives supposed to be replaceable? (How hard did Apple try to prevent generic drives being used?) --T