15 May
1997
15 May
'97
1:35 p.m.
Greetings.
Recently I picked up a manual for a machine called the "Laser Concept
286/16 Laptop" for the sole reason that it has a couple of good photos of
the machine's red gas plasma display.
I remember seeing some other systems with this kind of display in
magazines. (The GRiD Compass comes to mind?)
Anyway, I'm wondering why this technology was so little used. What were
the major disadvantages? And do these displays still survive today? (Does
anyone have one?)
I think gas plasma displays look extremely cool, but I've never actually
seen one in real life. They could be a real pain in the eyes to use for
extended periods?
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
15 May
15 May
2:47 p.m.
On Thu, 15 May 1997, Doug Spence wrote:
Recently I picked up a manual for a machine called the
"Laser Concept
286/16 Laptop" for the sole reason that it has a couple of good photos of
the machine's red gas plasma display.
I remember seeing some other systems with this kind of display in
magazines. (The GRiD Compass comes to mind?)
I can think of two others, the HP Integra and the Toshiba 3100(?).
Anyway, I'm wondering why this technology was so little used. What were
the major disadvantages? And do these displays still survive today? (Does
anyone have one?)
Didn't it require a good deal of power compared to LCD? I'm really just
guessing, but I'll bet that as LCD technology advanced, GPDs lost favor,
especially once color LCDs of reasonable size dropped in price and increased
in size. Both of the machines above I believe could run on batteries
for some period of time, but both were also pretty heavy compared to today's
laptops.
I passed oppertunities to buy both machines in the last few years. I kind
of regret passing on the HP. It was a pretty cool machine, it had Unix in
ROM! I would snap another one up in a minute today.
--pec
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
8:23 p.m.
At 04:47 PM 5/15/97 -0700, you wrote:
On Thu, 15 May 1997, Doug Spence wrote:
Didn't it require a good deal of power compared to LCD? I'm really just
guessing, but I'll bet that as LCD technology advanced, GPDs lost favor,
especially once color LCDs of reasonable size dropped in price and increased
in size. Both of the machines above I believe could run on batteries
for some period of time, but both were also pretty heavy compared to today's
laptops.
Having worked on the Compaq III series which had the plasma displays, I can
vouch for the power requirements. Lighting the thing up took a couple of
mills at 170V, plus the special circuitry that Compaq had to generate
variable (!) intensitys on the display.
Somewhat tempermental at times, and not at all practical fot battery
operation.
-jim
---
jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com
The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
4:36 p.m.
Anyway, I'm wondering why this technology was so
little used. What were
the major disadvantages? And do these displays still survive today? (Does
anyone have one?)
They are quite expensive to manufacture and suck power like crazy,
compared to LCDs. I do not know of any general purpose machines that
still use them, but they are quite common in military and industrial
equipment.
IBM once made some awesome terminals, mostly for the 30xx mainframes.
They were quite large and had a fantastic resolution - I seem to remember
them being able to display four _nice_ looking terminal windows without
overlap. I think this was in the early 1980s timeframe.
I once saw a few at a hamfest a year or so back, but they still had hefty
price tags - $200. I am sure that was a small fraction of their original
cost.
Incidently, glass plasma displays show that electron tubes can be made
_very_ small, using traditional semiconductor etching processes.
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net
11:12 p.m.
New subject: Byte Jan 87 retrospective.
It's been slow the last few days on the list so it is time to send this.
It is another look back at an issue of a magazine. This one is the
January 1987 issue of Byte. There is some interesting stuff. Enjoy.
--pec
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prelude
Once again Sam Ismail beat me to the punch. I've been working on this on
and off for about a week (mostly during long compiles). Most likely it
will be boring to some, but there is some value in looking back occasionally
to see how we got to this point. If the group consensus is that this sort
of stuff does not belong on the list, this will be the last one. A few
more are planned, but they focus more on the happier days of the 70s
and early 80s.
Introduction
While going through some old magazines I came across the January 1987 issue
of Byte. It is the oldest copy of Byte that I currently own. Over the
years I have pulled this issue out and looked at it several times, not
because it was a particularly good or bad issue, but because it was my
first. Since this list is about collecting computers over 10 years old
and this is a magazine about computers which is over ten years old, it
seems to be on topic.
This is somewhat biased look back to the state of computing 10 years ago
as presented by Byte. As has been noted, the articles in this issue have
an academic flavor so it clearly belongs to the second age.
The cover of this issue features a butterfly whos body is an IC and whos
wings are paper basic listings. The butterfly sits on a leaf with circuit
board traces. The focus of the magazine is programmable hardware. On the
cover is a block of text:
REVIEWS:
-------
9 PC AT
Multifunction Cards
12 EGA Cards
3 Modula-2s
12 PC AT Clones.
Clearly in 1987 we were in the era of the PC.
Looking through the magazine, there are some interesting threads. There
are quite a few ads for expert systems/AI programs. There is even an
article on the use of intelligent databases which advocates the use of
Prolog to implement databases. Many languages are represented in ads
and articles including several C products, Modula-2 ads and reviews,
as well as ads for Forth, COBOL, Pascal, BASIC, and APL. These are primary
ads focused on selling language products. There are also several ads for
Unix and machines which ran Unix.
It appears that a good machine in 1987 was a 286 with a 9 pin dot matrix
printer, 512K of memory, a 20MB hard disk, and a 2400bps modem. A top of
the line machine was a 386 with either a 24 pin dot matrix printer or a laser
printer, 1MB of memory, a 40MB+ hard disk, and a 9600bps modem.
There are many ads for 1200/2400 bps modems and dot matrix printers. The
state of the art at the time does appear to be 9600 bps modems and 24 pin
printers. One or two ads mention laser printers.
It is obvious that 386 has not been on the scene for a long time. Most
ads for clone machines feature AT class computers. 386's are priced at
a premium. Logicsoft lists only one 386, a Compaq Deskpro with 1MB of
memory, 16MHz maximum clock speed, and a 40MB hard disk for $5,349. A
monitor is available as an option.
Interestingly there is some coverage of the Amiga and Atari ST. There is
not anywhere near the coverage of x86 machines. Several ads mention Amigas,
STs, and even VAXen.
The dog that didn't bark
There is only one ad by Microsoft, and it is in the form of a "Languages
Newsletter". It features a picture of Bill Gates and pushes their C
compiler and QuickBasic. There are no articles about Microsoft products.
In 1987 they had not yet achieved a strangle hold on the programming and
applications markets.
While there was still some diversity it was definitely being elbowed out
by the beige boxes.
Prices
Everything was more expensive then. It is amazing that a box of 360K disks
cost between 8 and 12 dollars. There are several ads in the back of the
magazine in which DSDD disks could be had for as low as $.25 per disk (in
quantities of 500). High end products today still command premium prices.
16 May
16 May
5:31 a.m.
New subject: Byte Jan 87 retrospective.
This sounds like a lot of content, but there are 86
full page
ads. 43 column adds which comes out to about 14 more pages of ads. Out
of 201 pages in the technical section 100 pages are ads. This is not too
bad, but for a magazine which was at one time highly technical, it is
pretty sad. Tot total number of pages in this issue was 488. How many pages
of technical content does it [BYTE] have now?
IMHO, close to zero.
5:53 a.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
At 08:31 AM 5/16/97 -0600, Jeff Kaneko wrote:
i have many of the older Bytes (late 70's). those were high quality
content for any microcomputer enthusiast. I threw out most of my issues
How many
pages of technical content does it [BYTE] have now?
IMHO, close to zero.
from the mid to late 80's (after pulling out useful
articles including all
the Steve Ciarcia columns!). Also have two of the
compendiums of early Dr.
Dobb's that are chock full of stuff like assembly listings and construction
blueprints.
trivia question (easy): what was the original full name of Dr. Dobb's
Journal? and (bonus question) what was it's subtitle? Answer later...
- glenn
6:32 a.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
Glenn Roberts wrote:
trivia question (easy): what was the original full name
of Dr. Dobb's
Journal? and (bonus question) what was it's subtitle? Answer later...
Peering through the haze of long lost memories (delay line and core)
I see a title something like:
Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calesthnics [sp?] and Orthodontia:
Running Light without Overbyte
To my great regret, though, I don't own any copies from back then.
Brian L. Stuart
6:56 a.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
that didn't take long. congrat's (1/2 point off for misspelling
calisthenics). I have vol's 4 & 5 of the compendium which cover 1979 and
1980.
1980 issues were big on Apple II, Northstar, CP/M, UCSD pascal and of
course source code for Ron Cain's original "small C" for the 8080.
in '79 i see references to the 6800 microprocessor, KIM, COSMAC and other
early SBC's, PROM burning, SWTPC, Z80 disassembler, etc.
fun stuff.
- glenn
At 10:32 AM 5/16/97 -0500, you wrote:
Glenn Roberts wrote:
trivia question (easy): what was the original full
name of Dr. Dobb's
Journal? and (bonus question) what was it's subtitle? Answer later...
Peering through the haze of long lost memories (delay line and core)
I see a title something like:
Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calesthnics [sp?] and Orthodontia:
Running Light without Overbyte
To my great regret, though, I don't own any copies from back then.
Brian L. Stuart
7:13 a.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
On Fri, 16 May 1997, Glenn Roberts wrote:
i have many of the older Bytes (late 70's). those
were high quality
content for any microcomputer enthusiast. I threw out most of my issues
from the mid to late 80's (after pulling out useful articles including all
the Steve Ciarcia columns!). Also have two of the compendiums of early Dr.
Dobb's that are chock full of stuff like assembly listings and construction
blueprints.
trivia question (easy): what was the original full name of Dr. Dobb's
Journal? and (bonus question) what was it's subtitle? Answer later...
If my memory is not failing me (more than usual)
Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia
Subtitle: Running Lite without Overbyte
-jim
---
jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com
The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
9:01 a.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
If my memory is not failing me (more than usual)
Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia
Subtitle: Running Lite without Overbyte
-jim
---
jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com
The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
Hrrumph!
It's amazing that the _Journal_ still exists at all! It's (original)
philosophy is the complete antithesis of current industry practise.
Used to be, if you could write small, fast code, not only were you
good, you survived!
Nowadays, its "A couple of meg here, a couple of meg there,
pretty soon we're talking about real memory usage".
jeff
8:59 a.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
On Fri, 16 May 1997, Jeff Kaneko wrote:
Hrrumph!
It's amazing that the _Journal_ still exists at all! It's (original)
philosophy is the complete antithesis of current industry practise.
Used to be, if you could write small, fast code, not only were you
good, you survived!
Nowadays, its "A couple of meg here, a couple of meg there,
pretty soon we're talking about real memory usage".
Its totally fricken pathetic, isn't it? I remember when whole operating
systems resided in less than 64K. Now, you need 64 megs for all the
pretty GUI shit and sound clips. Totally pathetic.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
4:52 p.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
Hi Sam,
There was a recent posting to a newsgroup wherein the author
claimed one couldn't compile a program with a particular
compiler in less than 8 Mbytes. The fact that people were
doing it with 2 and 4 Mbytes was apparently of no relevance.
It brought to mind that I have a Pascal compiler for an older
machine that works very well in 24 Kbytes. Something has
gotten completely out of whack.
Hrrumph!
It's amazing that the _Journal_ still exists at all! It's (original)
philosophy is the complete antithesis of current industry practise.
Used to be, if you could write small, fast code, not only were you
good, you survived!
Nowadays, its "A couple of meg here, a couple of meg there,
pretty soon we're talking about real memory usage".
Its totally fricken pathetic, isn't it? I remember when whole operating
systems resided in less than 64K. Now, you need 64 megs for all the
pretty GUI stuff and sound clips. Totally pathetic. 
6:27 p.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
It was thus said that the Great Sam Ismail once stated:
On Fri, 16 May 1997, Jeff Kaneko wrote:
But you can do more with more memory, in less time. Now, it's easier to
run, for instance, statistical analysis on large amounts of text and use
that to generate interresting, if somewhat bizarre, text. Or edit large
images, or even do sound manipulation.
I remember in 1985 or 86, programming my Coco (with 64K of RAM - upgraded
myself from 16K) to do a 6-bit sound sample. I could get a reconizable
sample of 30 seconds (each sample took 32k), and only reconizable because I
knew what to listen for. A decent sample lasted only 2 or 3 seconds.
Still though, that doesn't excuse the bloat of today's operating systems.
Just wished that the operating systems could reside in under 64K (actually,
the kernel for QNX on a Pentium weighs in under 10K).
-spc (Sigh)
Hrrumph!
It's amazing that the _Journal_ still exists at all! It's (original)
philosophy is the complete antithesis of current industry practise.
Used to be, if you could write small, fast code, not only were you
good, you survived!
Nowadays, its "A couple of meg here, a couple of meg there,
pretty soon we're talking about real memory usage".
Its totally fricken pathetic, isn't it? I remember when whole operating
systems resided in less than 64K. Now, you need 64 megs for all the
pretty GUI shit and sound clips. Totally pathetic.
10:41 p.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
On Fri, 16 May 1997, Captain Napalm wrote:
I remember in 1985 or 86, programming my Coco (with
64K of RAM - upgraded
myself from 16K) to do a 6-bit sound sample. I could get a reconizable
sample of 30 seconds (each sample took 32k), and only reconizable because I
knew what to listen for. A decent sample lasted only 2 or 3 seconds.
HA! I could do 40 seconds in 48K on my Apple ][+ at 1-bit and it was
pretty legible. Didn't need no silly pentium and EDO memory for that.
If I sampled it into my 1 meg RAM card on my //e I could get five
(count'em FIVE) whole minutes!
Still though, that doesn't excuse the bloat of today's operating systems.
Just wished that the operating systems could reside in under 64K (actually,
the kernel for QNX on a Pentium weighs in under 10K).
I believe it's around 4K. And they have an impressive micro-GUI called
Photon which operates in under a meg. It easily compares to Windows.
I used to run my linux box on 4megs. Worked fine (with a decent swap
space). There's no need for the bloat which windows and its ilk covets.
What next? A 500meg operating system?
The Apple disk conrtoller ROM which read the boot sector off of a disk
was 256 bytes! Amazing piece of code. You won't find anything
comparable today, at least in any mainstream software (ie. windows).
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
17 May
17 May
7:05 a.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
It was thus said that the Great Sam Ismail once stated:
On Fri, 16 May 1997, Captain Napalm wrote:
Which version of Linux were you running? Sounds like either the 0.9x
series or maybe the 1.0 series. I would be slighty hesitent to run 1.2 in
4M and 2.0 in 8M (2.0 really bloated up).
Still though, that doesn't excuse the bloat of today's operating systems.
Just wished that the operating systems could reside in under 64K (actually,
the kernel for QNX on a Pentium weighs in under 10K).
I believe it's around 4K. And they have an impressive micro-GUI called
Photon which operates in under a meg. It easily compares to Windows.
I used to run my linux box on 4megs. Worked fine (with a decent swap
space). There's no need for the bloat which windows and its ilk covets.
What next? A 500meg operating system?
The Apple disk conrtoller ROM which read the boot
sector off of a disk
was 256 bytes! Amazing piece of code. You won't find anything
comparable today, at least in any mainstream software (ie. windows).
I've heard incredible things about the Apple ][ Disk drive. One, that it
took only 5 ICs for the hardware, and now only 256 bytes of code to read
from it? I'd really like to see both the
schematics and the code. That's
just incredible.
-spc (Also remembers writing code to drive the serial port under
the Coco ... )
8:20 a.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
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11:41 a.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
On Sat, 17 May 1997, Tim Shoppa wrote:
I thought the WD-17XX and WD-19XX chips were programed to automatically
get the first track/sector on reset. I seem to remember that the other
controller chips from that time also did this. I always thought this was
the ONLY way to do it 8-) I have often thought that if all the
peripherials (did I spell that right?) did the same thing (at reset) and
made thier *internal drivers* available at boot up - it would be a much
easier world with IO. You would just have to set a switch on the IO
card/device to tell it what CPU it is working with and then be done with
it.
I've
heard incredible things about the Apple ][ Disk drive. One, that it
took only 5 ICs for the hardware, and now only 256 bytes of code to read
from it? I'd really like to see both the schematics and the code. That's
just incredible.
The 256-byte-long bootstrap for the Disk ][ is really quite long,
as the very simple hardware needs extensive help from the software
to read anything from the disk. The very complex hardware/software
interaction is well-documented in Worth's and Lechner's _Beneath
Apple DOS_, still available new from Quality Computers. The
schematics are published in the back of both the Apple DOS 3.2
and 3.3 manuals, though the schematics themselves don't do you
a lot of good unless you know the programming of the bipolar
PROM's used in the controller's state machine.
For comparison, my S-100 boxes with WD1771-derived controllers have
bootstraps that are just over a dozen bytes long. For many PDP-11 disk devices, the bootstrap is only a
couple words.
When you have to toggle the bootstrap in through the front panel every
time you boot, a short bootstrap is extremely desirable.
Of course, in these cases, there is substantially more intelligence
in the device and controller than there is in the Disk ][.
Oh I don't know 8-) Some of them seem pretty stupid when I try to talk
to them. They don't seem to understand that they have to work the way
I WANT them to 8-)
Tim. (shoppa(a)triumf.ca)
BC
7:50 p.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
On Sat, 17 May 1997, Tim Shoppa wrote:
For comparison, my S-100 boxes with WD1771-derived
controllers have
bootstraps that are just over a dozen bytes long. For many
PDP-11 disk devices, the bootstrap is only a couple words. When
you have to toggle the bootstrap in through the front panel every
time you boot, a short bootstrap is extremely desirable. Of
course, in these cases, there is substantially more intelligence
in the device and controller than there is in the Disk ][.
Exactly. The Apple ][e bootstrap does a lot of work to read the boot
sector off the disk. It creates the 6&2 encoding table, looks for the
boot sector and reads it, decodes it and then jumps to it, all in less
than 256 bytes. Impressive as all hell. Woz is a god damn GOD.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
2:40 p.m.
New subject: Help with old SGI
I dragged home a big old Motorola based SGI today, and will need a great
deal of help repairing it. Do any of you have any information/knowledge
of the IRIS series of machines (specifically IRIS 2500T)? I am almost
completely stupid when it comes to SGIs, and the Web is not much help
(all FAQs deal with the 4D/ machines).
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net
7:34 p.m.
New subject: Help with old SGI
On Sat, 17 May 1997, William Donzelli wrote:
I dragged home a big old Motorola based SGI today, and
will need a great
deal of help repairing it. Do any of you have any information/knowledge
You're stoked. I was at an auction a few weeks back and there were four
of them, and I was hoping to get one but I had to leave before the
auctioneer got to them. I found out later they went for at least a $1000
each anyway, which I definitely would not have paid.
Anyway, don't have any help for you. I heard that the graphics for
Jurrasic Park were rendered on those though. Anyone care to back this up?
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
8:05 p.m.
New subject: Help with old SGI
You're stoked. I was at an auction a few weeks
back and there were four
of them, and I was hoping to get one but I had to leave before the
auctioneer got to them. I found out later they went for at least a $1000
each anyway, which I definitely would not have paid.
This one was free. It seems to be about ten years old, and was previously
doing ocean wave anaylsis or some such thing at the University of
Chicago. The disk (14" Fujitsu Eagle 424) has been parted out, and someone
raped some of the chips from the boards. Of course, I do not have IRIX
(the operating system) or any documentation.
It looks like I have another long term project!
Anyway, don't have any help for you. I heard that
the graphics for
Jurrasic Park were rendered on those though. Anyone care to back this up?
No doubt the movie was not done on IRISes - way too slow. Most likely the
movie people used MIPS based SGIs, with all of those fancy graphics
coprocessors. SGI adandonded Motorola 68K processors sometime in the
late-1980s, probably for the same reason Sun and HP did.
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net
7:47 p.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
On Sat, 17 May 1997, Captain Napalm wrote:
Yeah, it was a version less than 1.00. I haven't played with Linux for a
while and didn't know that the kernal has fattened up since 1.0. I guess
I better stop bragging to people that I can run linux in less than 4
megabytes.
The Apple ][ was an incredible machine. One beautiful hack on top of
the next.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
I used to run
my linux box on 4megs. Worked fine (with a decent swap
space). There's no need for the bloat which windows and its ilk covets.
What next? A 500meg operating system?
Which version of Linux were you running? Sounds like either the 0.9x
series or maybe the 1.0 series. I would be slighty hesitent to run 1.2 in
4M and 2.0 in 8M (2.0 really bloated up). The Apple disk
conrtoller ROM which read the boot sector off of a disk
was 256 bytes! Amazing piece of code. You won't find anything
comparable today, at least in any mainstream software (ie. windows).
I've heard incredible things about the Apple ][ Disk drive. One, that it
took only 5 ICs for the hardware, and now only 256 bytes of code to read
from it? I'd really like to see both the schematics and the code. That's
just incredible.
10:56 p.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
On Sat, 17 May 1997, Sam Ismail wrote:
On Sat, 17 May 1997, Captain Napalm wrote:
Yeah, it was a version less than 1.00. I haven't played with Linux for a
while and didn't know that the kernal has fattened up since 1.0. I guess
I better stop bragging to people that I can run linux in less than 4
megabytes.
I don't know Sam, I ran Linux 1.2.13 in 4 MB for quite some time. It got
REAL SLOW when I ran X-Windows but hell, it did run! Now I got 2.0.29 and
8 MB and run Linux in a couple of Virtual Consoles and DOSEmu in another
(only when I need too!) and have one machine for a comm server (386DX40
with NO keyboard and NO video card - can NT even do that?!?!?!? I mean I
know it won't run on a 386 with 8 MB but without Kb and Video??), my work
machine (386DX33), and the *family* machine (486DX66) running WFW 3.11 all
connected on the Internet (using IPMASQ) and running Samba to make WFW
happy.
I am pretty sure I can get 2.0.29 to run in 4 MB and a WHOLE LOTTA SWAP
8-)
BC
I used to
run my linux box on 4megs. Worked fine (with a decent swap
space). There's no need for the bloat which windows and its ilk covets.
What next? A 500meg operating system?
Which version of Linux were you running? Sounds like either the 0.9x
series or maybe the 1.0 series. I would be slighty hesitent to run 1.2 in
4M and 2.0 in 8M (2.0 really bloated up). 
19 May
19 May
4:14 a.m.
New subject: Bloated code?
On Sat, 17 May 1997, Captain Napalm wrote:
Which version of Linux were you running? Sounds
like either the 0.9x
series or maybe the 1.0 series. I would be slighty hesitent to run 1.2 in
4M and 2.0 in 8M (2.0 really bloated up).
The "bloating up" of the Linux 2.0 kernel depends on several factors. One
of them is whether you modularize device drivers etc. In the previous
kernel releases, all of your device drivers had to be compiled in, whether
you used them regularly or not. With 2.0 you can make them a permanent
part of the kernel or you can compile them as modules to be loaded on
demand. Yes, if you make _everything_ part of the kernel, the thing will
be huge. If you're running without networking, SCSI, sound card,
multi-serial, CD-ROM -- just ST506 or IDE drives, Linux 2.x can be smaller
and faster than 1.x, and can be happy in four meg of RAM. And if you need
some of these features only occasionally, such as to load software from CD
or ethernet, the driver module can be loaded, used, then dropped. My old
386DX25 has been _much_ happier since I upgraded to 2.0, and yes, I have
tested its operation with only four meg (it has eight normally). This
machine is _not_ being used for X -- a matter of CPU speed on that part.
It's semi-retired to just dial out with a modem, collect Usenet news, and
make that news available to the rest of the basement via NFS. It's stable
and I do not foresee much more upgrading of that machine -- it's not a
classic in any way, shape or form and the job it's doing is essentially a
sinecure for long and faithful service. It was the machine I started
hacking Linux on about five years ago with a stack of SLS floppies (5.25"
1.2MB) more than six inches high.
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
16 May
16 May
10:18 a.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
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10:13 a.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
On Fri, 16 May 1997, Tim Shoppa wrote:
The original plan for DDJ was it was to run a total of 3 issues to discuss
Tiny BASIC. People liked the magazine and so they decided to continue
publishing it.
Last Thursday I got bound volumes 1-9 (minus 7) of DDJ. It is a lot of
fun reading these. Recrecational computing was an adventure back then.
--pec
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
> If my
memory is not failing me (more than usual)
>
> Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia
>
> Subtitle: Running Lite without Overbyte
The very first issue actually reads "Dr. Dobbs Journal of
Tiny Basic Calisthenics and Orthodontia." The first couple
years of issues heavily concentrate on Tiny Basic. After that
they were a heavy promoter of Tiny C.
11:08 a.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
On Fri, 16 May 1997, Jeff Kaneko wrote:
Perhaps it should not be considered so much "amazing", as quietly
reassuring...
-jim
---
jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com
The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
If my memory
is not failing me (more than usual)
Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia
Subtitle: Running Lite without Overbyte
Hrrumph!
It's amazing that the _Journal_ still exists at all! It's (original)
philosophy is the complete antithesis of current industry practise.
12:58 p.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
Hrrumph!
It's amazing that the _Journal_ still exists at all! It's (original)
philosophy is the complete antithesis of current industry practise.
Perhaps it should not be considered so much "amazing", as quietly
reassuring...
-jim
---
8:01 a.m.
New subject: Magazine retrospectives
It was thus said that the Great Glenn Roberts once stated:
trivia question (easy): what was the original full name of Dr. Dobb's
Journal? and (bonus question) what was it's subtitle? Answer later...
Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calestentics and Orthodontia: Running Light
Without Overbyte.
-spc (Kant spel werth a darn)
6:47 a.m.
New subject: Byte Jan 87 retrospective.
This sounds like a lot of content, but there are
86 full page
ads. 43 column adds which comes out to about 14 more pages of ads. Out
of 201 pages in the technical section 100 pages are ads. This is not too
bad, but for a magazine which was at one time highly technical, it is
pretty sad. Tot total number of pages in this issue was 488. How many pages
of technical content does it [BYTE] have now?
IMHO, close to zero.
17 May
17 May
7:45 p.m.
New subject: Byte Jan 87 retrospective.
On Fri, 16 May 1997, Paul E Coad wrote:
Videotrax
This was an interesting system. It consisted of a board which plugged
into a PC and some software which allowed backups of a system using a
VCR. They claimed to be able to get up to 80MB per tape. They also sold
a VCR which allowed unattended
I saw this system at AppleFest '89. It was pretty interesting. I think
the problem with this system and why it never caught on is because: a)
let's face it, hooking your computer to a VCR is lame and b) it was slow.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
18 May
18 May
5:24 a.m.
New subject: Byte Jan 87 retrospective.
On Sat, 17 May 1997, Sam Ismail wrote:
On Fri, 16 May 1997, Paul E Coad wrote:
I remember a similar system (Corvus Mirror) that we had in our
undergraduate
computer lab (UCSB, 1984-86 or so). I also remember someone doing a
research project on document preservation by storing digitized copies of
documents on a videotape with one of these backup devices.
In both cases, there were problems with the reliability of the backups
(seems that VHS tapes aren't such a great medium for data storage, anyway)
Videotrax
This was an interesting system. It consisted of a board which plugged
into a PC and some software which allowed backups of a system using a
VCR. They claimed to be able to get up to 80MB per tape. They also sold
a VCR which allowed unattended
I saw this system at AppleFest '89. It was pretty interesting. I think
the problem with this system and why it never caught on is because: a)
let's face it, hooking your computer to a VCR is lame and b) it was slow. 
11:09 a.m.
New subject: Byte Jan 87 retrospective.
Videotrax
I saw this system at AppleFest '89. It was pretty interesting. I think
the problem with this system and why it never caught on is because: a)
let's face it, hooking your computer to a VCR is lame and b) it was slow.
11:37 a.m.
New subject: Byte Jan 87 retrospective.
On Sun, 18 May 1997, Bill Whitson wrote:
> > Videotrax
> I saw this system at AppleFest '89. It was pretty interesting. I think
> the problem with this system and why it never caught on is because: a)
> let's face it, hooking your computer to a VCR is lame and b) it was slow.
I saw this in an Slpha Micro shop (headquarters?) in Irvine California
back in - oh - 83?84?. It was neat *seeing* the data but as I understood
it, everything had to be recorded 5+ times for ANY reliable data recovery.
On the line of interesting storage devices - does
anyone remember the
"scanner" that read strips of encoded data. I don't remember what it
was called, but for a little while they printed some of these strips in
Nibble. I think it was an Apple II only thing. I guess you could read
and print these strips and they generated programs when you scanned
them.
I also remember either Byte of Dr. Dobb's doing this for a little while.
I might be slipping tho.
Also, some personal bad news - my van was broken into
on Friday night
and a large load of classic equipment was stolen (I'm preparing to move
and the it was the easiest place to store it). So, if you live in the
greater Seattle area and you see a good amount of the following show
up when you're poking around, please let me know (I'm not as much
concerned about the equipment as I am about my addressbook, insurance
folder, and vehicle registration.).
Ouch!
Stolen: IBM 6360 disk drive, Macintosh, Mac 512, Box
of CompuPro s-100
boards, Box of misc. manuals, Commodore DPS-1101 printer, TI99/4a
expansion box, Turbo C64 disk drive, CBM 8050 dual disk drive, Atari
520ST, 2 commodore vic-1541 disk drives, 1 blue chip disk drive.
Naw - it will end up in the garbage 8-(
I'm sure the thieves thought they really scored
but I'm guessing it
will soon turn up at a thrift store or pawn shop when they can't
move it. Some of the equipment may be blood-stained. I have mounted
razor blades across the bottom of my car stereo and they found them
when trying to rip it out ;). The dash was very bloody - quite
gratifying.
Sorry this took so long - I only have two fingers left to type with 8-)
Damn - that's MEAN man!!! Probably gratifying - but even worse if
someone called the cops on you for dealing drugs and the cops searched
the car! You could/would get sued for attempted MURDER (if your cops are
like our cops 8-( then beaten to some what of a mush - while trying to
*escape* or *resisting* arrest!) Well, that's unless you are well know to
your local constablary(sp).
Other than that - Cool idea! Do you have a sticker in the window -
Protected by Gillette or something 8-)
BC
1:21 p.m.
New subject: Bar code readers (was: Re: Byte Jan 87 retrospective.
On Sun, 18 May 1997, Bill Whitson wrote:
On the line of interesting storage devices - does
anyone remember the
"scanner" that read strips of encoded data. I don't remember what it
was called, but for a little while they printed some of these strips in
Nibble. I think it was an Apple II only thing. I guess you could read
and print these strips and they generated programs when you scanned
them.
There were at least two of these
a. Oscar Databar, late 1993 and
b. Cauzin Softstrip, more like 1985-6
7:27 p.m.
New subject: Byte Jan 87 retrospective.
On Sun, 18 May 1997, Bill Whitson wrote:
On the line of interesting storage devices - does
anyone remember the
"scanner" that read strips of encoded data. I don't remember what it
was called, but for a little while they printed some of these strips in
Nibble. I think it was an Apple II only thing. I guess you could read
and print these strips and they generated programs when you scanned
them.
Oh yeah... I remeber that. Vaguely. Can't remember its name, though.
However, it wasn't an Apple II only thing. I distinctly remember reading
that it was available for a number of machines (that impressed me back in
that glorious age of complete incompatibility). :-) A couple of mags were
publishing strips for that thingy.
Also, some personal bad news - my van was broken into
on Friday night
and a large load of classic equipment was stolen
Ouch! Nightmare come true...
OTOH, I just want to *see* the expression on the face of anyone braking
into my place and finding it stacked from floor to ceiling with hardware.
Then, of course, I'd love to see their expression when they try to fence the
goodies.
I have mounted razor blades across the bottom of my
car stereo and they
found them when trying to rip it out ;). The dash was very bloody - quite
gratifying.
Excellent! The Bastard Classic Computer Collector From Hell strikes! I
think you ought to have mounted razor blades on some of the machines as
well.
--------------------------- ,o88,o888o,,o888o. -------------------------------
Alexios Chouchoulas '88 ,88' ,88'
alexios(a)vennea.demon.co.uk
The Unpronouncable One ,o88oooo88ooooo88oo, axc(a)dcs.ed.ac.uk
19 May
19 May
6:17 p.m.
New subject: Byte Jan 87 retrospective.
On Mon, 19 May 1997 05:27:50 +0100 (BST), someone said:
On the line of interesting storage devices - does
anyone remember the
"scanner" that read strips of encoded data. I don't remember what it
was called, but for a little while they printed some of these strips in
Nibble. I think it was an Apple II only thing. I guess you could read
and print these strips and they generated programs when you scanned
them.
There was a thing called Oscar for the TI-99/4A and other systems.
Some magazines printed both human-readable printed listings and
Oscar-readable code.
_______________
Barry Peterson bm_pete(a)ix.netcom.com
Husband to Diane, Father to Doug,
Grandfather to Zoe and Tegan.
11:37 p.m.
New subject: Radionic
Can anyone help me with an old computer I found at a car boot sale
recently? (I find it hard to leave them there to their fate). It's
called a Radionic R1001. The odd thing about it is it has ten 3.5mm
jacks on it, six along the back and four down the side, none of which
can be for cassette leads as it has them attatched already. Anyone know
anything about it??
Eifion Bedford - Owner of ZX80, ZX81, Spectrums, QLs, Sinclair PC200, SAM Coupe,
Z88, CBM64, BBC 'B', Electron, Amiga 4000. Oh yes, and a Pentium PC (sorry).
20 May
20 May
5:25 a.m.
New subject: Byte Jan 87 retrospective.
On Mon, 19 May 1997, Alexios Chouchoulas wrote:
Excellent! The Bastard Classic Computer Collector
From Hell strikes! I
think you ought to have mounted razor blades on some of the machines as
well.
Ah. Another fan of Simon Travaglia (an AIX sysadmin like myself).
I remember back in '89 when the store for which I was performing tech
support received the first thirty or so NCR "Heisenberg" (NCR used to use
the names of famous scientists for their development code names) 80386sx
low-profile desktop systems to reach the US from the factory in West
Germany. It wasn't scheduled to be announced for another couple of
months, but we had a _good_ customer that had pull in Dayton. It was
obvious that the factory wasn't geared up for production on these beasts
as yet -- the edges of the cases weren't milled. When we opened them up
to add memory, disk, etc., we found lots of bloodstains and left no few
of our own. Well, I'd always heard those Krauts were efficient about
keeping things running on schedule.
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
15 May
15 May
11:39 p.m.
On Thu, 15 May 1997, William Donzelli wrote:
IBM once made some awesome terminals, mostly for the
30xx mainframes.
They were quite large and had a fantastic resolution - I seem to remember
them being able to display four _nice_ looking terminal windows without
overlap. I think this was in the early 1980s timeframe.
I remember seeing these at a site I visited once. They were totally cool.
Especially compared to the all metal green screen 3278s I had been using
for the previous few years. I also remember 4 non-overlapping virtual
3278s being displayed on the screen. The display was about 4-6 inches
deep and around 19 inches diagonally. (The 3278s I was using were about
2 feet deep.) I saw these in use in the early 90s.
I once saw a few at a hamfest a year or so back, but
they still had hefty
price tags - $200. I am sure that was a small fraction of their original
cost.
I'm sure that there are plenty of shops which would pay $200 each.
There was a time in which I would have paid $200 of my own money to
be able to use one of these. They beat the hell out of using 2 terminals
or Tubes. There is another cool thing. This software allowed use of
multiple virtual terminals on a single terminal with hot key switching.
We thought this was pretty hot stuff at the time.
--pec
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
___
PR0G 402 /___
16 May
16 May
4:08 a.m.
Due to massive amounts of caffeine & sleep deprivation, Paul E Coad said:
On Thu, 15 May 1997, William Donzelli wrote:
Ahhhh, yes... those were the good ol' days! I remember *working* on these,
and I can tell you that they were --==Sweet!!!==-- Extremely easy on the
eyes, with said 4 terminals made it very handy to work on different
machines at the same time. Even with 4 windows on the one terminal, ISTR
that there were almost no jaggies...
I worked for EDS (owned by GM) in 1989-1990 in Auburn Hills, MI, and had a
chance to work with IBM/Amdahl mainframes, some of the CAD terminals that
engineers designed the cars on, some early SUN hardware (can't remember
which machines... they were set inside consoles, so all you had to work
with were the keyboards/mice/monitors... I just remember *badly* wanting
one) and a bunch of other gnarly hardware!
It made me cry when I had to work on our 1-and-only overworked AS/400 that
took up to 2 hours to execute one command! One night (when load was lower)
I remember entering a [simple] command (WRKACTJOB [work with active jobs],
if memory serves), taking orders for the entire control room, driving to
Taco Bell (6-7 miles away), getting/paying for the food, went back and
distributed everything, and I was still done eating 10 minutes before the
command displayed output!
Anyone out there have a GPD for sale for $5 that I can interface to my
CoCo3? *Pinch* Owww! Damn! I'm at work! <sniff>
Gotta go!
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger Merchberger | If at first you don't succeed,
Programmer, NorthernWay | nuclear warhead disarmament should
zmerch(a)northernway.net | *not* be your first career choice.
IBM once made some awesome terminals, mostly for
the 30xx mainframes.
They were quite large and had a fantastic resolution - I seem to remember
them being able to display four _nice_ looking terminal windows without
overlap. I think this was in the early 1980s timeframe.
I remember seeing these at a site I visited once. They were totally cool.
Especially compared to the all metal green screen 3278s I had been using
for the previous few years. I also remember 4 non-overlapping virtual
3278s being displayed on the screen. The display was about 4-6 inches
deep and around 19 inches diagonally. (The 3278s I was using were about
2 feet deep.) I saw these in use in the early 90s.
8:42 a.m.
On Thu, 15 May 1997, William Donzelli wrote:
IBM once made some awesome terminals, mostly for the
30xx mainframes.
They were quite large and had a fantastic resolution - I seem to remember
them being able to display four _nice_ looking terminal windows without
overlap. I think this was in the early 1980s timeframe.
IBM 3290 Terminal. Equivalent to four 3270 series terminals. There's
one within twenty feet of my desk at Prudential. I wish it could be
used as ASCII terminals -- it's look dynomite attached to my sundry
Unix and Linux boxen. But it's only good with SNA.
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
15 May
15 May
7:05 p.m.
On Thu, 15 May 1997, Doug Spence wrote:
I remember seeing some other systems with this kind of
display in
magazines. (The GRiD Compass comes to mind?)
Hmmm...I saw a couple GRiD laptops at the last swap meet I went to. Are
these considered classic? I wasn't sure, and besides, the lady was
asking too much.
I think the first Compaq portables used a gas plasma display. Or was it
the second generation?
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
9930
days inactive
9935
days old
44 comments
19 participants
participants (19)
-
alexios＠vennea.demon.co.uk -
bill＠booster.bothell.washington.edu -
bm_pete＠ix.netcom.com -
danjo＠xnet.com -
dastar＠crl.com -
ds_spenc＠alcor.concordia.ca -
eifs＠thenet.co.uk -
gram＠cnct.com -
groberts＠mitre.org -
jeff.kaneko＠ifrsys.com -
jimw＠agora.rdrop.com -
mojaveg＠ridgecrest.ca.us -
pcoad＠crl.com -
shoppa＠alph02.triumf.ca -
spc＠armigeron.com -
stuart＠colossus.mathcs.rhodes.edu -
transit＠primenet.com -
william＠ans.net -
zmerch＠northernway.net