And thusly Vintage Computer Festival spake: :-) I think the biggest point was to stress the preservation of the hardware and not to talk *at all* about making money off the hobby. Cheers, Bryan

:o) I'll book a train ticket to London then! They want to talk about Sinclair collectables, so you can almost guarantee they'll ignore the technical stuff and go for the marketing stuff instead..... note to self: remember to mention I'm after a Lisa 1! cheers -- adrian/witchy www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the online computer museum www.snakebiteandblack.co.uk - ex-monthly gothic shenanigans :o(

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Heh. One reply I got was along the lines of "I'm not allowed to talk about the design of [machine] and can I just say my employers at the time were great!" That means to me that there was at least one significant falling out between him and the company. Others just say 'yes that was me' and that was it. The rest of the time I get ignored. cheers -- adrian/witchy www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the online computer museum www.snakebiteandblack.co.uk - ex-monthly gothic shenanigans :o(

There's probably a stack of them next to a pile of fully working Lisa 1s :o) cheers -- adrian/witchy www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the online computer museum www.snakebiteandblack.co.uk - ex-monthly gothic shenanigans :o(

Bummer. At least with Sinclair stuff it's pretty cut and dried as far as historians are concerned. I've just got to avoid giving them the chance to 'big up' something that has no reason to be, eg anything above the rubber key 48k spectrum. Makes me wonder whether I should mention that the ZX80 should never have existed in that form and that the ZX81 was what the ZX80 should've been :) cheers -- adrian/witchy www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the online computer museum www.snakebiteandblack.co.uk - ex-monthly gothic shenanigans :o(

And thusly Hans Franke spake: And as a side note you could mention that for some strange reason 1541 disk drives have become very hard to come by.... ;) Cheers, Bryan

In message <019c01c3a893$8ab5e060$3d7ca418@game> "Teo Zenios" &lt;teoz(a)neo.rr.com&gt; wrote: [blatant lie] Commodore 1541 disk drives are as common as soil [/blatant lie] I haven't seen C64s or peripherals for sale in the Leeds area for ages. I think I saw one at a car boot sale with a ?90 sticker on it, but that's it. The car boot sales around here are basically a load of crap - pirated software, old phones, kids toys, that sort of crap. Anyone care to suggest a car boot sale in the West Yorkshire (UK) area, preferably within, say, 15 miles of Leeds, that usually has people selling classiccmps? Which reminds me - I saw an Amiga 1000 in the free-adverts paper the other day - ?900 - "ideal starter's machine". Just for added irony, there was a very similar machine listed directly below that - "Amiga A1000, box full of games, loads of software including DeluxePaint. ?30 ONO". Later. -- Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB, philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com | ViewFinder, Ethernet (Acorn AEH62), http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/ | 8xCD, framegrabber, Teletext Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives

Wouldn't that significantly reduce its value :-) Antonio -- --------------- Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org

----- Original Message ----- From: "Witchy" &lt;witchy(a)binarydinosaurs.co.uk&gt; To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 6:14 PM Subject: RE: more talking to the press. selling other a Whats funny is that people I talk to in the UK find a500's for next to nothing and A1200's for slightly more then that while a good A1200 on ebay goes for over $100 in the US.

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, Philip Pemberton wrote: There is a computer called the Computer-in-a-Book. It is mounted to the rings inside a three-ring binder, with the manual accompanying it. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

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so do I I heared they are even rare on the island. Now, there's still the good old LC80, an East German Z80 (U880) based SBC, which could be orderen in a folder stly case. If Multitech, I'd be realy looking for the MPF II! Now, beeing a 6502 Geek from the beginning and a long time 8086 assembly programmer, I can't realy follow that. The 8086 is in my eyes one of the finest designs around. What I realy dislike is the Z80 ... if there was ever a CPU with an instruction set designed using a random number generator, it's the Z80! <FLAME MODE="War" ACTION="Start"/> Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Thanks, I'm honored, and no, I won't pay the cleaning. My all time favorite Didn't know that one. Quite a good mnemonic, since it even sounds like what id does.. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Who? Gruss H. (beside: Never realy tried to learn quoteing?) -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

At 08:01 PM 11/12/03 +0100, you wrote: There's one on E-bay. Take a look at <http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2765494848&category=1247 &rd=1> Joe

the Kim and the sym we may have duplicates of for possible barter. the aim we have only one of... it seems to be the hardest to get... there is a neat aux keyboard that plugs into it too! ed sharpe archivist for smecc ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe" &lt;rigdonj(a)cfl.rr.com&gt; To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 2:14 PM Subject: AIM-65 was Re: more talking to the press. <http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2765494848&category=1247

In message &lt;20031113070534.9800.qmail(a)web40909.mail.yahoo.com&gt; steven &lt;tosteve(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote: Unfortunately, I don't have a SOL-20, nor do I have anything else even remotely rare. I think I've got a VIC20 somewhere, but that's about it. The other option would be to buy it off you, but I'm not sure what an AIM is worth. $60 plus shipping? Later. -- Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB, philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com | ViewFinder, Ethernet (Acorn AEH62), http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/ | 8xCD, framegrabber, Teletext ... Acme Corp: Unlimited credit for disadvantaged coyotes.

Ben, in fact to me it's the way the memory is handled that makes the 8086 the great CPU it is - and of course the co processor concept (and some insructions), which is more like a mainframe than the usual microprocessor. While the 8080 is realy not the worlds greatest design, the similarities between 8080 and 8086 are rether marginal. To me, as long time /370 programmer, the segment registers always apeared as base registers ... The 8086 is a pure 16 Bit Design, no halfways includes 32 or whatever length operations. Shure, the design is build around special purpose registers, but the result is an incredible simple hardware design with an exceptional low gate count (from todays view) way lower than most other rivaling CPUs (68K, 16K). And at least the 4 main registers are general purpose (ok, AX is still priviledged in speed/code size). If I had to choose a CPU to be used in an embedded project, a x86 or a 6502 would be first choice. They take up amlost no space, are easy to programm and quite powerfull. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Hey Eric, now it get's fun :) Excuse me? The PDP-11 is a classic example for an external MMU, completely invisible to a user task. Nice if you just want to run old Software that expects a 28K addres space. But without expesive OS calls, and the MMUs equivalent of bank switching, it just allows to access said 28K (well, 32K since the IO may have been not mapped in). (And BTW, IBM had it before :) Try to see the segment address as a handle given to a user task as result of a mempry request to access the requested memory. As a user task, I don't care where the memory is located, I don't need the information - nor does any other part of the operation system, except for memory management. Now, still beeing a strict 16 Bit CPU, this little trick allows a 16 Bit user process to access up to 65K of 65K segments. How many memory realy was available and how it was organized did not concern to a user programm. While still beeing on a real mode CPU, the segments allowed it to programm with all the advantages of a mature OS. The only thing missing where page faults and boundry checks. The 286 then added these features. In fact, memory management on classic Macs was similar, a user programm got an handle to the requested memory, which it used to gain information where the memory is located - this, while still beeing a real mode OS, MacOS was able to reorganize/relocate memory. Usualy register relative addressing was used then and the register did hold the (thru the handle) aquirred block address. Basicly that's nothing else than using software to do exactly what the 8086 does in hardware. The value of the segment has no meaning - why do people always waste their time in calculateing 'real' addresses? I don't care for that on a /370, nor on a PDP 11, so why should I do so on my PC? Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Am 14 Nov 2003 5:45 meinte Eric Smith: So MMU is still external, like it could be to _any_ CPU, and not realy an architectural feature. Depends what you mean wit 'dealing' if it's load them with the proper handle, then yes, think of it as a hardware shortcut to a set of OS calls. For example if you have two data blocks and want to copy data between them, you may eiter map them in in sequence via an OS call, and do a double move, or map both in (via OS calls) and then copy ... of course after recalculateing the addresses, since the blocks are now moved within the address space ... of course you may always use some kind of base and offset calcualtion to get an effective address ... all in additional instructions to be programmed - just to get the same result? Aw, come on. /360 with virtual extension - don't ask me about the model, the similar Siemens version has been the 4004-220 Now your mixing up design and implementation. The design of segments operates with 64K possible segments with 64K max size each, while the implementation on the 8086 did only use a 20 Bit address bus and thus only allowed 16 independent _maxed_out_ segments. This is why I said Mac, and not 68k, it's the Mac memory management that uses so called 'Handles' to refer to relocable blocks in Heap. While they are in fact just a pointer to a pointer, no Mac programm should (and can) assume anything from just looking at the handles content. And exactly the same view a programm should maintain at segment values. See above. Of course if one always looks at the exact hardware implementation, and if one always does the stupid segment x 16 + ofset calcualtion, one will never get the abstract view. This sometimes is in an operating system made to fit the 8086 an extreme reare case and only needed within Memory management (*1), but 99.999% of all programmers will never have to think about it. I did a whole lot of DOS and Windows programming, 100% assembly, and have never ever needed to compare pointers (*2). So, if these pointer compares have not been uncommon, I maybe lived in a different world... an island of happyness (Munich is spacial, but not that special :) Gruss H. *1 I wrote once a little reale time system under DOS (in fact it was the other way around, I just used DOS as loader, then took over and let it run as a task within my system :). Memory management was the core to it, and the segments where the key. It was simple, elegant and extremly fast - basicly it's been a little application and dial in server for a mainframe system, I was able to handle 64 19,200 Bd lines, 4 mainframe connections and a bunch of printer ques simultanious on an 8 MHz 286 (It was also a real mode application, so only 8086 code, none of the 286 features where used, since the initial development has been on a 186 machine) and still sitting around idle most of the time. On a 12 MHz 386 I could even run the app in 100% trace mode via the integrated self trace (I some of the features of the 386 are extremly nice) - I was looking for a memory problem, where I suspected a segment problem (jep, even I did distrust them), just when traceing itself and monitoring each segment related operation, the problem did not happen, so I let the production machines just trace themselves all the time - after weeks of additional investigation (inofficial, since the Problem was closed) I found out that a timeing for a third party hardware was just randomly not working with 12 MHz ISA bus speed :) *2 The rule is quite simple, if the segment (aka handle) is not the same, they are not equal. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Am 14 Nov 2003 11:49 meinte Tom Jennings: So, where's the problem? start and end are memory ponters, and thus belog to one segemt. The whole operation is meaningless if they would belong to different segments. The comparsion generated for the while is a simple 16 bit compare. A Program has not to assume anything about segments, except that it owns it (or has the access right) and how long it is. Gruss H. BTW: above example is exactly one thing why I hate C. basicly every compiler will generate a stupid loop, while in assembly a REP STOSW would do the trick at maximum speed possible. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Am 14 Nov 2003 21:05 meinte Fred N. van Kempen: Would be great, I still haven't seen one like that. And just let me guess, it'll replace it by a REP STOSB, and not use STOSW or try to allign the REP to 16 Bit borders... Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Am 14 Nov 2003 21:39 meinte Fred N. van Kempen: It almost doubles the speed, of course, if it's an odd number of bytes, you need one additional STOSB before (or after, depending if the initial address was even or odd). I'm getting courious about the optimizations your compiler does. I loved the string operations, since they are the closest stuff to caracter operations on a mainframe, and I know most compilers had a real problem using them. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Am 14 Nov 2003 12:55 meinte Fred Cisin: Of course you're right Fred, the point is, that on a 8088, it doesn't matter, while on a 8086 it gives an additional boost. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

It was thus said that the Great Guy Sotomayor once stated: Which is why for copying, setting, or otherwise manipulating memory (in C) I use the ANSI C functions memmove(), memcpy() and memset() (or the string equivilents) above rolling my own routines to do the same. The compiler can then "see" what I'm trying to do and figure out what's going on, and I almost never try to second guess the compiler (I write the code, then if it's important, generate the assembly to see what the compiler is doing). It also helps to know the language. For instance: struct foo a; struct foo b; b = a; /* Legal under ANSI C! */ GCC can assume (since it's the one doing the compiling) that both a and b are aligned for best access, and it can also pad out struct foo to be a multiple of, say 4 bytes (on a 32-bit system) so the assignment (and yes, you can now do structure assignment in ANSI C) can be done with a "rep movsl" (which it did when I tested it). I could have done: struct foo a; struct foo b; memcpy(b,a,sizeof(struct foo)); and GCC would have probably done the same sequence, since memcpy() is defined by ANSI C, the compiler has some leeway to consider the parameters to memcpy() (in this case, a and b are aligned, the size follows a certain convention so inline it with a "rep movsl"). I like the first sequence though, since the intent is a bit more clear. But yes, the generalized memcpy() in glibc is rather complicated, trying to figure out (at run time) the best way to copy memory (I seem to recall discussion about this several years ago in comp.lang.asm.x86 (I think that's the group---it's been a while) that with Pentium class machines, you may get better performance using the floating point registers to copy memory). I know the IRIX C compiler can do global optimizations but that takes quite a bit of time and processing power; I never bothered with it when I was programming under IRIX. And this was at least 10 years ago so it's margially on topic here 8-P -spc (been programming in ANSI C for over ten years ... )

Fred N. van Kempen wrote: But the REP prefix has a bug, on the early machines if I remember reading right, is you can't have interupts enabled. OH wait, you only could run DOS and you did not need NO STINKING INTERUPTS!, and serial lines ran faster than 300 baud!

Fred Cisin wrote: Well that is still a bug! I want interupts and SEGMENT and REPEAT. I am trying to FORGET the intel cpu, not because it was a bad 16 bit CPU but because it has too many GOT-YA's.

It was thus said that the Great Fred N. van Kempen once stated: I don't think there were any opcode difference between the 8086 and 8088, but there was a prefetch queue length difference that was easily testable with some self-modifying code. -spc (Was able to slap a V20 in my PCjr to get about a 10% increase in speed ... )

It was thus said that the Great Fred N. van Kempen once stated: Oh. The V20 supported 80186 opcodes (two being pusha and popa if I recall). -spc (Been maybe 8-10 years since I've done serious assembly work)

On Sat, 15 Nov 2003, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote: I presume he meant a difference in opcodes between the 8088 and V20. Didn't the V20 have some additional operations available to it? -brian.

On Mon, 2003-11-17 at 14:43, Hans Franke wrote: Snicker, the 'pop cs' instruction was the one reason I managed to keep from getting the Yale virus on my very first PC (HP Vectra CS). Yale went around in a big way at college, in the PC labs. I couldn't manage to get it, even when I conscientiously _tried_ to infect my PC. I wonder if I still have a disassembly for that old virii around somewhere. David Useless trivia re Yale: http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/alameda.shtml

It was thus said that the Great Hans Franke once stated: Um, that should be: void foofill(char *start,char *end) { while (start < end) { *start++ = 0; } } True, but if you stick with the ANSI C library call memset(), an ANSI C copmiler is free to replace the actual call to an inlined version, which on the 8086 would probably be a REP STOSW. In fact, about the only routines I still regularly use from ANSI C are the mem*() and str*() routines (the rest are ... eh). Also, on modern x86 architectures, using REP STOS* may be *slower* than using the stupid loop (GCC generated four instructions for the inner loop, using the sequence that an assembly programmer would use if you can't use REP STOSW) but again, a compiler (like GCC) can be programmed with such optimization assumptions built in. I ran the following through GCC: struct foo { int a; int b; }; void fillfoo(struct foo *p) { memset(p,0,sizeof(struct foo)); } Guess what? fillfoo() ended up being 4 instructions: movl 4(%esp), %eax movl $0, (%eax) movl $0, 4(%eax) ret When I changed struct foo to have an array inside, GCC used "rep stosl" to do the fill (since I'm using memset() GCC "knows" what I'm trying to do). So don't sell the compilers short unless you check the actual generated output (programs here were compiled using "gcc -c -O4 -S -fomit-frame-pointer") -spc (Okay, starting to stray here ... )

yeah... and, I assume if you specify start and end with the same value, you want that ONE byte filled with zero, so the test should be: while (start <= end) Nicht war? --Patrick

On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 16:29, Patrick Rigney wrote: ... All criticisms are correct, my only defense is that it was 'for illustration purposes only' (sic). But it also proves a point, no code is 'temporary', kludges last forever to embarrass their authors and all code needs documentation :-)

On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 12:00, Hans Franke wrote: So, why do you assume I should/must/want to address only within a segment? ...which technique [16-bit compare] will cause unpleasant side effects, should the memory block be 65537 bytes long, for example. Oh really....! OK you win! EOT

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Hans Franke wrote: That depends, Hans.. sometimes you just want to allocate a chunk of, say, 80KB. Which spans the segment boundaries. That is OK, but the user program *must* know about that. --f

On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 13:49, Hans Franke wrote: That is physically not true. I had an 8086 multibuss machine, it had 16K or 32K (EPROM) short of a megabyte of dynamic RAM. The CPU had SI and DI, and DS and ES, and I can write code that moves arbitrarily-sized blocks of data, from 0 to 1024K bytes of data. It takes more than REP MOVSW to do that, but that's immaterial. It's like saying you can't write recursive code on a stackless machine because it wasn't envisioned by the manufacturer, or isn't accomodated in the hardware. It may be hard or ugly, but it's done. Who cares what the manufacturer says? Don't forget that "assembly language" itself is an abstraction, like C, that often restrains options. Of course CPUs contain a bunch of physical resources like registers and flags, and datapaths. If we were to write code at that level of abstraction we'd end up writing code very differently. It's just not very convenient, as our ancestors realized.

Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote: But did not the EARLY Mac's assume you would never need more than 128K. TOTAL in the machine! And that is the only size they made! Ben.

Eric Smith wrote: Well all I know it was a painful operation to upgrade the old Mac's to a FAT Mac, from Dr Dobb's Journal. Funny thing I liked the compared to the PC, but they were too much $$$. They still are. Funny how "open hardware/Software" is what makes the better product. First apple, then the IBM pc, then Microsoft and DOS, now linux is the trend for the best if not user friendly software. BTW I was never a fan of 'cool fad's' on computers ( The blinking lights are a feature needed for umm debuging ) so I am painting all the glowing parts of my new laser mouse, black so the glow is gone.

I wrote: Add: since the machines had 20-bit addressing, we segments were actually 4 bits wide, so you could do 16x64K max. --f

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Patrick Finnegan wrote: They did, and do, and thats what I assumed was the end of it. Until I hit some interesting documentation that spoke of the system as "Ultrix/OSF", and some searches later, it turned out that DEC started out with porting OSF/1 to their PMAX systems (MIPS based boxes, aka DECstation/DECsystem) and then adding a good deal of their Ultrix stuff onto it, *probably* intended as a successor to Ultrix. But, then came the Alpha, and they moved to just doing Alpha, and that's pretty much what we came to know: OSF/1 on Alpha, later Digital UNIX, later Tru64. Soon to be HPUX (no, dont get me started on that one.. pleez..) Several people helped me find that code, and I gathered a load of those boxes to see which will and which wont run it... :) If anyone has OSF/1 stuff (anything before DU 4.0g) pse contact me offlist. Cheers, Fred -- Fred N. van Kempen, DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) Collector/Archivist Visit the VAXlab Project at http://www.pdp11.nl/VAXlab/ Visit the Archives at http://www.pdp11.nl/ Email: waltje(a)pdp11.nl BUSSUM, THE NETHERLANDS / Sunnyvale, CA, USA

Peter, I grabbed both the OSF/1 and Ultrix source stuff- thanks lots! If only we could un-earth more of it... *sigh* Cheers, Fred

AFAIK only OSF/1 T1.0 will run on MIPS boxen, I'm still massively annoyed I can't find my disk! cheers -- adrian/witchy www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the online computer museum www.snakebiteandblack.co.uk - ex-monthly gothic shenanigans :o(

Patrick Finnegan wrote: Ultrix & OSF. But not all DecStations were supported

On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 04:26, Hans Franke wrote: And we all know no program ever needed more than 64K! Or communicate with another segment! (Sort of the opposite of Grolsh's Law, Informal). Mature segmented Intel OS?! I dare you to name one :-) Sadly, not very well! And the 68000 -- it had what appeared to be a clean, orthogonal order code (OK reading too many old books -- "instruction set"), but it was riddled with address-mode-limitation holes not addressed until later models. Plus it had many of the accumulator-bandwidth issues of machines from the 60's, which were fun to code but often inefficient. The point is, quick-to-market was as important as technical strong points and weaknesses, we all have our favorites, and we all know only those chips we worked on, however many or few that might be.

There was a datasheet stating that one may order 6532 with project specific chip select lines, but I never seen any computer using that. the 6532 CS is already a good design. And for the 6530, is's doable to replce it with a bit of glue logic, a 6532 and a PROM. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

----- Original Message ----- From: "Hans Franke" &lt;Hans.Franke(a)mch20.sbs.de&gt; Did you really say that 50p was too much ? Then you shouldnt be German but Scottish ! :-) Nico

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, Hans Franke wrote: I'm sure descendents of that tribe are currently settled in the village of Neuperlach in Munich, Bavaria :) -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

Pooh, good I don't live there ... I just work there :) :) Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

At 12:28 PM 11/12/03 +0000, you wrote: We call them garage sales in the US but the same thing is happening. The sellers go look at E-bay and find the highest price there and that's what they want for the stuff. (without the trouble and expense of listing their item, packaing and shipping it and all the other hassles of internet sales!) Garage sales in the US are a waste of time any more. BUT I still find bargains at the scrap metal places. Joe

----- Original Message ----- From: "Bryan Pope" &lt;bpope(a)wordstock.com&gt; To: &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 3:25 PM Subject: Re: more talking to the press. Funny somebody wants $50 for one (1541 drive) on the Vintage Computer Marketplace now!

Was given ("take this or it'll be dumped") a near NIB 1541-II drive last week- looks to have had virtually no use. All original packaging in good order. There's still bargains out there! DaveB Christchurch, NZ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick Rigney" &lt;patrick(a)evocative.com&gt; To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 7:40 AM Subject: RE: more talking to the press.

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Patrick Rigney wrote: Nah, that's reasonable :) -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

Now, that's the modern incarnation of a REAL(tm) Computer. Nop, the zSeries is todays version of a classic /370. The only real differnence to its predecessor (ES9000) is a somewhat weired 64 Bit mode - I have still no Idea what it is good for. Shure, the address extension from 24 to 31 Bit was quite helpful (8 MB user address space became quite tight when you already need 3 for your programm and need more speed due caching for 3000 concurent users), but above that, I see no real need. We got all bells and whistles in our data base engine, but still don't use more than a half a gig of mem. And even there the address extension of earlier architectures (swaping address spaces in and out of a task - aka banking:) was more than enough. I think, the extension was more a marketing thing than anything else. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

You're right here. Now, that's already true for earlyer machines, always align data to it's size (I got no idea who ever came up with the stupid idea that unaligned data should be allowed at all), and if possible try to align data blocks you work in to 64 Byte or larger boundries. You'll feel the result. Optimizing code below instruction level is kind of a hobby to me. Especialy doing hardware related optimization without knowing the Hardware:) Just I still see no reason for 64Bit integers or similar (as I still see no reason for floating point on a mainframe) the few ocassions where 32 Bit are not enough (I found less than a dozend in 25+ years) one can always go the classic way and use multipla 32 Bit operations. There's only one operation (or two to be correct) where I'd whish they had used a doubble register for result: CVB (CVD). Sometime it's usefull to convert decimal numbers with all 15 digits into binary to calculate evenly distributed hash codes or similar. Maybe I'm too much of a classic mainframe guy to see the need for such extensions. A /370 (and up) is just not ment to crunch numbers (I'd prefer a Cray/CDC here) or do other fancy stuff, a /370 is a work horse to shovel data around, dig thru incredible data piles and do a hard, unglamourous every day job. For what? Aligning? like AES - Align Everything Somewhere :) SCNR Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/