On 4 Aug 2008 at 23:26, Eric wrote: Boy, that name goes back quite a ways My friends at Lockheed (LMSC) in Sunnyvale used a couple of those in the 1970s. SDS->XDS is right. Here's some more information on the SDS machines: http://www.andrews.edu/~calkins/profess/SDSigma7.htm Cheers, Chuck

On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 06:55:29AM -0700, Peter C. Wallace wrote: ... Carleton University here in Ottawa Ontario Canada had a Sigma 9. I remember their RAD (Rapid Access Disk), wow. fast disk. It was actually a drum as I recall. CRC out in Shirleys bay (government installation) also had a Sigma, I think it was the Sigma 7. It was a long time ago. - Diane -- - db at FreeBSD.org db at db.net http://www.db.net/~db

And thusly were the wise words spake by Christian Liendo Why do they not use a Commodore 64 instead? It has already been reduced to a single chip by Jeri Ellsworth and it has enhanced graphics that are better then what the original C64 had. Cheers, Bryan

Does anyone know Jeri Ellsworth and can forward this to her? She should get in touch with the MIT guys and show them how this is done. Might save them many man hours and truly make a $12 computer. --- On Tue, 8/5/08, Bryan Pope <bpope at wordstock.com> wrote:

News is what gets people to read, listen or watch. Obviously, these college kids got someone to do same. Creating a simplified machine that can sell for the cost of a calculator would be useful. Consider the recent third world computer. Then, to make the issue less acedemic, they would have to create a method of using this machine to talk with mahines using more modern protocols. This would have application in many parts of the world. College kids also have the time, the focus and the resources to design such things. this is how they prove themselves worthy to be hired when they get out. bs On Tue, 5 Aug 2008, Fred Cisin wrote:

Intellectual property concerns, maybe? The Apple II is certainly a much easier design to build from elemental pieces or reverse-engineer. Not that I mind a $12 C64, but still ... -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Vote anarchist! ------------------------------------------------------------

I don't mean about the C64, I mean the *DTV* -- there's still patents on the patentable portions of that design. Sure, not the core logic, but the DTV itself couldn't be used without licensing (I'm sure Ironstone and Toy Lobster want their money). So they'd have to reverse engineer it and the Apple II is clearly an easier job. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- We only pretend to have standards. -- Unknown producer, ABC-TV -------------

Sadly, the collaboration ended between Jeri and the folks who produced the DTV ended very badly, I believe a suit was filed. As such, I don't think there's a future with that IP. There is another core that could be used (I have it saved here locally somewhere), but I think I agree, an Apple II would be easier to deal with. As well, the article (one of them) notes the group is trying to update an existing Apple-II like design alrayd in production, so there are some other factors at play. Jim

schwepes at moog.netaxs.com wrote: Cloud 9 does, but they're in New York. PANIX does too, but again in New York. Peace... Sridhar

On the other hand, Panix has local POP numbers all over the continental US, so that may not be a problem. Check their web site for details at http://www.panix.com/ Rich (happy Panix shell-only customer since Netcom closed down)

Sridhar Ayengar wrote: Surely it fits better with vintage computer collecting? I'm surprised that any of us are on broadband... ;) Thankfully I missed the 300 baud (and earlier) era - but I still landed in the middle of 2400 times, and that was painful enough! Although I seem to remember being perfectly happy when things progressed to 33.6K - I couldn't imagine making use of anything faster, and all the various non-WWW services did all that I could ever need. cheers Jules

Gene Buckle wrote: I don't know - I didn't mind 2400 for that as it was "instant enough" for email-sized message download (it just annoyed me for other uses), but I suspect that I'd find 300 "too slow". Gah, I bet! I've done hard disk transfers at 9600 in recent times, and that was slow enough. I keep thinking about that. It's not only the spam, but the threats from ISPs to start watching what we do, the users who don't know how to protect their machines properly, or the people who over-stress the system at the expense of everyone else. It's a far cry from what it used to be! cheers Jules

On 7 Aug 2008 at 9:02, Gene Buckle wrote: Inbetwixt the 1200 and 2400 baud periods, does anyone remember the Racal-Vadic protocol? ISTR, it was something like 1800 baud, using a 3450(?) modem. I had a couple of those back then; just wired them into the telco line without a DAA. When you called someone with another Racal modem, the difference in speed from 1200 was quite obvious. Cheers, Chuck

On 7 Aug 2008 at 13:27, Dennis Boone wrote: I dug through some old notes (curiosity will do that). I had the VA3451, the so-called "triple modem", which would do 103 and 212 signaling, as well as Racal-proprietary 1200 baud. My notes say that it was possible to push the Vadic speed a bit, once connected. Was it 1800? I don't know--my notes don't give that detail. Sigh...it's pretty surprising how much you can forget in a quarter of a century. Cheers, Chuck

Dennis Boone wrote: The real sneaky modems are the 1200/300 baud ones.

On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 10:48:26AM -0500, Jules Richardson wrote: I didn't - my first modem experiences were with acoustic couplers and DECwriters in the educational environment (we didn't have one at my school, but I had access to one at the university down the block from where I grew up), and with a VIC Modem c. 1982. I got on CompuServe (until my parents balked at the mounting costs), and local BBSes. Up until I was a beta-tester for the C-64 VidTex client (for guys that became my co-workers 20 years later), I used my own, heavily- tweaked, terminal emulator program on a C-64 (first BASIC, then BASIC/machine-language hybrid). I didn't get a 2400 baud modem until the late 1980s - right before that, I was using non-Hayes 1200 baud modems (Cermetek and Ventel) with real VT100s for dialling into work and "computer aided instruction" classes at that same university down the street. I finally upgraded when several events coincided - I got a 20MB hard disk on my Amiga (ST-225 w/ISA controller and "The Wedge" ISA adapter), I got UUCP working on that Amiga, and Goldstar came out with a $99 2400 baud modem. That rig racked up many, many hours of UUCP time to a friend down the street who eventually founded an ISP. To tie it into another recent thread, he was part of a local UNIX club where everyone was running 386s and Interactive UNIX (I still have my diskettes and manuals; picked up at Weird Stuff Warehouse on a trip to the Bay Area). Once Supra came out with a sub-$300 19.2K modem, I upgraded the old Goldstar, but it was a long, long time until I went to 33.6K, so long that I think the prices for an external modem were down to around $50. I needed it because they hadn't run cable out to my farm, and the telco routing was so sub-optimal that it was well under the max distance for DSL as the crow flies, but 2x-3x as the cables ran. The analog lines were so long that 56K wasn't even close to an option. As it was, I couldn't connect reliably over 28.8K. That was about 10 years ago, and since then, cable (and cable modems) have penetrated to the edges of town. Much more satisfactory. I don't know that I've ever owned a 56K modem - I made the transition to broadband (back in town) so early that I just kinda skipped that era. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 7-Aug-2008 at 19:40 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -48.1 F (-44.5 C) Windchill -92.7 F (-69.3 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 28.6 kts Grid 5 Barometer 681.4 mb (10575 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

Keith M wrote: 300 baud? Luxury! We *dreamed* of having 300 baud. We used Model 33 Teletypes at 110 baud, and we were darned lucky to have those. One guy I knew only had a Model 28 Teletype at 45.5 baud. On the other hand, the Model 28 was *much* more reliable than a 33. And we had to walk to school. Uphill. Both ways.

bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca wrote: The 28 was more modular than the 33. The reader and punch were options. The biggest drawback to the 28 was that it used a 5-level code (but NOT Baudot code), so there were fewer symbols and you had to use the letters and figures shifts. The oldest code I've written for which I still have source is a driver for the 28 for the little-known Apex operating system. The system natively used ASCII, so the driver did the translation, and characters that weren't available were represented using overstrikes (like many APL operators). The 28 didn't have a backspace, so the driver kept track of all the overstrikes needed on the line and did a second pass if necessary. http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/software/ttyhan/

From: Ethan Dicks Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2008 3:08 PM ...which is funny, given the climate. Yes, the southern edge of Lake Erie gets some snow, but go south 50 miles and it's risible. The first winter I was at Ohio State, having moved there from Chicago, my wife was greatly amused when it snowed (1/2in accumulation) and they were sent home k.t.l. Of course, Ethan makes up for that with his work address! Rich

On Thursday 07 August 2008 18:08, Ethan Dicks wrote: You forgot "in bare feet..." -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Kelly Fergason wrote: You might what to leave the closet now to hit the john ... runs and ducks.

Roy J. Tellason wrote: The bear chasing you has the BARE feet. :)

Fred Cisin wrote: You forgot to mention the 300lbs of school books carried on your back, too.

Fred Cisin wrote: Well, yes--enough to remember that it was "Carterfone". Cheers, Chuck

You had BOOKS??

Chuck Guzis wrote: I wonder when clothing was invented ... before or after fire?

Fred Cisin wrote: I suspect when digital watches came out.

LMAO, Fred. Greg

My first home modem experience was using a Silent 700 TI terminal (thermal print head) with a built-in acoustic coupler. It was manually dial the number and then plug the phone into the cups. This was before we had a modular phone jack in our house, so the terminal had to be physically close to the phone in the kitchen. This was after I had been using modems to connect Beehive, Tektronix 4010 and DECwriter LA36 terminals to the PDP-11/70 across town, usually via 300 baud acoustic couplers. Later we got a few leased line modems at 1800 baud. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

On Friday 08 August 2008 00:19, Ethan Dicks wrote: There are bunches of those old outlets here. And two boxes of grounded outlets in the basement. I told the landlord here I'd be glad to put 'em in, but that I'd need to have some wire available because there was no way I was going to put grounded outlets in if they weren't in fact grounded. I'm still waiting... :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Ethan Dicks wrote: I don't think I've yet been inside a single house on US soil that has sane wiring. They all seem rather random in implementation (and to heck with whatever local or national codes might say! :-) Needless to say, I'll be rewiring the building that the vintage machines are all going in (when I get chance to actually ship them over here) cheers Jules

Chuck Guzis wrote: Heh, no such luck here. The house has been semi-rewired in recent past and it's a total rats' nest down in the basement. As the place was once a working farm, the service panels look more like something befitting a factory - breakers and wires aplenty! It's on the list to trace it all out sometime so that when things do go wrong fault-finding will be a lot easier. The various out-buildings are a real mix of above-ground and below-ground power feeds, original 1940's wiring and fuseboxes, more modern cabling, and "home-made" stuff using any old fixtures and power cord. There's even a pair of enormous 150W light bulbs in the garage that look like they might have been hanging on since the '50s... For the building where the vintage computers will live, I'm thinking I'll put a new cable run out to there from the house, fit a new breaker unit, and give it both 120V and 240V. Cat-5 for network, and RS-232 just for the heck of it - I'm sure I'll find a use for it. Oh, I found an ancient fusebox behind a panel in one of the bathrooms (really) a few weeks ago - it's got power, but no amount of investigation has yet revealed what it's there for :-) cheers Jules

Patrick Finnegan wrote: You're not truly committed unless you have a 480V three-phase service. Peace... Sridhar

Patrick Finnegan wrote: Ha ha! We've actually got fair-sized barn in need of some TLC; once that's done it'll be crying out to have a big system put into it... the problem is going to be finding one! (consider that a 'want' - if anyone in MN or just over the border into Canada has a large system that they're going to be sick of in a year or two... ;) cheers Jules

On Fri, 8 Aug 2008, Jules Richardson wrote: Okay, I have a similar configuration in my attic. What happened was that the first electric went to that box. When the service was upgraded, the new box went to the basement and a line came up to the attic currently off of a fifty amp circuit that goes to a fusebox in the basement and then to the attic fusebox. i have found old wiring positions in the wall that because of long dead wiring had no voltage but were still on live lines. They looked like a fire waiting to happen. This house dates from 1930. My previous house was wired in 1905 and I was an early user of compact florescents because I felt a need to keep the current down on some of the wiring. This had also been upgraded at some point after WWII but in an interesting way. The old box was a rat's nest of wires and they ran wire to the new fusebox leaving the rest of the house as is. You could tell when the fridge came on because the lights dimmed. I'm surprized the previous owner didn't burn the place down. The fridge was at the end of a medium duty extention cord. I upgraded the service and worked on the electricity line by line starting with the most easily obtainable first floor boxes. bs

----- Original Message ----- From: "Keith M" <keithvz at verizon.net> To: <General at olddell.com>; "Discussion at olddell.com :On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2008 3:30 PM Subject: Re: dial-up experiences (was Re: question aaout ISP's) The Couriers were the modems to drool over in the BBS days. When modem prices came down a few years ago, I picked myself up a Courier V.Everything modem (which does 16,800 bps HST and 56K v.90, along with all the rates below them). It is still the best modem ever produced (and one of the largest :) ). Jim

On Thursday 07 August 2008 18:27, Chuck Guzis wrote: The figure $249 comes to mind for me. Two of the ones I have bear such a plate. The ones I have only upgraded by way of flash. I never got informed that there was even a shot at the upgrade to 56K, and then you were expected to pay for it. Luckily I got one that had already had that done to it. Yup! I also have this other one, the name not coming to mind offhand, but it was in a smaller case and seemed to run somewhat warmer. New out of the box, it worked well for me at 56K until getting glitched one day and then when I tried "AT" anything what it comes back with is "boot:" and nothing else. I've not been able to find anything about it online, so far... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

On Friday 08 August 2008 00:06, Chuck Guzis wrote: No, I finally remembered the name -- it's a "Maxtech" (or maybe Max-Tech). Yup. I did pretty well with that, got some decent connect rates, until it got zapped. Zoom put a bad taste in my mouth in a couple of ways. First the manual that came with the modem didn't include the complete set of commands at all and most particularly didn't include anything at all about using it for fax purposes, even though it was supposedly capable of that. Then I called their bbs, which I was of the initial (mistaken) impression was supposed to be there to support their products. If I hadn't stumbled across some messaging to some other caller in a public area I wouldn't have known that there was a ROM upgrade available for the unit I had, or another manual. Eventually I got them to send me those, but spent over an hour poking around there (long distance) looking for tech support. Then when that relay went bad on me later on and I sent it off for warranty repair they send it back in a different box, that was a plain white box rather than the one I'd started with. The original box was the only place that it said anything about the 7-year warranty, there was nothing in the paperwork about it. Thankfully I moved on to USR not too long after that. Indeed they did, mostly. I had one of those get zapped, too. I shut down my bbs and the next time I tried to fire up that machine that first HD wasn't working all that well, and didn't want to boot at all. Good thing I had a whole bunch of smaller drives in there instead of everything on one big one, but there's still some stuff on there I'd like to get at one of these days. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

I worked for a real estate software house in the mid-late 80s. We were doing online photos of listed properties starting in the '85-'86 timeframe. By modern standards the images were tiny, maybe 160x100 and 4-bit greyscale, but at 2400 baud, the 15 kBytes would have been a bit painful. We were out at the bleeding edge of higher-speed dialup from the beginning of the product. Display was accomplished by a "dumb" board we added to the Esprit terminals. It was a marble machine -- looked for the correct control code (just one character, sigh) then clocked in the next 15 k bytes. It could overlay either one quarter of the screen or the whole screen with the image, since it was inserted into the video circuit as well as the serial interface. Once it started loading an image, it ate all bytes coming in until it had counted far enough, so errors or spurious modem noise was very troublesome. The first installation used Motorola/UDS 208A/B modems, 4800 baud half duplex units that could be strapped for two wire or four wire operation. We used the EC100 error-corrector units with them. After that first site, we went through a whole series of v.29 9600 baud modems: Fastcomm, Data Race, eventually Multi-Tech when they finished theirs. v.29 was half-duplex on the wire, so we called these devices "ping pong" modems. (There were other nicknames: Fastbroke, Rat Race, Multi-wreck, etc.) We looked at other (better) things too, but didn't sell them because they were too expensive. For a while, we had two Telebit Trailblazers, one in answer mode in the computer room, and the other connected to my SB-180 at home (_really_ nice!). We looked at Couriers too. But the v.32 modems won, so it was Multi-Techs, Practical (Pregnant) Peripherals, etc. The host computers were Prime minis, which were notorious for crappy handshaking, so we spent lots of time fine tuning buffer sizes and modem setups. We had the Data Race folks on site in South Bend for a couple of days at one point figuring out why stuff was getting lost (hysteresis was too large for the modem's buffer). After I left the company, a buddy called me for troubleshooting help. Could I call x-and-such number and see how fast I could connect. My personal Courier locked at max rate. Drove him nuts, as the units they were selling, being cheap junk, couldn't do it. Couriers rocked. Still do, if you still do dialup. De

Chuck Guzis wrote: Weren't they something 'odd', like 23K? I know I acquired one amongst a pile of stuff once, but of course without a remote one to talk to, it wasn't much use for anything. cheers Jules

Chuck Guzis wrote: Although the Trailblazer transferred about 14 to 16 Kbps uncompressed, it was a 7 baud modem! [*] It used slightly fewer than 512 carriers, each transmitting at a very low rate. The system was referred to as Packetized Ensemble Protocole (PEP), although technically that described the patented method of distributing the data across the carriers rather than the actual modulation. It was the predecessor of DMT (Discrete Multi Tone) modulation used on most ADSL loops, and OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Domain Multiplexing) used by 802.11a, .11g, .11n, and many other high-bandwidth wireless systems. At one time Telebit management thought they might be able to get royalties on the PEP patent from the companies making ADSL equipment, but AFAIK that never happened. Since PEP was half-duplex, with only a very slow reverse channel, it had to do line turnarounds to handle full-duplex traffic. UUCP g protocol had acknowledgement frames that were large enough to cause a line turnaround, which would dramatically lower the throughput for an otherwise unidirectional transfer. Telebit put special "spoofing" for the UUCP g protocol into the model, so that it could avoid line turnarounds while still having end-to-end acknowledgements. That made it a great modem for UUCP. When the CCITT (now ITU-T) was working on the next high-speed PSTN modem standard beyond V.32, referred to as V.fast while in development, Telebit proposed a full-duplex version of PEP, but it was not ultimately chosen to be the V.34 standard. I worked at Telebit from 1991 to 1995, but mostly on the NetBlazer router products rather than modems. From time to time the lab had to be cleaned up, and one time my manager gave me an enormous wire-wrapped board (perhaps 24" by 30") which he couldn't bear to see thrown away. He said it was the first PEP modem prototype, and he knew that I was interested in computer history, so he wanted me to take it. A few years ago I met Paul Baran, founder of Telebit (and inventor of packet switching), and he authenticated it. I donated it to the Computer History Museum. Eric [*] A "baud" is a symbol (signal change) per second, not a bit per second. They are equal only if each symbol conveys a single bit. However, all dialup modems at 2400 bps or higher, and full-duplex dialup modems at 1200 bps, use modulations with multiple bits per symbol. For instance, V.32 9600 bps modulation is actually 2400 baud with four bits per symbol.

der Mouse wrote about the Telebit Trailblazer: They do all change in sync. The modulation and demodulation are performed using an FFT. That was important to making the original Trailblazer cost-effective, because it was able to trade off using a little more memory for needing less DSP computation, as compared to running hundreds of separate QAM modulators or demodulators. The rate isn't exactly 7 Hz, but it's somewhere close to that. Eric

Jim MacKenzie wrote: I picked myself up a Courier Absolutely. Great modems. And they were big. Like a foot long or something. :) I still have my Courier some place. Even the later Sportsters were pretty good, although I had two relays pop in them in one month. I think it was a phone system thing, and I added surge protection to the phone line after that happened -- never had a problem since. Keith

On Thu, 7 Aug 2008, Ethan Dicks wrote: My first modem was a Novation J-Cat: http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/Modems/Jcat.html A tiny little thing that stuck to the side of the computer with velcro. To dial it, I had to write a program to pulse the off-hook line. I used it in 1983 with my TRS-80 Model III. I wrote a Unix-based (Xenix, actually) BBS in 1985, along with a friend who owned a brand new Tandy 6000HD. Our lowest common denominator for screen width was the Coco, at 32 columns. So, the first time you logged in, you were stuck with 32 columns until you changed it. By that time, we were up to 1200 baud, with 4 lines. Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/

On Thu, 7 Aug 2008, Gene Buckle wrote: Yep, 4 lines, but I had one of them tied up most evenings. Remember "watchdog"? It monitored logins and limited you to a 30 minute session. It sent you a warning after 25 minutes, then another after 29 minutes (if I remember correctly), then disconnected you at 30 minutes so someone else could dial in. Speed-dial wars... :-) Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/

At the risk of boring those who have read it before... Procedure For Connecting To The 'net Circa 1978 (That's the ARPANET for all you young whipper-snappers. What we called the internet before they let all of the riff-raff in.) Initial notes: Do not begin this procedure before 11PM. This avoids conflicts over telephone usage with your parents. Net resources are generally not available to "tourists" before this time anyway. Resource availability is generally best on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights and holidays. Keep an ear open for police sirens. Rumor has it that the FCC will come and arrest you (and/or your parents) if it detects illegal equipment attached to the telephone system. Another reason to operate late at night, they probably aren't watching. 1) Move your computer from your bedroom to the kitchen table (that's where the phone is!). Don't connect power to the modem yet, it produces a carrier whenever it is powered and you need to be able to hear the far end of the telephone connection when you first dial. Also, you want it to be cool when you initiate the connection. 2) Take the handset off of the hook and replace it with the piece of broomstick that you fashioned for that purpose. 3) Get a big towel from the linen closet. Fold it into quarters and put the handset on it. Attach the speaker and microphone to the handset with wide rubber bands. Fold the towel over the handset. This will prevent various ambient sounds (like the sound of typing) from introducing noise on the line. 4) Being sure that the cassette/modem switch (a DPDT switch that connects the transmit and receive pins of the USART to either the cassette interface or the modem) is in the cassette position, load the terminal program. Run the program. You are greeted with a blank screen (this is normal but you can't be 100% sure that it loaded correctly until you have connected). Switch the cassette/modem switch to modem. You may see a few garbage characters on the screen (that's a good sign). 5) Get an ice cube from the freezer, put it in a sandwich bag and put it on the towel next to the modem. 6) Remove the broom stick from the telephone hook and dial the NBS (National Bureau of Standards) TIP (Terminal Interface Processor). Listen for the call to be answered and for the carrier on the far end. Sometimes the TIP is down and won't answer, sometimes it is down and will answer but won't give a carrier. If it's down, wait an hour and try again. 7) If you get a carrier, apply power to the modem. Start pressing the @ (at) key once a second until it is echoed on your screen. Listen for the chirp when you press the key. If you don't hear it, the terminal program isn't running correctly, hang up, unpower the modem, reset the computer and go back to step 4. 8) Once the @ character is echoed, press enter. You should get an error message (I no longer remember the text). Now type "@O 77<return>". This instructs the TIP to connect you to the MIT-DM (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dynamic Modeling) computer. 9) Start pressing the return key once a second until you get a logon prompt (I no longer remember the prompt text). The user name and password are GUEST. 10) Once logged on, wait for a minute or two, pressing enter every ten seconds or so. This gives the operator a chance to notice you and kick you off if the system is busy. If he's in a chatty mood, you'll get a message like "The system's busy, get lost!". If not, your connection will just die. If the system is busy, try again in an hour or so. 11) I no longer remember how to start up Zork or some of the other programs... anyone feel free to provide details I'm missing. Keep an ear on the connection. If the carrier starts to change pitch, wipe any condensation off the ice cube bag on the towel and then apply to the smaller chip on the right on the modem board.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 2:20 PM, Rich Alderson <RichA at vulcan.com> wrote: Agreed. <nitpick on> ...and IIRC, after a successful process was started using the "^K" method, you'd receive a "!" confirmation. So, in short, a proccess successfully started under ITS on one of the MIT ITS machines would look as thus: ZORK^K! <nitpick off> To this day, my "TIP" access remains the closest thing I ever did that resembled something similar to that of what happened in War Games -- as eventually some military brass from the TIP I was using sent me email telling me to beat it or else. I didn't at first, then received a sterner warning, and eventually had to leave (dialing the east coast cost TIP to access machines across the country was preferred -- at least in my eyes.) :-) --eric940

PPS was pre-TNG Ethan. This was in the 84-86 timeframe that I was using PPS. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.

I don't remember doing this with my VICMODEM, I think (though I was younger then) that we had a splitter. The 1660 was luxury by comparison though. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- TRUE HEADLINE: Teacher Strikes Idle Kids -----------------------------------

On Thu, 7 Aug 2008, Jim Brain wrote: I never had a splitter, but I did get yelled at for flexing the retaining tab so much that it broke on 3 handset cords. :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.

Yeah, I know of Whiz Kids. Only seen part of the first episode as I haven't had time to watch the others yet. About 9 episodes have been uploaded onto YouTube.com with each episode split into several parts. War Games is a great film, and I actually caught the last 30 minutes of The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes the other week. The bit with Kurt Russell doing his part in the quiz at the end is hilarious :) As for dial-up, I'm still using it with my 56K (?) laptop modem :)? The European Dreamcast I used on dial-up before that had a 33K (?) one, whilst the US and Japanese machines had 56K ones, grrr. I did use my Gamecube on dial-up too, but I have no idea what speeds it used. Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk Keith M wrote: I am a product of the 80's -- got interested in computers and modems right when WarGames came out, along with Whiz Kids, if anyone knows that show. You'll never guess what I did during my teenage(and later) years? :) Keith

On Thursday 07 August 2008 17:30, Keith M wrote: Mine didn't have that button, just the single switch, to select which mode you wanted. Some of the numerous BBSs in the Harrisburg area were running the wrong way, as I recall. There were bunches of them, most run on c64s, though I know of one on an Apple and one on a CP/M box (from which I now have the HD external box), and a few on clone hardware, back then. (Snip) After the above mentioned 300 I got an Avatex 1200 (non-standard command set for sure) that had problems, and I was able to get a hold of them and get them to send me a new processor chip for not all that much -- I think I had $40 invested in it altogether. Then later on came a Cardinal 2400, a Zoom 14.4 (which got swapped out under warranty when the line relay crapped out and it wouldn't release the phone line), followed by a few different Courier modems, 28.8 and 33.6, and one I got a hold of had the flash upgrade for 56K, though they didn't seem to make that widely available to folks. Not even those of use who purchased under the sysop deal! I still have all of them. :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Bryan Pope wrote: How so? -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

Jim Leonard wrote: There are a lot of new features, the main ones: * It provided a DMA engine to blit data on the screen. * It provided more colors per cell * It prvides more color options. no new resolution., though, AFAIK. -- Jim Brain, Brain Innovations (X) brain at jbrain.com Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times! Home: http://www.jbrain.com

Don Lancaster, although he doesn't like anyone who isn't american, was a wise man. He said very smart things on "hardware hacker" (radio electronics/electronics NOW!). One of these was (press "rec", guys): "Doing something for a special market with full knowledge of the inner works and without having all the specific periodicals and publications is one of the dumbest thing on the earth" (ok, it wasn't with this words, but the idea is the same :o)) These guys have NO knowledge of how things works. Doing a WEB BROWSER for an APPLE II??? Besides being a stupid idea, recreating an A2 for $12 for selling for poor people is a dumb ideia on itself. Listen: - Cellphone connection? If the guy is poor, how will he afford a cellphone? - The computer is the easy part, a FPGA can replicate an entire apple//. But what about video!? - Keyboard anyone? - Web browsing in 280 x 192? No. Get back to the drawing board and bring me something USEABLE. Maybe recycling old 486 boards and sending them to India. It is a good destination for all those old PCs. Strip the boards, recycle the cabinets in USA and build everything in a new cab there. What about that? :o)

Sridhar Ayengar wrote: No a goat ... or some other item to break the poverty cycle in inda... As for MIT wanting a $12 Apple clone... you can bet MIT is out make money, not to promote { free ideas?? in } education. Look what happend to Pascal from them if I remember right.

Eric Smith wrote: It could be the other large learning center on west coast. If I could remember who made the p-code I could look it up on the web, but it was the other OS for the PC after DOS and CP/M86.

bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca wrote: I wrote: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca wrote: UCSD? I still don't understand what you are saying "happened to Pascal from them"? Eric

Cameron Kaiser wrote: The UCSD p-system used p-code, but it was nowhere near the first Pascal compiler/interpreter system to do so.

I wrote: Cameron Kaiser wrote: Earlier Pascal implementations, from Wirth, Ammann, and others. IIRC, the UCSD Pascal compiler is actually derived from Amman's P2 compiler. The specific instruction encodings changed, but the concept is the same.

Cameron Kaiser wrote: Well I knew It was a BIG learning center. Intellectual property and $$$ for ideas, don't promote the exchange new ideas in the computer field. It is just strange that you got all that hype about Pascal and other laguages after Apple II came out with pascal, and then nothing is heard about it again. Just what happened to it?

It was thus said that the Great Eric Smith once stated: There are programmers out there that *hate* having to declare variables before using them (much less giving them a defined type---"that's premature optimization, and premature optimization is eeeeeeevil [1]") and you wonder why Ada didn't achieve greater popularity? It's about the strongest of the bondange-and-discipline languages out there, and the overhead of doing a "hello world" program is enough to turn off a great number of programmers (not me---I liked Ada when taught in college, but I tend to like statically typed lanauges [2] with early binding [3]). -spc (Just look at the hordes of programmers who grew up with Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby and Javascript ... all would run away screaming and yelling if forced to use Ada ... ) [1] A misunderstanding of Knuth, who in reality was talking about a comment someone else made, about optimization. [2] Dynamically typed lanauges tend to foster muddled thinking in my opinion. "We don't know what we're doing, but we want to develope it fast" indeed ... [3] I'm sorry, but the thought of having a computer constantly making decisions at run time what could easily be decided at compile time just rankles me ...

On 5 Aug 2008 at 15:44, Cameron Kaiser wrote: Perhaps the name is UCSD-specific, but it's far from being the first. "Incremental compilation" to pseudo-code has been around for a long time--at least from the 1960's. One advantage is that your pseudo- code can have features that the native machine architecture lacks, such as virtual memory, relocatability, large memory space, etc. If done well, the speed can rival (and in some cases, exceed) that of direct-to-native code. I know of a fellow who did a COBOL compiler and run-time back in the 60s that worked inside of a CDC 6000 series PPU (4K of 12 bit words). (Was there ever a COBOL for the 4K PDP 8/L?) I worked with him around 1971 to implement a inter-dialect COBOL translator. He knew nothing about the machine that we were working on--that was my job. He basically invented an abstract machine with an instruction set that operated on COBOL lexical elements. He wrote the translator using mnemonics and syntax that he invented. My job was to implement the machine--first as an interpreter and then later as a series of assembly macros. The darned thing pretty much worked right out of the box and when finally done in macros was a speed demon--and was easy to modify. A few years later, I used the same technique to write a business BASIC that compiled to an intermediate stack-machine code that ran on an 8085--and multitasked with no special hardware. At one trade show, there were some guys dragging around a benchmark that was pretty string-heavy. We beat the pants off of every BASIC there, including BillG's new compiled BASIC. We realized earlier that many business apps weren't so much arithmetic as they were report generators and string manipulators. So we optimized the devil out of our string routines. I still have my original design document, printed on a brand-new OEM- ed Teletype model 40 line printer. OT--there's a recent ad for a working TTY mod 40 setup (terminal, keyboard and printer) here: http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?t=169580. Cheers, Chuck

Chuck> "Incremental compilation" to pseudo-code has been around for a Chuck> long time--at least from the 1960's. One advantage is that Chuck> your pseudo- code can have features that the native machine Chuck> architecture lacks, such as virtual memory, relocatability, Chuck> large memory space, etc. Chuck> If done well, the speed can rival (and in some cases, exceed) Chuck> that of direct-to-native code. I know of a fellow who did a Chuck> COBOL compiler and run-time back in the 60s that worked inside Chuck> of a CDC 6000 series PPU (4K of 12 bit words). (Was there ever Chuck> a COBOL for the 4K PDP 8/L?) Are you sure that COBOL ran on a PPU? I can't imagine a reason for doing that, other than as a "watch this" stunt. On the other hand, Cobol on a 6000 CPU would be sensible and useful. Chuck> ...A few years later, I used the same technique to write a Chuck> business BASIC that compiled to an intermediate stack-machine Chuck> code that ran on an 8085--and multitasked with no special Chuck> hardware. Was that before Forth came out? That's the classic example of a p-code language with multitasking. Another earlier example is BASIC-PLUS for the PDP-11. That's an incremental compiler to P-code. Also, in the earlier versions (RSTS-11, for the no-MMU PDP-11s) it included multitasking (timesharing) support in the P-code machinery. The later versions (RSTS/E) didn't need that because there was a real kernel with MMU hardware. paul

John> At 09:08 AM 8/6/2008, Paul Koning wrote: John> P-code to a virtual machine, or just tokenized to save parsing John> time? P-code. It was called "push-pop code" because it would execute on a stack machine (like a B5500). And it had some rather interesting high level operations. Not just floating point (which was something not in the 11/20 instruction set) but also primitives to operate on matrices (like "invert this matrix) as a primitive opcode). John> I thought it was just tokenized because there were John> "de-compilers" that restored "compiled" code to real source. You may be thinking of RT-11 BASIC, where the "list" command actually did exactly that. paul

John> At 11:13 AM 8/6/2008, Paul Koning wrote: I thought it was just John> tokenized because there were "de-compilers" that restored John> "compiled" code to real source. John> No, I'm think of circa '83 VAX-based BASIC-Plus (2?). BP2 is a true compiler, not a P-code system. By the way, I meant to mention another compiler that did something like P-code: RT-11 Fortran. The actual scheme was called "threaded code" because it was basically a stream of function pointers. (Come to think of it, that's a common Forth encoding as well.) That's about as fast as straight code if most of what you need is calls to support functions, and more compact because you're not including the opcode word. paul

On 6 Aug 2008 at 17:46, Ethan Dicks wrote: There were also a bunch of compile-and-run-in-place systems, like GOTRAN. Does anyone recall what PUFFT used (it'd be in the programming languages book by Saul Rosen--I can't locate my copy right now)? Cheers, Chuck

Another P-code example, somewhat strange: The TUTOR language compiler in the PLATO system (designed by University of Illinois, "marketed" by CDC) is a P-code compiler. Or more precisely, a hybrid. It generates P-code for most operations, but it generates machine code for arithmetic and low level loops. paul

Richard> In article <18587.8416.365037.641299 at gargle.gargle.HOWL>, Richard> Paul Koning <Paul_Koning at Dell.com> writes: Richard> How did uTUTOR (microTUTOR) differ? I seem to recall that Richard> it downloaded directly into the terminal, which was a Z80. 8080, actually. As far as I can tell microTUTOR is a more conventional p-code system, i.e., no machine code in the compiler output. paul

At 12:25 PM 8/6/2008, Paul Koning wrote: As has happened many times before, the same topics get rehashed on this list even by the same people. So Paul, we crossed this topic about three years ago. :-) http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctech/2005-May/044445.html There are two decompilers mentioned in this RSTS history: http://elvira.stacken.kth.se/rsts/rsts_80th_birthday.html 1974 February-Clark Baker, George Robbins, Dan Grim and Ed Baker write the PPCODE Basic Plus Decompiler. 1978: October-Nick de Smith returns to Dulwich College, where he had been a student between 1967 and 1976, to write the DECOMP Basic Plus Decompiler. 1990: July-SPL announces special anniversary ?offers? on various software products including The Link, BAS24K, BP3, RPM, DECOMP, SORT1 and REPGEN. (The name George Robbins caught my eye, as I knew him from Commodore and the Amiga. Other googling makes it apparent it's the same guy who worked on the 1974 decompiler, and sadly, it seems he passed away in 2002.) Perhaps we're just arguing about semantics. If BP2 was a true compiler, to me that means it was emitting native CPU code in an executable format - no interpretation needed. So you're saying this decompiler was reading CPU opcodes and mapping them correctly back to BASIC code? That it wasn't just detokenizing something that ran through an interpreter? It would probably be easier for us to find on the net the BASIC source code for this decompiler I'm thinking of, than for me to find my copy in my own archives. Then we could study the source code. The Spring '80 DECUS tape from Chicago RSTS SIG matches my timeframe and locale, as well as the tape being submitted by someone close to George's origin in Delaware: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-11/decus/1… "[80,19] BASIC-PLUS-1 DECOMPILER: two programs, one data file BASIC-PLUS-1 reverse compiler" Bill Gunshannon was looking for it in 5/07 on comp.sys.dec, too. http://unix.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.sys.dec/2007-05/msg00008.html - John

At 02:01 PM 8/6/2008, Paul Koning wrote: No, I saw that difference, and that's why I pointed it out. What I'm remembering is a BASIC decompiler, written in BASIC, that was running on RSTS/e circa 1983. So that was BP, not BP2, right? - John

From: Paul Koning Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 12:02 PM [ snip ] It also ran on TOPS-20 (though I swear that I thought the name there was BASIC-PLUS-4, nothing I've seen since 1984 backs me up on that). There, it was a replacement for the second Tops-10 BASIC; the first was not portable to the newer OS. (NB: The first Tops-10 BASIC was the one learned by Messrs. Allen and Gates, of course.) Thanks, Rich

In article <6.2.3.4.2.20080806125406.092d0070 at mail.threedee.com>, John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> writes: These are all folks from Project DELTA, a group that taught me to program in BASIC-PLUS :-). See <http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mader/delta/> -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

It seems that the information was wrong it they are basing it on a machine called the Victor 70, which seems to be a clone of the Nintendo Famicom. All the groups information is given in the link below, it talks about who, what, where, when and why. But they are seriously lacking in the computer history section under resources. So basically they are going back to 8bit technology that uses TV to being computers to the masses. While it's not Apple or C64, it's still cool to see that older tech is being used by the young. Here is the groups website: http://design4dev.wetpaint.com/page/TV+Computer?t=anon A Computer World Article http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&… Pictures of the Victor. http://picasaweb.google.co.in/dereklomas/TVComputer

On 6 Aug 2008 at 23:31, Jason T wrote: According to this web page: http://phantom.sannata.ru/articles/subor.shtml The "Subor" is a clone of the Dendy (), which is a clone of NES/Famicon box. A clone of a clone! Are there any other examples of this? Cheers, Chuck

This is a **very** common "computer" in Brazil, it is sold as "magic computer" by Dynacom, and it is really a NES with some carts :oD

Chuck> On 6 Aug 2008 at 10:08, Paul Koning wrote: Chuck> Dead sure--that's what makes it so interesting. The guy and a Chuck> cohort did it as a "stunt" project for a CDC VP (of which Chuck> there were many). He was not a CDC employee, but an outside Chuck> consultant under contract. He went back pretty far with Chuck> COBOL--he was part of the original IBM COMTRAN group. A very Chuck> colorful character. Interesting. I forwarded your previous note to the "controlfreaks" list, which is home to a lot of people with major CDC expertise, and they all mentioned the Cobol products (for the CPU) but wouldn't believe a PPU edition. Do you have any names? paul

Sridhar Ayengar wrote: That was one of the major criticisms of the OLPC, but hte critics didn't understand that the OLPC with suitable software and e-texts was a LESS EXPENSIVE replacement for textbooks. Note that I'm not claiming that this will be true of the $12 Apple II clone, or that such is the intent. Eric

On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 9:59 PM, der Mouse <mouse at rodents-montreal.org> wrote: [...] I agree, but think that even the up-front cost for books is not as high. In my undergraduate (and earlier graduate) days, whenever a friend would go home to India, China or Pakistan, they'd come back with the overseas editions of engineering textbooks that cost $80-$100 here. There, they cost $2-$10, and we're not talking pirated copies. Printed cheaply (phonebook type paper) but still very serviceable, the content is exactly the same. (Yes, in english. There'd be a chinese or hindi subtitle on the cover, and some front matter, but the rest is the same) The publishers know that unless they price them that low, noone would buy the books. Joe.

I've had publishers tell me that those ARE pirated copies. One indicator (not completely accurate): what ISBN number do they have on them? (publishers normally use different ISBNs for different bindings, etc., but part of the ISBN is a publisher #)

At 12:17 PM -0700 8/5/08, Eric Smith wrote: The CPU portion is the part that really had me wondering. How on earth can you manufacture such a device for only $12. As for the software, I believe it has to all be written. I suspect that no existing Apple II software supports Hindi. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

Zane H. Healy wrote: I don't know how you get it down to under $12, but clearly the CPU has to be inside an ASIC, and the cost of the ASIC has to be under $1. It won't particularly affect the cost for the CPU to be a 32-bit RISC rather than a 6502. The RISC might take more transistors than the 6502, but the transistors are essentially free, since the ASIC will be pad-limited. The use of an ARM processor specifically might be more expensive than a different 32-bit RISC, just because of licensing fees to ARM Ltd., but other suitable choices exist. All the more reason to use a modern processor architecture rather than a 6502. Eric

They could use gopher. I'm just saying. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- FORTUNE: Make your own advancement opportunity. Blackmail your boss. -------

I looked up some things. There were two C64 based products from two different companies that used the same ASIC. So I don't think the companies own the intellectual property rights on the chip.. They have the rights to their products. Rumor is that Mammoth ordered many ASICs that were never used. To bad those couldn't be released to the public for people to make their own stuff. Also there are browsers and telnet apps for the C64 Web browsers for the C64 Hyperlink http://www.armory.com/~spectre/cwi/hl/ Singular Browser http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=30400 Ethernet hardware/software for the C64 http://home.ica.net/~leifb/commodore/ethernet.html I just think that this would be a quicker solution. Or everyone can donate their C64s, but I doubt the power supplies will survive.

Zane> At 12:10 PM -0700 8/5/08, Christian Liendo wrote: Zane> Ethernet would seriously add to the cost of such a device. These days, Ethernet is just a small corner of a modest FPGA. It might even be free (see www.opencores.org). Ditto for video, if the resolution isn't too high. In fact you can put a mainframe (including a modest amount of main memory) onto a decent FPGA without pushing hard. paul

As the author of HyperLink (SUPPLIES!), I can tell you that HyperLink cheats. The server distills HTML down into its own document and image format. This works very well, but it requires a proxy on the other end (which to be sure any cheap PC or Mac with Perl will suffice, but it's not doing the heavy lifting itself). -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Never trust a computer you can't lift. -------------------------------------

On Tue, 5 Aug 2008, Bob Armstrong wrote: There exist non-infringing copies of the Apple ][ firmware - Basis, Franklin, and Laser128? Aw. I like Lynx. Can a modern style browser be written without the bloat? -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com