Anyone have Solaris 2.4 or sunos 5.4 on cd or tape? I will trade a type 4 keyboard for a cd. -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey S. Worley Technical Services Bits & Bytes Computer Services Inc. 1979B Hendersonville Road Asheville, NC 28803 828-684-8953 - voice 0900-1700 five days 828-687-9284 - 24hr fax Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk? Technoid(a)Cheta.net -----------------------------------------------------------

While I agree the majority of programming positions are for people who understand enough MS stuff to deliver product, places like FreeGate (and now Tut) who do embedded systems that are more sophisticated than network switches are all using UNIX oses. We've got three openings in the SF Bay Area that we're trying to fill right now and its tough to get through the noise. --Chuck

Huw Davies wrote: Don't you know, being able to write in Visual Basic is what all computer professionals aspire to! Rumor has it Windows 2000 was written in Visual Basic. OK, I give up. Which one? I'm not aware of Microsoft having any Windows software by those names, therefore they don't exist, and never did! Zane PS let me just say for the benefit of anyone new here, I'm joking folks!

Well, in my case it started when I discovered that the copy of Visual Basic I bought wouldn't run under OS/2. This is DESPITE the fact that the box and manuals said it would! Then there is the issue of *stability*. Then there is the issue of *illegal* business practices. Then there is that question of innovation. Someone mind explaining why if I install software on a Microsoft system or make *very* minor changes I've got the reboot the @*& #$)@ thing?!?! I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. Um, you do know that's flame bait in this group, and Microslop roasting is a regular hobby here? Personally I'll willingly pay more if it means I've got stability. You know, I can't decide if that's a sad comment on the computer industry, or the United States. Zane

It's everywhere - and I may now loose your respect, but I'm even issuing VB jobs ... For a lot of one time scrap VB isn't that bad - and I don't have to argue with my customer (Althou, it happened more than once that we did let te app be rewritten in C(++) later on). Gruss H. -- VCF Europa am 29./30. April 2000 in Muenchen http://www.vintage.org/vcfe http://www.homecomputer.de/vcfe

This is one with which I have to agree, at least somewhat. The DEC stuff, back when they were in their prime, in the '70's and early '80's, did good work. They didn't field the latest technology in many cases, since they wanted to be sure of what they shipped, but they didn't pass on the latest cost savings as a result. Back then the older stuff was costlier than what was new. I also agree that since Microsoft's work is an apparent reflection of the "state-of-the-art" in software, I have to belive that there will be repercussions dealing with quality and with the inclusion of unnecessary features, e.g. the flight-simulator/billboard module included in one release of Excel, etc. I'd also point out, howver, that what's made them wildly successful is that they've made the computer accessible to people who don't want to become experts. It's just an appliance to them, like the TV or microwave oven. The fact that most people can tolerate this level of reliability (however one perceives it) is to their credit, however. Just to remind everyone, the system I'm using to process my email has never "crashed" or behaved anomalously in any way. Of course, it's a notebook, so I haven't had much motive to stick my hands inside. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: John Allain <John.Allain(a)donnelley.infousa.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2000 8:54 AM Subject: RE: !Re: Nuke Redmond! is

I have an NT-based PC at work, and I've never stuck my hands into it either, but I regularly have to reboot the damn thing. If I go a few days without having to reboot it, I count myself lucky... Same thing with one of my home PCs, but on that one, I have to reboot daily, if not more... ...but I have numerous DEC systems which have been running NON-STOP for a *YEAR* or more... Megan Gentry Former RT-11 Developer +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com | | Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com | | Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' | | 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | | Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler | | (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg | +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+

----- Original Message ----- From: <healyzh(a)aracnet.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2000 11:30 PM Subject: Re: !Re: Nuke Redmond! about. scale to Basic and That's something one would have to take up with the vendors of OS/2, right? I'm not sure what you mean by this. This particular system ( the one I use for my email, etc) has been "up" without a hitch for three years without a problem. I've never seen reason to cuss it. The key is that I don't try to make it do stuff for which it wasn't intended. The folks I see having problems with their MS-OS-based systems generally are the ones that (1) hand around the "chat" rooms (where their computers get "social diseases"), (2) try to squeeze more performance out of their computers by violating the components' specifications, (3) try to get their computers to do other sorts of things for which they (or their software) weren't intended. Now, that's not to say it doesn't happen otherwise, but Frankly, there's still room for doubt. It will be impossible to prove, of course, but that's because the means with which to detect these practices came about because of the evolution of the means with which to detect them. If there's really illegal activity, they'll get what they deserve, whoever "they" are. Having been involved with computers since the '60's I'd say this is a given. Nothing has been host to more innovation than the microcomputer business. Now, I don't know what you're pointing out, but if you know of anyone who's bringing more innovation to the masses, you could tell me about it. I've never wanted to become an expert on *NIX and its kin, but IIRC, if you make any changes to the system you not only have to restart the system, you have to recompile several modules, including, in some cases, the kernel. I remember attaching a serial I/O card to a LINUX box once, wherein I had to recompile (*GETTY) and restart several times. Adding a port to windows normally didn't require a last time I did it. Of course, it is sometimes necessary to restart the system if you have to add hardware, since nobody recommends doing that without first shutting off the power. they're everyone a got Well, the cost differential was larger than the cost of the PC machines I used to demonstrate what a poor choice the uVAXII was as a platform during my last stint in the aerospace industry. THE JPL guys liked the uVAX-II so they used it to replace the Apple-][ that was originally designed into a military-oriented project. I wouldn't argue that the uVAX-II didn't do better than the Apple-][, but their ESDI interface didn't outperform SCSI, which they claimed it did, and the high-res graphics cards we were told to use in the uVax-II cost as much as the entire uVAX-II with all the other peripherals. A comparable card from the same vendor but designed for the PC/AT cost only $600. Not all cases are so extreme, but it's the extremes that tend to be remembered. It's also no surprise that DEC seems to have gone out of their way, during the early days of widespread internet use (1985-1988). to make their LAN boards incompatible with anyone else's. They also tweaked their protocols to weaken their own networking system so people wouldn't be tempted to mix and match. the you'll I guess it just says that when there's a tool that gets the job done, it makes sense to learn how to use it as opposed to sticking one's nose in the air because it seems too "unsophisticated". What's more, people pay for the process of getting the job done. They don't want to pay for doing it the "hard" way.

please see remarks embedded below Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: <allisonp(a)world.std.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2000 10:56 AM Subject: Re: !Re: Nuke Redmond! are get their but Well, I avoid this by refusing to support a system that uses Netscape. It's probably throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but I've never seen a system that uses Netscape working well with Windows. system or I during so SCSI, EMULEX made an MSCP-compatible ESDI controller and that was the PATH the DEC junkies at JPL wanted to pursue. Imagine the red faces when I showed them the (also EMULEX) SCSI setup worked MUCH better! Of course, I nearly lost my job for causing such a stir. When I pointed out that the SCSI approach saved $1k on each drive and on the controller as well, while providing potentially 2.5x the performance (though the system couldn't really capitalize on the improved performance) it caused more red faces. to the I had several of them. They weren't cheap, but the boards from Matrox, Vectrix, et al, were out there. There was even a cheap card from Trident. their make their the the the Yep! It's just another oversimplification, but if it achieves the desired result, it's believed to work.

NT4 is better still. However don't run netbuei (lanman) and IPX with IP or you have a meltdown. Getting W9x or NT to play well with a real unix/linux node is more fun. Try this for fun printserver qube running netbuei so a few W95C boxen need netbuei and IP... then the desktops start disappearing or rearranging themselves due to redmonds broken IP cossing up with netbuei. back to plain IP. gag! Allison

----- Original Message ----- From: Bill Pechter <pechter(a)pechter.dyndns.org> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2000 11:00 AM Subject: Re: !Re: Nuke Redmond! right? a try to are get their but I can't say I've had that experience. I have a Netware server that's been pretty solid, and I do the resource sharing via the built-in TCP/IP in Windows. My two workstations are attached via fast ethernet as is the notebook. These all seem to have little trouble swallowing the data and regurgitating it when required. I recently had a problem due to a hardware failure, but I doubt MS had anything to do with that. given. business. who's That might be difficult to do. People's imaginations are limited, at least at the outset, by what applications of technology have preceded them. Now that PC's are pretty capable of doing what the mini's and mainframes did before, but perhaps on a smaller scale, it's only a matter of time before some "new" things pop up. So far, the primary innovation has been making all the available technology available to as many people as possible. This is all being done on a scale never before imagined. That scale certainly wasn't possible with mini's mainframes, and workstations. system or you you I've not had to change IP addresses much, so I really don't know. I think it's a simple decision that was made at MS. Most people fiddle with their IP addresses only when they have to, and most of them really never have to, since they're automatically assigned when the dial their ISP. If you have a persistent connection, you don't have to fiddle with that stuff much either. OTOH, if you're into fiddling with the internals and such as a hobby, which THEY (whoever that migh be) probably don't want to encourage anyway, you have to reboot a lot in order to register everything properly. That's simply putting the needs of the many ahead of the needs of a few. their make their What I remember about this matter is that the DEC machines were all running DECnet, while everybody else wanted to run TCP/IP. This was back in the mid-'80's and it wasn't easy to find an ethernet card that had TCP/IP support. The only popular LAN package back then was NETWARE, and it used IPX. Getting datagram service to run on the local net was a problem until we put the DEC hardware on a separate net. My interest was in running a voice system over the LAN, which is a hostile environment for that anyway. Nonetheless, the "fix" was to get the DEC stuff off the network. SUN, SGI, HP, and others coexisted with the PC's with no trouble. The DEC stuff didn't work well together with the SUN, SGI, and HP stations either. tomorrow?

Please see embedded comments below. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: John Wilson <wilson(a)dbit.dbit.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2000 11:55 AM Subject: Re: !Re: Nuke Redmond! I've used the same Trident 9680's in my Windows boxes since they first came out. Before that, I used Trident 8900's of various flavors, and the occasional 9440 on a VLB box. The only problem I've ever had at ANY resolution is the fact that it looks so much like its predecessor, the "Trident SuperVGA" for which Windows provides a driver, that it stubbornly hangs on to it. It gives up if you load the correct driver using the Device Manager's "update driver" procedure. if you system, you kernel. type one My problem with LINUX is that the only thing for which I've wanted to utilize LINUX as a NETWARE substitute, via the MARS NWE vehicle that comes with it. Though I'm told it is quite solid, I've never seen a document about that program that explains it well enough that I can get it to work. LINUX claims it's loaded the MARS stuff and claims that the Network is running, but it doesn't have enough information about the simple low-level configuration details to permit development of a rigorous sequence of actions to make it work. The doc's are full of self-contradictions, e.g. omission, in places, of key words such as "not" thereby making it hard to decipher. I'm considering acquiring the "file and print services for NETWARE networks" module for NT and replacing the NETWARE box with that. The only thing stopping me is that I'm not sure it works with the bare-bones IPX interface. The ODI driver set is too large to make the DOS memory useable for what I need. Even so, the ODI drivers and shell are only half the size of the smallest "other" driver set.

I don't think you'd call what I do with my PC's as "careful tuning" and when I got this notebook, with the preinstalled Win95, I loaded MSOFFICE 97-PRO, Free-Agent, CorelDraw, a few other graphics handler programs and the PLUS package so I'd have System Agent. I also needed some CD-handling software to drive my CD recorder, and some sound editing software. All that went in the first day and I've not had a single serious problem to complain about. That's when I stopped complaining about Microsoft. Their work is as good as any I've seen, and it costs VERY little. The app's I run aren't all from MS. Some are, though, and they seem to work well, too. Some are Windows 3.1 apps which I've seen no need to update, yet they work just fine. There are a lot of complaints, some probably legitmate, but I'd say that by and large, the majority of complaints result from failure to RTFM. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: Zane H. Healy <healyzh(a)aracnet.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2000 12:39 PM Subject: Re: !Re: Nuke Redmond! use a to are their but or you you I to during so SCSI, to pple ][ was to their make their systems the the

Richard Erlacher wrote: I don't know about #1. It is unclear to me what you mean by #2. #3 is where the big problem IMNSHO comes from. A number of software conflicts arise where the consumer would have no chance of finding out or knowing about until *IT* happens and the troubleshooting procedures arise. A recent example would be a client was opening a newsletter file in MS Word 2000, and most of the time the system would promptly (bad pun) crash. This started to happen only after a new scanner was installed. Coincidence ??? The problem turned out to be the *new* system needed an updated video driver. The MS Knowledge Base showed no similar problems with Word. It was only when I searched for the problem driver (I had no idea at the time what it was for) that the problem came up, and then only under another application. Another example would be a system crashing and I found the problem by (educated guess) uninstalling a number of utilities. It appears to me that problems like the above are a function of the OS design. The mentality "get it to market" and "let the consumer do the final beta testing" are one cause of the problems. And of course, things were changing very rapidly and it is somewhat understanable that a product that worked with the most common scenarios and most of the time with the rest would get put out to market.

Hi, Hmm, that would certainly explain why my system *ALWAYS* crashes sooner or later when I'm playing or recording a CD - that or it's objecting to my choice in music. :-) TTFN - Pete. -- Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer. Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC) peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk | www.wintermute.org.uk --

Bruce Lane wrote: Wait a minute, you're running part of your Intranet on *non-DEC* gear? What is the matter with you? All the servers on mine are DEC! Um, hate to nit-pick, but I'd like to see an old DEC box with over a hundred users when it's only got 64K of RAM :^) Zane

I used one. GRAF was the 11/70 in the DEC WJ01 facility in 1973 and was only 64k and all the users in the building ~100 were on it. Ran everything available under RSTS-11 with two RP03s (33mb ea). As a comparison it stacked up well compared to my 11/23 single user microRSTS system. Allison

You can't blame Microsoft for allowing YOU to write buggy code. I've never been shown a case where it's impossible to write the code so it correctly because of a limitation on the language's interpreter or compiler. It may not help you do things the way you'd like, but I've never been shown a case where it forces you to write bug-infested code. You may be onto something . . . maybe I have cracked up . . . I'm probably not alone, though. You did catch the point that VB is often used simply as a band-aid. It does this well. If you work as a consultant, you don't work for engineers, you work for managers. They like to point out a problem and have you fix it. No muss, no fuss, just dispatch the problem in the quickest way possible. That ends up costing them less most of the time. Sometimes it's not the right approach. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: <allisonp(a)world.std.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2000 8:24 AM Subject: Re: !Re: Nuke Redmond! inside Nor

Richard Erlacher wrote: Dick: you obviously have not had to deal with nasty surprises in the support libraries that microsoft provides. It is not that MS allows you to write buggy code (you can do that on any platform :-) ), but that their libraries or their code generators are flawed. I remember fortran powerstation (what they came up with after ms fortran 5.x). What a sack of bugs. Unfortunately, it was the only thing capable of making dll32's out of fortran at the time. I also vowed never to use any "C" from microsoft again for the same reason. I still use Watcom C R11, which has the added advantage that is more "unix-like". Too bad Watcom (a superior product) flopped and all developers were forced to use VS C . -- Carlos Murillo-Sanchez email: cem14(a)cornell.edu 428 Phillips Hall, Electrical Engineering Department Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853

Richard Erlacher wrote: If you are using C, you must use libc . If you are using FORTRAN, you must use libF77. And finally, you need to use the optimizer/code generator of the corresponding compiler. I had MS Fortran powerstation "optimize" out operations by totally failing to execute them! (well, actually, disassembling showed that it actually forgot to save the result of the operation...) if you grouped parentheses in a certain way. Then the thing leaked memory... even when using static allocation! Unless, of course, the only available product in the market for doing what you want is made by microsoft. Fortran powerstation failed spectacularly as soon as DEC came up with Digital Visual Fortran (a nice product, despite the name). And then there was the issue of how MS treated former fortran powerstation users... failing to provide fixes or refunds for a flawed product when they retired it. -- Carlos Murillo-Sanchez 428 Phillips Hall, Electrical Engineering Department Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853

John -- I've got an unused IBM OS/2 C compiler... also there's always GCC... What do you need... Keep up the good work -- I love E11 and have been hoping for the KL equivalent someday... Bill -- bpechter(a)monmouth.com | Microsoft: Where do you want to go today? | Linux: Where do you want to go tomorrow? | BSD: Are you guys coming, or what?

Geez... I thought the gcc for dos could do what you need... Bill -- bpechter(a)monmouth.com | Microsoft: Where do you want to go today? | Linux: Where do you want to go tomorrow? | BSD: Are you guys coming, or what?

Yeah, but the quality dropped out in the early to mid 80's when they figured the diags would do the work and all they'd need is a parts changer. And I can say that 'cause I WAS the parts changer from 81-86. DEC made great stuff... as did IBM. The one thing people forget is the reliability on the average WD drive or Maxtor is ten times that of an RP06. The average retail quality PC is 10 times better than the core memory and early mos memory boxes of yesteryear. The chips are more reliable, the hardware's faster. The one main problem is the software quality... I've run my FreeBSD PC about as long as I've seen an 11/780 run in the '80-88 timeframe with the same uptime as VAX/VMS a v3.5 or Ultrix. I'm not using Windows to do this, however. Let's not knock the PC architecture. PCI bus is fine... DIMMS are ok (especially ECC ones). The CPU screams. The Symbios and Adaptec SCSI cards are reliable and affordable. There's nothing as slick as an HSC50 for PC's YET. However, they raid quickly and cheaply. No daily reboots here... on a cheap K6-2 PC platform (FIC 503+) last shutdown was for a thunderstorm. FreeBSD 4.0-STABLE i4got.pechter.dyndns.org 12:06PM up 9 days, 3:45, 4 users, load averages: 0.03, 0.21, 0.19 The Sparc ELC's doing a netbsd build now... Going to go to 1.4.2 from 1.4.1 8-) Bill -- bpechter(a)monmouth.com | Microsoft: Where do you want to go today? | Linux: Where do you want to go tomorrow? | BSD: Are you guys coming, or what?

OK, I can no longer resist commenting on this. WHERE IS MICROSOFT'S INNOVATION?!?!?! Let's look at some of their programs through the years. MS BASIC: Basically a port of DEC BASIC MS DOS: They bought a clone of CP/M MS Windows: Mac OS MS Windows NT: OS/2 and VMS (OK, so they did help develop this, but OS/2 was trash until IBM took it over. Of course IBM blew it big time with OS/2.) MS Windows 95: Mac OS and NeXTstep (OK, the "System Properties" in the "Control Panels" is the one mildly cool thing about this. I don't know if there is prior art of any type for this.). MS Explorer: Netscape (I won't even credit them with having looked at Mosaic) MS Window 98: Bug fixes for '95 and bundled MS Explorer MS Windows 2000: Technologies bought from everywhere, just how much of OpenVMS have they licensed/bought for this? I actually want to give it a try, but haven't had the chance. MS Word: Various word processors MS Excel: Various spreadsheets MS PowerPoint: Harvard Graphics MS Foxpro (is this still around): They bought it MS Access (isn't this the one that was a failed communications product): ? MS Access (the DB): Various Databases, it's got a rep for loosing data last I heard. MSASM, MS Fortran, MS C, etc.: Ports of existing stuff MS Visual BASIC: Now this one has bothered me for several years, did they buy the underlying technology or copy something that already existed. I've a strange feeling that this one was actual innovation! There is other stuff, but I think that paints a fairly accurate picture of their innovation! Basically their innovation is in copying existing stuff, repackaging it, and tricking people into thinking they've just come up with something new. Zane | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator | | healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast | | healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

It was thus said that the Great Richard Erlacher once stated: The similarities of MS-DOS to CP/M are mostly internal. In looking over the list of OS functions between the two, the first 36 functions of each are the same, with a few notable exceptions where the concept don't match (MS-DOS for example does not have an IOBYTE). There are also two ways to call MS-DOS functions, one through the documented interrupt call (INT 21h), the other a call to location 0005h (that is, for a COM program consisting of a single segment, calling location 0005h in the current segment has the same effect of calling INT 21h---for an EXE program you may not be able to do it since the PSP (the segment the call lives in) is in a different segment than the rest of the program typically)), which is how you call BDOS in CP/M. You can also terminate a program by calling location 0000h (again, in a COM program). In CP/M this causes a warm reset (similar functionality). The register usage is different, but that's only to be expected because of differences between the 8080 and 8086, but 8080 code could be mechanically translated to 8086 since there was a one-to-one relationship between registers. It wouldn't produce optimal code, but it would produce code that would more or less work and these register mappings map pretty well between the CP/M and MS-DOS calls. Tim Patterson, who wrote the initial version of MS-DOS while at Seattle Products, may have had access to CP/M sources since Seattle Products sold CP/M systems and they were working on an 8086 based computer in the late 70s. Tim probably modeled his QDOS (Quick-n-Dirty Operating System) closely after CP/M (some say he may have mechanically translated CP/M since copyright statements to Digital Research have allegedly been found in MS-DOS 1.x but I haven't seen any). Why not? It would have been a quick and easy way to get an OS for the 8086 system up and running. Microsoft's coming along and obtaining QDOS for $50,000 isn't that straightforward but that's a story for another time. Apple was working on a version of BASIC for the Macintosh that would resemble VB today in the late 80s/early 90s. Microsoft got wind of it and threatened to cut their license to Microsoft BASIC for the APPLE II (still amoney maker at the time) if Apple actually released the product. Apple towed the line and what do you know---Microsoft produces this very innovative product called Visual Basic shortly thereafter, but for Windows. To my knowledge, the Apple ``Visual Basic'' never saw the light of day. -spc (All on topic, stuff happened more than 10 years ago)

I have a Hewlett Packard adapter for connecting HPIB to HPIL. It is in original box, with AC adapter, manual, and HPIL cord (all that originally came with it) I want $15 plus shipping ($3.55 for priority mail in US) I also have a Hewlett Packard ISA HPIB card, plus cable. It doesn't look like it's been used, but I don't have manual or disks. $10 plus shipping. I've also got an IBM GPIB board, but it's under a bunch of other stuff somwewhere. If I don't get any response soon, I'll start putting the stuff on e-bay. -- Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com 2210 Sixth St. (510) 644-9366 Berkeley, CA 94710-2219

I'd be interested in knowing what support there is for GPIB on the ISA bus in a PC. I've got a National Instruments GPIB interface card, yet have never seen fit to lay out the dough for their GUI-based software. Is there anything out there other than LabView? I have some equipment that might like the GPIB, but have not had need to use it since Windows became the de-facto standard. Labview doesn't have drivers for the 'scope and logic analyzer that I'd be wanting to use. Any suggestions, preferably from someone who's actually used the stuff? Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) <cisin(a)xenosoft.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>rg>; <baccl(a)home.mcmanis.com> Sent: Monday, April 10, 2000 1:54 PM Subject: HPIB to HPIL adapter

Well, I guess I'll have to look at the NI web site. I've looked for a means of deteriming basic requirements for LABVIEW drivers for instruments (like mine) which they don't support themselves. I have a TEK 'scope and logic analyzer, both GPIB capable, but for which there have apparently not been drivers written. I've also got a GPIB HDC and one of those common HP dual 3-1/2" floppy drive boxes, either of which would probably serve well as listener/loggers. It would be nice to be able to use that setup to monitor bursty events via the LA or 'scope. Is there anything worthwhile that doesn't involve National Instruments? Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2000 11:57 AM Subject: Re: HPIB to HPIL adapter bus there logic

Please see embedded comments below. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2000 2:24 PM Subject: Re: HPIB to HPIL adapter means (like logic been That's my inclination as well. It's just that numerous local companies use it in their testing and are willing to pay almost excessive (if it's what they pay me it's not excessive) rates for people to write scripts and drivers for Labview to drive their instruments. Many of them are already supported, but the new drivers are worth something. Yes, that's described in the manuals. I expect there'll be plenty of surprises, though. Well I have the doc's for my TEK instruments. The HP stuff may not be on the web any more, but I imagine I can find it. The MSC HDC will need a little work, but it is pretty simple. dual monitor Oh, yes. The PC will do that, but at some point in the future, I might want to make up a little controller board with the necessary firmware to make it able to initialize and poll, etc, and then do some specific task. I still have a couple of those 9114's from T.I. It's not as portable, but if portability isn't a factor, that would be my choice. Somehow I think folks will be more interested in having this done via Labview or some similar suite. I'm quite sure there are GPIB card vendors for the PC beyond N.I. Surely there's something besides LabView that's just as useful. If not, it will be necessary for me to look at whatever I can find to enable me to prepare drivers for various instruments or, the "generic" instrument, by using stubs for the appropriate device-specific stuff. Writing test procedures in low-level/command line constructs is a bit too primitive for the typical manager, and they're the one who sign the check.

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On Wed, 12 Apr 2000, Richard Erlacher wrote: You might check www.computerboards.com who market a number of specialized cards including several GPIB cards. - don

Jerome Fine replies: Since that seems to be the almost the only aspect that matters these days, then maybe that one of the reasons why DEC did not succeed. As you, and many others have stated, DEC had a better mouse trap. It almost always worked. The cheese was delicious and rarely ran out. But the other reason for the failure of DEC was that the DEC mouse trap was so much more expensive to buy that few households could afford to buy one. Never mind that in the long run, a serious mouse infestation would almost always be eliminated at less overall cost then using the variety of mouse trap which cost very little per unit, but rarely worked well. The less expensive unit was so low in initial cost that it was possible to buy a number of mouse traps even if a household had just one mouse to catch. And rather than re-use the mouse trap over again, it was as if it was just a simple to toss out the mouse trap with any mouse that was caught. As a result, millions of cheap mouse traps were sold that were very unreliable, but mass marketing and a very low price convinced almost everyone that was the only way to solve the mouse problem. Like it or not (and I did not like it at all), the expensive, reliable, re-usable that DEC made lay on the back shelf. Few people were even aware of them and since they were so expensive, most people who happened to pass by continued on their way preferring to stick with the model that promised success. You may not be able to fool all of the people all of the time, but you sure can fool most of the people most of the time. And if you have only one mouse to catch, then it really is less expensive to use a cheap mouse trap. After a while, the expensive mouse trap that few even hear about ..... Sad...... Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine

At 09:48 09-04-2000 -0500, Charlie Hobbs wrote: Judging by the number of Rainbows I once saw at one of the Bay Area swap meets, and subsequent ones I've seen in various surplus stores, I'd say yes, quite a few must have been sold. Hard to give them away now. The Rainbow was not wildly popular. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner and head honcho, Blue Feather Technologies http://www.bluefeathertech.com // E-mail: kyrrin(a)bluefeathertech.com Amateur Radio: WD6EOS since Dec. '77 "Our science can only describe an object, event, or living thing in our own human terms. It cannot, in any way, define any of them..."

Charles P. Hobbs (SoCalTip) asked: I came this close (holding fingertips together) to buying an R100 at about 1983(?) when I was taking an Assembler class on one. By semesters end the price came down a bit but I think it was still well over 2000. While thinking it over (<2 weeks) the news came that it was discontinued and I wimped. Too bad; I didn't notice many replies to this question! P.S. I use a "Microsoft Home" mousepad as a sunlight phosphor saver on my VT320. Oh, the irony. John A.

It was thus said that the Great Sipke de Wal once stated: File handles were introduced with MS-DOS 2.0. MS-DOS 2.0 used the underlying FCBs to handle the new file handle code, whereas with 3.0 it was finally reversed (the FCB code used the underlying file handle code). MS-DOS could handle larger partitions than 32MB. The limitation were the number of clusters MS-DOS could handle---65530 (not quite 65536 as a few values were used for flags and I don't recall the exact number). Increase the cluster size (which MS-DOS was flexible enough to handle) and you could use larger harddrives. But for large number of small files a lot of the disk space would be wasted and who's to say if third party utilities could deal with a non-standard cluster size? -spc (Gah! I still remember this stuff!)

On Fri, Apr 07, 2000 at 02:53:21PM -0700, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote: Isn't 3.0 also where they moved the loader into the OS itself, instead of being part of COMMAND.COM? Could be wrong. Also they added the executable filename to the end of the environment, since it was no longer guaranteed to be in the PATH. At what point did they add the ability to have multiple DOS partitions? John Wilson D Bit

Try running Wordperfects Drawperfect 2.0 even today unde DOS 7.0 without adequate FCBS (min: FCBS=2,0 in config.sys) and it won't work. FCBS are still among us, like the rudimentary footbones in a whale. Sipke ----- Original Message ----- From: Eric Smith &lt;eric(a)brouhaha.com&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2000 12:33 AM Subject: Re: !Re: Nuke Redmond! uses

Hey, drop this right now ... MSX was quite a great thing. And if I had to select the single best thing MS ever did to the customer, I'd definitly go for MSX. I think it's not MS fault that it never realy took of in the US ... Well, one could blame it on a US specific mood to avoide standards in favour for short term profit - Hasn't it been the same lately with GSM ? The whole world but the US can agree and use one standard ... making even small and prior unknown companies like Nokia big enough to conquer the divided US market... In another timeline, where the PC didn't take over the home computer market, MSX may have become the single small computer standard, only to see the US market be invaded by Japaneese Hardware and Software. Anyway, MSX was realy one of the better Microsoft products. I don't tell that it's a 1000% inovation out of nothing - just the right solution for a common problem. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa am 29./30. April 2000 in Muenchen http://www.vintage.org/vcfe http://www.homecomputer.de/vcfe

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----- Original Message ----- From: Hans Franke &lt;Hans.Franke(a)mch20.sbs.de&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Monday, April 10, 2000 11:00 PM Subject: MSX (Was: !Re: Nuke Redmond!) standard and they Hans Franke wrote I Agree ...... All I wanted to say is that MSX-DOS effectively is the same as CP/M 2.x CP/M-software even ZCPR3 would happily run under MSX-DOS Trouble was that there was more than one MSX standard mainly due to Spectravideo. That's why I stated: (in)famous. Sipke (By the way. I'm from the Netherlands. Not that far from you .....)

On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, Sipke de Wal wrote: The MSX's were some nice little machines. (I still have a Spectravideo that I picked up from a flea market some years ago, although it is non-working. If anyone wants such a beast, let's talk...) By the time they showed up in the US, though, the 8-bit home computer shakeout had already taken place, leaving nothing but Apple II (on the high end) and Commodore 64 (on the low end). . .The MSX's were very popular in other parts of the world, though.

On Fri, Apr 07, 2000 at 03:13:47PM -0400, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote: I heard the same story when I did an internship at Apple in summer '89. The way I heard it, the Mac BASIC actually got as far as field test before Billy strong-armed Apple into suppressing it and leaving the BASIC market to M$. John Wilson D Bit

I more or less agree, except I still have MS Qbasic for the mac, and I believe that was the product MS threatened with, and still dropped once the Apple basic was dead.

I was speaking in reference only to MicroSoft QuickBasic, and quite a few people were more than miffed when MS pulled the plug on it since the applications they wrote depended on a runtime module from MS. And yes I think MS did it to poke Apple in the eye.

please see embedded remarks below. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner &lt;spc(a)armigeron.comTo: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.orgSent: Friday, April 07, 2000 1:13 PM Subject: Re: !Re: Nuke Redmond! I console they I and are What of those things internal would you have had them leave out in order to be more different from CP/M, which was a VERY popular OS at the time, without removing its functionality. Since the features to which you refer are internal, I assume you have precice citations of common source code, right? They're certainly not obvious to me in my role as a fairly frequent user. location an call Since there is only one segment in CP/M, I guess you've got 'em there. Of course it really doesn't matter what the location is, does it? I guess any OS that load a register and then calls a specific location is a copy of CP/M, right? It's like saying a FORD is a copy of a Dusenberg because they both use wheels. of that between The mapping of one register set into the other is not an accident. Ask Intel about that! I'm told that CP/M-86 is considerably more than a translation of CP/M-80. Now you suggest that the roots of MS-DOS are entirely in CP/M? They may have common roots, as they reflect the then conventional wisdom about how one should write a microcomputer operating system. It should be no surprise to anyone that there are some similarities. One doesn't want to ignore what works just because it wasn't invented in house. After all, Pascal is not a copy of Algol just because it uses mnemonic variable names. closely MS-DOS easy I've heard that, too. Does that mean that anyone who writes a program to do what he's seen another program do is making a copy? You're not even sure he actually saw and read the source code. How many programmers do you know who'd simply copy someone else's work in a case like this? Everybody wants to leave his own mark. Buying something that shortens your burden is kind-of like buying an integrated circuit rather than making the thing yourself starting with a wheelbarrow of sand. The fact that Microsoft knew that IBM had gone to Kildall probably told them what they wanted was sort-f like CP/M. underlying feeling Windows. ... and now you'd like me to believe that MS knew this and copied it? Frankly, if I'd been in Billy's place, knowing that Apple had considered it would have scared me off. > To my knowledge, the Apple ``Visual Basic'' never saw the light of day.> -spc (All on topic, stuff happened more than 10 years ago)

please see embedded comments below. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner &lt;spc(a)armigeron.com&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Friday, April 07, 2000 7:12 PM Subject: Re: !Re: Nuke Redmond! over each are to refer frequent were functions: MS-DOS that's I'd say that was what he knew was popular and well-understood. Back then it was more important that it be easy to learn and use than to be unique. If Tim Patterson patterned his call list after CP/M it was probably because he'd been asked to cook up something that would appeal to the typical CP/M user. Today, there's no looking at the code and bitching about the call sequence or any other such minutiae, but it's the "look and feel" that gets the judges excited enough to rule agains you if you've preseved it. If you were thumping Billy Gates and his friends by hinting that they simply bought something and filed off the rough edges and nibbled at the edges where it didn't fit, well, that's legitimate business. You might not see that as innovation (just to bring this discussion back to where we left the original thread) then keep in mind that those of us who use the software every day care a lot more about whether it works than whether it is totally new. It would be truly innovative to have software weenies get used to writing the code just as it was specified and leaving out every extra "hook" or whatever that wasn't in the spec, hence won't be accounted for in the doc's. It would be truly innovative to have it tested systematically with a wide range of inputs, both random and systematic and to great depth to make sure that there's no way to make it go down the toilet, especially not by inadvertent input at the "wrong" time or place. I'd say that at a minimum it ought to be tested with every possible input of a single character at times when input is not expected and every combination of 2^32 chacters at every point at which input is anticipated. The software should behave in an entirely predictable way and give messages that are totally self explanatory. Do I really think American programmers will ever take their work that seriously, . . . No, but they should at least think about it, don't you think? It could be done automatically, though, couldn't it? First we should hope that the pro's learn not to write memory leaks, eh? That's a feature that came about when one fellow wrote one version and then, having become the boss, expected someone else to pick up where he left off, but not damage any of his now-sacred work. 0005h location 21h---for an the call Of any call it Now there's an interesting notion! A programmer actually did something to help out the struggling programmers who were going to have to live with his work. How thoughtful! You don't suppose those not-so-glaring similarities between the two OS' might actually exist because the authors thought it wise to make the environment familiar, or at least familiar-looking. because of mechanically code that between was wasn't with same What I meant was that the fact that my wagon has 4 wheels like yours doesn't make it a copy. Seattle sold late closely MS-DOS easy to do wants when Not nice, perhaps, but entirely legal. I won't claim that this behavior is innovative, however. and (still Apple Windows. it that's AMATEUR, you HISTORIAN WIth few exceptions, this tracks the PBS "revenge of the nerds" account of these events pretty closely. The thinly veiled truth must be in there somewhere.

Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote: When you generalise to this degree, you lose all credibility. I work on real-time embedded systems and complexity comes with the territory. Accusing Europeans en masse of writing complex code for complexity's sake is ridiculous. Why don't you just admit you've met about three European programmers, ever?

On Sat, 8 Apr 2000, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote: Clearly, this American Professor writes code for Linux! ;-) This observation completely agrees with mine. I would make the further claim that American programmers who make complex code do not understand software engineering, either (with a few exceptions). The major reason for this is that most people are not suited to be software engineers. There are fewer people suited than there are opportunities for software engineers. Ergo: Problem. When computers were young, mathematicians tended to program them. They tended to be relatively careful programmers. Yet, the general level of software engineering up through the, say, early 80s was not all that great. (Take a look at some of that old code, and I think you'll find that the standards today have risen as to what we consider to be "good code" - and most of that old stuff doesn't rise to those levels.) So, compounded with needing more software engineers, the level of acceptable quality has risen. Therefore, today, your average piece of software is garbage (with exceptions, of course!). -mac

On my SparcStation 300 I often get the error: panic: memory address anichment A bunch of hex and a restart. Seems to happen when I 'push' the machine harder such as trying to run openwindows. It may run but will surely crash. I am thinking of putting heatsinks on the major ic's on the video card and motherboard in hope this will bring things under control if something has passed out of tolerance for heat. Any advice? I have greased many a chip for clip-on type heatsinks and for voltage regulators that were screwed onto a heatsink, but what kind of epoxy do I use to secure a heatsink to a chip in the absence of any other mounthing option? I assume an epoxy because I have SEEN lots of these securing heatsinks to chips and allways wondered if it was a special heat-conductive type. -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey S. Worley Technical Services Bits & Bytes Computer Services Inc. 1979B Hendersonville Road Asheville, NC 28803 828-684-8953 - voice 0900-1700 five days 828-687-9284 - 24hr fax Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk? Technoid(a)Cheta.net -----------------------------------------------------------

Success. I just read your message. I had been trying ram for awhile but did not have a good MATCHING set of 4mb rams to install. Friday I got a good set and replaced the last four simms on the main board. The system has been running fine for several hours, runs OpenWindows reliably etc. No more panics etc. Now my last and only problem is that BOTH of my sun keyboards (type 4) work well but BOTH of my optical mice have one led that DON'T LIGHT. Working on this one. Also I don't have a mousepad but I think I can construct one while I wait to find one. I have had difficulties locating pinouts and other tech info on the mouse. Any suggestions? -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey S. Worley Technical Services Bits & Bytes Computer Services Inc. 1979B Hendersonville Road Asheville, NC 28803 828-684-8953 - voice 0900-1700 five days 828-687-9284 - 24hr fax Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk? Technoid(a)Cheta.net -----------------------------------------------------------

please see embedded comments below. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner &lt;spc(a)armigeron.com&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2000 2:45 AM Subject: Re: !Re: Nuke Redmond! simply see the totally "hook" truely hacked that I Well, heuristic progamming is the hallmark of the American school of programming. The Japanese have, in recent years actually applied genuine and therefore 30+ (probably much older) year-old engineering principles to software engineering, a term which, in the American school, is still an oxymoron, and have regularly been reported to be bringing software tasks in within both budget and schedule. again. he The notion that the original programmer will live forever, hence, always be available to fix things, is one of the main weaknesses of programming philosophy. Even I have fallen into that one. That's why plgramming languages have a construct for comments. Yes . . . I'm an engineer, and I have learned over the years that I shouldn't take on work for which I don't have a qualifying (test-on-delivery) specification. That's sort of an "if it does this I get paid" test. This may encourage designing for the test, but that gets me off the hot-seat as far as defining what "works" means. If this spec isn't a part of the RFQ, then I make it part of the proposal process. Getting unconditional or defined-conditional qualifying specifications is like pulling teeth. Often it's my teeth . . . that's why I have several sets. wide sure minimum at in an their it, complexity's to do change I didn't mean to suggest that being elsewhere-born and trained would make a programmer better. The art was defined by the sheer volume of code generated in the early years of microcomputing when micromputers were more available and more used in the U.S. than anywhere else. Consequently the techniques spread. I doubt programming will ever be freed from the mantle of "mystical art" or "right-brain activity" long enough to allow the introduction of discipline. I'm beginning to believe that programming is more a disease than an engineering discipline. It seems more folks get into it indirectly and almost against their own wishes. Thank goodness that they stick with it long enough to generate the tools we all use and love to hate. differ then, off, about a call suspect it to his similarities wise of several Well, that's not as bad as finding potential catastrophic failures and dispensing with then by changing the ground rules. That's how NASA likes to do it. BTW, your apparent juxtaposition of one word for its homomymn, and it happens all too often with this particular one. There's this term, pronounced "sloo" which is often misspelled "slew" but which should be "slough" also pronounced "sloo" meaning a swamp or quagmire. I've noticed this here in this forum several times in the last few weeks and had to complain.

The conventional wisdom where NASA is concerned, is that they HAD high standards through the Apollo program and that shortly thereafter, a lot of people left and apparently took vital talents with them. I've not worked directly with NASA people in a very long time, and can't agree or disagree with that view. I did work on one critical NASA program back in '86-'87 and was impressed with the cavalier attitude they displayed toward loss of human life vs. loss of hardware. They had ground rules which defined conditions that we, on the engine controller analysis team, determined would absolutely and in all cases cause a catastrophic failure on the launchpad with loss of life and loss of lots of hardware, costing way more than the $2e9 that the shuttle cost back then. One of the guys ran the numbers and a simulation of the effect of igniting all the LOX and H2 in one place, subsequently determining that we hadn't the technology to build a comparably destructive nuclear weapon, even the new high-efficiency types in the 40-50 TTon range. That's all speculation, I guess, but I did find it appalling that NASA considered in-flight power losses not detectable during ground testing were simply normal operation, hence required no special action, even though the defect could be inherited from one mission to the next. I don't know where this is supposed to lead. Anyway, I don't see NASA as a promising place to work for now. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner &lt;spc(a)armigeron.com&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2000 10:23 PM Subject: Re: !Re: Nuke Redmond! basically again. but he be fellow I him often that's genuine to in likes to there year even NASA

Upon the date 01:17 AM 4/9/00 -0600, Richard Erlacher said something like: -- snip -- ROTFL!!! :-) --Chris -- -- Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian Jamestown, NY USA cfandt(a)netsync.net Member of Antique Wireless Association URL: http://www.antiquewireless.org/

Apparently, "Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner" saw fit to utter some of the following: <snippage> <snippage> Can you say Stacker? Quicktime for Windows? <snippage> > > > > > Buying something that shortens your burden is kind-of like buying an > > integrated circuit rather than making the thing yourself starting with a > > wheelbarrow of sand. The fact that Microsoft knew that IBM had gone to > > Kildall probably told them what they wanted was sort-f like CP/M. > Like I said, the story of MS-DOS isn't that straightforward. Bill Gates > even told IBM to check with Digital Research for their OS. It was only > when IBM came back saying they were having negotiation difficulties with > DR did Bill Gates offer them an OS from Microsoft. And that was only because IBM was going to kill the whole deal if they couldn't get an OS to go with MS BASIC. Bill told them "Yeah, we'll have an OS for you" and then ran down the street to Tim's shop. > Bill Gates knew of QDOS and worked with SCP to licence it from them, > without telling SCP who their primary customer was. SCP was a bit peeved > when it learned that Microsoft's customer was IBM. > It wasn't until a few years later did Microsoft buy QDOS outright, after > SCP had gone bankrupt. And IBM apparently found enough code lifted directly from CP/M to justify an $800,000 settlement with Kildall to keep him from suing them. > > > Apple was working on a version of BASIC for the Macintosh that would > > > resemble VB today in the late 80s/early 90s. Microsoft got wind of it > > > and threatened to cut their license to Microsoft BASIC for the APPLE > > > II (still amoney maker at the time) if Apple actually released the > > > product. Apple towed the line and what do you know---Microsoft > > > produces this very innovative product called Visual Basic shortly > > > thereafter, but for Windows. > > > > > ... and now you'd like me to believe that MS knew this and copied it? > > Frankly, if I'd been in Billy's place, knowing that Apple had considered > > it would have scared me off. > This is Bill we're talking about here ... 8-) Bill knew about the Lisa and the Mac OS and the work at PARC, and that didn't scare him off, did it? No, he just cobbled a crude windowed-DOS patch together and called it Windows. Used all the money and leverage he'd gotten by catching a ride with IBM to make people try to buy it. Wile we're on the subject of Bill's "lucky" meeting with IBM, let's not forget that Bill's mom and one of IBM's higher-ups served on the same United Way Board of Directors.........think that might have something to do with it? And Paul Allen used a DEC when he "wrote" MITS BASIC. Also, according to one of the original Amiga coders, when Micros~1 (I love that!) was writing Virus95, they tried to buy the neat little Workbench feature that lets you control the mouse pointer with the cursor keys in an emergency, but since C='s stuff was all tied up in bankruptcy court in the Bahamas, they couldn't touch it. As much as my Micros~1 mouse locks up on my machine at work (running a Micros~1 OS, no less), I could sure use that feature......along with the neat little pointer editor that allowed me to draw my own mouse pointer instead of having to accept the little arrow.... Paul Braun NerdWare -- The History of the PC and the Nerds who brought it to you. nerdware(a)laidbak.com www.laidbak.com/nerdware

Gary Hildebrand &lt;ghldbrd(a)ccp.com&gt; wrote: CP/M got to 3.something. But it wasn't nearly as popular as 2.2 had been.

Here's where that little factoid came from. division of Random House, Inc., New York. ISBN 0-8129-2716-8 "Microsoft DOS still contained lines of code written by DRI's founder, Gary Kildall. In fact, IBM had been so paranoid about that when they realized Gates had sold them a clone, they paid Kildall about $800,000 - a pittance given the billions Microsoft had raked in from the product over the years - in exchange for his promise never to sue." Paul Braun NerdWare -- The History of the PC and the Nerds who brought it to you. nerdware(a)laidbak.com www.laidbak.com/nerdware

Hi, Richard, could I ask you to please edit out the irrelevant parts of the messages you reply to? Embedding comments the way you do makes your messages difficult to follow, on numerous occasions I've missed important points you're been making due to this.... I only used CP/M on a daily basis for about two years back around 1980/81, but I felt right at home when I started using MS-DOS. However, the point of this message is that if you look into the inner workings of MS-DOS you'll find that the similarities are much more than superficial. In fact, the first releases of DOS (1.00, 1.25) are compatible with CP/M right down to the system calls. This was a deliberate move to make the porting of software from CP/M to MS-DOS as easy as possible. It wasn't until MS-DOS 2 and 3 that they started moving away from this - and is the reason why so much software specifies DOS 3.x as the minimum it needs to run on. Try supporting a site running a couple of hundred machines loaded with M$ software and you'll change your opinion in short order! OTOH I only have two Macs here (a Plus and a Classic II) and I've NEVER known them to crash....unless they were running "M$ Works" at the time anyway.... I realise this is a small sample, but compared to my PC running Win'95 they're rock solid. Which explains why I despise both Nutscrape and InterNet Exploder....MOSAIC was the first web browser I ever used, on my Classic II around 8(?) years ago. I hated it with a passion then, and I still do. Personally, I don't consider bloated, buggy, slow software to be an improvement.... No, but it does indicate that they've been way too arrogant and pushy....they though they were untouchable, they were wrong. TTFN - Pete. -- Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer. Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC) peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk | www.wintermute.org.uk --

On Thu, 6 Apr 2000, Zane H. Healy wrote: How much did their purchase of Spyglass [the company and the product same name(?)] affect the look and feel of Explorer? Did they use any anything from Spyglass or did they do the Adobe "acquire and squash" two-step on them? Was Spyglass a license or commercial spin off of Mosaic? I haven't had the urge to look at VB. How visual and how object oriented is it? I believe Serius Developer for Mac precedes it. Serius was sold by its founder to Novell who renamed it Appware and seemed to carry it to version 1.2. Was this Novell's effort at competing with VB? It became a dual platform (Win and Mac) development environment, a connect the module (ALMs - Appware Load Modules) IDE. I believe the modules were written in another language, probably C. I think just before its swan dive in 1994(?) they renamed it AppBuilder, but whether that was just cosmetics or real changes I don't know. Using their search engine, I find that Novell has managed to expunge virtually all mention of either product from its web site. Technically this is on topic as the start date for Serius has to be over ten years ago or at least close. Similarly, what happened to Layout? I assume it also doesn't exist anymore. I wonder if there were any last patches, updates or extra code (modules) for both products, material that is now forever lost? Anybody have either of these two products in any of their various incarnations? --- Stephen Dauphin

Apparently, Zane Healy uttered some of the following: Amen, brother. Unfortunately, way too many people think that MS invented BASIC, and don't know or want to know that Paul Allen just rearranged it to run on an Altair. QDOS has been shown to have a significant portion of commands lifted from CP/M. Gary Kildall had a whole list, but the "author" of QDOS wouldn't own up to it. Again, MS just bought someone else's OS because they didn't have one of their own. And to a degree, from Xerox. At least Apple had worked with Xerox's engineers. They brought it out first, made it work, made it accessible. Only after M$ saw that people were starting to like it did they try Windows. And Windows, unlike Mac OS or AmigaDOS, was simply a graphical patch on top of the real cash cow, MS-DOS. I mean, EVERY Mac and Amiga app worked with the given system mouse. With Windows, you had to decide if the mouse you were buying was compatible with your software, and then you had to install an interface card, and then you had to pray that it kept working. If the mouse on my Mac or my Amiga stops working, something is seriously hosed. Plus, the resolution on Mac and Amiga mice is way better than any Windows mouse. First mistake was having MS write the original OS/2. Ballmer has said publicly that they only took on the project to keep in IBM's good graces. They had no incentive whatsoever to do a good job with it, as it would cut into their market share for MS-DOS. OS/2 Warp3 and Warp4 kicked butt as OS's (fully multitasking/multithreaded, handled large disk volumes, no ridiculous 640k memory limitations). Only problem was lack of apps, and that was mainly due to MS's bullying and threat tactics to potential vendors and IBM itself. IBM should have pushed harder, but they caved too early. And they treated it like the second coming of Christ. Gates appeared on late night talk shows, everyone was talking about how MS developed this fabulous new operating system that would revolutionize the way people compute (unlike the more mature windowing OS's that Apple, NeXT, and Amiga or, for that matter, Atari had been using since the '80's). Everyone thought MS invented the mouse, and they were happy to let you believe that. And it was still just a graphical patch on top of DOS. Again, bought someone else's work and claimed it as their own. "Internet? Big deal. It's just a fad. Who cares? What? Netscape is actually making money? Ok. Here's what we do. Let's buy Mosaic, call it something Microsoft, bundle it with Windows, and tell people that we've decided the Internet is the wave of the future." Right. Fixed 3,000 bugs in OSR2, which supposedly was a huge bug fix for 95a. Created about that many of it's own, plus obsoleted a bunch of hardware, and forced you to use a damn browser window to look at directories. Plus, it included that fabulous channel bar that would allow them to force advertising on you, except that outside their little Redmond paradis, not everyone has a T1 in their den.....or wants Disney stuff forced on to their desktop. Internal memo from development indicated that the "Final Shipping Version" still had 65,000 bugs in it....and this was after thousands of suckers had paid $90 for a beta to work them out.....and then got no discount or credit towards the retail version, an annoying practice that dates back to Win95. Actually, came from Xerox PARC. Charles Simonyi wrote a WSYIWG wp for the Alto and when it looked like Xerox didn't have a clue what to do with it, MS hired him and he brought it with him. Only thing was, it had to be downgraded to run on DOS........ Originally, a clone of Lotus 1-2-3, which was a blatant ripoff from VisiCalc, a fact which to this day Lotus's originator feels bad about. I knew there was a prototype for this one, just wasn't sure what it was. Yes, it's still around, and the one machine I had to install it on in my office suffered terminal registry errors and had to be reghosted back to a baseline install. Don't know this one. Clone of dBase. Yup. Object-oriented programming was nothing new, and certainly wasn't a MS innovation. <rant> Microsoft should be heralded as the most successful marketing and advertising firm in the history of computing, but certainly not an innovator. By sheer stupid luck, they got hitched on to IBM at a time when personal computers were considered toys, but an "IBM PC" just HAD to be a real computer, right? Gate's real genius lies in his ability to dynamically rewrite history to fit his own needs and bully everyone into his way of doing things, no matter how wrong they are. Ballmer once said in an interview that it was more important to ship a product on time than it was to ship a product that worked. They could always issue service patches later. The real problem is that people just accept that and let them get away with it. Appliance operators who don't have a clue what is in their machines or even what an OS actually is know that they have to have "Intel Inside" (sorry Zane...) and Windows 2000 and Microsoft Office because that's what all the advertising has told them. Doesn't matter that an iMac may do everything they need faster and easier, it doesn't have Intel and Microsoft. Have they tried alternatives? Maybe WordPerfect would be better for them, but because MS told the PC builder that they'd yank their Windows license if they even thought about bundling WordPerfect, the user sees Word on the computer and just accepts it. Same with AOL or MSN. I'm tired and hungry now. This subject always sets me off. MS's original mission statement in 1975 says it all...."A pc on every desktop running MS software." It's not about money for Gates, it's about total control. He can't accept anything else, and can't understand why everyone else doesn't see things his way. It's in his psychology. </rant> Paul Braun Cygnus Productions nerdware_nospam(a)laidbak.com

Gary Hildebrand wrote: - BIG SNIP - Try telling #2 to many of the economists on advisory boards for electric deregulation. They still seem to believe that, given the right economic incentives, an electron may be convinced to forgo the call to heed Kirchoff's laws, and act in its best economic interest. Only until recent events in the California, New York and Penn-Maryland-New Jersey markets have some of the politicians begun to hear to some of the engineering concerns and actually pay attention. Sorry for the out of topic post. But hey, we were talking about [mono,duo,oligo]poly concerns... -- Carlos Murillo-Sanchez email: cem14(a)cornell.edu 428 Phillips Hall, Electrical Engineering Department Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853

"Zane H. Healy" wrote: It's even worse, Zane; an proven business tactic of MS is to snatch up startups that hold patents which MS sees as competing against MS's view of the future. Then they kill the corresponding technology by offering ridiculous licensing terms. Carlos. -- Carlos Murillo-Sanchez email: cem14(a)cornell.edu 428 Phillips Hall, Electrical Engineering Department Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853

At 10:20 PM 4/5/00 -0600, Richard Erlacher wrote: I heard that DEC is making PCs and laptops these days that come bundled with Windows. - John

On Thu, 6 Apr 2000, John Foust wrote: Unless I'm sadly mistaken, DEC no longer exists. Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies(a)kerberos.davies.net.au | "If God had wanted soccer played in the | air, the sky would be painted green"

If MS made cars it would be good to have AAA and a cell phone as youd use it. ;) Yep, and the copy of VMS5.5 on my MVII I got used from DEC in 1993 is still racking up hours... The 486 I got in 96, puked, the replacement puked and the need to reinstall MS out numbers the times I've backed up the VAX (typically monthly). No, VB is a joke. That you can make money in goobs off it is not a joke. It is sad however that programming skills have fallen to that level... of course the last app I got here we prodded for two weeks before trashing it as unacceptably buggy. Oh, I maintain code here in VB, QB.45/dos and even GWBASIC. As a member of STAB most of that stuff is pretty horrid and only exceeded by the most cryptic of asm code. However being pragmatic person I know the stuff as greed is good. Allison

On Thu, 6 Apr 2000, Richard Erlacher wrote: You know why? To clean up other people "code" and thats quoted for sacrasm! Hate using it. There is that. Me, I have to be able to hit the floor running on ANY OS, progamming language or CPU. My job is results, not being a VB lover. I use what is there, mandated or cheap. Because I can speak other languages I don't ahve to worry if the industry decides tomorrow that visualfraq is now the hot thing and VB is passe`. Allison

I have NO idea what I will do with them, but I bought two brand new in the sealed static bags Optimem 600 internal drives (those old worm things). Most likely they will go on eBay, but if someone on the list is interested they should email me before Friday. Location is Orange, Cal.

Any information should help. I don't think these have some special value, except maybe to some certain small group that still uses them, but it was one of those if I don't buy it, it goes in the shredder. Most disgusting. I was only able to save two out of four brand new units I found, the other two were a bit mashed by sloppy loading. I "think" I know someone who may have a LOT of these sitting in a warehouse in the factory shipping boxes, so I am going to discretely question him on media etc. RJ Kuhlman (the SCSI guy always selling drives etc. in the SCSI newsgroups) has been trying to sell some of these for the last few months, starting at $150 and latest was $100 w del, so maybe the batch I knew of has been shifted.

Thanks for looking, and they AFAIK are plain 50 pin narrow SCSI. The guy doesn't sound bad at all in comparison to Microsoft (sorry sorry, but it was fun saying it.).