On Nov 2, 2007, at 4:55 PM, Kevin Handy wrote: I really cannot fathom why people keep suggesting a computer when the OP wanted a *terminal*. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Nov 4, 2007, at 12:39 PM, woodelf wrote: And fun! -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Sunday 04 November 2007 14:25, Curt - Atari Museum wrote: Neat! I'm wondering what that multi-colored keyboard was that was being used near the beginning of that. And in the segment where they're talking about the Cray, those "memory banks" are presumably big honking disk drives? -- 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 Mon, 5 Nov 2007, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: Flynn previously said that he snuck in at night and set up his own private memory file for creating video games. Maybe that was the context. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

Which came first: Tron, or Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan? I remember the star trek movie had a snippet of CG for the creation of the Genesis planet. I think both were from 1982, but not sure. Joe On 11/6/07, Bryan Pope <bpope at wordstock.com> wrote:

They were both 1982. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl. -------------

Joe Giliberti wrote: Khan was first, and it's planet sequence was the largest computer-rendered sequence of its time in movies until Tron. -- 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/

In article <473099EC.8040805 at atarimuseum.com>, "Curt @ Atari Museum" <curt at atarimuseum.com> writes: ...or Colossus: The Forbin Project -- "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/>

Chuck Guzis wrote: What about HAL 9000? Dr Who had a evil computer I think in the mid 70's. Strange how we belived a computer could have real AI with a few moving tape drives, a blinking console and a computer voice. Ben.

Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: <snippage of evil computer discussion> One I haven't seen mentioned so far... The truly evil... Uniblab from The Jetsons No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.15.22/1112 - Release Date: 11/5/2007 7:11 PM

Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: A source of nightmares for my 10-yr-old self. But I was always partial to the Mark 13 from the movie Hardware. -- 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/

Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: The M5 wasn't evil, it was unstable and misguided. It chose to deactivate itself rather than cause further death. Peace... Sridhar

Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: This is evil computer hardware, not evil gates. :)

In article <4730AB45.8060601 at jetnet.ab.ca>, woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> writes: I believe you're thinking of the episode "Face of Evil", which introduced Leela as the Doctor's companion. -- "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/>

Hi, Evil computer, giant flies, 3rd Doctor....I've seen just about every episode of Dr.Who but that doesn't ring any bells. Doctor #4 encountered the wasp-like "Wirrn" in "The Ark in Space", but evil computer...? Have a look here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/. I'm sure you'll find your story. TTFN - Pete.

On 6 Nov 2007 at 10:58, woodelf wrote: Is there such a thing as AI (I mean, outside of political circles)? Has there been constructed any set of hardware or software that can pass the Turing test 100% of the time? Will there ever be one? I recall that when 2001 came out, it was stated by several AI specialists that we were perhaps 20 years away from a real HAL 9000. Is AI the cybernetic equivalent of controlled atomic fusion? I didn't find the Forbin project particularly threatening. After all, what could be threatening about a bunch of CDC 3000-series "green glass" panels and what looked to be the blinkenlights console of an IBM 1710? The Colossus console looked more like an arcade game than anything. What is surprising is the prevalence of CRT-based displays in these old movies that purport to project "the future". A technological blind spot the size of Texas. Cheers, Chuck

Define "AI" and maybe I can tell you. :) I've seen it said that "the core of AI is that which has not yet been done", and while I think that might be overstating it, there is a germ of truth in it. There was a time when people would have said (and probably did say) that playing chess as well as a human was evidence of real thought. Thanks to Deep Blue, we now disagree (I almost wrote "know better", but I'm not sure I think that's an accurate phrasing). Yes, but the hardware is organic and the software is understood poorly to not at all. :-) The Turing test is not one for which 100% can be expected. My guess is, probably. My guess is also, probably not for quite a while - I'd be surprised to see it this century. For a third guess, I'll say that this will be tatamount to creating life - that Turing-test consciousness and life will turn out to be inextricably linked. Mind you, I'm not entirely sure what "life" means in this context, so I'm not sure how meaningful that is. No worse than any future-projection fiction's blind spot, in that they can't imagine technology that isn't, well, imagined yet. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On 6 Nov 2007 at 15:16, der Mouse wrote: The problem is that there were indeed technologies (not widely deployed, granted) didn't look like a jug-in-a-box when most of this stuff was penned. Thin-profile CRTs were a laboratory reality (used a side-shooting electron gun and an array of wires to deflect the beam, for example). Nor was plasma display anything particularly out of the mind's reach. Rear-projection displays, etc. were long realities. Even after systems using plasma displays had been deployed (think the 70's PLATO terminal), futurists were still fixated on the jug. Cheers, Chuck

Hi, He had one in the mid-60's. The William Hartnell story "The War Machines", first broadcast in June/July 1966, featured an evil computer named "WOTAN" which tried to take over the world. TTFN - Pete.

Ensor wrote: Why bother, you got Daleks for that. :)

Ray Arachelian wrote: A few coments about Japanese animation. While not a evil computer, Serial experiments Lain had a TRS-800. ( A future mac/internet clone). You have few Mad or Evil computers around but for the most part Japanese si-fi does not have many computers. Cute female mechanical dolls/robots but few computers -- that is a US thing. Ben.

YouTube is your friend. orion1052003 has uploaded several episodes of The Whiz Kid (split into 2 or 3 parts), whilst TheRedCity has uploaded a video of the theme. I'll check it out later, after I have caught up on the latest lonelygirl15 video. YouTube seems to be a great place to see old computer advert and TV programs. To think I discovered YouTube after someone pointed me in the direction of a video of BBC Micro Live from 1984, when they first had the Amiga on there :) Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote: Ray Arachelian wrote: A few coments about Japanese animation. While not a evil computer, Serial experiments Lain had a TRS-800. ( A future mac/internet clone). You have few Mad or Evil computers around but for the most part Japanese si-fi does not have many computers. Cute female mechanical dolls/robots but few computers -- that is a US thing. Ben.

Hi, I remember that! It was shown on TV over here, once....never got repeated as I recall. :-( Too

Thanks for posting that link. The video will go nicely with an article I have in an issue of 80 Microcomputing about how they made the TRON visuals :) Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk Curt - Atari Museum <curt at atarimuseum.com> wrote: Saw this on YouTube - nice video from 1982 that discusses Tron and how movies/TV would change due to Supercomputer based graphics... lots of great shots of a Cray 1, terminals and other graphic computer devices: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu5_33uRNzc Curt

I know I've got terminals with 6809s in them, the problem is remembering which ones. I think my Pericom monochrom graphics terminal does, I also have a colour video terminal made by Microvitec (yes, the commpany better known for the monitor for the BBC micro), I think that's got a 6809 inside. -tony

Kevin Handy wrote: "Looks around* For gods' sakes, what list is this? Hobbies are not expected to be cost-effective. They're supposed to be fun. Doc

Don't forget old low-end word-processing boxes for use as terminals. They still can be found fairly easily. They usually have at least one serial port, a green-screen display and a disk drive. Processors varied a bit, but Z80 was very popular. Cheers, Chuck

On Nov 4, 2007, at 4:59 PM, Tony Duell wrote: For me, the reason is simple. Terminal emulators are too damn much trouble...emulation problems, key mapping, etc. I've used pretty much all of them over the years, I think...the best one I've used was SmarTerm 240, and even that is far from perfect. Sometimes what one really needs is an APPLIANCE...not an emulation of said appliance built upon an unstable and problematic platform. Further...A VT320 terminal pulls less than half an ampere at 120V, and is available for use within about fifteen seconds of powerup...can anyone say either of those things for a PC running terminal emulation software? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007

On 4 Nov 2007 at 18:06, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: ...and let's not forget the DOS-in-ROM PS/1 model.

Tell me aout it !. About 10 years ago I used one particularly bad emulator under Windows which couldn't even get VT100 cursor positioning right.... I feel the saem way about electronic test gear. I want a 'scope. Not a disguised PC pretending to be a 'scope. Not something running an OS never designed for real-time work that's liable to crash (or worse still do the wrong thing and not warn me about it) if I look at it wrong. An HP100LX (which is PC-compatible-ish) will run for quite a time on a couple of AA cells (I would guess therefore a lot less than 60W!). I am pretty sure I could start up the built-in terminal emulator in well under 15s. [Sorry, couldn't resist. I use the 100LX and 95LX quite a bit as pocket-sized erminals when I'm sorting out serial problems] -tony

Kevin Handy wrote: 1) Size 2) The PC *sucks* at serial I/O. Note I picked up a used lap/top for a serial terminal for about $125. Now where can I find pro-comm? Ben

Chuck Guzis wrote: I used t use ProComm, but I switched to Telix. However, this is probably what you want: http://www.ncat.co.uk/Download/index.htm http://vetusware.com/download/ProComm%20Plus%202.01/?id=3807 Telix: http://www.telix.com/delta/deltacom/tfd/index.html I think the terminal versus PC with emulator app discussion is a general issue. Where does one draw the line? For instance, interfacing an IDE drive to a stock C64 is generally considered OK in the CBM circles, but using an SuperCPU is considered heresy by many. At what point do you draw the line? Jim -- Jim Brain, Brain Innovations (X) brain at jbrain.com Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times!

On 4 Nov 2007 at 22:41, Atsushi Takahashi wrote: Certainly true if you're using an 8250 UART chip. Replacing it with a 16550 and making sure that your software enables the FIFO can help quite a bit. And there were/are high-performance serial cards with large buffers. Names escape me at the moment, but they were popular with some BBS sysops. One thing that used to hurt a lot with old PCs and graphics cards was the way that software implemented scrolling--by performing block moves on the display buffer contents. Write your own screen handling software to manage the same thing by changing the starting display address instead if the display adapter that you're using doesn't have a scrolling feature. Really, there's no reason that a PC should lag behind a 1980's terminal that used a lowly 4MHz Z80. Cheers, Chuck

On 5 Nov 2007 at 6:08, Steve Stutman wrote: Please, you miss my point, which is that it's not the comm interface on a PC that's the problem; it's the display--and that there are ways to handle it so that it's not a problem. Many PC display controllers have a 6845 sort of video controller with shared access to local memory--and a register in the controller that indicates where within video memory that display is to begin. When the controller reaches the end of video RAM, it simply wraps around to the beginning. Most PC display software doesn't fool with the start address, preferring to scroll by shifting all but one line's worth of bytes in the display by one line. This is a very time-consuming job and usually results in data loss if a steady stream of data with plenty of linefeeds is encountered. Instead of shifting the data, simply change the starting address in the controller register. The only downside is that you must be aware of the starting address--a location on the screen does not have a static mapping to memory. But in the case of terminal software, this is a small price to pay. If a Z80-based terminal has to scroll by using LDIR's to shift lines of characters and screen attributes, it will fall behind too-- regardless of the quality of its silicon implementation. It's more of a problem on chipsets such as the Intel 8275 CRTC, where refresh is accomplished by DMA requests through something like an 8257 DMA controller with common RAM shared by the processor. Unless the designer has included "wraparound" addressing, scrolling becomes a problem. It can be ameliorated somewhat by allocating a large display buffer (2x-3x screen size) and moving the starting DMA address to scroll. When the end of the buffer is about to be reached, one can copy a screen's worth back to the start of the display buffer. This can be spread over the time it takes to fill the final end-of-buffer screen, but, but it's a lot more difficult to manage well. But then, I'd rather perform do-it-yourself root canals than use an 8275 CRC. What a piece of work. Cheers, Chuck

Chuck Guzis wrote: With a Z80 you had to write your own OS. There was *No* need for that in the 1980's other than *Pushing* 8080 to 8086 conversion as way to get *quick* software to the market place. Thinks the people who invented BASIC with slowed down computer development by centuries.

On 5 Nov 2007 at 11:19, woodelf wrote: If you're talking about the terminal function in the likes of Procomm, the OS doesn't even enter into things (unless you're a complete idiot about things) outside of, say, logging to disk and keeping dialing directories. Haven't you ever written any OS-less software for a PC that simply boots from a floppy? Given that there's a BIOS in ROM, such things are pretty easy to do if you don't like OS-es. One could easily write a PC terminal program that didn't use DOS or any other OS for that matter. For that matter, one could replace the BIOS with a terminal program and throw away the disks entirely. Cheers, Chuck

On 5 Nov 2007 at 12:34, woodelf wrote: How so? Particularly how so when using the 32-bit extended BIOS funtions or the INT 15H multitasking extensions? How about the Plug- and-play extensions or ACPI? Even in the bad old big iron days, controllers had their firmware and you were stuck with whatever the firmware writer decided to implement. The BIOS functions aren't all that bad when it comes to implementing something. You get a basic set for getting a simple OS loader going. If you want to use your own drivers after the system is loaded, that's your lookout--the PC architecture doesn't force you to use the BIOS. Even Unix/Linux/OS2/Windoze uses the BIOS to get started. You'd never get most PCI cards off the ground if it weren't for the BIOS. Cheers, Chuck

On 5 Nov 2007 at 16:02, woodelf wrote: It does? I'm up and running in less than a minute on a P4. But the BIOS has nothing to do with most of that time. Both Windoze and Linux shift into 32-bit protected mode pretty quickly when loading. By that time, the drivers have loaded and the BIOS is out of the picture at that point. What does slow down loading is the need to load drivers after boot, which then go through enumeration and resource mapping all over again. So I don't know why your systems load so slowly. Cheers, Chuck

Dave McGuire wrote: I use it. I have no choice, this machine is bought for PC[1] games. :) I use Mozilla for surfing. Grumbles that a real 'bitmapped graphics machine' never hit the home market. The mac[1] came close but they kept changing CPU's so all we have is PC clones. :( [1] The games I like are way off topic [2] 128K of memory realy was too small even in the 1980's. Ben. PS. I like windows/95 over the latest versions of linux ... Too much bloat.

Chuck Guzis wrote: Name is not lucy. The LISA and MAC I consider BITMAPPED. C64's and others had sprite graphics. Amiga and Atari(sp) were maketed as games machines. The APPLE II split screen I liked for text on the bottom (FAST) , graphics on the top slow. Only the development of fast 2D graphics cards even make modern software usable.

Cameron Kaiser wrote: I still favor character graphics, but everything in drawn in bitmap today. Weird OS design/display 640x400 --- for a 18 bit machine? layer 1) OS menu - cell graphics. layer 2) Text display - cell graphics. layer 3) Bit mapped display - 512 color - 9 bits? 256 fixed colors?

Chuck Guzis wrote: I am talking about machines that boot to a bitmapped display. Most of the rest still used TV scan rates, thus more of a games machine.

Chuck Guzis wrote: I never used a ST.

On 6 Nov 2007 at 17:13, Ethan Dicks wrote: A waste of hardware since the first VGA. The old "backward compatibility" business wherein an application can stuff alpha data into a memory mapped buffer I suspect. Did the IBM PGC emulate text mode in software or did it also use dedicated character-generation hardware? My O&A isn't within handy reach... Low-end home wapro boxes kept using text mode for a very long time after the 68K home systems came out. But maybe that's stretching the notion of "home machine". Cheers, Chuck

Looking at ON semiconductor most of the ECL seems to be 'last shipments' phase of stock. Now is the time to check into this for spares. Ben. PS NL7SZ57 looks like a neat new part - multi-function 2 input gate.

Don;'t you also require that the computer has an alphanumeric keyboard, a video display and a serial port? I can see seveal computers from where I am sittling that are lacking at least one of those facilities. -tony

If you really want a hardware solution then this http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=S3BOARD&Nav1=Produc… Would be a great platform. I have acting as a 6809 at 12MHz. Just plug in a PS2 keyboard, VGA monitor, and load paper tape images through the seial port. I would rather have an embedded single board computer running linux. You could get one of those for $200. Grant

Chuck Guzis wrote: Difficult to pull of video on one, though. Peace... Sridhar

On 2 Nov 2007 at 16:18, Doc Shipley wrote: The local recycler was selling mini Centrino(IIRC) PCs that had 256MB DRAM, a USB port and video, mouse and keyboard connections. It may also have had a floppy interface somewhere. Powered from a wall wart, these were intended to host some sort of public web browser. At the time, they were asking $5 the each. One could easily stick a flash RAM dongle into the USB port. Cheers, Chuck

On Nov 4, 2007, at 3:33 PM, Philip Pemberton wrote: Excellent idea. I've had very similar thoughts myself. Yes, but then you'd have a PC, not a terminal. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL