On Mon, 11 Apr 2011, Liam Proven wrote: Eh? I've NEVER seen Quick C in "mainstream" use. You sure you're not thinking of Turbo C? A brand new QB45 would be fun to have - then again, so would PDS 7.1 with a manual set. *wistful sigh* Delphi could be used to create ActiveX controls for VB, but VB could not create components for Delphi - unless they were ActiveX controls in which case Delphi could use them. Quick C and QB were _completely_ different product lines and languages. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

On 11 Apr 2011 at 13:51, Chris M wrote: Compilers are easy--it's the run-time that's the bugger. But yeah, you could probably do both in Quick C. I recall when M$ packed as a freebie with their C compiler, but I didn't bother to use it--and this may also be the reason that it didn't catch on generally. I preferred a more formal development style. Edit, compile, run, lather, rinse, repeat. Lots of different source files. The time saved by using QuickC didn't amount to a hill of beans in the overall picture. I find that the more sophisticated and "helpful"the IDE, the more it tends to disturb my thought processes. But then, I'm old. --Chuck

On 11 Apr 2011 at 15:39, Chris M wrote: I'll have to go back to my MSC collection (it goes all the way back to when Microsoft sold Lattice C as their own) to see when M$ tossed QuickC with their regular compiled product. You mean, for instance, like using MAKE? Before MS got the bugs worked out of nmake, I had my own any-idiot-can-use it called BUILD that worked out the dependencies without the nasty syntax of make (less capable, but good enough for my purposes). Eventually, things got fast enough that compiling in bits and pieces didn't matter much. I still work from paper, at least in outline form. I find it just about impossible to work out a program without a pad of paper or a whiteboard close by. By the time I'm entering code, the design's pretty much fully worked out. --Chuck

I find that really slows me down. I like that Eclipse, for example, offers this, but I'd rather only have it do it when I ask it to, not when I'm just typing along. For example, in vi I can bounce on the % key when I have unbalanced closures and I don't know where. But it only does it when I ask it to. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I'm still right. -------

On 4/12/2011 12:04 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: This sounds fairly typical of the environments I've worked in for the last five years. You seem to indicate that this is overkill or unnecessary? I'm currently bringing QA to a place which has never had it. There are no requirements document. Without one, software development and the internal customer aren't often on the same page. Development produces something that "kind of" meets the expectation, but doesn't give them fully what they want because this hasn't been spelled out. Feature creep happens. Much of the software framework was never designed --- and so there's no design documents anywhere. Each developer handles each situation his own way --- which almost never matches what the others have done. No style guide = no consistency. Without a requirements document, how will QA know when it's finished testing? We use the requirements document as THE STANDARD. We test to the standard. If the RD says it must do X, Y, and Z, we wrap test cases around each feature, and ensure that X, Y, and Z work as designed. Just wondering whether you think the process you listed above is prudent and necessary or overkill? I get your point that actual coding is a fraction of the process, but was interested in your input. Thanks Keith

On 2011 Apr 11, at 3:04 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: As a student, I was on the tail end of the keypunch/batch era. It was painful but one good thing it did was instill the notion of doing the design and coding correctly up-front, and forcing one to think in detail about your program logic before running it. It was an objective to have your program compile and then execute correctly the first time it hit the compiler. These days, that seems not just quaint but a radical notion.

On Tue, 12 Apr 2011, Dave McGuire wrote: Then there's the assinine requirement that you give a fine grained accounting for your time resulting in the choice - tell them about what you did, or actually do it. I can understand that kind of an accounting this particular nightmare even worse, as if such a thing were possible. * "Consultants: If you can't provide a solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem!" g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

On 12 Apr 2011 at 16:11, Dave McGuire wrote: Mind you, I have nothing against writing slapdash code to check out an idea or algorithm. Quick and dirty, use whatever tools are available. But then, if the concept proves out, throw the code away and write and document the new code in a way that it can be maintained. I'm tired of reading Linux listings where you say "Where's the narrative? How does this thing work and why did the author do what he did? What are his naming conventions?" I know...Linux Is Wonderful and I'm a Bad Person for criticizing it. Bureaucracy is evil. --Chuck

On 4/12/11 1:29 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: I have been looking at a bunch of source projects for various fairly complicated bits of system code, and you're right, the documentation sucks, sometimes just a handful of 'man' pages. These were implementing fairly complicated distributed systems and they don't even bother properly describing their data structures or communications protocols. My pet peeve are projects that drag in dozens of libraries, which then drag in dozens more. Of course, these then conflict with other projects' expectations, or screw up other already running builds. I guess the way of the world now is build a vm/sandbox for every fscking thing you want to try to compile.

On Tue, 12 Apr 2011, Dave McGuire wrote: Some years back, I was giving a presentation to our group, explaining why I had coded something in a particular way (because it was faster and more efficient). One of our so-called programmers raised their hand and asked, "Why don't you just run it on a faster processor?" I just stared at her. There's something to be said for learning to write code that had to fit in 64KB (or less). Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/

----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave McGuire" <mcguire at neurotica.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 6:02 PM Subject: Re: Modern source projects (was Re: difference betweenQuick compilers) Programmers learn to use what they have available. For old timers stuffing code into 64KB was the goal because that is all they had to use, for people just starting out it may be to use multiple cores and the GPU properly at the same time. I used to love apps that would run from a single floppy, that doesn't do much good these days when computers don't even have a floppy drive anymore and removable media is in the GB range for the cheap low end stuff.

In article <4DA5BB9E.1030907 at verizon.net>, Keith Monahan <keithvz at verizon.net> writes: This isn't so true anymore, anyway. Instead of increasing single core speeds, CPUs are incorporating more processor cores. In order to automagically get speedups now your code has to be parallelizable by the compiler tool chain. Most code isn't structured this way. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

On Wed, 13 Apr 2011, Keith Monahan wrote: I've been waiting and waiting, but THIS Windoze machine keeps getting slower! Alas, reliance on Moore's law is becoming common. It was recognized and accepted 25 years ago at MICROS~1. <sigh> -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On 04/14/2011 06:38 PM, Philip Pemberton wrote: That's odd; I wonder what's doing that to you. I'm using a different Linux distribution, and used its predecessors going back to 1995, and never have had that kind of thing happen. (I'm not mentioning it by name as I'm not claiming that it's better and I'm not trying to start a thread on the merits of various Linux distributions.) It's been said that if you have a problem with Windows, reboot, and if you have a problem with Linux, be root. However, far too often problems with Windows are not solved by rebooting and must be solved by reinstalling. Eric

On 4/15/11 9:55 PM, Philip Pemberton wrote: Firefox becoming constipated certainly shouldn't necessitate an OS reinstall though, right? If all else fails, just delete the entire profile from ~/.mozilla/firefox/<profiledir> and all state is gone, yes? That's really not a big deal for Firefox. I regularly have 3-4x that, for weeks at a time. I have 3x that right now. It eats a good bit of memory doing that, but FF4 seems to have improved that somewhat. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

In article <201104122158.p3CLwWJV014494 at floodgap.com>, Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com> writes: Dependencies are neither good nor bad, its how you use them that makes it hell or heaven. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

In article <4DA4C3A2.1020307 at bitsavers.org>, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> writes: This is the new "script kiddie" way to make open source. Just mashup a bunch of libraries and bind them together with chewing gum and bailing wire. Like most things in the world, you get what you pay for with open source. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

Dave McGuire wrote: Until then, they should get off our lawn. I avoid hiring people who have this attitude. Peace... Sridhar

On 4/13/11 12:41 AM, Geoffrey Reed wrote: If someone tried to feed me that garbage in a school, I'd demand my money back. Bravo for trimming the fat from your stuff. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 13/04/11 14:45, Dave McGuire wrote: Universities are great at this sort of crap... or at least mine was (not named for obvious reasons, namely I don't feel like poking the huge fire-breathing dragon that is their in-house legal team) This year (for the second year in a row) the MSc. Computing and Information Systems course was merged with the MEng. Software Engineering. Problem: CIS is intended as a fairly easy course for non-UK students who have no formal qualifications in comp-sci or any related subject. About 80% of the students on the course have backgrounds in business (mainly MBAs from various sketchy "universities" - quote-unquote, insert sarcasm here, et cetera). The MEng is -- or at least was -- a completely different course. To get on it in the first place you needed to do the BSc Software Development course first (four years) and hit an average of 60% over the final three years of the course AND the industry placement. No ifs, buts, arguments, or "2% grace". You get 60% or you leave with a BSc. Fail a single module, tough, you leave with the BSc. As a result of the merger, the course has been dumbed down significantly. The assignment for the Advanced Software Development module, for example, is a basic Java maintenance task: refactor some code (change function names, move some functions into separate classes, and so on). Basic stuff any second-year BSc Software Dev student should be able to do. One of the Infosec lecturers heard about this and tried to run a few extra modules (non-credit) while the networking/security lab wasn't in use. Reverse engineering, data analysis, pattern matching, all sorts of neat stuff. The Head of Department put the brakes on this pretty damn quickly: "Misuse of university resources." The icing on the cake is that the British Computer Society caught wind of the dumbing-down and promptly revoked accreditation for the MEng course track. So it's basically worthless if you're aiming for BCS membership. Bitter? Wouldn't you be? As for demanding money back, I bet I know how well that would go: "Oh, you want your money back? Well here's our Legal team, you can talk to them. By the way, they don't talk to Peons, only other lawyers, solicitors or attorneys-at-law at an equal or higher pay grade. Y'all have fun, now!" -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

Can somebody please give the make nad model :-)_ Surely a clacualtor cna;t be that large? -tony

there is only one thing that was not made 1909, that is a patent date. It's from much later maybe 30s or 40s at least. Still a find though. Allison On 04/15/2011 11:04 AM, Peter C. Wallace wrote:

I do not think that number is a patent number see http://home.ix.netcom.com/~hancockm/when_was_it_made.htm the serial number encodes date and model but the linked page seems to miss out the 184xxx numbers Dave Caroline On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 9:39 PM, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote:

looks like a class 1 style 9 http://www.officemuseum.com/IMagesWWW/1906_Burroughs_No._9_marketed_1911_OM… http://www.officemuseum.com/calculating_machines_adding_listing.htm Dave Caroline

--- On Fri, 4/15/11, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: Heh. Reminds me of the time I got kicked out of my High School library for using one of the computers to work an English assignment. "You're using a *disk* in our computers?" Apparently, despite the presence of both a 3 1/2" floppy drive and Microsoft Word, these computers are never to be used for such tasks. Nope - searching the library catalog is all they're good for. -Ian

On Fri, 15 Apr 2011, Fred Cisin wrote: Point out that with a usb thumbdrive and this: http://portableapps.com/suite ..they'll be set. :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Mr Ian Primus wrote: I would've approached it in a different way. I would have talked back. I would have been sent to the principal. The principal *might* have given me detention, in which case my father would have dropped our lawyers on the school. Peace... Sridhar

On Fri, 15 Apr 2011, Mr Ian Primus wrote: I'm one of three, AND we have to answer to mindless micro-managing college administrators. Students who understand what they are doing use online editing tools, and/or bring what they need on their flash drives. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On 4/15/11 6:55 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote: The metrology world typically uses calculable capacitors for C. For voltage, Josephson junctions are the top dog, driven by a primary frequency standard. This is a primary standard because the only other parameters are e and Planck's constant. I believe quantum Hall effect devices are still used for R standards but I haven't kept up with that. SET (single-electron tunneling) devices are en vogue as current standards but I don't know much about those either. In electronic metrology, "measurements" are carried out by comparison to these standards or derivatives thereof. Voltage is measured potentiometrically via either a solid-state null detector or a SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device). For capacitance, as in Tony's situation, I'd expect a passive AC bridge would be how it's done, comparing against (absolute best case) a calculable capacitor. That gets you down to first principles, but the "measurement" is still a comparison. As you stated above, measuring the RC time constant with a precision timer and a precision voltage source (both driven by primary standards, cesium fountain and Josephson junction array) is still comparing it, by my interpretation, mathematically against numbers calculated from those primary standards. I'm not sure Tony's instructor actually had a point. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 4/15/11 9:18 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote: Ahh ok, I understand what you mean now. I once had an argument with a fellow who didn't believe potentiometric voltage measurement systems ever had any value, because there have been "multimeters", VOMs and VTVMs for many decades. "Why do all that comparison stuff with standard cells when you can just MEASURE the damn thing?" he asked. He didn't understand that there's a voltage reference of one sort or another inside every VOM and VTVM. Just what does constitute an LSB interval in that DVM's ADC, anyway? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 4/16/11 7:52 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: No, but he had an MCSE, therefore he was an expert in all things technical. *snicker* As a collector of physics and metrology antiques, I seek out wall galvanometers! :) I regularly perform measurements with them, for no other reason than "because I can". I find them a pleasure to use. I do prefer the HP 3458A, though. Gads. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 4/17/11 11:21 AM, Gene Buckle wrote: Yep. The great mark of "clueless" for this era. I recall all to well the last era's mark of "clueless": CNE! Remember those guys? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 4/17/11 11:45 AM, Gene Buckle wrote: Oh yes, I'd say so. One such fellow insisted that files on a Netware server were stored "pre-encoded into IPX format" on the server's drives, which is how it could serve up file data so fast. [rolls eyes] I get pretty nostalgic about Netware. The last installation I did before getting out of that world was v2.15, pretty early. I always liked the simplicity, stability, and performance. I did dozens of small Netware networks in NJ in the late 1980s, mostly in law offices. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 4/17/11 1:46 PM, Alexandre Souza - Listas wrote: Nothing other than twenty-year-old memories, but I do recall that Netware used its own filesystem that supported some basic access controls and such. I think that's what had the clueless CNE thinking the on-disk layout was "pre-encoded for IPX", which is, of course, ridiculous. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 4/17/11 2:11 PM, Alexandre Souza - Listas wrote: I dunno about you, buy my ass is aging like fine wine! ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 4/17/11 3:28 PM, Gene Buckle wrote: *BLAM!!* oops -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 17 April 2011 18:46, Alexandre Souza - Listas <pu1bzz.listas at gmail.com> wrote: Interesting article. It seems to have been (exceptionally-well) machine-translated from Italian, which leads to a few confusing bits, but it's a good essay. One of the confusing aspects is that it suggests a new Netware filesystem was adopted in the interval between Netware 3 and 5. It wasn't. The NW filesystem was the only option on NW2, 3 and 4. 5 introduced new filesystems but still supported the old one - indeed I think you had to boot off the old format, at least at first in 5.0. The NW filesystem was interesting in several ways. One part of this that amuses me is that apparently the entire server filesystem code was one huge chunk of hand-coded x86 assembly. The mounted the disk, read it, wrote it, enforced security, the whole deal. A single module, which by the time of NW4.x was approaching a half megabyte of impenetrable assembler. Novell was terrified of breaking it and couldn't extend it any further, but without doing so, it could not break the restriction of needing a certainl fixed amount of RAM to mount a volume of given size. More disk = more RAM. So it wrote a whole new FS stack, renamed the old one NW Core File Services or something and started deprecating it. Of course the new one didn't offer anything like the performance but by 2000 or so this did not matter so much. The only interesting angles I know about the actual structure of the NW FS are scant. As disk blocks grew bigger - the great curse of FAT16 on disks of grew inefficient. Novell found a way to do block suballocation on NWFS. I don't know how, but if you enabled it, it could allocate parts of a single cluster to different files. A big gain in disk usage efficiency resulted. The more general thing is that NWFS was a flat filesystem. It did not support subdirectories. All files were on a single level. You added "namespaces" to the volume to support clients with hierarchical filing systems - i.e., MS-DOS 2.0 onwards and Macs from some early point after HFS replaced MFS. What this did was use hashing to generate a unique filename from the pathname of the file. I have no idea how it worked internally, but something like: /home/lproven/docs/readme.txt => "h-l-d-readme-text => "8-12-4-readme-txt" This meant that it could accommodate large numbers of identically-named files in different "directories" and that searching and accessing them was very, very quick. Essentially it generated unique keys for each file, so that a database-like search operation found them, rather than recursively opening subdirectories and scanning each one. This only became visible when more advanced namespaces became common - e.g. the Mac one to support Apple filename semantics, and more amusingly, the one used for NT 3.1 and later Win9x: OS2.NAM. Since they'd implemented DOS-like filenames for OS/2, they didn't bother doing it again when Windows gained long-file-name support, so Windows clients required the OS/2 namespace to be added to a volume before it could store LFNs. -- Liam Proven ? Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508

In genral to measure a quanity you can eitehr compare it to a standard of the same time (e.g. using a bridge circuit (in many cases), a ruller, a 2-pan balance...) or you can convert it to some other quantity and compare that against a stnadard (e.g, a spring balanace which converts a weight (not a mass!) to a change in length which you then compare against a 'standard' length scale). Most of the books I have read on measurements say that unless there are otehr problems, you get the most accurate reuslts if yourt stnadard is the same type as the quantiity being measured (if only becasue of possible errors and non-linearities in the conversion). Obviously there are many times when you can't do this, or don't want to do this. And there are times when you really do want to check against the fundamental SI stnadards. Hower, to claim, as said physics teacher claimed, that a comparison against a standard of the same type is not a measuremnt is plain wrong. ARGH! I used a potentiomenter (in the sense of a voltage measuring device) not that long ago. I wanted to measure the programming voltage in a programmer for ffusible-link PROMs. The problem was that if I tried to program a PROM I could proably measure the voltae applied, but if iy was way off, it'd progbably wreck the PRON. Anyway, Ididnt; want to waste one or more PROMs testing the programmer. If i asked it to program a chip and there was nothign in the socket, it would attempt to program the first location and then fail the verification and bomb out. Aha!. It was at least going to apply the programming voltage pulse of that first location. I didn't have a sotrage 'scope, so I couldn;'t sample that pulse and measure the amplitiude. What I did was connect a 'Helipot' multi-turn potentiometer accross a stable DC power supply, and then montiored the votlage on the slider of that pot with an DVM. I then connected that to one ipnput of a 339 comparator IC, and the other input to a pin on the progmrammer's socket that would gt the progrmaming pulse. The output of the 339 went to a logic probe so I could see if it was changing state. By reppeatedly 'programming' a non-existant chip and adjusting the pot, I could find a settign where the comparator _just_ didn't toggle. That man the outptu from the helipot was just higher than the progammign pulse voltage. And I could measure that constant voltage with the DVM. -tony

On 4/12/11 3:16 PM, Richard wrote: Just make sure it LOOKS pretty to the user. http://www.mixxx.org/ for example the structure of this project makes me want to gag.

On 4/12/11 4:01 PM, Richard wrote: Try building it

On 4/12/11 3:16 PM, "Richard" <legalize at xmission.com> wrote: Some open source is crap, but much of it isn't, and if you compare it with a lot of the retail software out there, is just as good. If you have installed a windows or mac package lately, even much of the commercial stuff drags a bunch of un needed crap along with it. At least with open source software, if something doesn't work as you think it should... You can fix it :)

On 4/12/11 7:06 PM, Richard wrote: You don't buy anything that isn't a Microsoft product, though, Richard. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 16/04/11 17:48, Alexander Schreiber wrote: Dare I ask if you're referring to Xilinx's "wonderful" ISE Design System? Altera seemingly learned a lesson long ago: sometimes software is just too old to maintain. Compared to ISE (and even the old Altera MAX+PLUS development system), Quartus is a dream to use. ISE has more bugs (I've found several Logic Synthesizer bugs in ISE, none in Quartus), is less stable (on average several crashes per day; I've never seen Quartus crash)... You'll only need one guess to figure out why I prefer the Altera chips, despite their little quirks. I love the direct-drive LVDS transceivers on Xilinx chips, but I can live with the three-resistor driver on the Altera chips... I once tried to fix a bug in the gcc lm32 arch. All I got for my trouble was a really big headache... I think I'll leave it to the folks with long, grey beards, coke-bottle glasses and suspenders in future... Can't say I've ever found a bug in the gcc x86 or x86_64 architectures though. That said, they're probably the most intensively tested (and used) of all the gcc archs, so it's hardly surprising... LM32 is a minor footnote by comparison. -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

On 18/04/11 00:26, Chuck Guzis wrote: It's a pain to make it work on Linux x64. The 64-bit version of ISE doesn't work in any usable fashion -- PlanAhead and PACE are broken-by-design (segfault on start), and firing up the Constraints Editor is a great way to bring it down hard and fast. Xilinx have known about this since the first x64 builds went out to subscription customers. The latest builds are no better... Thankfully the x32 version works fine on a 64-bit box, but you have to jump through some hoops to make it install: http://www.philpem.me.uk/elec/fpga/ise12ubuntu/ For bonus points, the whole thing is linked against an ancient X11 library which can't deal with DISPLAY= strings of the form ":0.0". You have to lose the ".0" or ISE segfaults. Me neither. It's also a hell of a lot easier to make it work -- add a Udev rule to make the USB Blaster work non-root, and that's about it. I've got a bunch of XC9500 and XC9500XL parts. The XLs are really, really nice -- 3.3V with 5V-tolerant-and-compatible I/O, 100MHz toggle rate, and a piece of cake to design for. I learned Verilog with a homebrew XC9572XL development board... Only thing I've got against Xilinx is their software. It's high time they took ISE out to pasture and replaced it with something that actually... well... *works* without crashing or going into 100%-CPU loops. A synthesizer that can handle CPU cache constructs without generating faulty netlists would be nice too... (another open bug: three years and counting!) -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

Peter C. Wallace wrote: Scary! I've only been using Spartan-3, -3E, and -3A, and don't yet have any Spartan-6 boards. I've tried synthesizing a few of my designs for Spartan-6 to see how the static timing analysis compares, but it sounds like my results probably weren't valid. Eric

Philip Pemberton wrote about Xilinx ISE: I've had 64-bit ISE 10.x, 11.x, and 12.x working on Fedora 12, 13, and 14 without the problems you describe. Presumably this works because RHEL5, which Xilinx supports, is closely related to Fedora. What distribution are you using? You might want to try Centos 5, which is essentially identical to RHEL5. Eric

On Tue, 12 Apr 2011, Geoffrey Reed wrote: You realize that you're interfering with his "open source is crap!" narrative by dragging out facts 'n stuff, right? :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

On Tue, 12 Apr 2011, Dave McGuire wrote: <miss piggy>Moi?</miss piggy> :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

On Tue, 12 Apr 2011, Richard wrote: That was the thinly-veiled implication. If memory serves, manx is a documentation repository isn't it? While it can fall under the heading "open source", it's not exactly a direct parallel to something like FlightGear or Mozilla, now is it? Just because you and your colleagues aren't doing this, doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't happen. It just means it doesn't happen within your particular theatre of operations. :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Richard [legalize at xmission.com] wrote: If you mean "a significant amount of stuff out there is essentially unmaintainable" you are almost certainly correct. But why is that such a big deal? Surely you only care about the things you actually use (or want to use). Even if you depend on project Y and it's too big for you to fix a bug that matters to you, you should be able to find someone who'll fix it for you for money. That's the advantage over commercial software: you at least have the option of having your specific itch scratched (assuming it really does matter enough to you). With commercial software you generally get new versions on a regular basis but you are not likely to get fixes for the bugs that matter to you. Antonio arcarlini at iee.org

On 4/13/11 6:33 PM, Richard wrote: Provide proof of this assertion, or it's bull. (Hey, if you can fall back on that, knowing full well that people would rather just give up rather than do your research for you when it's well-known that you've already made up your mind anyway, so can the rest of us!) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 04:33:17PM -0600, Richard wrote: Ok, _that_ claim is, admittedly, silly. There _is_ a lot of very high quality open source out there, definitely, It such isn't the majority of open source code in existence. Hey, anything written in PHP already has a 99.9% chance of being utter crap to begin with ;-) But the upside is, again: with open source, even if the code is crap, you can actually take a look at the source, see that it is hopeless and move on to something that works (or build it yourself) instead of buying lots of duck tape, baling wire and chewing gum to keep the expensive "enterprise solution" somehow from _visibly_ shitting over itself on a regular basis. Kind regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

On 4/13/11 12:25 AM, Richard wrote: I've been doing it for 20+ years, as has pretty much everyone I know. Where have you been? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Wed, 13 Apr 2011, Geoffrey Reed wrote: My error rate goes up with ethanol.

I've lost the original thread on this, but ISTR that the subject thread wasn't terribly relevant. I was thinking about Fred's statement quoting the business about "nobody programs today, nor ever will program" in assembly again. To a certain extent, save for a few exceptions (embedded, low-cost devices, special purpose-built hardware, etc.) I think it's probably true. Consider: When was the last HP-16C calculator sold? Why did HP quit selling it, but still sells the HP-12C financial calculator to this day? It would seem that if there were really a market, the 12C chassis could be reprogrammed to continue the 16C line. But it's not- -because few need to sit over a dump and work out what went wrong. Because nobody works at that level any longer; it would not be a profitable product for HP. I can remember when our department at work got ONE TI SR-22 calculator and how much easier it made calculating those 48-bit addresses and converting between bit, byte, halfword and word addresses. As much as I hate to admit it, the quote from Fred is probably closer to the truth than I'd care to admit. FWIW, I use my 16C practically every day. But I'm old. --Chuck

--- On Sat, 4/16/11, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: I'd like to hear from 1 person on this list that currently owns an 80186/88 based SBC.

Hi I have a AMD 80188 developement board with flash memory for programs. I also have a couple of STD board with both 80186's and 80C187's ( quite rare ). I have a board made by an embedded manufature that was used as a vehicle reporting and locating that included a GPS unit. It has several RS232 connections ( 6 as I recall ). I can't think why a truck would need 6 RS232 connections. These were pulled units and had one main problem. Most of the RS232 level converter chips were blown. A vehicle is not the place to put unprotected RS232. The starter generates some really nasty high voltage spikes that can even cause significant spikes from ground to ground in the frame ( high frequency spikes ). I put a version of Forth on both the AMD board and on the truck box. One has access to the world of I/O and even assembly from a good Forth setup. Later, I was told by some else that they'd taken my implementation of Forth and run it as is on a US Robotics phone modem. It is interesting that mode implementations of 80188/86 are so similar. Dwight

On 17 Apr 2011 at 16:28, Geoffrey Reed wrote: I'm sorking on and off with a little V40 SBC from a FAX gizmo that I repurposed. 256K of RAM, 256K of EPROM/flash and a 1.44M floppy drive. RS232C I/O. Runs CP/M-86 just fine. I much prefer the V40 to the 80188; the on-chip peripherals more closely resemble the x86 support chips. Late versions of the 80C188 were getting to be that way also, but ISTR that they come in surface- mount only. --Chuck

On 17 Apr 2011 at 20:47, Alexandre Souza - Listas wrote: Nope--the 80C188EC; 4 DMA channels, 2 UARTS, 2 8259-type PICs, DRAM refresh controller, power management, and 22 I/O pins. 3 and 5 volt versions, but comes in 100 pin QFP only. The -EB comes in PLCC84, but omits the DMA controller and other goodies for 2 UARTs--5V only. --Chuck

YEs, but they discontinuesd the 11C and 15C 'scientific' calculators too, andI've yet to hear that 'trigonometry is dead' :-) More eriosuly, many later HP calcualtors (inclduing all the RPL models) have the normal bitwise functions, shifts, rotates, etc. Yes, the 16C has a few more, but the ones on a 48, say, do all that most low-level programmers would need. And yes, I do use an RPL calculator for that sort of thing sometimes. The unlimited stack is very useful. I recently wrote an RPL program which contains none of the normal '4 functtionms' or any of the trigonometric, logartihmic, etc functions. Just a lot of ANDs and ORs, etc. Almost certainly iy could. The original Voyager machines contained 2 chips. A NUT CPU (which also contains the keyboiard interface) and an R2D2 (ROM/RAM/Display Driver). The latter is what was different between the various models. IIRC, the 15C had a 3rd chip to give it more ROM (and RAM?), this was an R2D2 with the display driver seciton disabled I think So do I... I even had to repair it (dry joint on one pin of the R2D2) a couple of months back. -tony

Hmm. I'm writing AltiVec assembly to speed up media decoding on my Power Mac. But then I'm weird. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- I know we can make it together! -- "Shogo" ---------------------------------

On 16 Apr 2011 at 13:24, Fred Cisin wrote: Not meaning to be facetious, but consider yourself to be fortunate. A good friend with her PhD in Library Science has been existing more or less had-to-mouth for at least the last decade working for a contractor to the state as a research assistant on the drugs task force. She'd love a library position, but hasn't had much luck. Lately, she's been understating her education, to avoid the "we can't afford to pay for your degree" answers. One of the biggest lies in academia is that a more advanced degree implies more job opportunies and advancement. We can but hope, but it doesn't look too promising when two of the top prime-time TV programs are "The Biggest Loser" and "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?" --Chuck

In article <4DA9A29C.23622.1006E7C at cclist.sydex.com>, "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> writes: That's because academia doesn't understand supply and demand because tenure and the whole university/academia mechanism insulates them from market realities. If there's a worldwide demand for 10 people with advanced degrees in library sciences and universities produce 100 people with those degrees, 90% of them should expect not to get a job. If the only reason you went to University was to earn more money, then you should have saved your tuition fees and learned to sell used cars instead. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

On 4/16/2011 4:56 PM, Chris M wrote: Since I am still building my home brew computer, I have to learn C. No C++, C - or C#. I need to write my micro-code and assembler in something that I can port later to my new machine. Ben.

that's a relatively new hobbyist phenomenon. When most of us hear "embedded" we think micro-controller. Sure a lot of that is done w/C these days, but I doubt you get too deep into the embedded/micro-controller world (as a programmer, read professional) w/o needing to learn assembler. But what's considered a uC these days can probably host a lot more ram/flash mem then in olden times, so maybe I could stand to be corrected (somewhat). --- On Mon, 4/18/11, Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:

Chuck Guzis wrote: Which 48-bit machine was that?

On 04/16/2011 09:41 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: Another reason might be that HP is just too expensive ? Just 3 years ago I bought a scientific calculater which also does hex,octal, binary and has all the logic functions. Price : 5 USD new..... Admittedly no RPN, keyboard less good, but still fully usable. Jos

On 4/17/11 12:51 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: Keypads are tough. :-( Several years ago I needed a membrane keypad for a commercial design, and I found a good company in Florida who did a very good job on them. They're still...membrane keypads, though. Eeew. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 4/17/11 1:47 PM, Alexandre Souza - Listas wrote: They produce them to spec? I wonder if they can do small quantities. Another option might be those keyswitches that have transparent keycaps, under which you can stick labels. Of course I adore those keyswitches that have a tiny color OLED display in them. At $50+/ea that'd make a pretty expensive calculator though. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Sun, 17 Apr 2011, Chuck Guzis wrote: You know, a big calculator that used Cherry keyswitches would just kick ass. If you were to kit one, I'd be first in line. :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

On Mon, 18 Apr 2011, Tony Duell wrote: Nope. I wasn't implying a full size keyboard, just a keypad that used full size keys. :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

On Mon, 18 Apr 2011, Tony Duell wrote: I don't want an adding machine - which essentially what those HP devices are. I was envisioning a hybrid "old style" programmer's calculator that used a huge keypad and a small LCD display of some kind. Think of the HP-16C but with large keys on it. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Good tools _are_ expensive :-) I think I've even seen one in a 'pound shop' over here. ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^ That, however, is a contradiction in terms. A non-RPN [1] calcualtor is never 'useable' [1] Note that i made no comment about it being a 4-levle stck RPN calculator. RPL is a form of RPN. -tony

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 3:41 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: I have been amused lately by an advertisement on a Cincinnati AM radio station (WLW) for COBOL and assembler programmers. Maybe their conservative talk radio demographic matches the average COBOL and assembler programmer. -chuck

It's much the same as the modern method of hardware design : Just thro a couple of over-complicated ICs onto the circuit board and link them together. Don't botyher to actually undertand what you are doing, or even to think about the problem (if you did the latter, you'd probably relaise it could be solved with a couple of discrete transistors ;-)) Whereas with commercial software you most certainly do not get what you pay for. -tony

I have no idea. As is well-known, I do not own a digital camera. Yes I would, actually. Having the source code means I can fix it (or find somebody to fix it) if soemthing goes wrong. I would much rather had that than have to do battle with some commercial software company (I have had the misfortune of doingthat a number of time). Give me the choiuce between the ability to fix something myself (having the source code, shcemaitcs, etc) or unlimited manufactuer 'support' and I will pick the former every time. And I suspect I will have many fewer problems I've had plenty of problems with commercial C compilers, I've never had one with gcc.... -tony

I have to agree. Photoshop is much better than the GIMP, even though the GIMP certainly has the price advantage. Couldn't work without it. But that doesn't mean that the GIMP isn't useful for people with lower-end needs, of course. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- The reader this message encounters not failing to understand is cursed. ----

On 4/13/11 4:53 PM, geoffrey oltmans wrote: Really? Anyone, in all cases of professional work (whatever that means) would automatically be foolish to use something that's free over paying hundreds of dollars for something that accomplishes about 95% of the same tasks? I don't think I've heard a more concise description of "well-trained American consumer" in my life. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 4/14/11 9:23 AM, Teo Zenios wrote: But only for "personal" tasks? Is your argument really that 100% of Photoshop's esoteric and rarely-used features are always needed for every job that is considered "professional" (again, whatever that means), and for that reason, anyone who attempts to do anything without it is "foolish"? (yes, not YOUR words, I know) Seriously? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Thu, 14 Apr 2011, Dave McGuire wrote: I bet he can't balance a biscuit on the end of his nose... :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Did I say in all cases, or was I talking about image manipulation? You are dangerously close to putting words in my mouth. ;) GIMP may be able to offer a large percentage of capability of Aperture or Photoshop, but it is nowhere as easy to use. ________________________________ From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Thu, April 14, 2011 8:08:55 AM Subject: Re: Modern source projects (was Re: difference between Quick On 4/13/11 4:53 PM, geoffrey oltmans wrote: Really? Anyone, in all cases of professional work (whatever that means) would automatically be foolish to use something that's free over paying hundreds of dollars for something that accomplishes about 95% of the same tasks? I don't think I've heard a more concise description of "well-trained American consumer" in my life. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

Actually 'Time' is the main reason I use open-source stuff. When my tools don't work properly (I am using tools in a very genreal sense, of course), I normally can't get on with what I want/need to be doing. I either have to fix the tools, or wait for somebody else to fix them. If I have an open-source program, there's a very good chance I can fix it myself.Or at least kludge it 'for the moment' so I can get on with something. If I don't have the soruce code, then, yes, I can submit a bug report, and then wait for soemthing to be done about it. And wait. And wait. I'd rather be fixing the problem myself to be honest, it'll probably be up and running sooner. I've contacted the authors of several open-source programs over the years, and generally get a useful e-mail reply within a day. Yes, I realise that most, if not all, open-source licenses don't require the authors to give support, but virtually all authors will. On the otehr hand, I've never received a useful reply (either by e-mail or telephone) -tony

You're more forgiving than I am. :) It's certainly not unusable, but I'd say it lacks the polish, featureset, and usability of Photoshop....even 5-7 years ago. ________________________________ From: Geoffrey Reed <geoffr at zipcon.net> To: cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Wed, April 13, 2011 4:39:40 PM Subject: Re: Modern source projects (was Re: difference between Quick On 4/13/11 1:07 PM, "geoffrey oltmans" <oltmansg at bellsouth.net> wrote: While Gimp is not the most polished image manipulation app out there, it is hardly unusable. Currently Gimp reminds me, functionality wise of photoshop current release of Photoshop (which I wouldn't use except I got in an auction lot as I couldn't afford it). I've used Gimp, and the biggest problem that others (and I have had) is that it does not have native support for the "raw" format that my camera puts out.

Tony Duell wrote: It is in general not possible to write a lossless format converter from a camera "raw" format to any conventional image format. In raw formats, the color primaries are not at coincident spatial locations as they are in conventional image formats such as JPEG. The raw formats also tend not to be publicly documented, but people reverse engineer them to add support to open-source software, e.g. dcraw. Eric

jim s wrote: The described Canon format would have better quantization than a typical camera JPEG., but isn't a truly "raw" format. The CCD or CMOS sensor in the camera doesn't have its primaries in the same spatial location, so any transformation to a format that does, such as JPEG, is lossy. The Canon cameras I have used give a raw format that is entirely unrelated to JPEG. Eric

On 4/13/11 4:07 PM, geoffrey oltmans wrote: And "commercial" automatically means "good", "complete" and "debugged", huh? Wow. You've not used much commercial software, have you. This is becoming quite the entertaining thread. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Thu, 14 Apr 2011, Josh Dersch wrote: It's known as Deja Moo - the sense you've seen this bullshit somewhere before... g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

--- On Thu, 4/14/11, geoffrey oltmans <oltmansg at bellsouth.net> wrote: It's definitely not always true - case in point, Microsoft Office 2010. That'a about as user-facing as it gets, and what a train wreck that mess of an interface is! I could forgive them if it was an early graphical application and nobody had thought of things like drop-down menus yet, but as a modern piece of supposedly business quality software, it falls flat on it's face. At least they fixed Excel so you can have more than 65,535 rows. At least, with the open source stuff, if one interface is especially terrible, someone will write another one. -Ian

Did anyone else think that the source code that Microsoft made public for Windows NT 3.1 was lovely? I haven't looked at all of it, but the driver samples I saw were clear, with good narrative. Compared to the stuff for MS-DOS, it was like night and day. It must have been the work of a very small team. Later versions of NT got sloppy. --Chuck

On Mon, 11 Apr 2011, Chris M wrote: The last release of Quick C was 1990. Borland's Turbo C pretty much guaranteed that it was an also-ran. Oh for... Look, when you write, "I'll assume Quick C could be used to write Quick Basic" that says to pretty much everyone that reads it that you're asking if you can write QB code in QC. You never mentioned writing a compiler. If you want to write a compiler that will generate code that QB45 can _link_ to, you'd need to use something that emitted a compatible binary format. I _think_ it used COFF. Borland compilers used a different binary format which made it (nearly?) impossible to link against libraries that were compiled with Microsoft products. If you wanted to write a QB45 _like_ compiler, then your choice of host compiler really doesn't matter. Hell, you could use Lua if you wanted. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

On Tue, 12 Apr 2011, Brent Hilpert wrote: I suspect you may be correct. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

On Mon, 11 Apr 2011, Gene Buckle wrote: I used early Quick C and TurboC interchangeably for quick and dirty tasks (NOT for retail products). I settled on TurboC for teaching beginning C classes when Borland started making free download available. But, I also REQUIRED each student to write at least one homework assignment using a command line compiler (I recommended GCC and DeSmet "PersonalC") What was the relationship to "EDIT" in MS-DOS? -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On 12 April 2011 01:41, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote: Some stuff I wrote off the top of my head is, on further checking, inaccurate. ... and 7.0 (Win95) and 7.1 (Win98/ME) and some versions of NT. Only true in the versions which came as part of standalone MS-DOS, not after DOS 7. It's only multi-file capable in the MS-DOS 7 version. Something I didn't know, though, is that it can edit files of up to 65K lines - about 5MB - *way* bigger than the original Windows 9x Notepad's 64K. -- Liam Proven ? Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508

I am not sure exactly what you are asking, but I have used the EDIT command ever since I started using DOS followed by Windows 95, Windows 98SE and currently Windows XP. The EDIT.COM file is run in what seems like a DOS box under many Windows operating systems and has the same (probably since it is actually the same identical file that I am using - at least it says MS-DOS EDITOR V2.0.026) commands in all systems. The commands are limited as is the size of the input file. But it gets the job done in the same way that KED does (but with different commands) under RT-11. Is this the question you are asking?

I have never used QBASIC, so EDIT was certainly not piggy-backed on the QBASIC code - unless I did not realize it was being done. And since I can be sure which file is executing is PATH is not used, then it must be EDIT.COM that is being executed. I must be missing something in your explanation.

On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: MS-DOS EDITOR V2.0.26 tells me that Jerome is talking about Win95 or newer (I checked on an XP box - it still reports V2.0.026 and a copyright date of 1995). Yep. I concur (having manually built many a specialty DOS floppy in the mid-1990s, when we used to run harddriveless DOS machines on a Novell network and needed to pack as much as possible on the boot floppy). If you weren't using MS-DOS 5.0 to 6.22, then you probably weren't using EDIT.COM chaining to QBASIC in single-file-edit-mode. If you were using Win95 or newer, you were probably running EDIT.EXE. On a suitable platform, try "QBASIC /EDIT" and see if that's familiar. The particular DOS version and how "DOS" under Win95 is unlike MS-DOS 5 and MS-DOS 6 w/Win3.1. As have I, with MS-DOS 5 and MS-DOS 6. I can't help your memory, but I can say that there's a difference between "real" MS-DOS and a "DOS Window" in Win95 and later. -ethan

On Tue, 12 Apr 2011, Liam Proven wrote: Thanks for solving the question. .EXE and .COM names could be interchanged! . . . and effect the sequence of choice if there were two programs with same name and different extensions! The REAL test (AFTER DOS decided which one to run) was whether the first two bytes were 'MZ', which would then invoke the .EXE handler. OB_Historical_trivia: Was there really a "Mark Zbikowski" at Microsoft? Most of us only have one or two legs of the elephant, . . . -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On Tue, 12 Apr 2011, Gene Buckle wrote: YES! I explained batchfiles and what MAKE is, and showed a couple of examples, but did NOT spend any significant amount of class time on them. One of the other instructors used Visual Studio for his classes. At the end of the semester, my students could write simple C programs (file handling, etc.) and struggle through how to use other compilers; his students could not write programs, nor use ANY compiler other than Visual Studio. I guess that his could get a job easier, mine could start a career. The differences really showed up in the second semester ("Data Structures and Algorithms") Obscured by variant aps with similar names -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

--- On Mon, 4/11/11, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote: I'm not saying compile basic code with. The authors stated that Delphi was a full fledged developmental tool that could create the visual basic compiler from the ground up. VB was "something less". Nowhere near as fast, amongst other things, as Delphi. At one time, about 10 years ago, the fastest compiler out there I think.

On Mon, 11 Apr 2011, Liam Proven wrote: If by "a bit", you mean "completely", you're right. :) The guy that wrote Trumpet Winsock figured out a process for writing device drivers in Delphi a few years ago. Up to that point it was "common knowledge" that such a thing was impossible. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

On Tue, 12 Apr 2011, Liam Proven wrote: Yep. Here's a link to the article he wrote about the Ring 0 driver work he did: http://petertattam.com/?p=19 g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.