Subject: Re: [OT] Karl Rove's confusion about capacity of NSA's Utah data center.
On 05/26/2015 02:57 AM, Zenaan Harkness wrote: >> Whoa! 16k! That's -twice- what my CoCo (Tandy color computer for all >> yous whippasnappas) >Trashy80s had more than 8K didn't they? My Coco3 came with 128 (I >upgraded to 512 but never got around to the hard drive kit nor did I >ever get the thing run 9600 baud using OS9 l2 with hacked kernel and >RS232pak.) TRS-80 (Model 1) came with either 4 kilobytes or 16 kilobytes of DRAM, and ran a Z-80 at 1.77 MHz. Eventually, they included an optional expansion bay that could bring the capacity up to (I think) 48 kilobytes. Old trivia story: My father (Samuel Bell) bought such a TRS-80 Model 1 in (I think) in 1977. Probably eventually filled it with 48 K. Around 1983, he wrote a program to generate a machining tape to machine an aluminum blade (about 18 inch long) that was itself a very small model of what would eventually become a far larger (probably around 20 feet long) blade for a fan for a cooling tower. He did this for his company: The company he worked for was Marley. http://spxcooling.com/ The blade worked great; I still have one, 32 years after it was made, and 3 years after he died. >From the "no good deed goes unpunished" department: Little known to my >father, or his boss, or his boss' boss, the highest-ups at Marley had been >advocating the purchase of a $100K computer for this specific task. That >computer was claimed, by those people, as being the minimum necessary to >generate the machining tape that would be required. Naturally, when it was >discovered that my father had done the task with a $1,000 1977 computer, >feathers were ruffled and great embarassment ensued. Consequently, my father, >his boss, and his boss' boss got fired, for inflicting embarrassment on those >who wanted to spend $100,000 on this oh-so-important task. He should have >sued them, but my father was not a litigious person. Jim Bell
