Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> writes: > On Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 3:51 AM Hope Rouselle <hrouse...@jevedi.com> > wrote: >> >> Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> writes: >> >> Wow, I kinda feel the same as you here. I think this justifies >> >> perhaps >> >> using a hardware solution. (Crazy idea?! Lol.) >> > >> > uhhh........ Yes. Very crazy idea. Can't imagine why anyone would >> > ever >> > think about doing that. >> >> Lol. Really? I mean a certain panic button. You know the GNU Emacs. >> It has this queue with the implications you mentioned --- as much as it >> can. (It must of course get the messages from the system, otherwise it >> can't do anything about it.) And it has the panic button C-g. The >> keyboard has one the highest precedences in hardware interrupts, >> doesn't >> it not? A certain very important system could have a panic button that >> invokes a certain debugger, say, for a crisis-moment. >> >> But then this could be a lousy engineering strategy. I am not an >> expert >> at all in any of this. But I'm surprised with your quick >> dismissal. :-) >> >> > Certainly nobody in his right mind would have WatchCat listening on >> > the serial port's Ring Indicator interrupt, and then grab a paperclip >> > to bridge the DTR and RI pins on an otherwise-unoccupied serial port >> > on the back of the PC. (The DTR pin was kept high by the PC, and >> > could >> > therefore be used as an open power pin to bring the RI high.) >> >> Why not? Misuse of hardware? Too precious of a resource? >> >> > If you're curious, it's pins 4 and 9 - diagonally up and in from the >> > short >> > corner. >> > http://www.usconverters.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=61&chapter=0 >> >> You know your pins! That's impressive. I thought the OS itself could >> use something like that. The fact that they never do... Says >> something, >> doesn't it? But it's not too obvious to me. >> >> > And of COURSE nobody would ever take an old serial mouse, take the >> > ball out of it, and turn it into a foot-controlled signal... although >> > that wasn't for WatchCat, that was for clipboard management >> > between my >> > app and a Windows accounting package that we used. But that's a >> > separate story. >> >> Lol. I feel you're saying you would. :-) > > This was all a figure of speech, and the denials were all tongue in > cheek. Not only am I saying we would, but we *did*. All of the above.
Cool! :-) > The Ring Indicator trick was one of the best, since we had very little > other use for serial ports, and it didn't significantly impact the > system during good times, but was always reliable when things went > wrong. > > (And when I posted it, I could visualize the port and knew which pins > to bridge, but had to go look up a pinout to be able to say their pin > numbers and descriptions.) Nice! >> I heard of Python for the first time in the 90s. I worked at an ISP. >> Only one guy was really programming there, Allaire ColdFusion. But, >> odd enough, we used to say we would ``write a script in Python'' when >> we meant to say we were going out for a smoke. I think that was >> precisely because nobody knew that ``Python'' really was. I never >> expected it to be a great language. I imagined it was something like >> Tcl. (Lol, no offense at all towards Tcl.) > > Haha, that's a weird idiom! Clueless people --- from Rio de Janeiro area in Brazil. :-) It was effectively just an in-joke. > Funny you should mention Tcl. > > https://docs.python.org/3/library/tkinter.html Cool! Speaking of GUIs and Python, that Google software called Backup and Sync (which I think it's about to be obsoleted by Google Drive) is written in Python --- it feels a bit heavy. The GUI too seems a bit slow sometimes. Haven't tried their ``Google Drive'' as a replacement yet. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
