Re: Rolm computers
Hi Peter, sorry I have no items to pary with. Just trying to preserve the legacy of the early Rolms by keeping one unit up and running and having some spares. Anything special you are looking for (a 1666B is for auction on eBay right now)? Best wishes, Erik. Am 22. Oktober 2018 12:28:34 GMT-06:00 schrieb Peter Van Peborgh via cctech : >I would be interested in any Rolm items you might have. (no promises.) > >Thanks, > >Peter VP > >|| | | || | | || >Peter Van Peborgh >62 St Mary's Rise >Writhlington Radstock >Somerset BA3 3PD >UK >01761 439 234 >|| | | || | | || -- Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android-Gerät mit K-9 Mail gesendet.
Rolm computers
I would be interested in any Rolm items you might have. (no promises.) Thanks, Peter VP || | | || | | || Peter Van Peborgh 62 St Mary's Rise Writhlington Radstock SomersetBA3 3PD UK 01761 439 234 || | | || | | ||
Re: Desktop Metaphor
On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 9:11 PM Mark Green via cctalk wrote: > The desk top metaphor goes back to at least Doug Englebarts work in the > 1960s. There were no icons, but the basic metaphor was there. > > You need to be careful when you talk about Smalltalk since there were > several quite different versions of it. The early versions were far more > interesting and experimental than the later ones. Unfortunately most of the > existing documentation is on Smalltalk 80 which was an attempt to take the > language main stream. I do seem to recall that the earlier implementations > had icons and the full desktop metaphor. They may have been dropped as > being to radical for the time. > This is entirely incorrect. Earlier versions of Smalltalk investigated a lot of different ideas, but none of them used a desktop metaphor with (or without) icons. - Josh > >
Re: Advice needed: Entry point into things PDP-8
Hi Carlos, With the cost of PDP-8 parts and the need for maintenance and repair, if you can find an emulator that will do what you want, go for it. Paul On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 10:39 PM Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > Greetings all... > > I have been pondering something and would love to receive feedback from > you. The thing > is, I would like to have something pdp8-ish that would allow me to play > a little bit > with the programming languages that were available for these machines, > FORTRAN 4K and > FORTRAN IV in particular. Now, I would love to be able to time some > FORTRAN jobs just > to get an idea about what it was like back then. I am aware of PiDP-8, > simh, as well as > SBC6120, SBC6120RBC. > > I happen to have three VT78 cpu boards (sans the RAM board) and two > vt278 cpu boards. > All were in rather sorry condition; I picked them up from a junk pile > that was stacked > several feet high and in which the contents were mostly random. Thus, > the VT78 boards' > components were scratched and in fact two of them are missing the > control panel ROM chip. > Otherwise they are complete, but I am missing the RAM boards. The VT278 > boards > were further abused by someone who yanked out the oscillators and a few > TTL chips, > damaging several traces, which I have now repaired. Alas, only one of > them has the > HM6120 cpu chip, and I do not know if it is good or not. Both are > missing the SMC5037 > CRT generator chip. Other than that, they are complete. > > So, now that we all know what I have, let me say out loud what I've been > thinking: > > If I try to build actual hardware: > > I've read that the VT278 has serious software compatibility issues with > older software > due to the use of the HM6121 I/O chip. So even if I get an adequate > keyboard, buy the > CRT chip and manage to use it to drive a monitor, I would need an > original floppy drive > system and media, because I do not have the DP278 serial comms board > that would allow me > to send the VT278 a program to run; > > For the VT78, I would need to hack a memory board, and, since it can be > coaxed to accept > a program to run if it is fooled into thinking that it is loading a > program from an > MR78/paper tape, perhaps I could make it boot something. I would need > to wire-up > and arduino or something like it to translate the keyboard and display > terminal > chatter in the serial console into something usable. But, that's three > hardware > projects (memory board, MR78-like contraption, microcontrolled serial > console > translator)... > > The last hardware option is to go and make an SBC6120RBC; I would need > to buy > programmers for the GAL/PAL devices, and I've heard that not all > programmers can deal > with the kind of chips used in it. And, if it turns out that the HM6120 > chip that I > have is bad, I would have to hunt down one of those rare beasts.. It > would be awesome, though, > to have an SBC6120RBC up and running, and be able to time actual > hardware running > FORTRAN. > > And then comes the emulation option, with the PiDP-8. I have to say > that the emulation > of the blinkenlights is very, very attractive to me, and this option is > a no-brainer > hardware-wise. > > So... am I missing something in my estimation of the effort involved in > these options? > > What would _you_ do? > > Carlos. > >
Re: Advice needed: Entry point into things PDP-8
On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 11:39 PM Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > Greetings all... > > I have been pondering something and would love to receive feedback from > you. The thing > is, I would like to have something pdp8-ish that would allow me to play > a little bit > with the programming languages that were available for these machines, > FORTRAN 4K and > FORTRAN IV in particular. Now, I would love to be able to time some > FORTRAN jobs just > to get an idea about what it was like back then. I am aware of PiDP-8, > simh, as well as > SBC6120, SBC6120RBC. > > > Carlos, My opinionGet a PiDP8. They're great for so many things including testing, file transfer, and making disks. I have mine set to boot into simH via serial terminal so it will immediately act like a PDP 8 running OS/8. Once you get a working real PDP8, whatever, the type you can use the PiDP8 safely to experiment, compare and contrast, build media, etc I have documented the process on my web site, and there are many others who have also done this. Bill
Re: Desktop Metaphor
The desk top metaphor goes back to at least Doug Englebarts work in the 1960s. There were no icons, but the basic metaphor was there. You need to be careful when you talk about Smalltalk since there were several quite different versions of it. The early versions were far more interesting and experimental than the later ones. Unfortunately most of the existing documentation is on Smalltalk 80 which was an attempt to take the language main stream. I do seem to recall that the earlier implementations had icons and the full desktop metaphor. They may have been dropped as being to radical for the time. Sent from my iPhone > On Oct 22, 2018, at 9:38 PM, Curious Marc via cctalk > wrote: > > As they used to say, Windows95 = Mac 1984. Which is pushing it a bit but has > some truth in it... Maybe Mac 1990. Curiously, the Xerox Alto has quite > advanced GUI and object oriented programming (including the smalltalk > windowing environment), but no desktop metaphor or icons that I have seen. I > believe desktop metaphors appear later in the Alto commercial successor, the > Xerox Star, and in the Apple Lisa, which bears strong Xerox influences. > Xerox’s desktop metaphor pushes the object concept a bit far, while the Lisa > got what would become the modern ubiquitous version of the concept almost > dead on. Did I get this approximately right? Are there any other GUI desktop > metaphors that predates this? > Marc > >>> On Oct 22, 2018, at 2:19 PM, ben via cctalk wrote: >>> >>> On 10/22/2018 10:57 AM, Rick Bensene via cctalk wrote: >>> X-Windows-based desktop metaphor UI's existed within the Unix world long >>> before Win95 came on the scene. >>> The whole desktop metaphor UI existed long before Windows 95 in non-Unix >>> implementations by Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) with the >>> pioneering Xerox Alto, introduced in 1973, which implemented Alan Kay's >>> concepts for the desktop metaphor that were postulated in 1970 using >>> Smalltalk as the core operating system. >> >> That may be true but DOS/WINDOWS and APPLE II all had TV display output >> formats, now it is WIDE SCREEN ONLY. From what little I have seen about the >> Alto, you had a full sized 8x10? page format. The printed page >> DOES matter for graphic displays. Try and find a printed page size PDF >> reader, or one a tad smaller. Reading a PDF on a KINDLE DOES NOT WORK. >> I suspect a good PDF reader, a not tablet, is needed often for all the >> online doc's at places like bit savers to get the knowledge close to a >> classic computer. >> >> I hate GUI's,because I hate ICON's. I see a little hand popup, is a mouse >> pointer,stop that sign, or play feel the naked photo. >> >> Ben. >>
Advice needed: Entry point into things PDP-8
Greetings all... I have been pondering something and would love to receive feedback from you. The thing is, I would like to have something pdp8-ish that would allow me to play a little bit with the programming languages that were available for these machines, FORTRAN 4K and FORTRAN IV in particular. Now, I would love to be able to time some FORTRAN jobs just to get an idea about what it was like back then. I am aware of PiDP-8, simh, as well as SBC6120, SBC6120RBC. I happen to have three VT78 cpu boards (sans the RAM board) and two vt278 cpu boards. All were in rather sorry condition; I picked them up from a junk pile that was stacked several feet high and in which the contents were mostly random. Thus, the VT78 boards' components were scratched and in fact two of them are missing the control panel ROM chip. Otherwise they are complete, but I am missing the RAM boards. The VT278 boards were further abused by someone who yanked out the oscillators and a few TTL chips, damaging several traces, which I have now repaired. Alas, only one of them has the HM6120 cpu chip, and I do not know if it is good or not. Both are missing the SMC5037 CRT generator chip. Other than that, they are complete. So, now that we all know what I have, let me say out loud what I've been thinking: If I try to build actual hardware: I've read that the VT278 has serious software compatibility issues with older software due to the use of the HM6121 I/O chip. So even if I get an adequate keyboard, buy the CRT chip and manage to use it to drive a monitor, I would need an original floppy drive system and media, because I do not have the DP278 serial comms board that would allow me to send the VT278 a program to run; For the VT78, I would need to hack a memory board, and, since it can be coaxed to accept a program to run if it is fooled into thinking that it is loading a program from an MR78/paper tape, perhaps I could make it boot something. I would need to wire-up and arduino or something like it to translate the keyboard and display terminal chatter in the serial console into something usable. But, that's three hardware projects (memory board, MR78-like contraption, microcontrolled serial console translator)... The last hardware option is to go and make an SBC6120RBC; I would need to buy programmers for the GAL/PAL devices, and I've heard that not all programmers can deal with the kind of chips used in it. And, if it turns out that the HM6120 chip that I have is bad, I would have to hunt down one of those rare beasts.. It would be awesome, though, to have an SBC6120RBC up and running, and be able to time actual hardware running FORTRAN. And then comes the emulation option, with the PiDP-8. I have to say that the emulation of the blinkenlights is very, very attractive to me, and this option is a no-brainer hardware-wise. So... am I missing something in my estimation of the effort involved in these options? What would _you_ do? Carlos.
Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen
On Oct 20, 2018, at 10:31 AM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: > > Oooh. My personal recollection about w95 is that there was a lot of > touting before the premiere day, how advanced it was because "object > oriented operating system”. [...] > I might have been one of the very few people who not only > understood some of the buzzwords but also was duped into believing > there should be some substance behind them (which maybe makes me > exceptional, just not in a good way). A lot of Windows 95 is implemented using COM, which is probably where the description of it as “object-oriented” comes from. And while I have never been a Windows user, to denigrate it as some sort of non-achievement given the constraints under which it was developed, both in terms of target systems and backwards compatibility, is myopic at best. -- Chris
Re: Desktop Metaphor
As they used to say, Windows95 = Mac 1984. Which is pushing it a bit but has some truth in it... Maybe Mac 1990. Curiously, the Xerox Alto has quite advanced GUI and object oriented programming (including the smalltalk windowing environment), but no desktop metaphor or icons that I have seen. I believe desktop metaphors appear later in the Alto commercial successor, the Xerox Star, and in the Apple Lisa, which bears strong Xerox influences. Xerox’s desktop metaphor pushes the object concept a bit far, while the Lisa got what would become the modern ubiquitous version of the concept almost dead on. Did I get this approximately right? Are there any other GUI desktop metaphors that predates this? Marc > On Oct 22, 2018, at 2:19 PM, ben via cctalk wrote: > >> On 10/22/2018 10:57 AM, Rick Bensene via cctalk wrote: >> X-Windows-based desktop metaphor UI's existed within the Unix world long >> before Win95 came on the scene. >> The whole desktop metaphor UI existed long before Windows 95 in non-Unix >> implementations by Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) with the >> pioneering Xerox Alto, introduced in 1973, which implemented Alan Kay's >> concepts for the desktop metaphor that were postulated in 1970 using >> Smalltalk as the core operating system. > > That may be true but DOS/WINDOWS and APPLE II all had TV display output > formats, now it is WIDE SCREEN ONLY. From what little I have seen about the > Alto, you had a full sized 8x10? page format. The printed page > DOES matter for graphic displays. Try and find a printed page size PDF > reader, or one a tad smaller. Reading a PDF on a KINDLE DOES NOT WORK. > I suspect a good PDF reader, a not tablet, is needed often for all the > online doc's at places like bit savers to get the knowledge close to a > classic computer. > > I hate GUI's,because I hate ICON's. I see a little hand popup, is a mouse > pointer,stop that sign, or play feel the naked photo. > > Ben. >
Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen
You've discovered some computer that doesn't ever crash? On Mon, 22 Oct 2018, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: Hmmm, well, my home desktop has been up 478 days, my web server has been up 232 days, and my Asterisk phone system has been up for 571 days. The web server is directly on the WAN, and subject to constant attacks, too. That's pretty close to never crashing in my book! These are all Linux systems. I really should get around to putting together a UPS - nothing here has been up more than nine hours, . . .
Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen
On 10/22/2018 05:15 PM, John Foust via cctalk wrote: You've discovered some computer that doesn't ever crash? Hmmm, well, my home desktop has been up 478 days, my web server has been up 232 days, and my Asterisk phone system has been up for 571 days. The web server is directly on the WAN, and subject to constant attacks, too. That's pretty close to never crashing in my book! These are all Linux systems. Jon
Re: Desktop Metaphor
On 10/22/2018 03:13 PM, ben via cctalk wrote: What do you call the TEXT based mouse interface, like found on some dos shells. I tend to use the term "(mouse) cursor" for both text and GUI. GUI I think of is the pure graphics. What is a graphic? Does a traditional text (extend ASCII characters 0 - 255) with ANSI color coding with sufficiently high enough resolution count? Particularly if the resolution is high enough that "characters" can almost double as pixels for a GUI? }:-) Also, MS-DOS Shell (as ships with MS-DOS 6.22) has a GUI mode. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen
> You've discovered some computer that doesn't ever crash? They used to be called "IBM Midrange". -- Will (don't call them minicomputers!)
Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen
On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 4:16 PM John Foust via cctalk wrote: > At 04:40 PM 10/22/2018, Jim Manley via cctalk wrote: > >As for multitasking, even Windows 10 can easily get bogged down where the > >GUI becomes essentially unresponsive to user actions. MS has never > grasped > >that it should never be possible to wind up in a situation where the user > >is stuck watching a rainbow-colored wheel spin, while some set of tasks > >consumes pretty much every clock cycle on every core, and the user can't > >even shift context away from whatever is hogging the system. > > There are lots of reasons why that can happen in any OS with a GUI > You've discovered some computer that doesn't ever crash? > These aren't crashes, because if you wait long enough (sometimes days), you eventually get control back. The system has been allowed to divert resources to purposes the user doesn't want, away from what the user is trying to accomplish. They have no way to change the precedence, short of getting an OS command prompt and running something akin to *n*x "nice" to modify the precedence level of a process, or killing processes outright. Yes, _if_ you can get the Task Manager up, you can do the latter, but a typical user isn't going to be aware that they can, and very likely would have no idea how, especially without blowing away something they shouldn't. > >The Woz was then challenged about Commodore 64 sales far exceeding those > of > >Apple ][ and //e models, and he replied, "At Apple, we were always in it > >for the long haul. What has Commodore sold lately?" Commodore, of > course, > >had long since gone bankrupt. > > CBM didn't do that until 1994, right? > Yep, April 29th, 1994. The Woz's comment was made December 10th, 2007, so, that was 13 years later. That means the celebration was for the 25th anniversary of the year of the launch of the C64, not the 30th anniversary - my bad. Warning to the young people out there: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES GET OLD!!! It may seem like a great idea now, but once you start down that path, THERE'S NO TURNING BACK!!! All the Best, Jim
Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen
At 04:40 PM 10/22/2018, Jim Manley via cctalk wrote: >As for multitasking, even Windows 10 can easily get bogged down where the >GUI becomes essentially unresponsive to user actions. MS has never grasped >that it should never be possible to wind up in a situation where the user >is stuck watching a rainbow-colored wheel spin, while some set of tasks >consumes pretty much every clock cycle on every core, and the user can't >even shift context away from whatever is hogging the system. There are lots of reasons why that can happen in any OS with a GUI You've discovered some computer that doesn't ever crash? >The Woz was then challenged about Commodore 64 sales far exceeding those of >Apple ][ and //e models, and he replied, "At Apple, we were always in it >for the long haul. What has Commodore sold lately?" Commodore, of course, >had long since gone bankrupt. CBM didn't do that until 1994, right? - John
Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen
Some corrections related to Mach and Apple. TTFN - Guy > On Oct 22, 2018, at 2:40 PM, Jim Manley via cctalk > wrote: > > > > BTW, MacOS X is based on Mach, the version of Unix that was designed for > multiple, closely-coupled processors, and it, too, uses X as a basis for > its GUI. No. Mach is a microkernel based system that split apart BSD into “kernel” portions and Unix portions. It really didn’t have anything to do with SMP as the premise behind Mach (which was a furthering of Accent) was message passing between tasks. I can dig up the original papers if anyone is interested. ;-) OS X does *not* use X as the basis of its GUI. It stems from NEXT which used display postscript (modern OS X uses display PDF). An (optional) X server (and clients) can be added to the OS (I use them all the time) but is not part of the base install which belies the comment of X as the basis of the GUI. BTW, the X server on OS X, interfaces not to the bit-map but instead to the native OS X display rendering framework. TTFN - Guy
Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen
On Mon, 22 Oct 2018, Jim Manley via cctalk wrote: windowing desktop per user, while X Window not only supports multiple desktops per user (each with its own context that can be swapped in to occupy the display area), but natively supports remote desktop access from a number of users over networks (MS Windows still doesn't support this). MS Windows has supported multiple desktops either through native OS features or via 3rd party utility since Windows 95. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen
Hi Liam, On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 8:15 AM Liam Proven via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > Cairo was intended to be semi "object oriented" ... > This reference to "object-oriented" is way off, conflating GUI "objects" and true object-oriented software. OO in code has nothing to do with manipulating virtual objects (desktops, icons for folders, documents by type, trash cans, etc.). It's a combination of attributes supported by programming languages, such as classes, methods, encapsulation, abstraction, inheritance, polymorphism, composition, delegation, etc. Even Ivan Sutherland's 1960 - 1961 Sketchpad truly implemented object-oriented design at both the GUI and code levels, despite being developed for the discrete-transistor MIT Lincoln Lab TX-2, with all of 64 K-words (36-bit word length) of discrete-transistor memory. > Win95 was astonishingly compatible, both with DOS drivers and apps, > and with Windows 3 drivers, and yet it was 32-bit in the important > places, delivered true preemptive multitasking, reasonably fast > virtual memory, integrated networking, integrated Internet access, and > a radical, clean, elegant UI which *every single OS after it* has > copied. > U ... no. You're apparently completely uninformed about MIT Project Athena, aka The X Window System, or X11, or just X, for short, and no, it's not plural. The latter is ironic, because MS Windows only supports one windowing desktop per user, while X Window not only supports multiple desktops per user (each with its own context that can be swapped in to occupy the display area), but natively supports remote desktop access from a number of users over networks (MS Windows still doesn't support this). While the early aesthetics of X's icons, windows, widgets, etc., are just what you'd expect some harried engineer to cobble together well after midnight the date of a major early release, the underlying technology was light years ahead of what MS spent decades screwing around with (per your description of the dead ends). Unfortunately, X, as well as other earlier GUI systems, was bitmap-based, and still is, so, the aesthetics haven't been improved over the past three-plus decades it's been around, despite incredible advances in graphics hardware, which was designed from the ground up to largely support floating-point computations necessary for 3-D and advanced 2-D graphics. Interestingly, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has found it necessary to spend a considerable amount of its meager resources (compared with those in commercial developers' piggy banks, emphasis on the "piggy") to GPU hardware accelerate X, that its Debian-based Raspbian OS uses for its GUI (the changes to open-source code are released upstream to benefit the entire Debian community). 99% of the die area on a Pi's system-on-a-chip (SoC) is the GPU, which is what boots on power-up. The ARM CPU in the SoC was originally included as just a traffic cop for shoveling video data coming in from the Ethernet port and routed to the GPU for decoding and generation of HD video signals in Roku 2 streaming media boxes. The acceleration included conversion from the integer bit-mapped representations used in X to floating-point data structures on which the GPU is designed to primarily operate. When you're limited to one GB of RAM, your CPUs are RISC-based, and the CPUs' clock speed is limited to 1.4 GHz, you need all the help you can get. BTW, MacOS X is based on Mach, the version of Unix that was designed for multiple, closely-coupled processors, and it, too, uses X as a basis for its GUI. Even in its early days, the Mac graphics system had a lot to admire. When the Mac II brought color video and full 32-bit processing to the product line, the OS was very cleverly provided a single System32 extension file that only had to be dropped into the System folder to make older black-and-white-only, 16-bit external-to-the-microprocessor (even the 68000 is 32-bit internally) Macs compatible with the new 32-bit, color-based graphics architecture. No changes were necessary to applications, with colors merely mapped to dithered patterns of black-and-white pixels having equivalent luminance as the colors on the older hardware. As for multitasking, even Windows 10 can easily get bogged down where the GUI becomes essentially unresponsive to user actions. MS has never grasped that it should never be possible to wind up in a situation where the user is stuck watching a rainbow-colored wheel spin, while some set of tasks consumes pretty much every clock cycle on every core, and the user can't even shift context away from whatever is hogging the system. Other than completing a valid low-level task, such as flushing queues to large-capacity storage, the user should always be in control of what the foreground process with highest precedence is. Loading ads from an incoming network connection for products and services, that the user has absolutely no interest in, is never
Re: Desktop Metaphor
On 10/22/2018 2:56 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote: On 10/22/2018 01:19 PM, ben via cctalk wrote: I hate GUI's,because I hate ICON's. I see a little hand popup, is a mouse pointer,stop that sign, or play feel the naked photo. It's perfectly possible to use GUIs without any icons. It's possible to use GUIs without a mouse. The GUI is not responsible for what people do with them / the mouse. What do you call the TEXT based mouse interface, like found on some dos shells. GUI I think of is the pure graphics. Ben.
Re: Desktop Metaphor
On 10/22/2018 01:19 PM, ben via cctalk wrote: I hate GUI's,because I hate ICON's. I see a little hand popup, is a mouse pointer,stop that sign, or play feel the naked photo. It's perfectly possible to use GUIs without any icons. It's possible to use GUIs without a mouse. The GUI is not responsible for what people do with them / the mouse. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen
On 10/22/2018 08:14 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: *Every* Unix desktop out there draws on Win95. Nope. That's simply not true. The following three vast families of window managers / desktops prove (to my satisfaction) that your statement is wrong. · Common Desktop Environment (a.k.a. CDE) and it's ilk. · The various *Box window managers / desktop environments. · Motif window manager and it's ilk. They are all significantly different from each other and from Windows's Explorer interface, first publicly debuting with Windows 95. The Win95 Explorer re-wrote the book on OS UI design. "A" book, maybe. I don't think it was "the" book. The _only_ company to resist was Apple, because of course, some of the reasons that Win95 is the way it is are attempts to do things differently from Apple so as not to get sued. I think /company/ is critical in that statement as it implies for profit business which excludes many other non-business related options. Even then, IBM, Sun, HP, etc were releasing commercial Unixes with CDE and / or Motif after Windows 95. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
DG Eclipse S-130 Front Panel Needed
I just rescued a DG S-130 from a scrapper. The rack was being pulled out of a trailer with a Excavator. So the nice rack and the hard drive where crushed. The S-130 seems to be repairable, with mostly sheet metal damage. The front panels where both crushed. I would guess these are hard to come by ?? but I thought I would at least ask if anyone had a spare they would part with. I'm guessing its a S-130 by the blue and white front panel and switches. The upper front panel which has the Model number is missing. Not sure how to read the Label on the back. It has 8461 after the model. Thanks, Jerry
Re: Desktop Metaphor
On 10/22/2018 10:57 AM, Rick Bensene via cctalk wrote: X-Windows-based desktop metaphor UI's existed within the Unix world long before Win95 came on the scene. The whole desktop metaphor UI existed long before Windows 95 in non-Unix implementations by Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) with the pioneering Xerox Alto, introduced in 1973, which implemented Alan Kay's concepts for the desktop metaphor that were postulated in 1970 using Smalltalk as the core operating system. That may be true but DOS/WINDOWS and APPLE II all had TV display output formats, now it is WIDE SCREEN ONLY. From what little I have seen about the Alto, you had a full sized 8x10? page format. The printed page DOES matter for graphic displays. Try and find a printed page size PDF reader, or one a tad smaller. Reading a PDF on a KINDLE DOES NOT WORK. I suspect a good PDF reader, a not tablet, is needed often for all the online doc's at places like bit savers to get the knowledge close to a classic computer. I hate GUI's,because I hate ICON's. I see a little hand popup, is a mouse pointer,stop that sign, or play feel the naked photo. Ben.
Desktop Metaphor
Liam Proven wrote: >On the one hand, the cosmetics. *Every* Unix desktop out there draws >on Win95. I take exception to the "*Every*" in Liam's statement above. Replacing "Unix" with "Linux" would make the statement more correct. X-Windows-based desktop metaphor UI's existed within the Unix world long before Win95 came on the scene. The whole desktop metaphor UI existed long before Windows 95 in non-Unix implementations by Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) with the pioneering Xerox Alto, introduced in 1973, which implemented Alan Kay's concepts for the desktop metaphor that were postulated in 1970 using Smalltalk as the core operating system. Windows 95, and the earlier versions of Microsoft's desktop metaphor UI's, were patterned after these implementations. Microsoft simply took concepts that already existed in the world of UI design, and made their own implementation based on those concepts. -Rick -- Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen
On Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 02:36 Jim Manley wrote: Microsoft did offer a RAM expansion board specifically to allow the Softcard to access 64K of RAM dedicated to CP/M, Even that wasn't dedicated to CP/M. It was a 16K RAM card that was equivalent to the Apple "Language Card", which allowed replacing the 12K of ROM of the Apple II and II+ with 16K of RAM, of which 4K had two banks. Although it was useful with the Softcard, it wasn't in any way specific to it. All models of the Softcard could output 80 x 24 text, not only through third-party cards, but Apple's own 64K RAM and 80 x 24 video combo card, Which was only available for the IIe. I stand by my assertion that the Softcard did not in any way provide 80x24 text. It could use the capability if it was separately provided.
Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen
On Mon, 22 Oct 2018 at 16:28, Jim Manley via cctalk wrote: > > I'm going to stand by my assertion that the Softcard was a single-board > computer on the technicality that it did have its own RAM - you apparently > forget that registers are a form of RAM - HA! They're memory, they're > addressed over a bus (that just happens to be within the microprocessor), > and you can directly access any register at any time (random access). As > for I/O, that's what the Apple ][ bus was for, right? As Opus from Bloom > County, among other comic characters, was known to utter, > "PBBTT!!! Heh. Nice attempt at hair-splitting but I think you missed. ;-) > > For those that cited the Amstrad systems, I was referring to the S-100 and > Softcard timeframe. But you didn't _say_ that. > > CP/M was only provided with the Amstrad CPC664 and > 6128 floppy-disk based models, and the DDI-1 disk expansion unit for the > 464 (only CP/M 2.2 with the 664, and 2.2 and 3.1 with the 6128). Nope. It was an option for the CPC series of colour-capable home computers, yes. But it was supplied *as standard* with the PCW 8000 & 9000 series of monochrome-only "personal computer wordprocessors". You got 2 boot disks in the box: one with LocoScript, the dedicated Amstrad PCW word processor (albeit later ported to, or rather rewritten, for IBM-compatibles), and one with CP/M 3. CP/M was the _only_ general-purpose OS for the PCWs. (Excluding the later, unsuccessful, PcW 16.) They had no ROM and no ROM BASIC or anything else. I think they were the last CP/M machines of any significance, first released in 1985, well into the MS-DOS era. Nonetheless they were hugely successful in their time and there were quite a few CP/M apps released that only ran on the PCWs, directly driving their 720*256 res screen in graphics mode or a few in 90*32 text mode. -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: Rolm Computers: 1602, 1602A, 1602B, 1666, MSExx (was Data General Nova Star Trek)
Hi Bill, thanks for your reply. It would be cool to see this brochure - can you put it on a scanner? So you did not work with those yourself? Thanks again, Erik. Am 22. Oktober 2018 08:38:14 GMT-06:00 schrieb Bill Degnan : >While we are on the subject of Rolm I was curious and found in my docs >library a Rolm 1601 Sales brochure with some tech info/parts/prices. >Heavy >duty machines for sure. >Bill > > >On Sun, Oct 21, 2018 at 2:25 PM Erik Baigar via cctalk < >cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > >> >> Hi Paul, thanks for your reply - good to see that there are still >guys out >> there who worked with this heavy iron. So you have been in the UK >while >> working with the Rolm? I guess it was a 1602B or later and pesumably >some >> airborne early warning stuff? Best wishes, Erik. >> >> Am 21. Oktober 2018 03:12:52 GMT-06:00 schrieb Paul Anderson via >cctalk < >> cctalk@classiccmp.org>: >> >I was at the DG factory school at Southbourgh in 76 or 77, and >worked >> >on a >> >ROLM NOVA while at RAF Chicksands in the late 70s. Unfortunately, my >EX >> >through out all of the manuals, prints, etc along with a complete >set >> >of >> >SAGE (ANFSQ-7) docs. >> > >> >Paul >> > >> >On Sun, Oct 21, 2018 at 3:38 AM Thomas Hollowell via cctalk < >> >cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: >> > >> >> Hi Eric, >> >> My name is Tom Hollowell. I took the US support of Rolm in 1998. >PWA >> >> assumed the international. I noticed that you have some ROLM >> >hardware. I >> >> may be interested in finding out what you have. >> >> Let me know, >> >> Thanks, >> >> Tom >> >> >> >> Sent from my iPhone >> >> -- >> >> -- Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android-Gerät mit K-9 Mail gesendet.
Re: Selling keyboards without the terminal
On Sat, 20 Oct 2018 at 12:50, Yvan Janssens via cctalk wrote: > > So, I have built a USB adapter for my 5150’s keyboard. The experience is > actually quite bad, as stated earlier. The main reason why I still use it > is because I took it with me from Belgium - it’s a French keyboard, and > having access to all the special characters makes typing in eg. French, > German or Spanish so much easier in the odd cases I have to. I use a Compose key. Built in to Linux, easy to add to Windows. Thus my UK-layout IBM Model M has every international character it's possible to type. I can type à la Français as easily as I can v čestina, tady v Křižíkova. > For my main daily driver I just use a Unicomp PC5250. Like others said, new > keyboards based on the original mechanisms perform so much better. Tried one (belonging to list member Peter Corlett). I find the original Real Thing™ _far_ better than the modern reproductions. I think he will agree with me. -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: Selling keyboards without the terminal
On Fri, 19 Oct 2018 at 21:01, ben via cctalk wrote: > Is just me, but is keyboad input geting slower and slower on web stuff, > even the old 110 buad tty gave better response running under a PDP/8. https://danluu.com/input-lag/ Summary: no, it's not just you. -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: Rolm Computers: 1602, 1602A, 1602B, 1666, MSExx (was Data General Nova Star Trek)
While we are on the subject of Rolm I was curious and found in my docs library a Rolm 1601 Sales brochure with some tech info/parts/prices. Heavy duty machines for sure. Bill On Sun, Oct 21, 2018 at 2:25 PM Erik Baigar via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > Hi Paul, thanks for your reply - good to see that there are still guys out > there who worked with this heavy iron. So you have been in the UK while > working with the Rolm? I guess it was a 1602B or later and pesumably some > airborne early warning stuff? Best wishes, Erik. > > Am 21. Oktober 2018 03:12:52 GMT-06:00 schrieb Paul Anderson via cctalk < > cctalk@classiccmp.org>: > >I was at the DG factory school at Southbourgh in 76 or 77, and worked > >on a > >ROLM NOVA while at RAF Chicksands in the late 70s. Unfortunately, my EX > >through out all of the manuals, prints, etc along with a complete set > >of > >SAGE (ANFSQ-7) docs. > > > >Paul > > > >On Sun, Oct 21, 2018 at 3:38 AM Thomas Hollowell via cctalk < > >cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > >> Hi Eric, > >> My name is Tom Hollowell. I took the US support of Rolm in 1998. PWA > >> assumed the international. I noticed that you have some ROLM > >hardware. I > >> may be interested in finding out what you have. > >> Let me know, > >> Thanks, > >> Tom > >> > >> Sent from my iPhone > > -- > >
Fwd: Microsoft-Paul Allen
[ Accidentally only sent to Eric originally ] On Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 3:41 PM Eric Smith wrote: > On Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 01:46 Jim Manley via cctalk > wrote: > >> The Softcard was a Z-80 based single-board >> computer > > > It wasn't. It was only a processor card. > Eric, I'm going to stand by my assertion that the Softcard was a single-board computer on the technicality that it did have its own RAM - you apparently forget that registers are a form of RAM - HA! They're memory, they're addressed over a bus (that just happens to be within the microprocessor), and you can directly access any register at any time (random access). As for I/O, that's what the Apple ][ bus was for, right? As Opus from Bloom County, among other comic characters, was known to utter, "PBBTT!!! Microsoft did offer a RAM expansion board specifically to allow the Softcard to access 64K of RAM dedicated to CP/M, and the Premium Softcard //e provided on-board RAM to CP/M for the Apple //e, as you noted. All models of the Softcard could output 80 x 24 text, not only through third-party cards, but Apple's own 64K RAM and 80 x 24 video combo card, which was often offered in packages, especially through dealers that supported business customers (that's how my system came delivered). The "etc." I mentioned was the functionality provided through the glueware logic on the Softcard that enabled RAM and 80 x 24 text output, as well as other I/O over the Apple ][ slots bus. When I was in the Navy, our ship called at HMS Tamar in Hong Kong, and I followed verbal directions (26 stops on the then-new subway under the harbor into the New Territories) to the basement level of a shopping center. There, I found clones of everything from Apple ][s and //es to every expansion board and peripheral available in the early 1980s, including both the original Softcard and the Premium Softcard //e. Everything came complete with the floppy disks and every page of the documentation, not just photocopied, but professionally typeset and offset-printed. In your missing-the-forest-for-the-trees response, you completely missed the point of my post - that the Softcard was an extremely important early product for Microsoft, the critical connection between the Softcard and the QDOS prototype for x86 MS/PC-DOS, through Seattle Computer Products, and that the number of CP/M licenses was much larger on Apple computers than S-100 systems. For those that cited the Amstrad systems, I was referring to the S-100 and Softcard timeframe. CP/M was only provided with the Amstrad CPC664 and 6128 floppy-disk based models, and the DDI-1 disk expansion unit for the 464 (only CP/M 2.2 with the 664, and 2.2 and 3.1 with the 6128). The Amstrads came along four years after the Softcard was introduced, and three years after the release of the IBM PC. By that time, Digital Research's influence had faded into insignificance, despite the full release of CP/M-86 within six months of the IBM PC's debut (albeit at six times the price of MS/PC-DOS). I do know that CP/M was used in European banking systems well into the late 1990s, mostly because it wasn't broken and didn't need to be "fixed". It probably would have remained in use well past 1999 if it weren't for Y2K's impetus for massive upgrades to current technology for 2000 and beyond. All the Best, Jim On Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 3:41 PM Eric Smith wrote: > On Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 01:46 Jim Manley via cctalk > wrote: > >> The Softcard was a Z-80 based single-board >> computer > > > It wasn't. It was only a processor card. > > that plugged into an Apple ][ slot, equipped with its own >> 80x24 character x line black-and-white video output, > > > No version of the Softcard had it's own video output. It used normal Apple > video output. If you wanted 80x24, you had to use a separate third-party > 80-column card, or (later) and Apple IIe, IIc, IIc+, or IIgs. > > RAM, etc., >> > > I'm not sure what you're referring to by "etc.", but the vast majority of > Softcards and their clones did not have their own RAM, and used that of the > Apple II. > > The PCPI Applicard and it's clones had their own RAM. Some very late > models of the Softcard had their own RAM. > >
Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen
On Sat, 20 Oct 2018 at 19:31, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: > Oooh. My personal recollection about w95 is that there was a lot of > touting before the premiere day, how advanced it was because "object > oriented operating system". The premiere came, the toutings quickly > faded away, never heard any kind of objection about this aspect. I, > for quite long time, had been thinking W95 was a scam because for the > life of me I could not spot any sign of its object-orientedness (and > there was nothing else interesting enough to make me want to tinker > with this... something). I think the explanation for that is fairly clearly there in the history. NT 3.1 came soon after Windows 3. After the OS/2 "divorce" from IBM, MS ran its 2 big OS projects, Chicago and Cairo, more or less in parallel. Cairo was next-gen NT, Chicago was next-gen Windows 3, at that point intended to be "Windows 4". Cairo started to fall behind schedule very early. So more effort was given over to Chicago. A fair bit of the ambitious UI work for Cairo made its way over to Chicago. Cairo was intended to be semi "object oriented", with a database-oriented filesystem (something Be did better in BeOS' BFS). That never happened, but the object-based (rather than folder- or drive-based) system browser made it over to Chicago. The Explorer, as it came to be known, uses several "virtual folders" -- "My Computer", "Network Neighbourhood". "Control Panel" etc. These have no location in the filesystem, you can't manually put anything in them or delete anything -- they only appear in Explorer, automatically populated with stuff _drawn_ from the filesystem or the Registry. Those are the vestiges of the Cairo object system. In itself, these things are vestigial remainder of concepts in NeXTstep, Xerox Smalltalk, HP NewWave and so on. By this stage, the real meaning has been forgotten, and "object oriented" has become a buzzword meaning, vaguely, that the user manipulates "objects" which may not genuinely exist as files or folders in the filesystem. They're virtual entities, generated by the OS on the fly. > It was only years later that it finally came > to me: I might have been one of the very few people who not only > understood some of the buzzwords but also was duped into believing > there should be some substance behind them (which maybe makes me > exceptional, just not in a good way). There was substance behind them once. But, in a pattern that is very typical of the development of the digital computer, especially microcomputers, the evolution goes like this: [1] someone, probably an academic, invents a new concept [2] someone else tries to implement it, finds it hard, and has to bodge it in some way -- with hardware extensions, or an abstraction layer, or faking it up and presenting it as if it were real [3] (a) another company copies the general idea but, lacking the conceptual underpinning, simplifies it into near-meaninglessness ... or... [3] (b) the other company finds a much quicker, simpler way to implement it, such as by doing it in cheap software rather than expensive hardware, or by some clever hack to another part of the system. Examples to illustrate my point: [a] Microsoft decided to add an RDBMS to its new OS. (It's not integrated from the start, like in Pick.) [b] It talks widely about some of the things this will enable, such as querying the filesystem like querying a database rather than iteratively searching [c] Be builds a new OS from scratch, and free from legacy compatibility restrictions, designs a filesystem with extensible, queryable attributes, thus achieving MS' goal with no database involved. [d] Apple fakes the end result of this by hacking a file-modification-watching daemon into its Unix, enabling the daemon to maintain an index for the whole filesystem. That in turn enables near-instant searching, without needing a whole new filesystem. [e] Microsoft having now been comprehensively outdone, abandons its database-in-the-filesystem idea and tries to bolt-on a filesystem indexer -- but because its OS is far more widely-used by a far broader range of hardware and software, it can't do the low-level hackery necessary without breaking legions of 3rd party apps, so the MS implementation is poor and takes years & multiple product generations to get working. It's a sort of horrible sequel (see what I did there?) to the Osborne Effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect > Nowadays, I consider W95 as very interesting subject of study - a > technical product of non-technical genius(es) (ok, if there were tech > geniuses involved in its making, I would say it does not show up). I strongly disagree. (And I am no Microsoft apologist!) On the one hand, the cosmetics. *Every* Unix desktop out there draws on Win95. The Win95 Explorer re-wrote the book on OS UI design. The _only_ company to resist was Apple, because of course, some of the reasons that Win95 is the way it is are attempts to do
Re: Data books available in Aachen
Hi Al, I work at the RWTH Aachen and will contact him. I'd be happy to save the books from being thrown away. All the best, Pierre --- Pierre's collection of classic computers moved to: http://www.digitalheritage.de Am Montag, 22. Oktober 2018, 15:54:28 MESZ hat Al Kossow via cctalk Folgendes geschrieben: I received this message this morning, if someone in Germany would like a data book collection "The computer club at the RWTH Aachen University has to move from a larger collection of semiconductor data books. These are 2..3 steel cabinets full of data books of various manufacturers, for which there is no more space in the new premises. I have seen your website and that you are dealing with the archiving / digitization of such books. Would you be interested in taking over this data book inventory? You would otherwise have to go to the waste paper ..." -- From: Alfred Arnold Guten Tag, der Computerclub an der RWTH Aachen muß sich im Zuge eines Umzugs von einer größeren Sammlung an Halbleiter-Datenbüchern trennen. Dabei handelt es sich um 2..3 Stahlschränke voll von Datenbüchern verschiedenster Hersteller, für die in den neuen Räumlichkeiten kein Platz mehr ist. Ich habe Ihre Webseite gesehen und daß Sie sich mit der Archivierung/Digitalisierung solcher Bücher beschäftigen. Bestünde eventuell Interesse an der Übernahme dieses Datenbuch-Bestandes? Sie müßten wohl ansonsten ins Altpapier gehen... Viele Grüße Alfred Arnold -- Alfred Arnold E-Mail: alf...@ccac.rwth-aachen.de Computer Club at the http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de:8000/alf/ Technical University Phone: +49-241-406526 of Aachen
Data books available in Aachen
I received this message this morning, if someone in Germany would like a data book collection "The computer club at the RWTH Aachen University has to move from a larger collection of semiconductor data books. These are 2..3 steel cabinets full of data books of various manufacturers, for which there is no more space in the new premises. I have seen your website and that you are dealing with the archiving / digitization of such books. Would you be interested in taking over this data book inventory? You would otherwise have to go to the waste paper ..." -- From: Alfred Arnold Guten Tag, der Computerclub an der RWTH Aachen muß sich im Zuge eines Umzugs von einer größeren Sammlung an Halbleiter-Datenbüchern trennen. Dabei handelt es sich um 2..3 Stahlschränke voll von Datenbüchern verschiedenster Hersteller, für die in den neuen Räumlichkeiten kein Platz mehr ist. Ich habe Ihre Webseite gesehen und daß Sie sich mit der Archivierung/Digitalisierung solcher Bücher beschäftigen. Bestünde eventuell Interesse an der Übernahme dieses Datenbuch-Bestandes? Sie müßten wohl ansonsten ins Altpapier gehen... Viele Grüße Alfred Arnold -- Alfred Arnold E-Mail: alf...@ccac.rwth-aachen.de Computer Club at thehttp://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de:8000/alf/ Technical UniversityPhone: +49-241-406526 of Aachen
Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen
On Sat, 20 Oct 2018 at 12:55, Adam Sampson via cctalk wrote: > > Do you mean sold up to that point? Amstrad went on to sell several > million PCWs with CP/M later in the 1980s. (They say 8 million on > http://www.amstrad.com/products/archive/, but that includes the > much less popular PCW16 which wasn't a CP/M machine.) I was going to make the same cavil. :-) The PCW was wildly successful, but not in the USA, and USAnians tend to forget about anything that wasn't big in their own country. I think the PCWs were also the only widely-successful CP/M *3* computers. Although to be fair I suspect that many users never left LocoScript. Certainly some of my acquaintance were astonished to learn that they had the option to upgrade to LocoScript 2 (8*** series owners) or 3 / 4 (8*** & 9*** series owners). I think mostly just people who bought additional printers learned that. Poor marketing by Locomotive, sadly. -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: 1970s CDC disk drive (Craigslist, Washington DC)
it's too bad that I am on the other side of the great pond . I would have been very interested in it :-( Pierre --- Pierre's collection of classic computers moved to: http://www.digitalheritage.de Chuck Guzis via cctalk schrieb am Mo, 22.10.2018: Betreff: Re: 1970s CDC disk drive (Craigslist, Washington DC) An: "Ken Shirriff via cctalk" Datum: Montag, 22. Oktober, 2018 08:16 Uhr On 10/21/18 7:12 PM, Ken Shirriff via cctalk wrote: > Someone pointed out this CDC disk drive on Craigslist in the Washington DC > area: > https://washingtondc.craigslist.org/mld/zip/d/early-computer-era-rolling/6728728220.html > > I have no connection to this, and don't know anything about it, but figured > someone on cctalk might want to pick it up, rather than it getting scrapped. > Looks like a 9746. --Chuck
Re: 1970s CDC disk drive (Craigslist, Washington DC)
On 10/21/18 7:12 PM, Ken Shirriff via cctalk wrote: > Someone pointed out this CDC disk drive on Craigslist in the Washington DC > area: > https://washingtondc.craigslist.org/mld/zip/d/early-computer-era-rolling/6728728220.html > > I have no connection to this, and don't know anything about it, but figured > someone on cctalk might want to pick it up, rather than it getting scrapped. > Looks like a 9746. --Chuck
