Re: Found my favorite DOS editor
On Tue, Sep 28, 2021 at 5:30 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > "Baby Duck Syndrome": you bond to the first one. Any time you are tempted > to switch, everything that any other one does differently is "just all > wrong". If you are eventually compelled to switch, you will bond to a new > one; and every other one "just does it all wrong". > > 'course, then there are the MAJOR religious battles. Such as VI VS EMACS. I started on 8-bitters. On minis, I first encountered EDT (on VMS), then Emacs (on UNIX, AmigaDOS, and even VMS), then years later when I was working for Lucent/Bell Labs, vi... I'm all kinds of messed up, but mostly I use vi(m) these days. It's not perfect (oh, buy, it's not perfect!) but I can have the same experience going from platform to platform to platform. That's worth it. -ethan
Re: PDP-11/05 Fault?
On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 10:49 AM Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > I see that the PDP-11 architecture handbook doesn't seem to be on Bitsavers... Do you mean this handbook? http://wwcm.synology.me/pdf/EB-23657-18%20PDP-11%20Architecture%20Handbook.pdf ORDER CODE: EB-23657-18 (from here: http://wwcm.synology.me/scanned.html)
Re: PDP-11/05 Fault?
On 9/29/2021 6:31 PM, Matt Burke via cctalk wrote: I've been restoring a PDP-11/05 recently and after replacing several faulty ICs I have it mostly working. I've run into a bit of a problem whilst running MAINDEC-11-D0NB (T14 TRAP TEST) though. The failing instruction sequence is: 7200: MOV #6340,R0 7204: MOV R0,(R0)+ 7206: CMP 6340,#6342 7214: BEQ 7220 7216: HALT This halts at 7216 with: R0 = 6342 6340 = 6340 I tried this same set of instructions on a PDP-11/84 and also on Simh and the result is: R0 = 6342 6340 = 6342 which is what the diagnostic seems to expect. Firstly, I think this is a documented processor difference. My PDP-11/05S , 11/10S manual, DEC-11-H05SS-B-D, in table 4-8, programming differences reads: OPR %R,(R)+ 11/20: Contents of R are incremented by 2 *before* being used as the source operand. 11/05 & 11/10: Initial contents of R are used as the source operand 11/35 & 11/40: (Same as 11/20) So the halt would be expected on an 11/05. Secondly, I have an original DEC listing of D0NB. On it I have a written note (by me) "Bugs according to (UW Madison) ECE". But there is no notation of that those bugs might be. The source in my listing reads essentially the same as what you have written (comments abbreviated to fit on my lines): 7200 012700 006340 MOV#K11,%0 ; SRC and DST BOTH R0 7204 010020 MOV%0,(0)+ ; SRC No Mem Reference 7206 026727 177126 006342 CMPK11,+#K11+2 ; Dest Is Mem Reference 7214 001401 BEQ.+4 7216 00 HLT; Failed %(0),(0)+ 7220 010700 SCOPE JRJ
Re: PDP-11/05 Fault?
> On Sep 29, 2021, at 8:21 PM, Matt Burke wrote: > > On 30/09/2021 01:06, Paul Koning wrote: >> Either the diagnostic has a major bug, or you're running it on a machine it >> doesn't support, or there is a setup to tell it the difference which you >> missed. >> >> What you're seeing is the very first entry in the table "PDP-11 family >> differences", appendix B of the PDP-11 architecture handbook. It is the >> famous pattern that the assembler rejects with a Z (machine dependency >> alert) error code. >> >> This particular pattern produces 6342 only on 11/23, 11/20, 11/35, 11/70, >> J-11, and T-11. On all others, including the 11/05 and the PDP-11 emulation >> in the VAX, it produces 6340 as you observed. >> >> paul >> > > Thanks, Paul. The MAINDEC-11-D0NB diagnostic is meant for the PDP-11/20 > according to the listing though the same goes for many other diagnostics > which are also applicable to the PDP-11/05. I guess this one is the > exception. There is a newer version MAINDEC-11-D0NC but I can't find a > listing for that one. Perhaps it has a switch register setting to handle > the difference. Perhaps it was written just for the 11/20 when that was the only model. You mentioned it's a T14 test -- that is actually one that probably cares about the model a lot for another reason -- differences 10 and 11. In the 11/05 and 11/20 (and VAX), an RTI with T set in the saved PSW traps after one instruction (i.e., you get single stepping). In all others, the T14 trap occurs immediately and you have to use the RTT instruction to get the single step action. 11/05 and 11/20 don't have RTT. The debugger (ODT) in an early version used the instruction you ran into as a way to see whether to use RTI or RTT for single step. Of course, that doesn't work with the other machines that work that way, and presumably it was changed later. It could try RTT with a T10 vector set to catch the illegal instruction trap an 11/05 would give it, for example. I see that the PDP-11 architecture handbook doesn't seem to be on Bitsavers... paul
Re: PDP-11/05 Fault?
On 30/09/2021 01:06, Paul Koning wrote: > Either the diagnostic has a major bug, or you're running it on a machine it > doesn't support, or there is a setup to tell it the difference which you > missed. > > What you're seeing is the very first entry in the table "PDP-11 family > differences", appendix B of the PDP-11 architecture handbook. It is the > famous pattern that the assembler rejects with a Z (machine dependency alert) > error code. > > This particular pattern produces 6342 only on 11/23, 11/20, 11/35, 11/70, > J-11, and T-11. On all others, including the 11/05 and the PDP-11 emulation > in the VAX, it produces 6340 as you observed. > > paul > Thanks, Paul. The MAINDEC-11-D0NB diagnostic is meant for the PDP-11/20 according to the listing though the same goes for many other diagnostics which are also applicable to the PDP-11/05. I guess this one is the exception. There is a newer version MAINDEC-11-D0NC but I can't find a listing for that one. Perhaps it has a switch register setting to handle the difference. I did wonder if this might be a model specific issue and I did various searches online but didn't find the right info. Thanks for the pointer. At least I know it's not a fault that needs debugging now. Regards, Matt
Re: PDP-11/05 Fault?
> On Sep 29, 2021, at 7:31 PM, Matt Burke via cctalk > wrote: > > > I've been restoring a PDP-11/05 recently and after replacing several > faulty ICs I have it mostly working. I've run into a bit of a problem > whilst running MAINDEC-11-D0NB (T14 TRAP TEST) though. > > The failing instruction sequence is: > > 7200: MOV #6340,R0 > 7204: MOV R0,(R0)+ > 7206: CMP 6340,#6342 > 7214: BEQ 7220 > 7216: HALT > > This halts at 7216 with: > R0 = 6342 > 6340 = 6340 > > I tried this same set of instructions on a PDP-11/84 and also on Simh > and the result is: > R0 = 6342 > 6340 = 6342 > > which is what the diagnostic seems to expect. Either the diagnostic has a major bug, or you're running it on a machine it doesn't support, or there is a setup to tell it the difference which you missed. What you're seeing is the very first entry in the table "PDP-11 family differences", appendix B of the PDP-11 architecture handbook. It is the famous pattern that the assembler rejects with a Z (machine dependency alert) error code. This particular pattern produces 6342 only on 11/23, 11/20, 11/35, 11/70, J-11, and T-11. On all others, including the 11/05 and the PDP-11 emulation in the VAX, it produces 6340 as you observed. paul
Microcomputing nostalgia & cctalk
Nostalgia is great for aging baby-boomers as me. Back in 1978 I along with a friend bought a Heathkit H1 and spent many leisure hours constructing it and getting it to boot up! By 1984 I moved on to the Coleco ADAM and learned BASIC(Well more accurately APPLE Basic) spending too much time on it rather than on my PhD studies. Trying to write my dissertation using Writer was a challenge as was getting it to print on the included daisy-wheel printer – all that clacking. Noise! Noise! as the Grinch says. But I did get my doctorate but had to go to S. Korea and Univ. of Education(TESOL program) to use it. Microsoft’s monopoly began in the earliest days of microcomputing. Read Gate’s letter to programmers /hobbyists to see how a monopolist thinks. Linux has come along and poked Microsoft in the eye but hasn’t done too much damage according to this writer. As written here a nostalgia for the early years may be what we classic computer-philes find so compelling in cctalk. And to be honest I’ll move to WIN 11 because the choice(s) are somewhat limited. Happy computing. Murray
PDP-11/05 Fault?
I've been restoring a PDP-11/05 recently and after replacing several faulty ICs I have it mostly working. I've run into a bit of a problem whilst running MAINDEC-11-D0NB (T14 TRAP TEST) though. The failing instruction sequence is: 7200: MOV #6340,R0 7204: MOV R0,(R0)+ 7206: CMP 6340,#6342 7214: BEQ 7220 7216: HALT This halts at 7216 with: R0 = 6342 6340 = 6340 I tried this same set of instructions on a PDP-11/84 and also on Simh and the result is: R0 = 6342 6340 = 6342 which is what the diagnostic seems to expect. I've carefully looked through the PDP-11/05 microprogram listing but I'm having difficulty seeing where this is going wrong. Here is a brief extract of the microprogram in the context of the MOV R0,(R0)+ instruction along with my interpretation of what I think is going on: LOC NXT * SOURCE MODE 0 (REGISTER), GET SOURCE DATA 201 007 S0-1 B=R[S]; BUT BYTE 007 001 S0-2 R[10]=B; BUT DESTINATION / IF IR<5:3> = 2 GOTO D2-1 B = R0 = 6340 // B = source register R10 = B = 6340 // Source data stored in sratch pad register R10 LOC NXT * DEST MODE 2 (AUTO-INC) GET DEST DATA, OP AND REPLACE 105 331 D2-1 BA=R[D]; DATAIP; ALBYT 331 341 D2-2 B=R[D]+1+BYTE.BAR 341 200 D2-3 R[D]=B; BUT JSRMP; GOTO D1-2; CKOFF / IF INST NOT JMP OR JSR FALL THROUGH TO D1-2 BA = R0 = 6340 // Bus address = destination register B = R0 + 2 = 6342 // Auto-increment and store in B R0 = B = 6342 // Update destination register LOC NXT * DEST MODE 1 (REG,DEFERRED) GET DEST DATA, OP AND REPLACE 200 210 D1-2 B=UNIBUS DATA; BUT BYTE 210 143 D1-3 R[11]=B; BUT UNARY 163 334 D1-4 B=R[10] OP B; BUT NOMOD 334 065 D1-5 DATO; ALBYT; CKOFF 065 305 D1-5 DRIVERS=B; GOTO S2-2 (BUT SERVICE) B = (6340) = 0 // B = value at location pointed to by bus address R11 = B = 0 // R11 is only used for unary instructions B = R10 = 6340 // B = source data stored previously in R10 (6340) = B = 6340 // B is written to the address pointed to by bus address Where have I gone wrong with this? I can't see from the above how the value at 6340 can possibly be 6342 Matt
Re: Found my favorite DOS editor
On Wed, 29 Sept 2021 at 20:25, ben via cctalk wrote: > I like TERSE for dos. A 4096 byte sized editor for DOS. > 64Kb files only, but good for editing from a floppy > when we had them. Still can be found on the web. > Ben. That is really quite impressive! https://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Terse -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
Re: Found my favorite DOS editor
On 2021-09-29 10:16 a.m., Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: But really nothing to love. Then I learned VAX/VMS at Uni and I didn't love EDT, although later I learned Edlin on DOS in my first job, and that made me miss EDT very badly. I think it was probably only when DR-DOS and MS-DOS 5+ included decent full-screen CUA editors that I actually found ones I _liked_ using. Which is why I want to properly CUA-ify Emacs -- and *no* cua-mode is _not_ an acceptable answer -- but dear hypothetical deities, the resistance from the Emacs fans... yeesh. I like TERSE for dos. A 4096 byte sized editor for DOS. 64Kb files only, but good for editing from a floppy when we had them. Still can be found on the web. Ben.
Re: Found my favorite DOS editor
On Wed, 29 Sept 2021 at 06:53, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > > Writing to the video memory was the simplest and most straightforward way > to do it "*Real* programmers use a magnetized needle and a steady hand." https://xkcd.com/378/ -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven • Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702-829-053
Re: Found my favorite DOS editor
On Wed, 29 Sept 2021 at 01:47, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote: > > Control-C, Control-X & Control-P for copy, cut and paste in Windows 11 > dates back to Wordstar on 8-Bit CPM systems in the 80s. No they didn't. They came from the Mac: https://ieee-isto.org/isto-blog/standards-for-cut-copy-and-past/ The Windows standard _was_ Shift-Del to cut, Ctrl-Ins to cut, Shift-Ins to paste. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut,_copy,_and_paste#Cut_and_paste Nobody could remember it, including CUA evangelist me -- I had to look that up -- so they switched to PC-ified Mac standard. TBH I can't remember when; I am not sure but it might have been in Windows 3.0, the first release after the divorce from IBM. -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven • Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702-829-053
Re: Found my favorite DOS editor
On Wed, 29 Sept 2021 at 01:37, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > > I confess to having Wordstar so thoroughly burned into my reflexes It was once, yes. I got better. But now: http://wordtsar.ca/ > that > I still use joe under linux. Tilde FTW. https://os.ghalkes.nl/tilde > Let's not forget MINCE, either. Ran on 8-bit x80 systems, emacs subset > with a nested acronym of a name. Ultimately became Borland Sprint! http://www.sci.wsu.edu/math/faculty/barnes/borland/sprint.htm -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven • Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702-829-053
Re: Found my favorite DOS editor
On Wed, 29 Sept 2021 at 00:41, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > Can EMACS be expanded enough to emulate VI? https://www.linode.com/docs/guides/emacs-evil-mode/ > Can VI be expanded enough to emulate EMACS? https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=300 There's something almost poetic in their mutual love-hate relationship. Yin and yang. :-D > About 3 decades ago, there was some linguistic analysis of effects on > writing style with some editors. > There were some very simplistic conclusions, such as that small screen > (number of characters/lines, NOT square footage) produced choppier > writing, with more repetitions, due to not seeing both paragraphs at the > same time. > > It really should be studied in depth, including expanding the algorithms > of Flesch-Kincaid, SMOG, Coleman-Liau, ARI, Linser Write Formula, > phrase repetition analysis, etc. Nifty idea! -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven • Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702-829-053
Re: Found my favorite DOS editor
On Tue, 28 Sept 2021 at 23:55, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote: > > Fred Cisin said "'course, then there are the MAJOR religious battles. > Such as VI VS EMACS." > > I cannot agree more. I know many people who live in VI thought I cannot > fathom why. I worked at Red Hat briefly and SUSE for more than anywhere else in my career. I know Vi fans in their 20s, people born well after I first used it and disliked it on SCO Xenix. I didn't fall in love with my first editor (probably the full-screen BASIC editor on the Commodore PET), or with Sinclair BASIC's (which was pretty horrible but Beta BASIC made it better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_BASIC ) And the SAM Coupé's BASIC -- written by the same chap -- was much more pleasant as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAM_Coup%C3%A9 But really nothing to love. Then I learned VAX/VMS at Uni and I didn't love EDT, although later I learned Edlin on DOS in my first job, and that made me miss EDT very badly. I think it was probably only when DR-DOS and MS-DOS 5+ included decent full-screen CUA editors that I actually found ones I _liked_ using. Which is why I want to properly CUA-ify Emacs -- and *no* cua-mode is _not_ an acceptable answer -- but dear hypothetical deities, the resistance from the Emacs fans... yeesh. -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven • Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702-829-053
Re: An American perspective on the late great Sir Clive Sinclair, from Fast Company
On Wed, 29 Sep 2021, John Many Jars via cctalk wrote: I had a TI 99/4 when I was a kid. It was my first computer (although I used my friend's Apple ][ much more). All I can say is, what a piece of garbage. It was horrible in every way, and it overheated if you left it on too long. SLOWEST BASIC EVER! The TI 99/4A is what you get when the MBAs on the design team outnumber the engineers by ten to one. 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: An American perspective on the late great Sir Clive Sinclair, from Fast Company
On Wed, 29 Sept 2021 at 17:45, John Many Jars wrote: > > I had a TI 99/4 when I was a kid. It was my first computer (although I used > my friend's Apple ][ much more). > > All I can say is, what a piece of garbage. It was horrible in every way, and > it overheated if you left it on too long. SLOWEST BASIC EVER! Harsh but not entirely unfair. It had, IMHO, a lot of foolish compromises, including the BASIC in an interpreted bytecode and a crippled memory bus. But if there hadn't been a price war, most of its defects would have been fixed in the announced, demonstrated but cancelled, TI-99/8. https://www.99er.net/998.html 10MHz 16-bit machine with Extended BASIC _and_ Pascal included, speech synthesis, expandable to 16MB RAM... all before the Mac, let alone the Amiga. And a relative of that *did* ship, later on, in the form of the Geneve 9640, a replacement motherboard that fitted into the 99's Peripheral Expansion Box. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneve_9640 -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven • Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702-829-053
Re: An American perspective on the late great Sir Clive Sinclair, from Fast Company
On Tue, 28 Sept 2021 at 22:05, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote: > > I went and looked up the numbers. A 1983 Fiat Panda was £3k (list). At the > same time, the C64 was selling for £345. So it's an order-of-magnitude out, > but still a formidable sum of money: a factory-new rustbucket (e.g. Renault > Duster) is about €10k today and I wouldn't willingly drop €1k on a machine > with similar deficiencies to the C64. > > Any Brit lucky enough to have £345 burning a hole in their pocket in 1983 > would have more likely gotten a BBC Micro for £399. The Beeb had less memory > and the graphics and sound were less useful for games, but it had a faster > CPU (2MHz uncontended), much better BASIC, higher-resolution graphics, and > was generally a rather more well-rounded and serious machine. > > Once you were doing useful things on the Beeb, a dual disk drive and decent > monitor would beckon, at which point the price quickly creeps upwards to > that of a second-hand car. I thank my learnéd friend for the correction. OK, not a new car -- a 2nd hand, used, car. So, as Fred says, around 1980, the early all-in-one ready-to-use machines like the PET & TRS-80 were the cost of a used car in the States. £-for-$ they cost around _three times_ as much in the UK. A few years later, the much cheaper 2nd-generation home computers from Commodore and Atari were *still* in the ballpark of the cost of a cheap used car in the UK, and easily as much if you added a disk drive... while a Sinclair was about a third of the price, and even with the (crappy but *much* better than audio cassettes!) ZX Microdrive and the interface/controller, were _still_ around the price of a standalone C64. Whereas, as Peter says and I agree, if you were hobbyist and not a gamer, a BBC Micro was a more attractive buy -- capable of 80-column text, hi-res mono graphics, and with an excellent, fully-structured, recursion and all, blisteringly-fast BASIC interpreter which also supported inline 6502 assembly language. And also *extremely* expandable -- not only could it have a 2nd 6502 CPU, or a Z80 and CP/M, later it could even have a NatSemi 32016 or an ARM 2nd processor. Not just able to network, use a hard disk, have additional ROMs and things, it even talked to Laserdiscs: https://www.domesday86.com/?page_id=2140 Definitely preferable if you wanted a _computer_ and not games. Although it had great games, too, including the seminal Elite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JCU4Hulgcg I wanted one very much, but my family couldn't afford it... so I got a Spectrum. 2nd hand, it cost one-fifth the price of a BBC Model B. -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven • Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702-829-053
Re: An American perspective on the late great Sir Clive Sinclair, from Fast Company
I had a TI 99/4 when I was a kid. It was my first computer (although I used my friend's Apple ][ much more). All I can say is, what a piece of garbage. It was horrible in every way, and it overheated if you left it on too long. SLOWEST BASIC EVER! On Wed, 29 Sept 2021 at 16:37, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: > On Mon, 27 Sept 2021 at 22:49, Fred Cisin via cctalk > wrote: > > > > > > I think that it is truly tragic about the price gouging. > > Strongly agreed. > > The TI-99/4A wasn't a great computer, with foolish design compromises, > but it was driven out of the market by unfair pricing. > > The Amiga was a superior machine in almost every way to the Atari ST, > and should have been a bit more expensive -- I'm sure it was to > produce. But no, another price war. > > And so on. > > > A number of people have commented that computers were sold as if the > > exchange rate was 1:1! > > Yup. But that was probably me. A computer that sold for $1000 > > would be sold in UK for 1000 GBP! (the equivalent of $3000) > > Yup. A particular habit of Apple, to be fair, but not unique to them. > Also, the US cost of living is substantially cheaper -- e.g. gasoline. > > Today the average US price is €0.80 per litre. > EU average is about c€1.40 per litre. > > Source: > https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/USA/gasoline_prices/ > https://www.tolls.eu/fuel-prices > > > How much did the TRS80 sell for in UK? > > Which model? > > They were pretty rare here -- I don't think I ever saw a single one > anywhere outside Tandy store display units. > > > https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/5791/was-the-trs-80-model-1-ever-actually-sold-new-with-that-name > > Model I, 4K Level I: £385.25 > Model I, 16K Level II: £546.25 > > -- > Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven > Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com > Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven • Skype: liamproven > UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702-829-053 > -- Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems: "The Future Begins Tomorrow" Visit us at: http://www.yoyodyne-propulsion.net "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." -- Jonathan Swift
Re: An American perspective on the late great Sir Clive Sinclair, from Fast Company
On Mon, 27 Sept 2021 at 22:49, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > > > I think that it is truly tragic about the price gouging. Strongly agreed. The TI-99/4A wasn't a great computer, with foolish design compromises, but it was driven out of the market by unfair pricing. The Amiga was a superior machine in almost every way to the Atari ST, and should have been a bit more expensive -- I'm sure it was to produce. But no, another price war. And so on. > A number of people have commented that computers were sold as if the > exchange rate was 1:1! Yup. But that was probably me. A computer that sold for $1000 > would be sold in UK for 1000 GBP! (the equivalent of $3000) Yup. A particular habit of Apple, to be fair, but not unique to them. Also, the US cost of living is substantially cheaper -- e.g. gasoline. Today the average US price is €0.80 per litre. EU average is about c€1.40 per litre. Source: https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/USA/gasoline_prices/ https://www.tolls.eu/fuel-prices > How much did the TRS80 sell for in UK? Which model? They were pretty rare here -- I don't think I ever saw a single one anywhere outside Tandy store display units. https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/5791/was-the-trs-80-model-1-ever-actually-sold-new-with-that-name Model I, 4K Level I: £385.25 Model I, 16K Level II: £546.25 -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven • Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702-829-053
Re: Linux and the 'clssic' computing world
> On Sep 28, 2021, at 8:32 PM, ben wrote: > > On 2021-09-28 2:24 p.m., Paul Koning wrote: > >>> ... >>> More I play with my designs, I come to the conclusion that >>> 32 bits is not ample for a general purpose computer. >> I think Von Neumann would agree; he picked 40 bits as I recall. There are >> all sorts of interesting word lengths out there; the strangest I've worked >> with is 27 bits one's complement. > Was that a drum machime? Not a drum machine. Core memory, all solid state -- one of the first, and as far as I know the first commercial product with interrupts standard. Electrologica X1, from 1958. Also its successor the X8, around 1964. The X8 had a drum as a peripheral device, used in the THE operating system for paging virtual memory (512 k words). paul
Re: Found my favorite DOS editor
On Tue, 28 Sep 2021, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: "I've been using vi for about two years, mostly because I can't figure out how to exit it." :q you're welcome No, no... you're doing it all wrong ... it's ZZ See . :q is colon q enter, so 3 buttons. ZZ is jsut 2 buttons (shift doesn't count and z is close to shift anyway, so one hand) And thus holy wars even exist inside the vi/vim vs emacs 'war' ... I use vim daily - minimal features, barley more than what vi can do. I'm using alpine email, so mostly a nano-like editor here althogh sometimes I drop into vim to do some formatting, etc. which I find easier in vim. My own editor is nano-like (I have C and BCPL versions) but often feel that I want some vi style global commands, so one day it might morph into something like that. And some 30 ish years back I was helping to "bring-up" a new unix-like system and they wanted emacs - I managed to port microEmacs to it at the time, but to do that I wanted a vi for myself, so ported "stvie" then used that to help with the port of µEmacs but that's as close as I got to emacs... Brand loyalty and all that... Gordon
RE: Linux and the 'clssic' computing world
> -Original Message- > From: cctalk On Behalf Of Van Snyder via > cctalk > Sent: 28 September 2021 23:34 > To: cctalk@classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: Linux and the 'clssic' computing world > > On Tue, 2021-09-28 at 17:03 -0500, Jay Jaeger via cctalk wrote: > > > On 2021-09-28 11:43 a.m., Vincent Long standing via cctalk wrote: > > > > > > > The C standards are more liberal, and continue to require char > > > > types to be 8 or more bits. > > > Was PL/I the only language that would let you select data size for > > > variables? Of course the fine print would not let you have more than > > > 16 decimal digits, or 32 bit binary. You would think by now that a > > > language could handle any length data. > > > > > > > Hardly. > > > > FORTRAN: INTEGER*4 INTEGER*8 (and sometimes INTEGER*2 - e.g. Sun > > FORTRAN-77) was common, though never adopted as a standard. Also > > REAL vs. DOUBLE. > > Fortran 90 introduced "kind type parameters" for all types. For REAL, one can > use SELECTED_REAL_KIND to ask for a specific number of decimal digits. The > standard does not require any minimum number be required. > Both "default real" and double precision are required. Many processors > provide quad precision. For INTEGER, one can use SELECTED_INT_KIND. > Processors are required to provide at least one kind with at least 18 decimal > digits. There is no specification which other sizes are required. REXX has had this ability from the start. It only does decimal arithmetic, but you can set the number of numeric digits used to whatever you want Dave
