Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
On Fri, 18 Dec 2009, Gene Heskett wrote: I got to work for several months as a bench tech for an outfit building the first pair of the then smallest tv cameras in the world. Later I found out that one of those civies was Jacques Cousteau, 3 hours later had a contract to put those two cameras on the Trieste as soon as we could get the pressure cases built. Those were headed for the bottom of the Challenger Deep, 37,000+ feet in the big pond. Short story, we did, and they worked. And I think Gene wins. Bravo! That's a cool story. -- John Hardin KA7OHZhttp://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/ jhar...@impsec.orgFALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhar...@impsec.org key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79 --- Bother, said Pooh as he struggled with /etc/sendmail.cf, it never does quite what I want. I wish Christopher Robin was here. -- Peter da Silva in a.s.r --- 7 days until Christmas
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
hc...@mail.ewind.com wrote: re: CP/M No S-100 bus systems mentioned yet? My first home computer was a Godbout S-100 bus system running a dual 8085/8088 CPU board. At that time, the future in operating systems was going to be CP/M 86. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the ZX80/1 yet. I've also got a Newbrain stashed away somewhere, manuals, circuit diagrams an' all. /Per Jessen, Zürich
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
Benny Pedersen wrote: On fre 18 dec 2009 15:57:18 CET, Per Jessen wrote I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the ZX80/1 yet. or even spectrum hacked to run cpm :) I've also got a Newbrain stashed away somewhere, manuals, circuit diagrams an' all. add it to ebay if you want to sell it, if i remember newbrain has 2 z80 cpu ? I think the basic model had just one, but there's also an IO controller and one box more - there's a lot of Zilog hardware involved. /Per Jessen, Zürich
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
On Friday 18 December 2009, jdow wrote:
From: Gene Heskett gene.hesk...@verizon.net
Sent: Thursday, 2009/December/17 21:21
[...]
Now, if you want to get me rolling about an incompetent computer
company just mention GRiD and their Compass not really a laptop computer.
Even the bugs were themselves buggy. (We had to own 6 of them to keep 5
running most of the time. The displays went out regularly. And the OS
would lock up at peculiar times just because it felt like it when
trying to talk to an HPIB device. (It had built in HPIB to talk to its
disk drive etc.) Wikipiddle accuses it of being a laptop. All I can do
is snicker about that assertion. Then they continue the phrase to call
it a computer. Admittedly it was, on brief occasions, a computer. But
it spent too much time emulating a doorstop to be worthy of its price.
{^_^}
ROTFL, thanks Joanne.
--
Cheers, Gene
There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order.
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them.
https://www.nrahq.org/nrabonus/accept-membership.asp
There is something in the pang of change
More than the heart can bear,
Unhappiness remembering happiness.
-- Euripides
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
On Friday 18 December 2009, John Hardin wrote: On Fri, 18 Dec 2009, Gene Heskett wrote: I got to work for several months as a bench tech for an outfit building the first pair of the then smallest tv cameras in the world. Later I found out that one of those civies was Jacques Cousteau, 3 hours later had a contract to put those two cameras on the Trieste as soon as we could get the pressure cases built. Those were headed for the bottom of the Challenger Deep, 37,000+ feet in the big pond. Short story, we did, and they worked. And I think Gene wins. Bravo! That's a cool story. Thanks John. I have in my 75 years of history, several examples of being in the right place, at the right time, due purely by serendipity. But I think we have wasted enough of this lists tolerance for off-topic posts by now. -- Cheers, Gene There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them. https://www.nrahq.org/nrabonus/accept-membership.asp Who is John Galt?
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
On Friday 18 December 2009, Per Jessen wrote: hc...@mail.ewind.com wrote: re: CP/M No S-100 bus systems mentioned yet? My first home computer was a Godbout S-100 bus system running a dual 8085/8088 CPU board. At that time, the future in operating systems was going to be CP/M 86. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the ZX80/1 yet. I've also got a Newbrain stashed away somewhere, manuals, circuit diagrams an' all. That's because the z-80 was only slightly less dain bramaged than the 6502. /Per Jessen, Zürich -- Cheers, Gene There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them. https://www.nrahq.org/nrabonus/accept-membership.asp A day without sunshine is like a day without orange juice.
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
R-Elists wrote: as far as museum pieces go, i submit that my first was an Apple 2E if i remember correctly.. BRUN BEERRUN was an interesting game, or something to that effect... ;-) ...and (snore) i also programmed a helicopter to fly across the top and drop a bomb on a space invader and go boom... wow huh? My first computer was an Apple II+. Black case made by Bell Howell. It had a cassette drive and connected to the TV for video. It had a couple of paddle controllers that we used to play Breakout and Pong. I have no idea how much (little) memory it had. I think we eventually added a 5.25 floppy to it. I remember typing in games in Basic from a couple of books full of Basic games. -- Bowie
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
Gene Heskett wrote: On Friday 18 December 2009, Per Jessen wrote: hc...@mail.ewind.com wrote: re: CP/M No S-100 bus systems mentioned yet? My first home computer was a Godbout S-100 bus system running a dual 8085/8088 CPU board. At that time, the future in operating systems was going to be CP/M 86. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the ZX80/1 yet. I've also got a Newbrain stashed away somewhere, manuals, circuit diagrams an' all. That's because the z-80 was only slightly less dain bramaged than the 6502. Completely agree, but the ZX80/1 made computers very, very affordable. I was 15 when I managed to convince my parents that I desperately needed one of those. Back in 1981, I think it was about DKK1500, I'm not sure. It was a hell of a jump from the RC7000 with teletype and 32k core memory we had at school. /Per Jessen, Zürich
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
On Fri 18 Dec 2009 07:09:03 PM CET, Per Jessen wrote Completely agree, but the ZX80/1 made computers very, very affordable. I was 15 when I managed to convince my parents that I desperately needed one of those. Back in 1981, zx80 was 1980 imho, and had just 1k ram, and 8k rom, fully expandeble to a cpm system that is can run rc7000 software :) I think it was about DKK1500, I'm not sure. i still have danish books with that prise from that time It was a hell of a jump from the RC7000 with teletype and 32k core memory we had at school. i remember comet in multiuser setup with shared floppy disks, and printers or plotters, even some of them with some lego or fisher teknic electronik learning kits :) -- xpoint http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html pgpad0maaBCSX.pgp Description: PGP Digital Signature
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
Benny Pedersen wrote: On Fri 18 Dec 2009 07:09:03 PM CET, Per Jessen wrote Completely agree, but the ZX80/1 made computers very, very affordable. I was 15 when I managed to convince my parents that I desperately needed one of those. Back in 1981, zx80 was 1980 imho, and had just 1k ram, and 8k rom, fully expandeble to a cpm system that is can run rc7000 software :) Yeah, I started on the ZX81 - still have one with its 64K RAM expansion. I think it was about DKK1500, I'm not sure. i still have danish books with that prise from that time It was a hell of a jump from the RC7000 with teletype and 32k core memory we had at school. i remember comet in multiuser setup with shared floppy disks, and printers or plotters, even some of them with some lego or fisher teknic electronik learning kits :) The gymnasium I went to (Langkaer) was built in the mid-70s, and had a computer room - top notch. Except nobody used it - when I started there in 1979, a couple of us got the keys to the room. An RC7000 with bootstrap switches, a teletype with papertype and -punch, 3 x 80x25 terminals, 2 x 8 floppy drives - heaven! Until the ZX81 came along. I think the next thing I got was the Newbrain, then an IBM PC, then IBM mainframes around 1986. /Per Jessen, Zürich
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
From: Gene Heskett gene.hesk...@verizon.net
Sent: Friday, 2009/December/18 09:25
On Friday 18 December 2009, Per Jessen wrote:
hc...@mail.ewind.com wrote:
re: CP/M
No S-100 bus systems mentioned yet?
My first home computer was a Godbout S-100 bus system running a dual
8085/8088 CPU board. At that time, the future in operating systems was
going to be CP/M 86.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the ZX80/1 yet. I've also got a
Newbrain stashed away somewhere, manuals, circuit diagrams an' all.
That's because the z-80 was only slightly less dain bramaged than the
6502.
/Per Jessen, Zürich
Actually the 6502 was a handy little chip once prices dropped. On one
project we replaced a host of other chips with 6502s. They, plus a few
extra components, make nice glass TTYs. You can also use one as a very
flexible timer. It seems the guys in charge of the project went a
little overboard on the 6502s. But it did work, was reliable, and did
the job. For a 2-off design that's all you need.
You'll also find that the Z-80 design powers amazing amounts of gadgets
in theaters and theme parks. (Several Z-80s were on set and in use for
the animations in, for example, Team America, Harry Potter (I knew the
Mandrake root's lines from LONG before it hit theaters. sigh), Total
Recall, Chucky, and many others. (Gilderfluke makes some nice gadgets
based on modern Z-80ish CPUs.)
{^_-}
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
On Friday 18 December 2009, jdow wrote:
From: Gene Heskett gene.hesk...@verizon.net
Sent: Friday, 2009/December/18 09:25
On Friday 18 December 2009, Per Jessen wrote:
hc...@mail.ewind.com wrote:
re: CP/M
No S-100 bus systems mentioned yet?
My first home computer was a Godbout S-100 bus system running a dual
8085/8088 CPU board. At that time, the future in operating systems was
going to be CP/M 86.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the ZX80/1 yet. I've also got a
Newbrain stashed away somewhere, manuals, circuit diagrams an' all.
That's because the z-80 was only slightly less dain bramaged than the
6502.
/Per Jessen, Zürich
Actually the 6502 was a handy little chip once prices dropped. On one
project we replaced a host of other chips with 6502s. They, plus a few
extra components, make nice glass TTYs. You can also use one as a very
flexible timer. It seems the guys in charge of the project went a
little overboard on the 6502s. But it did work, was reliable, and did
the job. For a 2-off design that's all you need.
True, for one or two-offs maybe. But it was short one very valuable
addressing mode, and needed about 2 more , maybe 3, more 16 bit wide pointer
registers before it could be said to compete with a 6809. Then when the
Hitachi 6309's secrets were discovered, those of us with 6809 code in our
dreams were ecstatic. Moto was too proud of the 6809, so it didn't get the
design wins it should have.
You'll also find that the Z-80 design powers amazing amounts of gadgets
in theaters and theme parks. (Several Z-80s were on set and in use for
the animations in, for example, Team America, Harry Potter (I knew the
Mandrake root's lines from LONG before it hit theaters. sigh), Total
Recall, Chucky, and many others. (Gilderfluke makes some nice gadgets
based on modern Z-80ish CPUs.)
I take that newer shrinks of the z-80 have fixed the ignore the $EB command
(switch foreground/background registers) the earlier ones ignored about 10 to
20% of the time? Zilog told me to go pound sand when I called complaining
about that bug in both of the chips I had at the time, Early 1982 IIRC. I
never touched the chip again, but the one in a timex 1000 I bought the kids
later either didn't suffer, or somehow managed to program around it.
{^_-}
--
Cheers, Gene
There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order.
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them.
https://www.nrahq.org/nrabonus/accept-membership.asp
Men take only their needs into consideration -- never their abilities.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
re: CP/M No S-100 bus systems mentioned yet? My first home computer was a Godbout S-100 bus system running a dual 8085/8088 CPU board. At that time, the future in operating systems was going to be CP/M 86. I decided it was time to upgrade when a computer store clerk was trying to tell me that there was no such thing as an 8 floppy disk... - Hoover Chanhc...@mail.ewind.com -or- hc...@well.com Eastwind Associates P.O. Box 16646 voice: 415-731-6019 -or- 415-565-8936 San Francisco, CA 94116
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
On Thu, 17 Dec 2009, hc...@mail.ewind.com wrote: I decided it was time to upgrade when a computer store clerk was trying to tell me that there was no such thing as an 8 floppy disk... I wonder if IBM finally phased them out? I still have a couple as souvenirs :) - C
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
From: Steve Lindemann st...@marmot.org
Sent: Thursday, 2009/December/17 08:30
I think I still have a Model B in the loft somewhere...
Kevin
I've seen CP/M mentioned but no mention of the venerable Kaypro! Oh
those were the days 8^)
Have one complete with the SASI hard disk.
{^_^}
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
From: hc...@mail.ewind.com
Sent: Thursday, 2009/December/17 09:06
re: CP/M
No S-100 bus systems mentioned yet?
Processor Technology SOL-PC boosted to a higher speed (had to
reengineer timing on the board.) I also added a paddle board with S-100
slots on both sides. I was able to stick 5 S-100 cards into a remarkably
odd profile compared to other S-100 systems.
My first home computer was a Godbout S-100 bus system running a dual
8085/8088 CPU board. At that time, the future in operating systems was
going to be CP/M 86.
I also have a Godbout chassis and some of their CPU cards. I used them
as the basis for my paging hack.
I decided it was time to upgrade when a computer store clerk was trying to
tell me that there was no such thing as an 8 floppy disk...
I decided to upgrade when Jay Miner's geniuses put together the Amiga
computer.
{^_^}
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
On Thu, 17 Dec 2009, Charles Gregory wrote: On Thu, 17 Dec 2009, hc...@mail.ewind.com wrote: I decided it was time to upgrade when a computer store clerk was trying to tell me that there was no such thing as an 8 floppy disk... I wonder if IBM finally phased them out? I still have a couple as souvenirs :) They're running about $9 each on EBay... -- John Hardin KA7OHZhttp://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/ jhar...@impsec.orgFALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhar...@impsec.org key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79 --- Bother, said Pooh as he struggled with /etc/sendmail.cf, it never does quite what I want. I wish Christopher Robin was here. -- Peter da Silva in a.s.r --- 8 days until Christmas
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
From: John Hardin jhar...@impsec.org
Sent: Thursday, 2009/December/17 09:35
On Thu, 17 Dec 2009, Charles Gregory wrote:
On Thu, 17 Dec 2009, hc...@mail.ewind.com wrote:
I decided it was time to upgrade when a computer store clerk was trying
to
tell me that there was no such thing as an 8 floppy disk...
I wonder if IBM finally phased them out?
I still have a couple as souvenirs :)
They're running about $9 each on EBay...
Verified formatted or New Old Stock we don't have a way to check them?
(They seem to have held their value compared to the last pack of
Verbatims I bought. Alas, the oxide is probably flaking off.)
{^_-}
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
Steve Lindemann wrote: I think I still have a Model B in the loft somewhere... Kevin I've seen CP/M mentioned but no mention of the venerable Kaypro! Oh those were the days 8^) But my first digital computer (at work) was a Raytheon 703 with paper tape to load programs (after you fingered in the boot) and output was the lights on the front panel. I also worked on analog computers for a number of years, it wasn't so much programming as re-engineering. I actually do miss those days. A skilled practitioner could get 5 digits out of this baby: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule (I still have the yellow one). If you needed more rigorous but still relatively easy and quick, you would use this: http://ljkrakauer.com/CRC99ph/CRCbook.htm. Later, there were Wang digital calculators (http://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/wang362e.html - that one's actually newer, smaller more feature rich) in the chem library with multiple keyboard/display units connected by serial cable so that several students could be using it at once. The thing is that all those extra digits were insignificant and had to be lopped off anyway. ;-) Computers often encourage innumeracy (http://www.amazon.com/Innumeracy-Mathematical-Illiteracy-Its-Consequences/dp/0809074478/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0), and make us think we know more than we actually do. (That's quite a good book, by the way. If you like numbers/math, get it for yourself for Christmas or whatever you celebrate at this time of year.) -- --- Chris Hoogendyk - O__ Systems Administrator c/ /'_ --- Biology Geology Departments (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center ~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst hoogen...@bio.umass.edu --- Erdös 4
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
On Thursday 17 December 2009, hc...@mail.ewind.com wrote: re: CP/M No S-100 bus systems mentioned yet? Sorry, my omission. The first gizmo I ever built, in 1979, was a Quest Super Elf, which has an expansion connector on its board that allowed an s-100 buss backplane to be plugged into it. It had an RCA 1802 cpu, running at a whopping 1.79mhz, but its full machine cycle was 8 clocks. I wrote, in hex by looking it up in the excellent rca programmers manual, entering it into memory from a hex monitor using a 6 digit led display, a program to take a finished tv commercial tape from the production guys, run the tape deck to search for and mark the first frame of video to see air, tell it how long the commercial was in time with 6 presets from 10s to 2m. It would then back the machine up about 12 seconds, roll it fwd and enable the insert edit mode of the machine and lay a new, frame accurate 10 second academy countdown leader that I wrote the routine for and built the hardware to display it in 103 line high characters, disappearing at T-2.0 seconds, laying a trigger tone for the automatic station break machine at T-5.0 secs in the process, and continue to the end, laying another trigger tone on the 2nd audio channel 5 seconds from the last frame to air. In use for a decade+ at KRCR in Redding CA where I was the ACE at the time. I still have a paper copy of the program on one of the higher bookshelves above me. And given enough time access to graveyard electronics, I could rebuild the cg and interface boards yet. Simple stuff really, ran in about 1200 bytes of the $400 4k static ram board I bought and built for it. Lots of it was lookup tables, at least 40% of the ram used, was used as lookup. Self modifying code snippets scattered all thru it to conserve ram, designed in without ever having a clue as to how much ram it would take to do the job and I was surprised that it came in at the size it did. And dead stable despite the self-modifying as it effectively rebooted itself at the end of every job. It was a job humans were doing, and screwing up the timing of, and it saved a generation of dubbing loss, a very valuable feature in the days of u-matic tape machines being used in tv broadcasting. Biggest problem was in getting the production people to leave me 15 seconds of good black in front of the commercial itself I love to remember, but really, this is off topic... -- Cheers, Gene There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them. https://www.nrahq.org/nrabonus/accept-membership.asp The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
From: Chris Hoogendyk hoogen...@bio.umass.edu
Sent: Thursday, 2009/December/17 10:07
Steve Lindemann wrote:
I think I still have a Model B in the loft somewhere...
Kevin
I've seen CP/M mentioned but no mention of the venerable Kaypro! Oh
those were the days 8^)
But my first digital computer (at work) was a Raytheon 703 with paper
tape to load programs (after you fingered in the boot) and output was
the lights on the front panel. I also worked on analog computers for
a number of years, it wasn't so much programming as re-engineering. I
actually do miss those days.
A skilled practitioner could get 5 digits out of this baby:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule (I still have the yellow one).
If you needed more rigorous but still relatively easy and quick, you
would use this: http://ljkrakauer.com/CRC99ph/CRCbook.htm.
I still have my KE Log Log Duplex Decitrig. It still works. And it's
still aligned despite it's being bamboo.
Learning to calculate with slide rules is an important step to being
numerate. You can forget actually using the slide rule. But being able
to hammer out answers on it for complex problems leads to a really good
ability to estimate answers. That way when the nice digital CPU coughs
up a digital hairball answer to a problem you can see the error at a
glance.
{^_^}
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
hc...@mail.ewind.com wrote: My first home computer was a Godbout S-100 bus system running a dual 8085/8088 CPU board. At that time, the future in operating systems was going to be CP/M 86. You and Jerry Pournelle :-)
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
jdow wrote: From: Chris Hoogendyk hoogen...@bio.umass.edu Sent: Thursday, 2009/December/17 10:07 Steve Lindemann wrote: I think I still have a Model B in the loft somewhere... Kevin I've seen CP/M mentioned but no mention of the venerable Kaypro! Oh those were the days 8^) But my first digital computer (at work) was a Raytheon 703 with paper tape to load programs (after you fingered in the boot) and output was the lights on the front panel. I also worked on analog computers for a number of years, it wasn't so much programming as re-engineering. I actually do miss those days. A skilled practitioner could get 5 digits out of this baby: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule (I still have the yellow one). If you needed more rigorous but still relatively easy and quick, you would use this: http://ljkrakauer.com/CRC99ph/CRCbook.htm. I still have my KE Log Log Duplex Decitrig. It still works. And it's still aligned despite it's being bamboo. Learning to calculate with slide rules is an important step to being numerate. You can forget actually using the slide rule. But being able to hammer out answers on it for complex problems leads to a really good ability to estimate answers. That way when the nice digital CPU coughs up a digital hairball answer to a problem you can see the error at a glance. bingo. I like the way you stated that. -- --- Chris Hoogendyk - O__ Systems Administrator c/ /'_ --- Biology Geology Departments (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center ~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst hoogen...@bio.umass.edu --- Erdös 4
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
On Thu, 17 Dec 2009, jdow wrote:
I still have my KE Log Log Duplex Decitrig. It still works. And it's
still aligned despite it's being bamboo.
Ah, you've got the newer cheaper model. I inherited mine from my father
(40's vintage) and it has a rosewood core.
In my freshman year of college, (1970) we had to take a slide-rulesmanship
class, given pages of number problems were graded on speed and accuracy
of working those problems (shades of grade school ;).
Learning to calculate with slide rules is an important step to being
numerate. You can forget actually using the slide rule. But being able
to hammer out answers on it for complex problems leads to a really good
ability to estimate answers. That way when the nice digital CPU coughs
up a digital hairball answer to a problem you can see the error at a
glance.
That's because the slide rule doesn't give you the exponent, only the
mantissa. So part of that slide-rulesmanship class was learning to
do the exponent calculations in your head rapidly and accurately.
Great for looking at gobs of numbers and figuring out the OOM of
the answer.
--
Dave Funk University of Iowa
dbfunk (at) engineering.uiowa.eduCollege of Engineering
319/335-5751 FAX: 319/384-0549 1256 Seamans Center
Sys_admin/Postmaster/cell_adminIowa City, IA 52242-1527
#include std_disclaimer.h
Better is not better, 'standard' is better. B{
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
On Thursday 17 December 2009, jdow wrote:
From: Chris Hoogendyk hoogen...@bio.umass.edu
Sent: Thursday, 2009/December/17 10:07
Steve Lindemann wrote:
I think I still have a Model B in the loft somewhere...
Kevin
I've seen CP/M mentioned but no mention of the venerable Kaypro! Oh
those were the days 8^)
But my first digital computer (at work) was a Raytheon 703 with paper
tape to load programs (after you fingered in the boot) and output was
the lights on the front panel. I also worked on analog computers for
a number of years, it wasn't so much programming as re-engineering. I
actually do miss those days.
A skilled practitioner could get 5 digits out of this baby:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule (I still have the yellow one).
If you needed more rigorous but still relatively easy and quick, you
would use this: http://ljkrakauer.com/CRC99ph/CRCbook.htm.
I still have my KE Log Log Duplex Decitrig. It still works. And it's
still aligned despite it's being bamboo.
So do I, but mine is alu, and corrosion over about 50 years has taken its
toll on how smoothly it operates. But like yours, it still worrks, just
needs a shot of wd-40 occasionally.
Learning to calculate with slide rules is an important step to being
numerate. You can forget actually using the slide rule. But being able
to hammer out answers on it for complex problems leads to a really good
ability to estimate answers. That way when the nice digital CPU coughs
up a digital hairball answer to a problem you can see the error at a
glance.
Yup, great teacher, for a kid with a grammer school education way back when
the 50L6-gt was a brand new tube.
{^_^}
--
Cheers, Gene
There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order.
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them.
https://www.nrahq.org/nrabonus/accept-membership.asp
Q: How does a Unix guru have sex?
A: unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck;more;yes;umount;sleep
-- unknown source
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
On Thursday 17 December 2009, Robert Ober wrote: hc...@mail.ewind.com wrote: My first home computer was a Godbout S-100 bus system running a dual 8085/8088 CPU board. At that time, the future in operating systems was going to be CP/M 86. You and Jerry Pournelle :-) Yeah, but Jerry is relatively new. I started out reading all of Doc Smiths stuff as soon as I could read, eagerly awaiting the next issue of whatever SF rag my uncle was subbed to in the early 40's, when they could find enough paper to publish it. -- Cheers, Gene There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them. https://www.nrahq.org/nrabonus/accept-membership.asp Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge it.
RE: OT Re: Museum piece...
as far as museum pieces go, i submit that my first was an Apple 2E if i remember correctly.. BRUN BEERRUN was an interesting game, or something to that effect... ;-) ...and (snore) i also programmed a helicopter to fly across the top and drop a bomb on a space invader and go boom... wow huh? anyways, my FAVORITE was always the VAX !!! DEC VAX 11/785 to be more concise... although 11/780's and 11/750's and microVAXes were fun to play, errr work with too... set proc /priv=ALL eh? - rh
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
On Thursday 17 December 2009, R-Elists wrote: as far as museum pieces go, i submit that my first was an Apple 2E if i remember correctly.. BRUN BEERRUN was an interesting game, or something to that effect... ;-) ...and (snore) i also programmed a helicopter to fly across the top and drop a bomb on a space invader and go boom... wow huh? anyways, my FAVORITE was always the VAX !!! DEC VAX 11/785 to be more concise... although 11/780's and 11/750's and microVAXes were fun to play, errr work with too... The absolute, without a doubt, biggest POS I ever had to live with was an 11/23 that had more hdwe bugs than all issues of windows combined since DOS5.0. Dec field engineers changed every piece in that thing except the frame rail with the serial number and all they managed to do was convert a daily crash into an every 10 minute crash. When it started costing us money because we were selling tooth paste instead of dog food when a switch didn't get done, I blew up, and before I was off the phone, the head computer guy at CBS was packing up his test mule to send to me that he used to check stuff out with before sending it out to the affiliates. We got the legal dicks at DEC at accept that CBS and WDTV were trading seriel numbers so we still had a support contract. A contract which at the time I considered worthless, but at the time, the docs on that 11/23 were not for sale except possibly at gunpoint in the parking lot, so my hands were also rather effectively tied. Hugo's machine worked flawlessly, but because the machine I sent Hugo was a genuine lemon, he could no longer fix other stations problems CBS was forced into replacing the whole maryann at all affiliates with an industrial IBM, and an artic card. So Dec's ineptness at honoring a service contract at a single affiliate out in the WV mountains cost CBS at least $300K, and that, multiplied a few times no doubt contributed to the demise of DEC. Couldn't have happened to nicer folks. Field office was 30 miles away in Morgantown but they often didn't show up in the same week they were called. Funny thing, the the service contract said 4 hour response. They treated us like stray dogs AFAIAC. -- Cheers, Gene There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them. https://www.nrahq.org/nrabonus/accept-membership.asp Ad astra per aspera. [To the stars by aspiration.]
RE: OT Re: Museum piece...
The absolute, without a doubt, biggest POS I ever had to live with was an 11/23 that had more hdwe bugs than all issues of windows combined since DOS5.0. Dec field engineers changed every piece in that thing except the frame rail with the serial number and all they managed to do was convert a daily crash into an every 10 minute crash. snip -- Cheers, Gene wow, Gene, that is a bummer, sincerely sorry to hear about that episode... i was just a wee tiny lad when you (cough) more experienced folks were using tin cans string... ;- did 11/23 meant it was 23 months off the engineering board? i dont recall ever having an issue with DEC stuff yet maybe that was because they had pocket burns up to the elbow on their arms ? - rh
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
On Thursday 17 December 2009, R-Elists wrote: The absolute, without a doubt, biggest POS I ever had to live with was an 11/23 that had more hdwe bugs than all issues of windows combined since DOS5.0. Dec field engineers changed every piece in that thing except the frame rail with the serial number and all they managed to do was convert a daily crash into an every 10 minute crash. snip -- Cheers, Gene wow, Gene, that is a bummer, sincerely sorry to hear about that episode... i was just a wee tiny lad when you (cough) more experienced folks were using tin cans string... We were just a slight more advanced than that. I went to Kalifornia to make my million and didn't, but that's another story. While there in '60 I got to work for several months as a bench tech for an outfit building the first pair of the then smallest tv cameras in the world. BW of course, 2.5 in diameter about a foot long out of the case. We had the breadboard working fairly well but it was ugly as sin with parts flying out of it nearly everywhere. About 10 minutes after I arrived one morning the front door opened up and a couple of civilians plus about 6 copies of some navy folks with silver gold on their shoulders walked in. Wanted to see it work. In the dark. So as it was showing a good pix of the shop area on a monitor, Joe picked it up, cleared one side of one of the benches drawers out, set it in gently and closed the drawer on the coax cable that was both video and power supply. 3 seconds later the auto target finally got there and a very nice pix of the wood grain of the drawers plywood back was showing on the monitor, slightly out of focus. Joe offered to trim the focus but the silvered gent said it won't be necessary, but do you have an office with a few chairs so we can talk. Later I found out that one of those civies was Jacques Cousteau, who was one of the 2 guys in that 6 foot pressure ball in Feb '61 when that dive was made. We did, and 3 hours later had a contract to put those two cameras on the Trieste as soon as we could get the pressure cases built. Those were headed for the bottom of the Challenger Deep, 37,000+ feet in the big pond. Short story, we did, and they worked. And don't let anyone tell you water is not compressible. The Trieste ran on big banks of sears die hard batteries and were not protected from the pressure. Each cell had a small extension neck screwed into it, and a small balloon with about a cup of battery acid in it was snapped on. A wire cage kept the balloons from being carried too far by the currents. One of the pix they brought back showed one rack of batteries, with the balloons either out of sight or only about 1/4 high above the neck, the squeeze of 17,000 psi was on. The batteries didn't care, they Just Worked(TM). ;- did 11/23 meant it was 23 months off the engineering board? At this late date, I haven't a clue exactly what the 11/23 meant. That was a weird beastie, the app was written in pascal, and it was recompiled at boot time. So they could call it up, upload a new version of the app, and reboot it as they were logging out. The reboot of course took several minutes, so they had to choose a time when the schedule was empty for an hour or more when they did that. We had a vt-220 that stayed logged in all the time so we could make emergency schedule changes, but that turned out to be no job at all, and when it was the vt-220 that failed, the HOT went up in smoke, was when I re-wrote the vt-100 proggy we had for the coco3, and turned it into a vt-220. That was fairly easy cuz the only real change in the protocol was the esc sequence, it became a full 8 bit byte but 99% of the rest of it was identical. i dont recall ever having an issue with DEC stuff yet maybe that was because they had pocket burns up to the elbow on their arms ? My impression of the field engineers knowledge was that it was nil, other than the rote stuff, DEC had taught him. And I suspect Joanne would back me up on that. Those guys couldn't replace a stuck output cuz it had an open collector in a 7406 with a gun to their head, no idea how to troubleshoot to the critters part level with a good scope, and little or no idea which end of a soldering iron got hot. He drug out a wood burning kit from ungar once to do something and I unplugged it 3 times before he got the message that he wasn't going to use that piece of blow every chip in the building crap on my watch. I went and got my bench iron, a fairly fancy, grounded tip, variable temp controlled iron and a roll of silver bearing solder and did it my self. And he was surprised as all get out when a pair of 5 curved nose suture clamps came off my T-shirt collar and grabbed that stuff about 10x tighter than he would ever get with his worn out radio shack special long noses. Ditto the pair of 4 flush cut diagonals I used to clean up the surplus leads on the other side of
Re: OT Re: Museum piece...
From: Gene Heskett gene.hesk...@verizon.net
Sent: Thursday, 2009/December/17 21:21
My impression of the (DEC) field engineers knowledge was that it was nil,
other
than the rote stuff, DEC had taught him. And I suspect Joanne would back
me
up on that. Those guys couldn't replace a stuck output cuz it had an open
collector in a 7406 with a gun to their head, no idea how to troubleshoot
to
the critters part level with a good scope, and little or no idea which end
of a soldering iron got hot. He drug out a wood burning kit from ungar
once to
do something and I unplugged it 3 times before he got the message that he
wasn't going to use that piece of blow every chip in the building crap on
my
watch. I went and got my bench iron, a fairly fancy, grounded tip,
variable
temp controlled iron and a roll of silver bearing solder and did it my
self. And he was surprised as all get out when a pair of 5 curved nose
suture
clamps came off my T-shirt collar and grabbed that stuff about 10x tighter
than he would ever get with his worn out radio shack special long noses.
Ditto the pair of 4 flush cut diagonals I used to clean up the surplus
leads on the other side of the board. Not to mention the alky and
q-tips used to
clean up after myself. He/they had just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
Gene, it's HP 2100S computers that I know. And I was able to accurately
diagnose at least one problem before the substitute tech figured it out.
He looked at me with a strange expression on his face. The usual guy
had not prepared him. The usual fellow and I had a good rapport. I learned
to describe problems well enough he could diagnose them quickly and fix
them. (Aside from the digital tape drives in those old 8500 consoles the
basic setup was quite reliable. Even the Versatec wet printers did their
job very well on simple routine maintenance.)
I have experience on DEC PDP-11 machines and VAXen. But it's limited.
Now, if you want to get me rolling about an incompetent computer
company just mention GRiD and their Compass not really a laptop computer.
Even the bugs were themselves buggy. (We had to own 6 of them to keep 5
running most of the time. The displays went out regularly. And the OS
would lock up at peculiar times just because it felt like it when
trying to talk to an HPIB device. (It had built in HPIB to talk to its
disk drive etc.) Wikipiddle accuses it of being a laptop. All I can do
is snicker about that assertion. Then they continue the phrase to call
it a computer. Admittedly it was, on brief occasions, a computer. But
it spent too much time emulating a doorstop to be worthy of its price.
{^_^}
