Re: Screen sizes. Was Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On 25 April 2016 at 23:46, Swift Griggs wrote: > On Mon, 25 Apr 2016, ben wrote: >> PS: I hate OS's for upgrading the screen resolution to get more crappy >> dancing toasters. BRING BACK 640x480. I can READ the SCREEN. > > Amen to that. I have macular degeneration in my

Re: High resolution screens are great for typography - Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On 4/25/2016 6:56 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > From: Swift Griggs > it's (currently) a big hassle in Windows to get absolutely every font > to get bigger at once. Have you tried right-click on a blank spot on the desktop, 'Properties', 'Setting', 'Advanced'? The window that pops up

Re: High resolution screens are great for typography - Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On 4/25/2016 6:15 PM, Swift Griggs wrote: On Mon, 25 Apr 2016, Toby Thain wrote: Incorrect. Scalable system (& third party) fonts have been with us for more than 30 years, as I said. Though you are quite correct, it doesn't mean that scalable fonts are everywhere. They might be present more

Re: High resolution screens are great for typography - Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On 2016-04-25 8:15 PM, Swift Griggs wrote: On Mon, 25 Apr 2016, Toby Thain wrote: Incorrect. Scalable system (& third party) fonts have been with us for more than 30 years, as I said. Though you are quite correct, it doesn't mean that scalable fonts are everywhere. They might be present

Re: High resolution screens are great for typography - Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

> From: Swift Griggs > it's (currently) a big hassle in Windows to get absolutely every font > to get bigger at once. Have you tried right-click on a blank spot on the desktop, 'Properties', 'Setting', 'Advanced'? The window that pops up allows you to change i) on older Windows,

Re: High resolution screens are great for typography - Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

> On Apr 25, 2016, at 8:15 PM, Swift Griggs wrote: > > On Mon, 25 Apr 2016, Toby Thain wrote: >> Incorrect. Scalable system (& third party) fonts have been with us for >> more than 30 years, as I said. > > Though you are quite correct, it doesn't mean that scalable

Re: High resolution screens are great for typography - Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On Mon, 25 Apr 2016, Toby Thain wrote: > Incorrect. Scalable system (& third party) fonts have been with us for > more than 30 years, as I said. Though you are quite correct, it doesn't mean that scalable fonts are everywhere. They might be present more or less everywhere in MacOS and maybe

Re: High resolution screens are great for typography - Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On 2016-04-25 6:34 PM, ben wrote: On 4/25/2016 3:55 PM, Toby Thain wrote: There is no upper limit to size & more pixels means better fidelity to letterforms and therefore better legibility, not worse. Ask a typographer anything. --Toby I suspect other that TEX fonts, You cannot get fonts to

Re: High resolution screens are great for typography - Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On 4/25/2016 3:55 PM, Toby Thain wrote: There is no upper limit to size & more pixels means better fidelity to letterforms and therefore better legibility, not worse. Ask a typographer anything. --Toby I suspect other that TEX fonts, You cannot get fonts to scale properly for the bigger

Re: Screen sizes. Was Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On 04/25/2016 02:46 PM, Swift Griggs wrote: > On Mon, 25 Apr 2016, ben wrote: >> PS: I hate OS's for upgrading the screen resolution to get more >> crappy dancing toasters. BRING BACK 640x480. I can READ the >> SCREEN. > > Amen to that. I have macular degeneration in my retinae. It's not >

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 2:17 PM, wrote: > >> The >> other is that many Amigas had processor "slots" (with edge connectors) >> rather than some tiny fiddly ball-grid array etc... but I'm not a EE; so >> maybe that's bunk. >> >> > High clock rates for data busses of modern systems

RE: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

> -Original Message- > From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Noel > Chiappa > Sent: 25 April 2016 17:51 > To: cctalk@classiccmp.org > Cc: j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu > Subject: Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business? > >

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

> From: Jules Richardson > I think my personal view is that I'll consider modern replacements to > things when it's impossible to use the originals - but not simply for > reasons of speed, cost, convenience. This sounds like it's not _that_ far from my position, which is that I

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On Sat, 23 Apr 2016, Chris Hanson wrote: > I want to use the systems as a whole enough not to just live in emulation, > but I only have a limited amount of time to spend with them, so replacing > just a few subsystems in ways that make the use of the overall systems > smoother seems like a

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On Mon, 25 Apr 2016, Paul Koning wrote: > I know some very ancient MIPS processors had oddball required delays > ("load delay"?) that went away after. And there's the misbegotten > "branch delay slot" -- but that is part of the architecture and applies > to all MIPS even long after the reason

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

> On Apr 25, 2016, at 11:05 AM, Swift Griggs wrote: > > On Fri, 22 Apr 2016, Sean Conner wrote: > >> One major problem with adding a faster CPU to an SGI is the MIPS chip >> itself---code compiled for one MIPS CPU (say, the R3000) won't run on >> another MIPS CPU (say,

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On Fri, 22 Apr 2016, Sean Conner wrote: > One major problem with adding a faster CPU to an SGI is the MIPS chip > itself---code compiled for one MIPS CPU (say, the R3000) won't run on > another MIPS CPU (say, the R4400) due to the differences in the pipeline. Oh and you are so totally correct.

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

Overall I'm personally much more about using the system *as a whole* than using it *as it was*. For example, I have a Mac IIci with maxed-out RAM, some large SCSI disks, Ethernet, and an accelerated NuBus video card, all possible at the time. (Though 128MB RAM and the 1GB disks would have

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On 04/23/2016 10:37 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > From: Jules Richardson > I can't see the point in modern upgrades .. At the point where people > start adding emulated storage, USB interfaces, VGA display hardware > etc. it stops being a vintage system and starts being a modern

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

> From: Jules Richardson > I can't see the point in modern upgrades .. At the point where people > start adding emulated storage, USB interfaces, VGA display hardware > etc. it stops being a vintage system and starts being a modern version > which just happens to still have a

RE: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

> Honestly, I can't see the point in modern upgrades except perhaps for > temporary use in order to get data to/from original equipment. At the point > where people start adding emulated storage, USB interfaces, VGA display > hardware etc. it stops being a vintage system and starts being a modern

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On 04/22/2016 01:51 PM, Eric Christopherson wrote: I like the new types of peripherals but it makes me a little uncomfortable knowing that e.g. in the case of the uIEC-SD for Commodores, the clock speed of the peripheral is 16 to 20 times that of the original host CPU. Honestly, I can't see

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On Sat, 23 Apr 2016, Sean Conner wrote: > > > One major problem with adding a faster CPU to an SGI is the MIPS chip > > > itself---code compiled for one MIPS CPU (say, the R3000) won't run on > > > another MIPS CPU (say, the R4400) due to the differences in the pipeline. > > > MIPS compilers

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On 04/22/2016 01:03 PM, Swift Griggs wrote: Remember all the accelerator boards for the Mac, Amiga, and even PCs in the 90's ? I've often wished that I could get something similar on my older SGI systems. Well, I seem to remember that some of the desktop SGI machines could take a variety of

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On 23/04/2016 06:16, Eric Smith wrote: On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 9:29 PM, Sean Conner wrote: One major problem with adding a faster CPU to an SGI is the MIPS chip itself---code compiled for one MIPS CPU (say, the R3000) won't run on another MIPS CPU (say, the R4400) due to

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 9:29 PM, Sean Conner wrote: > One major problem with adding a faster CPU to an SGI is the MIPS chip > itself---code compiled for one MIPS CPU (say, the R3000) won't run on > another MIPS CPU (say, the R4400) due to the differences in the pipeline. > MIPS

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

It was thus said that the Great Swift Griggs once stated: > > Remember all the accelerator boards for the Mac, Amiga, and even PCs in the > 90's ? I've often wished that I could get something similar on my older SGI > systems. For example, fitting an R16k into an O2 or doing dynamic >

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On 22/04/2016 21:38, Jan Adelsbach wrote: Older SGI's have a VME bus and the GIO/GIO64 bus used for I think the Indigo's and Indys and the small Challenges is also documented. yes, it could be obtained through the Developer Program (I have a copy), though I seem to recall some strings

Re: Apple LaserWriter - was Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On Fri, 22 Apr 2016, Toby Thain wrote: Yes, it had RS232 serial (and AppleTalk), like all the early PostScript devices. It wasn't _that_ fast, though: 12 MHz 68K running an interpreted language it would certainly not be fast by any recent standards, and I had always assumed that the speed

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On Fri, 22 Apr 2016, et...@757.org wrote: > SGI stuff is still much under wraps as far as I know. Thats why NetBSD > and similar for SGI are still pretty rudimentary. All propriatary, those > groups don't want to use stolen info, and who knows if the documentation > still even exists after the

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

> On Apr 22, 2016, at 2:09 PM, Mike Stein wrote: > > - Original Message - > From: "Guy Sotomayor" > Sent: Friday, April 22, 2016 2:25 PM > ... >> Most companies would rather > spend their time and budget doing things for a high ROI and for

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

- Original Message - From: "Guy Sotomayor" Sent: Friday, April 22, 2016 2:25 PM ... >Most companies would rather spend their time and budget doing things for a high ROI and for large and growing markets. >TTFN - Guy True in general of course and a board

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

The same is true of the CosmosEx device I've been thinking of getting for my Atari STs; it has a Raspberry Pi inside. That thing is rad. I didn't know about it. I never owned an ST, but lately I've considered getting one. I like the all-in-one designs, but I'd probably go for the full size rig

Apple LaserWriter - was Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On 2016-04-22 4:28 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: On Fri, 22 Apr 2016, Eric Christopherson wrote: I like the new types of peripherals but it makes me a little uncomfortable knowing that e.g. in the case of the uIEC-SD for Commodores, the clock speed of the peripheral is 16 to 20 times that of the

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

The way one would implement such accelerator boards over an IO subsystem bus is to use memory-mapped registers and depending upon the accelerator either a single register that executes an instruction on write or a small memory for microcode with some way of triggering execution. Older SGI's

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On Fri, 22 Apr 2016, Eric Christopherson wrote: > I've heard about PPC Amigas from time to time. What was the state of > 68K->PPC emulation or dynamic translation on those? >From my perspective it's complicated and sub-optimal but a darn-sight better than nothing. They usually had a hosted 68k

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On Fri, 22 Apr 2016, Eric Christopherson wrote: I like the new types of peripherals but it makes me a little uncomfortable knowing that e.g. in the case of the uIEC-SD for Commodores, the clock speed of the peripheral is 16 to 20 times that of the original host CPU. I keep hatching little

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

I'm most familiar with the Amiga accelerators. I suspect those who produced them were helped out greatly by a couple of factors. One is that the hardware specs were very well known and full schematics were available for most (all?) Amigas. I doubt the same is true of SGI machines. SGI stuff

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On Fri, 22 Apr 2016, Guy Sotomayor wrote: > [...] emulation (or dynamic translation) is fast enough and with the > various virtualization capabilities, it?s not unusual to have multiple > different OS?s running on the same HW. Indeed. My other wish is that someone far brighter than I will

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 1:25 PM, Guy Sotomayor wrote: > > > On Apr 22, 2016, at 11:03 AM, Swift Griggs > wrote: > > > > > > Remember all the accelerator boards for the Mac, Amiga, and even PCs in > the > > 90's ? I've often wished that I could get

Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

> On Apr 22, 2016, at 11:03 AM, Swift Griggs wrote: > > > Remember all the accelerator boards for the Mac, Amiga, and even PCs in the > 90's ? I've often wished that I could get something similar on my older SGI > systems. For example, fitting an R16k into an O2 or

Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

Remember all the accelerator boards for the Mac, Amiga, and even PCs in the 90's ? I've often wished that I could get something similar on my older SGI systems. For example, fitting an R16k into an O2 or doing dynamic translation on a 4.0Ghz i7. I'm most familiar with the Amiga accelerators.