On Thu, 1 Oct 2015 11:08:18 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 30 Sep 2015 05:48:01 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

stuff snipped

I am not sure that the PC revolution would have been as remarkable as it
was
without the clones. They enabled a lot more people access to personal
computing than an IBM-only world would have.

I worked for 5 years for a small high-end clone mfg here in Canada -
the first PCs to be sold with a 3 year warranty.
They were really good machines, at a very competetive price, until a
beancounter took over the company with the help of a socalled "Harvard
MBA" - between the 2 they killed the quality and bled the company into
backrupsy within about 3 years. (I was gone in about 1 1/2)

Those same bean counters ran through my old employer's company destroying
value while alleging to make us more efficient. I think they're soon to
collapse with the coming changes in government contracting.

Compatibility-wise, I think the clones (good ones, anyway) really helped
move the PC revolution along. My first *real* IBM PC cost over $5,000 (this
is when full height diskette drives were also about $600). The clones
helped force prices of all peripherals out of the IBM stratosphere and into
the real world. Eventually I was buying the surplus IBM half-height
diskette drives (from the botched PC JR) for $40 - quite a drop from $600.

Some of the clones offered options that even IBM didn't. One board I bought
had 8 sockets for BIOS chips. That really fascinated my friend who liked to
program in assembler.

Another AT clone had a CPU that wasn't artificially prevented from running
at 8MHz like the IBM AT was for a while.

IIRC, the ultimate test of a PC's compatibility was:

"Can it run flight simulator?"
We has 20Mhz PCs using Harris chips - and we built 12mhz ATs whenIBM
was doing good to get 8 - and soon had 24s running stable, and selling
for less than "Big Blue" sold their 8.
We also had CDRom long before IBM did - as well as providing larger
hard drives. Lots of features that pushed "big Blue" ahead. The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

All Trillium clones passed ALL compatability tests.

On Thu, 1 Oct 2015 11:47:50 -0600, Tony Hwang
wrote:

Don Y wrote:
On 9/30/2015 6:52 AM, rbowman wrote:
On 09/30/2015 03:48 AM, Robert Green wrote:
I am not sure that the PC revolution would have been as remarkable as
it was
without the clones. They enabled a lot more people access to personal
computing than an IBM-only world would have.

I never owned a genuine IBM PC and didn't have compatibility problems.
Some
were hotter than PCs, in more ways than one.

I'm always amused when people I consider to be toward the left end of the
political spectrum favor Apple products. I guess they like the 'my way
or the
highway' approach Apple has always used.

Most of the folks that I know who are into Macs "just want it to work".
They tend not to use esoteric software (e.g., just a "productivity
suite") so can live with the more restrictive offerings that seem
to be available to the Apple world. OTOH, they don't want to have
to spend an afternoon coercing a printer to interoperate with their
computer. Or, deal with DLL hell, The Registry, etc.

A neighbor who frequently called me to sort out his "PC problems"
bought a Mac about two years ago. I've not heard from him (wrt
computer problems) since then! So, either he has decided he
doesn't need all those programs and peripherals that he needed
previously on his PC (doubtful!) *or* the Mac manages to make
it easier for him to make it work without my involvement.

[He's a Republican, if that matters : ]

Old (e.g., 68K) Macs were always BUILT much better than PC's of similar
vintage. But, running MacOS was just impractical (for the sorts of
applications that *I* want). And, they were terribly underpowered
(esp for the price).

Mac is just for general consumers. Is there a Mac used as server?
I had assembled a few PC clone to control mould making machine using
laser beam. Using top quality power supply, memory, 3D capable high
res. graphics card, enterprise class HD. None ever had trouble. This
boxes run only specific application 24/7. Cutting a mould from special
alloy block often takes for days. My SIL owns the shop. Always too much
work to do. Even he makes helicopter engine mounts for military
helicopters. Many things for oil field equipment, etc. He makes mould
for something like RJ45 jack. He is mechanical engineer by training.
Couldn't be happier quitting his desk job and starting his own business.



The university where my wife worked in Health Services used Mac
Medical, on macintosh computers, with a mac based server. It was down
more than my windows network.

Macintosh -


Machine
Always
Crashes
If
Not
The
Operating
System
Hangs

I wasn't impressed. Nor was she.

posted for all of us...



On Tue, 29 Sep 2015 20:20:59 -0600, rbowman
wrote:

On 09/29/2015 06:46 PM, wrote:
You'd be hard pressed to GIVE me a Mitsu. My daughter bought an
Elantra GT. Nice car. A lot less money than my second daughter's Honda
Civic too.

On our honeymoon in Quebec City I rented a first generation Dodge Colt,
which was a rebadged Mitsubichi, figuring a compact would be a little
better for navigating the city than the Continental. I'd driven up in
the Conti, cruising at 100 mph while my bride snoozed. With the Colt,
every time I got up past 25 she started having a panic attack.

In that thing a jaunt up to Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre was a real adventure.
When I came home from Africa in 1975 I bought a 1972 Colt 1600. I
could not drive that car 15 miles without my legs going to sleep - the
seats were that terrible. My brother had a 1973 Cricket - the one year
they were re-badged Colts, not sunbeams - and his seats were fine.
Both cracked heads and had other problems that were deal-killers.
Never touched another one.

The 1972 Renault, and my '67 Peugeot 204 were both better cars
(definitely better rides) .

I had a Mitsu Dodge Ram p/u (small) head cracked. I liked it, had fun
driving it. No fun fixing it. Gone...

--
Tekkie

On Thu, 1 Oct 2015 12:23:55 -0600, Tony Hwang
wrote:

Robert Green wrote:
wrote in message
...
On Wed, 30 Sep 2015 05:48:01 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

stuff snipped

I am not sure that the PC revolution would have been as remarkable as it
was
without the clones. They enabled a lot more people access to personal
computing than an IBM-only world would have.

I worked for 5 years for a small high-end clone mfg here in Canada -
the first PCs to be sold with a 3 year warranty.
They were really good machines, at a very competetive price, until a
beancounter took over the company with the help of a socalled "Harvard
MBA" - between the 2 they killed the quality and bled the company into
backrupsy within about 3 years. (I was gone in about 1 1/2)

Those same bean counters ran through my old employer's company destroying
value while alleging to make us more efficient. I think they're soon to
collapse with the coming changes in government contracting.

Compatibility-wise, I think the clones (good ones, anyway) really helped
move the PC revolution along. My first *real* IBM PC cost over $5,000 (this
is when full height diskette drives were also about $600). The clones
helped force prices of all peripherals out of the IBM stratosphere and into
the real world. Eventually I was buying the surplus IBM half-height
diskette drives (from the botched PC JR) for $40 - quite a drop from $600.

Some of the clones offered options that even IBM didn't. One board I bought
had 8 sockets for BIOS chips. That really fascinated my friend who liked to
program in assembler.

Another AT clone had a CPU that wasn't artificially prevented from running
at 8MHz like the IBM AT was for a while.

IIRC, the ultimate test of a PC's compatibility was:

"Can it run flight simulator?"

--
Bobby G.


Side note, any one wired up an old Imsai box?
Did not play with Z80 cpu? At very early stage
we could assemble Apple II clone. Apples big thing
was using GUI(point and click) on thier OS pretty early.


My first imprssion of both Mac and Wiindoze was :
"Anything that takes that much memory and runs that slow has something
wrong with it"

Back when 4K was a lot of ram.

On Thu, 01 Oct 2015 11:49:45 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 10/1/2015 11:23 AM, Tony Hwang wrote:
Side note, any one wired up an old Imsai box?
Did not play with Z80 cpu? At very early stage
we could assemble Apple II clone. Apples big thing
was using GUI(point and click) on thier OS pretty early.

My first products were i4004 and i8080/8085 based.
I spent a *lot* of time with the Z80 -- I suspect I
could still "hand assemble" machine code (i.e., 16r01xxxx,
16r11xxxx, 16r21xxxx are the "LXI" opcodes (LD BC/DE/HL),
16r76 is HLT, etc.)

Zilog's most coloosal blunder was in not leveraging their Z80
successes (Z280, Z8000, Z80000, Z380, etc.) effectively.
They had to rely on Hitachi to breathe continued life into
the family with the '180 devices...

I "cut my teeth" on Motorola 6809 code.

On 10/1/2015 12:54 PM, wrote:
Side note, any one wired up an old Imsai box?
Did not play with Z80 cpu? At very early stage
we could assemble Apple II clone. Apples big thing
was using GUI(point and click) on thier OS pretty early.

My first imprssion of both Mac and Wiindoze was :
"Anything that takes that much memory and runs that slow has something
wrong with it"

Back when 4K was a lot of ram.

The first Reading Machine (KRM) had 8KB (4KW) of "core".
http://larashapiro.com/category/scrapbook/

Granted, it was a dedicated device but far more complex than
many pieces of bloatware currently offered (where most of the
code is spent drawing pretty GUI's)

On 10/1/2015 12:56 PM, wrote:
Zilog's most coloosal blunder was in not leveraging their Z80
successes (Z280, Z8000, Z80000, Z380, etc.) effectively.
They had to rely on Hitachi to breathe continued life into
the family with the '180 devices...

I "cut my teeth" on Motorola 6809 code.

6809 was considerably more capable than the 8080 and 4004.
The 6800 was more on a par with the 8080. The i4004 would
almost be physically painful coding for -- esp today.

Back then, we counted ram in "dozens of bytes" -- I can
recall 256 bytes being A LOT!!!

wrote:
On Thu, 1 Oct 2015 11:08:18 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

wrote in message
...
On Wed, 30 Sep 2015 05:48:01 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

stuff snipped

I am not sure that the PC revolution would have been as remarkable as it
was
without the clones. They enabled a lot more people access to personal
computing than an IBM-only world would have.

I worked for 5 years for a small high-end clone mfg here in Canada -
the first PCs to be sold with a 3 year warranty.
They were really good machines, at a very competetive price, until a
beancounter took over the company with the help of a socalled "Harvard
MBA" - between the 2 they killed the quality and bled the company into
backrupsy within about 3 years. (I was gone in about 1 1/2)

Those same bean counters ran through my old employer's company destroying
value while alleging to make us more efficient. I think they're soon to
collapse with the coming changes in government contracting.

Compatibility-wise, I think the clones (good ones, anyway) really helped
move the PC revolution along. My first *real* IBM PC cost over $5,000 (this
is when full height diskette drives were also about $600). The clones
helped force prices of all peripherals out of the IBM stratosphere and into
the real world. Eventually I was buying the surplus IBM half-height
diskette drives (from the botched PC JR) for $40 - quite a drop from $600.

Some of the clones offered options that even IBM didn't. One board I bought
had 8 sockets for BIOS chips. That really fascinated my friend who liked to
program in assembler.

Another AT clone had a CPU that wasn't artificially prevented from running
at 8MHz like the IBM AT was for a while.

IIRC, the ultimate test of a PC's compatibility was:

"Can it run flight simulator?"
We has 20Mhz PCs using Harris chips - and we built 12mhz ATs whenIBM
was doing good to get 8 - and soon had 24s running stable, and selling
for less than "Big Blue" sold their 8.
We also had CDRom long before IBM did - as well as providing larger
hard drives. Lots of features that pushed "big Blue" ahead. The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

All Trillium clones passed ALL compatability tests.

i386 based box was embedded diagnostic tool using serial bit shifting
method on logic circuits. Then water cooled back panel, the CDC made
96 layer back panel water cooled. I spent many years at local university
campus. They were multi vendor user for political reasons. DEC, IBM,
CDC, Honeywell. We site EICs were always got along very well. We almost
cross trained ourselves among us, LOL! We used to have a French Bull
made mid-level box which used CMOS VLSI using CML circuitry. One board
was drawing like 35 Amps. We used to call it welding machine. That CMOS
caused lot of headaches caused by static from mis-handling it. Then strict
anti-static measure was implemented which was strictly reinforced. If a
guy was found touching the board with bare hands without glove, strap
and mat, he could be fired on the spot. You know the story about Zenith
laptops during desert storm 1?
What is your back? Process control? Or telemetry? One box solution for
whatever?

Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 10/1/2015 2:20 PM, Tony Hwang wrote:
Uncle Monster wrote:


How come? My self esteem is boosted not having those.
Too many of those things make one dumb and stupid, LOL!
Wal Mart sneakers are just fine with me working in the yard,
walking the dog.

When my kids were in high school they went through that stage.

Dad, I need sneakers.

OK son, here is $25

But dad, Nikes cost $50

OK, buy one now and get the other in a couple of months.


Here is old Korean joke. A kid's family was very poor and his dad giving
his son a pair of new sneakers. He told his son, you have to use this
pair as long as you can. Like you walk barefoot, when some one is around
just put them on and stand there until he is out of sight. After
1950's war Korea was very poor. My Gdad was an old time landlord, so
food was never a problem for the family. Many kids in my generation left
the country during this military dictatorship and economical hardship.
Most of my friends, class mates live and work in Silicon
valley. Aside myself another one is in Ottawa. Spent many years at
Nothern Telecomm. He invested all in his company stock and nothing
much left for him. Feel sorry for him and his family. His specialty is
fiber optics. Getting too old to go back to work.

On Thu, 1 Oct 2015 14:37:05 -0600, Tony Hwang
wrote:

wrote:
On Thu, 1 Oct 2015 11:08:18 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

wrote in message
...
On Wed, 30 Sep 2015 05:48:01 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

stuff snipped

I am not sure that the PC revolution would have been as remarkable as it
was
without the clones. They enabled a lot more people access to personal
computing than an IBM-only world would have.

I worked for 5 years for a small high-end clone mfg here in Canada -
the first PCs to be sold with a 3 year warranty.
They were really good machines, at a very competetive price, until a
beancounter took over the company with the help of a socalled "Harvard
MBA" - between the 2 they killed the quality and bled the company into
backrupsy within about 3 years. (I was gone in about 1 1/2)

Those same bean counters ran through my old employer's company destroying
value while alleging to make us more efficient. I think they're soon to
collapse with the coming changes in government contracting.

Compatibility-wise, I think the clones (good ones, anyway) really helped
move the PC revolution along. My first *real* IBM PC cost over $5,000 (this
is when full height diskette drives were also about $600). The clones
helped force prices of all peripherals out of the IBM stratosphere and into
the real world. Eventually I was buying the surplus IBM half-height
diskette drives (from the botched PC JR) for $40 - quite a drop from $600.

Some of the clones offered options that even IBM didn't. One board I bought
had 8 sockets for BIOS chips. That really fascinated my friend who liked to
program in assembler.

Another AT clone had a CPU that wasn't artificially prevented from running
at 8MHz like the IBM AT was for a while.

IIRC, the ultimate test of a PC's compatibility was:

"Can it run flight simulator?"
We has 20Mhz PCs using Harris chips - and we built 12mhz ATs whenIBM
was doing good to get 8 - and soon had 24s running stable, and selling
for less than "Big Blue" sold their 8.
We also had CDRom long before IBM did - as well as providing larger
hard drives. Lots of features that pushed "big Blue" ahead. The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

All Trillium clones passed ALL compatability tests.

i386 based box was embedded diagnostic tool using serial bit shifting
method on logic circuits. Then water cooled back panel, the CDC made
96 layer back panel water cooled. I spent many years at local university
campus. They were multi vendor user for political reasons. DEC, IBM,
CDC, Honeywell. We site EICs were always got along very well. We almost
cross trained ourselves among us, LOL! We used to have a French Bull
made mid-level box which used CMOS VLSI using CML circuitry. One board
was drawing like 35 Amps. We used to call it welding machine. That CMOS
caused lot of headaches caused by static from mis-handling it. Then strict
anti-static measure was implemented which was strictly reinforced. If a
guy was found touching the board with bare hands without glove, strap
and mat, he could be fired on the spot. You know the story about Zenith
laptops during desert storm 1?
What is your back? Process control? Or telemetry? One box solution for
whatever?
My backround was automotive - then I changed horses and got into
computers. My main job at Trillium was putting CD Rom onto networks
back before Novel knew what a CDRom was, and Unix didn't have a clue
either. The company I worked for was at one time the largest reseller
of hard drives for IBM PC and compatible computers (this was before
the XT) and the largest distributor of CD ROM drives in Canada as well
- We were the first distributor of Hitachi CD ROM drives in Canada -
We put CD Rom towers into university and medical libraries across
Canada.
We also built premium clone computers - with 2 year warranty.

Then the owner hired a "harvard MBA" type manager who wanted to "grow
the company" - and also wanted it for himself. The business was
mismanaged to death in several stages.

On 10/1/2015 11:30 AM, Robert Green wrote:
"rbowman" wrote in message
...
On 09/30/2015 03:48 AM, Robert Green wrote:
I am not sure that the PC revolution would have been as remarkable as it
was
without the clones. They enabled a lot more people access to personal
computing than an IBM-only world would have.

I never owned a genuine IBM PC and didn't have compatibility problems.

It really depended on the clone and what you were doing with it. I have
seen compatibility issues and have worked through some of them, mostly with
high-end graphics and with HW manufacturers deciding to cleverly make use of
areas of memory IBM had marked as "resevered" in their tech manuals.
Remember the days of EMS and expanded memory and programs like 386 to the
Max?

Some were hotter than PCs, in more ways than one.

I've purchased and seen some pretty wild looking CPU coolers. Big copper
pad coolers that look like the Guggenheim museum. Coolers with thin fins
spread out like a card-sharp's show-off deal. Never did get into
overclocking in a big way so I never got into water-cooled rigs. Although I
never saw much point in overclocking, a PC design engineer I talked to said
that overclockers provided excellent feedback about PC designs and
limitations because they were right on the bleeding edge.

I'm always amused when people I consider to be toward the left end of
the political spectrum favor Apple products. I guess they like the 'my
way or the highway' approach Apple has always used.

Hey, even I am considering getting an iPhone because I was unimpressed by
the Android "industry's" reaction to the StageFright bug. It also torques
me up to see that every damn version of Android is slightly different.

Apple controls their whole eco-system and generally delivers a more uniform
experience. When the StageFright bug was found, Google, Samsung and others
appeared to stall, pointing fingers at others while trying to decide who
should fix what. Apple just mostly fixes the stuff without the corporate
drama.

I've read a number of case studies that ask why Apple makes virtually all
the profit in the cell phone industry. (Really, only Samsung makes a
profit - the rest operate at a loss).

http://nyti.ms/1Qp3ipy

The reason is partly snob appeal but it's also because Apples seem to be
very well-liked by the people that use them. Far more so than Android users
like their phones.

As for politics, my wife, a retired Army colonel somewhere to the right of
Atilla the Hun, loves her iPhone. I've always been on the PC/clone side of
the Apple/Wintel war, but I will probably end up getting an iPhone. If it's
going to become the hub of my computer operations, I want it to come from a
company that's on the ball.



I use an I6 *(the previous smaller I4GS was just as good and an easier
fit in your pocket) and will say its a nice
'phone/tablet/clock/radio/gamer/whatever gadget'.

But then again I am still working.

When I retire a *much less expensive*
'phone/tablet/clock/radio/gamer/whatever gadget' will be my choice.

John

wrote:
On Thu, 1 Oct 2015 14:37:05 -0600, Tony Hwang
wrote:

wrote:
On Thu, 1 Oct 2015 11:08:18 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

wrote in message
...
On Wed, 30 Sep 2015 05:48:01 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

stuff snipped

I am not sure that the PC revolution would have been as remarkable as it
was
without the clones. They enabled a lot more people access to personal
computing than an IBM-only world would have.

I worked for 5 years for a small high-end clone mfg here in Canada -
the first PCs to be sold with a 3 year warranty.
They were really good machines, at a very competetive price, until a
beancounter took over the company with the help of a socalled "Harvard
MBA" - between the 2 they killed the quality and bled the company into
backrupsy within about 3 years. (I was gone in about 1 1/2)

Those same bean counters ran through my old employer's company destroying
value while alleging to make us more efficient. I think they're soon to
collapse with the coming changes in government contracting.

Compatibility-wise, I think the clones (good ones, anyway) really helped
move the PC revolution along. My first *real* IBM PC cost over $5,000 (this
is when full height diskette drives were also about $600). The clones
helped force prices of all peripherals out of the IBM stratosphere and into
the real world. Eventually I was buying the surplus IBM half-height
diskette drives (from the botched PC JR) for $40 - quite a drop from $600.

Some of the clones offered options that even IBM didn't. One board I bought
had 8 sockets for BIOS chips. That really fascinated my friend who liked to
program in assembler.

Another AT clone had a CPU that wasn't artificially prevented from running
at 8MHz like the IBM AT was for a while.

IIRC, the ultimate test of a PC's compatibility was:

"Can it run flight simulator?"
We has 20Mhz PCs using Harris chips - and we built 12mhz ATs whenIBM
was doing good to get 8 - and soon had 24s running stable, and selling
for less than "Big Blue" sold their 8.
We also had CDRom long before IBM did - as well as providing larger
hard drives. Lots of features that pushed "big Blue" ahead. The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

All Trillium clones passed ALL compatability tests.

i386 based box was embedded diagnostic tool using serial bit shifting
method on logic circuits. Then water cooled back panel, the CDC made
96 layer back panel water cooled. I spent many years at local university
campus. They were multi vendor user for political reasons. DEC, IBM,
CDC, Honeywell. We site EICs were always got along very well. We almost
cross trained ourselves among us, LOL! We used to have a French Bull
made mid-level box which used CMOS VLSI using CML circuitry. One board
was drawing like 35 Amps. We used to call it welding machine. That CMOS
caused lot of headaches caused by static from mis-handling it. Then strict
anti-static measure was implemented which was strictly reinforced. If a
guy was found touching the board with bare hands without glove, strap
and mat, he could be fired on the spot. You know the story about Zenith
laptops during desert storm 1?
What is your back? Process control? Or telemetry? One box solution for
whatever?
My backround was automotive - then I changed horses and got into
computers. My main job at Trillium was putting CD Rom onto networks
back before Novel knew what a CDRom was, and Unix didn't have a clue
either. The company I worked for was at one time the largest reseller
of hard drives for IBM PC and compatible computers (this was before
the XT) and the largest distributor of CD ROM drives in Canada as well
- We were the first distributor of Hitachi CD ROM drives in Canada -
We put CD Rom towers into university and medical libraries across
Canada.
We also built premium clone computers - with 2 year warranty.

Then the owner hired a "harvard MBA" type manager who wanted to "grow
the company" - and also wanted it for himself. The business was
mismanaged to death in several stages.

Common story with Gung Ho type with fancy degrees, LOL!
I always liked Plextor SCSI drives. I still have some on my desktop.
It has 3 optical drives Blue ray writer, etc. which is handy. I still
use Panasonic CD-RAM too for small back ups.

On Thursday, October 1, 2015 at 1:20:38 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Uncle Monster wrote:
On Thursday, October 1, 2015 at 3:26:39 AM UTC-5, look wrote:
On 10/01/2015 12:18 AM, Uncle Monster wrote:
On Wednesday, September 30, 2015 at 10:38:51 AM UTC-5, bob_villa wrote:

In my experience, I find the opposite...your ilk are the elite, snobbish, Apple-types. You always like to pigeonhole people...that does not work, as you will be wrong most of the time. But you don't actually care...

Gee wiz! I sure am glad I'm not one of the elite Apple using snobs! ^_^


Yah, those snobbish little kids and their Nike sneakers became iPhone/iPad/iPod/iTV iDiots!

I feel so depraved, I mean, deprived because I never had Nike sneakers or an iPhone. My self esteem is shattered. 8-(

[8~{} Uncle Depraved Monster

How come? My self esteem is boosted not having those.
Too many of those things make one dumb and stupid, LOL!
Wal Mart sneakers are just fine with me working in the yard,
walking the dog.

But I wanna be elite! (whiny voice) I never get anything the other kids have. They all point at my thrift store sneakers and clothes and make fun of me. A lot of them won't sit with me in the lunchroom because I don't have a cellphone and they all have iPhone and I don't have anything. (sobbing uncontrollably) I hate them all. o_O

[8~{} Uncle Upset Little Monster

Don Y wrote:
On 10/1/2015 12:05 PM, Tony Hwang wrote:
Don Y wrote:
On 10/1/2015 11:23 AM, Tony Hwang wrote:
Side note, any one wired up an old Imsai box?
Did not play with Z80 cpu? At very early stage
we could assemble Apple II clone. Apples big thing
was using GUI(point and click) on thier OS pretty early.

My first products were i4004 and i8080/8085 based.
I spent a *lot* of time with the Z80 -- I suspect I
could still "hand assemble" machine code (i.e., 16r01xxxx,
16r11xxxx, 16r21xxxx are the "LXI" opcodes (LD BC/DE/HL),
16r76 is HLT, etc.)

Zilog's most coloosal blunder was in not leveraging their Z80
successes (Z280, Z8000, Z80000, Z380, etc.) effectively.
They had to rely on Hitachi to breathe continued life into
the family with the '180 devices...

I always miss Z80 vs. i8080. Got tired of wire wrapping and
bought a battery powered wrap gun.

A friend bought me an electric GD gun as a bday gift. I also
had a "cut and strip" bit (feed kynar wire through hole in
bottom of bit, pull out through an opening in the outer sleeve,
pull trigger and wire is cut to length, stripped and wrapped
in one shot)

At times I found Gardener Denver's
mis-wiring trouble-shooting back panels later on. Tracing wiring was
not that difficult, all the wiring complex was available in micro fiche.

A small crochet hook was indispensible for fishing wires out of the
"rats nest". I worked on large 2 ft x 6 ft panels (military work)
where you were dealing with *thousands* of components on a single
panel (power supplied by 3/4" square -- cross sectional -- copper
"buss bars" running the length of the panels).

I was one man crew, so having a boss was just that. My rank was higher
th.an his on company pay grade. Any way I never put him in any kinda
jam on
technical issues causing customer irritation.

We used paper tape or indented puch card knocking off holes
to program machine code instead toggling buttons of swwitches
on control panel. Good old days. Biggest PSU was +5V Ault unit
which puts out 150A. Some big system needed more than few.

On Thursday, October 1, 2015 at 1:45:16 PM UTC-5, Don Y wrote:
On 10/1/2015 11:34 AM, Tony Hwang wrote:
Don Y wrote:
On 10/1/2015 10:47 AM, Tony Hwang wrote:

Mac is just for general consumers. Is there a Mac used as server?

Yes, there are several 1U Mac servers. Now considerably more practical
as OSX isn't *entirely* geared to single users (as MacOS was)

I had assembled a few PC clone to control mould making machine using
laser beam. Using top quality power supply, memory, 3D capable high
res. graphics card, enterprise class HD. None ever had trouble. This
boxes run

PC's have come a long way since the early/mid 80's. And, applications
are now largely prevented from diddling with specifics of the hardware
as they could "in the old days". E.g., I have software that won't
work with USB serial ports, USB parallel ports, etc. but, instead,
requires *genuine* hardware ports. One early ecad program required
a special mouse card and mouse! (the application talked directly
to the mouse, not a "driver layer")

only specific application 24/7. Cutting a mould from special alloy
block often
takes for days. My SIL owns the shop. Always too much work to do. Even
he makes
helicopter engine mounts for military helicopters. Many things for oil
field
equipment, etc. He makes mould for something like RJ45 jack. He is
mechanical
engineer by training.
Couldn't be happier quitting his desk job and starting his own business.

I've not regretted setting out on my own, decades ago. It let me decide
how I wanted to spend my days -- instead of someone else TELLING me how
they would be spent.

I *do* miss not having a "stationery cupboard" that I could raid for
supplies without worrying about restocking it. Similarly, it would be
nice to be able to have a technician order parts for prototypes instead
of having to do so, myself. I.e., the "grunt work" that I can't
pawn off on someone else as would be the case in a 9-to-5.

OTOH, the idea of having employees would be worse (to me) than having a
*boss*!

What SIL did was gathered round some class mates to form core of the place. All
employees participate in profit sharing. Still he says HR is always stressful.

I would think it would be *moreso* because "everyone has a stake" ("You can't
fire me! I'm a part owner!") and all are/were "friends".

One of the best things (retrospectively) in my career was NOT going into
business with my best friend. We had complimentary talents, similar
outlooks/goals, etc. But, in hindsight, he opted for security and
profits while I opted for diversity and "adventure". I.e., this would
have turned up sooner or later and soured our relationship.

He just turned 40. His goal is to retire at 50. Move
to small Alpine town where daughter can practice(rural family medicine).. They
are avid mountain people, trekking, rock climbing, ice climbing, skiing, etc.

I live in fear of "forced" retirement -- i.e., when my mind or body can
no longer keep up with the goals that I set for myself. My current
project has me taxed to the limits of my abilities -- so much so that,
for the first time in my career, I actually wonder if I can pull it off!

I have no idea what to do *after* this as I'm sure whatever goal I set
*would* be unattainable! :

You can always do what extremely intelligent and creative people have done since the beginning, take on an apprentice and pass on your knowledge to someone younger. I've known a lot of guys who's sons weren't interested in their profession so they had to find a young person who who was fascinated with what they did and eager to learn. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle Curious Monster

On 10/01/2015 09:30 AM, Robert Green wrote:
I've purchased and seen some pretty wild looking CPU coolers. Big copper
pad coolers that look like the Guggenheim museum. Coolers with thin fins
spread out like a card-sharp's show-off deal. Never did get into
overclocking in a big way so I never got into water-cooled rigs. Although I
never saw much point in overclocking, a PC design engineer I talked to said
that overclockers provided excellent feedback about PC designs and
limitations because they were right on the bleeding edge.

We had a few with the old AT form factor that had a few embellishments.
You definitely didn't want to put the tin back on.

Vapor phase cooling, that's where it's at. It wasn't a computer but the
first company I worked for made industrial dielectric preheaters for the
plastics industry. The largest model was 15KW. Then there was the chief
engineer's pet project. He wanted to squeeze 50KW out of a big Eimac
triode and figured vapor phase was the way to go. The condenser had a
striking resemblance to a Falcon radiator. What could go wrong with a
50KW Colpitts oscillator / steam kettle?


Hey, even I am considering getting an iPhone because I was unimpressed by
the Android "industry's" reaction to the StageFright bug. It also torques
me up to see that every damn version of Android is slightly different.

I wasn't even thinking about the iPhones, just the Apple
desktop/laptops. My phone technology is stuck at the $19.95 LG flip
phone level.

I did get an Android tablet when the company decided we needed a tablet
product. As a developer I can attest Google throws a few curves with
every new release. Fortunately I can still build and run the app on my
old 4.0 and it mostly works. From our viewpoint, Android is much handier
since we can just load up the apk and never go anywhere near the Google
store.

Apple controls their whole eco-system and generally delivers a more uniform
experience. When the StageFright bug was found, Google, Samsung and others
appeared to stall, pointing fingers at others while trying to decide who
should fix what. Apple just mostly fixes the stuff without the corporate
drama.

That definitely helps.

The reason is partly snob appeal but it's also because Apples seem to be
very well-liked by the people that use them. Far more so than Android users
like their phones.

They do have a dedicated customer base. The only Apple product I've ever
owned is an iShuffle my boss gave out on Christmas. I didn't really
appreciate the iTunes part of it. I have nothing against Apple but
nobody ever wanted to pay me to develop Apple software. The closest I
ever got was one DoD project where there were some of the 1st gen Macs.
They were crap but they did meet the TEMPEST requirements.\


As for politics, my wife, a retired Army colonel somewhere to the right of
Atilla the Hun, loves her iPhone. I've always been on the PC/clone side of
the Apple/Wintel war, but I will probably end up getting an iPhone. If it's
going to become the hub of my computer operations, I want it to come from a
company that's on the ball.

I pretty much hate phones in general. I guess an iPhone could be okay if
I never had to talk on it.

On 10/01/2015 10:49 AM, Don Y wrote:
Most of the folks that I know who are into Macs "just want it to work".
They tend not to use esoteric software (e.g., just a "productivity
suite") so can live with the more restrictive offerings that seem
to be available to the Apple world. OTOH, they don't want to have
to spend an afternoon coercing a printer to interoperate with their
computer. Or, deal with DLL hell, The Registry, etc.

This goes back a few decades but I mostly associated Macs with desktop
publishing and other artsy endeavors. One quirk I remember as a C
programmer is the Apple II needed some sort of keyboard tweak to handle
C. There was some character it didn't have natively, possibly curly and
square brackets. I don't think it had ~ or ^ but those aren't real
showstoppers.

On 10/1/2015 5:43 PM, Tony Hwang wrote:

We used paper tape or indented puch card knocking off holes
to program machine code instead toggling buttons of swwitches
on control panel. Good old days. Biggest PSU was +5V Ault unit
which puts out 150A. Some big system needed more than few.

I worked on a discrete ECL processor ("ALU", no memory) that
drew 100A @ -5.2VDC. 600 (six hundred) bit data words.
7ns cycle time. (not bad for 30+ years ago!)

You took off all "jewelry" (belt buckles, rings, watches,
metal framed eyeglasses) when you worked on it as a "slip"
would quickly bring the item to cherry red *without*
blowing the power supply fuse/protector!

We had a dedicated 440V service installed just to power the
instrument (used to test the *core* memory in certain aircraft)

On 10/01/2015 12:11 PM, Don Y wrote:
I've not regretted setting out on my own, decades ago. It let me decide
how I wanted to spend my days -- instead of someone else TELLING me how
they would be spent.

I did okay on my own back in the '80s. The one thing I didn't enjoy was
selling myself. Fortunately I'd made a few contacts that kept me in work
but there was always the feeling my eggs were in only a few baskets. The
bookkeeping and so forth didn't do much for me either.

Some people really want to have their own business; I just wanted to
write code.

On Thursday, October 1, 2015 at 2:46:46 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Thu, 1 Oct 2015 11:08:18 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 30 Sep 2015 05:48:01 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

stuff snipped

I am not sure that the PC revolution would have been as remarkable as it
was
without the clones. They enabled a lot more people access to personal
computing than an IBM-only world would have.

I worked for 5 years for a small high-end clone mfg here in Canada -
the first PCs to be sold with a 3 year warranty.
They were really good machines, at a very competetive price, until a
beancounter took over the company with the help of a socalled "Harvard
MBA" - between the 2 they killed the quality and bled the company into
backrupsy within about 3 years. (I was gone in about 1 1/2)

Those same bean counters ran through my old employer's company destroying
value while alleging to make us more efficient. I think they're soon to
collapse with the coming changes in government contracting.

Compatibility-wise, I think the clones (good ones, anyway) really helped
move the PC revolution along. My first *real* IBM PC cost over $5,000 (this
is when full height diskette drives were also about $600). The clones
helped force prices of all peripherals out of the IBM stratosphere and into
the real world. Eventually I was buying the surplus IBM half-height
diskette drives (from the botched PC JR) for $40 - quite a drop from $600.

On 10/1/2015 7:43 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 10:49 AM, Don Y wrote:
Most of the folks that I know who are into Macs "just want it to work".
They tend not to use esoteric software (e.g., just a "productivity
suite") so can live with the more restrictive offerings that seem
to be available to the Apple world. OTOH, they don't want to have
to spend an afternoon coercing a printer to interoperate with their
computer. Or, deal with DLL hell, The Registry, etc.

This goes back a few decades but I mostly associated Macs with desktop
publishing and other artsy endeavors.

Dunno. I only played with 68K Macs as servers of various types
(WWW/FTP/DNS/TFTP/etc.). As such, usually running headless and
"talking " to them over a telnet connection.

One quirk I remember as a C programmer is
the Apple II needed some sort of keyboard tweak to handle C. There was some
character it didn't have natively, possibly curly and square brackets. I don't
think it had ~ or ^ but those aren't real showstoppers.

Trigraphs would handle that. But, from a telnet session, not an issue.

MacOS got *one* thing right, though -- putting the "menubar" for the
"active window" at the top of the screen... instead of wasting all that
screen real-estate drawing menu bars in EVERY application window
(even those without the focus!)

On 10/01/2015 12:42 PM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

When my kids were in high school they went through that stage.

I was in a sporting goods store looking for a new pair of sneakers when
I overheard a mother grilling one of the clerks. She wasn't concerned
about the price but she wanted assurance the kid wasn't buying something
with gang connotations or that woukd get him killed when some real
gangbanger decided he wanted a new pair of Nike Maritan AirPump
Glow-in-the-darks or whatever was the thing that year.

I'm partial to New Balance for that style of show and was amused to find
skinheads like them too. The big N on the side works for them.

On 10/1/2015 7:28 PM, Uncle Monster wrote:

I live in fear of "forced" retirement -- i.e., when my mind or body can no
longer keep up with the goals that I set for myself. My current project
has me taxed to the limits of my abilities -- so much so that, for the
first time in my career, I actually wonder if I can pull it off!

I have no idea what to do *after* this as I'm sure whatever goal I set
*would* be unattainable! :

You can always do what extremely intelligent and creative people have done
since the beginning, take on an apprentice and pass on your knowledge to
someone younger. I've known a lot of guys who's sons weren't interested in
their profession so they had to find a young person who who was fascinated
with what they did and eager to learn. ^_^

But that inherently limits what *I* can learn (other than "how to teach").

I currently prepare "documents" that describe my thought processes for
each aspect of this project in a narrative fashion. So, *they* can
talk to those who follow after me: "Why did he choose to do THIS
instead of THAT? Ahhh... I see!"

It's also a force multiplier: it can talk to N people instead of me
having to answer the same (potentially) question N times from those
N people "in person".

On 10/01/2015 12:49 PM, Don Y wrote:
Zilog's most coloosal blunder was in not leveraging their Z80
successes (Z280, Z8000, Z80000, Z380, etc.) effectively.
They had to rely on Hitachi to breathe continued life into
the family with the '180 devices...

They tried. I was somewhat ****ed when IBM put the Good Housekeping Seal
of Approval on the 8088 piece of crap rather than the Z8000. Turns out
Exxon had bought a major stake in Zilog and IBM was in a ****ing contest
with Exxon so the Z8000 was never on the table. The 68008 had been
considered but IBM didn't think Motorola could reliably supply parts. At
that time Motorola had a bad rep of hanging you out to dry if they got a
massive contract from the auto industry.

I still have a Captain Zilog t-shirt around here someplace.

On 10/1/2015 7:56 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 12:11 PM, Don Y wrote:
I've not regretted setting out on my own, decades ago. It let me decide
how I wanted to spend my days -- instead of someone else TELLING me how
they would be spent.

I did okay on my own back in the '80s. The one thing I didn't enjoy was selling
myself. Fortunately I'd made a few contacts that kept me in work but there was
always the feeling my eggs were in only a few baskets. The bookkeeping and so
forth didn't do much for me either.

Yup. I remember visiting accountant for my first tax return as a business.
He looked over my records and said, "What the hell do you need *me*, for?"
"shrug I dunno. You tell me?!"

My downside was that clients wanted "repeat business" -- but, that would
just be "another project very similar to the one you just finished".
There's no appeal in that, for me. Sure, LOTS of appeal for client
as I am now a "proven quantity" -- especially for projects of that
sort! But, I'm not going to LEARN anything doing "model 2".

Some people really want to have their own business; I just wanted to write code.

Yup. I am a terrible manager! My idea as to "management" is that *I*
should facilitate getting whatever resources those "under me" need.
I shouldn't need to monitor their progress (they're PROFESSIONALS, right?)
or track their attendance, hours, etc. This is contrary to what most
employers consider "management responsibilities".

I also want to be "in the thick of things" -- pushing the technology in
different directions, exploring what *can* be done instead of what
*might*/should be done.

One of the most taxing projects I undertook was writing a user's manual
for an existing device. I.e., I had no say in how the device was designed,
how consistently it was implemented, how reliable it was, etc. Yet, had
to codify all of this in a way that *seemed* intuitive to readers.

[I am NOT keen on writing/composition! OTOH, I learned a lot about how to
organize material in a way that made it easy for folks to navigate and
"recall" -- remember WHERE you found something is as important as
finding it in the first place!]

I also developed ways of doing things that made "typographical errors"
impossible. And, have extended those to other hardware/software design
aspects so you defined something *once* and let the tools ensure that
everything related to that is synthesized *from* that "gold master"
(instead of transcribing things manually, etc.)

On Thursday, October 1, 2015 at 10:02:16 PM UTC-5, Don Y wrote:
On 10/1/2015 7:28 PM, Uncle Monster wrote:

I live in fear of "forced" retirement -- i.e., when my mind or body can no
longer keep up with the goals that I set for myself. My current project
has me taxed to the limits of my abilities -- so much so that, for the
first time in my career, I actually wonder if I can pull it off!

I have no idea what to do *after* this as I'm sure whatever goal I set
*would* be unattainable! :

You can always do what extremely intelligent and creative people have done
since the beginning, take on an apprentice and pass on your knowledge to
someone younger. I've known a lot of guys who's sons weren't interested in
their profession so they had to find a young person who who was fascinated
with what they did and eager to learn. ^_^

But that inherently limits what *I* can learn (other than "how to teach").

I currently prepare "documents" that describe my thought processes for
each aspect of this project in a narrative fashion. So, *they* can
talk to those who follow after me: "Why did he choose to do THIS
instead of THAT? Ahhh... I see!"

It's also a force multiplier: it can talk to N people instead of me
having to answer the same (potentially) question N times from those
N people "in person".

I suppose that would make you a virtual instructor? ^_^

[8~{} Uncle Virtual Monster

On 10/1/2015 7:32 PM, rbowman wrote:

The reason is partly snob appeal but it's also because Apples seem to be
very well-liked by the people that use them. Far more so than Android users
like their phones.

They do have a dedicated customer base. The only Apple product I've ever owned
is an iShuffle my boss gave out on Christmas. I didn't really appreciate the
iTunes part of it. I have nothing against Apple but nobody ever wanted to pay
me to develop Apple software. The closest I ever got was one DoD project where
there were some of the 1st gen Macs. They were crap but they did meet the
TEMPEST requirements.\

Apple products remind me too much of B&O. Too much emphasis on "glitz"
over function. My iPods are tedious to use -- a *mechanical* wheel
(or even a four way navigation bar) would be far more reliable as
an input device than the capacitive "dial" that it employs. Try
using it without WATCHING what you are doing! Ditto for every other
Apple product.

As for politics, my wife, a retired Army colonel somewhere to the right of
Atilla the Hun, loves her iPhone. I've always been on the PC/clone side of
the Apple/Wintel war, but I will probably end up getting an iPhone. If it's
going to become the hub of my computer operations, I want it to come from a
company that's on the ball.

I pretty much hate phones in general. I guess an iPhone could be okay if I
never had to talk on it.

Ditto for hating phones. I don't think I would use an iPhone for
anything that I can't already do with a PDA -- just more horses under
the hood!

On 10/01/2015 01:19 PM, Don Y wrote:
A small crochet hook was indispensible for fishing wires out of the
"rats nest". I worked on large 2 ft x 6 ft panels (military work)
where you were dealing with *thousands* of components on a single
panel (power supplied by 3/4" square -- cross sectional -- copper
"buss bars" running the length of the panels).

Square D, the industrial controls manufacturer, entered the solid state
fray with NORPAK. They were modules a little smaller than a VHS
cartridge that you mounted on a backplane and interconnected with taper
pine jumpers. Each module had a number of discrete gates. As the name
suggests, most of them were NORs with a few NANDs and NOTs for good measure.

Theoretically you can do anything given enough NORs. You can also run up
a hell of a bar tab trying to restore your brain to normal operation
after doing so.

On 10/01/2015 01:56 PM, wrote:
I "cut my teeth" on Motorola 6809 code.

I had a 68000 development board when they first came out, but missed the
6800, 6809, HC08, HC11 and the rest. No particular reason, I just went
down the Intel/Zilog path instead. In later years I went with Atmel
rather than PIC. Again, no particular reason.

On 10/01/2015 02:30 PM, Don Y wrote:
Back then, we counted ram in "dozens of bytes" -- I can
recall 256 bytes being A LOT!!!

I did a hand held pH/ion concentration meter using the 8048. It was fun.
You knew where every damn byte was at all times. The counter top lab
devices used the Z80 and I hardly knew what to do with all that space.

On 10/01/2015 01:45 PM, Tekkie® wrote:
Nah, it's the stuff from Newark, NJ. Maybe the co. was on Corinthian Ave?
Nothing rich about Newark. Maybe made out of parchment paper and cigar
wrappers. I don't think the druggies had blunts then...

Newark is on par with the part of Connecticut where they skin the giant
Naugas.

On 10/01/2015 01:46 PM, wrote:
The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

A moment of silence for DEC...

On 10/01/2015 04:56 PM, wrote:
Then the owner hired a "harvard MBA" type manager who wanted to "grow
the company" - and also wanted it for himself. The business was
mismanaged to death in several stages.

I worked for a company where the CEO's son was a Harvard MBA. The
company had over expanded right before the plastics industry took a hit
with the oil embargo and was having problems. Sonny boy was brought in
to fix things. It took him about a year to fix us into Chapter 11.

Prior to that he'd helped another company. I don't think it was Jim Fixx
but there was some fairly famous runner who had started a couple of
runners' stores in Boston. The kid helped him expand the operation into
bankruptcy too.

On 10/1/2015 8:15 PM, Uncle Monster wrote:
On Thursday, October 1, 2015 at 10:02:16 PM UTC-5, Don Y wrote:
On 10/1/2015 7:28 PM, Uncle Monster wrote:

I live in fear of "forced" retirement -- i.e., when my mind or body can no
longer keep up with the goals that I set for myself. My current project
has me taxed to the limits of my abilities -- so much so that, for the
first time in my career, I actually wonder if I can pull it off!

I have no idea what to do *after* this as I'm sure whatever goal I set
*would* be unattainable! :

You can always do what extremely intelligent and creative people have done
since the beginning, take on an apprentice and pass on your knowledge to
someone younger. I've known a lot of guys who's sons weren't interested in
their profession so they had to find a young person who who was fascinated
with what they did and eager to learn. ^_^

But that inherently limits what *I* can learn (other than "how to teach").

I currently prepare "documents" that describe my thought processes for
each aspect of this project in a narrative fashion. So, *they* can
talk to those who follow after me: "Why did he choose to do THIS
instead of THAT? Ahhh... I see!"

It's also a force multiplier: it can talk to N people instead of me
having to answer the same (potentially) question N times from those
N people "in person".

I suppose that would make you a virtual instructor? ^_^

When writing code, you are encouraged to document what you have done
so those who "come after" can understand what the code is *trying* to do.

Too often, the "commentary" that folks include is ineffective.
For example, the statement:
count++;
means "add one to count". It is not uncommon to see the following
in someone's code:
count++; // add one
D'uh!

The other problem with "commentary" is that it becomes something that
others must "maintain" -- in addition to the code that it documents.

So, the more you write, the more another person will have to
rewrite/modify to reflect any changes that he/she imparts to your code.
Folks being lazy, what ends up happening is the commentary does NOT
get updated. So, the NEXT guy (after the guy who follows you)
scratches his head wondering why the commentary doesn't "make sense".

The alternative is the guy who follows you decides to just REMOVE your
commentary because he doesn't want to bother updating it.

By pulling the bulk of this information *out* of the program and
putting it in a separate document, there is less of a direct tie
to particular program statements (e.g., "count++"). So, less
need to maintain that level of commentary detail.

Instead, you (I) can concentrate on The Big Picture without getting
bogged down in all the trivial details of "implementation".

For example, I have a tiny speech synthesizer that I use in my
current project. Sufficeit to say, there is a LOT of technology
that goes into the algorithms. Trying to explain all of that
*in*/alongside the actual code would add 100 pages or "text"
to the code. And, be confined to *just* text!

By moving the documentation out of the "code", I can add illustrations,
animations and even sound samples to make what would be difficult or
ambiguous to explain in prose far more explicit. And, spare the
future developer/maintainer the effort of having to keep this up
to date to reflect the minutiae of each little change he opts to
impart to my codebase.

As it takes none of my time WHEN IT IS BEING EXAMINED/"read", the
documents can be consumed at leisure.

On 10/1/2015 8:19 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 01:19 PM, Don Y wrote:

Square D, the industrial controls manufacturer, entered the solid state fray
with NORPAK. They were modules a little smaller than a VHS cartridge that you
mounted on a backplane and interconnected with taper pine jumpers. Each module
had a number of discrete gates. As the name suggests, most of them were NORs
with a few NANDs and NOTs for good measure.

Theoretically you can do anything given enough NORs. You can also run up a hell
of a bar tab trying to restore your brain to normal operation after doing so.

There was a logic family (for sea of gates implementations) called STL.
Basically, single transistors (inverters!) that you would wire together
(on the die) to form gates. Tying collectors together ("wired-or"),
inverting inputs/outputs, etc.

It was grossly inefficient -- but very versatile.

On 10/1/2015 8:31 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 01:46 PM, wrote:
The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

A moment of silence for DEC...

(sigh) I had a 3000 AXP that I *swear* you could use for a jack stand,
in a pinch! Damn thing almost required two people to carry it
(exaggeration)! 256 bit wide memory -- back in the 90's!

On 10/1/2015 8:01 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 12:42 PM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

When my kids were in high school they went through that stage.

I was in a sporting goods store looking for a new pair of sneakers when I
overheard a mother grilling one of the clerks. She wasn't concerned about the
price but she wanted assurance the kid wasn't buying something with gang
connotations or that woukd get him killed when some real gangbanger decided he
wanted a new pair of Nike Maritan AirPump Glow-in-the-darks or whatever was the
thing that year.

I was in a local mall some years back wearing a bandana on my head.
Rent-a-cop approached me and told me I had to remove the bandana:
"gang affiliations" (Really??? Do you KNOW how OLD I AM? Do you think
people BUY this hair color in a BOTTLE??? :).

Stunned, I asked, "So, does that mean women wearing blouses of this same
color have to remove their BLOUSES in order to shop, here??"

I'm partial to New Balance for that style of show and was amused to find
skinheads like them too. The big N on the side works for them.

On 10/1/2015 8:28 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 02:30 PM, Don Y wrote:
Back then, we counted ram in "dozens of bytes" -- I can
recall 256 bytes being A LOT!!!

I did a hand held pH/ion concentration meter using the 8048. It was fun. You
knew where every damn byte was at all times. The counter top lab devices used
the Z80 and I hardly knew what to do with all that space.

I designed a Z80 box that had 16K of RAM that was EXPANDABLE IN 6KB (six)
increments! (think about how I did *that*! :)

On 10/01/2015 11:38 PM, rbowman wrote:
I worked for a company where the CEO's son was a Harvard MBA. The company had over expanded right before the plastics industry took a hit with the oil embargo and was having problems. Sonny boy was brought in to fix things. It took him about a year to
fix us into Chapter 11.

Yah, that's quite common.
Dad starts a business, devotes all his time and energy to it and ignores his kids.
As we all know, ignored children are often under-performers.
Few people can have their cake and eat it too.

On 10/1/2015 11:31 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 01:46 PM, wrote:
The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

A moment of silence for DEC...

DEC, DG, Wang are at the forefront of technology. Big (and smart)
companies that will go on forever.

As Ken Olsen wisely pointed out "why would anyone want a computer on
their desk?" Such a great vision.