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#281
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On 5 Jan 2005 11:04:16 -0800, "Dave Hall" wrote:
Hmmmm, I am reminded of a little TI unit I had with a membrane "keyboard" whose "harddrive" was my cassette tape recorder. I am not a techie (I was in school getting my accounting degree at the time), but I managed to program a Tic-Tac-Toe game in Basic on it. 16K of total memory if I recall. The "monitor" was my TV set. Dave Hall Cassette recorders? Cassette recorders! Hell son, I wrote the book on cassette recorders for computer data storage! Literally. I was even paid for it, although the company never published it -- for some odd reason. The really odd thing is that you can find the book listed in several on-line book stores. :-) --RC "Sometimes history doesn't repeat itself. It just yells 'can't you remember anything I've told you?' and lets fly with a club. -- John W. Cambell Jr. |
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#282
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On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 11:07:50 -0500, Silvan
wrote: Jim Warman wrote: HOWEVER.... I can still vaguely recall single side, low density that couldn't hold what is now a smallish *,gif.... While we're at it... how many can remember when a 44Meg HDD was HUGE!!! I can remember when IBM maintained no one would ever need a hard drive larger than 10Meg. I think the huge drive Dad used to have at work was only 32 MB or so. It was the size of a dormitory refrigerator. Was it the kind with the removable disk packs that you loaded and unloaded through the top of the machine? We had an incident once where the brake mechanism on one of those broke and the disks didn't stop spinning when it was shut down to change disk packs. The operator lifted out the disks without realizing they were still spinning -- until he tried to turn and the gryoscopic forces slammed him into the wall! Ah, memories! --RC "Sometimes history doesn't repeat itself. It just yells 'can't you remember anything I've told you?' and lets fly with a club. -- John W. Cambell Jr. |
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#283
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I can remember when I was the envy of my block because I had a Casio
pocket calculator! IIRC the most impressive thing I did with it was to type in 07734 then turn it upside down. (You have to remember how the LED numbers were formed.) FoggyTown |
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#284
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On 5 Jan 2005 15:38:44 -0800, "foggytown" wrote:
I can remember when I was the envy of my block because I had a Casio pocket calculator! IIRC the most impressive thing I did with it was to type in 07734 then turn it upside down. (You have to remember how the LED numbers were formed.) I was first on my block to have one as well. Later I bought a TI programmable scientific calculator. It cost more then the price of a fully loaded computer does now. But it got me through college math. It was so new the professor didn't realize it could be programmed to do the work for you.  |
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#285
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On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 06:39:10 GMT, "Jim Warman"
wrote: 144Kb though Micro$oft had a way of packing a bit more onto them when they shipped Winders Fer WerkGroops.... HOWEVER.... I can still vaguely recall single side, low density that couldn't hold what is now a smallish *,gif.... While we're at it... how many can remember when a 44Meg HDD was HUGE!!! Heck, I remember when a 10MB drive was the size of a washing machine and cost the earth. Tim Douglass http://www.DouglassClan.com |
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#286
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On 4 Jan 2005 19:10:25 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:
On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 09:25:32 -0800, Tim Douglass wrote: I *do* still have an O-1. I had forgotten about that one. I actually built a printer interface for the edge connector and wrote the OS (CP/M) extensions to drive the printer in its various modes. That thing was a brute, but it got me through college. At one time I very seriously considered adding a hard drive to it - $4,000 for a 5 megabyte drive. It seems a bit more reasonable when you consider that a floppy only held 185K IIRC. 160 or 185K, depending on if it was 35 or 40 tracks. You're going to make me think now. I'm pretty sure I did 40 track, so 185K. Tim Douglass http://www.DouglassClan.com |
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#287
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On 5 Jan 2005 16:46:31 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:
I think I got something like 5 bucks a piece for aged, used, 8" floppies. About half of what they were worth when new, but a whole lot more than they're worth for any other reason. Purely a supply:demand situation. Stuff's only worth what you can get for it. When the company I worked for closed out a product line many years ago (software) we dumped all the old masters. Some of the variations ran 40 5 1/4" floppies (Apple II). We had different master for each system and often had both double-sided and single-sided sets for the same thing. They were also all duplicated in 3 1/2" disks (again often both single and double-sided). The upshot was that we almost filled and entire dumpster with nothing but disks - probably more than 10,000 all told. The guy with the garbage company actually called the office to make sure he was supposed to be dumping all that stuff. Tim Douglass http://www.DouglassClan.com |
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#288
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On 5 Jan 2005 15:38:44 -0800, "foggytown" calmly
ranted: I can remember when I was the envy of my block because I had a Casio pocket calculator! IIRC the most impressive thing I did with it was to type in 07734 then turn it upside down. (You have to remember how the LED numbers were formed.) That number was 710 77345 and it looked like SHELL OIL when you inverted the calc. -- "Menja bé, caga fort!" |
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#289
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Morris Dovey wrote:
Dave Hinz wrote: /clever rejoinder mode/ Oh Yeah??!! /crm off/ My first disk had 2K 24 bit words. It was also the RAM. Cycle time of 0.01 sec. Verdan computer, manufacture by Autonetics and the flight computer for the Hound Dog cruise missile. Gronk. I think you win. crm Nah. First computer I programed had no transistors and no RAM. It was a Bendix G-15 with a rotating drum memory. It was a challenge to distribute programs around the (2K) drum so that as each instruction finished executing the next would be (almost) at the read head. It did double duty as a space heater. /crm About that same time a friend of mine built a computer (stored program calculator) out of telephone relays. Noisy thing. As I recall, he had to be careful because if too many relays picked at the same time, it blew the power supply fuse. Fascinating. Somebody had written a cross assembler for the Verdan that ran on the G-15. Certainly better than nothing. The first computer that I ever tried to program was a Burroughs E-101. It was externally programmed and at the approximate size of a desk, did about as much. j4 |
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#290
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jo4hn wrote:
Fascinating. Somebody had written a cross assembler for the Verdan that ran on the G-15. Certainly better than nothing. The first computer that I ever tried to program was a Burroughs E-101. It was externally programmed and at the approximate size of a desk, did about as much. Fascinating indeed. Way better than nothing. The machines weren't much by today's standards (although the G-15 was capable of true multiprocessing), but they were such an incredible jump ahead of everything that had ever gone before. We hung a tapedrive onto the Bendix, then a Calcomp plotter, then an IBM 407, and eventually a "mark-sense" card reader. By the time all the 'upgrades' were in place the poor thing had a MTTF somewhere between three and four hours. The G-15 was about the size of a refrigerator - and churned its way through a lot of calculations before finally being replaced with an incredibly faster IBM 1130 (8K of 16-bit words with 320K word cartridge disk drive and a snazzy Selectric console printer.) I'd never thought about it until just now; but that old Bendix had a better MTTF than did my 80286 PC running Windows 3.1 (: -- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/collectors.html |
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#291
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Gino wrote:
Later I bought a TI programmable scientific calculator. It cost more then the price of a fully loaded computer does now. But it got me through college math. It was so new the professor didn't realize it could be programmed to do the work for you. I had one of those as well. Still do, somewhere. I saw something similar the other day at Wal-Mart for $3.99 or something suitably ludicrous considering what that thing set my parents back in the '80s. Which was probably only a quarter or less what you paid for yours. I remember paying $1200 for a VCR too, and $80 for a blank tape. Or being aware of it happening around me anyway, mind you. Wow. That's actually kind of interesting in a way. $1200 for a VCR. That's a pretty firm memory, and I think that's right. That was a hell of a lot of money in 1981 or so. We had two channels on TV. Why the hell did my parents pay $1200 for a VCR? That's probably something close to $5,000 today, I'm guessing off the top of my head. Hell's bells man. Short of a house or a car, I can't think of a thing I'd ever spend that much on. Maybe a metal lathe. If I had $5,000 to spend, which I sure don't. I guess with VCRs going for $20 a pop now, which is probably $0.75 in 1981 dollars, it probably explains why the VCR repairman has gone the way of the dodo. When the thing used to cost as much as a car, it was worth fixing. So I guess an equivalent VCR in today's money would go for about $18,000. Now I'm all confused. That calculator let me cheat my way out of learning math. -- Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621 http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/ http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/ |
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#292
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Michael Burton mhburtonatmomentdotnet wrote:
I remember the 44Meg HDD being huge. I also think of actually paying $200 for a 4mb RAM chip for a 486 and thinking wow, I'll bet a 50mb of RAM would make an awesome machine except it would cost 12 Grand!! Hah! I remember paying $800 for a CPU. Just a CPU. I probably put that damn thing on my credit card, paid $25,000 for it, and haven't paid it off yet. (Two more years. Oh the terrible, terrible price of stupidity.) In contrast, I paid $300 for my last computer. Complete with everything but a monitor. Good grief. -- Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621 http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/ http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/ |
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#293
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mark wrote:
the bulletin boards I dialed up way back then. Remember how frustrating it was to get the constant busy signal on the really popular ones? Yeah, and the really schmootzy ones had two or three phone lines. Back then the only real-time chatting you ever did was with the sysop. Sysops could never type worth a damn. I find the same is true more broadly of the general population now that instant messaging stuff is abundant. I never have been able to adapt to real-time. I don't IRC or ICQ or AIM or blah blah blah because I can't stand to sit there for 45 minutes waiting on the putz on the other end of the line to finish a sentence. I don't type fast enough to pass a typing test for a secretary job, but I type leaps and bounds faster than anyone I've ever chatted with online. I find it all but impossible to believe that vast numbers of office types can hammer out words faster than I can. Wow, now there's a thought. Best non-woodworking thing you ever bought. Has to be the Microsoft Natural Keyboard from 1991. I forget how many millions of words I've typed on this thing, but it's up there. Hrm. 4,500,000 as a very, very conservative estimate. It might be up to three times that. Damn I yack a lot. The new ones are crap, and this one exceeded its life expectancy several million switch cycles ago, I'm sure. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I really, really, really hate the new ones. Anybody want to get rid of an early '90s vintage Microsoft Natural Keyboard, from before they redesigned it, when they were still made in the USA? -- Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621 http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/ http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/ |
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#294
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#296
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On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 16:12:08 -0800, Tim Douglass
wrote: On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 06:39:10 GMT, "Jim Warman" wrote: 144Kb though Micro$oft had a way of packing a bit more onto them when they shipped Winders Fer WerkGroops.... HOWEVER.... I can still vaguely recall single side, low density that couldn't hold what is now a smallish *,gif.... While we're at it... how many can remember when a 44Meg HDD was HUGE!!! Heck, I remember when a 10MB drive was the size of a washing machine and cost the earth. Tim Douglass http://www.DouglassClan.com Sounds like an RL02 drive, lift-out sets of platters. What a pain those were. I had a friend was standing next to one when a head caught a platter and went through the case and into the wall couple of feet from him. Mike Patterson Please remove the spamtrap to email me. "I always wanted to be somebody...I should have been more specific..." - Lily Tomlin |
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#297
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On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 01:42:24 -0500, Silvan
wrote: Gino wrote: Later I bought a TI programmable scientific calculator. It cost more then the price of a fully loaded computer does now. But it got me through college math. It was so new the professor didn't realize it could be programmed to do the work for you. I had one of those as well. Still do, somewhere. I saw something similar the other day at Wal-Mart for $3.99 or something suitably ludicrous considering what that thing set my parents back in the '80s. Which was probably only a quarter or less what you paid for yours. Did yours read the little cards? I remember paying $1200 for a VCR too, and $80 for a blank tape. Or being aware of it happening around me anyway, mind you. Wow. That's actually kind of interesting in a way. $1200 for a VCR. That's a pretty firm memory, and I think that's right. That was a hell of a lot of money in 1981 or so. We had two channels on TV. Why the hell did my parents pay $1200 for a VCR? Porn? That why I paid $900 for my first one.bfg That's probably something close to $5,000 today, I'm guessing off the top of my head. Hell's bells man. Short of a house or a car, I can't think of a thing I'd ever spend that much on. Maybe a metal lathe. If I had $5,000 to spend, which I sure don't. I guess with VCRs going for $20 a pop now, which is probably $0.75 in 1981 dollars, it probably explains why the VCR repairman has gone the way of the dodo. When the thing used to cost as much as a car, it was worth fixing. So I guess an equivalent VCR in today's money would go for about $18,000. Now I'm all confused. That calculator let me cheat my way out of learning math. LOL! You too? |
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#298
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On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 01:56:16 -0500, Silvan wrote:
mark wrote: the bulletin boards I dialed up way back then. Remember how frustrating it was to get the constant busy signal on the really popular ones? Yeah, and the really schmootzy ones had two or three phone lines. Back then the only real-time chatting you ever did was with the sysop. Sysops could never type worth a damn. Hey now... I could always keep up with the 300 baud modem, y'know. I find the same is true more broadly of the general population now that instant messaging stuff is abundant. I never have been able to adapt to real-time. I don't IRC or ICQ or AIM or blah blah blah because I can't stand to sit there for 45 minutes waiting on the putz on the other end of the line to finish a sentence. It's different with IM though, because you don't see what they're typing real-time, like you did back in "the day" on BBS's and like with Unix 'talk'. Wow, now there's a thought. Best non-woodworking thing you ever bought. Has to be the Microsoft Natural Keyboard from 1991. I forget how many millions of words I've typed on this thing, but it's up there. Hrm. 4,500,000 as a very, very conservative estimate. It might be up to three times that. They do make good hardware. They should stick to their strengths, but sadly they feel like they need to do OS's also. Dave "you read about Bill's BSOD at the CES again, right?" Hinz |
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#299
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On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 11:42:39 -0500, Mike Patterson
wrote: On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 16:12:08 -0800, Tim Douglass wrote: Heck, I remember when a 10MB drive was the size of a washing machine and cost the earth. Sounds like an RL02 drive, lift-out sets of platters. Yes! I can't recall the terminology any more, but this was a DEC installation with 2 RL02 drives. I remember watching an entire room full of reels of tape backups get replaced with one shelf of cartridge tapes. It must have been about 1986 or so. It was also about that time that the old PDP 11/70s got ripped out and replaced with a bank of MicroVax-en. Tim Douglass http://www.DouglassClan.com |
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#300
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On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 10:27:15 -0800, Tim Douglass
wrote: On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 11:42:39 -0500, Mike Patterson wrote: On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 16:12:08 -0800, Tim Douglass wrote: Heck, I remember when a 10MB drive was the size of a washing machine and cost the earth. Sounds like an RL02 drive, lift-out sets of platters. Yes! I can't recall the terminology any more, but this was a DEC installation with 2 RL02 drives. I remember watching an entire room full of reels of tape backups get replaced with one shelf of cartridge tapes. It must have been about 1986 or so. It was also about that time that the old PDP 11/70s got ripped out and replaced with a bank of MicroVax-en. Tim Douglass http://www.DouglassClan.com Yep, we sold a network management system (for our complete line of 4-wire dedicated analog modems!) that used RL02s with a PDP11/44, later replaced by 11/70s, later still with a microVax running flavors of RSX-11M. I was regional tech support for that system for 3 years. It seemed so cool then, but looking back on it makes me wonder what things will look like in 20 years when I retire. Mike Patterson Please remove the spamtrap to email me. "I always wanted to be somebody...I should have been more specific..." - Lily Tomlin |
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#301
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On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 10:27:15 -0800, Tim Douglass
wrote: On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 11:42:39 -0500, Mike Patterson wrote: On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 16:12:08 -0800, Tim Douglass wrote: Heck, I remember when a 10MB drive was the size of a washing machine and cost the earth. Sounds like an RL02 drive, lift-out sets of platters. Yes! I can't recall the terminology any more, but this was a DEC installation with 2 RL02 drives. I remember watching an entire room full of reels of tape backups get replaced with one shelf of cartridge tapes. It must have been about 1986 or so. It was also about that time that the old PDP 11/70s got ripped out and replaced with a bank of MicroVax-en. Tim Douglass http://www.DouglassClan.com Yep, we sold a network management system (for our complete line of 4-wire dedicated analog modems!) that used RL02s with a PDP11/44, later replaced by 11/70s, later still with a microVax running flavors of RSX-11M. I was regional tech support for that system for 3 years. It seemed so cool then, but looking back on it makes me wonder what things will look like in 20 years when I retire. Mike Patterson Please remove the spamtrap to email me. "I always wanted to be somebody...I should have been more specific..." - Lily Tomlin |
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#302
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On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 11:21:34 -0500, "j.duprie"
wrote: I can remember back in the day when dad was working for the feds at Apollo (the moon shot days) when a huge washing machine sized disk "array" held the contents of a small box of punch cards. One of the fun geek things to do was to send it read/write commands timed such that it would walk accross the floor..... We had two 15" HP "discs." I traced down a few program bugs by listening to the discs as the code executed. |
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#303
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On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 11:21:34 -0500, "j.duprie"
wrote: I can remember back in the day when dad was working for the feds at Apollo (the moon shot days) when a huge washing machine sized disk "array" held the contents of a small box of punch cards. One of the fun geek things to do was to send it read/write commands timed such that it would walk accross the floor..... We had two 15" HP "discs." I traced down a few program bugs by listening to the discs as the code executed. |
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#304
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Jim Warman wrote:
144Kb though Micro$oft had a way of packing a bit more onto them when they shipped Winders Fer WerkGroops.... Because the first version of WFW didn't sell well, I've read that even the Microsofties called it "Windows for Warehouses." ;-) -- Mark |
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#305
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Jim Warman wrote:
144Kb though Micro$oft had a way of packing a bit more onto them when they shipped Winders Fer WerkGroops.... Because the first version of WFW didn't sell well, I've read that even the Microsofties called it "Windows for Warehouses." ;-) -- Mark |
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#306
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jo4hn wrote:
hail to the geezers, I remember when .com was a file extension. -- Mark |
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#307
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jo4hn wrote:
hail to the geezers, I remember when .com was a file extension. -- Mark |
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#308
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Silvan wrote:
The new ones are crap, and this one exceeded its life expectancy several million switch cycles ago, I'm sure. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I really, really, really hate the new ones. Anybody want to get rid of an early '90s vintage Microsoft Natural Keyboard, from before they redesigned it, when they were still made in the USA? I got one the first month they were available and recently retired it. (I have a new NK at work and the change in layout of the Home End PageUp... keys changed. I wanted to have the same layout at home and at work.) It's grungy, showing I spent many hours using it, but you can have it if you want. It was working fine when I unplugged it. Remove the obvious to reply by mail. -- Mark |
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#309
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Actually, 07734 was "hello". I never tried anything as sophisticated
as SHELL OIL. FoggyTown |
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#310
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On 7 Jan 2005 05:24:40 -0800, "foggytown" wrote:
Actually, 07734 was "hello". I never tried anything as sophisticated as SHELL OIL. There was a joke that went along with the SHELL OIL bit. You would pretend to make several calculations that ended up pointing to Shell Oil having all the money. |
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#311
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On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 22:21:21 GMT, Mark Jerde wrote:
Jim Warman wrote: 144Kb though Micro$oft had a way of packing a bit more onto them when they shipped Winders Fer WerkGroops.... Because the first version of WFW didn't sell well, I've read that even the Microsofties called it "Windows for Warehouses." ;-) Kind of like Windows ME? |
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#312
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On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 08:07:57 -0800, Gino wrote:
On 7 Jan 2005 05:24:40 -0800, "foggytown" wrote: Actually, 07734 was "hello". I never tried anything as sophisticated as SHELL OIL. There was a joke that went along with the SHELL OIL bit. You would pretend to make several calculations that ended up pointing to Shell Oil having all the money. I had a TI-30 scientific calculator in about, er, 1979 or so, that came with a "calculator workbook" with a whole list of these silly calculator games in it. The ShellOil one is definately in there, I think I can find the book (scary, that). The calculator itself has long ago gone to the great place in the parts bin, but my everyday desk calculator is a TI-31 Solar that I bought in 1988 or so. (Google is amazing - here it is: ) http://www.datamath.org/Sci/Modern/TI-31SOLAR.htm |
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#313
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Dave Hinz wrote:
It's different with IM though, because you don't see what they're typing real-time, like you did back in "the day" on BBS's and like with Unix 'talk'. There's some modern internet based flummy where you do type in real time though, I think. I seem to remember watching letters crawl slowly across the screen and wanting to finish what they were trying to say already so they could just hurry up and get it out. That was in the post-BBS era, but I have no idea what it was. I've looked at a number of IM type things and IRC long enough to say "ewwwwwwwwwww" and go back to email. I just don't get IM at all, really. People can send email in nearly real time, and there's no expectation that the person on the other end is going to sit there twiddling his thumbs while you get around to saying something that way. They do make good hardware. They should stick to their strengths, but sadly they feel like they need to do OS's also. They used to make good hardware. Their newer hardware is pretty crappy. Their OS really is crappy. It's not even a war anymore. I can't help it that so many people either want to or are forced to run that bucket of crap. I'm just glad I don't have to fool with it very often. I was over at my boss's daughter's house trying to fix her DSL. I was trying to do everything by the book for the tech support drone because I couldn't get it working without calling to find out what her password and stuff was supposed to be (that I asked her to please write down someplace safe the last time I had to do this.) After the copy of XP Pro that I had just installed about six months ago--which hadn't been used much ,at all since I put Linux on there for her--horked up for the fourth time in a row, I had to tell the drone "Look, I know this is going to scare you, but I HAVE to switch over to a real operating system. This piece of crap is driving me nuts." After I booted the Linux install it only took five minutes to get everything humming. Problem was Windows trying to be friendly and giving me cached versions of status pages from the modem because the internet connection was broken, and it assumed everything on the other end of an IP address had to be on the internet. Or something. I could have figured it out, but I just didn't have the patience to continue screwing with it. Part of that is familiarity, and a large measure of it is pure crappiness. Anyway, that whole experience was kind of funny. The tech drone at one point said something to the effect of "I'm glad you know what you're doing, because you lost me six pages ago." I really ought to figure out a way to do this kind of crap for a living. Problem is they don't actually want to hire someone who knows anything about this stuff to help people. They just want a drone to read a stack of FAQs. -- Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621 http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/ http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/ |
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#314
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On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 17:43:09 -0500, Silvan wrote:
Dave Hinz wrote: It's different with IM though, because you don't see what they're typing real-time, like you did back in "the day" on BBS's and like with Unix 'talk'. I just don't get IM at all, really. People can send email in nearly real time, and there's no expectation that the person on the other end is going to sit there twiddling his thumbs while you get around to saying something that way. Actually, I never "got it" until I got into the job I now have. We work in different parts of the building, state, and country, but work together. When we're doing a deploy/release, there are folks in maybe 5 locations (plus usually at home if it's off-hours) all working together, getting whatever done. We go into Yahoo Messenger, open up a conference, and can all get to whoever else is on. Little side comments go on also, of course, usually smartass comments about the conference, not shared with the whole group. They do make good hardware. They should stick to their strengths, but sadly they feel like they need to do OS's also. They used to make good hardware. Their newer hardware is pretty crappy. Ah well, at least they're meeting expectations then. Their OS really is crappy. It's not even a war anymore. I can't help it that so many people either want to or are forced to run that bucket of crap. I'm just glad I don't have to fool with it very often. I'm doing a "friends and family support" thing this weekend. Just loaded up my USB thumb drive with XP Service Pack 2, Grisoft's antivirus, AdAware, and the Firefox installer. Should do it. Trading this for having our ... dog groomed. And she's gonna feed me beer while I'm working, so it's a win-win as far as I'm concerned. I was over at my boss's daughter's house trying to fix her DSL. I was trying to do everything by the book for the tech support drone because I couldn't get it working without calling to find out what her password and stuff was supposed to be (that I asked her to please write down someplace safe the last time I had to do this.) Yeah, I love that. After the copy of XP Pro that I had just installed about six months ago--which hadn't been used much ,at all since I put Linux on there for her--horked up for the fourth time in a row, I had to tell the drone "Look, I know this is going to scare you, but I HAVE to switch over to a real operating system. This piece of crap is driving me nuts." It's hard to find good tech support people, though, because either of us would quit if forced to do the job. Once in a while you get a good one. I called once for someone, new system. "OK, so do I use DHCP or do I need to set up an address? How about DNS? Right. What's your NNTP server? IMAP? POP3? Anything else like defaultrouter or web proxies? OK great, thanks. Nice to talk to someone who knows the answers, by the way.". How often does that really happen, though? After I booted the Linux install it only took five minutes to get everything humming. Problem was Windows trying to be friendly and giving me cached versions of status pages from the modem because the internet connection was broken, Ah. Somewhere in IE config is "show friendly error messages", you can turn that off and get actual meaningful things. (was that a 401 or a 403?) Or something. I could have figured it out, but I just didn't have the patience to continue screwing with it. Part of that is familiarity, and a large measure of it is pure crappiness. Some of each, I'm sure. Anyway, that whole experience was kind of funny. The tech drone at one point said something to the effect of "I'm glad you know what you're doing, because you lost me six pages ago." Ah, so he was a good one, because he _recognized_ that you knew where to go. It's the ones who tell you blatantly wrong things that **** me off. "Reboot and clear your cache." "Um, why exactly?" "Because I can't go on to the next line in my script until you do that." I really ought to figure out a way to do this kind of crap for a living. Problem is they don't actually want to hire someone who knows anything about this stuff to help people. They just want a drone to read a stack of FAQs. You've just summed up tech support hell right there. |
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#315
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I just don't get IM at all, really. People can send email in nearly real time, and there's no expectation that the person on the other end is going to sit there twiddling his thumbs while you get around to saying something that way. I can tell you. I support 20,000 IM users. The things that gets typed most a You there? and Can I call you? |
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#316
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Dave Hinz wrote:
Actually, I never "got it" until I got into the job I now have. We work in different parts of the building, state, and country, but work together. Yeah, it's kinda like database stuff I guess. I could learn it if I had to, but I have no personal use for it, so fooey on it. They used to make good hardware. Their newer hardware is pretty crappy. Ah well, at least they're meeting expectations then. having our ... dog groomed. And she's gonna feed me beer while I'm working, so it's a win-win as far as I'm concerned. The last time I did one of these for a different "client" I went to the fridge after and took home *all* the beer. They got off cheap. stuff was supposed to be (that I asked her to please write down someplace safe the last time I had to do this.) Yeah, I love that. Yeah, like I can remember everybody's password for everything. Nine computers, eight routers, six cable/DSL/dialup modems. I don't even have a big "network" but it's big enough I need a crib sheet. I wrote down her particulars some place where *I* can keep up with it this time, so I can deal with future problems over the phone. It's hard to find good tech support people, though, because either of us would quit if forced to do the job. Probably. That's the other side of the problem, isn't it? Most of the people you deal with are too stupid to find their ass with both hands if you super glue both hands to their ass. by the way.". How often does that really happen, though? Probably about as often as the techs get someone like you on the phone, I imagine. It happened to me once. About 3:00 AM. I called and got the doorman, answered the token questions to prove I wasn't an idiot, and I was lucky enough to get a drone with enough sense to realize I was talking about something, but he had no idea what it was. He passed me up to a real tech who had all kinds of actual working knowledge. It took two minutes to solve the problem, and the problem was UP-stream, thank you very much. Ah. Somewhere in IE config is "show friendly error messages", you can turn that off and get actual meaningful things. (was that a 401 or a 403?) Neither. It just volunteered a cached page for me without asking. How friendly. Except it was a page from a router that was no longer connected, instead of a page from a DSL modem at the same address. How very helpful. I find Windows is frequently helpful that way. Ah, so he was a good one, because he _recognized_ that you knew where to go. It's the ones who tell you blatantly wrong things that **** me off. "Reboot and clear your cache." "Um, why exactly?" "Because I can't go on to the next line in my script until you do that." Yeah, me too. "OK, I'm rebooting. Beep. There, I'm rebooted. Next question. Yes, this machine boots very fast. Next question please. It's a, um, Octegenarian 4000. They're new. Next question please." hire someone who knows anything about this stuff to help people. They just want a drone to read a stack of FAQs. You've just summed up tech support hell right there. I discovered a new kind of tech support hell on this one. They had some kind of voice recognition thing on the voice mail, so I had to talk to the HAL 9000 and tell it where I wanted to go. But I kept confusing it because I found the idea of talking to a voice mail thing so humorous that I kept giggling and making it lose its place in the tree. I kept imagining Scotty picking up that mouse. "Computah, Ah want information on transparent aluminum." -- Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621 http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/ http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/ |
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#317
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On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 17:43:09 -0500, Silvan
wrote: Problem is they don't actually want to hire someone who knows anything about this stuff to help people. They just want a drone to read a stack of FAQs. The problem is that we want to pay the minimum possible fee each month that leaves room for nothing but drones and grossly paid ceos. |
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#318
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On Sat, 08 Jan 2005 02:06:25 -0500, Silvan
wrote: .... snip Yeah, like I can remember everybody's password for everything. Yep, that's becoming a problem for even regular users. My company's password policy requires changes every 90 days, the main LAN log-in then starts dunning you 20 days before password expires, asking, "Password expires in xx days, do you want to change now? (Yeah, right, tell me when I have a couple days left)" Then, in addition to LAN and main PC there are a minimum of 5 other applications, sites, or web log-ins that each require passwords, each changing every 90 days, each demanding various complexities or not allowing certain similarities to prior passwords. Now, I'm an engineer/engineering manager who has more than one or two things to think about each day and wasting brain cells memorizing each of these ever changing passwords is just not somehthing that even hits the bottom of my priority list. So, like every other user, all my passwords are written down -- yep those password policies really helped improve security, didn't they? Now, I won't say where those passwords are, but suffice it to say, I don't hide them under my keyboard or mousepad -- I have a little bit of operations security sense. Sorry -- rant mode off .... snip I discovered a new kind of tech support hell on this one. They had some kind of voice recognition thing on the voice mail, so I had to talk to the HAL 9000 and tell it where I wanted to go. You know, the sad thing is that approaches like this are likely to succeed because the metrics being kept will show that 1) Number of calls to tech support decrease over time (obviously they are getting a better product out, it's not because people have given up on the product and support) and 2) Duration of calls has decreased (the automated menu is providing an optimal solution, it's not because callers get frustrated and give up) But I kept confusing it because I found the idea of talking to a voice mail thing so humorous that I kept giggling and making it lose its place in the tree. I kept imagining Scotty picking up that mouse. "Computah, Ah want information on transparent aluminum." +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Now we'll just use some glue to hold things in place until the brads dry +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |
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#319
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Mark & Juanita wrote:
they? Now, I won't say where those passwords are, but suffice it to say, I don't hide them under my keyboard or mousepad -- I have a little bit of operations security sense. They're on a big yellow Post-It note on the front of your monitor, right? It floored me when I saw a machine at a, um, locally owned store which shall remain namless. The server responsible for handling all the credit card transactions for the store. Big yellow Post-It note with usernames and passwords right on it. Gee willakers Mrs. Cleaver, I wonder if I can figure out how to break into that machine? -- Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621 http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/ http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/ |
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#320
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You got me curious enough to go upstairs and get out my O-1 and fire it up.
It runs CP/M 2.2 My CP/M boot floppy is labeled as.. Single Side, Double Density.....185k in the help screens on the boot floppy, it mentions... "The diskettes used by the Osborne 1 should be soft-sectored, 5 1/4 inch, single-sided, and single density. This is the information you need to tell a salesman to insure that you buy the proper diskettes." another window on the help screen indicates .. "If you recieve a message like "DISK FULL" or "NO SPACE" you need to get out a fresh diskette. CP/M CAPACITY = 92k" So..... Single Side Single Density = 92k Single Side Double Density = 185k "Tim Douglass" wrote in message news  On 4 Jan 2005 19:10:25 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote: On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 09:25:32 -0800, Tim Douglass wrote: I *do* still have an O-1. I had forgotten about that one. I actually built a printer interface for the edge connector and wrote the OS (CP/M) extensions to drive the printer in its various modes. That thing was a brute, but it got me through college. At one time I very seriously considered adding a hard drive to it - $4,000 for a 5 megabyte drive. It seems a bit more reasonable when you consider that a floppy only held 185K IIRC. 160 or 185K, depending on if it was 35 or 40 tracks. You're going to make me think now. I'm pretty sure I did 40 track, so 185K. Tim Douglass http://www.DouglassClan.com |
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