Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!uwm.edu!newsfeed1.earthlink.net!newsfeed.gte.net!nntp.giganews.com!uunet!in2.uu.net!news.blarg.net!animal.blarg.net!jhague From: James Hague Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 10:07:49 -0700 Organization: Dadgum Games Lines: 16 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: animal.blarg.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Sender: jhague@animal.blarg.net x-no-archive: yes Lately I've been noticing some people on the net who are clinging to strange ideas about computer history. To wit: 1. One person insisted that Pascal was created many years after C, in an attempt to dumb-douwn C into a teaching language. 2. Just today I've been talking to someone who insists that Emacs was originally written for Windows. Any other fun stories? -- James Hague The Giant List of Classic Game Programmers http://www.dadgum.com/giantlist.html ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!newsfeed.internetmci.com!204.71.76.137!news.campus.mci.net!n-f-m From: Neil Moore Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 05 May 1998 19:00:00 -0400 Organization: The Penguin Conspiracy Lines: 11 Sender: amethyst@maxwell.ml.org Message-ID: References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: s12-pm06.uky.campus.mci.net X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.2 Pete Fenelon writes: > James Hague wrote: > > Any other fun stories? > > "Usenet was created by AOL" seems to be a fairly popular one. I think he meant ones that aren't true. -- -Neil Moore, penguin1077@aol.com, http://www.sfloyd.ml.org/~amethyst/ ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!btnet-peer!btnet!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: Pete Fenelon Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 5 May 1998 20:56:13 GMT Message-ID: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: man-191.dialup.zetnet.co.uk User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-980226 (UNIX) (Linux/2.0.32 (i586)) Lines: 9 James Hague wrote: > Any other fun stories? "Usenet was created by AOL" seems to be a fairly popular one. pete -- Pete Fenelon, 3 Beckside Gardens, York, YO10 3TX, UK (pete.fenelon@zetnet.co.uk) ``there's no room for enigmas in built-up areas'' ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!141.211.144.13!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!jobone!dailyplanet.srl.ford.com!eccws1.dearborn.ford.com!longhorn!tph From: tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 5 May 1998 21:04:44 GMT Organization: Mechanist Industries Lines: 24 Message-ID: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> References: Reply-To: tph@rmi.net NNTP-Posting-Host: cs0053.eld.ford.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] James Hague (jhague@dadgum.com) wrote: : Lately I've been noticing some people on the net who are clinging to : strange ideas about computer history. To wit: : 1. One person insisted that Pascal was created many years after C, in an : attempt to dumb-douwn C into a teaching language. : 2. Just today I've been talking to someone who insists that Emacs was : originally written for Windows. Wasn't EVERYTHING good and useful originally created for Windows? It's not exactly history, but... I did meet a guy once who was positively stunned to learn that there was such a thing as a computer that didn't run MS Windows. He had a hard time imagining that they'd be in any way useful. "No...Microsoft Windows? What does it DO, then?" I just barely managed to suppress the urge to slap him silly. -- Tom Harrington --------- tph@rmii.com -------- http://rainbow.rmii.com/~tph "Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy." - Orson Welles Cookie's Revenge: ftp://ftp.rmi.net/pub2/tph/cookie/cookies-revenge.sit.hqx ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-koe1.dfn.de!news-han1.dfn.de!news.uni-paderborn.de!fu-berlin.de!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news.idt.net!netnews.com!ix.netcom.com!linley From: linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Message-ID: Organization: Megami no Belldandy-sama no deshi References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 21:42:10 GMT Lines: 14 Sender: linley@netcom9.netcom.com In ye olden post Pete Fenelon spake... >James Hague wrote: >> Any other fun stories? > >"Usenet was created by AOL" seems to be a fairly popular one. The RS-232 serial standard was named for it's creator- Radio Shack. I recall a radioshack sales drois who adamantly insisted upon this. -- Bruce James Robert Linley | +---+---+--_ | "Tea is always bitter... but linley@netcom.com | | |NV | UT | blood is warm and sweet." Programmer, Fortunet Inc. | \ CA \ |___ | Las Vegas, Nevada, USA ----------> \*| AZ | - Miyu ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-koe1.dfn.de!news-han1.dfn.de!news.fh-hannover.de!newsfeed.nacamar.de!wnfeed!204.127.130.5!worldnet.att.net!newsadm From: "Joseph J. Ambrose" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 22:04:35 -0400 Organization: JJA & Associates Lines: 30 Message-ID: <6iog9v$dh0@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.68.135.38 X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.71.1712.3 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.71.1712.3 Tom Harrington wrote in message <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com>... >James Hague (jhague@dadgum.com) wrote: >: Lately I've been noticing some people on the net who are clinging to >: strange ideas about computer history. To wit: > >: 1. One person insisted that Pascal was created many years after C, in an >: attempt to dumb-douwn C into a teaching language. > >: 2. Just today I've been talking to someone who insists that Emacs was >: originally written for Windows. > >Wasn't EVERYTHING good and useful originally created for Windows? > >It's not exactly history, but... I did meet a guy once who was >positively stunned to learn that there was such a thing as a >computer that didn't run MS Windows. He had a hard time imagining >that they'd be in any way useful. "No...Microsoft Windows? What >does it DO, then?" I just barely managed to suppress the urge to >slap him silly. > Man is such a forgetfull creature... and stubborn too.... Joseph Ambrose NT Network Administrator / Open VMS System Manager The Conference Board ambrose@conference-board.org ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!europa.clark.net!164.67.42.145!awabi.library.ucla.edu!137.82.194.1!unixg.ubc.ca!alph02.triumf.ca!shoppa From: shoppa@alph02.triumf.ca (Tim Shoppa) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 5 May 1998 23:43:16 GMT Organization: TRIUMF, Canada's National Meson Facility Lines: 16 Message-ID: <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: alph02.triumf.ca In article , Bruce James Robert Linley wrote: >The RS-232 serial standard was named for it's creator- Radio Shack. >I recall a radioshack sales drois who adamantly insisted upon this. "ASC2" instead of "ASCII" is something I've been seeing for the past two decades and it still hasn't gone away! And every day I see more ads for PC-clones with clock rates in the millihertz than in the megahertz! (Let's not forget the millibyte memory systems, too!) And, finally, *everyone* agrees that you cannot get on the Internet with anything less than a Pentium! Tim. (shoppa@triumf.ca) ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news-xfer.netaxs.com!netaxs.com!bbs.cpcn.com!root From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (Lee Winson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 6 May 1998 03:36:55 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS Lines: 2 Message-ID: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: bbs.cpcn.com Originator: root@bbs.cpcn.com The attitude that the industry went from the ENIAC to the Personal Computer with essentially nothing in between. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!204.71.76.137!news.campus.mci.net!mwfunk From: mwfunk@uncc.campus.mci.net (Michael Funk) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 6 May 1998 05:34:02 GMT Organization: CampusMCI Lines: 10 Message-ID: References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> Reply-To: mwfunk@uncc.campus.mci.net NNTP-Posting-Host: s18-pm30.snaustel.campus.mci.net X-Newsreader: slrn (0.9.4.3 UNIX) Tim Shoppa wrote: > >And, finally, *everyone* agrees that you cannot get on the Internet >with anything less than a Pentium! And if you upgrade that Pentium to a shiny new P2, it will "make the Internet go faster". :) Mike ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newshub.northeast.verio.net!uunet!in2.uu.net!inetserv2.fs.lmco.com!news.owg.fs.lmco.com!news.man.fs.lmco.com!usenet From: Russell Kegley Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 07:40:43 -0500 Organization: Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems Lines: 8 Message-ID: <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com> References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: 143.114.163.108 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.03 [en] (Win95; U) James Hague wrote: > Any other fun stories? That the industry has FINALLY in the past couple of years discovered what it takes to make a multiprocessor operating system work, and that we owe it all to Microsoft. Russell ###### Date: 06 May 98 10:01:21 -0800 From: "Charlie Gibbs" Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <1161.430T1096T6014457@sky.bus.com> Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Lines: 30 X-Newsreader: THOR 2.5a (Amiga;TCP/IP) NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.244.247.7 Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-east.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!204.244.4.2!news.westel.com!news.skybus.com!204.244.247.124 In article <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> shoppa@alph02.triumf.ca (Tim Shoppa) writes: >In article , >Bruce James Robert Linley wrote: > >>The RS-232 serial standard was named for it's creator- Radio Shack. >>I recall a radioshack sales drois who adamantly insisted upon this. > >"ASC2" instead of "ASCII" is something I've been seeing for the past >two decades and it still hasn't gone away! My favourite is ASC11, pronounced "A-S-C-eleven". Of course, whenever I see someone misspell "OK" as "Ok" (which I blame on generations of Microsoft BASIC going right back to the CP/M days), I make a point of pronouncing it "awk", just to rub their noses in it. >And every day I see more ads for PC-clones with clock rates in the >millihertz than in the megahertz! (Let's not forget the millibyte >memory systems, too!) > >And, finally, *everyone* agrees that you cannot get on the Internet >with anything less than a Pentium! Good thing my machine is too stupid to realize this - it just goes on posting anyway... :-) -- cgibbs@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs) Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply. ###### Message-ID: <3550CDE4.378F@compuserve.com> Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 12:53:56 -0800 From: Sam Yorko X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: exosecure-symbol.psd.symbol.com X-NNTP-Posting-Host: exosecure-symbol.psd.symbol.com Organization: Exodus Communications http://www.exodus.net Lines: 13 Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news.idt.net!kiowa.exodus.net!207.82.39.214.MISMATCH!newsread.exodus.net!exosecure-symbol.psd.symbol.com Bruce James Robert Linley wrote: > > The RS-232 serial standard was named for it's creator- Radio Shack. > I recall a radioshack sales drois who adamantly insisted upon this. > > -- I once had a Radio Shack sales droid insist that the pocket chess player they were selling back in 1980 was just a bunch of diodes and the keyboard. He had disassembled one, and that's all he found. Wouldn't believe that the chip was under the blob of epoxy on the back of the PC board.... ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!news-stkh.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news1.best.com!newshub.sdsu.edu!gondor!rohan!stremler From: stremler@rohan.sdsu.edu (Stewart Stremler) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 6 May 1998 18:40:20 GMT Organization: San Diego State University Lines: 35 Message-ID: <6iqaqk$go$1@gondor.sdsu.edu> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: rohan.sdsu.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL0] James Hague (jhague@dadgum.com) wrote: > Lately I've been noticing some people on the net who are clinging to > strange ideas about computer history. To wit: > 1. One person insisted that Pascal was created many years after C, in an > attempt to dumb-douwn C into a teaching language. > 2. Just today I've been talking to someone who insists that Emacs was > originally written for Windows. > Any other fun stories? "Stacks are limited to 64kbytes." Trying to educate this person, and point out that a "stack" is a data structure, and that because _some_ implementations were limited did not mean that ALL implementations were so limited, merely resulted in the idiot calling me names and providing me with other gems... "All CPUs have 64kbyte segments." "Function were `invented' when programs got larger than 1 segment, as a way to write bigger (space-wise) programs." "C was the first language with functions." It seems that this guy was an Engineering Geek who know only C and i86 ASM, and that's all there was to the world. A severe case of "all the world runs on Intel".... -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Life *is* Pain, your Highness. Anyone who | stremler@rohan.sdsu.edu says differently is selling something." | Stewart Stremler -The Man In Black (_The Princess Bride_) | ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!ix.netcom.com!linley From: linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Message-ID: Organization: Megami no Belldandy-sama no deshi References: <6iqaqk$go$1@gondor.sdsu.edu> Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 19:14:39 GMT Lines: 14 Sender: linley@netcom3.netcom.com In ye olden post stremler@rohan.sdsu.edu (Stewart Stremler) spake... > >It seems that this guy was an Engineering Geek who know only C and i86 ASM, >and that's all there was to the world. A severe case of "all the world runs >on Intel".... Well, as they say, when the only tool you have is a hammer. Everything starts to look like a nail. -- Bruce James Robert Linley | +---+---+--_ | "Tea is always bitter... but linley@netcom.com | | |NV | UT | blood is warm and sweet." Programmer, Fortunet Inc. | \ CA \ |___ | Las Vegas, Nevada, USA ----------> \*| AZ | - Miyu ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.wli.net!newshub.sirius.com!newsfiler.sirius.com!hnsngr From: hnsngr@sirius.com (Ron Hunsinger) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 19:30:18 -0700 Organization: ErsteSoft Lines: 11 Message-ID: References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp-asft03--086.sirius.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.3.1 In article <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com>, Russell Kegley wrote: > That the industry has FINALLY in the past couple of years discovered > what it takes to make a multiprocessor operating system work, and that > we owe it all to Microsoft. I was working at Burroughs in 1969. We all just shook our heads at the reports in the newspapers that IBM had just invented virtual memory. -Ron Hunsinger ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-koe1.dfn.de!news-han1.dfn.de!news.fh-hannover.de!newsfeed.nacamar.de!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.87.106.104!surfnet.nl!ruu.nl!tijger.fys.ruu.nl!usenet From: Rik van Riel Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Sender: usenet@fys.ruu.nl (News system Tijgertje) Message-ID: X-Sender: riel@mirkwood.dummy.home In-Reply-To: <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com> Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 21:51:13 GMT X-Nntp-Posting-Host: anx1p8.fys.ruu.nl Reply-To: Rik van Riel Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Organization: Linux memory management wishlist. Lines: 20 On Wed, 6 May 1998, Russell Kegley wrote: > James Hague wrote: > > Any other fun stories? > > That the industry has FINALLY in the past couple of years discovered > what it takes to make a multiprocessor operating system work, and that > we owe it all to Microsoft. Yeah, it's a truly remarkable company. Their software is just soo soft, it bulges over at the slightes touch. Their tech support however is really hard, hard on themselves and even harder on the callers :) Rik. +-------------------------------------------+--------------------------+ | Linux: - LinuxHQ MM-patches page | Scouting webmaster | | - kswapd ask-him & complain-to guy | Vries cubscout leader | | http://www.phys.uu.nl/~riel/ | | +-------------------------------------------+--------------------------+ ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!nntp.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail From: afcasta@texas.net (Al Castanoli) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> <1161.430T1096T6014457@sky.bus.com> Reply-To: Al Castanoli Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 22:49:59 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.127.6.190 NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 17:49:59 CDT On 06 May 98 10:01:21 -0800, Charlie Gibbs wrote: :In article <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> shoppa@alph02.triumf.ca :(Tim Shoppa) writes: : :>In article , :>Bruce James Robert Linley wrote: :> :>>The RS-232 serial standard was named for it's creator- Radio Shack. :>>I recall a radioshack sales drois who adamantly insisted upon this. :> :>"ASC2" instead of "ASCII" is something I've been seeing for the past :>two decades and it still hasn't gone away! : :My favourite is ASC11, pronounced "A-S-C-eleven". Of course, whenever :I see someone misspell "OK" as "Ok" (which I blame on generations of :Microsoft BASIC going right back to the CP/M days), I make a point of :pronouncing it "awk", just to rub their noses in it. Brutha, you done sed a mouthfull. The Mac and PC users I had at a prior site kept calling the helpdesk with problems with Endora. Now that Qualcomm are selling PCS phones, I'm glad I'm not working comms. Reminds me of the bright light I worked with in Panama a few years back, who thought it was cool to pipe all his error messages to /dev/zero in- stead of /dev/null and was always complaining about running out of disk space. -- Al Castanoli Computers save time like kudzu prevents soil erosion. ~ ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsm.ibm.net!ibm.net!uunet!in3.uu.net!newsfeed.attap.net!mango.singnet.com.sg!dahlia.singnet.com.sg!ocean.singnet.com.sg!id4.nus.edu.sg!luakt-r2.iscs.nus.edu.sg!not-for-mail From: Colin Tan Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 7 May 1998 07:24:05 GMT Organization: National University of Singapore Lines: 7 Message-ID: <6irnil$hou6@id4.nus.edu.sg> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: luakt-r2.iscs.nus.sg X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 unoff BETA release 961115] James Hague wrote: : Any other fun stories? That it's possible to do something useful with a Win95 system without it crashing at least once. ###### From: bcorsel@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net (Brad Corsello) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers References: Reply-To: bcorsello@#NOSPAM#usa.net X-Newsreader: slrn (0.9.4.3 OS/2) NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.37.112.254 Message-ID: <35516ac2.0@news1.ibm.net> Date: 7 May 1998 08:03:14 GMT X-Trace: 7 May 1998 08:03:14 GMT, 129.37.112.254 Organization: IBM.NET Lines: 15 X-Notice: Items posted that violate the IBM.NET Acceptable Use Policy X-Notice: or otherwise violate the IBM.NET Terms of Service X-Notice: should be forwarded in their entirety to postmaster@ibm.net Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newsgate.cistron.nl!het.net!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!arclight.uoregon.edu!news-out.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!165.87.194.248!newsm.ibm.net!ibm.net!news1.ibm.net!bcorsel On Tue, 5 May 1998 10:07:49 -0700, jhague@dadgum.com wrote: >Lately I've been noticing some people on the net who are clinging to >strange ideas about computer history. To wit: > >[...] > >Any other fun stories? How about, "the Internet was built by the Pentagon so it would survive a nuclear war." -- Bradley S. Corsello, New York, NY No animals were harmed in the writing of this message. >>> Reply-to address cleverly altered to elude spammers. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!masternews.telia.net!newspost.telia.com!d2o27.telia.com!h1392.unisource.se From: anders.hultman@unisource.se (Anders Hultman) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Thu, 07 May 1998 08:41:07 GMT Organization: Kvarteret Skruven Lines: 13 Message-ID: <3551729e.7327376@news.tip.net> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: d2o27.telia.com X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 X-NNTP-Posting-Host: h1392.unisource.se X-Complaints-To: abuse@internet.telia.com On Tue, 5 May 1998 10:07:49 -0700, James Hague wrote: >Any other fun stories? A survey quoted in Newsweek said that while 98 percent of the students knew that the Internet isn't owned by anyone, 86% of the suits thought that it was controlled by a corporation. 32% thought that it was owned by Microsoft. anders ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!europa.clark.net!207.20.0.50!peerfeed.ncal.verio.net!news.ncal.verio.com!not-for-mail From: Jim Stewart Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Thu, 07 May 1998 08:53:49 -0700 Organization: http://www.jkmicro.com Lines: 19 Message-ID: <3551D90D.5B25E31B@jkmicro.com> References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: swan.dsp.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) To: Rik van Riel Rik van Riel wrote: > > On Wed, 6 May 1998, Russell Kegley wrote: > > James Hague wrote: > > > Any other fun stories? > > > > That the industry has FINALLY in the past couple of years discovered > > what it takes to make a multiprocessor operating system work, and that > > we owe it all to Microsoft. > > Yeah, it's a truly remarkable company. Their software > is just soo soft, it bulges over at the slightes touch. > Their tech support however is really hard, hard on > themselves and even harder on the callers :) Sorta reminds you of the early 70's when IBM "invented" virtual memory... Jim ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newsgate.cistron.nl!het.net!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!mail2news.demon.co.uk!tnglwood.demon.co.uk!unclebob From: Robert Billing Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Thu, 07 May 98 09:25:41 GMT Message-ID: <894533141snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> References: <6irnil$hou6@id4.nus.edu.sg> Reply-To: unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Mail2News-User: unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Mail2News-Path: post-10.mail.demon.net!post.mail.demon.net!tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Trace: mail2news.demon.co.uk 894546139 16110 unclebob tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Newsreader: Demon Internet Simple News v1.29 Lines: 22 In article <6irnil$hou6@id4.nus.edu.sg> tankengy@luakt-r2.iscs.nus.edu.sg "Colin Tan" writes: > That it's possible to do something useful with a Win95 system without it > crashing at least once. It is, you can use it to load several games from Electronic Arts which take over the machine completely. Get the Bumpkins demo- SimCity meets the Archers (Mooo Grunt Thud Cluck Belch Ooo-Arr Fancy Some Nookie? Mooo Woof) and you get to build a village at the end of it, if you can avoid the cow sitting on the milkmaid, get the peasants out of bed and just keep building things. I laughed so much I almost sent in the registration card. -- I am Robert Billing, Christian, inventor, traveller, cook and animal lover, I live near 0:46W 51:22N. http://www.tnglwood.demon.co.uk/ "Bother," said Pooh, "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock phasers on the Heffalump, Piglet, meet me in transporter room three" ###### Date: 07 May 98 11:13:13 -0800 From: "Charlie Gibbs" Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> <1161.430T1096T6014457@sky.bus.com> Message-ID: <563.431T663T6733680@sky.bus.com> Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Lines: 15 X-Newsreader: THOR 2.5a (Amiga;TCP/IP) NNTP-Posting-Host: news.skybus.com Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-east.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!204.244.4.2!news.westel.com!news.skybus.com!204.244.247.123 In article afcasta@texas.net (Al Castanoli) writes: >Reminds me of the bright light I worked with in Panama a few years >back, who thought it was cool to pipe all his error messages to >/dev/zero instead of /dev/null and was always complaining about >running out of disk space. On one box I worked on, someone had managed to delete /dev/null. When he ran out of disk space I had to do a mknod and remove a VERY big disk file... -- cgibbs@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs) Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!btnet-peer!btnet!newsfeed.internetmci.com!141.211.144.13!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!jobone!dailyplanet.srl.ford.com!eccws1.dearborn.ford.com!longhorn!tph From: tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 7 May 1998 15:52:56 GMT Organization: Mechanist Industries Lines: 18 Message-ID: <6islco$4694@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> References: <6iqaqk$go$1@gondor.sdsu.edu> Reply-To: tph@rmi.net NNTP-Posting-Host: cs0053.eld.ford.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Bruce James Robert Linley (linley@netcom.com) wrote: : In ye olden post stremler@rohan.sdsu.edu (Stewart Stremler) spake... : > : >It seems that this guy was an Engineering Geek who know only C and i86 ASM, : >and that's all there was to the world. A severe case of "all the world runs : >on Intel".... : Well, as they say, when the only tool you have is a hammer. Everything : starts to look like a nail. And when your only hammer is C++, everything begins to look like a thumb. [Not mine originally, but I've lost the original reference]. -- Tom Harrington --------- tph@rmii.com -------- http://rainbow.rmii.com/~tph "Boy, you look tough in your black leather jacket! Bring your head closer, I'll be the first to smack it!" -Fishbone Cookie's Revenge: ftp://ftp.rmi.net/pub2/tph/cookie/cookies-revenge.sit.hqx ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newsgate.cistron.nl!het.net!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!feeder.qis.net!news.wwa.com!not-for-mail From: jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 7 May 1998 16:02:16 GMT Organization: Everett Associates Lines: 27 Message-ID: <6islu8$qsj$5@hirame.wwa.com> References: <6irnil$hou6@id4.nus.edu.sg> NNTP-Posting-Host: pool1-054.wwa.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.8 (x86 32bit) In article <6irnil$hou6@id4.nus.edu.sg>, tankengy@luakt-r2.iscs.nus.edu.sg says... > >James Hague wrote: > >: Any other fun stories? > >That it's possible to do something useful with a Win95 system without it >crashing at least once. > As an old operating systems developer (co-author of TSS-8, and long time member of the TOPS-10 development group), and a believer in the old adage that any operating system sows the seeds of it's own destruction, I'm pretty impressed that my copy of Windows 95 recently demonstrated 23+ days uptime. I even managed to do a couple of useful things over that period. BTW, I recall the celebration many years ago when a copy of TOPS-10 running on a KS-10 in a commercial environment stayed up for about 1123 hours (over 46 days). -- jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Things have gotten so bad I feel the need to disguise my email address. And I don't like this explanation because I just hate long signatures. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!24.128.1.125!chnws03.mediaone.net!24.131.1.12!denws01.mw.mediaone.net!news.gmi.edu!nova.kettering.edu!root From: Munged Email Munged Email Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 16:50:42 -0400 Organization: Kettering University (formerly GMI E&MI) - Flint MI Lines: 34 Message-ID: References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> Reply-To: Munged Email Munged Email NNTP-Posting-Host: nova.kettering.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Sender: lee1089@nova.kettering.edu In-Reply-To: <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> On 5 May 1998, Tim Shoppa wrote: > In article , > Bruce James Robert Linley wrote: > >The RS-232 serial standard was named for it's creator- Radio Shack. > >I recall a radioshack sales drois who adamantly insisted upon this. > > "ASC2" instead of "ASCII" is something I've been seeing for the past > two decades and it still hasn't gone away! > > And every day I see more ads for PC-clones with clock rates in the > millihertz than in the megahertz! (Let's not forget the millibyte > memory systems, too!) Milliherts is possible (although, very, very, veeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrryyyy slow) but millibyte is totally inconcievable. I guess a decibyte could be a bit as 1/8 is as close as you can get to 1/10 in base 2. > And, finally, *everyone* agrees that you cannot get on the Internet > with anything less than a Pentium! But with anything less than a Pentium how are you going to run MSIE 4.0!?!?!?!?!? How about "the internet was invented by MS" or "the web is the internet" (after all, to get to the web you click on that little "The Internet" icon). --- The address in the from field is a spam blocking address, replying to that address will redirect your mail to your sysadmin. To send mail to me my username is lee1089 and my domain is kettering dot edu. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed.nacamar.de!blackbush.xlink.net!ganesha.ganesha.com!shorter!combo.ganesha.com!peterk Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 18:11:56 +0200 Message-ID: From: peterk@combo.ganesha.com (Dr. Peter Kittel) Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Reply-To: peterk @ combo.ganesha.com References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com> X-Newsreader: rn7.bas Lines: 15 Organization: Private In article <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com> Russell Kegley writes: >James Hague wrote: >> >> Any other fun stories? > >That the industry has FINALLY in the past couple of years discovered >what it takes to make a multiprocessor operating system work, and that >we owe it all to Microsoft. Yes, and they also invented the mouse and the GUI, 32 bits and multitasking! -- Best Regards, Dr. Peter Kittel // http://www.pios.de of PIOS Private Site in Frankfurt, Germany \X/ office: peterk @ pios.de ###### From: "Scott Stevens" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 19:07:37 -0500 Lines: 61 X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.71.1712.3 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.71.1712.3 NNTP-Posting-Host: usr-401-4-13.isd.net Message-ID: <35524cd6.0@aedes.isd.net> Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!europa.clark.net!207.103.147.20!news.voicenet.com!news.new-york.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!aedes.isd.net!usr-401-4-13.isd.net Munged Email Munged Email wrote in message ... >On 5 May 1998, Tim Shoppa wrote: > >> In article , >> Bruce James Robert Linley wrote: >> >The RS-232 serial standard was named for it's creator- Radio Shack. >> >I recall a radioshack sales drois who adamantly insisted upon this. >> >> "ASC2" instead of "ASCII" is something I've been seeing for the past >> two decades and it still hasn't gone away! >> >> And every day I see more ads for PC-clones with clock rates in the >> millihertz than in the megahertz! (Let's not forget the millibyte >> memory systems, too!) > >Milliherts is possible (although, very, very, veeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrryyyy >slow) but millibyte is totally inconcievable. I guess a decibyte could be >a bit as 1/8 is as close as you can get to 1/10 in base 2. > Actually, it's not possible to run an x86-type computer below a certain clock frequency. Among other issues, some (all?) of the internal registers in the microprocessor are dynamic, which means that unless they are excercised (read and written to) with some minimum frequency, they lose their contents. There are versions of some microprocessors that are all static (i.e. Z8 microcontrollers), and thus can run at clock frequencies down to near DC (visualize keeping a monkey whose job is to open and close the knife switch to keep the system running). I personally experimented with extremely low clock frequencies on an old 386sx motherboard a few years back. It had a socketed 'metal block' crystal oscillator, so I plugged in progressively slower oscillators. I remember that it would run down in the single digit megahertz range (very slow power-on-self-tests), but that it was DOA (unless I didn't wait long enough... which would have been a L O N G time, actually) when I plugged in a 32.768KHz oscillator module (the lowest freq. I had). Then again, I can be weird sometimes. My PC Junior had a Norton SI rating of .7 and was well worth holding on to, just so I could bring it up in a boastful tone when hot dogs around me started carrying on about the speed of their systems. >> And, finally, *everyone* agrees that you cannot get on the Internet >> with anything less than a Pentium! > >But with anything less than a Pentium how are you going to run >MSIE 4.0!?!?!?!?!? > >How about "the internet was invented by MS" or "the web is the internet" >(after all, to get to the web you click on that little "The Internet" >icon). > >--- >The address in the from field is a spam blocking address, replying to >that address will redirect your mail to your sysadmin. To send mail to me >my username is lee1089 and my domain is kettering dot edu. > > ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: alderson@netcom.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers In-Reply-To: tph@longhorn.uucp's message of 5 May 1998 21:04:44 GMT Message-ID: Sender: alderson@netcom.netcom.com Reply-To: alderson@netcom.com Organization: NETCOM On-line services References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 19:21:58 GMT Lines: 12 Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!news.freedom2surf.net!btnet-peer!btnet!newsfeed.internetmci.com!205.252.116.205!howland.erols.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom!alderson In article <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) writes: >[snip] >"No...Microsoft Windows? What does it DO, then?" I just barely managed to >suppress the urge to slap him silly. Why? -- Rich Alderson Last LOTS Tops-20 Systems Programmer, 1984-1991 last name @ XKL dot COM Current maintainer, MIT TECO EMACS (v. 170) ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!jobone!dailyplanet.srl.ford.com!eccws1.dearborn.ford.com!longhorn!tph From: tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 7 May 1998 22:45:28 GMT Organization: Mechanist Industries Lines: 23 Message-ID: <6itdi8$k3b5@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> References: Reply-To: tph@rmi.net NNTP-Posting-Host: cs0053.eld.ford.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Richard M. Alderson III (alderson@netcom.netcom.com) wrote: : In article <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> tph@longhorn.uucp : (Tom Harrington) writes: : >[snip] : >"No...Microsoft Windows? What does it DO, then?" I just barely managed to : >suppress the urge to slap him silly. : Why? Well.... it wasn't as though this person was trying to set himself out as a someone who "knows computers" or anything, he was an inexperineced user who had just been so snowed over by MS/Intel marketing that he didn't know any better. So since I had some time to kill, I set about trying to educate him a bit. I don't know if it helped, but I can always hope that maybe the light bulb finally came on over his head. -- Tom Harrington --------- tph@rmii.com -------- http://rainbow.rmii.com/~tph "I'm waiting for the time when I can finally say, that this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way." -Phish, "Down with Disease" Cookie's Revenge: ftp://ftp.rmi.net/pub2/tph/cookie/cookies-revenge.sit.hqx ###### Date: 08 May 98 10:47:35 -0800 From: "Charlie Gibbs" Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com> Message-ID: <570.432T1766T6474811@sky.bus.com> Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Lines: 15 X-Newsreader: THOR 2.5a (Amiga;TCP/IP) NNTP-Posting-Host: news.skybus.com Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-east.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!204.244.4.2!news.westel.com!news.skybus.com!204.244.247.123 In article linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) writes: >And that we all must wait with baited breath for the birth of 64-bit ^^^^^^ That's "bated", not "baited". Unless you're talking about the cat who ate some cheese and then waited by the mouse hole with baited breath. Sorry. But an opportunity to pick one of my favourite spelling nits and make a sick pun at the same time was too much to resist. -- cgibbs@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs) Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!panix!news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: stern@panix.com (Stern, just Stern) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 8 May 1998 11:01:48 -0400 Organization: No thanks, I gave at the office Lines: 17 Message-ID: <6iv6os$78h@panix3.panix.com> References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6iuvre$bl6$1@vodka.tnx.djmarkets.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix3.nfs100.access.net In <6iuvre$bl6$1@vodka.tnx.djmarkets.co.uk> cbh@REMOVE_THIS.teabag.demon.co.uk (Chris Hedley) writes: >In article <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com>, > lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (Lee Winson) writes: >> The attitude that the industry went from the ENIAC to the Personal >> Computer with essentially nothing in between. >... and that the Industry started with ENIAC, for that matter! Well, computers existed before ENIAC but one could argue that the *industry* was created there or even later (with the first Univac machines). -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- We'll add creationism to science textbooks just as soon as you add http://www.panix.com/~stern/ Darwin to the Bible. stern@[spambuster]wheels.org ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!mail2news.demon.co.uk!tnglwood.demon.co.uk!unclebob From: unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk (Robert Billing) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Fri, 08 May 98 11:02:15 GMT Message-ID: <894625335snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> Reply-To: unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Mail2News-User: unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Mail2News-Path: post-12.mail.demon.net X-Trace: mail2news.demon.co.uk 894634666 26734 unclebob tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Newsreader: Demon Internet Simple News v1.29 Lines: 18 In article root@127.0.0.1 "Munged Email Munged Email" writes: > Milliherts is possible (although, very, very, veeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrryyyy > slow) but millibyte is totally inconcievable. I guess a decibyte could be > a bit as 1/8 is as close as you can get to 1/10 in base 2. Actually, no. The video compression chappies whith their discrete cosines commonly talk about fractional bits when describing their compression ratios. -- I am Robert Billing, Christian, inventor, traveller, cook and animal lover, I live near 0:46W 51:22N. http://www.tnglwood.demon.co.uk/ "Bother," said Pooh, "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock phasers on the Heffalump, Piglet, meet me in transporter room three" ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!206.25.34.3!skylink!not-for-mail From: "Jack Peacock" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 12:41:36 -0700 Organization: Skylink Networks, Inc. (http://www.skylink.net./) Lines: 13 Message-ID: <6ivnab$slo$1@news.skylink.net> References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> <35524cd6.0@aedes.isd.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: jack.simconv.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-7" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 Scott Stevens wrote in message +ADw-35524cd6.0+AEA-aedes.isd.net+AD4-... +AD4- +AD4-Actually, it's not possible to run an x86-type computer below a certain +AD4-clock frequency. Among other issues, some (all?) of the internal registers +AD4-in the microprocessor are dynamic, which means that unless they are +AD4-excercised (read and written to) with some minimum frequency, they lose +AD4-their contents Some X86 CPUs did have a fully static design. IIRC the NEC V20/V30 (8088/8086 semi-clones) could run down to DC, and was it Harris that did a rad hardened 80C86 that also clocked to DC? Jack Peacock ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newsgate.cistron.nl!het.net!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp.news.xara.net!xara.net!Aladdin!aladdin.net!ns2.aladdin.net!vodka.tnx.djmarkets.co.uk!not-for-mail From: cbh@REMOVE_THIS.teabag.demon.co.uk (Chris Hedley) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 8 May 1998 13:03:42 GMT Organization: teabag Lines: 8 Message-ID: <6iuvre$bl6$1@vodka.tnx.djmarkets.co.uk> References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.8 In article <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com>, lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (Lee Winson) writes: > The attitude that the industry went from the ENIAC to the Personal > Computer with essentially nothing in between. ... and that the Industry started with ENIAC, for that matter! Chris. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!newsm.ibm.net!ibm.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!ix.netcom.com!linley From: linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Message-ID: Organization: Megami no Belldandy-sama no deshi References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com> Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 15:47:21 GMT Lines: 22 Sender: linley@netcom16.netcom.com In ye olden post peterk @ combo.ganesha.com spake... >In article <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com> Russell Kegley writes: >>James Hague wrote: >>> >>> Any other fun stories? >> >>That the industry has FINALLY in the past couple of years discovered >>what it takes to make a multiprocessor operating system work, and that >>we owe it all to Microsoft. > >Yes, and they also invented the mouse and the GUI, 32 bits and >multitasking! And that we all must wait with baited breath for the birth of 64-bit microprocessors... when Intel rolls out Merced! DEC 21whuzza64??? Never heard of it. -- Bruce James Robert Linley | +---+---+--_ | "Tea is always bitter... but linley@netcom.com | | |NV | UT | blood is warm and sweet." Programmer, Fortunet Inc. | \ CA \ |___ | Las Vegas, Nevada, USA ----------> \*| AZ | - Miyu ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-stock.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!198.60.22.3!xmission!xmission.xmission.com!dabear From: No one you know Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 18:38:32 -0600 Organization: little to none Lines: 18 Message-ID: References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: xmission.xmission.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Sender: dabear@xmission.xmission.com In-Reply-To: <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> X-Spambot-Bait: postmaster@127.0.0.1 X-No-Archive: Yes On 5 May 1998, Tim Shoppa wrote: > And, finally, *everyone* agrees that you cannot get on the Internet > with anything less than a Pentium! Heh. When my 486 went down several months ago, I took my old Commodore 64 out of it's storage box and got on the Internet with *it* to keep up with my email until the 486 was back up. Who says dialup shell accounts (and anything less than a Pentium...snicker...) aren't good for anything anymore? -- No one you know is not dabear at xmission dot com and does not exist. "Wasn't there, didn't do it" *** Visit the CyberResistance Underground Web Site at http://www.xmission.com/~dabear *** Cross-posting all or part of this post to other newsgroups carries a fee of $500 per cross-post. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsm.ibm.net!ibm.net!uunet!in2.uu.net!xmission!xmission.xmission.com!dabear From: No one you know Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 18:41:42 -0600 Organization: little to none Lines: 14 Message-ID: References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: xmission.xmission.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Sender: dabear@xmission.xmission.com In-Reply-To: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> X-Spambot-Bait: postmaster@127.0.0.1 X-No-Archive: Yes On 6 May 1998, Lee Winson wrote: > The attitude that the industry went from the ENIAC to the Personal > Computer with essentially nothing in between. Or my favorite: The IBM PC was the first personal computer... -- No one you know is not dabear at xmission dot com and does not exist. "Wasn't there, didn't do it" *** Visit the CyberResistance Underground Web Site at http://www.xmission.com/~dabear *** Cross-posting all or part of this post to other newsgroups carries a fee of $500 per cross-post. ###### Path: ccw.ch!usenet From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Sat, 09 May 1998 00:41:54 +0200 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 23 Message-ID: <35538A32.BAEDABCE@ccw.ch.remove> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.0.27 i486) James Hague wrote: > > Lately I've been noticing some people on the net who are clinging to > strange ideas about computer history. To wit: > > Any other fun stories? Yes. A mainframe (390s) service technician I know was once nearly thrown out of an PC users meeeting after insisting that an _real_ Centronics plug is not DB25. He actually got so unsure from their criticism that he after came to me to reassure himself that it does have 36 pins. This one is particularly bad bcause the real 36 pin plug is still in wide use at the printer end of the cable. BTW: same 36 pin plug has appeard in an dongle ad named as "the non standard Japaneese printer port" (the NEC PCs (and their clones) common there use the real plug). -- private: Neil.Franklin@ccw.ch.remove http://www.ccw.ch/Neil.Franklin/ office: franklin@arch.ethz.ch.remove http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/~franklin/ Lawyers are killing society, perhaps we should return the favour. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newsgate.cistron.nl!het.net!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!fu-berlin.de!unlisys!news.snafu.de!jnickelsen From: jnickelsen@acm.org (Juergen Nickelsen) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Sat, 9 May 1998 01:20:19 +0200 Organization: Unlimited Surprise Systems, Berlin Lines: 12 Message-ID: <1d8qire.1f3awc15i4177N@n36-62.berlin.snafu.de> References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: n36-62.berlin.snafu.de X-Newsreader: MacSOUP 2.3 Dr. Peter Kittel wrote: > >we owe it all to Microsoft. > > Yes, and they also invented the mouse and the GUI, 32 bits and > multitasking! And that multitasking had to come only lately because you can't do it in less than 4 MB. -- Juergen Nickelsen ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.130.5!mtf1!newsadm From: "Harold Rabbie" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 9 May 1998 02:08:37 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Lines: 13 Message-ID: <6j0dr5$ovk@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> References: <35538A32.BAEDABCE@ccw.ch.remove> NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.64.107.200 X-Newsreader: Microsoft Internet News 4.70.1162 James Hague wrote: > > Lately I've been noticing some people on the net who are clinging to > strange ideas about computer history. To wit: > > Any other fun stories? How about "Windows was the first protected-mode operating system for 80x86" ? I worked on a fully protected Unix look-alike on the 80286 in 1982, when the PC barely had floppies. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!ais.net!uunet!in2.uu.net!news.optus.net.au!wombat.cs.monash.edu.au!not-for-mail From: bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 9 May 1998 10:05:26 +1000 Organization: This is innd taking over... Lines: 22 Message-ID: <6j06k6$fra$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> Reply-To: bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au NNTP-Posting-Host: modem05.cs.monash.edu.au Munged Email Munged Email writes: >Milliherts is possible (although, very, very, veeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrryyyy >slow) but millibyte is totally inconcievable. I guess a decibyte could be >a bit as 1/8 is as close as you can get to 1/10 in base 2. Not quite --- a "bit" (and hence, the derived "byte") is the unit for measures of information. A millibyte is about equal to the expected amount of information needed to describe the outcome of 8 experiments with two possible outcomes each and a 99.99% vs 0.01% probability distribution. Now, while this might not sound very useful, I can assure you that I deal with changes of sizes "millibits per pixel" almost daily ;-) Bernie -- ============================================================================ "It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy... ...let's go exploring" Calvin's final words, on December 31st, 1995 ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!peerfeed.ncal.verio.net!news1.best.com!nntp2.ba.best.com!not-for-mail From: Paul Workman Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 09 May 1998 16:21:21 -0700 Lines: 24 Message-ID: References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell15.ba.best.com X-Trace: 894756082 9890 paulcw 206.86.0.12 X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 No one you know writes: > > On 5 May 1998, Tim Shoppa wrote: > > > And, finally, *everyone* agrees that you cannot get on the Internet > > with anything less than a Pentium! > > Heh. When my 486 went down several months ago, I took my old Commodore 64 > out of it's storage box and got on the Internet with *it* to keep up with > my email until the 486 was back up. Who says dialup shell accounts (and > anything less than a Pentium...snicker...) aren't good for anything > anymore? When I was a CS student, I frequently did my homework, read email and usenet news, browsed web pages, etc. dialing in to my (university) shell account on an ADM-3A and a 14.4 modem. As I recall there's no CPU in an ADM-3A at all. On a related note, is it just me or does the new cheap Mac (forget the model name) bear a striking resemblence to that ADM-3A shell-case? --Paul ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news.Stanford.EDU!nntp.Stanford.EDU!not-for-mail From: xmikex@eyrie.org (XmikeX) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 9 May 1998 16:44:10 -0700 Organization: The Eyrie Lines: 32 Message-ID: <6j2poa$uc6@eyrie.org> References: <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: eyrie.stanford.edu Wonderful "microcomputer", "appliance computer", aka "personal computer" revisionist agenda. 1) Apple made the first, IBM perfected it. 2) Altair -really- made the first, Apple made the first big seller. 3) All begins with Microsoft/Traf-O-Data. 4) Commodore Business Machines, Atari, Tandy, miscellaneous Z80 CP/M machines, *.uk and other european machines, played no role. 5) The Mark-8 did not exist, Altair -really- made the first. 6) Because there were probably other things that could be classified as a progenitor "pc" at the time, let's stick to the Altair -and if really pressed- to the Mark-8. 7) The Commodore 64 was NOT the absolute best selling home computer model of all time. (It was, and still is.) 8) Microsoft invented BASIC and DOS and GUIs. 9) Microsoft invented and developed the "internet". 10) You need (insert latest model machine) to do (insert incredibly mundane and simple task) by running (insert new microsoft office suite package). XmX ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 9 May 1998 19:57:29 GMT Message-ID: <6j2cf9$sj4$5@irk.zetnet.co.uk> References: <6iv6os$78h@panix3.panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: man-155.dialup.zetnet.co.uk X-Everything: Net-Tamer V 1.08X Lines: 22 On 1998-05-08 stern@panix.com(Stern,justStern) said: :Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers :In <6iuvre$bl6$1@vodka.tnx.djmarkets.co.uk> cbh@REMOVE_THIS.teabag. :demon.co.uk (Chris Hedley) writes: :>In article <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com>, :> lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (Lee Winson) writes: :>> The attitude that the industry went from the ENIAC to the :>>Personal Computer with essentially nothing in between. :>... and that the Industry started with ENIAC, for that matter! :Well, computers existed before ENIAC but one could argue that :the *industry* was created there or even later (with the first :Univac machines). *ahem* whose machines? ferranti were first to the market with the ferranti mark 1. and it could be argued that teashops were vital for the acceptance of computers into the business market. -- Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her... ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 9 May 1998 19:57:31 GMT Message-ID: <6j2cfb$sj4$6@irk.zetnet.co.uk> References: <3551729e.7327376@news.tip.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: man-155.dialup.zetnet.co.uk X-Everything: Net-Tamer V 1.08X Lines: 15 On 1998-05-07 anders.hultman@unisource.se(AndersHultman) said: :A survey quoted in Newsweek said that while 98 percent of the :students knew that the Internet isn't owned by anyone, 86% of the :suits thought that it was controlled by a corporation. 32% thought :that it was owned by Microsoft. this should be allowed to continue, you know. our favourite is the supposition that the first stored-program computer was american... -- Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her... ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!btnet-peer!btnet!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 9 May 1998 19:57:33 GMT Message-ID: <6j2cfd$sj4$7@irk.zetnet.co.uk> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: man-155.dialup.zetnet.co.uk X-Everything: Net-Tamer V 1.08X Lines: 12 On 1998-05-07 6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca said: :But with anything less than a Pentium how are you going to run :MSIE 4.0!?!?!?!?!? rather slowly - but it is possible; our work system (486dx2/66, 16Mb, 128k cache) ran MSIE 4 for as long as it took to decide it was crap at a respectable speed - ie. no more slowly than IE3. -- Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her... ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!ubnnews.unisource.ch!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!masternews.telia.net!newsfeed.ecrc.net!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!netnews.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!Supernews60!supernews.com!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: Charles Richmond Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 00:37:52 -0500 Organization: Cannine Computer Center Lines: 15 Message-ID: <35553D30.F2CBA63B@plano.net> References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com> Reply-To: richmond@plano.net NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.215.63.146 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: 894778248 R67V8VHUD3F92CCD7C usenet77.supernews.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.03 (Macintosh; I; 68K) To: Bruce James Robert Linley Bruce James Robert Linley wrote: > > [snip...] [snip...] [snip...] > And that we all must wait with baited breath for the birth of 64-bit > microprocessors... when Intel rolls out Merced! DEC 21whuzza64??? > Never heard of it. > That is funny. I used a 64-bit microprocessor about 3 years ago. It was called the DEC Alpha chip. So, since Intel acquired the DEC Alpha chip fab plant, I guess now that *Merced* will be the first!!!!! -- +-------------------------------------------------------------+ | Charles and Francis Richmond | +-------------------------------------------------------------+ ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!202.14.100.1!status.gen.nz!kcbbs!riplin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers From: riplin@kcbbs.gen.nz (Richard Plinston) Date: 10 May 98 03:32:07 GMT Message-ID: <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> Organization: Kappa Crucis Unix BBS, Auckland, New Zealand Lines: 8 > > : 1. One person insisted that Pascal was created many years after C, in an > : attempt to dumb-douwn C into a teaching language. > s/C/Algol/g then it would be absolutely correct. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!join.news.pipex.net!pipex!krypton.inbe.net!INbe.net!not-for-mail From: lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 13:51:57 GMT Organization: . Lines: 51 Message-ID: <35559e69.9697464@news.innet.be> References: <6j2cfd$sj4$7@irk.zetnet.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: pool02b-194-7-226-16.uunet.be Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 X-No-Archive: yes lisard@zetnet.co.uk told us > On 1998-05-07 6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca said: > :But with anything less than a Pentium how are you going to run > :MSIE 4.0!?!?!?!?!? > > rather slowly - but it is possible; our work system (486dx2/66, 16Mb, > 128k cache) ran MSIE 4 for as long as it took to decide it was crap at a > respectable speed - ie. no more slowly than IE3. "Rather slowly"? Not even that. For IE4, you don't need a pentium at all (I ran it on a 486 long enough to know). In the last couple of years I've seen enough proof of it, that with win95 software in general it's not the processor that's the bottleneck, but *hard disk speed*. Give a 386/33 enough RAM to work in (amounts comparable to what you tend to see in P* computers) and a recent harddisk, and it will run a lot faster than you'd expect from a 386 (but I don't know if IE4 will run on a 386 at all: a 386 will run win95, I doubt if it will run OSR2, but it definitely won't run win98 because it doesn't have the required instruction set). When '95 came out, I did the test with an AMD 386/40 and an Intel 486DX33 with the same amount of RAM. The 386 was about as fast as the 486, until I put back its old harddisk and installed win95 on that. I recently switched my 486DX4-100/32M for a PII-266/64M mainboard, my Miro 20SV display adapter for a stealth 3D 4000 turbo (AGP), but kept the same harddisk (quantum bigfoot 3.5G). Things like screen repainting happen in a flash now (on my 486 you could still notice that Freecell paints the cards one by one, now the entire game just appears if the card images are cached), and very CPU-intensive tasks (like MP3 sound compression) are a *lot* faster, but in general use (like IE4) my system hardly sped up at all: when my harddisk starts rattling to start a program, it rattles just as slow and just as long as before. IE4 maybe takes a fraction of a second less to start up as it did on my 486 - the first time I start it up. When I exit and restart it, most of it is still in the cache, and there processor speed makes a difference of course. BTW, a week later I added a new 6.5 G harddisk (a fireball this time, thinking it would be faster than a bigfoot because of its smaller dimensions: the heads wouldn't have to travel as far). It appears that I thought right, though the difference is less than I expected. You may still want to consider this if you're deciding whether to buy a bigfoot or a 'normal' HD. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!Supernews60!supernews.com!uunet!in1.uu.net!xyzzy!nntp From: "Ralph Wade Phillips" Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers X-Nntp-Posting-Host: 129.172.150.50 Message-ID: X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 Lines: 34 Sender: nntp@news.boeing.com (Boeing NNTP News Access) Organization: The Boeing Company X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 16:52:34 GMT Hi, Paul! Paul Workman wrote in message ... > >No one you know writes: >> >> On 5 May 1998, Tim Shoppa wrote: >> >> > And, finally, *everyone* agrees that you cannot get on the Internet >> > with anything less than a Pentium! >> >> Heh. When my 486 went down several months ago, I took my old Commodore 64 >> out of it's storage box and got on the Internet with *it* to keep up with >> my email until the 486 was back up. Who says dialup shell accounts (and >> anything less than a Pentium...snicker...) aren't good for anything >> anymore? > >When I was a CS student, I frequently did my homework, read email and >usenet news, browsed web pages, etc. dialing in to my (university) >shell account on an ADM-3A and a 14.4 modem. As I recall there's no >CPU in an ADM-3A at all. > On later ADM-3A's, there was a 6502 processor, as there was in earlier TeleVideos. The earliest ADM-3's were all TTL logic, tho. RwP ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!feeder.qis.net!btnet-peer!btnet!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!teabag.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: cbh@REMOVE_THIS.teabag.demon.co.uk (Chris Hedley) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 10 May 1998 21:41:31 GMT Organization: teabag Message-ID: <6j56ub$fgr$1@teabag.demon.co.uk> References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com> <570.432T1766T6474811@sky.bus.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost X-NNTP-Posting-Host: teabag.demon.co.uk:193.237.4.110 X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 894909189 nnrp-02:13287 NO-IDENT teabag.demon.co.uk:193.237.4.110 X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Newsreader: knews 1.0b.0 Lines: 18 In article <570.432T1766T6474811@sky.bus.com>, "Charlie Gibbs" writes: > That's "bated", not "baited". Unless you're talking about the cat > who ate some cheese and then waited by the mouse hole with baited > breath. > > Sorry. But an opportunity to pick one of my favourite spelling > nits and make a sick pun at the same time was too much to resist. Can we now engage in the argument as to whether trailing punctuation should go inside or outside double quotes? :) Personally, my favourite gripes are the use of "irregardless" instead of "regardless" (I'm not even convinced that the former is a valid word) and the use of "off of," which is just hideous; whenever I hear it I keep thinking of the faux-Cockney woman I used to live next door to screaming at her kids: "git off of i', yer nasty little cah!" Lovely. Chris. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!teabag.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: cbh@REMOVE_THIS.teabag.demon.co.uk (Chris Hedley) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 10 May 1998 21:45:41 GMT Organization: teabag Message-ID: <6j5765$fgr$2@teabag.demon.co.uk> References: <6iqaqk$go$1@gondor.sdsu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost X-NNTP-Posting-Host: teabag.demon.co.uk:193.237.4.110 X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 894909190 nnrp-02:13287 NO-IDENT teabag.demon.co.uk:193.237.4.110 X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Newsreader: knews 1.0b.0 Lines: 13 In article <6iqaqk$go$1@gondor.sdsu.edu>, stremler@rohan.sdsu.edu (Stewart Stremler) writes: > "Function were `invented' when programs got larger than 1 segment, as a > way to write bigger (space-wise) programs." Don't joke about it. I've seen people write programs which are pages and pages and pages in length, without any hint of a subroutine or loop. Okay, such programs probably run bloody fast on modern pipelined processors, but that's hardly the point... especially given that the person in question was almost certainly blissfully unaware of any form of optimisation. Chris. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!teabag.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: cbh@REMOVE_THIS.teabag.demon.co.uk (Chris Hedley) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 10 May 1998 21:49:22 GMT Organization: teabag Message-ID: <6j57d2$fgr$3@teabag.demon.co.uk> References: <6irnil$hou6@id4.nus.edu.sg> <6islu8$qsj$5@hirame.wwa.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost X-NNTP-Posting-Host: teabag.demon.co.uk:193.237.4.110 X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 894909191 nnrp-02:13287 NO-IDENT teabag.demon.co.uk:193.237.4.110 X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Newsreader: knews 1.0b.0 Lines: 16 In article <6islu8$qsj$5@hirame.wwa.com>, jeverett@wwa.DEFEAT.UCE.BOTS.com (John Everett) writes: > As an old operating systems developer (co-author of TSS-8, and long time > member of the TOPS-10 development group), and a believer in the old adage > that any operating system sows the seeds of it's own destruction, I'm pretty > impressed that my copy of Windows 95 recently demonstrated 23+ days uptime. I > even managed to do a couple of useful things over that period. My (other) PC at work invariably manages a full five days uptime during the week; mostly because it gets turned on first thing monday morning, then gets shutdown on friday afternoon, and does bugger all in the interim (yes, I know, it's a waste of electricity; it's just that, should I need it at short notice, the bastard takes so long to boot) The fact that the networking is shagged is probably a boon wrt reliability. Chris. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed.nacamar.de!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!teabag.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: cbh@REMOVE_THIS.teabag.demon.co.uk (Chris Hedley) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 10 May 1998 21:53:48 GMT Organization: teabag Message-ID: <6j57lc$fgr$4@teabag.demon.co.uk> References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost X-NNTP-Posting-Host: teabag.demon.co.uk:193.237.4.110 X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 894909192 nnrp-02:13287 NO-IDENT teabag.demon.co.uk:193.237.4.110 X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Newsreader: knews 1.0b.0 Lines: 9 In article , No one you know writes: > Or my favorite: The IBM PC was the first personal computer... Err, wasn't it the *last*? (Or thereabouts... I'm being somewhat oblivious to workstations and further developments of older platforms, and admittedly can't remember at which point the Macintosh appeared) Chris. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!nntp.news.xara.net!xara.net!newsfeed.nacamar.de!ix.netcom.com!dbryant From: dbryant@netcom.com (David K. Bryant) Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Message-ID: Organization: Netcom On-Line Services X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 CURRENT #9 References: Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 00:01:29 GMT Lines: 22 Sender: dbryant@netcom7.netcom.com James Hague writes: >Lately I've been noticing some people on the net who are clinging to >strange ideas about computer history. To wit: >1. One person insisted that Pascal was created many years after C, in an >attempt to dumb-douwn C into a teaching language. >2. Just today I've been talking to someone who insists that Emacs was >originally written for Windows. Bill Gates wrote BASIC. He wrote A Basic; not The Basic. I sold a whole shit load of early Bytes, Kilobauds, and other early magazines to a person at Microsoft... something about Bill wanting to re-write history. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-dc.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!ix.netcom.com!dbryant From: dbryant@netcom.com (David K. Bryant) Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Message-ID: Organization: Netcom On-Line Services X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 CURRENT #9 References: <6iqaqk$go$1@gondor.sdsu.edu> Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 00:08:02 GMT Lines: 9 Sender: dbryant@netcom7.netcom.com stremler@rohan.sdsu.edu (Stewart Stremler) writes: >"Stacks are limited to 64kbytes." >"All CPUs have 64kbyte segments." That all bytes are 8 bits long. Oh, how many years I spent trying to right that wrong. I gave up. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-ber1.dfn.de!fu-berlin.de!unlisys!news.snafu.de!jnickelsen From: jnickelsen@acm.org (Juergen Nickelsen) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 00:24:05 +0200 Organization: Unlimited Surprise Systems, Berlin Lines: 26 Message-ID: <1d8thof.jqocnx1gwoas2N@[10.0.0.3]> References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> NNTP-Posting-Host: n163-105.berlin.snafu.de X-Newsreader: MacSOUP 2.3 Richard Plinston wrote: > > : 1. One person insisted that Pascal was created many years after C, in an > > : attempt to dumb-douwn C into a teaching language. > > > s/C/Algol/g > > then it would be absolutely correct. The one Algol compared to that Pascal came several (not even many) years later was Algol 60, and Pascal is *not* a dumbed-down Algol 60. Pascal has several features that were not even remotely present in Algol 60 (powerful type system, pointers, etc.). Neither is Pascal a dumbed-down Algol 68 (which was developed at about the same time, but was finalized later than Pascal), which is very different in several respects. On the contrary, Wirth had left the Algol development some years before 1968 because he disagreed with the direction of the Algol effort. He developed an own Algol design (Algol-W), which is not widely known, and then Pascal. See the proceedings of the History Of Programming Languages conferences (HOPL and HOPL 2) for details. -- Juergen Nickelsen ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!jobone!dailyplanet.srl.ford.com!eccws1.dearborn.ford.com!longhorn!tph From: tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 11 May 1998 15:13:47 GMT Organization: Mechanist Industries Lines: 17 Message-ID: <6j74jb$b8d10@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> References: <6iqaqk$go$1@gondor.sdsu.edu> Reply-To: tph@rmi.net NNTP-Posting-Host: cs0053.eld.ford.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] David K. Bryant (dbryant@netcom.com) wrote: : stremler@rohan.sdsu.edu (Stewart Stremler) writes: : >"Stacks are limited to 64kbytes." : >"All CPUs have 64kbyte segments." : That all bytes are 8 bits long. Oh, how many years : I spent trying to right that wrong. I gave up. I have a computer architecture textbook, published last year, which claims that this is the case. -- Tom Harrington --------- tph@rmii.com -------- http://rainbow.rmii.com/~tph "religious mania is said to be the prevailing form of insanity in the United States." -Henry Coswell Cookie's Revenge: ftp://ftp.rmi.net/pub2/tph/cookie/cookies-revenge.sit.hqx ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-fw.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!198.60.22.3!xmission!not-for-mail From: raebad@moc.noissimx (No one you know) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 11 May 1998 15:39:28 -0600 Organization: Little to none... Lines: 16 Sender: dabear@xmission.xmission.com Message-ID: <6j7r6g$g96$1@xmission.xmission.com> References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6j57lc$fgr$4@teabag.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: xmission.xmission.com X-No-Archive: Yes X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 unoff BETA 970327; sun4m SunOS 5.5.1] Chris Hedley wrote: > > Or my favorite: The IBM PC was the first personal computer... > Err, wasn't it the *last*? (Or thereabouts... I'm being somewhat > oblivious to workstations and further developments of older platforms, > and admittedly can't remember at which point the Macintosh appeared) Well, the Apple Lisa came out in 1982, and the Mac came out sometime after the Lisa. The first IBM PC came out in late '81. -- --No one you know-- Email address reversed to foil spammers. War On Spam website: http://www.xmission.com/~dabear/ Ban Spam Now! Join CAUCE! http://www.cauce.org/ ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.uunet.ca!atbowler From: atbowler@thinkage.on.ca (Alan Bowler) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 11 May 1998 17:32:43 GMT Organization: Thinkage Ltd. Lines: 11 Message-ID: <6j7cnr$acj$1@nntp2.uunet.ca> References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> <1d8thof.jqocnx1gwoas2N@[10.0.0.3]> NNTP-Posting-Host: 192.102.11.4 In article <1d8thof.jqocnx1gwoas2N@[10.0.0.3]> jnickelsen@acm.org (Juergen Nickelsen) writes: > >Neither is Pascal a dumbed-down Algol 68 (which was developed at about >the same time, but was finalized later than Pascal), which is very >different in several respects. On the contrary, Wirth had left the Algol >development some years before 1968 because he disagreed with the >direction of the Algol effort. He developed an own Algol design >(Algol-W), which is not widely known, and then Pascal. But its legacy lives on. The reason for the bizarre precedence of 'and' and 'or' in Pascal, is inherited from a feature of Algol-W. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!24.130.1.14!lsnws01.we.mediaone.net!24.131.1.12!denws01.mw.mediaone.net!news.gmi.edu!nova.kettering.edu!lee1089 From: Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 18:02:10 -0400 Organization: Kettering University (formerly GMI E&MI) - Flint MI Lines: 16 Message-ID: References: <6iqaqk$go$1@gondor.sdsu.edu> <6j74jb$b8d10@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: nova.kettering.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In-Reply-To: <6j74jb$b8d10@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> On 11 May 1998, Tom Harrington wrote: > David K. Bryant (dbryant@netcom.com) wrote: > : stremler@rohan.sdsu.edu (Stewart Stremler) writes: > > : >"Stacks are limited to 64kbytes." > : >"All CPUs have 64kbyte segments." > > : That all bytes are 8 bits long. Oh, how many years > : I spent trying to right that wrong. I gave up. > > I have a computer architecture textbook, published last year, which > claims that this is the case. Anymore that is usually (always?) the case. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!teabag.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: cbh@REMOVE_THIS.teabag.demon.co.uk (Chris Hedley) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 11 May 1998 18:05:08 GMT Organization: teabag Message-ID: <6j7ekk$10i$1@teabag.demon.co.uk> References: <6iqaqk$go$1@gondor.sdsu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost X-NNTP-Posting-Host: teabag.demon.co.uk:193.237.4.110 X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 894912595 nnrp-03:26650 NO-IDENT teabag.demon.co.uk:193.237.4.110 X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Newsreader: knews 1.0b.0 Lines: 15 In article , dbryant@netcom.com (David K. Bryant) writes: > That all bytes are 8 bits long. Oh, how many years > I spent trying to right that wrong. I gave up. I like to promote the case of the wonderful PDP-10, which had various interpretations of "byte" (although I suspect that this was all pretty arbitrary because of it's word-based architecture) which, in its 36- bit word, could store either 6 SIXBIT characters (hence the former restriction of 6 character system names on DeathNet networks) or five ASCII characters with a bit left over (I think that this was often used to indicate that the word in question represented a line number in certain cases) Chris. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!feeder.qis.net!btnet-peer!btnet!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!taos.demon.co.uk!!dg From: dg@ (David Given) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 18:17:55 GMT Organization: I'm organised? Wow! Message-ID: <894910675.984.0.nnrp-01.9e9878e0@news.demon.co.uk> References: <6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> <35524cd6.0@aedes.isd.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: taos.demon.co.uk X-NNTP-Posting-Host: taos.demon.co.uk:158.152.120.224 X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 894910675 nnrp-01:984 NO-IDENT taos.demon.co.uk:158.152.120.224 X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net Lines: 20 In article <35524cd6.0@aedes.isd.net>, Scott Stevens wrote: [...] >Then again, I can be weird sometimes. My PC Junior had a Norton SI rating >of .7 and was well worth holding on to, just so I could bring it up in a >boastful tone when hot dogs around me started carrying on about the speed of >their systems. [...] I've got a Zenith Z150 (8088, 4.77MHz, all RAM access via 8-bit ISA) that manages 0.03 bogomips under ELKS. One of my friends has a twin-processor Pentium that rates 666 bogomips. Whenever he brings his rating up, I bring mine up... -- +- David Given ----------------+ If a man speaks in a forest, and there | Work: dg@tao.co.uk | is no woman to hear him, is he still | Play: dg@freeyellow.com | wrong? +- http://wiredsoc.ml.org/~dg -+ ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.ultranet.com!not-for-mail From: "dave porter" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 11 May 1998 19:00:25 GMT Organization: none of the above Lines: 35 Message-ID: <01bd7d0e$fd28de10$0ba17392@glastonbury> References: <6iqaqk$go$1@gondor.sdsu.edu> <6j7ekk$10i$1@teabag.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: 146.115.161.11 X-Complaints-To: abuse@ultra.net X-Ultra-Time: 11 May 1998 19:00:25 GMT X-Newsreader: Microsoft Internet News 4.70.1161 On the PDP-10, a byte was from 0 bits (I think, though perhaps it had to be 1 bit) to 36 bits wide. There was a special address format called a byte pointer which had a memory address in one half (memory was word addressable), and offset-in-word and width information in the other. There were only a very few instructions which could operate on bytes: basically "load byte from memory to accumulator" and "store byte from accumulator to memory". So, yes, it was all pretty arbitrary. "Bytes" were basically a way to subdivide "words" however you wanted. dave -- For email, please remove the 'w' from my address. Sorry. Chris Hedley wrote in article <6j7ekk$10i$1@teabag.demon.co.uk>... > In article , > dbryant@netcom.com (David K. Bryant) writes: > > That all bytes are 8 bits long. Oh, how many years > > I spent trying to right that wrong. I gave up. > > I like to promote the case of the wonderful PDP-10, which had various > interpretations of "byte" (although I suspect that this was all pretty > arbitrary because of it's word-based architecture) which, in its 36- > bit word, could store either 6 SIXBIT characters (hence the former > restriction of 6 character system names on DeathNet networks) or five > ASCII characters with a bit left over (I think that this was often used > to indicate that the word in question represented a line number in > certain cases) > > Chris. > ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.ultranet.com!not-for-mail From: "dave porter" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 11 May 1998 19:03:35 GMT Organization: none of the above Lines: 31 Message-ID: <01bd7d0f$6c8aa950$0ba17392@glastonbury> References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com> <570.432T1766T6474811@sky.bus.com> <6j56ub$fgr$1@teabag.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: 146.115.161.11 X-Complaints-To: abuse@ultra.net X-Ultra-Time: 11 May 1998 19:03:35 GMT X-Newsreader: Microsoft Internet News 4.70.1161 The punctuation-inside-or-out issue is an English-versus-American debate. Fortunately, English is also the more logical, so I don't have to defend the "indefensible". dave -- For email, please remove the 'w' from my address. Sorry. Chris Hedley wrote in article <6j56ub$fgr$1@teabag.demon.co.uk>... > In article <570.432T1766T6474811@sky.bus.com>, > "Charlie Gibbs" writes: > > That's "bated", not "baited". Unless you're talking about the cat > > who ate some cheese and then waited by the mouse hole with baited > > breath. > > > > Sorry. But an opportunity to pick one of my favourite spelling > > nits and make a sick pun at the same time was too much to resist. > > Can we now engage in the argument as to whether trailing punctuation > should go inside or outside double quotes? :) Personally, my > favourite gripes are the use of "irregardless" instead of "regardless" > (I'm not even convinced that the former is a valid word) and the use > of "off of," which is just hideous; whenever I hear it I keep thinking > of the faux-Cockney woman I used to live next door to screaming at her > kids: "git off of i', yer nasty little cah!" Lovely. > > Chris. > ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!surfnet.nl!ruu.nl!tijger.fys.ruu.nl!usenet From: Rik van Riel Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Sender: usenet@fys.ruu.nl (News system Tijgertje) Message-ID: X-Sender: riel@mirkwood.dummy.home In-Reply-To: <35553D30.F2CBA63B@plano.net> Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 19:29:04 GMT X-Nntp-Posting-Host: anx1p2.fys.ruu.nl Reply-To: Rik van Riel Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII References: <6inudd$eco$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <35505A4B.66F56E44@lmco.com> <35553D30.F2CBA63B@plano.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Organization: Linux memory management wishlist. Lines: 28 On Sun, 10 May 1998, Charles Richmond wrote: > Bruce James Robert Linley wrote: > > > > [snip...] [snip...] [snip...] > > And that we all must wait with baited breath for the birth of 64-bit > > microprocessors... when Intel rolls out Merced! DEC 21whuzza64??? > > Never heard of it. > > > That is funny. I used a 64-bit microprocessor about 3 years ago. It was > called the DEC Alpha chip. So, since Intel acquired the DEC Alpha chip fab > plant, I guess now that *Merced* will be the first!!!!! Slight correction: Intel (mis)used technology which was patented by DEC. DEC had a chip factory which was running under capacity... After the lawsuit, Intel agreed to BUY the factory from DEC. Now DEC only pays for the manufacturing costs of the Alpha chips, while Intel has to pay for the other (unused) part of the factory (by making their own chips). Rik. +-------------------------------------------+--------------------------+ | Linux: - LinuxHQ MM-patches page | Scouting webmaster | | - kswapd ask-him & complain-to guy | Vries cubscout leader | | http://www.phys.uu.nl/~riel/ | | +-------------------------------------------+--------------------------+ ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!feeder.qis.net!btnet-peer!btnet-feed1!btnet!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 11 May 1998 19:39:50 GMT Lines: 26 Message-ID: <6j7k66$66e$1@irk.zetnet.co.uk> References: <35559e69.9697464@news.innet.be> NNTP-Posting-Host: man-140.dialup.zetnet.co.uk X-Everything: Net-Tamer V 1.08X On 1998-05-10 lucvdv@null.net(LucVanderVeken) said: :lisard@zetnet.co.uk told us :> On 1998-05-07 6io86k$hm2$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca said: :> :But with anything less than a Pentium how are you going to run :> :MSIE 4.0!?!?!?!?!? :> rather slowly - but it is possible; our work system (486dx2/66, :>16Mb, 128k cache) ran MSIE 4 for as long as it took to decide it :>was crap at a respectable speed - ie. no more slowly than IE3. :"Rather slowly"? Not even that. For IE4, you don't need a pentium :at all (I ran it on a 486 long enough to know). :In the last couple of years I've seen enough proof of it, that :with win95 software in general it's not the processor that's the :bottleneck, but *hard disk speed*. yes, our apologies, you're right - which is why we should have specified that our hard drive is double-spaced out of necessity (340Mb). that *would* impact on the speed (especially swapping speed. ever heard a hard drive being shredded every time the system decides it's time for an email check? ugh.) -- Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her... ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newsgate.cistron.nl!het.net!newsfeed.adam.ixe.net!newsfeed.xs4all.nl!xs4all!xs4all!not-for-mail From: Jan van den Broek Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 11 May 1998 20:45:04 +0200 Organization: Staats Ysbeer Beheer Lines: 17 Message-ID: <6j7gvg$2u9$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> References: <6iqaqk$go$1@gondor.sdsu.edu> <6j74jb$b8d10@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: xs2.xs4all.nl X-XS4ALL-Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 20:45:06 CEST X-Order: Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps, please. X-Question: never, never known not even by many to exist X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #4 tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) writes: >David K. Bryant (dbryant@netcom.com) wrote: >: That all bytes are 8 bits long. Oh, how many years >: I spent trying to right that wrong. I gave up. >I have a computer architecture textbook, published last year, which >claims that this is the case. Let's go a byte further; "All bits are eight bytes long".[1] [1] As a user once told me. _________________________________________________________________________ De digitale paardenslager Jan van den Broek balglaas@xs4all.nl ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!btnet-peer!btnet-feed2!btnet!carbon.eu.sun.com!uk-usenet.uk.sun.com!engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM!not-for-mail From: writer1@Eng.Sun.COM (Bob Morrisette) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Rewriting the history of computeres. Date: 11 May 1998 21:49:31 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc. Lines: 7 Message-ID: <6j7rpb$rvb$1@engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM> Reply-To: writer1@Eng.Sun.COM NNTP-Posting-Host: sabu.eng.sun.com A Time magazine TV commercial keeps insisting that Jobs and Wozniak invented the world's first personal computer. Bob Morrisette ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!join.news.pipex.net!pipex!krypton.inbe.net!INbe.net!not-for-mail From: lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 22:17:20 GMT Organization: . Lines: 48 Message-ID: <355c6c47.8225427@news.innet.be> References: <35559e69.9697464@news.innet.be> <6j7k66$66e$1@irk.zetnet.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: pool02b-194-7-226-4.uunet.be Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 X-No-Archive: yes lisard@zetnet.co.uk wrote > yes, our apologies, you're right - which is why we should have specified apologies? what for? I thought we basically said the same thing. > that our hard drive is double-spaced out of necessity (340Mb). that > *would* impact on the speed (especially swapping speed. ever heard a > hard drive being shredded every time the system decides it's time for an > email check? ugh.) I know the feeling. At work I'm still using a 486/33 (originally got it with 4M, now +16 = 20; 250M harddisk, approx 230M full, including fixed 16M swap file) to store some old files I don't know where else to leave, and as a printer server for my other two PC's. As a printer server it still does a good job. Actually, that's the same computer & harddisk I used in the 386/486 comparison I spoke about in my other post. BTW (I'm *really* getting off topic now), maybe a fixed-size swap file could speed up your system a bit: keeps it from getting fragmented. You may need to defrag first, so all empty space is in one big block; reboot so your swap file is [almost] empty, then set a minimum size (16M?) for your swap file, and reboot again. IIRC, compression doesn't make a difference in swapping behaviour, because drivespace 3 doesn't compress your swap file. At least I believe I read that, but don't remember where. I may be mixing it up with something else, though. You can also try putting this in the [vcache] section of your SYSTEM.INI file (just add the section if it isn't there): MaxFileCache=4096 This setting originates from wfw 3.11, but it still works in win95 (there are a few knowledge base article about it at MS's site: article Q140678, which refers you back to Q108079). A lower value tends to make your system swap less (but your disk cache is smaller, otoh). The value is in KB, it just limits the maximum size your disk cache can ever grow to: a 16M system sometimes starts swapping while it's got 8M of old data in the cache. 4M is a good starting point. -- (C)opyright notice: I wouldn't dare claim any (C) on the above tips, because I didn't invent anything of it myself. Most of it comes out of other people's usenet posts. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!ix.netcom.com!netcom19!alderson From: alderson@netcom19.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers In-Reply-To: raebad@moc.noissimx's message of 11 May 1998 15:39:28 -0600 Message-ID: Sender: alderson@netcom19.netcom.com Reply-To: alderson@netcom.com Organization: NETCOM On-line services References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6j57lc$fgr$4@teabag.demon.co.uk> <6j7r6g$g96$1@xmission.xmission.com> Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 07:11:29 GMT Lines: 11 In article <6j7r6g$g96$1@xmission.xmission.com> raebad@moc.noissimx (No one you know) writes: >Well, the Apple Lisa came out in 1982, and the Mac came out sometime after the >Lisa. The first IBM PC came out in late '81. Lisa came out in February, 1983; I got to see one under non-disclosure. The Mac came out in February, 1984--think of the young woman in the orange shorts. -- Rich Alderson Last LOTS Tops-20 Systems Programmer, 1984-1991 last name @ XKL dot COM Current maintainer, MIT TECO EMACS (v. 170) ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!24.128.1.125!chnws03.mediaone.net!24.131.1.12!denws01.mw.mediaone.net!news.gmi.edu!nova.kettering.edu!lee1089 From: Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 08:32:15 -0400 Organization: Kettering University (formerly GMI E&MI) - Flint MI Lines: 21 Message-ID: References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com><6j57lc$fgr$4@teabag.demon.co.uk> <6j7r6g$g96$1@xmission.xmission.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: nova.kettering.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In-Reply-To: On Tue, 12 May 1998, Richard M. Alderson III wrote: > In article <6j7r6g$g96$1@xmission.xmission.com> raebad@moc.noissimx > (No one you know) writes: > > >Well, the Apple Lisa came out in 1982, and the Mac came out sometime after the > >Lisa. The first IBM PC came out in late '81. > > Lisa came out in February, 1983; I got to see one under non-disclosure. The > Mac came out in February, 1984--think of the young woman in the orange shorts. They were red shorts and it was January 1984. From the commercial: "On January 24th Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh and you'll see why 1984 won't be like "1984". Also, her t-shirt had the "Picasso Mac" picture on it. (The one that was on the "Welcome to Macintosh" screen before they changed it to "Welcome to MacOS" with the smiley face. You can download the commercial from www.apple.com along with many other Apple commercials. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!news.ultranet.com!d16 From: jmfbahxx@ma.ultranet.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Tue, 12 May 98 11:19:45 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 29 Message-ID: <6j9e57$cu1$2@strato.ultra.net> References: <6iqaqk$go$1@gondor.sdsu.edu> <6j7ekk$10i$1@teabag.demon.co.uk> <01bd7d0e$fd28de10$0ba17392@glastonbury> NNTP-Posting-Host: d16.dial-15.mbo.ma.ultra.net X-Complaints-To: abuse@ultra.net X-Ultra-Time: 12 May 1998 12:09:11 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 In article <01bd7d0e$fd28de10$0ba17392@glastonbury>, "dave porter" wrote: >On the PDP-10, a byte was from 0 bits (I think, though perhaps >it had to be 1 bit) to 36 bits wide. Ermm...not quite. The word was 36 bits long (counting 1, 2, 3,...,36). Using some of the instructions counted the bits as 0,1,2,...,35 e.g,. the JFFO instruction is an example. >There was a special >address format called a byte pointer which had a memory >address in one half (memory was word addressable), and >offset-in-word and width information in the other. Not quite. One could do indexing with the instruction. The address contained in the right half of the LDB instruction had the "where to pickup/deposit" info. > >There were only a very few instructions which could >operate on bytes: basically "load byte from memory to accumulator" >and "store byte from accumulator to memory". > >So, yes, it was all pretty arbitrary. "Bytes" were basically >a way to subdivide "words" however you wanted. And then there were the bit instruction :-). /BAH ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!198.60.22.3!xmission!not-for-mail From: raebad@moc.noissimx (No one you know) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 13 May 1998 14:04:58 -0600 Organization: Little to none... Lines: 22 Sender: dabear@xmission.xmission.com Message-ID: <6jcuda$ill$1@xmission.xmission.com> References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6j57lc$fgr$4@teabag.demon.co.uk> <6j7r6g$g96$1@xmission.xmission.com> <6jchsd$fo81@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: xmission.xmission.com X-No-Archive: Yes X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 unoff BETA 970327; sun4m SunOS 5.5.1] Tom Harrington wrote: > : Well, the Apple Lisa came out in 1982, and the Mac came out sometime after > : the Lisa. The first IBM PC came out in late '81. > And the Mac made its debut in 1984. So, was the Macintosh the last > personal computer? I don't know when Amiga first appeared, exactly. > Be originally had their own hardware line, but the BeBox was canned > before it hit the general market, so it probably doesn't count. I'm not sure of the exact date the Amiga was introduced (mid 80's sometime, I believe?) There were several others that came and went since the Mac was introduced though. The Commodore 128 might fit this category as well, although it was to some extent merely an update of the 64. -- --No one you know-- Email address reversed to foil spammers. War On Spam website: http://www.xmission.com/~dabear/ Ban Spam Now! Join CAUCE! http://www.cauce.org/ ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!jobone!dailyplanet.srl.ford.com!eccws1.dearborn.ford.com!longhorn!tph From: tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 13 May 1998 16:31:09 GMT Organization: Mechanist Industries Lines: 21 Message-ID: <6jchsd$fo81@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6j57lc$fgr$4@teabag.demon.co.uk> <6j7r6g$g96$1@xmission.xmission.com> Reply-To: tph@rmi.net NNTP-Posting-Host: cs0053.eld.ford.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] No one you know (raebad@moc.noissimx) wrote: : Chris Hedley wrote: : > > Or my favorite: The IBM PC was the first personal computer... : > Err, wasn't it the *last*? (Or thereabouts... I'm being somewhat : > oblivious to workstations and further developments of older platforms, : > and admittedly can't remember at which point the Macintosh appeared) : Well, the Apple Lisa came out in 1982, and the Mac came out sometime after : the Lisa. The first IBM PC came out in late '81. And the Mac made its debut in 1984. So, was the Macintosh the last personal computer? I don't know when Amiga first appeared, exactly. Be originally had their own hardware line, but the BeBox was canned before it hit the general market, so it probably doesn't count. -- Tom Harrington --------- tph@rmii.com -------- http://rainbow.rmii.com/~tph "Spot the troll in this post and win a Pez". -Kibo Cookie's Revenge: ftp://ftp.rmi.net/pub2/tph/cookie/cookies-revenge.sit.hqx ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!howland.erols.net!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!jobone!dailyplanet.srl.ford.com!eccws1.dearborn.ford.com!longhorn!tph From: tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 13 May 1998 16:32:24 GMT Organization: Mechanist Industries Lines: 18 Message-ID: <6jchuo$fo82@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> References: <6iqaqk$go$1@gondor.sdsu.edu> <6j74jb$b8d10@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> Reply-To: tph@rmi.net NNTP-Posting-Host: cs0053.eld.ford.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] lee1089@kettering.edu wrote: : On 11 May 1998, Tom Harrington wrote: : > I have a computer architecture textbook, published last year, which : > claims that this is the case. : Anymore that is usually (always?) the case. True. But this was in the first chapter, the one that also had a quick overview of the history of computer architecture. You might think that they'd at least mention that 8 bits/byte had not always been the rule. -- Tom Harrington --------- tph@rmii.com -------- http://rainbow.rmii.com/~tph "Parents, protect your children, from mediocrity and blandness. Don't let them grow up to be as boring as you." -John Wesley Harding Cookie's Revenge: ftp://ftp.rmi.net/pub2/tph/cookie/cookies-revenge.sit.hqx ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!howland.erols.net!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!jobone!dailyplanet.srl.ford.com!eccws1.dearborn.ford.com!longhorn!tph From: tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 13 May 1998 16:32:24 GMT Organization: Mechanist Industries Lines: 18 Message-ID: <6jchuo$fo82@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> References: <6iqaqk$go$1@gondor.sdsu.edu> <6j74jb$b8d10@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> Reply-To: tph@rmi.net NNTP-Posting-Host: cs0053.eld.ford.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] lee1089@kettering.edu wrote: : On 11 May 1998, Tom Harrington wrote: : > I have a computer architecture textbook, published last year, which : > claims that this is the case. : Anymore that is usually (always?) the case. True. But this was in the first chapter, the one that also had a quick overview of the history of computer architecture. You might think that they'd at least mention that 8 bits/byte had not always been the rule. -- Tom Harrington --------- tph@rmii.com -------- http://rainbow.rmii.com/~tph "Parents, protect your children, from mediocrity and blandness. Don't let them grow up to be as boring as you." -John Wesley Harding Cookie's Revenge: ftp://ftp.rmi.net/pub2/tph/cookie/cookies-revenge.sit.hqx ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!denver-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!coop.net!csnews!nag.cs.colorado.edu!crosby From: crosby@nag.cs.colorado.edu (Matthew Crosby) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 13 May 1998 21:02:25 GMT Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder Lines: 28 Message-ID: <6jd1p1$igt$1@csnews.cs.colorado.edu> References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6j57lc$fgr$4@teabag.demon.co.uk> <6j7r6g$g96$1@xmission.xmission.com> <6jchsd$fo81@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: nag.cs.colorado.edu In article <6jchsd$fo81@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com>, Tom Harrington wrote: >No one you know (raebad@moc.noissimx) wrote: >: Chris Hedley wrote: > >: > > Or my favorite: The IBM PC was the first personal computer... > >: > Err, wasn't it the *last*? (Or thereabouts... I'm being somewhat >: > oblivious to workstations and further developments of older platforms, >: > and admittedly can't remember at which point the Macintosh appeared) > >: Well, the Apple Lisa came out in 1982, and the Mac came out sometime after >: the Lisa. The first IBM PC came out in late '81. > >And the Mac made its debut in 1984. So, was the Macintosh the last >personal computer? I don't know when Amiga first appeared, exactly. >Be originally had their own hardware line, but the BeBox was canned >before it hit the general market, so it probably doesn't count. > Not true; they where available on the general market for at least a year. the dual 133 603 model was $2700 US or so, I believe. (less if you qualified as a developer) (Speaking as an owner as one of the 1700 total boxes made) -- Matthew Crosby crosby@cs.colorado.edu Disclaimer: It was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!peer.news.bb.u-net.net!u-net!nntp.news.xara.net!xara.net!server5.netnews.ja.net!news.york.ac.uk!tower.york.ac.uk!jsg102 From: JS Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 00:48:53 +0100 Organization: The University of York, UK Lines: 34 Sender: jsg102@york.ac.uk Message-ID: References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6j57lc$fgr$4@teabag.demon.co.uk> <6j7r6g$g96$1@xmission.xmission.com> <6jchsd$fo81@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <6jcuda$ill$1@xmission.xmission.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: tower.york.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In-Reply-To: <6jcuda$ill$1@xmission.xmission.com> On 13 May 1998, No one you know wrote: > Tom Harrington wrote: > > > : Well, the Apple Lisa came out in 1982, and the Mac came out sometime after > > : the Lisa. The first IBM PC came out in late '81. > > > And the Mac made its debut in 1984. So, was the Macintosh the last > > personal computer? I don't know when Amiga first appeared, exactly. > > Be originally had their own hardware line, but the BeBox was canned > > before it hit the general market, so it probably doesn't count. > > I'm not sure of the exact date the Amiga was introduced (mid 80's > sometime, I believe?) > > There were several others that came and went since the Mac was introduced > though. The Commodore 128 might fit this category as well, although it > was to some extent merely an update of the 64. The Amiga was either `85 or `87, can't remember which it said on the boot up. I think the A1000 was `85, and A500 was `87. There are a lot more that have come and gone since the Mac. How about the Atari ST, or the Atari Falcon? (has anyone ever used one - I'm interested in knowing what it's like). Or even the ill-fated (and only available in Japan) X68000 came out after the Mac, I think Sharp manufactured these. JS -- JS Greenwood Langwith College University of York ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!panix!news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: stern@panix.com (Stern, just Stern) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 14 May 1998 10:14:08 -0400 Organization: No thanks, I gave at the office Lines: 31 Message-ID: <6jeu7g$2f8@panix3.panix.com> References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6j57lc$fgr$4@teabag.demon.co.uk> <6j7r6g$g96$1@xmission.xmission.com> <6jchsd$fo81@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix3.nfs100.access.net In <6jchsd$fo81@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) writes: >No one you know (raebad@moc.noissimx) wrote: >: Chris Hedley wrote: >: > > Or my favorite: The IBM PC was the first personal computer... >: > Err, wasn't it the *last*? >: Well, the Apple Lisa came out in 1982, and the Mac came out sometime after >: the Lisa. The first IBM PC came out in late '81. >And the Mac made its debut in 1984. So, was the Macintosh the last >personal computer? I don't know when Amiga first appeared, exactly. IIRC, both the Amiga and the Atari ST came out in 1985. One could reasonably argue that the personal computer industry froze after that year, with the players established, the number of platforms decreasing and the speed of the survivors just increasing every year. People whose experience with computers dates to after 1985 have no concept of how wide a range of system is possible or how creative system designers can be. -stern -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- We'll add creationism to science textbooks just as soon as you add http://www.panix.com/~stern/ Darwin to the Bible. stern@[spambuster]wheels.org ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!netnews.com!howland.erols.net!news-peer.gip.net!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!mail2news.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: Robert Billing Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Thu, 14 May 98 22:48:44 GMT Message-ID: <895186124snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6j57lc$fgr$4@teabag.demon.co.uk> <6j7r6g$g96$1@xmission.xmission.com> <6jchsd$fo81@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <6jeu7g$2f8@panix3.panix.com> Reply-To: unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Trace: mail2news.demon.co.uk 895219840 mail2news:9136 mail2news mail2news.demon.co.uk X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Mail2News-Path: news.demon.net!post-10.mail.demon.net!post.mail.demon.net!tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Newsreader: Demon Internet Simple News v1.29 Lines: 29 In article <6jeu7g$2f8@panix3.panix.com> stern@panix.com "Stern, just Stern" writes: > People whose experience with computers dates to after 1985 have no > concept of how wide a range of system is possible or how creative > system designers can be. At the risk of saying "me too", I also miss the diversity of 20 years ago. What makes me live in hope (I also live in Berkshire- much the same thing) is that if the free OSes *really* take off, then we may in 10 years or so see manufacturers competing to make the fastest Linux or FreeBSD box on the market. > We'll add creationism to science > textbooks just as soon as you add http://www.panix.com/~stern/ > Darwin to the Bible. stern@[spambuster]wheels.org This would be fine were not my main argument with the people who have added creationism to the bible (it is nowhere to be found in the Hebrew or Greek texts.) OTOH, as you can see from my .sig, life is far too short to take seriously. -- I am Robert Billing, Christian, inventor, traveller, cook and animal lover, I live near 0:46W 51:22N. http://www.tnglwood.demon.co.uk/ "Bother," said Pooh, "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock phasers on the Heffalump, Piglet, meet me in transporter room three" ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.87.106.104!surfnet.nl!news.tue.nl!toad.stack.nl!not-for-mail From: Michael-Dennis Biemans Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 14 May 1998 22:54:19 +0200 Organization: MCGV Stack, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. Lines: 17 Message-ID: <6jfllr$scu@toad.stack.nl> References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6j57lc$fgr$4@teabag.demon.co.uk> <6j7r6g$g96$1@xmission.xmission.com> <6jchsd$fo81@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <6jeu7g$2f8@panix3.panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: toad.stack.nl User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-980202 (UNIX) (FreeBSD/2.1-STABLE (i386)) Stern, just Stern wrote: > IIRC, both the Amiga and the Atari ST came out in 1985. One could > reasonably argue that the personal computer industry froze after > that year, with the players established, the number of platforms > decreasing and the speed of the survivors just increasing every > year. The Acorn Archimedes came out in 1987, it had an 8MHz ARM RISC processor. Originally it ran the Arthur OS, but in 1988 (IIRC) RISC OS was released. I own one of the later models (RiscPC, 1994), upgraded to a 200MHz StrongARM. Still a very nice machine, best GUI (well designed, easy to use) I've ever seen, but the underlying OS isn't up to modern standards. Shame they were never a big success.... MD ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!surfnet.nl!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!195.99.66.215!news-feed1.eu.concert.net!btnet-peer!btnet!nntp.news.xara.net!xara.net!server5.netnews.ja.net!news.york.ac.uk!figaro.york.ac.uk!jsg102 From: JS Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 11:53:04 +0100 Organization: The University of York, UK Lines: 29 Sender: jsg102@york.ac.uk Message-ID: References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6j57lc$fgr$4@teabag.demon.co.uk> <6j7r6g$g96$1@xmission.xmission.com> <6jchsd$fo81@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <6jeu7g$2f8@panix3.panix.com> <6jfllr$scu@toad.stack.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: figaro.york.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In-Reply-To: <6jfllr$scu@toad.stack.nl> On 14 May 1998, Michael-Dennis Biemans wrote: > Stern, just Stern wrote: > > > IIRC, both the Amiga and the Atari ST came out in 1985. One could > > reasonably argue that the personal computer industry froze after > > that year, with the players established, the number of platforms > > decreasing and the speed of the survivors just increasing every > > year. > > The Acorn Archimedes came out in 1987, it had an 8MHz ARM RISC processor. > Originally it ran the Arthur OS, but in 1988 (IIRC) RISC OS was released. > I own one of the later models (RiscPC, 1994), upgraded to a 200MHz > StrongARM. Still a very nice machine, best GUI (well designed, easy to use) > I've ever seen, but the underlying OS isn't up to modern standards. Shame > they were never a big success.... I saw an overclocked one running at around 297mhz with well over 100mb of RAM once, it was quite impressive. Personally I quite like the OS as well, there's no real problem with that; I think it's the software for it that lets it down. JS -- JS Greenwood Langwith College University of York ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!howland.erols.net!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!newsrelay.iastate.edu!news.iastate.edu!rhawkins From: rhawkins@iastate.edu (Rick Hawkins) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 15 May 1998 16:33:48 GMT Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa USA Lines: 28 Message-ID: <6jhqpc$plt$1@news.iastate.edu> References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6iuvre$bl6$1@vodka.tnx.djmarkets.co.uk> <6iv6os$78h@panix3.panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: pv2086.vincent.iastate.edu In article <6iv6os$78h@panix3.panix.com>, Stern, just Stern wrote: >In <6iuvre$bl6$1@vodka.tnx.djmarkets.co.uk> cbh@REMOVE_THIS.teabag.demon.co.uk (Chris Hedley) writes: > >>In article <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com>, >> lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (Lee Winson) writes: >>> The attitude that the industry went from the ENIAC to the Personal >>> Computer with essentially nothing in between. >>... and that the Industry started with ENIAC, for that matter! >Well, computers existed before ENIAC but one could argue that >the *industry* was created there or even later (with the first >Univac machines). OK, microsoft as ENIAC's heir is a fair comparison. ENIAC was largely copied from the ABC, and then they obtained patents on the copied technology. OK, even further: the patentes were later invalidated . . . :) rick -- R E HAWKINS rhawkins@iastate.edu These opinions will not be those of ISU until they pay my retainer. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!uwm.edu!news.he.net!Supernews73!supernews.com!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: Charles Richmond Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 07:03:08 +0000 Organization: Cannine Computer Center Lines: 26 Message-ID: <355D3A2C.83145C21@plano.net> References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6iuvre$bl6$1@vodka.tnx.djmarkets.co.uk> <6iv6os$78h@panix3.panix.com> <6jhqpc$plt$1@news.iastate.edu> <6jjs4k$qnq$1@news.latrobe.edu.au> Reply-To: richmond@plano.net NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.215.63.148 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: 895320064 R67V8VHUD3F94CCD7C usenet87.supernews.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.03 (Macintosh; I; 68K) To: Huw Davies Huw Davies wrote: > > I would have thought that there was very little copied from ABC into ENIAC. > I don't say this in anyway to denigrate either ABC or ENIAC, it's just that > if you look into both systems, there's just not very much in common. ABC's > main claim to fame (as far as many are concerned) is that is was used in > a demonstration of "prior art" to invalidate the ENIAC patents. > > To avoid this degenerating into a "which was the first computer" my personal > view was that ABC and EDIAC were independently invented at about the same > time (along with ZEUS). Things just sort of happen that way in science > (take calculus for example). > This "independently invented" idea would be fine...except for the fact that John Mauchly *visited* Atanasoff and discussed the concepts used the the ABC computer *before* the ENIAC was designed. It just does *not* sound very independent to me. And the courts in the US seem to be on my side here. By "ZEUS", are you talking about Konrad Zuse? He has the much better claim of independently developing his ideas on computing equipment. -- +-------------------------------------------------------------+ | Charles and Francis Richmond | +-------------------------------------------------------------+ ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!enews.sgi.com!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.latrobe.edu.au!lucifer.its.latrobe.edu.au!cchd From: cchd@lucifer.its.latrobe.edu.au (Huw Davies) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 16 May 1998 11:09:08 GMT Organization: La Trobe University Lines: 22 Message-ID: <6jjs4k$qnq$1@news.latrobe.edu.au> References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6iuvre$bl6$1@vodka.tnx.djmarkets.co.uk> <6iv6os$78h@panix3.panix.com> <6jhqpc$plt$1@news.iastate.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: lucifer.its.latrobe.edu.au X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Rick Hawkins (rhawkins@iastate.edu) wrote: : OK, microsoft as ENIAC's heir is a fair comparison. ENIAC was largely : copied from the ABC, and then they obtained patents on the copied : technology. OK, even further: the patentes were later invalidated . . : . I would have thought that there was very little copied from ABC into ENIAC. I don't say this in anyway to denigrate either ABC or ENIAC, it's just that if you look into both systems, there's just not very much in common. ABC's main claim to fame (as far as many are concerned) is that is was used in a demonstration of "prior art" to invalidate the ENIAC patents. To avoid this degenerating into a "which was the first computer" my personal view was that ABC and EDIAC were independently invented at about the same time (along with ZEUS). Things just sort of happen that way in science (take calculus for example). -- Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies@latrobe.edu.au Information Technology Services | Phone: +61 3 9479 1550 Fax: +61 3 9479 1999 La Trobe University | "My Alfas keep me poor in a monetary Melbourne Australia 3083 | sense, but rich in so many other ways" ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!howland.erols.net!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!news.mindspring.net!news.mindspring.com!abuse From: abuse@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 00:02:40 -0400 Organization: Orion Computer Consulting Lines: 30 Message-ID: References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355e2427.8393310@news.linkny.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: user-37kba8i.dialup.mindspring.com X-Server-Date: 17 May 1998 04:01:00 GMT X-Newsreader: MT-NewsWatcher 2.4.4 In article <355e2427.8393310@news.linkny.com>, not.here@nospam.com wrote: > On 10 May 98 03:32:07 GMT, riplin@kcbbs.gen.nz (Richard Plinston) wrote: > > > > > > > : 1. One person insisted that Pascal was created many years after C, in an > > > : attempt to dumb-douwn C into a teaching language. > > > > > s/C/Algol/g > > > > then it would be absolutely correct. > > WRONG. Pascal was first (over C.) ;-) He's not saying that C came before Pascal; he's modifying the original statement from "Pascal was created many years after C... to dumb-down C" to "Pascal was created many years after Algol..." etc. In other words, Pascal *is* a dumbed-down version of another language, but the other language is Algol, not C. And is it properly written Pascal or PASCAL? Every text I've seen uses the all-caps version as though it were an acronym... but an acronym of what? The A could be Algol... For that matter how did Algol (ALGOL?) get its name? -- Joe -- Joe Thompson | By sending commercial | Tech support is a fine O- He-Who-Grinds- | e-mail, you agree to | art which, once mastered, the-Unworthy | pay US$1000.00/item. | ensures loss of sanity. http://kensey.home.mindspring.com/ - Electrify the gene pool's fence! ###### From: not.here@nospam.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 00:51:48 GMT Message-ID: <355e2427.8393310@news.linkny.com> References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.452 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: bath-pm-5.linkny.com Lines: 16 Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!206.28.142.4!news.netacc.net!bath-pm-5.linkny.com On 10 May 98 03:32:07 GMT, riplin@kcbbs.gen.nz (Richard Plinston) wrote: > > > > : 1. One person insisted that Pascal was created many years after C, in an > > : attempt to dumb-douwn C into a teaching language. > > > s/C/Algol/g > > then it would be absolutely correct. WRONG. Pascal was first (over C.) ;-) 1968 - Pascal 1972 - C ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newspump.sol.net!news.mindspring.net!news.mindspring.com!abuse From: abuse@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 05:36:45 -0400 Organization: Orion Computer Consulting Lines: 15 Message-ID: References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355e2427.8393310@news.linkny.com> <6jm73b$p4a$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: user-37kba8p.dialup.mindspring.com X-Server-Date: 17 May 1998 09:35:04 GMT X-Newsreader: MT-NewsWatcher 2.4.4 In article <6jm73b$p4a$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu>, dpeschel@u.washington.edu (D. Peschel) wrote: > The name "Algol" stands for "Algorithmic Language". Algol is also the name of > a star (actually a trinary star; it's AKA Beta Persei). And of course there's > the other star Altair (in the constellation Aquila). :) Both names are Arabic. That'd be the Algol also known as "The Winking Demon" with a very short-period luminosity curve. -- Joe, ex-astrophysics major -- Joe Thompson | By sending commercial | Tech support is a fine O- He-Who-Grinds- | e-mail, you agree to | art which, once mastered, the-Unworthy | pay US$1000.00/item. | ensures loss of sanity. http://kensey.home.mindspring.com/ - Electrify the gene pool's fence! ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!wn4feed!135.173.83.24!wn3feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!dpeschel From: dpeschel@u.washington.edu (D. Peschel) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 17 May 1998 08:28:27 GMT Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Lines: 17 Message-ID: <6jm73b$p4a$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355e2427.8393310@news.linkny.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: saul7.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 895393707 25738 (None) 140.142.64.4 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: dpeschel In article , Joe Thompson wrote: >And is it properly written Pascal or PASCAL? Every text I've seen uses >the all-caps version as though it were an acronym... but an acronym of >what? The A could be Algol... For that matter how did Algol (ALGOL?) get >its name? -- Joe Pascal was named for Blaise Pascal, so the name isn't an acronym. I would write it in mixed case. You probably see all caps because of ignorant habit (because *everything* on computers used to be written in all caps). The name "Algol" stands for "Algorithmic Language". Algol is also the name of a star (actually a trinary star; it's AKA Beta Persei). And of course there's the other star Altair (in the constellation Aquila). :) Both names are Arabic. -- Derek ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!enews.sgi.com!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.latrobe.edu.au!lucifer.its.latrobe.edu.au!cchd From: cchd@lucifer.its.latrobe.edu.au (Huw Davies) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 17 May 1998 10:46:59 GMT Organization: La Trobe University Lines: 44 Message-ID: <6jmf73$384$1@news.latrobe.edu.au> References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6iuvre$bl6$1@vodka.tnx.djmarkets.co.uk> <6iv6os$78h@panix3.panix.com> <6jhqpc$plt$1@news.iastate.edu> <6jjs4k$qnq$1@news.latrobe.edu.au> <355D3A2C.83145C21@plano.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: lucifer.its.latrobe.edu.au X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Charles Richmond (richmond@plano.net) wrote: : Huw Davies wrote: : > : > I would have thought that there was very little copied from ABC into ENIAC. : > I don't say this in anyway to denigrate either ABC or ENIAC, it's just that : > if you look into both systems, there's just not very much in common. ABC's : > main claim to fame (as far as many are concerned) is that is was used in : > a demonstration of "prior art" to invalidate the ENIAC patents. : > (take calculus for example). : This "independently invented" idea would be fine...except for the fact that : John Mauchly *visited* Atanasoff and discussed the concepts used the the ABC : computer *before* the ENIAC was designed. It just does *not* sound very : independent to me. And the courts in the US seem to be on my side here. Not only did Mauchly visit Atanasoff, but there were many "conferences" discussing the possibility of automatic computation, for example the meeting at the Moore School. I would think that most of the ideas were discussed amongst quite a large number of people (and the basic concepts had been known for a long while - Babbage's work contained many of the ideas we think of in modern computing, except that it was mechanical). The point I was getting at was the construction of a number of systems occurred about the same time, with many of the ideas required for construction being independently invented. I'm afraid a court case independent of jurisdiction comes up with a conclusion that may or may not be correct. The judgement should be based on the facts presented which might differ from reality by various degrees. I'm very grateful that the decision that occurred was made, otherwise the industry would have ended up being rather homogenious, a bit like what we see in the desktop world today. : By "ZEUS", are you talking about Konrad Zuse? He has the much better claim of : independently developing his ideas on computing equipment. Woops, fingers typing what they want rather tahn what I wanted to say. My only excuse is that one of our web servers is called zeus and I type it rather a lot.... -- Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies@latrobe.edu.au Information Technology Services | Phone: +61 3 9479 1550 Fax: +61 3 9479 1999 La Trobe University | "My Alfas keep me poor in a monetary Melbourne Australia 3083 | sense, but rich in so many other ways" ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!europa.clark.net!198.138.0.5!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news-feed1.tiac.net!posterchild2!news@tiac.net From: "John L. Pearlman" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 14:15:14 -0400 Organization: The Internet Access Company, Inc. Lines: 20 Message-ID: <355F2927.6DDB@tiac.net> References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355e2427.8393310@news.linkny.com> <6jm73b$p4a$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: jlp@tiac.net NNTP-Posting-Host: tapuach.tiac.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (Macintosh; I; PPC) To: Joe Thompson CC: "John L. Pearlman" Joe Thompson wrote: > > > That'd be the Algol also known as "The Winking Demon" with a very > short-period luminosity curve. -- Joe, ex-astrophysics major > -- Yes, actually the name (previously noted as coming from Arabic) means something like "The Ghoul" or "The Ghost" and referred to the periodic changes in the star's apparent luminosity. Cheers, John -- John L. Pearlman or If one man calls you a donkey, pay him no heed. If two men call you a donkey, get yourself a saddle. (ancient Rabbinic saying) ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!Supernews73!supernews.com!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: genew@vip.net (Gene Wirchenko) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 19:44:04 GMT Organization: All USENET -- http://www.Supernews.com Lines: 23 Message-ID: <355e8b3d.42214284@news.vip.net> References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355e2427.8393310@news.linkny.com> Reply-To: genew@vip.net NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.209.212.16 X-Trace: 895433943 A01OARAUVD410CCD1C usenet57.supernews.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.1/32.230 abuse@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) wrote: [snip] >And is it properly written Pascal or PASCAL? Every text I've seen uses >the all-caps version as though it were an acronym... but an acronym of >what? The A could be Algol... For that matter how did Algol (ALGOL?) get >its name? -- Joe It is "Pascal" as it isn't an acronym but named after the mathematician. There were so many languages that had acronyms for names and lower-case was "omitted" for so long that some thought all programming language names should be capped. "ALGOL" comes from "ALGOrithmic Language". Sincerely, Gene Wirchenko C Pronunciation Guide: y=x++; "wye equals ex plus plus semicolon" x=x++; "ex equals ex doublecross semicolon" ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!141.211.144.13!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!newsrelay.iastate.edu!news.iastate.edu!rhawkins From: rhawkins@iastate.edu (Rick Hawkins) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 18 May 1998 15:24:01 GMT Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa USA Lines: 38 Message-ID: <6jpjqh$tuq$1@news.iastate.edu> References: <6iolsn$fva@netaxs.com> <6iv6os$78h@panix3.panix.com> <6jhqpc$plt$1@news.iastate.edu> <6jjs4k$qnq$1@news.latrobe.edu.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: pv2086.vincent.iastate.edu In article <6jjs4k$qnq$1@news.latrobe.edu.au>, Huw Davies wrote: >Rick Hawkins (rhawkins@iastate.edu) wrote: >: OK, microsoft as ENIAC's heir is a fair comparison. ENIAC was largely >: copied from the ABC, and then they obtained patents on the copied >: technology. OK, even further: the patentes were later invalidated . . >: . >I would have thought that there was very little copied from ABC into ENIAC. >I don't say this in anyway to denigrate either ABC or ENIAC, it's just that >if you look into both systems, there's just not very much in common. ABC's >main claim to fame (as far as many are concerned) is that is was used in >a demonstration of "prior art" to invalidate the ENIAC patents. >To avoid this degenerating into a "which was the first computer" my personal >view was that ABC and EDIAC were independently invented at about the same >time (along with ZEUS). Things just sort of happen that way in science >(take calculus for example). hmm, one of those folks who thinks Leibnitz didn't steal it :) Seriously, though, it's more than independent development. I forget names, but one of the lead ENIAC folks had actually come and examined the ABC in depth; the two weren't independent. But all I wanted to bring up was that comparing microsoft to a group that claimed to have invented that which they actually copied from somewhere else seems reasonable :) rick -- R E HAWKINS rhawkins@iastate.edu These opinions will not be those of ISU until they pay my retainer. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!news.idt.net!nntp.abs.net!news-dc.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!nntp.news.xara.net!xara.net!server5.netnews.ja.net!bris.ac.uk!usenet From: Nathan Sidwell Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computeres. X-Nntp-Posting-Host: laie.cs.bris.ac.uk Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii To: writer1@Eng.Sun.COM Message-ID: <3561421F.EE4@cs.bris.ac.uk> Sender: usenet@fsa.bris.ac.uk (Usenet) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: Computer Science Dept, Bristol University References: <6j7rpb$rvb$1@engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM> Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 08:26:07 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.03 (X11; I; SunOS 5.5.1 sun4u) Lines: 18 Bob Morrisette wrote: > > A Time magazine TV commercial keeps insisting that Jobs and > Wozniak invented the world's first personal computer. That's nothing, My Oxford English Dictionary has a mini encyclopedia at the back and insists that the first 'selfcontained portable OS with networking and multitasking'* is NT and that came fully formed from the mind of Gates. Nary a mention of unix and the like. nathan * how many fallacies can _you_ find in that sentance?** ** probably more than the number of words in it! -- Dr Nathan Sidwell :: Computer Science Department :: Bristol University You can up the bandwidth, but you can't up the speed of light nathan@acm.org http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~nathan/ nathan@cs.bris.ac.uk ###### From: not.here@nospam.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 14:48:44 GMT Message-ID: <356396de.1057283@news.linkny.com> References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355e2427.8393310@news.linkny.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.452 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: bath-usr-4.linkny.com Lines: 18 Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!206.28.142.4!news.netacc.net!bath-usr-4.linkny.com On Sun, 17 May 1998 00:02:40 -0400, abuse@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) wrote: > And is it properly written Pascal or PASCAL? Pascal. The language was named for Blaise Pascal and he was not an acronym to my knowledge. > Every text I've seen uses the all-caps version as though it were an acronym... Of my twenty-eight Pascal books, I have only one that uses Pascal in caps. I think you need to recheck your text books as I have just done as I can't believe that there could possibly be that much difference. Well I think I'll browse the web in search of the earliest publications by Niklaus Wirth, the developer of the Pascal language to see how he originally spelled it. ###### From: TheCentralScrutinizer.62@pobox.com () Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355e2427.8393310@news.linkny.com> Reply-To: TheCentralScrutinizer.62@pobox.com Message-ID: X-Newsreader: slrn (0.9.4.6 UNIX) Organization: Nyx Public Access Internet X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a Free Public Access Internet Service: http://www.nyx.net Nyx is not responsible for the actions of its users. Our AUP / Free Speech Policy are at http://www.nyx.net/policies/ Direct complaints to abuse@nyx.net X-Post-Lines: 21 Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 15:29:53 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: iris.nyx.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 09:29:53 MDT Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!pln-e!extra.newsguy.com!lotsanews.com!ix.netcom.com!baron.netcom.net.uk!netcom.net.uk!colt.net!news.freedom2surf.net!btnet-peer!btnet!newsfeed.internetmci.com!206.124.0.31!pulsar.dimensional.com!dimensional.com!wormhole.dimensional.com!iris.nyx.net!unknown@nyx10.nyx.net Lines: 19 In article , Joe Thompson wrote: >He's not saying that C came before Pascal; he's modifying the original >statement from "Pascal was created many years after C... to dumb-down C" >to "Pascal was created many years after Algol..." etc. > >In other words, Pascal *is* a dumbed-down version of another language, but >the other language is Algol, not C. and BASIC is a dumbed down version of FORTRAN. > >And is it properly written Pascal or PASCAL? Every text I've seen uses >the all-caps version as though it were an acronym... but an acronym of >what? The A could be Algol... For that matter how did Algol (ALGOL?) get >its name? -- Joe I've *never* seen pascal in all uppercase. Algol stood for "algorithmic language". or something like that ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!209.6.107.173!newsfeed.xcom.net!news.ultranet.com!d11 From: jmfbahxx@ma.ultranet.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Wed, 20 May 98 12:30:03 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 29 Message-ID: <6julbd$lm0$1@ligarius.ultra.net> References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355e2427.8393310@news.linkny.com> <356396de.1057283@news.linkny.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: d11.dial-15.mbo.ma.ultra.net X-Complaints-To: abuse@ultra.net X-Ultra-Time: 20 May 1998 13:20:45 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 In article <356396de.1057283@news.linkny.com>, not.here@nospam.com wrote: >On Sun, 17 May 1998 00:02:40 -0400, abuse@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) >wrote: > >> And is it properly written Pascal or PASCAL? > >Pascal. The language was named for Blaise Pascal and he was not an >acronym to my knowledge. > >> Every text I've seen uses the all-caps version as though it were an acronym... > >Of my twenty-eight Pascal books, I have only one that uses Pascal in >caps. I think you need to recheck your text books as I have just done >as I can't believe that there could possibly be that much difference. > >Well I think I'll browse the web in search of the earliest publications >by Niklaus Wirth, the developer of the Pascal language to see how he >originally spelled it. > In our (TOPS-10) documentation, we generally indicated a command to the operating system will all capitals since those commands were stored as SIXBIT. So it was not unusual to see the word directory, DIRECTory, or DIRECT on the same page. The diffenences in the spelling depended on the context of the word in the sentence. /BAH ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newshub.northeast.verio.net!newsfeed.sollentuna.se!dera!taz.dra.hmg.gb!WAGRAY From: wagray@taz.dra.hmg.gb (Walter Gray) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 20 May 1998 17:30:42 GMT Organization: Defence Research Agency Lines: 24 Message-ID: <6jv402$2p9$2@trog.dra.hmg.gb> References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355e2427.8393310@news.linkny.com> <356396de.1057283@news.linkny.com> Reply-To: wagray@taz.dra.hmg.gb NNTP-Posting-Host: taz.dra.hmg.gb In article <356396de.1057283@news.linkny.com>, not.here@nospam.com writes: :On Sun, 17 May 1998 00:02:40 -0400, abuse@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) :wrote: : :> And is it properly written Pascal or PASCAL? : :Pascal. The language was named for Blaise Pascal and he was not an :acronym to my knowledge. : :> Every text I've seen uses the all-caps version as though it were an acronym... : :Of my twenty-eight Pascal books, I have only one that uses Pascal in :caps. I think you need to recheck your text books as I have just done :as I can't believe that there could possibly be that much difference. Twenty-eight Pascal books! You must really enjoy suffering. Walter Disclaimer: My employer is not responsible for this stuff. Please reply to: wagray@dra.hmg.gb as the address given above sometimes doesn't work. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!howland.erols.net!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!news.ultranet.com!d10 From: jmfbahxx@ma.ultranet.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: Thu, 21 May 98 10:40:02 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 24 Message-ID: <6k1397$pb0$1@strato.ultra.net> References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355e2427.8393310@news.linkny.com> <356396de.1057283@news.linkny.com> <6jv402$2p9$2@trog.dra.hmg.gb> NNTP-Posting-Host: d10.dial-17.mbo.ma.ultra.net X-Complaints-To: abuse@ultra.net X-Ultra-Time: 21 May 1998 11:30:47 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 In article <6jv402$2p9$2@trog.dra.hmg.gb>, wagray@taz.dra.hmg.gb (Walter Gray) wrote: >In article <356396de.1057283@news.linkny.com>, not.here@nospam.com writes: > :On Sun, 17 May 1998 00:02:40 -0400, abuse@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) > :wrote: > : > :> And is it properly written Pascal or PASCAL? > : > :Pascal. The language was named for Blaise Pascal and he was not an > :acronym to my knowledge. > : > :> Every text I've seen uses the all-caps version as though it were an acronym... > : > :Of my twenty-eight Pascal books, I have only one that uses Pascal in > :caps. I think you need to recheck your text books as I have just done > :as I can't believe that there could possibly be that much difference. > > >Twenty-eight Pascal books! You must really enjoy suffering. ROTFL! That one made my day :-). /BAH ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!venus.sun.com!news2me.EBay.Sun.COM!engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM!not-for-mail From: scottdav@Eng.nospam.COM (Scott Davidson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers Date: 21 May 1998 20:52:41 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc. Lines: 32 Message-ID: <6k246p$4fp$1@engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM> References: <356396de.1057283@news.linkny.com> Reply-To: scottdav@Eng.nospam.COM NNTP-Posting-Host: voyager2.eng.sun.com In article 1057283@news.linkny.com, not.here@nospam.com writes: >On Sun, 17 May 1998 00:02:40 -0400, abuse@orion-com.com (Joe Thompson) >wrote: > >> And is it properly written Pascal or PASCAL? > >Well I think I'll browse the web in search of the earliest publications >by Niklaus Wirth, the developer of the Pascal language to see how he >originally spelled it. > The second edition of Jensen and Wirth (Pascal user manual and report) from 1975 has it as Pascal inside. (I just happen to have it on my bookshelf.) I'm pretty sure that the first edition, which was not bound, also spells it that way. On the spine it is spelled as PASCAL, but on the front and back cover as pascal, so that was probably the graphic designer at work. Scott replace nospam by the big light in sky to email me. --- Scott Davidson Sun Microsystems ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355e2427.8393310@news.linkny.com> <356396de.1057283@news.linkny.com> From: Berry Kercheval Date: 29 May 1998 15:00:24 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 8 X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.6.9/XEmacs 20.4 - "Emerald" NNTP-Posting-Host: cm2081384467.cableco-op.com X-NNTP-Posting-Host: cm2081384467.cableco-op.com Organization: MediaCity World Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.msfc.nasa.gov!newsfeed.internetmci.com!205.216.172.11!news.mediacity.com!cm2081384467.cableco-op.com not.here@nospam.com writes: > Well I think I'll browse the web in search of the earliest publications > by Niklaus Wirth, the developer of the Pascal language to see how he > originally spelled it. That would be the article in Acta Informatica 1:1. I have it at home; I'll check later. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Rewriting the history of computers References: <6inutc$ftm1@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> <3298129.12727.25898@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355e2427.8393310@news.linkny.com> <356396de.1057283@news.linkny.com> From: Berry Kercheval Date: 31 May 1998 20:27:52 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 38 X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.6.9/XEmacs 20.4 - "Emerald" NNTP-Posting-Host: cm2081384467.cableco-op.com X-NNTP-Posting-Host: cm2081384467.cableco-op.com Organization: MediaCity World Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!205.216.172.11!news.mediacity.com!cm2081384467.cableco-op.com Berry Kercheval writes: > not.here@nospam.com writes: > > Well I think I'll browse the web in search of the earliest publications > > by Niklaus Wirth, the developer of the Pascal language to see how he > > originally spelled it. > > That would be the article in Acta Informatica 1:1. I have it at home; > I'll check later. Found it. ---- Wirth, N. "The Programming Language Pascal", Acta Informatica, Vol. 1 pp. 35-63 Fasc. 1 1971. Springer-Verlag. Summary: A programming language called Pascal is described which was developed on the basis of ALGOL 60. [ALGOL is in small caps --bk] Compared to ALGOL 60, its range of applicability is considerably increased due to a variety of data structuring facilities. In view of its intended usage both as a convenient basis to teach programming and as an efficient tool to write large progeams, emphasis was placed on keeping the number of fundamental concepts reasonably small, on a simple and systematic language structure, and on efficient implementability. A one-pass compiler has been constructed for the CDC 6000 computer family; it is expressed entirely in terms of Pascal itself. ----- Wirth's own words. Throughout the article Pascal is printed in mixed case: "Pascal". ALGOL is printed with a capital A and small caps. This was in interesting issue; also in this fascicle was Don Knuth's classic paper on Optimum Binary Search Trees. --berry