Post #19,465
11/26/01 7:29:59 PM
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More Slothware Doings___and..___ *CPM* Lives!
Ah those French - Plus de choses changent, le plus qu'ils restent le m\ufffdme:
Think you got trouble with your car's shifting? Try -
[link|http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/23016.html|YAN MSloth e-mail virus - in UK thus far]
[link|http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/23/23025.html|Russian? folks studied up on NT flaws - now converting lore to $\ufffdRubles]
And for those wanting more basic simplicity than Linus's fervid creation:
[link|http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23010.html|CP/M Returns! pip b:=a:*.*/V Lives!]
Ashton
whose Otrona sits in closet, ready to run Eliza for any friends suffering cognitive dissonance: complete with 5" AND 3.25" disks (my kluge thankyouverymuch) PS - it also has the MSDOS board! and a whopping 256K of unincreasable RAM, or should that be RAM?
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Post #19,474
11/26/01 9:20:59 PM
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What, for a packrat you have no 8" diskette drives?
Surely they were used outside of IBM. Unfortunately, I did not keep a single one of those diskettes.
Alex
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
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Post #19,479
11/26/01 10:33:07 PM
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Dang, I must be a packrat....
......I still have plenty of 8" diskettes around.....<gulp!>
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Post #19,483
11/26/01 11:22:15 PM
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I used to know someone with punchcards.
Blank ones, that is, leftover from her Uni days. She used to use them as bookmarks, IIRC.
Wade.
"All around me are nothing but fakes
Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
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Post #19,485
11/26/01 11:51:12 PM
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great idea....
....using them as bookmarks. Now, where are those boxes
of punch cards <g>.
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Post #19,487
11/27/01 12:07:47 AM
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Just got rid of
3 8" drives and 2 boxes of blank disks. Gave them to a local electronics surplus store.
-----
Steve
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Post #19,486
11/27/01 12:05:07 AM
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Miniature computing devices
Ash, if ya should feel the need -- I have at my disposal [unfortunately only one] genyewine original Shugart 8" floppy drive, single sided, single density. Shipping instructions?
Also, I think I can come up with a couple of the high-tech Newer Models -- the half-height, double-sided, double-density ones that stored *gasp* 1.2 megabytes on something not *much* bigger than the pizza-box system units from Gateway, et. al.
No blanks, though. Sincere apologies[TM]
Regards,
Ric
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Post #19,499
11/27/01 9:11:23 AM
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Speaking of computing devices
I know a guy who has a warehouse (or storage shed, I'm not exactly sure) full of old computers. Kaypro. Osbourne. Tandy 2000.
The biggest regret I've heard him express over the years is that he didn't pick up a copy of Microsoft Bob when he saw it at one of these computer shows a few years ago.
His (expressed) plan is to open up some sort of computer museum, but I think that's just an excuse - he just enjoys accumulating stuff.
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."
-- Donald Knuth
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Post #19,516
11/27/01 12:03:56 PM
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Well, I've got plenty of 8" floppys . .
. . and drives to go with them (Qumes & Mitsubishis), but somewhere around here I've got an 8" Winchester hard disk (10-Meg if I remember correctly).
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #19,493
11/27/01 4:23:07 AM
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Thanks for kind offers, but..
This tiny (18#) jewel with built-in 5" green screen was once the epitome of portability and.. those 8" drive thingies are .. umm Huge!
It would just spoil the, qu'est-ce que c'est? ambience, y'know? I mean, would ya install a CD player (or cup holders ?!) in yer cherry MG-TC?
Bet not many of youse remember when a SSSD (80K) Scotch floppy cost $5 EACH, now do ya !? (Or what {sob} an Otrona cost!)
{sigh}
Spoiled. Rotten.
Damn.. wish I could get a refund in '81 $ :[
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Post #19,560
11/27/01 8:20:12 PM
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Cup holders and Otronas
I wanted an Otrona so.o.o.o bad... until I saw the HP lunchbox. Had a (7"?) plasma display glued to the side, and the keyboard clipped on to cover it up a la the front of the Osborne, etc. Love at first byte. But I could never collect the scratch, or convince my employer it was cost-effective...
And I remember extending the BIOS of the Big Board to use the Shugart 10MB Winchesters. You had to be creative; leaving a big enough buffer really sucked the usable memory out of the magnificent 64K. And cursing Zilog for not putting autoincrement opcodes on the index instructions, even harder for their failure to implement LD A, (IX+B) e.g.
::chuckle:: You know, the computer business has always been weird, and here's another way: in just about every other field, there's some analog of the kids' disdain for adults in Johnny and the Bomb: "I remember when you could get that for sixpence, and have change..."
Regards,
Ric
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Post #19,599
11/28/01 5:55:55 AM
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In my case: Dumbth
I actually thought...
Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle.. Cackle..
This is LOTS of bread but - it's so nicely built (Tektronix-grade looking; not that grade designed tho) .. why I won't have to buy another toy computer for 8 or 10 years! We know how That went.. (but I got 15% off!)
Anyway.. add a composite monitor, learn the WStar codes (now forever impressed) and.. WTF actually Needs WordBloat ?? if what you are doing is WRITING (and not $@#$* Prettified Corp boilerplate - tho it could do that BS too).
I used WS 7.0 (the last, for DOS) until a few years ago.. ^KB = start block, ^KS = save, yada yada. Prolly still would, if I hadn't had to setup Word6 on a friend's machine, and teach her to use it. What a POS: save One Word and the overhead filesize ~ 5.5 KB. Secret ID#s and all.
Notice how the culture's decline is the inverse of Billy's rise? Damn, now I need to talk to Eliza - 56K of reassurance. (or Fran\ufffdoise) Everything's falling apart now..
(Even sports: skiing is going downhill)
Ashton
Computers Suck Ltd.
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