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NLG Members who host their own Repair Logs of Various Games. => RickHunters Computer Help 101 => Topic started by: CaptainHappy on December 22, 2009, 10:29:35 AM



Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: CaptainHappy on December 22, 2009, 10:29:35 AM
Comdex was the big computer show. Key phrase WAS.....
All of the computer vendors used to announce new versions and releases of software at this show.....
Then later on it everyone used to start announcing weeks before the show to get the jump on the others.
Soon Comdex became redundant and then it declared bankrupcy.

The show guide was 300 pages thick, with about an 8point font.
 
I was there when the president of Word Perfect made the statement "What self respecting word processing person would take their hands off the keyboard to use a thing called a mouse".
Word Perfect didn't get onto the Windows band wagon until about 3 years later, and then the product was so far behind the curve it never recovered. The question was answered. 90% of us are not self respecting word processing people.

I used to love Comdex as my company got alot of the invites to many of the exclusive invite parties! Quantum used to be one of the best party throwers!!! Talk about money thrown around!!! :89- :71- :89-

This was a major expense for us, and we just had a small 20ft x 20ft (?) booth! This show used to fill the entire town, and the surrounding areas. It was the largest show in the world I think??

I really used to like Word Perfect! Also their President would not have liked me as I was one of the first to use a program called "MOUSE PERFECT" that added mouse capabilities to Word Perfect! WOW.. I just admitted mega-dorkiness, didn't I???

I liked to think that I was ahead of the curve!  :200- :200- :200-

CH :95-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on December 23, 2009, 01:07:24 AM
Comdex used to be a blast, especially when the company was picking up the tab for everything. There was always plenty of time to go off and explore all of the booths in between attending seminars, manning our own booth, and discussing business related purchases with some of the other vendors. Many of the vendors had innovative advertising widgets to giveaway (and no doubt this is still the case at these shows), and part of the fun was going around collecting those. As CH mentioned, there were great parties and great food, and there were always cool new consumer gadgets that one could purchase when roaming around on one's own.

I once bought a set of 3D glasses for my computer at Comdex. They used LCDs as shutters to open and close each eye in sync and the software could make anything on the computer screen 3D. I'm not sure how their software was able to determine what should be in the foreground and what should be in the background, but it worked. They were great for gaming, as they would work with any game, although they worked best with first person POV games like Doom.

...
I really used to like Word Perfect! Also their President would not have liked me as I was one of the first to use a program called "MOUSE PERFECT" that added mouse capabilities to Word Perfect! WOW.. I just admitted mega-dorkiness, didn't I???

I liked to think that I was ahead of the curve!  :200- :200- :200-

CH :95-

You were definitely ahead of the curve.  :89- :71-  But mega-dorkiness? No. Mega-dorkiness was steadfastly clinging to DOS and refusing to use a mouse! That was me. I set up my computers not to boot into Windows 3.1 and would do almost everything in DOS. I would only run Windows if the program I wanted to run required it, and would then exit back to DOS as soon as I was finished, often doing this in a DOS batch file.

I had literally hundreds of DOS power tools -- little COM programs and TSRs that could do everything. I even had a TSR for removing TSRs! It acted as a 1k wedge in memory that could be uninstalled, and doing so would clear the program in memory above it, and one could use multiple instances of it.

You all know how anal I am. I had a COM program that would alphabetize the files in every directory, and I even alphabetized the order of my directories within directories. I used to use the REAL Norton utility (before the company sold out to the lowest common computer user), NU.EXE (V4.5 and earlier), to probe the FAT table, disc, and directory structure, and learn how discs worked, and then to manipulate them.

To this day, simple DOS commands will still do things that Winduhs can't. Try renaming every file in a folder with 200 files from "DSC_nnnn.jpg" to "DSC1nnnn.jpg" with one quick command in WinDoze. Good luck. :5-  There is also an old program called pcopy as well as Windows xcopy that can do even more.


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: Stolistic on December 23, 2009, 11:59:32 AM
Stat your just a geek! (like me :96-).  I would write DOS programs in Turbo C similar to the utilities at the time.  Wish I had known there was a market for it.

I used to love COMDEX too.  And then there is this whole thing about "booth babes"... :58-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: jay on December 23, 2009, 02:14:15 PM
Robocopy !!!


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: brichter on December 23, 2009, 04:05:14 PM
CES? Isn't that the show they run at the same time as the AVN (Adult Video News) Awards?  :5- :97- :97-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on December 23, 2009, 04:05:48 PM
Robocopy !!!

If you have the MS Resource kit.


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: Op-Bell on December 24, 2009, 06:01:18 AM
Quote
Mega-dorkiness was steadfastly clinging to DOS and refusing to use a mouse! That was me. I set up my computers not to boot into Windows 3.1 and would do almost everything in DOS. I would only run Windows if the program I wanted to run required it, and would then exit back to DOS as soon as I was finished, often doing this in a DOS batch file.
Are you perhaps an unknown brother of mine, Stat? I too did without Windows when possible. My computer booted into XTree Gold and I hardly ever left the shell. But I'm only a kilo-dork, because I had a mouse driver loaded in DOS. I had to keep my hard disks partitioned into 500MB chunks just for XTree, otherwise it ran out of memory  :25-  I hated Windows because it wouldn't run my graphic-intensive games properly - Windows ME wouldn't run them at all and effectively put an end to my DOS programming career. I reluctantly installed W98 in 2000, when I needed USB, though I still had it boot to the prompt.

Before I had XTree I used to write everything in WordStar. Even now, 25 years later, I've never seen a non-document editor that has the features WordStar offered. You could even copy and paste columns, an incredibly useful trick on the few occasions you needed it. The self-destruction of MicroPro, the WordStar company, is covered in depth in Merrill Chapman's In Search Of Stupidity (http://books.google.com/books?id=8jntt5nZZ5UC&dq=in+search+of+stupidity&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=WRozS4jEHI3KsAPO17DIBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false), conveniently available on Google Books. Everyone in hi-tech management needs to read this book, along with Fred Brook's Mythical Man-Month (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month), which has evaded Google Books' scanners but (Google tells me) is available as a torrent.


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: Op-Bell on December 24, 2009, 06:12:59 AM
A few years ago Comdex used to bring Las Vegas to a standstill for a week, yet in a couple of years it disappeared without trace. The resorts weren't sorry to see it go - even with the hotels sold out, it was their worst revenue week of the year. Gaming revenue fell to a pittance, as every hotel room in the city was occupied by people who didn't gamble. CES is a lot more fun, IMHO, but the most fun of all is an adult entertainment exhibition that runs at about the same time, that I occasionally get tickets for through a friend of mine. The good thing about the AE show is that it's heavily staffed by content providers (nudge, nudge). Booth babes? You ain't seen nothin'.
:185-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: brichter on December 24, 2009, 06:27:10 AM
A few years ago Comdex used to bring Las Vegas to a standstill for a week, yet in a couple of years it disappeared without trace. The resorts weren't sorry to see it go - even with the hotels sold out, it was their worst revenue week of the year. Gaming revenue fell to a pittance, as every hotel room in the city was occupied by people who didn't gamble. CES is a lot more fun, IMHO, but the most fun of all is an adult entertainment exhibition that runs at about the same time, that I occasionally get tickets for through a friend of mine. The good thing about the AE show is that it's heavily staffed by content providers (nudge, nudge). Booth babes? You ain't seen nothin'.
:185-

The venerable Op-Bell knows of that which I spake! And I will second the :185-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: Op-Bell on December 24, 2009, 06:46:48 AM
Quote
The venerable Op-Bell knows of that which I spake!
Oh, yeah. Those people don't just party, they debauch. One time I picked up an open bar pass and, um, I don't seem to remember much else, except ending up at the Hard Rock at a David Lee Roth concert with my friend and two east european porn actresses. I think they wanted to give it a go, but I was too "tired and emotional".

David Lee Roth was hopeless, incidentally.  :52-  Talk about people who need to retire...



Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: brichter on December 24, 2009, 09:04:53 AM

David Lee Roth was hopeless, incidentally.  :52-  Talk about people who need to retire...



That's a pretty astute observation, as the last time I saw him he was singing in a park at the San Jose Grand Prix, for a BLUEGRASS band! :208- :208- :208-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on December 24, 2009, 01:41:02 PM
A few years ago Comdex used to bring Las Vegas to a standstill for a week, yet in a couple of years it disappeared without trace. The resorts weren't sorry to see it go - even with the hotels sold out, it was their worst revenue week of the year. Gaming revenue fell to a pittance, as every hotel room in the city was occupied by people who didn't gamble. CES is a lot more fun, IMHO, but the most fun of all is an adult entertainment exhibition that runs at about the same time, that I occasionally get tickets for through a friend of mine. The good thing about the AE show is that it's heavily staffed by content providers (nudge, nudge). Booth babes? You ain't seen nothin'.
:185-

The venerable Op-Bell knows of that which I spake! And I will second the :185-

Save some :185- for me, would you? :208-  I'll have to check out the AE show sometime. :89-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on December 24, 2009, 01:42:21 PM
Quote
The venerable Op-Bell knows of that which I spake!
Oh, yeah. Those people don't just party, they debauch. One time I picked up an open bar pass and, um, I don't seem to remember much else, except ending up at the Hard Rock at a David Lee Roth concert with my friend and two east european porn actresses. I think they wanted to give it a go, but I was too "tired and emotional".

David Lee Roth was hopeless, incidentally.  :52-  Talk about people who need to retire...

That's a pretty astute observation, as the last time I saw him he was singing in a park at the San Jose Grand Prix, for a BLUEGRASS band! :208- :208- :208-


Sounds like the story of Spinal Tap. :126-  It's a shame; he was good back in the day.


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on December 24, 2009, 01:46:18 PM
Quote
Mega-dorkiness was steadfastly clinging to DOS and refusing to use a mouse! That was me. I set up my computers not to boot into Windows 3.1 and would do almost everything in DOS. I would only run Windows if the program I wanted to run required it, and would then exit back to DOS as soon as I was finished, often doing this in a DOS batch file.
Are you perhaps an unknown brother of mine, Stat? I too did without Windows when possible. My computer booted into XTree Gold and I hardly ever left the shell. But I'm only a kilo-dork, because I had a mouse driver loaded in DOS. I had to keep my hard disks partitioned into 500MB chunks just for XTree, otherwise it ran out of memory  :25-  I hated Windows because it wouldn't run my graphic-intensive games properly - Windows ME wouldn't run them at all and effectively put an end to my DOS programming career. I reluctantly installed W98 in 2000, when I needed USB, though I still had it boot to the prompt.

Before I had XTree I used to write everything in WordStar. Even now, 25 years later, I've never seen a non-document editor that has the features WordStar offered. You could even copy and paste columns, an incredibly useful trick on the few occasions you needed it. The self-destruction of MicroPro, the WordStar company, is covered in depth in Merrill Chapman's In Search Of Stupidity (http://books.google.com/books?id=8jntt5nZZ5UC&dq=in+search+of+stupidity&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=WRozS4jEHI3KsAPO17DIBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false), conveniently available on Google Books. Everyone in hi-tech management needs to read this book, along with Fred Brook's Mythical Man-Month (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month), which has evaded Google Books' scanners but (Google tells me) is available as a torrent.

Funny that you should mention WordStar. I still have a copy on my hard drive, as well as many documents. I'm not sure if I could get it to run in an XP environment as I haven't tried to run it in years. I preferred it to WordPerfect.


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: rickhunter on December 24, 2009, 02:01:08 PM
Geez, I didn't even like shells, everything was command prompt or die.  Wordstar was it, I still have 360K floppies with it.  Then I put it on the hard drive (my HUGE 20MB drive Seagate ST225).

C>ws

Those were the days when everything was su much simpler.

I used to write TSR programs in assembly language to handle some of the expansion hardware on my PC.  Remember the Turbo acceleartors?  I had a board made by Quadram called the Quadsprint, that basically had an 8 Mhz (yes, you heard that right) 8086 processor that replaced the 4.77 mhz 8088 processor. It was very clever as you had to remove the 8088 from the mainboard and plug this jumper cable into the socket that led to the Quadsprint.  The big deal of the quadsprint is that you needed a program to switch from 8Mhz down to 4.77 Mhz as certain programs wouldn't work right with the faster processor.  One of my TSR's (Terminate but Stay Resident) programs would control the speed by means of hot keys. I used Ctrl-Alt-Plus and Ctrl-Alt-Minus to control the speed.  I also had a Quadram board that had a frame buffer that I controlled by my hotkey program, it would allow me to display the frame buffer as a background in the dos environment.  It was able to display 640x200 with 16 colors (how's that for technology).  So I had dos with a background screen.  The frame buffer was in graphics mode while still remaining in Text mode for the command prompt.  It thought that was very cool.  UUUUBBBBBERRR GEEK.

Remember how long it took the IBM PC to boot up while doing it's post (counting and testing memory, etc).  I made a utility that would add memory to the registers so that I could configure my motherboard to 64K of ram and then this "quickboot" utility would add the RAM and then pass on the loading of dos to the hard drive.  I did it in the boot sector of a floppy disk,  and I was never able to put it in the boot sector of the hard drive as I would have had to modify IO.SYS, so my custom IO.sys would add ram and then pass on over to the IO.sys in the hard drive.  It was the lazy way out, but the machine booted up from power up to c prompt in about  10 seconds!!!

I still have my original IBM PC somewhere up in the attic.

Remember BBS systems, fido-net, etc.  300 baud modems!!!!


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on December 24, 2009, 02:04:37 PM
Okay, I just ran WordStar successfully in a DOS window. CHECK THIS OUT!!  :200-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: rickhunter on December 24, 2009, 02:07:36 PM
WOW that's 4.0.  I only have 3.3!!!  :72- :72- :72- :72- :97- :97- :97- :97-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on December 24, 2009, 02:09:05 PM
But wait! There's more. Here is XTPro (not gold). Unfortunately, it gives me an out of memory error. Gee, I guess that it can't handle a 500GB HDD!  :208- :208- :208-

Available Bytes: ###########  :127-  :30- :30-


PS: I'll have to get an old scrap drive and see what it does to NTFS. :101- :100-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: Stolistic on December 24, 2009, 02:57:03 PM
I used to run VisiCalc off of floppies.  Another program that required you to learn a bunch of keyboard combinations.


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on December 24, 2009, 03:55:54 PM
Funny, I still prefer keyboard combinations to my mouse. :186- :31- 

For example, type the emoticons on the keyboard (without the added space) ": 5 -  : 71 - : 79 -  "   then, <ctrl><shft> {<right arrow> (x3)},  <ctrl> C,  {<ctrl> V (x3)} , and voila!:  :5-  :71- :79-  :5-  :71- :79-  :5-  :71- :79- 

or goto the beginning of the second line in this post and type,  <shft> {<down arrow> (x2)}, <ctrl> C,  {<down arrow> (x3)}, <ctrl> V, and:

For example, type the emoticons on the keyboard (without the added space) ": 5 -  : 71 - : 79 -  "   then, <ctrl><shft> {<right arrow> (x3)},  <ctrl> C,  {<ctrl> V (x3)} , and voila!:  :5-  :71- :79-  :5-  :71- :79-  :5-  :71- :79- 


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: stayouttadabunker on December 24, 2009, 04:06:39 PM
And to think I  thought Comdex was a Comdial telephone show... :25- :25- :25-  :5-
Boy, was I way off!... :96-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: jdkmunch on December 24, 2009, 05:00:33 PM
I have that stuff still running on an IBM XT 8088.    It has a 10Mb hard drive with a nice green screen.   Every once and a while I boot it up to run PC USA - I like to see what it predicted the population to be in 1992.

I need a new keyboard though.  Sadly I dropped the original and a few keys don't work. 


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on December 24, 2009, 08:39:26 PM
Now that's cool.  :89- It's like having an antique slot.

I never had an 8088 with a hard drive. I used my mom's IBM PC-Jr (POS) with a single floppy and a CGA monitor, then got my own XT clone with two floppies and a monochrome amber monitor. My first hard drive was on an AT.

Prior to those I had a Morrow VIC-20, which could run a complete version of WordStar with quite a large document in addition to the operating system in only 64k of RAM, and before that I got to play around various versions of the TRaSh-80. There was an IMSAI 8080 that we used in computer club in high school, and before that, my friend's S-100 bus computer, which was a much better design than the PC, IMO. Another friend of mine built an ELF which he augmented with a hexadecimal keypad that allowed more robust programs to be entered. Then there were times that I got to use teletype terminals that had time sharing on university computers. I did get to play around with some punch cards, but they were really before my time.


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: brichter on December 24, 2009, 08:53:56 PM
I have that stuff still running on an IBM XT 8088.    It has a 10Mb hard drive with a nice green screen.   Every once and a while I boot it up to run PC USA - I like to see what it predicted the population to be in 1992.

I need a new keyboard though.  Sadly I dropped the original and a few keys don't work. 

That should be a standard keyboard with huge 5 pin DIN connector, right?


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on December 24, 2009, 09:05:44 PM
Hey guys. consider this.

Those early XT computers typically had 64k-128k of RAM (before we all got the BIG 640k). The first HDDs for them were around 10MB.

Today, the average PC HDD is around 250-500GB, or 25,000 to 50,000 times as large (roughly, and disregarding the powers of 2). If RAM had kept up with offline storage using that metric, today's PCs would conservatively have between 1 and 5 Gigabytes of RAM. But if we used the AT baseline of 640k of RAM and 10MB of HDD storage, today's home computers would need to have around 32GB of RAM to have kept up with HDD space.


<EDIT> Oops, I worded this incorrectly. :96- :30-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: brichter on December 24, 2009, 10:58:35 PM
And your computers don't have between 1 and 5 GB of RAM?  :96- :97-


I've got one laptop (Winblows) with 2, one laptop (MacBook Pro) with 6, and my Windows desktop machines have 4 since it takes a 64 bit OS to use more than that (and Windows  32 bit can only see ~3.5 GB max, with a command line switch in the boot.ini file), all my Linux and other 64 bit boxen have 16 to 32 GB.  :214-

Of course those are servers, and some of them run multiple virtual machines...  :186-

RAM is cheap (relatively speaking) and with any good OS more memory is a real kick in the pants in the performance department.


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: Op-Bell on December 25, 2009, 12:18:33 AM
Quote
RAM is cheap (relatively speaking) and with any good OS more memory is a real kick in the pants in the performance department.

*** COUGH CHOKE SPLUTTER ***

WHAT kind of OS? Oh hahahaha, silly me, for a moment I thought you said any GOOD OS ...

Oh wait a minute...

<walks dog>

Ok, calmed down now. So I have this computer, and I want it to do stuff for me. I will tell it what to do because I'm the owner. I give it some RAM to play with, and a hard disk to store stuff on. Because I'm lazy, I prefer not to have to tell it what sectors to load into memory, so I get it an "operating system" to take care of that. Imagine my surprise when the operating system pops up and tells me there isn't enough memory or HD space, because it (the operating system) has occupied FIVE HUNDRED MEGABYTES OF RAM AND TWO THOUSAND MEGABYTES OF HARD DISK and hasn't left enough over to do the job it was originally designed to do. So I give it more additional memory than existed in the world 10 years ago, and things improve, and I'm supposed to give credit to the OPERATING SYSTEM?

This is a bit like having a country and appointing a Government to keep things in order and run the Navy, and the next thing you know the Government has grown to the point where it takes half the GNP and appoints a bureaucrat per citizen to make sure nothing is done that it doesn't get a slice of. One doesn't solve this problem by doubling the size of the Government offices and then saying how wonderful it is that things get done a bit faster now than before. One solves it with pitchforks, torches and guillotines.

Microsoft, and to a lesser extent the Church of Linux, need to get it into their thick heads that nobody, ever, bought a computer to run a feckin' OPERATING SYSTEM. They bought it to run APPLICATIONS. A good operating system is one you never, ever see, and consumes negligible resources. A good operating system does what it's told and never tells its master it knows better than him. A good operating system does not expand to fill the resources available, or refuse to run because it can't manage with the resources that were perfectly fine for its predecessor. And mainly, a good operating system never says it can't run an old application that ran perfectly fine with its predecessor.

IMHO, there is at the moment no good operating system. Microsoft is consumed with how to extract money from people who don't need anything; their solution is to force people to upgrade to larger hardware so they get OEM sales. Linux is no solution - it can run on 64 cores at teraflops, but not a Flash application - but Unix was a terrible place to start anyway, more bloated than Windows at that time. Now we have netbooks, small memory, small disks, that don't suit either. It's going to be interesting to see what happens.


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on December 25, 2009, 07:51:05 AM
And your computers don't have between 1 and 5 GB of RAM?  :96- :97-


I've got one laptop (Winblows) with 2, one laptop (MacBook Pro) with 6, and my Windows desktop machines have 4 since it takes a 64 bit OS to use more than that (and Windows  32 bit can only see ~3.5 GB max, with a command line switch in the boot.ini file), all my Linux and other 64 bit boxen have 16 to 32 GB.  :214-

Of course those are servers, and some of them run multiple virtual machines...  :186-

RAM is cheap (relatively speaking) and with any good OS more memory is a real kick in the pants in the performance department.

Yeah, I didn't word that correctly. What I was trying to say was that if RAM had kept up with the AT baseline, the typical home computer would have 32GB of RAM today instead of only 1-4GB.


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: brichter on December 25, 2009, 07:58:39 AM
Calm down, Op! Beware the BP, don't want to bust a vein... :96- Let me rephrase that to "relatively good OS". Happy now?  :5-

You have 2 issues here:

1) Backwards compatibility: As applications require more resources, and those resources are made available in hardware, the OS needs to change to be able to manage the new hardware.If the application demands 1GB of RAM and the OS can't address that much, the application plain won't run. Is that the fault of the OS? No, it's the fault of the application for exceeding the capabilities of the OS. The application demanded the memory requirements it was written with when it loaded. The more the hardware/OS changes, the harder (read: more expensive) it is to keep backwards compatibility. But, there's a solution: Run those old apps on their old OS inside a virtual machine on new hardware. :89-

2) OS bloat: You have a point here, but it's not necessarily the fault of the OS, but of the consumer who wants the computer to do internet, email, photo processing, movie editing, etc., etc., etc., out of the box. So, the OS manufacturers bundle the kitchen sink into the OS, because the customer wants it. You can strip most OSes down pretty small by uninstalling all the crapware, and the *nix kernels will usuallly go a lot thinner than the Winblows OS, and a lot of that is due to not having to deal with the dreaded HAL.



Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: brichter on December 25, 2009, 07:59:36 AM
[
Yeah, I didn't word that correctly. What I was trying to say was that if RAM had kept up with the AT baseline, the typical home computer would have 32GB of RAM today instead of only 1-4GB.

Ok, gotcha!  :89-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: Op-Bell on December 25, 2009, 06:11:09 PM
Calm down, Op! Beware the BP, don't want to bust a vein... :96- Let me rephrase that to "relatively good OS". Happy now?  :5-
<calms down>
Quote
...but of the consumer who wants the computer to do internet, email, photo processing, movie editing, etc., etc., etc., out of the box.
BUT! Every one of those things is an application. All that is required of the operating system is to load and manage multiple applications, something they had cracked back in Windows 3.1 when the operating system fit on a few floppies. The memory limitation is a feature of the CPU, not the operating system. 32 address lines = 2^32 bytes = 4GB. The CPU itself can't represent a number high enough to request data above 4GB. The original 8088 only had 20 address lines. 2^20 is 1 megabyte, hence the limitations of the original PC/XT.

Linux will go thinner, maybe, but I was shocked when I first tried to put Ubuntu on my laptop and it said 256M of RAM wasn't enough. Shoot, it was enough for XP! I got used to Linux but I still don't like it. There are two major apps I run every day that don't run in Linux, so I will never make a complete break from Windows. As for the Mac, I've heard of it.


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: jdkmunch on December 25, 2009, 09:22:54 PM
You know why windows 7 installs faster than vista?

Among other things -
500Mb of print drivers have omitted  :5-

Don't get me wrong I think it's a great idea.  No need to have Gigabytes of crap lying around that you don't use.  IMHO Bloat is totally out of control.   No reason for it.




Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: brichter on December 25, 2009, 09:38:02 PM

The memory limitation is a feature of the CPU, not the operating system. 32 address lines = 2^32 bytes = 4GB. The CPU itself can't represent a number high enough to request data above 4GB. The original 8088 only had 20 address lines. 2^20 is 1 megabyte, hence the limitations of the original PC/XT.

Linux will go thinner, maybe, but I was shocked when I first tried to put Ubuntu on my laptop and it said 256M of RAM wasn't enough. Shoot, it was enough for XP! I got used to Linux but I still don't like it. There are two major apps I run every day that don't run in Linux, so I will never make a complete break from Windows. As for the Mac, I've heard of it.


Point 1: Yes, but the OS must support the same addressable space as the hardware, DOS 6.22 can't address 8 gigs of RAM. That's why we now have separate versions of OSes, either 32 bit or 64 bit. (unless you get into *nix, with the whole concept of 64 bit kernels, and 32 bit userspace where the applications run :200-).

Point 2: That's because Ubuntu (like all other consumer-based OSes nowadays) throw in the kitchen sink as far as applications go so the consumer will be happy. .

Now here I go off on a tangent like Stat or Bunker:

 :210-

Microsoft gets around this by having 8^43 versions of each OS (Win XP Home, Professional, Media Center, Ultimate, Professional+, Media Center ++, Ultimate Super Duper, Media Center Super Duper Pooper Scooper, etc., I'm sure I left a couple out by accident  :200- :97-), each with a different hardware requirement.

Since the Linux coders are geeks, you just get every possible option at install time, and they expect CLI package managers like yum and rpm will allow the user to remove anything they don't need. They keep dreaming of Linux as a Windows replacement, but they just don't understand their target market, or rather the target market doesn't have a snowball's chance in you-know-where of understanding their OS.
Most computer users nowadays would melt down if they ever had to type a CLI command, and that stuff is documented so cryptically in Linux that a non-technical person would just throw their hands up in disgust and spend money on more RAM.

Apple gets around this issue on the Mac by manufacturing the hardware and writing the OS and much of the software, so it is a lot simpler to get everything to play nice in the sandbox. The Mac does a pretty good job of being the perfect OS for the non-technical user, and there's enough stuff available (being based on FreeBSD) that the geeky engineering types can live with it also. And, Apple spends a lot of money on the look and feel, so people feel like they're getting more than just another box. the only problem is that Windows users someetimes have a hard time switiching, because theMac OS interface seems dumbed down to Windows users, and it takes a while to learn how to do all those advanced things Win users were accustomed to doing with a right click. Sometimess I think operating a Mac is not so much using it as it is sneaking up behind it and clubbing it into submission to get it to do what I need.
Heck, it took Apple decades to realize that a mouse needed more than one button!

Me, I just don't give a crap. I have to use them all, so I think they all suck, just in different ways. :71- :5-

/ :210-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: brichter on December 25, 2009, 09:44:44 PM
You know why windows 7 installs faster than vista?

Among other things -
500Mb of print drivers have omitted  :5-

Don't get me wrong I think it's a great idea.  No need to have Gigabytes of crap lying around that you don't use.  IMHO Bloat is totally out of control.   No reason for it.




Yeah, but you know there's going to be 10 million users peed off because that old dot matrix printer won't work any more... :208- :208-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: jdkmunch on December 25, 2009, 09:46:59 PM
That's the great thing-  all you have to do is click on Windows Update and it pulls only the driver you need!

It works well.  I'm very happy with Win7.


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: stayouttadabunker on December 25, 2009, 09:55:29 PM
This thread is fantastic reading  :89-  but shouldn't it be in the computer talk area? LOL


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: jdkmunch on December 25, 2009, 09:58:28 PM
lol  :30-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: brichter on December 25, 2009, 11:24:26 PM
This thread is fantastic reading  :89-  but shouldn't it be in the computer talk area? LOL

No, because the thread is about CES... :96- :200- :97- :97- :97- :97-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on December 26, 2009, 11:43:20 AM
This thread is fantastic reading  :89-  but shouldn't it be in the computer talk area? LOL

No, because the thread is about CES... :96- :200- :97- :97- :97- :97-

Could have fooled me. :200- :97- :97- :97-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: stayouttadabunker on December 26, 2009, 12:43:34 PM
I give up! :37-     :97-


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: jdkmunch on December 26, 2009, 01:17:42 PM
That should be a standard keyboard with huge 5 pin DIN connector, right?

Nope - the XT had some weird thing going on.  You may remember that years ago keyboards had an XT/AT switch on them.  If the keyboard had that switch then it would work.  I tried AT keyboards, Tandy 1000 keyboards - all no good.  I just bought and original one on eBay for $40.   Last year they were $100 - That's why I  didn't go for it. 


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: brichter on December 26, 2009, 06:37:39 PM
So what kind of connector?

I remember the ones with the switch, but mine were either pre-switch or post-switch.


Title: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: jdkmunch on December 26, 2009, 06:43:50 PM
The connector is that huge 5 pin din thing.


Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: rickhunter on December 27, 2009, 06:40:43 AM
AT keyboards used a bi-directional protocol, while XT keyboards only worked one way.  On an AT keyboard, the idle state is data and clock  high, on an XT keyboard clock is high and data is low. 


Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: jdkmunch on December 27, 2009, 11:48:07 AM
When I get the keyboard this week I'll send some video. 

I wonder if Chrome OS is going to tackle the OS Bloat. 




Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: stayouttadabunker on December 27, 2009, 02:43:45 PM
I had fun loading these up into my old machine in front of my boys...
They asked me..."Dad, what in the world are those?"... :72-
They've never heard of floppy disks...LOL

I especially like the IBM statement on the box>>>
"...deliver your business message with pizazz!"
 
say "pizazz" really, really slow... :200-


Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: jdkmunch on December 27, 2009, 02:48:39 PM
Lol! That's great!!


Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on December 27, 2009, 03:43:43 PM
Stout, would you please pass me a piece of Juicy Fruit? :200-

If you guys keep this up, I'll have to go into digging in my garage and post a picture of my 8 inch floppy disc. How many here remember those? :5-

Even more interesting is its content: a copy of the programming language FORTH. I didn't use if for robotics, which was, I believe, its primary purpose. I used it to program a synthesizer to play music back in college.


Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: Stolistic on December 27, 2009, 05:00:08 PM
I remember writing a program on the IBM System 36 to do backups on 8" floppies.  There were 5 floppies in a hard plastic magazine, and 2 magazines in total.  The machine could pull out one floppy at a time and write to it, then put it back into the magazine and move to the next.  Oh yeah, it was written in RPG II if I remember correctly.


Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: bob in phx on December 29, 2009, 01:01:14 AM
having been there back in the day,,, all I can say is "turbo button".........:)


Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: jdkmunch on December 29, 2009, 01:23:36 AM
lol  :3- :3-


Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: bob in phx on December 29, 2009, 01:59:16 AM
as a side note, my younger brother's main home and gaming machine (state of the art) is housed in a slant front IBM AT case. He changes out the guts about every 6 months, yep he is nuts...... older folks always freak out when they see it... same question all the time, "wow does it still work???". the younger folks always ask where is the computer??? so my younger bother spins a tale about computers and software companies conspiracies etc and then claims he has the secret to never having to buy a new computer ... always good for a laugh....


Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on December 29, 2009, 07:41:35 AM
I always built my own PCs until the cost of the parts exceeded the cost of a complete system. You used to have to use jumpers to create the LED digits displayed when turbo and non-turbo modes were selected. The numbers (or weird symbols  :72-) displayed had nothing to do with the clock speed on the board, they just displayed whatever LED segments you set them to display. :96-

The terms "turbo" and "normal"were misleading. They should have called them "normal" and "throttled" modes.  :47-
Of course, that wouldn't have sold as well, although I can't fathom why! :128- :200-    :97- :97- :97-


Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: stayouttadabunker on December 29, 2009, 01:49:54 PM
I used to buy all kinds of computer components and loved making my own computers.
Now I cannot get half the parts I used to get pricewise - I agree with you Stat...
It's much cheaper nowadays by just going out and
buying a brand new computer stocked and loaded with all the goodies.
I loved going to those trade shows at the Meadowlands in N.J. and
grabbing plastic bags full of hard drives, motherboards, and CPU's off of cafeteria tables fulla stuff!!!
At that time, you could also take a ride into Brooklyn,NY and see what "fell offa the truck"....LOL


Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: reho33 on December 29, 2009, 06:13:16 PM
Yes, went to lots of computer shows in those days Market pro, Tri-state fairs, etc. KGP did shows here on the East coast and then went out of business. I think that all computer shows will dissappear at some point like pay phones did.


Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: rickhunter on January 04, 2010, 03:32:30 PM
Gotta love the old school write protect mechanism on the old 5 1/4 and 8 inch floppies.  I use to use spare ones to block out eprom windows.

I still build out my PC's, just because sometimes you get the manufacturers that don't update bios for newer processors.  I just buy the stuff when the next gen stuff is released, so I get the benefit of the price breaks.  I just bought a new x48 chipset board for about $100.00 (my old socket 775 board died last month), this thing sold for over $300 a year or so ago before the Socket 1366 stuff came out.  It's the top of the line Socket 775 chipset out, and the only one "officially" specked at 1600Mhz FSB for the Extreme processors.  I don't really like that intel has 3 concurrent sockets going on, though I believe they will probably maintain the 1156 (AKA Socket H) for mainstream and 1366 (AKA socket B) for the high end to further differentiate the thing.  I didn't really want to invest on a socket 1156 until intel figures out if they are going to offer the 6 core processors on it, so far, it's only a 1366 socket processor.


Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: jay on January 04, 2010, 03:52:21 PM
I have heard that Microsoft is against this. They license a lot of their software by the processor and multi-core technology steals revenue since you can hyper-thread SQL and similar and run with fewer licenses.
This is sort of like IGT bullying JCM into not releasing the new colored $5's for the S+.
I thought they had learned their lesson when they came out with the Irridum procesor and said that was the only way to do 64bit and backwards compatiability with 32bit was a pipe dream
Its just a  matter of time. They have to move forward otherwise AMD and others will be nipping at their heals rather than feasting on crumbs. I( am sure they are just scheming how to take the market in a proprietary direction in which they hold all the patents. This is why I think BlueRay will be short lived. Sony holds the patents and everyone from the hardware manufacturers to the studios pays Sony a license fee.




Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: jdkmunch on January 04, 2010, 03:56:06 PM
I found a keyboard for $40 on eBay so I went for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7scsphmch8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7scsphmch8)



Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on January 05, 2010, 03:35:55 PM
Gotta love the old school write protect mechanism on the old 5 1/4 and 8 inch floppies.  I use to use spare ones to block out eprom windows.

I still build out my PC's, just because sometimes you get the manufacturers that don't update bios for newer processors.  I just buy the stuff when the next gen stuff is released, so I get the benefit of the price breaks.  I just bought a new x48 chipset board for about $100.00 (my old socket 775 board died last month), this thing sold for over $300 a year or so ago before the Socket 1366 stuff came out.  It's the top of the line Socket 775 chipset out, and the only one "officially" specked at 1600Mhz FSB for the Extreme processors.  I don't really like that intel has 3 concurrent sockets going on, though I believe they will probably maintain the 1156 (AKA Socket H) for mainstream and 1366 (AKA socket B) for the high end to further differentiate the thing.  I didn't really want to invest on a socket 1156 until intel figures out if they are going to offer the 6 core processors on it, so far, it's only a 1366 socket processor.

Rick, can you be more specific? What brand and model board did you buy? :103- Did you get it at Frys?


Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: rickhunter on January 05, 2010, 04:59:12 PM
Bought this when there was a 10% bing cashback and a combo discount of $75.00 when purchased with certain CPU's (I bought a Core2Quad 8400 for $149 at the same time that I used to upgrade my parents old core2 E4300) around the "Black Friday" timeframe.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128331 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128331)

You can buy the MSI Platinum X48 from tiger direct right now for $120.00.  I don't think there's sales tax in CA from Tiger Direct.  If you use bing cashback you get an extra 8% off.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3747315&CatId=3646 (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3747315&CatId=3646)




Title: Re: Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware
Post by: StatFreak on January 06, 2010, 12:29:46 PM
Bought this when there was a 10% bing cashback and a combo discount of $75.00 when purchased with certain CPU's (I bought a Core2Quad 8400 for $149 at the same time that I used to upgrade my parents old core2 E4300) around the "Black Friday" timeframe.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128331 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128331)

You can buy the MSI Platinum X48 from tiger direct right now for $120.00.  I don't think there's sales tax in CA from Tiger Direct.  If you use bing cashback you get an extra 8% off.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3747315&CatId=3646 (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3747315&CatId=3646)

Thanks Rick.  :3- :3-