Prev: ------->>>FREE MAC<<<-------
Next: Far and near pointers on the 80286 and later
From: Rich Alderson on 13 Apr 2010 20:37
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv(a)aol> writes:

> 1022 guy wrote:

>> Please stop crossposting to alt.sys.pdp10

> Sigh! for you people who are snobs. The best way for people, who have
> never had the pleasure to use a PDP-10, to learn about the PDP-10 is to
> welcome them into the newsgroup. A few will get that itch of curiosity
> and delve into the architecture. And then, perhaps, they'll learn that
> there is another way to code.

Barb,

There was a time when alt.folklore.computers was full of the discussion of
old computers. Then a few people began posting long diatribes against the
economic status of the world of today, and political screeds of all stripes,
and on and on and on and on....

Many of these people have no interest in discussing computer topics, but
insist on cross-posting their long threads across any number of other groups
without any thought of the desires of the readers of those newsgroups to be
allowed to discuss their interests rather than defend themselves from the
barbarians.

The invasion of some of these twits into alt.sys.pdp10 is my fault. I made
the serious error of cross-posting a Happy DEC-20 Day message to a.f.c last
fall (*late* last fall), and the nut cases quickly took over.

If any of the people who are posting about US politics, or the world economy,
or the like were interested in the PDP-10, they'd have stopped their ranting
and asked a question, or made an observation. None of them has. None of
them want to.

So it's not snobbery. It's a request that the barrel close itself (which it
of course will never do), and a forlorn hope, and a cry in the wilderness.

--
Rich Alderson "You get what anybody gets. You get a lifetime."
news(a)alderson.users.panix.com --Death, of the Endless
From: Quadibloc on 16 Apr 2010 12:02
On Mar 23, 5:57 pm, Bernd Felsche <ber...(a)innovative.iinet.net.au>
wrote:

> And the only time when people throw data away is when they upgrade
> computers. New desktop computer systems come with half a terabyte of
> storage capacity. And maybe a floppy drive for backups. :-)

Oh, it's not _that_ bad any more. They're likely to have DVD burners.

John Savard
From: Quadibloc on 16 Apr 2010 12:09
On Mar 23, 12:26 pm, George Neuner <gneun...(a)comcast.net> wrote:
> Apart from utterly ridiculous
> cost, the only real impediment is their snail-like performance ... the
> fastest 68060 chips are 75MHz and I've never seen faster than 60MHz
> from any CPU board vendor.

That, of course, is because they stopped designing new 68000 chips
about when the Pentium was available in 60MHz and 66MHz.

So the ridiculous costs of these particular systems aren't just due to
their industrial nature, but also due to the fact that they're
replacements for legacy systems. An x86 version might cost the same,
but have an up-to-date 3 MHz quad core processor from Intel.

Of course, "snail-like" is relative. Given how speedily one could run
Windows 3.1 on a 60 MHz Pentium, and given that the mighty IBM 360/195
could be considered architecturally comparable to the original
Pentium, but with a speed of about 16 MHz...

just *think* of what we could do with today's computers if they
weren't hobbled by bloatware. (Maybe bloatware is a government
conspiracy to keep the North Koreans from successfully designing a
hydrogen bomb. If so, Red Star Linux is a *real* problem...
apparently, they have managed to smuggle some PC clones into that
rogue nation despite our best efforts, possibly from China.)

John Savard
From: Charlie Gibbs on 16 Apr 2010 14:28
In article
<f8da0db6-f2ea-4d99-8229-66e58d03b1e4(a)z7g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
jsavard(a)ecn.ab.ca (Quadibloc) writes:

> just *think* of what we could do with today's computers if they
> weren't hobbled by bloatware. (Maybe bloatware is a government
> conspiracy to keep the North Koreans from successfully designing
> a hydrogen bomb. If so, Red Star Linux is a *real* problem...
> apparently, they have managed to smuggle some PC clones into that
> rogue nation despite our best efforts, possibly from China.)

Nah, we're too busy searching for Saddam's WMDs. <g,d&r>

My theory of bloatware points not at the government, but at Bill
Gates - who is actually a Martian. Back in the '60s, when we were
enjoying an surge of technological innovation the likes of which
has never been seen before or since, the Martians observed that
at that rate we'd soon explode into space (thank you, Steppenwolf)
and start bothering them in their own back yard. So they sent one
of their own to Earth to do something about it. It worked; even
though everyone has on his desk a computer with more than the
combined power of all the computers used to put a man on the
Moon, nobody is going to the Moon anymore. They're all too busy
re-installing Windows and keeping antivirus programs up to date.

--
/~\ cgibbs(a)kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

From: Bernd Felsche on 16 Apr 2010 14:02
Quadibloc <jsavard(a)ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>On Mar 23, 5:57=A0pm, Bernd Felsche <ber...(a)innovative.iinet.net.au>
>wrote:

That was along time ago!

>> And the only time when people throw data away is when they upgrade
>> computers. New desktop computer systems come with half a terabyte of
>> storage capacity. And maybe a floppy drive for backups. :-)

>Oh, it's not _that_ bad any more. They're likely to have DVD burners.

Agreed. Not quite that bad. Backup a terabyte to DVD. Practical?
Likely to be done? How many DVDs do you think a "consumer" DVD
burner will burn on a continuous basis before failing?
--
/"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign | If builders built buildings the way programmers
X against HTML mail | wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that
/ \ and postings | came along would destroy civilization.
First  |  Prev  |  Next  |  Last
Pages: 1 2 3 4
Prev: ------->>>FREE MAC<<<-------
Next: Far and near pointers on the 80286 and later