Everybody needs a little love sometime; stop hacking and fall in love!

Posted: 1 Day 20 Hours ago by: jimtaylor

Yee-up. In terms of normal usage, you wouldn't see much difference next to GNU/Linux, but there are some very interesting features like translators that other systems don't have. Trouble is, it's still (afaik) 686-only and lacks sound capa

Re: Gordon Moore dead at age 94 (thread)

Posted: 2 Days 7 Hours ago by: D.J.

My condolences.

Re: CTOS/BTOS (thread)

Posted: 2 Days 15 Hours ago by: vallor

Thank you for the pointer, I've subscribed to his channel. :)

Gordon Moore dead at age 94

Posted: 2 Days 21 Hours ago by: Peter Flass

Gordon E. Moore, the Intel Co-Founder Behind Moore’s Law, Dies at 94

Re: CTOS/BTOS (thread)

Posted: 3 Days 1 Hour ago by: Dennis Boone

There's a fellow, AJ Palmgren, who has attended the VCFmw show several times who has a number of these and has been working to sort out various problems and learn about them. He has a youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@Conve

Re: CTOS/BTOS (thread)

Posted: 3 Days 12 Hours ago by: gareth evans

30 years ago I was part of the design team of a PABX that used the 80186, the Interconnect Ltd I3000.

CTOS/BTOS

Re: Alive and well: Bob Metcalfe, Ethernet Pioneer, Wins Turning Award (was: Re: Bob Metcalfe, Ethernet Pioneer, Wins Turing Award (thread)

Posted: 3 Days 15 Hours ago by: vallor

I was in the USCG in the 80's, and we used the Convergent Technologies Operating System (CTOS), which became _BTOS_ (Burroughs)(that is to say, Unisys) while I was in the service. I was the ship's "systems manager". CTOS was a message-pa

Re: Richard Stallman as Seen via the BBS Scene (thread)

Posted: 4 Days 1 Hour ago by: Andreas Kohlbach

I remember to have watched the Computer Chronicles episode "Networks" recently, aired October 1985, which has Bob Metcalfe in the studio. The episode starts by Stewart Cheifet asking what the future of networks will be. May be IBM's Toke

alt.bbs

Posted: 4 Days 5 Hours ago by: David Lesher

I had a face to face confrontation with Stallman on the 'GNU/Linux' issue. I told him that if and when Linus, Bob Young, and Marc Ewing called it that, I would as well. He stomped off.

Alive and well: Bob Metcalfe, Ethernet Pioneer, Wins Turning Award

Re: Bob Metcalfe, Ethernet Pioneer, Wins Turing Award (thread)

Posted: 4 Days 8 Hours ago by: vallor

On Wed, 22 Mar 2023 16:42:46 -0700, in <1521822476.701221311.291823.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal- september.org>, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote: september.org>, turing-award-20230322/ I, too, am glad it wasn't an obit.

Re: Bob Metcalfe, Ethernet Pioneer, Wins Turing Award (thread)

Posted: 5 Days ago by: Peter Flass

I noticed this too, when I saw the post. If I’d realized how it would appear I’d have reworded the subject. Sorry.

Bob Metcalfe, Ethernet Pioneer, Wins Turing Award

Posted: 5 Days 8 Hours ago by: ted@loft.tnolan.com

Nice to hear. And much better than I assumed from reading the first few words of the subject: I was afraid it would be an obit.

Posted: 5 Days 10 Hours ago by: Peter Flass

https://www.quantamagazine.org/bob-metcalfe-ethernet-pioneer-wins-turing-award-20230322/

Posted: 6 Days 20 Hours ago by: Carlos E.R.

That's what I meant. Fail parse, not filled, so the variable has whatever value it gets on creation as new by whatever compiler they use, or the programmer set it intentionally to "zero" when the code creates it. The 1970 date marks va

Posted: 6 Days 21 Hours ago by: Dennis Boone

More like the parse failed so it never filled it in, probably, but yes. I doubt many newsreaders go fishing for any field other than Date when they set up a quote like that. De

Posted: 7 Days 1 Hour ago by: Carlos E.R.

Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2023 22:03:51 CET So it resets to the start of time (zeroes?), not that it uses the "Reply-By" string. It could also have used: Injection-Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2023 22:03:49 +0100

Posted: 7 Days 1 Hour ago by: Dennis Boone

I suspect what's going on here is that some (*cough*tbird*cough*) software is choking on the time zone spec in his date field. A _strict_ interpretation of RFC2822/5322 doesn't include arbitrary time zone spec strings. You're allowed +

Posted: 7 Days 5 Hours ago by: Carlos E.R.

https://paste.opensuse.org/5aa799ecc9a0

Posted: 7 Days 6 Hours ago by: Andy Burns

do you see more than these 6 messages from him? <http://andyburns.uk/misc/vandenbroek.png>

Re: Wrong date [Was: Re: Injudicious Use of Stock Photo] (thread)

Posted: 7 Days 6 Hours ago by: Vir Campestris

I see one Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: Jan van den Broek <fortytwo@xs4all.nl> Subject: Re: Injudicious Use of Stock Photo Organization: Nederlandse Vereniging voor Hobby Boeddhisten References: <jfi.5DAF69DB.42.fortytwo@xs4al

Posted: 7 Days 8 Hours ago by: D.J.

And I have a silly organization line.

Posted: 7 Days 10 Hours ago by: Andy Burns

Well, none of his posts show as 1970 here (even those from before xmas)

Posted: 7 Days 13 Hours ago by: Carlos E.R.

Yes, but I don't understand why Thunderbird, in some of his posts displays the date on 1970, despite the date header being current. That's the problem. The one that is correct shows: User-Agent: slrn/1.0.3 (Patched for libcanlock3) (N

Posted: 7 Days 13 Hours ago by: Andy Burns

The *DATE:* header shows 2023 it's the (more or less spurious) *REPLY-BY:* header that shows 1970

Posted: 7 Days 13 Hours ago by: Carlos E.R.

Look at the quote header line above, in which it says «On 1970-01-01 01:00, Jan van den Broek wrote». I notice when things break. This post shows the correct date.

Re: Wrong date [Was: Re: Injudicious Use of Stock Photo] (thread)

Posted: 7 Days 16 Hours ago by: Jan van den Broek

I'm using this header for years (twenty or so), it's is the first time someone mentioned noticing this.

Wrong date [Was: Re: Injudicious Use of Stock Photo] (thread)

Posted: 8 Days 2 Hours ago by: Andy Burns

Indeed, what are you even meant to do with a Reply-By: header on usenet? <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1327#section-5.3.4> Thankfully its a long time since I had to think about X.400

Posted: 8 Days 3 Hours ago by: Carlos E.R.

Not normally, but Thunderbird is saying that the date of those posts is 1970, it is visible in the display panel. So I looked inside, and saw: Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: Jan van den Broek <fortytwo@xs4all.nl> Subject: Re:

Posted: 8 Days 6 Hours ago by: Andreas Kohlbach

He might have added that manually. May be to see if anyone looks into headers of posts. Or his clock runs a 16-bit (unsigned) counter. ~$ date --date='@65535' Thu Jan 1 13:12:15 EST 1970 ;-)

Posted: 8 Days 8 Hours ago by: Johnny Billquist

Note how I said "older hardware" and shared interrupt lines... ;-) Johnny

Posted: 8 Days 8 Hours ago by: Scott Lurndal

That means that the data used to generate that time had a value of 32400, which probably means the feature isn't supported by his MUA or his MUA is misconfigured. $ date --date='@32400' Thu Jan 1 01:00:00 PST 1970 $

Going back to the roots...

Posted: 8 Days 9 Hours ago by: Thomas Koenig

https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2023-March/240913.html That will be interesting.

Posted: 9 Days ago by: Carlos E.R.

--*********** What's up with your clock? It is this header you put: Reply-By: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00

Posted: 9 Days 2 Hours ago by: Sn!pe

[...] A sweeping generalisation, how nice.

Re: Injudicious Use of Stock Photo

Posted: 9 Days 2 Hours ago by: Jan van den Broek

You're right, although they seem to go hand in hand.

Posted: 10 Days 8 Hours ago by: Ahem A Rivet's Shot

Also prone to false triggering in high noise environments with inadequate decoupling (DAMHIK).

Posted: 10 Days 8 Hours ago by: Scott Lurndal

Most modern hardware uses edge semantics for interrupt detection. All PCI and PCI Express message signaled interrupts are edge[*]. The only level sensitive interrupts still used are generally for legacy devices (e.g. the ARM PL011) or c

Posted: 10 Days 8 Hours ago by: Johnny Billquist

Not sure why you would expect edge triggered any more than level. In fact, most older hardware use level triggered. Edge triggered is sometimes problematic/risky, and certainly run the risk of ending up interrupts not recognized if shar

Re: 8259 (was Re: Ferranti ULAs) (thread)

Posted: 10 Days 11 Hours ago by: gareth evans

Accepting that I might have experienced a senior moment*****, but that statement is about the 8259A and not the 8259. *****( I used to be big-headed, but now I'm perfect"???? :-)

Posted: 10 Days 23 Hours ago by: Peter Flass

BTDT

Posted: 10 Days 23 Hours ago by: Peter Flass

2019

Posted: 11 Days 1 Hour ago by: D.J.

I wrote: Yup, those are the ones.

Posted: 11 Days 1 Hour ago by: D.J.

The electrolyte paste info the Chinese hacked from Japan was copied down wrong. The electrolitic capacitors in the Amiga computers have to be replaced. How, on youtube.

Posted: 11 Days 2 Hours ago by: Bob Eager

They weren't heavily marketed. And only a few selected larger WH Smith branches had them (and didn't, I think, know much about them). I live in East Kent, and bought mine after driving down to Croydon. They were bulky, all black plast

Posted: 11 Days 2 Hours ago by: OldbieOne

LOL!!!! Leave it to the Brits to come up with a perfectly apt snark! -- OldbieOne [TM] The One Who Tells It Like It is! Brought to you by RetroPC using Forte Agent News Reader .99g/32

Posted: 11 Days 4 Hours ago by: Dennis Boone

https://www.boredpanda.com/soldering-iron-stock-image-fails/

Re: The MicroAce, the Jupiter Ace, and? (thread)

Posted: 11 Days 4 Hours ago by: OldbieOne

I do remember seeing those luggables, but thankfully never had to carry one, or any machine in the "luggable" era. My first portable experience was when we had already moved on to the laptop era - at the time when they were still too he

Posted: 11 Days 5 Hours ago by: OldbieOne

On Thu, 16 Mar 2023 16:52:59 +0000, Vir Campestris <vir.campestris@invalid.invalid> did make me awaken from my chaotic existentialism when they didst announce: I saw quite a few old hams with Dragons for SSTV and RTTY in UK, but few use

Posted: 11 Days 5 Hours ago by: OldbieOne

I seem to recall it had an actual RS232 port on-board, unlike Big Blue at the time, and a color monitor which was kinda impressive in the world of amber or green at the time. I don't remember what resolution it would render but to my ey

Posted: 11 Days 5 Hours ago by: Ahem A Rivet's Shot

Olivetti was Italian, but there is a British connection. They bought Acorn when it collapsed - leading to people in Cambridge singing "Just Acorn-etti ...".

Posted: 11 Days 6 Hours ago by: Charlie Gibbs

I think we still have an Olivetti M18 around here somewhere. This was the "luggable" version. My arms are a couple of inches longer than they used to be because I had to park several blocks from the customer site to which I hauled it on

Re: 8259 (was Re: Ferranti ULAs) (thread)

Re: The MicroAce, the Jupiter Ace, and? (thread)

Posted: 11 Days 6 Hours ago by: Scott Lurndal

The tricky part is that the edge signal asserted level must be maintained until the CPU acknowledges the interrupt to the 8259/8259A.

Posted: 11 Days 6 Hours ago by: Andy Leighton

Yep the 6809 was pretty nice. The thing that let the Dragon down was that it was just upper-case in text mode, and the graphics were not really all that good for the gamers. Also ISTR that OS9 was delayed quite a while as was the Dragon

8259 (was Re: Ferranti ULAs) (thread)

Re: The MicroAce, the Jupiter Ace, and? (thread)

Posted: 11 Days 6 Hours ago by: Vir Campestris

err... <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8259> tells me what my memory dredged up from all those years ago: "Edge and level interrupt trigger modes are supported by the 8259A." I used it in a non-IBM compatible device. Andy

Posted: 11 Days 7 Hours ago by: Vir Campestris

I have fond memories of my Dragon. I really liked the 6809. But nothing like anything Sinclair had at the time. Andy

Posted: 11 Days 7 Hours ago by: Sn!pe

[...] I had one after my IBM PC XT. It was basically a [ditto] in a pretty case with a better display. Italian make, I think.

Posted: 11 Days 8 Hours ago by: D.J.

Stock photos I saw a few years ago had two soldering pencil iron users holding the heat dissipation grid, not the handle. If the soldering pencils had been plugged in, their hands would have been burned.

Re: The MicroAce, the Jupiter Ace, and? (thread)

Posted: 11 Days 9 Hours ago by: OldbieOne

I don't remember ever seeing, or hearing about them, but I certainly remember WH Smiths. This is another new one for me. This was around the time my father brought home an Olivetti M23 with whopping 20MB hard drive and a "full" 640K RAM

Posted: 11 Days 9 Hours ago by: OldbieOne

Makes perfect sense. Closest I came was with My Rolls Canardly. Rolls down hill, can 'ardly get up them ;) -- OldbieOne [TM] The One Who Tells It Like It is! Brought to you by RetroPC using Forte Agent News Reader .99g/32

Posted: 11 Days 11 Hours ago by: gareth evans

AAAH!!! The dreaded 8259 Interrupt Controller. Not edge triggered as one would expect but ISTR level sensitive with edge lockout. Had to do the board support using one of these in the Herald Pentara and KBX100 PABX exchanges circa 1981

Posted: 11 Days 11 Hours ago by: Bob Eager

I didn't see the original post, but I bought my first computer in 1984. Had a lot of those ULAs in it. I did a fake service call, because I knew the first thing the technician would do was to glue heatsinks to all ofg them - they ran

Posted: 11 Days 13 Hours ago by: Ian

Now a housing estate. Worked there around 1986, then in Hollinwood, where they did the ULAs and ASICs. https://www.jusme.com/perm/gem/gallery/pages/page_0001.html "There's trouble at t' mill"

Posted: 11 Days 14 Hours ago by: maus

Google groups, more than gmail.

Posted: 11 Days 14 Hours ago by: Jan van den Broek

^^^^ [Schnipp] No, just a gmail-poster digging up old messages.

Posted: 11 Days 15 Hours ago by: maus

/BAH returns?

Posted: 11 Days 18 Hours ago by: Hill Stone

Stock photos are a lifesaver for content creators. Often there is simply not enough time and resources to take the required number of photos, and on the stock in one click you can find cool photos on absolutely any topic. Recently, I took

Re: The MicroAce, the Jupiter Ace, and? (thread)

Posted: 11 Days 18 Hours ago by: Hill Stone

Posted: 12 Days ago by: D.J.

I didn't have to add any memory to run my copy of Lotus 1-2-3 for my Amiga computer. It had a caution in the owner's manual. Don't go below a certain row as the MS-DOS version couldn't import those rows.

Ferranti ULAs

Re: The MicroAce, the Jupiter Ace, and? (thread)

Posted: 12 Days 2 Hours ago by: gareth evans

Used to work at Vanwell Data Systems in Melksham, Wilts, who provided Ferranti with the memory-behind-the-pin test eqpt. ISTR visiting Ferranti in Gem Mill in Oldham.

Re: The MicroAce, the Jupiter Ace, and? (thread)

Posted: 12 Days 2 Hours ago by: Ahem A Rivet's Shot

Yes, the big difference being the F (or lack thereof), the ULAs were factory programmed with a final mask like masked ROMs. They eventually got ordered to return the toys (which were leased I think) including the Rolls, Lotus and Ce

Re: The MicroAce, the Jupiter Ace, and? (thread)

Posted: 12 Days 3 Hours ago by: OldbieOne

Impressive level of development! Thanks for the info. I'll have to go play with this on my Slackware box now :) -- OldbieOne [TM] The One Who Tells It Like It is! Brought to you by RetroPC using Forte Agent News Reader .99g/32

Re: The MicroAce, the Jupiter Ace, and? (thread)

Posted: 12 Days 4 Hours ago by: OldbieOne

So possibly the forerunner of the modern FPGA? I regret being a tad too young to have ridden that gravy train, lol! -- OldbieOne [TM] The One Who Tells It Like It is! Brought to you by RetroPC using Forte Agent News Reader .99g/32

Re: The MicroAce, the Jupiter Ace, and? (thread)

Posted: 12 Days 4 Hours ago by: maus

From memory, the A500 needed extra memory to run a spreadsheet.

Re: The MicroAce, the Jupiter Ace, and? (thread)

Posted: 12 Days 5 Hours ago by: Scott Lurndal

There were less than a couple of dozen spots in the code that were not 64-bit clean (using int instead of the appropriate type for casting pointers, for the most part) - it is open source, but the original author (Jonathan Kamens) had don

Re: The MicroAce, the Jupiter Ace, and? (thread)

Posted: 12 Days 5 Hours ago by: Ahem A Rivet's Shot

No they were very different - even if most of them were financed by the same DOI grant. The ULA - uncommitted logic array - could be set up to contain almost any circuitry. Quite possibly - there was a lot of grant chasing going on.