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Cool boat & travel computer
Larry wrote:
cavelamb himself wrote in m: Find me a decent CAD to replace my beloved Design CAD and I'll convert to Linux. Or a way to run without it (Wine still needs Win). http://www.tech-edv.co.at/lunix/CADlinks.html Will these do? Sorry the list is so deep....(c; I'm sure you'll find one of them, maybe the one you're using now, ported to Linux, directly. You don't need WINE..... It will take a while to examine everything on that list! ARCAD 3D ( http://www.arcad.de/ ) looks like it may have the features (at 165 pounds sterling id better!?) But most seem to be optimized for some particular type of service. The true test is how a package handles curves in 3D. I'm terribly spoiled on cubic splines. I started out on AutoCAD version 10 (for over $8000!!!) I didn't like it then - and still don't. I've seen a few ACAD systems brought up to near the same level via macros, but those generally don't come with the system. And none of them have the gravity point select feature from DCad. Design CAD has been around since the DOS days. When I found it, I was floored at how much easier it was to use, and how fast it ran. But I've not seen anything that indicates any desire on the publisher's part to port to Unix. Which is (to my mind) rather short sighted! http://www.imsidesign.com/Products/O...6/Default.aspx -- Richard (remove the X to email) |
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Wayne.B wrote:
On Fri, 26 Sep 2008 10:12:14 -0400, wrote: What I listed is only the tip of the iceberg. I even have stuff such as a tape punch, and a Linotronic photo-typesetter with 8.5 inch floppy drives in it. In a previous life, I ran a bunch of newspapers. Burroughs Flexowriter ? I wrote my first computer program on one of those in the fall of 1967. If you were really good you could edit with scissors, scotch tape and a hole punch, otherwise you re-keyed everything. Converted IBM Selectric - seven solonoids that pulled the bales. Way cool printer - with selectable fonts (balls). -- Richard (remove the X to email) |
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"Larry" wrote in message
... "Capt. JG" wrote in easolutions: Anyone remember the S100 bus? I worked with Concurrent CPM for a while. Sure! Kept me poor buying parts to build them for years....(c; My first was a Southwest Technical Products that had 8 toggle switches for input and 8 light bulbs for output.....then, some smartass sold me a TELETYPE interface! REAL programmers use: COPY CON PROGRAM.EXE on DOS machines....(c; I worked for Bill Godbout at CompuPro back when.... -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com |
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On 2008-09-26 13:24:29 -0400, "Capt. JG" said:
Anyone remember the S100 bus? I worked with Concurrent CPM for a while. I remember it and all the rest mentioned. The first time I saw a Kaypro, I was in lust: A computer that you could carry as a self-contained unit! My dad was an early programmer, starting with "flip the switches" and ending on an an IBM 360. For my 14th birthday, he took me down to see his baby, then to the Academy of Music, featuring Dvorak's "New World Symphony", my absolute favorite piece of music (I played French horn).... That day is burned indelibly into my brain. Here it is, 40 years later. Now, the machine I take down to the boat is more powerful than the fastest supercomputers extant then. Dad's computer was in a temple of technology; we very nearly had to put on clean suits to enter the inner sanctum. We toss ours onto a settee without a thought, slightly worry that it might be dropped a couple of feet. The march of tech is scary. -- Jere Lull Xan-à-Deux -- Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD Xan's pages: http://web.mac.com/jerelull/iWeb/Xan/ Our BVI trips & tips: http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/ |
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"Jere Lull" wrote in message
news:2008092614594875249-jerelull@maccom... On 2008-09-26 13:24:29 -0400, "Capt. JG" said: Anyone remember the S100 bus? I worked with Concurrent CPM for a while. I remember it and all the rest mentioned. The first time I saw a Kaypro, I was in lust: A computer that you could carry as a self-contained unit! My dad was an early programmer, starting with "flip the switches" and ending on an an IBM 360. For my 14th birthday, he took me down to see his baby, then to the Academy of Music, featuring Dvorak's "New World Symphony", my absolute favorite piece of music (I played French horn).... That day is burned indelibly into my brain. Here it is, 40 years later. Now, the machine I take down to the boat is more powerful than the fastest supercomputers extant then. Dad's computer was in a temple of technology; we very nearly had to put on clean suits to enter the inner sanctum. We toss ours onto a settee without a thought, slightly worry that it might be dropped a couple of feet. The march of tech is scary. -- Jere Lull Xan-à-Deux -- Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD Xan's pages: http://web.mac.com/jerelull/iWeb/Xan/ Our BVI trips & tips: http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/ I remember almost buying an Osborne... finally bought one of the first Compaqs... the luggable. -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com |
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"Jere Lull" wrote in message
news:2008092615090350073-jerelull@maccom... On 2008-09-26 09:32:59 -0400, said: On Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:19:32 -0400, Gogarty wrote: In article lutions, lid says... Friends don't let friends use Vista. I was co-author of a "VISTA for idiots" The title tells you everything you need to know. Hate to say it, but there are "Mac for idiots" books, too. Of course, they're mostly pictures with no words of greater than 3 syllables, considering the audience. -- Jere Lull Xan-à-Deux -- Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD Xan's pages: http://web.mac.com/jerelull/iWeb/Xan/ Our BVI trips & tips: http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/ Yeah, but Macs *are* cool. -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com |
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On Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:28:20 -0400, Gogarty
wrote: If there is one thing this thread reveals, it is our ages. :) Did we all walk five miles to school in the snow uphill both ways? They hadn't yet invented walking. |
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"Gogarty" wrote in message
... If there is one thing this thread reveals, it is our ages. :) Did we all walk five miles to school in the snow uphill both ways? You forgot about the hot potato... -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com |
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"Capt. JG" wrote in
easolutions: I worked for Bill Godbout at CompuPro back when.... Wow....That must have been an amazing time. |
Cool boat & travel computer
Jere Lull wrote in news:2008092614594875249-
jerelull@maccom: I remember it and all the rest mentioned. The first time I saw a Kaypro, I was in lust: A computer that you could carry as a self-contained unit! I drove all the way to Jacksonville, FL to buy the new 8088 Compaq Portable for $2,495....twin floppies, 9" screen. The keyboard became the bottom when you carried it. It looked like a sewing machine...and weighed about the same. AC power ONLY....88 watt switching power supply you could overload by simply plugging something new into it. The expansion boards overloaded it. DOS 3.3 and the GREEN monochrome monitor completed the package.... I spent the weekend in the closest motel to Sears' computer center plugging in floppy disks with programs and stuff to play with from home. We hardly slept.......(c; We'd probably have starved if there hadn't been two restaurants next door to the motel. At the next Computer Club meeting, it was the center of attention. Pong never looked better....(c; |
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"Capt. JG" wrote in news:MMadnVnnvp4-
reasolutions: I remember almost buying an Osborne... finally bought one of the first Compaqs... the luggable. -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com Is your right arm 1.5" longer than your left like mine?....(c; Everyone thought it was a bowling phenomenon. But, it only happened to us Portable and Portable 286 owners.... |
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Gogarty wrote in news:20080926-202820.842.0
@Gogarty.news.bway.net: Did we all walk five miles to school in the snow uphill both ways? Nope. I drove the bus! Slid down a long hill at a 45 degree angle off into the right ditch on glare ice when I was a senior, my last year in high school. Not a single kid even had a bump and I got a commendation for saving them. The school was covering its ass. It should have been CLOSED for a snow day that day and we no sooner got there, a bit late, when they sent everyone home with more snow on the way. |
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"Larry" wrote in message
... "Capt. JG" wrote in easolutions: I worked for Bill Godbout at CompuPro back when.... Wow....That must have been an amazing time. He wasn't a bad guy... very driven to prove his technology, but it was obvious to me at the time that it wasn't going to go anywhere... but I needed the work. :-) Some of the people at the company were truly strange. -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com |
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"Larry" wrote in message
... "Capt. JG" wrote in news:MMadnVnnvp4- reasolutions: I remember almost buying an Osborne... finally bought one of the first Compaqs... the luggable. -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com Is your right arm 1.5" longer than your left like mine?....(c; Everyone thought it was a bowling phenomenon. But, it only happened to us Portable and Portable 286 owners.... Yeah, but my golf game improved significantly. LOL My first actual computer that I owned (I shared the Compaq with someone else) was a Televideo (no harddisk, two 8" floppy drive). I got it in trade for some work I was doing for a modem protocol company, where I could actually talk on the same line as the modem tones for 30 seconds or so until the modem dropped. Finally, I got sick of swapping floppies, went to a computer show and bought a 17 meg HD for $450 (on sale). I had to put it in an external box, and the cable was about 2 inches too long, which meant I got a lot of crashes. I suppose I should have kept mine, as it seems to have held it's value: http://cgi.ebay.com/TeleVideo-TS-803...17103002r20375 -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com |
Cool boat & travel computer
"Capt. JG" wrote in message
easolutions... "Larry" wrote in message ... "Capt. JG" wrote in news:MMadnVnnvp4- reasolutions: I remember almost buying an Osborne... finally bought one of the first Compaqs... the luggable. -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com Is your right arm 1.5" longer than your left like mine?....(c; Everyone thought it was a bowling phenomenon. But, it only happened to us Portable and Portable 286 owners.... Yeah, but my golf game improved significantly. LOL My first actual computer that I owned (I shared the Compaq with someone else) was a Televideo (no harddisk, two 8" floppy drive). I got it in trade for some work I was doing for a modem protocol company, where I could actually talk on the same line as the modem tones for 30 seconds or so until the modem dropped. Finally, I got sick of swapping floppies, went to a computer show and bought a 17 meg HD for $450 (on sale). I had to put it in an external box, and the cable was about 2 inches too long, which meant I got a lot of crashes. I suppose I should have kept mine, as it seems to have held it's value: http://cgi.ebay.com/TeleVideo-TS-803...17103002r20375 Actually, this one is slightly newer than the one I had. Mine only had two floppy drives. More like this one. I maxed out the memory to 128K! Except for the crashes, I loved that machine. http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/...sp?st=1&c=1077 -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com |
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"Capt. JG" wrote in message
easolutions... "Capt. JG" wrote in message easolutions... "Larry" wrote in message ... "Capt. JG" wrote in news:MMadnVnnvp4- reasolutions: I remember almost buying an Osborne... finally bought one of the first Compaqs... the luggable. -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com Is your right arm 1.5" longer than your left like mine?....(c; Everyone thought it was a bowling phenomenon. But, it only happened to us Portable and Portable 286 owners.... Yeah, but my golf game improved significantly. LOL My first actual computer that I owned (I shared the Compaq with someone else) was a Televideo (no harddisk, two 8" floppy drive). I got it in trade for some work I was doing for a modem protocol company, where I could actually talk on the same line as the modem tones for 30 seconds or so until the modem dropped. Finally, I got sick of swapping floppies, went to a computer show and bought a 17 meg HD for $450 (on sale). I had to put it in an external box, and the cable was about 2 inches too long, which meant I got a lot of crashes. I suppose I should have kept mine, as it seems to have held it's value: http://cgi.ebay.com/TeleVideo-TS-803...17103002r20375 Actually, this one is slightly newer than the one I had. Mine only had two floppy drives. More like this one. I maxed out the memory to 128K! Except for the crashes, I loved that machine. http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/...sp?st=1&c=1077 Ok, I must be getting old... I had the TS-1603, with the 8088. I recall that I added an 8087 to it. Damn thing got so hot that it did the big melt down eventually. -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com |
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"Capt. JG" wrote in
easolutions: Some of the people at the company were truly strange. That could be said for every computer company....(c; Hell, look at Google! Who would have thought a bunch of kids playing in the sandbox would be filthy rich? |
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|
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"Capt. JG" wrote in
easolutions: Ok, I must be getting old... I had the TS-1603, with the 8088. I recall that I added an 8087 to it. Damn thing got so hot that it did the big melt down eventually. -- "j" ganz @@ w Aha! The Math Coprocessor! Going first class so 2+2=4 not 3.999999999992398237049865098712398740129386532847 It would even take a proper square root....er, ah, if it wasn't overheated already. http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Liqui...uter_20Cooling Damned overclockers! |
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Hanz Schmidt wrote in
: Next u'll talk about the Pet Computer (Commodore 2000).... Oh, my....Pets cost more than Commode Door 64.... Whenever I call Knology about an outage, I ask them if they minded going back into the garage and plugging the Commodore 64 back into the wall so we can have internet in Charleston, again....(c; |
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Next u'll talk about the Pet Computer (Commodore 2000)....
Hanz Larry wrote: "Capt. JG" wrote in easolutions: Some of the people at the company were truly strange. That could be said for every computer company....(c; Hell, look at Google! Who would have thought a bunch of kids playing in the sandbox would be filthy rich? |
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On Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:59:42 +0000, Larry wrote:
Oh, my....Pets cost more than Commode Door 64.... Whenever I call Knology about an outage, I ask them if they minded going back into the garage and plugging the Commodore 64 back into the wall so we can have internet in Charleston, again....(c; I had a 64 and the Vic-20 before that. Who would believe in this day and age that we actually stored data and programs on audio cassette tape at one time. |
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Wayne.B wrote:
On Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:59:42 +0000, Larry wrote: Oh, my....Pets cost more than Commode Door 64.... Whenever I call Knology about an outage, I ask them if they minded going back into the garage and plugging the Commodore 64 back into the wall so we can have internet in Charleston, again....(c; I had a 64 and the Vic-20 before that. Who would believe in this day and age that we actually stored data and programs on audio cassette tape at one time. Audio tape is for wimps, I used to store them on punched paper tape, ASR-33 teletype with integral tape reader and punch! Cheers Marty |
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"Hanz Schmidt" wrote in message
... Next u'll talk about the Pet Computer (Commodore 2000).... Hanz Larry wrote: "Capt. JG" wrote in easolutions: Some of the people at the company were truly strange. That could be said for every computer company....(c; Hell, look at Google! Who would have thought a bunch of kids playing in the sandbox would be filthy rich? I bought my father one of those when it came out. He didn't like it, so I returned it. -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com |
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"Larry" wrote in message
... Hanz Schmidt wrote in : Next u'll talk about the Pet Computer (Commodore 2000).... Oh, my....Pets cost more than Commode Door 64.... Whenever I call Knology about an outage, I ask them if they minded going back into the garage and plugging the Commodore 64 back into the wall so we can have internet in Charleston, again....(c; Oh, that's what it was... the 64. -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com |
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On 2008-09-26 20:50:43 -0400, Larry said:
"Capt. JG" wrote in news:P8adnVJnxPX_ reasolutions: bought a 17 meg HD for $450 (on sale) Wow! a bargain! This thread is SO off-topic, but I'm laughing too much to say "stop". -- Jere Lull Xan-à-Deux -- Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD Xan's pages: http://web.mac.com/jerelull/iWeb/Xan/ Our BVI trips & tips: http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/ |
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"Jere Lull" wrote in message
news:2008092701031650073-jerelull@maccom... On 2008-09-26 20:50:43 -0400, Larry said: "Capt. JG" wrote in news:P8adnVJnxPX_ reasolutions: bought a 17 meg HD for $450 (on sale) Wow! a bargain! This thread is SO off-topic, but I'm laughing too much to say "stop". -- Jere Lull Xan-à-Deux -- Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD Xan's pages: http://web.mac.com/jerelull/iWeb/Xan/ Our BVI trips & tips: http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/ Hey, my first modem was a 300 to 1200 baud... $475 new. It was so cheap I bought three of them! LOL -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com |
Cool boat & travel computer
On Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:50:43 +0000, Larry wrote:
I wrote the system using Dbase III, but as CODE, not the automated Dbase bugware it wrote itself. The code was long because they kept adding to my tasking. The system, at 4.77 Mhz, slowed because of Dbase's interpreter, of course. Then, Clipper came out with this snazzy Dbase III COMPILER that assembled the libraries and machine code of your system into a huge .exe file that, by those standards, ran like greased lightning. My Clipper serial number is 1700...(c; Navy refused to buy it and we got caught trying to run around the end, so I paid $495 out of my pocket for it. NOTE: Since the friend I mention below has a Wauquiez 38' Hood Mark II and sometimes cruises, I deem this post not too far off topic. There were a lot of apps designed for small business and home use that couldn't make the transition to big time data flows. Dbase was pretty slick as far as it went. I knew a guy still doing Clipper work for small businesses in the mid-90's. I wrote an employee "database" interactive app for use by one of the consulting firms I worked for in Lotus spreadsheet macros back in the '80's. Screen flashing all over the place since it was interpretive, but it worked and management used it for years. MicroFocus came out with a beautiful compiling COBOL package for the PC in 1985, supporting an ISAM-like file structure and emulating interactive CICS, but it cost about 4 grand for the complete package, so it was easier to spend a few hundred for Dbase, Lotus, etc, and hack away. I recall MicroFocus was an English firm. I was contracting for a very large IBM shop in Chicago when the MicroFocus package came out. A friend - who is a sometime cruiser - consulting at the same shop asked the manager of Tech Support to get a copy from MicroFocus. MicroFocus had the tech support guy swear up and down to keep it closely guarded for the evaluation. Within an hour of it arriving about 7 of us had full copies, and we were busy lugging InstaPrint copies of the manuals from the copy shop across the street. So much for promises. Think it was about $50 apiece for copying the manuals. My friend told me he did an app for an accountant friend of his, and I used mine to write a complex mult-module/file thoroughbred handicapping app, employing many variables that had to be keyed in daily. It was structured, slick, and *almost* turning a profit running the projection module when Arlington Park burned down and I gave it up. I found futures trading a better way to gamble. I really don't think the MicroFocus package found its niche in the market, and believe it was later absorbed by MS. But it was certainly better for developing small business apps than the competition. Just too expensive, and you needed to know COBOL. At that time everybody thought they could buy software off the shelf to run their business. Maybe they really can now! --Vic |
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Vic Smith wrote in
: Screen flashing all over the place since it was interpretive, but it worked and management used it for years. Being a Navy installation, our XT opened each morning with "The National Anthem" playing on the crappy little computer speaker while the green flag waved on the screen. This was, of course, if you had the code for the HARDWARE LOCK board which intercepted the bootup on its way to the drives. No code? No access IN HARDWARE! One of my problems was convincing the mainframe security types at the yard HQ that it wasn't a threat to national security (not to mention their own jobs, which is why they attempted to defeat every microcomputer installed outside their office for years). We didn't NEED them any more. It must have been terrifying that the "little people" has so much power on their desktops. The head of IT Security spent hours trying to crack into my system sitting at its terminal. "What do you do when you go home at night? How do you secure it then??", he asked my boss, pointedly. "We turn the goddamned thing off and lock the door on our way out of the Secure Nuclear Industrial Area", my boss retorted. "If they get inside the CIA, I doubt they'll go for the PC with the calibration records on it!", he said louder to get his point across. (He always got louder when excited.) Knowing they were coming one day, I shooed Gloria away from the keyboard and popped a floppy into the drive with some fun stuff on it. One program made all the letters on the screen fall into a random-looking pile on the bottom of the screen if you didn't do anything for 60 seconds. You had to press CTRL-END and the letters would jump back to their normal position, completely usable as ever with no effect on anything but a little CPU load. Another one popped up a green picture of a goat who stuck his tongue out at you until you pressed a key to make him quit. We baited the hook just as the guy arrived and Gloria sat back down as if everything were "normal", whatever that meant in the crazy lab full of mischievous engineers. The computer was already up and running so we had no excuse not to let him in. I kept him talking just long enough for the letters to fall off the screen in front of his eyes. "What have you done to our system!", I said in a loud voice. Right on cue, my big boss came storming out of his office all in a fake huff and accused this jerk of trashing our system to protect his turf, which is exactly what they were trying to do without ever saying so. The goat popped up while they were arguing and raspberried him through the little speaker. My boss lost it and couldn't keep a straight face holding his stomach. Our ruse worked perfectly. Now, convinced we were all insane, they never bothered us again and refused to report the incident. Everyone in our command structure knew what they were trying to achieve and backed us. What we did solved the major problem with the Navy's ancient batch processed paper system.....right in the lab. My job was Electronic Technician, not computers. If I had not been a GS employee, I'd have never been able to do it as the wage grade's union would have filed grievance after grievance until I was stopped. This is why I took the job in Metrology Laboratory in the first place. I came from the yard's Instrument Room, a WG blue collar job. My old shop asked for my help. Someone dumped a complete Wang MVP-2200 system on them noone wanted. It had to be "somewhere" because some bigshot had bought it for hundreds of thousands of wasted dollars. It had two disk pack drives plus a fixed disk and a 8", hard sectored, floppy drive for input. Only one console came with it and a really noisy chain printer we put in a closet when I installed it. It ran Wang Extended BASIC and I had to learn BASIC all over again to do anything with it. It was stupid, but available. I wrote a Wang BASIC program for it that stored and tracked all the Shop 67 (Electronics) and Shop 51 (Electrical) tech manuals, which were in the thousands, a collection from before WW2. This way there was something besides a green log book you had to search through to find out who had the manual you wanted checked out...by hand. I tried to dump the Wang and build the shop another "Parts PC" from Bob's Computer Warehouse, but they had to use the Wang. Sure was fast finding a record with all that power for the day....(c; I tried to figure out how I could steal one of the disk pack drives and hook it to my calibration PC to do backups faster than the little tape drive I had on B: but never found an interface. I could back up fast to the 9-track NEC, and did so several times, but I got a deal on the little data tape drive and it would operate without my baby sitting it the NEC software required. It just made a drive image. |
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Wayne.B wrote in
: On Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:59:42 +0000, Larry wrote: Oh, my....Pets cost more than Commode Door 64.... Whenever I call Knology about an outage, I ask them if they minded going back into the garage and plugging the Commodore 64 back into the wall so we can have internet in Charleston, again....(c; I had a 64 and the Vic-20 before that. Who would believe in this day and age that we actually stored data and programs on audio cassette tape at one time. I have Z80 software on paper tape for your teletype machine....(c; it's in hexidecimal...all very modern. |
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Marty wrote in
: Audio tape is for wimps, I used to store them on punched paper tape, ASR-33 teletype with integral tape reader and punch! Ahhh....the sounds of reperf in the mawnin'! |
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Jere Lull wrote in news:2008092701031650073-
jerelull@maccom: This thread is SO off-topic, but I'm laughing too much to say "stop". No it's not. There are many Windows 98 machines running on boats.... |
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"Capt. JG" wrote in
easolutions: Hey, my first modem was a 300 to 1200 baud... $475 new. It was so cheap I bought three of them! LOL And, just like the rest of us, you sat for HOURS thrilling to the stuff you were downloading from some obscure hacker's BBS....just because YOU would have something noone ELSE had when it was done! Our secret BBS was called "Summerville 80" in Summerville, SC. There were two BBSs in one house, the public one everyone knew about and another, more obscure, unlisted, unpublished 56K BBS for the chosen few who supported it and stole the finest stuff from the finest places for all to play...... I can still remember that phone number....(c; |
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Larry wrote:
I have Z80 software on paper tape for your teletype machine....(c; it's in hexidecimal...all very modern. I still have a binful of parts to repair tape readers, Chalco IIRC. Used to have a bunch of stuff that the Canadian Navy flew in Arguses, they were really modern, used metalized mylar tape. Kind of pretty for Christmas decoration in the shop, silver on one side and shiny blue on the other. I shudder to think how many millions of dollars worth of code we had strung on the ceiling. Cheers Marty |
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On Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:13:07 +0000, Larry wrote:
No it's not. There are many Windows 98 machines running on boats.... They should be upgraded to Win2K immediately. It's much more stable. No joke - A lot of the Windows bad rep is from the Win95 and Win98 era. |
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"Larry" wrote in message
... "Capt. JG" wrote in easolutions: Hey, my first modem was a 300 to 1200 baud... $475 new. It was so cheap I bought three of them! LOL And, just like the rest of us, you sat for HOURS thrilling to the stuff you were downloading from some obscure hacker's BBS....just because YOU would have something noone ELSE had when it was done! Our secret BBS was called "Summerville 80" in Summerville, SC. There were two BBSs in one house, the public one everyone knew about and another, more obscure, unlisted, unpublished 56K BBS for the chosen few who supported it and stole the finest stuff from the finest places for all to play...... I can still remember that phone number....(c; Well, actually, I had a business going and we needed the outside world. LOL -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com |
Cool boat & travel computer
"Vic Smith" wrote in message
... On Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:50:43 +0000, Larry wrote: I wrote the system using Dbase III, but as CODE, not the automated Dbase bugware it wrote itself. The code was long because they kept adding to my tasking. The system, at 4.77 Mhz, slowed because of Dbase's interpreter, of course. Then, Clipper came out with this snazzy Dbase III COMPILER that assembled the libraries and machine code of your system into a huge .exe file that, by those standards, ran like greased lightning. My Clipper serial number is 1700...(c; Navy refused to buy it and we got caught trying to run around the end, so I paid $495 out of my pocket for it. NOTE: Since the friend I mention below has a Wauquiez 38' Hood Mark II and sometimes cruises, I deem this post not too far off topic. There were a lot of apps designed for small business and home use that couldn't make the transition to big time data flows. Dbase was pretty slick as far as it went. I knew a guy still doing Clipper work for small businesses in the mid-90's. I wrote an employee "database" interactive app for use by one of the consulting firms I worked for in Lotus spreadsheet macros back in the '80's. Screen flashing all over the place since it was interpretive, but it worked and management used it for years. MicroFocus came out with a beautiful compiling COBOL package for the PC in 1985, supporting an ISAM-like file structure and emulating interactive CICS, but it cost about 4 grand for the complete package, so it was easier to spend a few hundred for Dbase, Lotus, etc, and hack away. I recall MicroFocus was an English firm. I was contracting for a very large IBM shop in Chicago when the MicroFocus package came out. A friend - who is a sometime cruiser - consulting at the same shop asked the manager of Tech Support to get a copy from MicroFocus. MicroFocus had the tech support guy swear up and down to keep it closely guarded for the evaluation. Within an hour of it arriving about 7 of us had full copies, and we were busy lugging InstaPrint copies of the manuals from the copy shop across the street. So much for promises. Think it was about $50 apiece for copying the manuals. My friend told me he did an app for an accountant friend of his, and I used mine to write a complex mult-module/file thoroughbred handicapping app, employing many variables that had to be keyed in daily. It was structured, slick, and *almost* turning a profit running the projection module when Arlington Park burned down and I gave it up. I found futures trading a better way to gamble. I really don't think the MicroFocus package found its niche in the market, and believe it was later absorbed by MS. But it was certainly better for developing small business apps than the competition. Just too expensive, and you needed to know COBOL. At that time everybody thought they could buy software off the shelf to run their business. Maybe they really can now! --Vic I have a friend who support COBOL. Makes a nice living doing it too. -- "j" ganz @@ www.sailnow.com |
Cool boat & travel computer
On 2008-09-27 08:54:40 -0400, Vic Smith said:
At that time everybody thought they could buy software off the shelf to run their business. Maybe they really can now! The salespeople would like you to believe that, but no business can use off-the-shelf software without programmer support, even if the programmers are the users of the software. Since the 60s, at least, the second, third, fourth generation programming languages have promised the elimination of programmers. The reality has been opposite as users demand more and more. Everyone wants that little bit more that only a programmer can deliver. -- Jere Lull Xan-à-Deux -- Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD Xan's pages: http://web.mac.com/jerelull/iWeb/Xan/ Our BVI trips & tips: http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/ |
Cool boat & travel computer
On Sat, 27 Sep 2008 21:04:01 GMT, Jere Lull wrote:
Everyone wants that little bit more that only a programmer can deliver. Are you saying I should update my ten year old version of Agent? Casady |
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