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.

wrote in :

http://oldcomputers.net/trs100.html

Ha! My portable dumb terminal! I still have one in the piles
somewhere...Nice little dumb terminal machine.

wrote in :

On Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:43:31 +0000, Larry wrote:

wrote in :

http://oldcomputers.net/trs100.html

Ha! My portable dumb terminal! I still have one in the piles
somewhere...Nice little dumb terminal machine.

It's been a long time since I fired mine up. Did it have built in
VT100 emulation? I don't recall that, but I suppose it's possible.



Yep...

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:09:43 -0400, Gogarty
wrote:

Which brings to mind another thought. Has anyone but a used ToughBook on eBay?

Not on EBAY but a CF-48 from one of the online used laptop dealers.
It has been my primary boat computer for the last two years and many
thousands of miles. It has survived salt spray, being knocked
around, and one 3 foot drop. I paid less than $400 for it. It has
some battle scars but still works well.

There are any number of used laptop bargains for rugged machines like
the IBM Thinkpads. Typical price for a Pentium III is around $200.
I bought a so called factory reconditioned Thinkpad for my wife at
less than $300. It arrived in brand new factory packaging without a
mark on it and has worked perfectly on the boat for 3 years, still
looking like new. Typically we run the Thinkpad at the lower helm for
receiving Weather FAX and SSB EMAIL; Toughbook at the upper helm as
backup chartplotter and route planner.

I took an old Thinkpad on the 2002 Newport-Bermuda Race using saran
wrap over the keyboard to make it water resistant. We were on a Frers
41 which is a fairly wet boat. It survived the race even after
getting sprayed a few times.

"Roger Long" wrote in
:

I'm typing this on an ASUS Eee PC I bought yesterday at Best Buy.
It's about the size and weight of a thin hardback book, uses Window XP
(Probably the last XP machine available), and has solid state memory
instead of a hard disk. No drives or card slot but three USB ports
and MMC/SD card slot as well as Ethernet & video connectors. Nice
screen with some cool zooming and panning features that make it's more
than adequate size and clarity even easier to use. Built in webcam.



If you buy a Serial to USB adapter like this:

http://www.electronicproductonline.c...hp?cPath=35_67
&products_id=1803&osCsid=02348a8645bc5c88ee61b13b3 3e7c519

(It comes with a CD manual and drivers for your WinXP that turn one USB
port into a COM serial port.)

Then, you can input NMEA data and the AIS receiver to the tiny PC and run
The Cap'n or other nav software on it, totally automating chart plotting,
trip planning, autopilot steerage, etc., just like the big boys have!

For your application, the XP model is probably best. I have a friend with
the Ubuntu Linux version which is much faster and leaves lots more memory
storage because the operating system is tiny in comparison to WinXP
bloatware.

Skype runs great on it....even with the webcam for Live TV!

Nice little PC, but little support from the computing community.

On Sep 25, 2:04 pm, Larry wrote:
"Roger Long" wrote :

I'm typing this on an ASUS Eee PC I bought yesterday at Best Buy.
It's about the size and weight of a thin hardback book, uses Window XP
(Probably the last XP machine available), and has solid state memory
instead of a hard disk. No drives or card slot but three USB ports
and MMC/SD card slot as well as Ethernet & video connectors. Nice
screen with some cool zooming and panning features that make it's more
than adequate size and clarity even easier to use. Built in webcam.

If you buy a Serial to USB adapter like this:

http://www.electronicproductonline.c...info.php?cPath...
&products_id=1803&osCsid=02348a8645bc5c88ee61b13b3 3e7c519

(It comes with a CD manual and drivers for your WinXP that turn one USB
port into a COM serial port.)

Then, you can input NMEA data and the AIS receiver to the tiny PC and run
The Cap'n or other nav software on it, totally automating chart plotting,
trip planning, autopilot steerage, etc., just like the big boys have!

For your application, the XP model is probably best. I have a friend with
the Ubuntu Linux version which is much faster and leaves lots more memory
storage because the operating system is tiny in comparison to WinXP
bloatware.

Skype runs great on it....even with the webcam for Live TV!

Nice little PC, but little support from the computing community.

I have the smaller Asus ee with 7" screen and the great thing about it
is that it runs Linux and boots up in 20 seconds instead of the 4
minutes of a Vista trash machine. When in airports or anywhere with
wifi, I can check my e-mail, answer them, shut it and be putting it
away before everybody else's Vista or Windows machines have booted.

wrote in news:1067971e-5f9d-4aab-b310-
:

I have the smaller Asus ee with 7" screen and the great thing about it
is that it runs Linux and boots up in 20 seconds instead of the 4
minutes of a Vista trash machine. When in airports or anywhere with
wifi, I can check my e-mail, answer them, shut it and be putting it
away before everybody else's Vista or Windows machines have booted.



My Linux machine is the Nokia N800 Linux Internet Tablet, with a lot of
mods from the Linux hackers at the Maemo linux garage:
http://www.maemo.org/
where our freeware comes from.

The little tablet only runs at 400 Mhz on an ARM processor, but is like
you say very fast booting and running in Linux, not Bloatware. Hell,
the Gnumeric Spreadsheet app and Abiword full-featured word processor
are only a few MB of code.

Bootup is a little slowed because I have two 16GB SDHC Class 6 memory
cards stuffed with movies, music, map tiles for Maemo Mapper and
Wayfinder GPS programs, ebooks, and other stuff like documentaries, TV
comedy shows from BBC TV, etc. Maemo looks through the files during
bootup and it takes a while to wade through my piles....(c;

It's still WAY faster then even an 80GB WinXP Pro Gateway laptop.
During the bootup process, if you autoconnect through BT to the BT DUN
connected sellphone broadband, it isn't through displaying the logos
before Linux has the internet online and running....THEN displays the
home screen...(c;

Google Nokia N800 and Nokia N810. We have many videos. We stole the
Wii Remote video game controller for our games. Some smartasses wanted
to connect USB devices the tablet was never intended to support, so come
Canadians are buildling a little miniUSB to USB femail adapter with
appropriate electronics to hardware force the USB chipset into HOST/OTG
mode. Recently, I've installed some scripts and a wired LAN driver so I
can use the tablet on the directly connected LAN at home at 100Mbps,
instead of the Wifi radio link which is slower to respond. A Linksys
tiny USB 100M USB-to-Ethernet adapter runs off the router's DC on the
Cat5 cable and feeds the tablet's USB with internet,
directly.....totally cool in a portable device. I can connect to even
the Motorola Z6m sellphone's memory card (2GB) and move files on and off
over the bluetooth FTP and OBEX protocols to load and unload pictures,
music and my phone book.

Unhobbled like your Asus by the sellphone company bureaucrats, the
little Linux tablet is very addictive and new stuff comes out every
week!
http://maemo.org/downloads/updated/OS2008/275/
these apps are "released" for users. Hundreds more are in development,
which we're invited to help with, over in the garage area:
http://garage.maemo.org/

Larry wrote:
wrote in news:1067971e-5f9d-4aab-b310-
:


I have the smaller Asus ee with 7" screen and the great thing about it
is that it runs Linux and boots up in 20 seconds instead of the 4
minutes of a Vista trash machine. When in airports or anywhere with
wifi, I can check my e-mail, answer them, shut it and be putting it
away before everybody else's Vista or Windows machines have booted.




My Linux machine is the Nokia N800 Linux Internet Tablet, with a lot of
mods from the Linux hackers at the Maemo linux garage:
http://www.maemo.org/
where our freeware comes from.

The little tablet only runs at 400 Mhz on an ARM processor, but is like
you say very fast booting and running in Linux, not Bloatware. Hell,
the Gnumeric Spreadsheet app and Abiword full-featured word processor
are only a few MB of code.

Bootup is a little slowed because I have two 16GB SDHC Class 6 memory
cards stuffed with movies, music, map tiles for Maemo Mapper and
Wayfinder GPS programs, ebooks, and other stuff like documentaries, TV
comedy shows from BBC TV, etc. Maemo looks through the files during
bootup and it takes a while to wade through my piles....(c;

It's still WAY faster then even an 80GB WinXP Pro Gateway laptop.
During the bootup process, if you autoconnect through BT to the BT DUN
connected sellphone broadband, it isn't through displaying the logos
before Linux has the internet online and running....THEN displays the
home screen...(c;

Google Nokia N800 and Nokia N810. We have many videos. We stole the
Wii Remote video game controller for our games. Some smartasses wanted
to connect USB devices the tablet was never intended to support, so come
Canadians are buildling a little miniUSB to USB femail adapter with
appropriate electronics to hardware force the USB chipset into HOST/OTG
mode. Recently, I've installed some scripts and a wired LAN driver so I
can use the tablet on the directly connected LAN at home at 100Mbps,
instead of the Wifi radio link which is slower to respond. A Linksys
tiny USB 100M USB-to-Ethernet adapter runs off the router's DC on the
Cat5 cable and feeds the tablet's USB with internet,
directly.....totally cool in a portable device. I can connect to even
the Motorola Z6m sellphone's memory card (2GB) and move files on and off
over the bluetooth FTP and OBEX protocols to load and unload pictures,
music and my phone book.

Unhobbled like your Asus by the sellphone company bureaucrats, the
little Linux tablet is very addictive and new stuff comes out every
week!
http://maemo.org/downloads/updated/OS2008/275/
these apps are "released" for users. Hundreds more are in development,
which we're invited to help with, over in the garage area:
http://garage.maemo.org/


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).

Until then, it ain't gonna happen.

I recently replaced my old Dell laptop (running 98 SE) with a Thinkpad
clone running XP.

XP ain't half bad (for Windoze) (once ya get the hang of it).

The USB connectivity is certainty more consistent.
And it boots quickly. Up in 30 seconds.
But I don't load a bunch of web stuff.

I used to be strictly a Cad and spreadsheet guy.

But these days, playing DVDs, photoshop, and cutting new movies rank up
there time wise.

But the think that keeps Ubuntu in the box is the CAD issue.


--

Richard

(remove the X to email)

"cavelamb himself" wrote in message
m...
Larry wrote:
wrote in news:1067971e-5f9d-4aab-b310-
:


I have the smaller Asus ee with 7" screen and the great thing about it
is that it runs Linux and boots up in 20 seconds instead of the 4
minutes of a Vista trash machine. When in airports or anywhere with
wifi, I can check my e-mail, answer them, shut it and be putting it
away before everybody else's Vista or Windows machines have booted.




My Linux machine is the Nokia N800 Linux Internet Tablet, with a lot of
mods from the Linux hackers at the Maemo linux garage:
http://www.maemo.org/
where our freeware comes from.

The little tablet only runs at 400 Mhz on an ARM processor, but is like
you say very fast booting and running in Linux, not Bloatware. Hell, the
Gnumeric Spreadsheet app and Abiword full-featured word processor are
only a few MB of code.

Bootup is a little slowed because I have two 16GB SDHC Class 6 memory
cards stuffed with movies, music, map tiles for Maemo Mapper and
Wayfinder GPS programs, ebooks, and other stuff like documentaries, TV
comedy shows from BBC TV, etc. Maemo looks through the files during
bootup and it takes a while to wade through my piles....(c;

It's still WAY faster then even an 80GB WinXP Pro Gateway laptop. During
the bootup process, if you autoconnect through BT to the BT DUN connected
sellphone broadband, it isn't through displaying the logos before Linux
has the internet online and running....THEN displays the home
screen...(c;

Google Nokia N800 and Nokia N810. We have many videos. We stole the Wii
Remote video game controller for our games. Some smartasses wanted to
connect USB devices the tablet was never intended to support, so come
Canadians are buildling a little miniUSB to USB femail adapter with
appropriate electronics to hardware force the USB chipset into HOST/OTG
mode. Recently, I've installed some scripts and a wired LAN driver so I
can use the tablet on the directly connected LAN at home at 100Mbps,
instead of the Wifi radio link which is slower to respond. A Linksys
tiny USB 100M USB-to-Ethernet adapter runs off the router's DC on the
Cat5 cable and feeds the tablet's USB with internet, directly.....totally
cool in a portable device. I can connect to even the Motorola Z6m
sellphone's memory card (2GB) and move files on and off over the
bluetooth FTP and OBEX protocols to load and unload pictures, music and
my phone book.

Unhobbled like your Asus by the sellphone company bureaucrats, the little
Linux tablet is very addictive and new stuff comes out every week!
http://maemo.org/downloads/updated/OS2008/275/
these apps are "released" for users. Hundreds more are in development,
which we're invited to help with, over in the garage area:
http://garage.maemo.org/


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).

Until then, it ain't gonna happen.

I recently replaced my old Dell laptop (running 98 SE) with a Thinkpad
clone running XP.

XP ain't half bad (for Windoze) (once ya get the hang of it).

The USB connectivity is certainty more consistent.
And it boots quickly. Up in 30 seconds.
But I don't load a bunch of web stuff.

I used to be strictly a Cad and spreadsheet guy.

But these days, playing DVDs, photoshop, and cutting new movies rank up
there time wise.

But the think that keeps Ubuntu in the box is the CAD issue.


Friends don't let friends use Vista.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:15:41 -0500, cavelamb himself wrote:


Find me a decent CAD to replace my beloved Design CAD and I'll convert
to Linux.

google qcad

But the think that keeps Ubuntu in the box is the CAD issue.

what does that mean?