Cool boat & travel computer
 

"Larry" wrote in message
...
"Roger Long" wrote in
:

Anybody remember the Sinclair Z80? That was my first computer. A
Basic loop to count 1,2,3.... would go slower than you could say the
number out loud.

--
Roger Long





Z80's good....especially running CP/M OS....(c;

I was an Ohio Scientific microcomputer dealer. OSI had the first hard
drive micro, a 74MB (MB not GB) fixed hard drive stolen out of
minicomputers. It had a 14" platter and was mounted in the Model 3's
standard 18" equipment rack. There were 3 processors you could switch
between very easily. A 6502, Z80 and 6800 (not 68000). OS-65/U was the
companies OS to run on the 6502, a great little processor, and it came
with a very extended BASIC interpreter making software fun to write.

We wrote an accounting system to keep track of a few thousand vending
machines/jukeboxes, etc., for Sumter Music and Amusements in our town.
The system was the 74MB computer under OS-65/U with our BASIC program
running on it. The box used dumb terminals and we had 4 cards in it
with 4 ADDS Regent 24 dumb terminals on various desks in their office.
They were thrilled that such a cheap system could do what it cost, at
that time, hundreds of thousands of dollars to do on an expensive
minicomputer. It ran for years 24/7 off a commercial UPS we installed
for it. Crashing on power glitches wasn't pretty! It usually took out
the database. Backup was in 8" floppies each week and we handled that
for them after hours. Dick or I would go down at night and take the
backup with us in case the building burned we'd still have the whole
database, only updating what had been done between the backup and the
fire, which never happened. The UPS failed once, but we got lucky and
noone was writing to the hard drive when the crash occurred. We went
way, way past the noted MTBF. OSI couldn't believe how long it ran....
(c;

IBM came out with the PC and that was the end of OSI and our little
computer store. My biggest sale was to Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co in
North Carolina. They wanted to break their people into microcomputers
and funded a whole school with 36 OSI desktop computers in the training
room. Those used little NTSC video monitors as output and had two
floppy drives and a keyboard in a pre-Apple 1 small computer that
actually worked. Their IT boss was a fan of OSI and used to send us
some really neat software he wrote on them to play with on ours.

The PC just put everyone out of business....almost Apple, too!

================================================== =========

The Maemo Linux hackers have written or ported many old small computer
emulators to the tablet's Linux OS. There may be one for the Sinclair.
There's one for the old TI handhelds, I know.



Anyone remember the S100 bus? I worked with Concurrent CPM for a while.


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

Cool boat & travel computer
 

"cavelamb himself" wrote in message
m...
Capt. JG wrote:
"Wayne.B" wrote in message
...

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:15:11 -0700, "Capt. JG"
wrote:


Friends don't let friends use Vista.

It actually runs pretty well on a Quad Core desktop with 4 GB of
memory and a fast hard disk. :-)

I'm liking it better than I thought I would but there is still some
software that won't run.




I've had nothing but problems with it when trying to support those who
have it. Yeah, I'm sure it's quite adequate with a Quad and 4gigs. :-)



Which is more computer power that several foriegn countries combined!

WHY?

Why do I need that much power to do what I've been doing all along?


Because you can! LOL

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

Cool boat & travel computer
 

On Fri, 26 Sep 2008 10:24:29 -0700, "Capt. JG"
wrote:



Anyone remember the S100 bus? I worked with Concurrent CPM for a while.

Is that the one that used to run down Jackson Street?
Never met Concurrent.

--Vic

Cool boat & travel computer
 

"Gogarty" wrote in message
...
In article lutions,
lid says...


Friends don't let friends use Vista.

I was co-author of a "VISTA for idiots" type book. As such, was a beta
tester
on Vista. I could not wait to banish it from my system as soon as the
project
was done. Indeed, friends don't let friends use Vista. Except for one
module,
voice recognition. Excellent. Wish I could find such a module that would
run
on XP.



I had a friend who needed VR. I think he used Dragon and hated it.

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

Cool boat & travel computer
 

Gogarty wrote:

In article lutions,
lid says...


Friends don't let friends use Vista.


I was co-author of a "VISTA for idiots" type book. As such, was a beta tester
on Vista. I could not wait to banish it from my system as soon as the project
was done. Indeed, friends don't let friends use Vista. Except for one module,
voice recognition. Excellent. Wish I could find such a module that would run
on XP.


Many years back I worked for the University of Delaware in the Office of
Instructional Technology.

These were the DOS days, of course.

We had video overlays on DOS screens, text to voice and voice
recognition projects up and running - under DOS - on 33 Mhz ATs.

So it's not a technology thing, as much as a business thing.

That's ny opinion - for what it's worth.

--

Richard

(remove the X to email)

Cool boat & travel computer
 

mister b wrote:

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

Qcad is a fairly simple 2D only system.
Not gonna do it for me...

For instance, (this being a nautical forum)
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~cavelamb/draft.htm

We start in flat space, but wind up in 3D - fully rendered.
All in one package.

Now there are lots of CAD systems that can do this - but they don't run
under Linux.


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


what does that mean?


mo betta?

--

Richard

(remove the X to email)

Cool boat & travel computer
 

Wayne.B wrote:

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


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


http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=linux+CAD+software



Oooo...

Suddenly I feel like a kid on Christmas morning!

There are a couple there that I hadn't seen before and need
to investigate.

Thanks Wayne

--

Richard

(remove the X to email)

Cool boat & travel computer
 

"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;

Cool boat & travel computer
 

cavelamb himself wrote in news:FPqdnRZ-
:

Suddenly I feel like a kid on Christmas morning!



That's the trouble with Linux. EVERY morning is Christmas morning!

Cool boat & travel computer
 

cavelamb himself wrote in
m:

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.


We couldn't afford AutoCAD, and really didn't have a use for it, either.

But, the "inner circle" who ran the 14,400 baud computer club BBS I was a
member of, used to have several hidden-from-users little places where
various DOS softwares COULD, if one were to look, download some pretty
expensive stuff, like the absolute bleeding edge versions of AutoCAD that
made it onto those directories as if by magic, the very day the version was
released....(c;

Spending 14 hours downloading something amazing at 3AM on a workday didn't
seem that unusual, either!....(yawn).....

Lucky for them the soundcard and nice graphics card hadn't been invented
yet. We didn't have all the music and movies until years later.....(c;