HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: 01ksdavis@bsu-ucs.uucp (Rebel without a clue.)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Bumper Sticker
Date: 10 Oct 92 05:09:33 GMT
Distribution: usa

In article <1992Oct9.200518.6143@isc-br.isc-br.com>, lenh@access.isc-br.com (Len Humbird) writes:
> In article <munk.718547691@prles6b>, munk@prl.philips.nl (Harm Munk) writes:
>> 
>> >> ken mencher
>> >> Apple ][ Forever!!!
>> 
>> >TRS-80 Forever!  (I just could NOT resist....)
>> 
>> Exidy Sorcerer Forever (neither could I....)
>> 
> Altair 8800 Forever! (I helped solder one together!)
-- 
Vic-20s forever!
 ______________________________________________________________________________
|Kyle S. Davis				                                       |
|2000HD	1MbRAM//                                Hot VWs               1973     |
|1084s       //  Only Amiga makes it possible,    \/   Take 2 home-   311      |
|Oki 20   \\//   All others make it plausible.   \/\/  They're small.          |
|
|______________________________________________________________________________|
From: jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu (Joseph M. Newcomer)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Date: 17 Oct 92 01:55:18 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Excerpts from netnews.alt.folklore.computers: 11-Oct-92 Re: WANTED: Unix
administra.. by Eiji Hirai@cc.swarthmore 
> Moral of all these stories:  if I had to hire a Unix sysadmin, the first
> thing I'd look for is experience.  NOTHING can substitute for down-to-earth,
> real-life grungy experience in this field.

First quoted to me by Fred Brooks: "Good judgment is the result of
experience.  Experience is the result of bad judgment".
                            joe
From: deand@bcarh823.BNR.CA (Dean Dillabough)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Flip-Chips (was Re: FAQ)
Date: 7 Oct 92 16:53:34 GMT
Reply-To: deand@BNR.CA (Dean Dillabough)
Organization: Bell-Northern Research Ltd.

In article <1992Oct6.140816.26967@news.uiowa.edu>,
jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H
MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes:
|>
|>I think I just cited the second edition of the same publication!  It's a
|>pity that DEC didn't stick to this format, because it's refreshing to see
|>old DEC documentation that's not yet yellowed and crumbling!  Is there a
|>need for a tutorial on how to rescue old manuals when they reach this state?
|>I've done reprints of one DEC handbook on archival paper, and I'm willing
|>to share the art.
                      
 I would very much like to know how to do this. Please post (or Email me) this
 info.


                                  Dean Dillabough (No shirt, No shoes, No sig)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: gardner_c@apollo.hp.com (Cal Gardner)
Subject: Re: What was the intended advantage of using 36bits CPU?
Summary: I blew it - Stretch was Solid State
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 06:53:15 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA

Seems that I can't keep a 704, 709, 7030, Q/7, or 709tx
straight in my dated head.  Back in BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early
Warning System) days, the ititial hardware proposal was for a
machine known as the 709tx which was to be a solid state 709 and
nothing more.  The 709 like the 704 had a basic instruction time
of 24 microseconds which matched the memory speed.  Perhaps there
was some talk of speeding things up, but I am not aware of any
such talks.  Whem IBM proposed the 7090 instead of the 709tx it was
gladly accepted and the initial 90s started out with the Stretch
2.18 microsecond core memories.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris)
Subject: Re: What is RPG ???
Organization: The MITRE Corporation
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 01:51:28 GMT

Someone once pointed out that in some quarters, RPG stands for "Role
Playing Game..."

The best one-liner summary I have of RPG (the language) is that it is
an emulator of the punched-card EAM (Electronic Accounting Machine) systems
which did the books for companies before the 1401 came on the scene.

OK, that took two lines plus one more to say that it was a one-liner.  Purist.

Joe Morris / MITRE
From: dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Screen colors (Was Re: Zork/Dungeon)
Date: 14 Oct 92 02:44:20 GMT
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam

In article <1992Oct13.204524.21453@news2.cis.umn.edu> thornley@mega.cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley) writes:

A good article, but I have a bit more information:

 >                                                    RBG is a good choice;
 > although it obviously cannot match any possible spectrum, it can simulate
 > the effects very well for the human visual system, since the eye can only
 > sample three frequencies (two in cats, four in bees, it varies among
 > species).
This is one point.  It appears that some human eyes can view four frequencies.
There appear to be two variants of the green detecting cones (with only a
slight variation in the frequeny).  Some people have only one variant, but
some (mostly women) have both.

Another thing is that color-blindness does not only disable one to
distinguish two colors, but might also enable one to distinguish two
other colors!  A well known (amongst some people) example is in a fairly
standard color-blindness test.  The victim is shown figures consisting of
different colored circles.  The victin should tell what digit he is seeing,
if any.  For one of the examples a non-color-blind person will not see
anything, but a red-green color-blind person will see a digit.

This is all from a local paper a few months ago; a human perception
knowledgable person will probably know more about it.
-- 
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj  amsterdam, nederland
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn  amsterdam, nederland; e-mail: dik@cwi.nl
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: brentw@coopsol.com (Brent Williams)
Subject: Re: Wang 2200
Organization: Cooperative Solutions, Inc.
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 92 18:27:10 GMT

Paul.Cashman@mechanic.Fidonet.org (Paul Cashman) writes:

>        I picked up a Wang 2280 drive unit for a 2200 series computer
>        the other day and have not a clue on the format or the
>        interface.

	Don't know what the interface was.  The drive was a Control 
	Data Phoenix, with ~13.4mb removable platters, and either 1, 2, or 
	3 fixed platters, also of ~13.4mb.

>            It came with a 2280 mdpu ( I think thats right ) interface
>        with a stack of cards in it. Some look like standard fair but
>        one looks out of place. It has a female printer port on it and a
>        couple of 8150s I think.

	The one that looks like a printer port is the one that connects
	to the Wang 2200 cpu.  It's not really a printer port.  
	I don't know anything about the hardware interface technology 
	used, but I would guess that it's very primitive from the CDC
	drive into the DPU, which does all the "magic" to turn it into 
	the Wang 2200 drive controller.  The Wang disk controller was 
	very stupid -- it was designed for one Diablo 44B (5 fixed, 
	5 removable) drive, and they added progressively more clever 
	hacks into the DPU to fool the dumb controller into thinnking 
	the Phoenix was just a bunch of 10mb drives.


>                 Any suggestions???????????

>           It came with about 400 megs of platens and I beleive it a cdc
>           Phenix

	Yeah, it is.

>        Where can I get info on this Beast?
	
	Probably can try Wang.  But they have their hands full right now
	trying to stay in business; probably won't have much interest 
	in helping hardware hackers with interfaces to incredibly obsolete
	hardware.

>        Anyone need one?

	This is truly a world class boat anchor.  Actually, if anyone 
	needs *more* than one, I know some people who are still using 
	these beasties but would love to get rid of 'em.


-- 
Brent Williams/Cooperative Solutions Inc., San Jose CA   (408) 377-0300
brentw@coopsol.com
Cooperative Solutions makes Ellipse, a development environment for
industrial strength graphical client/server business applications.
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:15118 comp.unix.admin:5623
From: peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Date: 14 Oct 92 11:39:03 GMT
Article-I.D.: NeoSoft.1992Oct14.113903.24367
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900

In article <1992Oct13.175936.25382@fwi.uva.nl> casper@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik) writes:
> In current environments there is no need for a login command in the
> shell.

There never was. I don't understand why the shell treated login and newgrp
specially in V7. It was terribly inconvenient. In older environments I use
a version of newgrp that works like "su", and if you want to get the effect
of the shell "login" command there's always "exec login".

> My version of login does a:
> `if (geteuid() != 0) { fprintf(stderr,"Permission denied\n"); exit(1); }'

Just dike the "login" builtin right out. It's a waste of bytes.
-- 
Peter da Silva.  <peter@sugar.neosoft.com>.
 `-_-'   "Megulegetted ma mar a farkasodat ?"
  'U`  
Dette kan umulig vaere mitt rom, eftersom jeg ikke puster ammoniakk.
From: dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What was the intended advantage of using 36bits CPU?
Date: 13 Oct 92 23:01:09 GMT
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam

In article <1992Oct13.134929.13824@tpl68k0.tplrd.tpl.oz.au> keithh@tplrd.tpl.oz.au (Keith Harwood) writes:
 > The 7030 was also known as the Stretch. It used transistors and had 64bit words,
 > with addressability down to the 8bit byte (rare, in those days addresses usually
 > went to the word, regardless of how large the word was). The character code was
 > based on BCD, ...

To say that the code was based on BCD is stretching it.  For instance, 52
contiguous places in the code table were reserved for lower and upper case
letters.  No form of BCD had contiguous coding for the letters.  (The 7030
order of the letters was: a A b B ...)
-- 
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj  amsterdam, nederland
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn  amsterdam, nederland; e-mail: dik@cwi.nl
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.admin
From: payner@netcom.com (Rich Payne)
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 14:35:45 GMT

In article <1992Oct12.080944.23519@jet.uk> djs@jet.uk (David J Stevenson) writes:
>In <W1NRB20H@cc.swarthmore.edu> hirai@cc.swarthmore.edu (Eiji Hirai) writes:
>>...[some deleted]
>>(4) I heard this from a fellow sysadmin friend.  My friend was forced to
>>work with some sysadmins who didn't have their act together.  One day, one
>>of them was "cleaning" the filesytem and saw a file called "vmunix" in /.
>>"Hmm, this is taking up a lot of space - let's delete it".  "rm /vmunix".
>
>>My friend had to reinstall the entire OS on that machine after his coworker
>>did this "cleanup".  Ahh, the hazards of working with sysadmins who really
>>shouldn't be sysadmins in the first place.
>When this happened to a colleague (when I worked somewhere else) he restored
>vmunix by copying from another machine.  Unfortunately, a 68000 kernel does
>not run very well on a Sparc...
 
If it was a Sparc and still running, could you not have re-compiled the
kernal and copied ti back to root?
 
>-- 
>+---------------------------------------------------+
>| David Stevenson  djs@jet.uk   Tel: +44 235 465028 |
>+---------------------------------------------------+
>- Disclaimer: Please note that the above is a personal view and should not 
>  be construed as an official comment from the JET project.

Rich

payner@netcom.com


Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: jmpierce@whale.st.usm.edu (Jimmy Malcolm Pierce)
Subject: Re: TI-99/4A Info wanted!
Organization: University of Southern Mississippi
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 12:02:00 GMT

In article <1686BA47A.IQTI400@INDYCMS.IUPUI.EDU> IQTI400@INDYCMS.IUPUI.EDU (macphil) writes:
>In article <1992Sep23.084638.22404@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>
>"Axel Gutmann" <HK11@DKAUNI2.BITNET> writes:
> 
>>Last week I bought a TI-99/4A homecomputer for 20.- marks (about $ 14.-)
>>still in it's original package complete with cables, docs, software and
>(...)
>>but also any other info, tip, story....
>>about the TI-99 then please let me hear from You soon!
> 
>Looks like they've gone up in price!  (seriously):
> 
>A few years ago they were available @ KMart for $49 and had a $50
>rebate, meaning you were being paid a $1 to get one (minus postage,
>of course).

     Well, the story I heard about the TI 99/4 was that certain keyboard
sequences would short line-voltage to the keyboard, possibly killing you...
Thats why the quick changeover from TI 99/4 to TI 99/4A. Is this true ? I have
no idea... Jim.

-- 
 Jim Pierce Bach. of Sci. in Applied Computer Science
 jmpierce@whale.st.usm.edu  Disclaimer: Standard.
  "Is it the weekend yet ?" me :-)
From: gjn@cs.uq.oz.au (Geoff (cbird) Newton)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Date: 15 Oct 92 00:28:13 GMT
Reply-To: gjn@cs.uq.oz.au

Well, if everyone else can admit their failures, so can I.
My only severe disruption of a box occured on our administration machine,
where they do lots of, well, administration type stuff.

Its not so much a machine as a toy. It is running xenix.

I had just been adding terminals to be mips box, and was doing the same on
xenix.

Of course to re-read the inittab we just send init a SIGHUP. So I happily did:

kill -1 1

Not a good idea on Xenix. Everything froze. What's happened. Realization. OOPS,
think quick, call out - "Anybody got problems with dibbler (the machine)".
[ Various respones saying it was very slow/dead. ]
"Fear not", say I, "I will fix it - but it looks like it may need a reboot".

Of course I never did tell them it was *my* fault. We can't have them thinking
I can make a mistake. Besides, they would have lynched me.

Of course I deny the entire episode :-)


--
gjn    | Email: gjn@cs.uq.oz.au  (Geoff Newton)                  |  _-_|\
(-|    | ITI Systems Obliterator^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HAdministrator| /     *
       |                                                         | \_.-._/
       | "It was working this morning - honest"                  |      v
From: jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu (Joseph M. Newcomer)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What was the intended advantage of using 36bits CPU?
Date: 17 Oct 92 03:24:43 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Excerpts from netnews.alt.folklore.computers: 14-Oct-92 Re: What was the
intended a.. by Sergej Roytman@engin.umi 
> |there that would be nice to have.  Right now 16 bit character support
> |is mandatory in Japan.
>  
> Man!  What do the keyboards look like over there?

I saw a Japanese word processor when I was visiting there some years ago.
A couple hundred keys arranged in a rectangular array, and it contained
a full-screen "fatbits" editor so you could create any character you
wanted.  They were quite proud of it since it represented one of the most
modern devices that was available.  (Actually, I just did some event
mapping and realize that it was almost exactly five years ago).
                                joe
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.admin
From: obi@gumby.ocs.com (Obi Thomas)
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Reply-To: obi@gumby.ocs.com
Organization: Online Computer Systems, Inc.
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 02:24:28 GMT

This isn't nearly as bad as some of the stories in this thread, but...

I once mistakenly partitioned my Sun's boot disk so that the swap
partition overlapped the usr partition. The machine ran fine for a long
time (many months), presumably because the swap space was always nearly
empty. Then, one day there was a memory parity error and the system crash
dumped at the *end* of the swap partition. What should have been a simple
reboot after the crash dump turned into a long and painful re-install of
the entire system (Suns cannot boot without a /usr partition).

Now when I partition a disk I sit there with a calculator and make sure
all the numbers add up correctly (offsets, number of cylinders, number of
blocks, and so on).
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: pt@geovision.gvc.com (Paul Tomblin)
Subject: Re: Fun Display Hacks for Sun
Reply-To: pt@geovision.gvc.com
Organization: Not officially GeoVision Systems Inc., Ottawa, Ontario
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 02:25:28 GMT

kaszeta@frith.egr.msu.edu (Richard Kaszeta) writes:

>I have a program called zot (without source code) which is a sparc binary
>which has many hack effects, like static, melting, vertical hold, and others.

>Will UUENCODE and mail if anyone wants it.

No offence Richard, but you really expect people will just grab a binary
from a complete stranger and run it on their Sparc?  I don't know about the
net at large, but I would think about things like the internet worm and
passwd crackers.  (I hope to hell nobody at this site does that - we had
enough problems with viruses on the docos Macs)

-- 
Paul Tomblin, pt@geovision.gvc.com or {uunet,revcan}!geovision!pt
(This is not an official opinion of GeoVision Systems Inc.)
"No matter what you've lost - be it a home, a love, a friend - like the 'Mary
Ellen Carter' rise again." - Stan Rogers - "Mary Ellen Carter"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: duane@tamsun.tamu.edu (Duane K Fields)
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
Organization: Texas A&M University, College Station
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 05:11:06 GMT

We used to do all sorts of fun things in my highschool pascal class.  One
of our favorites was to take a blank disk and crunch it up real nice.  We
would then take the label off someone's work disk, and place it on their
work disk!

Another scheme involved replacing "turbo pascal" executable with a program
that would rename every file on their disk to a random 8 character name!

Duane



-- 
Duane Fields                  Friends don't      Work#   (409) 845-6904
Box 1315                     let friends use     Home#   (409) 847-6760
College Station, Tx 77841        MS-DOS.         Email: duanef@tamu.edu
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
From: alanb@sdl.mdcbbs.com (Alan Braggins)
Date: 07 Oct 92 11:53:20 GMT
Organization: Shape Data (Division of EDS), Cambridge UK
In-reply-to: Josef Moellers's message of Wed, 7 Oct 1992 06:55:40 GMT

>>>>> On Wed, 7 Oct 1992 06:55:40 GMT, Josef Moellers <mollers.pad@sni.de> said:
> In <1992Oct6.135525.1@cc.curtin.edu.au> sbakerjr@cc.curtin.edu.au writes:
>>When someone leaves their VAX terminal without logging off (fatal mistake)
>>I find it hilarious to add the line to the front of thier login.com file...
>>$ LOGOFF

> Under UNIX try putting the following at the start of someone's .profile:
> echo "No home"
> sleep 5
> exit

Wrong group I know, but what is the Unix equivalent of VMS 
LOGIN/COMMAND=NOTLOGIN.COM ?

ObFolklore: You know you've been hacking too long when it takes a while to 
remember growing out of these kind of tricks... (and of course there isn't
a lot of scope for screen hacks on a teletype).
--
     Alan Braggins, alanb@sdl.mdcbbs.com, abraggins@cix.compulink.co.uk
Shape Data - A division of EDS-Scicon Limited.   Cambridge, UK +44-223-316673
   "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
 "My employer does not necessarily share my views - but I'm working on it."
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: souva@aibn58.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Ignatios Souvatzis)
Subject: Re: Zilog System 8000
Reply-To: isouvatzis@babsy.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
Organization: Radioastronomisches Institut der Universitaet Bonn, Bonn, FRG
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 19:53:00 GMT

hm...

I have no hardware manual, don't know what kind of disk you would have
to plug in, and where to get a system for it. Ask some Zilog rep.

The OS was called Zeus, which stands for Zilogs extended unix system?

The software corp. I once worked for had one, with a 100+/-5% full 10M
hard disk. The OS was some kind of early BSD. The machine  used to get
sloooooooow when starting to swap...  and we all  were supposed to  do
our 'tar u ~' before leaving,  so that not  more  than one day's labor
would be lost... it was very bad to leave early in the afternoon, when
many ppl were around....

We used to reboot often, to cut down log file sizes...

Our machine had one of the  ventilators built in  the wrong way around
(both were pushing the air in, effectively  there was NO air flow). In
the summer, we  opened the case, and  placed  the hard disk outside of
it, and got much less trouble this way.

--
Paper mail: Ignatios Souvatzis, Radioastronomisches Institut der 
            Universitaet Bonn, Auf dem Huegel 71, D-5300 Bonn 1, FRG
Internet:   souva@babsy.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de ignatios@cs.uni-bonn.de


Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: mdw@theory.TC.Cornell.EDU (Matt Welsh)
Subject: Re: What was the intended advantage of using 36bits CPU?
Organization: Cornell Theory Center
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 22:11:32 GMT

In article <1992Oct15.194352.4227@news.columbia.edu> lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:
>Any other silly remarks?  (On the topic?)
>
>cjl
>
>

Damn! Got me... I had *plenty* of silly remarks to make, but not actually
on the topic...

mdw

-- 
Matt Welsh    mdw@tc.cornell.edu        +1 607 253 2737
Systems Programmer, Cornell Theory Center
  "Yow! Up ahead! It's a DONUT HUT!!"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: dmatiske@larson.helios.nd.edu (David Matiskella)
Subject: Re: Screen colors (Was Re: Zork/Dungeon)
Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers,rec.games.int-fiction
Organization: University of Notre Dame
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 21:15:46 GMT

In article <o4yDsB1w164w@lorc.UUCP>, lowen@lorc.UUCP (Lamar Owen) wrote:
> 
> xeno@iastate.edu (Gary L Snethen) writes:
> > In <Xs76RB1w164w@lorc.UUCP> lowen@lorc.UUCP (Lamar Owen) writes:
> > >xeno@iastate.edu (Gary L Snethen) writes:
> > >> That would be 4096 x 4096 resolution...  Pretty snazzy monitor!
> > >This is very true.  But, even with a 4096x4096 screen, you still couldn't se
> > >16 million colors.  Why?  The eye can only distinguish about 4 milllion colo
> > >So, those other 12 million are just useless baggage.  Although using 24 bits
> > >for color info is easy on the hardware and the programmer, these days, due t
> > >IBM's success at pushing 8-bit bytes.
> > 
> > Interesting observation...
> > 
> > However, with 24 bits, you can only represent 256 different values of
> > true grey...  and I assure you that my eye can distinguish more than 256
> > shades of grey, so therefore either more bits are needed or the bits availabl
> > must be used more effectively to cover the entire spectrum that the human
> > eye can distinguish.
> 
	I know that JPL did a study showing that on paper it took over 16 million
colors until the eye couldn't tell a shade one unit higher in one component
apart. The easy way to prove this is look a a 24bit picture under vga,
hicolor, and in 24 bit mode. If the pictures don't look identical then the
added color inforamtion is valuable.
	When I took psychology we spent a descent amount of time of the eye and
how it works. The truth is that no one is really sure with some favoring
the rgb method and others faving a method which two types of cone which
dectect the intensity of one of two colors.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.games.int-fiction