HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: sasjaa@morticia.unx.sas.com (James Adams)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Virtural Reality Operating Systems?
Date: 16 Oct 92 14:49:17 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.
Originator: sasjaa@morticia.unx.sas.com


Back in the late seventies, I was working in a university operations support
group at NCSU. At that time, I remember a 'press release' from IBM being
circulated that announced a new system called IEHMESSIAH or IEHPROPHET that
talked about a virtual universe ro something like that. Anybody remember
tthis? Or better yet, still have it? I would love a copy!

-- 
+-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
|James Adams                          |  Pat Buchanan is trying to change   |
|  sasjaa@unx.sas.com                 |  the name of our species to         |
|                                     |  Heterosapiens         Phil         |
+-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris)
Subject: Re: What was the intended advantage of using 36bits CPU?
Organization: The MITRE Corporation
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 01:56:50 GMT

guy@Auspex.COM (Guy Harris) writes:

>>Besides, what was the advantage at that time of a word length which
>>was a multiple of 8? There was no agreed upon character coding scheme
>>of that length (IBM's EBCDIC was 12 bits, CDC used 6 bits, ...)

>No, EBCDIC was 8 bits, but I don't think it emerged until the 8-bit-byte
>360 did.  I think IBM's BCD used 6 bits; IBM *punched cards* used 12
>bits, but which IBM machines, if any, stored character strings in
>punched-card code (which doesn't include reading raw punched card code
>into memory and then converting it to BCD for processing)?

The standard punched card (aka "IBM card") had twelve bits per column of 
data, but each computer system defined the set of valid combinations of
holes.  The BCD (Binary Coded Decimal) systems which predated the EBCDIC/
ASCII wars usually defined 64 valid codes out of the 2**12 possibilities.
8-bit codes (like EBCDIC and most ASCII implementations) define 256
combinations.

The only times that all 2**12 combinations were valid was where the computer
system could read and write binary mode directly to and from punched cards:
in this case each card hole had a one-to-one correspondence with a bit in
memory.  Few modern systems define binary mode today...of course, few 
modern systems define punched cards either...

Joe Morris / MITRE
From: ivie@cc.usu.edu (CP/M lives!)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Radio Shack testimonial
Date: 16 Oct 92 15:53:50 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Utah State University

In article <1992Oct16.094858.59767@cc.usu.edu>, ivie@cc.usu.edu (CP/M lives!) writes:
> In article <1992Oct16.133916.27853@news.uiowa.edu>, jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes:
>> From article <Bw7H5x.A7E@solbourne.com>,
>> by kucharsk@solbourne.com (William Kucharski):
>>> 
>>> Save yer butt -- hell, if you live anywhere but the Bay Area and need chips/
>>> LEDs/resistors/capacitors/miscellaneous parts where else CAN you get them
>>> without using a catalog with a $20 or so minimum order?
> 
> Except they never seem to have what I'm looking for (yes, I'm sure that
> 4000 series CMOS flip-flop will work just fine next to my F logic)...

I can't believe I forgot to relate my favorite Radio Shack horror story,
which kind of sums up my experience with them.

Back in 1980, I bought and built a Heathkit microprocessor trainer (it
was the short-lived cheap version on the cardboard box; I've got serial
number 8) and decided that it needed more memory. Off to Radio Shack, but
they don't have what I need. No problem, they say, we'll order it for you.
So I had them special-order me 2 2114 1Kx4 RAMs.

Six months later, _one_ of them shows up. Useful, really useful. The guy
didn't quite grasp why I didn't want to buy it until the other one arrived.
It never did.

Roger Ivie
ivie@cc.usu.edu
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 20:06:01 -0400 
From: "Joseph M. Newcomer" <jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Total erasure of hard drive data??

This is apparently the 'dumb programmer tricks' thread...

Some years ago we hired a CMU undergraduate.  This person was having
trouble getting a C program to compile.  It had a statement of the form:
        printf("The answer is %d items," count);
I was called in after this person had spent a number of hours on it.
I was a little perplexed as the error message was a dead giveaway, but
I said "Oh, you put the comma separating the parameters inside the quote",
thinking this was a typo.  The response was "But the comma /always/ goes
inside the quotation marks".  I was a little taken aback.  So I asked
another naive question, thinking I had misunderstood, something about
syntactic rules.  It turns out this programmer was using Chicago Manual
of Style syntax rules for C.  And didn't understand what was wrong with
it.  Somehow this person had managed to get thru FOUR YEARS of CMU computer
courses without absorbing anything at all!
                                joe

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 19:50:55 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 calles 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...


--
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


Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:15142 comp.unix.admin:5665
From: mike@pacsoft.com (Mike Stefanik)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Date: 14 Oct 92 18:14:53 GMT
Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers
Organization: Pacific Software Group, Riverside, CA

In an article, hm@fwi.uva.nl (Hans Mulder) writes:
>>% ls -l /bin/login
>>-r-xr-xr-x  1 root        40960 Jul  2 15:42 /bin/login
>
>Errhm, Casper, did you notice that the login builtin of the shell no
>longer works?  The error message is "Permission denied".

Then you must think there we're really deprived ... ;-)
$ ls -l /bin/login
---x------   1 root     bin       113106 Sep 06 1991 /bin/login

-- 
Mike Stefanik  mike@pacsoft.com  ...!uunet!pacsoft!mike  (714) 681-2623
Pacific Software Group, Riverside, CA
From: /dev/null@lorc.UUCP (The NULL Device)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: dev-null an imposter--I am REAL.
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 92 10:08:21 EDT
Organization: LORC Enterprises

Well, I never.  To think that someone would stoop so low as to forge a
message from me, /dev/null.  Humph!  You would think he/she/it would have
at least spelled /dev/null correctly.  No sir, they ended up spelling it
"dev-null".  What a crock.  My wife, /dev/console, has conspired with me to 
make the imposter very sorry for doing that.....

I am the only true /dev/null.  Your bits are safe with me, as they are totally
encrypted, 100% compressed, and unrecoverable.  (Unless I belch).

And always remember: you friendly, neighborhood /dev/null is *always* watching
you.... :-).

E-mail replies directed to /dev/null, of course.

Oh... After swallowing several thousand mutlus today (somebody's wonderful
posting filter program redirects to /dev/null), I feel a little green, so
pardon me for this bit-belch....

<<<BELCH>>> --> 110001000101011101001011010100010110100010101000101010101011

/dev/null@lorc.UUCP  (*THE* NULL device)
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 03:19:02 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Excerpts from netnews.alt.folklore.computers: 13-Oct-92 Re: What was the
intended a.. by Charles Lasner@watsun.cc 
> bit used to signify that the rest of the word isn't chars at all, but rather
> is a binary line number.

Sorry, it was NOT a binary line number, it was 5 7-bit characters
representing lines 00000-99999, with the low-order bit set.  The
character
following the line number was by convention ignored, and was a tab.  A
page mark in LINED/SOS was five spaces with the low order bit set and
was followed by a FF character:
    |     |     |     |     |     |     |
    |00100|#This| is l|ine 1|00\!*|     | \='\r' !='\n' *='\0' # = '\t'
    |99999|#This| is l|ine 9|9999\|!****|
    |     |%****|                         or maybe %\!**, I forget
    |00100|#This|...
         ^
         low order bit set in this word.

I wrote a lot of assembler code to allow programs to read these files,
and did a lot of work in other aspects of reading this stuff.  The only
thing I'm no longer sure of was whether or not a page mark was
followed by \f\r\n\0\0 or \f\0\0\0\0.
                                joe
From: ivie@cc.usu.edu (CP/M lives!)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Transmissions (was: Re: The need for assem..
Date: 16 Oct 92 15:40:40 GMT
Organization: Utah State University

In article <doctor.04c3@k9.UUCP>, doctor@k9.UUCP (Paul Broe) writes:
> 
> Clearly he never saw an automatic in some earlier Honda's. It was a two speed
> that you had to shift yourself. (Called the Honda-matic? It was in one of the
> smallest cars they built at the time. Even GM gave up on two speed automatics
> in about 1968.)

One of my favorites is Volkswagen's Automatic Stickshift (TM) that is used in
some Beetles. It was a standard transmission, but you didn't have a clutch
pedal. When you grabbed the gearshift, the clutch would be automatically
released. Letting go of the gearshift put it back in. And it had a torque
converter to smooth things out and let you stop.

Roger Ivie
ivie@cc.usu.edu
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: gbloom@nyx.cs.du.edu (Gregory Bloom)
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
	of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
	control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 19:25:30 GMT

In article <ALANB.92Oct7125320@sdlhpp13.sdl.mdcbbs.com> alanb@sdl.mdcbbs.com (Alan Braggins) writes:
>
>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).

Well... Old ASR33 teletypes used to have this cylinder with little tines
sticking up that one could encode a (16?) character message which would
be sent in response to a WRU code - I once saw a TTY that had been hacked
to print a rude remark when sent this character (ctrl-E?).  Then the 
equivalent of .login was made to always send that character to the
terminal of the victim.   The TTY also makes this sort of 'bronx-cheer'
sound while spinning the WRU drum, adding to the effect.

Ahh the good old days - when men were men, and UARTS were mechanical!

Gregory Bloom

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: mdw@theory.TC.Cornell.EDU (Matt Welsh)
Subject: Re: Computer hate slogans
Organization: Cornell Theory Center
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 22:05:43 GMT

In article <16372@mindlink.bc.ca> Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca (Charlie Gibbs) writes:
>Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca
>"Intel inside" - is that meant as a warning?
>

No; more as a dare. It's a game, see... you've got an Intel chipset in
your box, see if you can get it out!! 

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,comp.unix.admin
From: casper@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik)
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Organization: FWI, University of Amsterdam
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 17:59:36 GMT

hm@fwi.uva.nl (Hans Mulder) writes:

>In <1992Oct12.194110.10926@fwi.uva.nl> casper@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik) writes:
>>alan@spuddy.uucp (Alan Saunders) writes:

>>>About inexperienced sysadmins .. One such had been on a Sun syasadmin 
>>>course, and learned all about security.  One of the topics was on file
>>>and group access.  On his return, he decided to put what he had learned
>>>into practice, and changed the ownership of all files in /bin, /usr/bin
>>>to bin.bin!  I was called in when no one could log in to the system
>>>(of course /bin/login needs to be setuid root!)

>>That's not true. 
>>% ls -l /bin/login
>>-r-xr-xr-x  1 root        40960 Jul  2 15:42 /bin/login

>Errhm, Casper, did you notice that the login builtin of the shell no
>longer works?  The error message is "Permission denied".

>Or is that intentional?

In current environments there is no need for a login command in the
shell. My version of login does a:
`if (geteuid() != 0) { fprintf(stderr,"Permission denied\n"); exit(1); }'
If I hadn't done that, the login builtin would have behaved slightly
odd. The shell must have permission to exec /bin/login, though.
/bin/sh does not exit when an exec fails. /bin/csh does, but
it is broken anyway.

The reason not to have a set-uid login is simple: there are many
ways to subvert passwordless accounts or non-shell accounts
by mucking with the environment and doing a ``login -p''.


Casper
From: Jeff@digtype.airage.com (Jeff Wasilko)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What ever happened to Motorola 88000 chips
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 92 21:10:21 EST
Organization: Univ of Fnord; Roslyn's Cafe Div.
Reply-To: jeff@digtype.airage.com
Distribution: world
X-Mailer: uAccess - Macintosh Release: 1.6v1


In article <1992Oct7.035750.19511@sqwest.wimsey.bc.ca> (alt.folklore.computers), mch@sqwest.wimsey.bc.ca (Mark C. Henderson) writes:
> In article <1992Oct6.224854.14746@cybernet.cse.fau.edu> michaelb@cse.fau.edu (Michael Rogero Brown) writes:
> >In article <1992Oct6.121334.2598@mdcbbs.com> rivero@mdcbbs.com (Michael Rivero) writes:
> >>  I recall hearing about Motorola's follow-on to the 68000 series
> >>of CPU's, the 88000 series. It featured (initially) a CPU chip
> >>paired with twin memory managers running as cache's and IP units
> >>or somesuch. Sounded like a fascinating chip set, but it sorta faded
> >>away. Did the RISC revolution kill them off or what?
> >>
> >Motorola's 88K series is totally separate from the 68K.  In fact the 
> >88K is a RISC processor series.  There are 2 or 3 different versions
> >and they are being used as CPUs in some computers.
> 
> In particular Data General sells computers with 88K chips in them (Aviion).
> I can't think of any others off hand, other than the defunct Tektronix
> XD88 workstations.

My NCD 17crs use the Moto 88k series CPU. In fact, all of the new
NCD color x-terminals use the 88k. Their monochrome stations use the
MIPS R3000.....

Jeff

--
Jeff's Oasis at Home.                   Jeff can also be reached at work at:
                                                        jwasilko@airage.com
"A system admin's life is a sorry one.  The only advantage he has over
Emergency Room doctors is that malpractice suits are rare.  On the other
hand, ER doctors never have to deal with patients installing new versions
of their own innards!"  -Michael O'Brien
From: dab@ism.isc.com (Dave Butterfield)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Counting on hands: (was: Possible UL alert)
Date: 8 Oct 92 23:31:05 GMT
Organization: x
NNTP-Posting-Host: change

In article <1992Oct03.032725.14768@cubic.com> hees@cubic.com (Phil Hees) writes:
>I'm surprised that no human civilizations used a power-of-two base for
>their number system.

"Never trust a man who can count to 1023 on his fingers." -- Reid Kneeland
-- 
	Truth is an evaluation of a statement within a context.
From: jimf@centerline.com (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: The need for an assem
Date: 15 Oct 1992 14:12:37 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.3.202

lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:
>>(BTW, my automatic transmission allows me to manually select gears, and
>>my HLL allows me to embed inline asm code.)

>That's totally bogus.  No automatic selects gears, merely you may be able
>to limit the *top* gear it shifts into.

Clearly you've never driven the new Porshe 911 with the Tiptronic
transmission.

jim frost
jimf@centerline.com
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:15204 rec.games.int-fiction:588
From: aldavi01@starbase.spd.louisville.edu (Arlie Davis)
Subject: Re: Total erasure of hard drive data??
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 20:21:38 GMT
Organization: University of Louisville

In <1992Oct09.124407.4731@NeoSoft.com> peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:

> In article <1992Oct9.021445.23009@samba.oit.unc.edu> jem@calypso.uucp (Jonathan Magid) writes:
> > There is no excuse for the continuous rewriting of "hello world" programs.

> > The GNU version is superior to all previous version. 

> Yes, but the GNU version only runs on UNIX, and requires 512K of stack and
> 2-4 MB of VM (depending on whether shared libraries are available). It won't
> run on 286 or PDP-11 systems, either, though there's a micro-gnu-hello-world
> that's supposed to fit in 64K with overlays.

Yes, but the GNU hello-world can read mail, news, can fake mail, can print
out "Zippy the Pinhead" quotes, can greet the user in any of 1024 modern
languages and 64 classical languages, can write itself in any of 10 popular
modern compiled languages and three dialects of Lisp, can start the Sun's
CD player, and can translate from *any* image format to PPM.

And those are just the documented features.

-- 
lrwx------   1 aldavi01 emacsstu       9 Jun  6 12:43 .signature -> /dev/null
From: chardi@p4.cs.man.ac.uk (Ian Chard)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Date: 16 Oct 92 13:05:21 GMT
Reply-To: chardi@cs.man.ac.uk
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester

I had the dubious honour of administrating a 3B2/300.  No manual pages,
no nothing.  Lovely.  Anyway, back to the story.

The company in question _survives_ because it has a mailing list with x
thousand names and addresses (where x is a constant the value of which I have
forgotten).  The very nasty DBMS being used can remain anonymous as I don't
really want to get sued into the Earth's core.  Suffice it to say that there
was no direct access to the database other than building a form and some code,
and someone had asked me to delete one record (a previous sysadm had removed
the "delete" option from the user form, along with all the source code, just
before he walked out :-) ).

I set about writing a very short program in the DBMS's 4GL which looked
something like:

	use file 'fmlist'
	if c_name = 'Foo Inc' then
		delete;

...or similar.  You get the idea.  Unfortunately the DBMS didn't, and set about
deleting every record.  Thirty seconds later (the box had 16 terminals; our
maintenance people recommended no more than 6) I realised that something was
wrong and interrupted it.  A quick query revealed that the world no longer
contained anyone whose name starts with A or B.  Damn.  Oh God, damn, damn,
erm, oh, damn, {face turns white} etc.  I reach for the backup tapes.  Oh
God, damn, no, please, not that.  The tapes were there.  Unfortunately they
were not numbered, and the somewhat hacked-together backup software we were
using core dumped if it came across a tape that was out-of-sequence.  Now there
were six tapes, giving a total of... oh GOD! combinations.  The users are
beginning to jump up and down, asking why "routine maintenance" (all I could
think of under pressure) was taking so damn long, and why I was looking so
pale.

Finally I hit the right combination at 2:15am the following morning.

I thought I never wanted to see another backup tape ever again.

And then, six weeks later, the disk crashed.

I changed my mind very quickly.

Ian.
-- 

[ Ian Chard, Systems Integration |  "Kryten, unpack Rachel and get out the    ]
[ University of Manchester, UK   |  puncture repair kit."                     ]
[ Email:    chardi@cs.man.ac.uk  |                -- Rimmer (un-H), Red Dwarf ]
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:14992 comp.unix.admin:5491
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
From: Frank T Lofaro <fl0p+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 15:20:39 -0400 
Organization: Sophomore, Math/Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

    Well one time I was installing a minimal base system of Linux on a
friends PC, so that we would have all the necessary utlitities to bring
over the rest of the stuff. His 3 1/2 inch disk was dead, so when had to
get the 5 1/4 inch version of the boot/root disk. Too bad that version,
having to fit in 1.2M instead of 1.44, didn't have tar. We could get a
version of tar, but it was in a tar file (nice chicken and egg
scenario). I said, okay, since we don't have tar, we can't use that to
copy the files from floppy to the hard disk, I'll use cp instead (bad
move). It actually seemed to work for a while, then the machine
rebooted! I did it again, the same thing happened. Then I realize cp
wouldn't work on device files! (this is what happens when you try to
install un*x at 3 AM). It just read the contents of the device and made
a file containing such, which is undesireable in any event. (when it
read /dev/port, the device file that references I/O ports, it must've
did something to reboot the machine, that was the file that was causing
the reboots).

    I finally got it working by having him get the tar archive of the
linux binaries (including the tar we needed), and untarring it on one of
the public decstations here, so we could ftp tar to his PC using his dos
tcp/ip stuff. A funny aside was that it untarred into ~/bin, and
superseded all his normal commands. We were wondering why everything
wouldn't run. Luckily it wasn't too hard to fix after we realized what
happened.


Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.games.int-fiction
From: twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce)
Subject: Re: Screen colors (Was Re: Zork/Dungeon)
Organization: Amherst College, Amherst MA
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 16:06:19 GMT

In article <1992Oct8.003300.38853@datamark.co.nz> david@datamark.co.nz (David Rowland) writes:

>4 Million Now. A few messages back, it was 350 000 colours. Does any
>one know the exact number of colours the human eye can see?

Eighty-seven.

-- 
____ Tim Pierce                / "You are just naive and repressed because
\  / twpierce@unix.amherst.edu /  penis envy is here and it's now and it's
 \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) /  all around you." -- Neal C. Wickham
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers