HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: tjhendry@queen.mcs.drexel.edu
Subject: Re: NeXTstep not running on Cyrix 486DLC (was Re: Apple IIGS...)
Reply-To: tjhendry@queen.mcs.drexel.edu
Distribution: USA
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 19:24:17 GMT

In article <1993Jan6.091513.7530@news.columbia.edu>  
lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:

> BTW, there is also a 16-bit version of the Cyrix chip, so that boards
> designed for 386SX can also run 486-only software.  And of course it
> allows 387SX-type FPU's to be used.  Since this is a 16-bit system, maximum
> RAM is 16 MBytes, and performance will be much lower, but it should still
> be compatible in every meaningful way.
> 
> cjl

What about a 32-bit address space? I'd like to see NeXTSTEP 486 run in 16bits.
And I'd also like to see Congress work for free. :)
--
Jonathan Hendry  Anderson Financial Systems
jon@afs.com  (Nextmail Welcome!) or hendryjw@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu

> allows 387SX-type FPU's to be used.  Since this is a 16-bit system, maximum
> RAM is 16 MBytes, and performance will be much lower, but it should still
> be compatible in every meaningful way.
> 
> cjl

What about a 32-bit address space? I'd like to see NeXTSTEP 486 run in 16bits.
And I'd also like to see Congress work for free. :)
--
Jonathan Hendry  Anderson Financial Systems
jon@afs.com  (N foot the bill (or a substantial part of it) for the port.

I think the problem is in some instruction that's missing. I don't know the specifics. Someone else posted something about "bswap" being in the 486 but not the 386. If I'm not mistaken, the Cyrix chip is a  386 that's been reengineered to provide near-486 performance. If that's the case, then it may not support bswap.

Again, I don't have docs in front of me.

On the other hand
From: higgins@fnalng.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: LoC paradox? (was Re: Library of Congress as a size metric)
Date: 8 Jan 93 15:59:55 -0600
Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: fnalng.fnal.gov

In article <C07q2w.D59@chinet.chi.il.us>, koziarz@chinet.chi.il.us (Louis Koziarz) writes:
> At times, I've seen various groups use the amount of data in the Library
> of Congress as a measure of how much data can be stored in a medium
> (i.e. x CD-ROMS can store the Library of Congress).  Encyclopedia Britannica
> also comes to mind as a metric.  
> 
> Question: What is the accepted figure for the size of the L of C?  Are we
> talking terabytes?  Magnitudes greater?  Who actually computed it and why?
> Same for the EB...  any ideas?  I'm just being curious here...

What happens when the Library of Congress starts to acquire CD-ROMs?

-- 
     O~~*           /_) ' / /   /_/ '  ,   ,  ' ,_  _           \|/
   - ~ -~~~~~~~~~~~/_) / / /   / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap!
 /       \                          (_) (_)                    / | \
 |       |     Bill Higgins   Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
 \       /     Bitnet:     HIGGINS@FNAL.BITNET
   -   -       Internet:  HIGGINS@FNAL.FNAL.GOV
     ~         SPAN/Hepnet:      43011::HIGGINS 
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: dnichols@d-and-d.com (DoN. Nichols)
Subject: Re: help with old adm3a
Organization: D and D Data, Vienna VA
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 04:39:28 GMT

In article <kfIE=RS00WB5QB0RI_@andrew.cmu.edu> Paul Christopher Workman <pw0l+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
>
>
>Hi.
>
>I recently got an old lear-sigler adm3a terminal, unfortunatly
>without documentation.
>
>Can someone tell me if there's a good way to turn that obnoxious
>right-margin beeping off (preferably without opening it up and
>cuttng the beeper wires), before I go insane?

	Well, you don't have to cut the bell wires.  The speaker that
produces the tones plugs in.  I used to have one of these beasts.  I don't
think that one of the switches in the back area of the board controlled
that, but it has been a *long* time.  (There are two switchblocks near the
center of the back of the board, which can be accessed by:

1)	Pulling the screws out of the front corners (or nearby).

2)	Tilting the upper body of the case backwards on the hinge pins at
	the back.

3)	The speaker leads (from below the board) can be traced to a molex
	connector that *PLUGS* in above one edge of the board.  If I
	remember correctly, there was even an entry in the manual about
	cutting the wire, and putting a resistor in series to soften the
	bell.  (That was one of the ECNs).

4)	The switches near the center of the back control such things as what
	kind of modem handshaking it was to do, the choice of turnaround
	character, etc.  I think that I lived with the beep for all the time
	I used the terminal.  (It was so much quieter than the Teletypes
	that were te alternative.)

5)	There is a small toggle switch, on the right hand edge of the board,
	about one-third of the way back, which when switched to the other
	position will cause a clear-screen to clear it to zeros (as a test
	pattern) rather than to blanks.

6)	The character test mode, which continually re-drew the character set
	across the bottom edge of the screen had my cat of the time
	attempting to catch the cursor. :-)

Actually, not all of the enumerated points above are necessary to the
access, but I just couldn't stop numbering while I was thinking of things
about the terminal. :-)

>Are there any confirmed reports of someone going insane from
>that damned bell, and killing their co-workers?

	No, thanks to the counterexample of the teletypes, which rang a
*mechanical* bell in the same position, but made so much noise that you
didn't notice it.

	Good Luck
		DoN.
-- 
 Email:   <dnichols@d-and-d.com>  |  ...!uunet!ceilidh!dnichols 
		 <dnichols@ceilidh.beartrack.com>
 Donald Nichols (DoN.)  |   Voice (Days): (703) 704-2280 (Eves): (703) 938-4564
	--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:18576 sci.math:17663 comp.compression:4316
From: daz@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (David A. Z.)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,sci.math,comp.compression
Subject: Re: Compressing decimal expansion of pi (was Re: PI)
Date: 4 Jan 93 23:09:07 GMT
Organization: /etc/organization
NNTP-Posting-Host: hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu

In article <willmore.726163337@kiev.gis.iastate.edu> willmore@iastate.edu 
(David Willmore) writes:
)In the danger of interjecting something from reality into this strain,
)here are the results of the comp2 compressor from the kit that Nico
)distributes:
)
)1381376 pi
) 606070 pi.0
) 603291 pi.1
) 601576 pi.2
) 606552 pi.3
) 645668 pi.4
) 727973 pi.5
) 767188 pi.6
)
)  [ etc... ]

	At the danger of interjecting something from reality into this
strain, I suspect that your "PI" file was an 8-bit ASCII file which was
loading with only about 4.25 bits (10 characters) per 8-bit word.  (256
characters possible.)

	That alone, should have compressed your 1381376 down to 733856.
Obviously, any CR/LF's or the like would increase that.  Compression 
beyond the 733856 is kind of interesting though.  

	Has anyone done a check of digit frequency (how many 1's, how many
2's, etc...) there is in a long file of PI?  I'd like to hear the results.
(Don't have a long copy handy)
 
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher)
Subject: Re: CLI/GUI wars (was Re: Apple IIGS being discontinued...)
Organization: Integrated Systems Laboratory, ETH, Zurich
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 13:15:23 GMT

In article <19270@mindlink.bc.ca>, Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca (Charlie Gibbs) writes:

> In article <NEERI.93Jan5174107@iis.ethz.ch> neeri@iis.ethz.ch
> (Matthias Neeracher) writes:
[...]
>>The Apple II [gs] team realized that the lIsa and Macintosh teams had simply
>>traded ease of learning for ease of use in shrinking the scroll boxes, so
>>they went back to proportional scroll boxes.

>      This trade-off is consistent with the apparent target audience
> for the Mac: people who know little about computers and who are
> unlikely to become that familiar with them (i.e. "the rest of us").
> Ease of learning is important if you're dealing with people who will
> never use a machine enough to really learn it, and who must therefore
> relearn a lot of it every time.  I much prefer the worms, though.
> They're more intuitive; a large worm can't move very far in the
> scroll box, just you can't slide a document very far when nearly
> all of it is on the screen.  In fact, I find it disconcerting when
> a large movement of a scroll box moves the text on the screen very
> little.

I am somewhat familiar with computers :-), but I have no complaints
about Apple's scroll bars, as I rarely ever use them anyway (Mostly, I
just use keyboard equivalents). *If* I use them, I am more likely to use the
arrows and the paging (gray) areas than the scroll box, and in these two cases,
the above observation does not apply.

>      I guess "that's not a bug, it's a feature" (Microsoft's
> watchword, which explains the Windoze scroll bars, I guess :-).
> Too bad it wasn't configurable for us experienced users who value
> ease of use over ease of learning.

I think you should be able to configure it for many programs by writing an
external init.

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher                                   neeri@iis.ethz.ch
   "There once was an Age of Reason, but we've progressed beyond it."
                                   -- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_


Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: duening@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de (Lars Duening)
Subject: Re: VCS processor (was Re: Game machine processors)
Reply-To: duening@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de (Lars Duening)
Organization: TU Braunschweig, Informatik (Bueltenweg), Germany
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 17:35:36 GMT

pt@geovision.gvc.com (Paul Tomblin) wrote in <C0DvHH.KG6@geovision.gvc.com>:

>john@gu.uwa.edu.au (John West) writes:
>
>>Any other evil hardware hacks in production machines? Things that really
>>should never have been done?
>
>I heard a rumour that the evil screen memory addressing scheme on Apple ][
>in Hires mode was due to Steve Wozniak trying to save a couple of chips per
>machine - save a couple of cents per machine, and cause programmers
>sleepless nights trying to write routines to put dots where you want
>them.

True, and it also kept the RAM fresh :-)

>I also heard that the disk drives on the Apple ][ used way too
>much software in order to save hardware

Yup, the 6502 did all, from data en/decoding over driving the head
stepper phases up to transfering the data between mem and disk - every
32 microseconds the next byte (fortunately it was not possible to
replace even the shiftregister by software).

> - but then that might just have been a Commodore-bigot's point of
> view.

Could be that the reason why C= now sells a computer using a similar disk
interface?  ('FDCs?  We need no stenking FDCs!')

>(My disk drive was smarter than my computer - it had 3 6502s in it!)

But that didn't made it faster, did it?

>(Sort of reminiscent of the time when the most powerful computer
>Apple made was the Laserwriter) 

--
Lars Duening
duening@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: ben@csi.compuserve.com (Benny Jones)
Subject: TCP/IP for Tops-10
Organization: CompuServe Incorporated
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 20:06:04 GMT

Back in the medieval days of computing, did TCP/IP ever run on a
TOPS-10 system?  I'd be very interested in knowing who did it or
any names of individuals that I might contact with questions about
the implementation.  Thanks loads.


-- 
Benny Jones		614-457-8600
CompuServe 		70003,1153
Internet		ben@csi.compuserve.com
			hjones@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
From: jimf@centerline.com (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Yes Virginina, pi is transcendental (was Re: PI)
Date: 5 Jan 1993 14:32:28 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.3.202

magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson) writes:
>The transcendentality (transcendence?) of pi was proved by Lindemann
>in the latter half of the 19th century.
[...]
>Check out almost any book on the history of mathematics, and you'll
>find the names and dates. I can recommend Dirk J. Struik's "A Concise
>History of Mathematics" (still in print from Dover publications);
>that book has also been translated into Swedish (and should be
>available from a public library near you, Samuel).

Pick up _A History Of Pi_ by (if I remember right) Petr Beckman.  It's
more than just a history of pi, it goes into a lot of mathematical
history in general and is quite humorous to boot.  (He consistently
abuses the Romans and provides lots of basis for that abuse, for
instance.)

jim frost
jimf@centerline.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: CLI/GUI wars (was Re: Apple IIGS being discontinued...)
From: Geoff@equinox.gen.nz (Geoff Mccaughan)
Date: 4 Jan 93 19:49:11 +1200
Organization: Equinox Networks
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]

Jeremy Reimer (Jeremy_Reimer@mindlink.bc.ca) wrote:

>One other point about GUI's--- one of the neatest features I have found in
>OS/2 is present in the Amiga GUI, most Unix GUIs, NeXT and (I believe) even
>the Atari ST but surprisingly not the Mac or Windoze.  This is the small
but
>incredibly useful feature of a SLIDING SCROLL BAR.  This allows you to see
at
>a glance how long a document is and how much of that document is visible in
>the window.  Why Mac and Windoze don't support it is one of the great
>mysteries of nature.

Apple will bring this feature out in their next Mac system release, and then
spend the next 5 years trying to sue anyone else who uses it.

--
Geoff, Sysop Equinox (equinox.gen.nz) +64 (3) 3854406 [4 Lines]
                               Voice: +64 (3) 3852101
        "Hi. You have just entered the fourth dimension. Small isn't it?"
From: terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Mass Bus
Date: 7 Jan 93 10:01:49 GMT
Organization: St. Peter's College, US

In article <1993Jan7.072148.1480@netcom.com>, sspatter@netcom.com (Samuel Scott Patterson) writes:
>      anybody out there got any idea what Mass Bus is?  I have a card in
> my Unibus PDP-11/34a that has a jack on it and the card is labeled, 
> "Mass Bus"  I suspect it's a converter to some other bus format so the 
> PDP can use the Mass Bus backplane but what the heck does Mass Bus go to?

  First, a gentle poke: When you collect these older systems, you should try
to get some manuals or the generic sales literature of the time for them as
well. This is the third question from you I've answered tonight, and they're
all solveable with the documentation. You also might ask on the net if any-
one has old PDP-11 manuals they're throwing out and see if you can get some
that way.

  Now that that's out of the way:

  Massbus is a high-speed bus used to interface RM and RP class disks to a
PDP-11 (or a DECsystem, or a VAX). It also attaches some tape drives to
the same systems.

  The "real" PDP-11 Massbus adapter is on the PDP-11/70, which has space for
four Massbus controllers which directly access the 32-bit memory bus of the
11/70. The model number for an 11/70 Massbus adapter is RH70.

  On other Unibus PDP-11's, Massbus adapters were available as a normal I/O
option (with no special path to memory). They occupied a 9-slot system unit
and had the model number RH11.

  The loose card you have is a very small part of a Massbus adapter. I sus-
pect it's one of 3 Massbus transceivers, dual cards used to drive/receive
signals from the cable. I believe the module was an M5901 or M5904. Some-
thing like that, anyway.

	Terry Kennedy		Operations Manager, Academic Computing
	terry@spcvxa.bitnet	St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA
	terry@spcvxa.spc.edu	+1 201 915 9381
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: r.evans@ic.ac.uk (Rob Evans)
Subject: Re: What happened to "smart buildings"? and three tangents
In-reply-to: lstowell@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com's message of 12 Jan 93 01:21:09 GMT
Organization: Imperial College Centre for Computing Services
Date: 12 Jan 93 14:19:06

In article <184887@pyramid.pyramid.com> lstowell@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Lon Stowell) writes:
>Even further tangental....
>
>Would anyone from the UK care to expound on "TV licensing"?
>
>I saw some pubic service announcements and newspaper warnings
>about this on a trip recently.  I'm sure the truth is much more
>bizarre than anything I could make up.  

Well, I don't know about bizarre, but here goes.

In the UK, if you own a TV set capable of receiving a picture (ie one
that works), then you must have a TV License. This goes to the funding
of BBC Radio and Television, but not the commercial stations. To ensure
that people 'tow the line', there are 'Television Detector Vans'.

A 'Television Detector Van' can pick up the Electro-Magnetic Radiation
generated by a powered-on TV set. If this is mixed with some appropriate
sync signals, the people in the van can even see which channel the viewer
is watching. They can then pound on the person's door and check that they
have a TV licence. I believe that they even have a right of entry so that
if you claim that you don't have a set they double-check.

If you are caught without a TV licence, then the fine is up to #400 compared
with the cost of about #70 (I forget the exact price).

The technology used in TV Detector Vans can also be used to snoop on
computer screens in much the same way. So, beware, if you have sensitive
information on your screen, look out of the window for vans with a variety
of aerials on the roof!

	Robert
--
Robert Evans                 r.evans@ic.ac.uk               Analyst/Programmer
  Centre for Computing Services, Imperial College of Science, Technology and
                Medicine, Exhibition Road, London. SW7 2BX. UK.
                       Telephone: +44 71 589 5111 x4917
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: Tony.Duell@launchpad.unc.edu (Tony Duell)
Subject: Kluges!! (was Re: VCS processor (was Re: Game machine processors))
Organization: University of North Carolina Extended Bulletin Board Service
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 19:33:26 GMT


The jupiter Ace was a british home computer, about the timeof the
ZX81/Spectrum. it's great claim to fame was that it used Forth, not Basic
as its ROMed language. It wasa messy hardware design though, with 3
separate 1K areas of RAM, one for the program, one for the video, one for
the character set (which was soft-loaded). There wre no address
multiplexors, just 1k resistors to link the address and data lines of the
ram to the video circuitry or z80 CPU.
 The apple ][ was a kluge-a-minute. The roms on peripheral cards had the
5v lines switched off to save power when the roms were deselected,
although the data and address lines were still driven (never drive a
signal past the supply and all that!). The hires scheme was as bad , and
the disk drive did not even have a track 0 sensor -  it just stepped the
head out the full 40 steps at switch on, and banged it against the end stop.
 I'm sorry to be so against the Apple, but I have one, a pet, a TRS-80
model 1, and an Exidy Sorceror, and the apple is by far the worst designed
of any of them. My apple 2 motherboard, apple language card, and one disk
II card (no drives) draw 2.6A from the +5v line , which is rated at 2.5A
  More kluges: The intel 8088 :-). MSDOS :-)

-tony 'PDP11 Hacker' Duell
ard@siva.bris.ac.uk

--
   The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
     North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
        Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
           internet:  laUNChpad.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80
From: andor@inode.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: APPLE IIGS BEING DISC
Date: 12 Jan 93 08:32:48 EST
Reply-To: andor@inode.com
Distribution: world
Organization: inode BBS, Usenet Access for NYC (212-679-9146)

 -=> Quoting Aj923@cleveland.freenet.e to News <=-

 Aj> I would hate to have to use an interface like that.  I can see a
 Aj> "Copy" command, a "Move" command, a "Rename" command, and other basic
 Aj> commands, but NOT something like "Eject disk" or "Shut off computer". 
 Aj> Dumb little things like that aren't beneficial for powerusers like
 Aj> myself.  For chrissake, the power switch and disk button are right

 Well, on some VAX computers there are console commands like "POWER
 OFF". 
 And you can only do that after doing a system shutdown, preferably by
 using the SHUTDWN command procedure, which closes all the files in an
 orderly fashion, and can take 5 or 10 minutes to complete.






... I call things as I see them; If I didn't see them, I make them up!
--- Blue Wave/QWK v2.10
#! rnews 7
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Subject: Re: Proper pronounciation of 'Kibo'
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 00:25:32 GMT

In article <1993Jan7.120921.21496@nntp.nta.no> styri@hal.nta.no
(YuNoHoo) writes:

>cts1@cec2.wustl.edu (Christopher T. Schuster) writes:
>> Also, what is ISDN?  I haven't quite gotten that one yet, either!
>
>It used to be ~I Still Don't kNow", but I not certain any longer.
>The acronym is printed on some of our phones. Maybe it's significant.

Considering how little progress it's made, I've heard people suggest:

     It Still Does Nothing

Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca
If your nose runs and your feet smell, you're built upside-down.
From: smckinty@sunicnc.France.Sun.COM (Steve McKinty - Sun ICNC)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to "smart buildings"? and three tangents
Date: 12 Jan 93 11:06:28 GMT
Distribution: alt
Organization: SunConnect
NNTP-Posting-Host: hardy.france.sun.com

In article <CANNAM.93Jan12100339@borodin.sc.ZIB-Berlin.de>, Cannam@sc.ZIB-Berlin.de (Chris Cannam) writes:

> 
> The idea is that in order to receive BBC TV, you need a TV licence.
> (A cheap one for black-and-white TV, a more expensive one for colour.
> The licence fee is the source of the BBC's income -- they don't have
> advertising.)  They claim that if you don't buy one, a TV detector van
> will detect that you're receiving illicit TV and be around to your
> house to take you away and throw you into a dank cell for several
> years.  Nobody quite understands (do they?) how the TV detector van is
> supposed to work; the most common thesis I've heard is that it's all a
> big con

The vans do work. They rely on detecting the local oscillator radiation
from the TV tuner, some of which escapes back up to the aerial and gets
retransmitted. Its also very easy to detect the harmonics from the
scanning circuits (try putting a medium-wave radio near a TV) but that
can be confused with radiation from computer monitors.

 and really all they do is have the drivers look for TV aerials
> on houses without licences.  In whatever case, the vans certainly
> exist, and they certainly do (occasionally) catch people.
> 
> Perhaps more interesting are the arguments they get with people who
> are thus nabbed, and then claim in court that they don't watch BBC --
> their TVs are only capable of receiving independent TV, or they only
> use them with a video or computer, or whatever.

Its not a valid argument. You require the license to have the TV, not
to use it. Whether the law is right is a different issue, but 'I only
watch coronation street' isn't a defence.

In any case, the last figures I saw showed that the average household
pays about twice as much per year to the Independent companies (by way of
advertising costs incorporated in things they buy) compared to the BBC
licence fee. You could make an argument that that is even more unfair
because even people who haven't got a TV still pay the advertising costs.

Steve


-- 
Steve McKinty
SUN Microsystems ICNC
38240 Meylan, France
email: smckinty@france.sun.com	   BIX: smckinty
From: Edward.Rice@p4214.f70.n109.z1.fidonet.org (Edward Rice)
Sender: Uucp@blkcat.UUCP
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Compressing decimal expansion of pi (was Re: PI)
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 1993 17:14:59 -0500

David A. Z. said to All: 

  DA> 	At the danger of interjecting something from reality into this
  DA> strain, I suspect that your "PI" file was an 8-bit ASCII file which
  DA> was loading with only about 4.25 bits (10 characters) per 8-bit word. 
  DA> (256 characters possible.)

3.32 bits/word, don't you mean?