HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,misc.forsale.computers
Subject: Re: Wanted: Unused PDP-8?
Date: 6 Oct 92 14:27:27 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.1992Oct6.142727.27281
Organization: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

From article <1992Oct6.202554.1@cc.curtin.edu.au>,
by zcookbruc@cc.curtin.edu.au:
> mdw@theory.TC.Cornell.EDU (Matt Welsh) writes:
>  
>>I know this sounds crazy, but I'm wondering if someone out there
>>has an unwanted/unloved machine in the PDP-8 line that they'd like
>>to give a happy home (namely, to me), or sell. There must be one
> 
> You also might try to find a DECmate - This is a single chip PDP-8.
> Don't know if that's what you're looking for but I know a source of
> these without keyboards - Just supply your own LK201, and it's running.

Read the FAQ in alt.sys.pdp8 -- the DECmate family was only discontinued
a few years ago, and there ought to be lots of them out there!  These
"workstations" were based on the Intersil IM6100 and IM6120
microprocessors, and they represent the "last gasp" of the PDP-8
architecture in the commercial marketplace.

The PDP-8 architecture did pretty well, surviving in the marketplace from
1963 to 1990, but it set no records!  The IBM 360, introduced in 1965,
is still alive and well (renumbered 370, and renumbered again, but still
upward compatable).  I think UNISYS still makes the UNIVAC 1100 family
also, and that's even older.

				Doug Jones
				jones@cs.uiowa.edu
From: dougm@cns.caltech.edu (Doug McNaught)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Total erasure of hard drive data??
Date: 27 Sep 92 22:47:29
Organization: California Institute of Technology
	<Bv1HGD.Kvv@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
	<1992Sep23.205814.10809@leland.Stanford.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: bradbury.cns.caltech.edu
In-reply-to: edremy@leland.Stanford.EDU's message of Wed, 23 Sep 92 20:58:14 GMT

In article <1992Sep23.205814.10809@leland.Stanford.EDU> edremy@leland.Stanford.EDU (eric remy) writes:

   ObFolklore(Gripe): Any other system manager types have to deal with that
   one group of people (Out of a mostly (computer) literate crowd.) who 
   _absolutely_ cannot grasp computers?  We're talking frequent calls to
   "unfreeze the computer"  (Hold screen button pressed) or "deal with a 
   runaway program"? (Control-C or -Y usually works)   Any ideas, serious
   or not, appreciated....


   (Note, some of these people are friends, but it's just soooo exasperating.)

  Well, up until this summer I was a monitor in our VAX lab (the
lowest level of contact between the lusers and the staff) and I
invented the term "clueless hordes" to mutter at opportune moments. I
am a very friendly and patient person, but my temper would shorten
quite a bit as the long evenings wore on. Problems such as the above
were very common, but the most annoying people were those who expected
the monitors to help them debug their (incredibly crufty) Pascal and
BASIC programs. Some got very angry when I told them "you're really
supposed to figure it out for yourself. If you're really stuck, talk
to your instructor." From time to time, generally if the luser in
question was female and attractive, I'd give it a stab, often being
nauseated by what they called code. I must admit, though, every once
in a while I'd hit something where the problem wasn't immediately
obvious and stupid, and those cases gave me some valuable debugging
experience.
  Now I'm what they call here a "student operator" which means I get
to run backups, install software, and do anything else the
professional staff doesn't want to dirty their hands with. I thought I
was getting away from the clueless hordes. Well, my big complaint now
is clueless lab monitors!
  I don't know how one deals with such people. As Heinlein said,
"shooting [such people] is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to
get you talked about." I just try to remember that you run into bozos
in all walks of life, and most of them are nice folks. Being a system
manager gives you lots of different methods of revenge for those few
who turn out to be assholes :)
-doug
--
Doug McNaught              |"Sadder still to watch it die/ Then never to have
dougm@cns.caltech.edu      | known it/ For you, the blind who once could see/
doug@midget.towson.edu     | The bell tolls for thee..." --Neil Peart
  Nobody approves my opinions! Not even me, sometimes. Read at your own risk.
From: Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Zork/Dungeon (was Re: MDL)
Date: 30 Sep 92 21:03:36 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

In article <1992Sep30.104700.6275@pollux.lu.se> magnus@thep.lu.se
(Magnus Olsson) writes:

>Actually, all they ported was the Z-code (the code emitted by the ZIL
>compiler) interpreter. The data files are identical for CP/M, MSDOS
>and other platforms.

     Yup.  I once wrote a program that pulled the data file for
Suspended off an MS-DOS disk.  I transferred it to a CP/M disk and
played it with the CP/M Planetfall interpreter.

Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca
You are in a twisty maze of little menus, all alike.

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: smith@sctc.com (Rick Smith)
Subject: Re: Oldest ARPAnet messages?
Organization: SCTC
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 19:48:30 GMT

There are several 'firsts' being asked about, I think. The 'first'
electronic mail would have been between users on a single timeshared
host (not to say batch users _couldn't_ use mail, just that it
wasn't consistent with the model of computer usage.

I'm not at all sure when the first EMail system was developed,
regardless of host. They were blossoming all over the place in
the early '70s, usually home-grown. Hopefully someone else can
fill in details.

I _do_ remember hearing some folklore claiming that the first "real"
mailing list was SF-Lovers, and that it crashed one of MIT's PDP-10s
by choking it with traffic. I remember seeing a fictionalized version
written up with the title "Time Enough for Mail" a dozen years ago or
so.

A couple of other early lists were "Info-Micro" and "Human-Nets"
The first was about microprocessors, microcomputers, everything,
and anything. The second one focussed on social implications of
networking and EMail.

Rick.
smith@sctc.com          arden hills, minnesota
Organization: Sophomore, Math/Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 10:17:38 -0400 
From: Samuel Roy Helwig <sh4j+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: MDL


    Does anyone in this group remember MDL (muddle)?  I was told that
the original Adventure was written in it.  It seems that it was an
interactive fiction game language.  Is this true?  Also, I was told that
the Infocom text-based games were written in a language based on a
subset of MDL.  Finally, if anyone has the original Adventure source (in
MDL) or anything else in MDL, I'd like to look at it.

                        thanx,
                        Sam
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Subject: Re: Computer comics and illiteracy
Reply-To: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 01:20:29 GMT

In article <1992Oct2.174324.14919@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> bwatson@nyx.cs.du.edu (bruce watson) writes:
>>Perfesser:  Not speedy enough, I'm afraid.  My *brain* has lost at least
>>            20 megs of REM in the meantime.
>>-- 
>I saw this. I thought they were talking about sleep.
No, not Rapid Eye Movement.  This was RAM that died and can't be used to
store data anymore.  REM is the past tense of RAM.

cj "maybe it was 20 megs of BASIC program comments?" l

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: sbakerjr@cc.curtin.edu.au
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
Organization: Curtin University of Technology
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 04:55:25 GMT

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

This really creates a riotous situation...

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,talk.bizarre
From: anton@cv.ruu.nl (Anton H.J. Koning)
Subject: Re: You know when you're hacking too long when...
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 09:14:42 GMT
Organization: University of Utrecht, 3D Computer Vision Research Group

You know you've been hacking to long when you start typing semi-colons
at the end of sentences instead of full stops;

;-)

Happened to me yesterday.

********************************************************************************
*   ____  . __   ___ *             The mist crawls from the canal              *
*  (__   / /__) /__  *        Like some primordial phantom of romance.         *
* ____) / /  \ /__   *        To curl, under a cascade of neon pollen,         *
*--------------------* While I sit tied to the phone like an expectant father  *
* Anton H.J. Koning  *           Your carnation will rot in a vase.            *
* anton@cv.ruu.nl    *                                    ~ Marillion ~        *
********************************************************************************
From: Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Bumper sticker
Date: 30 Sep 92 15:55:53 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

     Seen on a car last weekend:

          I <heart> DOS

     Scary.

Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca
I hate DOS, but I use it - twice a day.
From: ma90alb@brunel.ac.uk (Ashley L Brandwood)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Testing
Date: 5 Oct 92 19:34:38 GMT
Organization: Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3

This is a test, please ignore
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: joinonen@cs.joensuu.fi (Juha Oinonen)
Subject: you know you've been hacking too long...
Summary: This is a _true_ story
Keywords: hacking long absurd msdos TM
Organization: University of Joensuu
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 12:06:09 GMT


	You know you've been hacking too long when...

	(this is true, believe it or not!)

	... when you write a Turing Machine with MS-DOS Command Language !

	All right, I've got an excuse: there was some time ago some
	discussion in NN (.msdos.programming ?) if MS-DOS Command Language
	is a language at all, so ...

	Got to get out of here to some place without NN, and soon!

-- 

	I'm a computer science student - what's your excuse?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
From: nunn@nutmeg.ntu.edu.au (JsNO  BAR---NUNN)
Date: 7 Oct 92 00:47:52 +0900
Distribution: world
Organization: Information Technology, Northern Territory University
Keywords: Unknown

  Correction......


  Thats subbmit , not submitt



-Jas
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: gfowler@javelin.sim.es.com (Gary Fowler)
Subject: Re: Total erasure of hard drive data??
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 14:34:01 GMT

twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce) writes:

>In article <1992Oct5.182255.13846@javelin.sim.es.com> gfowler@javelin.sim.es.com (Gary Fowler) writes:
>>twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce) writes:
>>
>>Well let's just reinvent the wheel.  Who wants to start by rewriting "cat"?

>Rewriting "grep", on the other hand -- especially if you own a DOS box
>or something else without such a utility -- is not a particularly bad
>idea.  (And don't remind me that I can get this from the GNUish
>project.  I did it before I had Internet access, okay?)

>>And let's do it in assembler for performance reasons.  Wasted effort is wasted
>>effort.

>But if it wasn't wasted effort in the first place, it's a moot point.

>-- 
>____ 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

Far be it from me to say that programming for learning is bad, or reverse
engineering a utility for a different OS.  The intent of my original post
was to point out that this person didn't learn anything from the exercise.
He was already a good C programmer.  What he learned about vt220 escape
sequences he would have applied if he had done it in shell script.  If he
just would have learned that there was an easier way to do it, then it would
have been worth the trouble.  Unix has a lot of powerful features that we
can take advantage of so we don't have to reinvent the wheel for everything.
I've done things the hard way before, but I hope that I have learned my lesson
when a better way is shown to me.

So much for editorializing.

Faithfully,
Bozo the Programmer
From: rfd@po.CWRU.Edu (Richard F. Drushel)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Computer comics and illiteracy
Date: 1 Oct 1992 14:05:43 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: rfd@po.CWRU.Edu (Richard F. Drushel)
NNTP-Posting-Host: thor.ins.cwru.edu


	From the comic strip "Shoe" by Jeff MacNelly, Thursday 1
October 1992:

Computer Wizard:  Great news!  In the past few months they've developed
                  a way to upgrade your computer to ten megs of REM!!
                                                                ^^^
Perfesser:  Huh?

Computer Wizard:  More memory!  Speedier!

Perfesser:  Not speedy enough, I'm afraid.  My *brain* has lost at least
            20 megs of REM in the meantime.
                       ^^^
[reproduced without permission of Tribune Media Services, Inc.]
-- 
Rich Drushel ** rfd@po.CWRU.edu *** Biology Ph.D. Student ** Cleveland FreeNet
Co-Sysop, Coleco ADAM Forum --- Assistant Sysop, Science Fiction & Fantasy SIG
"Solda pung apfashat ro des-marno, / Marn ladir o armag noth yeni arno. / Hell
miryat it, / Jambo iat it, / Os lasse wei ticip kati baldo." / Old Ennish poem
From: mshute@cs.man.ac.uk (Malcolm Shute)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Story-telling in computer languages (was Re: Add One to COBOL)
Date: 1 Oct 92 10:07:08 GMT
Organization: Dept Computer Science, University of Manchester, U.K.

About 9 years ago (sorry) I posted a translation of "I'm dreaming of a white
Christmas" into Pascal.  It was a bit clumsy... but it triggered someone into
responding with an absolute masterpiece of "Santa Claus is coming to town"
translated into Unix Shell Script.  Unfortunately, I inadvertently deleted
it some years ago.

If anyone can remember it... and even better, if they can supply a copy
to me, or to this group... I would be enormously grateful.

(BTW... the Cobol version of "Goldilocks and the three bears" doesn't seem
to have the chair-sitting scene... And while we're on the subject, Walt
Disney's version of "Snow-white and the seven dwarves" doesn't have the
poisoned-comb scene.  Ah well, so much for freedom of the new art forms).
--

Malcolm SHUTE.         (The AM Mollusc:   v_@_ )        Disclaimer: all
From: Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca (Charlie Gibbs)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Story-telling in computer languages (was Re: Add One to COBO
Date: 5 Oct 92 06:23:42 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

In article <6311@m1.cs.man.ac.uk> mshute@cs.man.ac.uk (Malcolm Shute)
writes:

>About 9 years ago (sorry) I posted a translation of "I'm dreaming of a white
>Christmas" into Pascal.  It was a bit clumsy... but it triggered someone
into
>responding with an absolute masterpiece of "Santa Claus is coming to town"
>translated into Unix Shell Script.  Unfortunately, I inadvertently deleted
>it some years ago.
>
>If anyone can remember it... and even better, if they can supply a copy
>to me, or to this group... I would be enormously grateful.

     It goes a lot like this:

better watchout
better !cry
better !pout
lpr why
santaclaus <northpole >town

cat >list /etc/passwd
ncheck list
ncheck list
grep >nogiftlist naughty list
grep >giftlist nice list
santaclaus <northpole >town

who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | grep bad|good
for (goodness sake) {be good}

     Now if you could repost your Pascal version of "I'm Dreaming
of a White Christmas" I'd be very grateful; I wasn't on the net then.

Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca
"I'm cursed with hair from HELL!"  -- Night Court

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: pv@gagme.chi.il.us (Paul Vader)
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
Originator: pv@gagme
Keywords: ouch
Organization: Inline Software Creations
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 00:01:22 GMT

johnm@metro (John McKirdy) writes:
>I have occasionally changed their login scripts to set the prompt to
>    Do not forget to log out>
>but found out some of the naive users hit by this didn't know what was
>going on and couldn't change it back.  It didn't work anyway, so now I
>just walk by.
>
We have people at work who leave themselves logged in all day, without so
much as a screen saver obscuring that they're doing. I just can't understand
this behavior. If you're into harsh object lessons...

One of my favorites is "PATH=." When someone asks what's wrong with the
machine just type what they do and say "works fine for me".

If you're feeling dangerous, type out some malicious command (such as rm -rf
~, or yes "bite my kneecaps" | tail -1000 | mail root) and very carefully
(making sure they haven't been creative with stty) type the cancel key. This
works quite nice for commands that don't feed back, so you can't tell by
looking at the screen that the commands didn't actually happen. Creative
aliases can be fun too ("why does Emacs boot up every time I try to get a
directory?").

On the DOS side, try sticking the "warmboot" command at the end of
autoexec.bat (make sure the echo is off).  You can do roughly the same thing
on a Mac with a Quickeys sequence to pull down the "restart" menu on
startup. It's amusing that most people scurry frantically for boot disks and
not just pull the plug until they know what's going on. PV
-- 
Paul Vader           Systems Analyst, semi-lurker, Rollerblader,
pv@gagme.chi.il.us   ex-Zen poet, FOAF, and bleeding-heart liberal
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: jrs8@quads.uchicago.edu (john richard stracke)
Subject: Re: Hacking too long!
Reply-To: jrs8@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 20:35:23 GMT

In article <1992Sep21.034446.14953@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> parry@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Tom J Parry) writes:
>Sergej Roytman (ftit@sussex.engin.umich.edu) wrote:
>> 
>> This just happened to me: I wanted to take an elevator down to the
>> second floor and I hit the '1' key.  Ground floor is 0 so the floor
>> above it is 1, right?  I need a vacation.  Now.  When does spring
>> break start?
>
>Well, in MANY places outside of the USofA the Ground Floor is G and the one
>above it is 1. In a sense it is the correct way of doing things. It is the
>first floor above the ground and the one below it is Ground, it isn't a
>floor (you have to build floors, ground was there to start with :-)

There's a building at Northwestern Univ., where I went to college,
that has two ground floors, since the ground is higher in the front
than in the back.  The lower of the two floors is labelled G, the
higher 1.

-- 
/============================================================================\
| Francis Stracke              | My opinions are my own.  I don't steal them.|
| Natl. Sci. Center Foundation |=============================================|
| Augusta, GA                  | Eat when hungry.  Sleep when tired.         |
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader)
Subject: Strange streets (was: Thoughts)
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 19:49:56 GMT

> In suburban Philadelphia (Bucks County) there is  rather major street
> named Street Road (or is it a major road?).

Someone should move that street to Toronto, where it could be made to
intersect with the major street called Avenue Road.  Though if we
allow historical names, at one time the street now called College
Street was Yonge Street Avenue -- the avenue that you took to get to
Yonge Street.  [Huh?  Oh, from the university of course.  Where else
would anyone possibly start from? :-)]

Incidentally, Avenue Road consists of two disconnected pieces -- not a
record for Metropolitan Toronto, as Dufferin Street has four disconnected
pieces.  But as you continue southward beyond the south end of the
southern piece of Avenue Road, you are successively on Queen's Park,
Queen's Park Crescent West%, and University Avenue.

% One-way southbound; Queen's Park Crescent East is the corresponding
  northbound road.

Metropolitan Toronto also has at least one example of a self-intersecting
street: I used to know someone who lived on a street shaped like the
letter P.  The street name was Abbeywood Crescent.  If there's one there
are probably others.

Someone mentioned streets with different names for the two sides.  I've
seen at least two examples of this in England.  I particularly liked the
one where the house numbers ran:

	|             1  2  3 ...
	|-------------------------
	| 1  2  3  4  5  6  7 ...

This was in Bath.  I stayed at a B&B which was on the, uh, lower-numbered
side of that street (I don't remember its name or the street name, but
I remember finding out later that it was listed in Let's Go.  The people
whose door I knocked on on the other side of the street were quite nice
about directing me to the B&B...).

I think the computer relevance of this thread is that only people who
work with computers really find this sort of thing surprising!  Maybe
rec.games.trivia would be a better place for the topic, or, again,
rec.travel.  But I won't be the one to move it.
-- 
Mark Brader		"Male got pregnant -- on the first try."
utzoo!sq!msb			Newsweek article on high-tech conception
msb@sq.com			November 30, 1987

This article is in the public domain.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: pv@gagme.chi.il.us (Paul Vader)
Subject: Re: "Any" key
Originator: pv@gagme
Organization: Inline Software Creations
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 23:35:46 GMT

In the few situations where I have actually coded a "press any key to
continue" prompt, I have always defined a few keys to generate a response
of "except that one" and go back into the loop. PV


-- 
Paul Vader           Systems Analyst, semi-lurker, Rollerblader,
pv@gagme.chi.il.us   ex-Zen poet, FOAF, and bleeding-heart liberal
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:14775 comp.os.os9:1307 comp.sys.m6809:427 comp.sys.m68k:1195 comp.sys.misc:756
From: aevans@nmt.edu (Alex Evans)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.os9,comp.sys.m6809,comp.sys.m68k,comp.sys.misc
Subject: Motorola Four-Phase Systems S2000
Summary: What do you know?
Keywords: Motorola
Date: 4 Oct 92 19:34:18 GMT
Article-I.D.: nmt.1992Oct4.193418.2161
Followup-To: aevans@titan.nmt.edu
Organization: New Mexico Tech

Hello all,
  I just got another dusty old computer, this one is a Motorola Phase-Four
Systems S2000.  I also got two Motorola codex terminals with it.  What can
you all tell me about this beast.

-- 
Theodore (Alex) Evans aka Alexei Vnebrachnei Ivanovitch
MOL College of St. Golias     | Free computer, where, when, how
Collector of dusty silicon    | "That probably won't run on anything I have."