HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: hugo@cae.wisc.edu (Kevin Hugo)
Subject: Re: help with old adm3a
Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering
Date: 11 Jan 93 13:35:43 CST

In article <kfIE=RS00WB5QB0RI_@andrew.cmu.edu> Paul Christopher Workman <pw0l+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
>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?

I have an ADM-3A terminal and the "operator's handbook" right here.
I don't recall a margin bell on the terminal, and it's not mentioned
in the manual.  However, you might enjoy the following excerpt from the
manual ((c) 1975 Lear Siegler):

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ADM-3A versus the Teletypewriter
  In early-generation computer systems, electromechanical teletypewriters
  were the most popular data terminal.  The operator entered information
  by typing at a keyboard.  The data characters were simultaneously
  transmitted to the computer and mechanically printed on paper.  Data
  from the computer was received and printed by the teletypewriter.

CRT terminals represent a better solution.
  Like the teletypewriter, the ADM-3A has a keyboard at which the operator
  enters information.  But instead of mechanically printing the information,
  the ADM-3A displays it electronically on a CRT similar to a TV screen,
  eliminating the noise and mechanical failures associated with earlier
  devices.

The ADM-3A offers many advantages:
  It's Faster.  Data can be entered as fast as the operator can type, and
  be received at up to 1920 characters per second.

  It's Quiet.  The noise of mechanical printing has been silenced forever.

  It's Much More Dependable.  The ADM-3A contains no moving parts except
  the keyboard which has been proven reliable to the tune of over 20
  million failure-free keystrokes.  And the ADM-3A circuitry is all
  solid-state, contained on a single printed circuit board.

With all this going for it, the ADM-3A represents a modern solution to
today's data entry and display requirements -- a more efficient, dependable
terminal geared to the needs and convenience of you, the operator.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

So you see, Paul, if your office mates only understood how the ADM-3A
is an Efficient, Convenient, and Reliable solution they wouldn't complain
about the bell.

- Kevin Hugo
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Digigal Rainbow 100?
From: don@zl2tnm.gen.nz (Don Stokes)
Date: 8 Jan 93 09:01:57 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: The Wolery

fogelinc@nmr1.Cyanamid.COM (Carl Fogelin) writes:
> Side note: a few years ago I was talking with a DEC engineer who was on the Rainbow's
> design team.  According to him, the original design of of the floppy sub-system would
> have let the Users format their own disks.  It was a marketing decision to skew the
> heads on the RX-50s, thus reducing their tolerance.  This would make customers have
> to buy DEC pre-formatted floppies...  

But the Rainbow *CAN* format RX50s!  It's other controllers that are a pain.
Some sites had been known to buy a Rainbow for the purpose of formatting
RX50s for machines that couldn't.

There's nothing terribly oddball about the RX50 format: just 80 tracks, 10
sectors per track, one side.  (Of course the IBM PC only managed 40 tracks
at 8 sectors per track when it came out....)

As for skewed heads on the disks, it didn't take Marketing to stuff it up;
the drives are perfectly capable of stuffing themselves up....

--
Don Stokes, ZL2TNM (DS555)                        don@zl2tnm.gen.nz (home)
Network Manager, Computing Services Centre            don@vuw.ac.nz (work)
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand              +64-4-495-5052
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: pt@geovision.gvc.com (Paul Tomblin)
Subject: Re: Apple IIGS being discontinued Dec 1992
Reply-To: pt@geovision.gvc.com
Organization: Not officially GeoVision Systems Inc., Ottawa, Ontario
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 13:48:59 GMT

lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:

>cj "probably more productive as a programmer with a card punch than with a
>GUI" l (but prefer a CLI and an editor!)

And a beer - don't forget the beer!

-- 
Paul Tomblin, pt@compass.gvc.com
(This is not an official opinion of GeoVision Systems Inc.)
I used to homebrew computers, now I homebrew beer.  Is this progress?
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:18840 comp.arch:12223 comp.sys.intel:2997
From: ercm20@festival.ed.ac.uk (Sam Wilson)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch,comp.sys.intel
Subject: Re: NeXTstep not running on Cyrix 486DLC (was Re: Apple IIGS...)
Date: 11 Jan 93 17:20:32 GMT

lemson@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (David Lemson) writes:
> aj923@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (P. J. Remner) writes:
> 
> 
> >It should.  A 486 is much faster than a 386 of the same speed.  Case in
> >point: The 486SX/25 (like the one I'm using now) is a little faster than
> >an AMD 386/40, but the 486SX is upgradeable for $450.
> 
> What?  I have seen two benchmarks that put the 386/40 at a faster
> cpu speed than the 486SX/25.
> I think that anyone who buys either is crazy right now.  Buy at
> least a 486DX/33, or you are throwing your money away if you ever
> intend to need full-blown 486 power.

I just got a flyer from Intel full of nice (paper) graphics advertising
their new iCOMP(tm) index (they don't say benchmark!) and giving numbers
for all(?) the Intel 386 and 486 processors.  You have to send off for
more info if you want to know how they actually calculate the figures
and there is no comparison with other manufacturers' products (but if
Intel push this I expect there will be soon!).  They make the point that
"MHz != performance" but my guess is that these are simply based on
calculated processor instruction issue rates and are also not simply
related to the delivered performance of any real system.  (By the way,
to inject a little folklore, whatever happened to memory wait states?
Way back when(tm) they were an important factor in benchmarking/selling
one's 8080 or Z80 CP/M system.  Has the 80x86 BIU and (later) cache
memory made them irrelevant, or does all memory just go fast enough not
to need them now or what?)

Anyway, FWIW, here are the numbers, if not the pretty coloured bars that
come with them.  Everything that follows my name and address is a
quotation, including the stupid claim that the two words 'intel inside'
without any other qualification are a trademark.  What these Americans
get away with!

Sam Wilson
Network Services Division
Computing Services, The University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK


			The iCOMP(tm) Index
			-------------------

i486(tm)DX 2-66		297
i486(tm)DX 50		249
i486(tm)DX 2-50		231
i486(tm)DX 33		166	+ OverDrive(tm)	297
i486(tm)SX 33		136	+ OverDrive(tm)	297
i486(tm)DX 25[*]	122	+ OverDrive(tm)	231	[= DX 2-50]
i486(tm)SX 25		100	+ OverDrive(tm)	231
i486(tm)SX 20		 78	+ OverDrive(tm)	166	[= DX 33]
i386(tm)DX 33		 68
i386(tm)DX 25		 49
i386(tm)SL 25		 41
i386(tm)SX 25		 39
i386(tm)SX 20		 32

[*] The Intel486(tm)SL CPU in a mobile configuration performs the same
    as the i486(tm)DX CPU in a mobile configuration. 

	Intel COmparative Microprocessor Performance
	--------------------------------------------

The iCOMP(tm) index indicates relative CPU performance.  As the 25MHz
Intel486(tm)SX is the current entry level member of the Intel family we
have assigned this an iCOMP(tm) rating of 100. 

iCOMP, intel inside, i486, Intel486, i386 and OverDrive are trademarks of
Intel Corporation.
From: jimf@centerline.com (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Number of instructions in microprocessors
Date: 8 Jan 1993 15:55:33 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.3.202

pgut1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) writes:
>The first time I saw ARM assembly language I
>couldn't believe that something with instructions that complex could be
>called "RISC".

Look at the RS/6000.  They call it RISC but they change what the
acronym means: Reduced Instruction Set Cycle.  About the only thing
reduced about the '6000's instruction set is memory access modes --
very few instructions operate on anything but registers.  The
instruction set is rather wide apart from that.

jim frost
jimf@centerline.com
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:18694 alt.folklore.urban:32779 alt.religion.kibology:5663
From: styri@hal.nta.no (YuNoHoo)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.folklore.urban,alt.religion.kibology
Subject: Re: Proper pronounciation of 'Kibo'
Date: 7 Jan 93 12:09:21 GMT
Reply-To: styri@nta.no
Distribution: inet
Organization: Norwegian Telecom Research

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.

---
YuNoHoo  "newbie trawling? me...?"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: frank@twg.com (Frank McConnell)
Subject: Re: "Stringy Floppy"
Organization: The Wollongong Group, Palo Alto, CA (USA)
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 22:51:02 GMT

In article <1993Jan9.201706.27670@EE.Stanford.EDU> siegman@EE.Stanford.EDU 
(Anthony E. Siegman) writes:
>   Among the collection of bizarre early computer artifacts is the
>"Stringy Floppy" (that was its product name) that was once marketed in
>the Northern California area.  

>   I had one; does anyone else recall this?

Vaguely, which means it wasn't just a Northern California thing (I
lived in Maryland at the time).  Didn't _Creative Computing_ magazine
push these things for a while, for several platforms?  The phrase
"Exatron Stringy Floppy" comes to mind, and I also recall that it
could be made to work on other then-popular micros (e.g. Apple ][,
Commodore PET, maybe others).  Or maybe Exatron just ran a lot of
full-page ads in _Creative Computing_?

This must have been sometime in or before 1980.  I don't recall seeing
an actual working unit.

Unfortunately, the _Creative Computing_ magazines of the era are
probably still somewhere back east, waiting for me to buy another
bookshelf (and go back east to rescue them from the attic) so they can
keep all the _Byte_s and _Kilobaud_s company out here....

-Frank McConnell    "I want my MPE" (w/apologies to Dire Straits)
 <frank@twg.com>    
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: hausner@qucis.queensu.ca (Alejo Hausner)
Subject: Re: Number of numbers (Was Re: PI)
Organization: M.Sc, C.S, Queen's, Kingston, Canada.
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 16:34:28 GMT

From blake+@transarc.com Thu Jan  7 09:31:31 1993
Date: Thu,  7 Jan 1993 09:28:51 -0500 (EST)
From: Blake_Lewis@transarc.com
To: hausner@qucis.queensu.ca (Alejo Hausner)
Subject: 

>>>
>>>A faster one is
>>>
>>>       pi = 24 * atan(1/8) + 8 * atan(1/57) + 4 * atan(1/239)
>> 
>> How about Euler's improvement,
>> 
>>    pi = 4 * (5 * atan(1/7) + atan(3/79)) ?
>>
>
>That's also nice, but I think not as fast as the one I quoted,
>since 1/8 < 1/7.

Yes, BUT.

If all you want is PI in binary form, then you're right.  However, if
you want to print it, you might as well work in a decimal
representation all along.  In that case, using terms lik 1/50 and
72/50000 are going to give you a big advantage.  And terms like 1/239
make for fast convergence, but slower divisions.


>
>>
>>              x           2        2 x 4  2    2 x 4 x 6  3
>>   atan(x) = --- ( 1  +  --- y  +  ----- y  +  --------- y  + ...)
>>              y           3        3 x 5       3 x 5 x 7
>> 
>> where y = x^2/(1+x^2).
>
>Are you sure that you have this right?  It seems to blow up as x -> 0.
>

OOPS.  Should have been y/x, not x/y.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Adobe and adobe
From: s342046@emu.insted.unimelb.edu.au
Date: 11 Jan 93 10:18:24 GMT

In article <930110024422_75230.1437_DHE36-1@CompuServe.COM>, 75230.1437@CompuServe.COM writes:
> In my dictionary, "adobe" is defined as sun-dried building brick. Was
> that how Adobe Type for Windows was named?

Incredibly enough, no.  Adobe is the name of a creek that ran past Adobe's
HQ when they started out.

I suggest you refer to 'Accidental Empires' by Robert X Cringeley, for more
Adobe (and other) gossip. 

-- 
Jane Anna Langley			|snail-mail: 	105 Osborne Street
s342046@emu.insted.unimelb.edu.au	|		South Yarra
University of Melbourne			|		Victoria 3141, AUSTRALIA
Melbourne, Australia.			|	+613/03	820 3629
			*** ready, fire, aim! ***
From: cts1@cec2.wustl.edu (Christopher T. Schuster)
Subject: Re: Proper pronounciation of 'Kibo'
Organization: Washington University, St. Louis Mo.
Distribution: inet
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 23:36:14 GMT

I have been wondering the usenet forever (or so it seems) and I have never been able to
figure out what 'kibo' means.... kibology... etc. as in alt.imploding.kibo,
alt.politics.kibo.

Also, what is ISDN?  I haven't quite gotten that one yet, either!

thanks
otto
From: Cannam@sc.ZIB-Berlin.de (Chris Cannam)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to "smart buildings"? and three tangents
Date: 12 Jan 93 10:03:39
Organization: Konrad Zuse Zentrum fuer Informationstechnik Berlin
Distribution: alt
NNTP-Posting-Host: borodin.zib-berlin.de
In-reply-to: lstowell@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com's message of 12 Jan 93 01:21:09 GMT


In article <184887@pyramid.pyramid.com> lstowell@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Lon Stowell) writes:

      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.  

[Yes, I'm posting from Germany, but I am from the UK]

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 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.

							Chris

--

           on sighting mathematicians it should unhook the algebra from their
           minds and replace it with with poetry; on sighting poets it should
               unhook poetry from their minds and replace it with algebra
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: matthew@tadsrc.uucp (Matthew Sweet)
Subject: Re: What happened to "smart buildings"? and three tangents
Organization: Tadpole Technology plc
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 22:59:08 GMT

In article <R.EVANS.93Jan12141906@afs1.ic.ac.uk> r.evans@ic.ac.uk (Rob Evans) writes:
> 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.

I doubt if this is the case. Upon the license it states something
along the lines that they may demand to see your receiving
equipment, but I think it is worded such that you could unplug your
TV and take it to the front door.

Very few people have a right of entry. Even the police require a
warrent which states upon _what_grounds_ they wish to search your
place. When the police call at a house without a warrent they are
always careful to ask "may we come in" (info from a school friend
who is a policewoman). If you agree, then you have waived some of
your rights, but I don't remember which ones exactly.

Matthew
matthew@tadtec.co.uk
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,sci.math
From: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Subject: Re: Number of instructions in microprocessors
Reply-To: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 16:01:32 GMT

In article <1993Jan5.005419.16209@ryn.mro4.dec.com> Peter.Mayne@cao.mts.dec.com writes:
>
>I'd like to know how many instructions some popular microprocessors have,
>and this group would undoubtedly jump at the chance to pull out this kind
>of trivia. :-) (Undoubtedly we'll also learn some other stuff along the way.)
>
>I'll start:
>
>ARM (RISC):		<30
>6502 (RISC?):		55
>8086 (non-RISC):	90+
>Alpha (RISC):		150 (approx)
>VAX (non-RISC):		>400
6120 (PDP-8)            8 (but one has 512 variants)

cjl
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: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 16:41:07 GMT

In article <Geoff.6la6@equinox.gen.nz>, Geoff@equinox.gen.nz (Geoff Mccaughan) writes:
> 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.

Here's what Bruce Tognazzini has to say about this:

\begin{quote}
Proportional scroll bars first appeared in SmallTalk. They have the advantage
of letting the user know how big a document is. They may or may not have a size
advantage: If the document is small, they appear like giant, white worms, all
but filling the scroll bar area. As the document grows, however, they shrink up
to the point where they are no longer than the Macintosh scroll bars.

Our research during the Lisa project found that proportional scroll bars were
very confusing to new users. [...] We elected to use the tiny scroll boxes to
ease the learning process.

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. I don't think you will see that happen
on the Macintosh. However, we are aware that such small targets are less than
ideal from the point of view of Fitts's law [...] and have been playing with
some new ideas that don't have us revert to worms, but do enlarge the effective
target area of the scroll box.

Stay tuned
\end{quote}

               -- Bruce "TOG" Tognazzini, TOG on Interface

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher                                      neeri@iis.ethz.ch
  "Macintosh System 7.1 -- just say no.  If I'd wanted to pay for OS
   upgrades, I'd have bought an IBM." -- mathew@mantis.co.uk
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879)
Subject: Re: HISTORY OF WORD PROCESSIN
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 21:58:13 GMT
Organization: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

From article <1iv5j2INNc4t@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>,
by haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (Jim Haynes):
> ...                                        Note too, from the Thompson
> and Ritchie papers, that the first use of Unix aside from the developers
> was a word-processing system for patent applications.  This suggests that
> the writing of nroff and troff and their predecessor roff was going on
> at least in the early history of Unix, and probably back in Multics days.

I happen to have a copy of the Murray Hill Computing Honeywell GCOS Roff
Text Formatter manual, dated October 1972.  M. D. McIlroy wrote ROFF for
the GE 600/H 6000 under G[E]COS, with a 1971 release date.  This is based
on Saltzer's RUNOFF, with the citation pointing to the CTSS book edited
by Crisman and published by MIT Press in 1965.

When I was at Bell Labs in 1973, UNIX had become a "word processing
system" fairly recently.  Prior to this, UNIX was developed without official
sanction from the management of the labs (all technical staff members were
allowed 20% of their time for personal projects, so this wasn't unusual).
By having the labs support UNIX officially as a word processing system,
Kernighan and Ritchie and Thompson and McIlroy were able to devote more of
their time to UNIX than the 20% they would otherwise have been allowed.

I should say that when I was at Bell Labs in '73 and '74, I knew UNIX
users, but I used GCOS and spent my time working on a command language
interpreter (shell) for a different system, a cluster of 3 workstations
based and a file server, based on DDP 516 minicomputers and a slotted ring
LAN.
From: wingo@apple.com (Tony Wingo)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Number of numbers (Was Re: PI)
Date: 6 Jan 93 19:20:34 GMT
Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers
Organization: Apple Computer

In article <C0C6BC.8yz@sci.kun.nl>, jc@sci.kun.nl (Jan Christiaan van
Winkel) wrote:
> 
> In <726145237.AA00000@blkcat.UUCP> Edward.Rice@p4214.f70.n109.z1.fidonet.org (Edward Rice) writes:
> 
> >Magnus Olsson said to All: 
> 
> >  MO> Another is that a number is random if all N-digit sequences have the
> >  MO> same probability of appearing in its decimal expansion. (A number that
> >  MO> satisfies this is also called a "normal number").
> 
> >This doesn't match what I learned in stat.  The number:
> > 
> >    3.12345678901234567890 (repeating)
> 
> >has equal probability of a digit appearing, but isn't random (and the digits are
> >not pseudo-random) by any interpretation of the term I have ever heard.
> 
> Read again:  MO said: that a number is random if all ***N-digit*** sequences have the
> same probability of appearing in its decimal expansion.
> 
> In your number 3.12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890...
> the sequence 00 000 0000, 001 0001 0001 22 222 2222 etc etc appears
> NOWHERE, but the sequence 01 does.  Hence your number is not normal, since
> 00 and 01 do not have the same probablity of appearing!
> 
> To be normal,  all ***N-digit*** sequences must have the same probablity!
> not just the 1-digit sequences as in your example.

As I recall from my Real Analysis course 20 years ago, a number that
satifies the 1 digit case is called a Simple Normal number.  (Thus all
Normal numbers are also Simple Normal, but most (almost all?) Simple Normal
numbers are not Normal).

One of the questions that came up was if a number is normal when
represented in base 10, is it also normal if represented in any other
integer radix? I seem to recall that this question hadn't been decided at
that time.  Any updates?

-tony

>>usual disclaimer<<
From: kurz.1@ipa.fhg.de (Hermann Kurz)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Whatever happened to ... SC/MP
Date: 8 Jan 1993 18:14:48 GMT
Organization: IPA Stuttgart
NNTP-Posting-Host: leila1.ipa.fhg.de

In article <1993Jan7.200713.1391@icd.teradyne.com> 
ardai@zax.eda.teradyne.com (Michael Ardai) writes:

>Wasn't the SC/MP kit the one that used thumb tacks and a probe for the
>keyboard?

on my computer there where 8 dip switches for data and 8 dip switches for 
addresses! And just 256 Byte of RAM! No ROM or such evil things! It was 
developed by the magazine Elektor back in 77. In later issues there where 
numerous projekts to expand this system. Even there was a 4kByte RAM-card! 
Never could afford so much memory at this time ...
---
ern