>
>Actually, very little. Most of the AI researchers in the 70's/early
80's
>were working on one of the following:
>
>1. PDP-10's running a very advanced operating system such as TOPS-20,
What do you mean by "advanced"?
>2. Things such as the Symbolics LISP machine, specifically designed
for
> AI research and with all sorts of spiffy hardware features that
make
> it automatic to do some really nice things (such as actual
machine-level
> "objects" that aren't just locations in memory but are real data
types.
I HATE object oriented stuff. Hate it, hate it, hate it. At least in
C++, Java, and Visual Basic, which have been my only expoures to it.
>Unfortunately, now if you go to a CS department it's rare to see people
>using anything other than generic Unix boxes. This is a crying shame,
as
>Unix was a pretty poor choice of OS's in 1972 (when it was started) and
>on today's big computers it's a much, much poorer choice compared to
>all the OS's developed by advanced research groups in the 70's and
80's.
Well, would any "advanced" OS like TOPS be suitable for modern
machines? Anyone want to be the second Linus Torvalds?
>
>To get a feel of what life was like in a AI lab, you ought to read one
>(or both) of the following:
>
>_The Hacker's Dictionary_, compiled by Eric S. Raymond. (Yes, it is
mainly
>just the jargon file, but there's also essays by Raymond and others
which
>nicely illustrate the AI researcher's "state of mind" in the book.)
>
>_The UNIX-Hater's Handbook_, discusses many OS's developed in the 70's
>and 80's which are far superior to Unix, but never caught on because
they
>weren't "lowest-common-denominator" OS's.
Ironic that now it's the other way around -- we're pushing UNIX-like
stuff like Linux, BeOS and Rhapsody, against DOS, Windows, NT, and
MacOS
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At the risk of getting incinerated, I would like to put in my two bits on
the great MS debate.
You fellows tend to resemble a lot of Grand Prix drivers running down
Fords and Chevvies. What it comes right down to is that there are a whole
bunch of people who are doing useful things with computers who would not be
if they had to depend on the equipment and software that was available
before PC's, Mac's, MS-Dos and Windows.
I saw the same thing with the introduction of self threading 16mm
projectors about twenty five years ago. The National Film Board of Canada
banned them because they chewed up film, but they made it possible for
thousands of teachers to use film in their classes.
Someday possibly we can run our modern computers with an operating system
that comes on one single sided floppy, but until then lets appreciate what
we have.
Cheers
Charlie Fox
>> So STAY ON TOPIC...THE
>> RESTORATION, REAPIR AND USE OF OLD COMPUTERS.
Unless that HTML is running on a Z80 or an F8 I'm not interested
either.
On topic....someone once did an S-100 memory board for Seeq
52B13 EEPROMs (2Kx8, 5v only, 6116 pinout), I think it was a
16KB board, made in the early 1980s. Does anyone have any info
on this board, I don't remember the manufacturer. I have two
hundred 52B13s I just found in the junk closet, thought it would
be neat to have a solid state disk on the old IMSAI. These are
not flash parts, each byte can be individually programmed and
erased.
Jack Peacock
<Text. If the e-mail that you wish to respond to's in plain text, that's
<what it'll send. The problem is that if M$ supports it, the WHOLE WORLD
<suddenly has to all have HTML-ized e-mail readers. It's nice if you hav
<it, but a pain in the A** if you don't.
There is the little matter of some several million (or more) unix(linux,
and related cuzins) systems out there where HTML is far from a standard.
For me and many of the hybrid users HTML means slow, slower and special
utilities to handle it and for what? What a waste of bandwidth.
Allison
A few years ago, I got a Practical Peripherals thing which was
supposed to be a modem. The model number is PM2400SA. It is external.
It dials out, but for some reason, does not connect when the carrier
on the other end starts. Could someone tell me what this thing is?
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>A few years ago, I got a Practical Peripherals thing which was
>supposed to be a modem. The model number is PM2400SA. It is
external.
>It dials out, but for some reason, does not connect when the
carrier
>on the other end starts. Could someone tell me what this thing
is?
>
I think that's a 2400 baud async modem (I had one, sounds like
the same model). If it doesn''t connect, maybe whatever you are
calling doesn't support 2400 anymore, or it's looking for an
error correcting protocol. Make sure you are on factory default
(AT&F if memory serves me right).
Jack Peacock
On 1998-03-14 classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu said to lisard(a)zetnet.co.uk
:I'm almost certain that IE4/outlook express HTMLizes email you send
:from it. there is a way to turn it off, but i dont remember how one
:does it. i'm staying far away from IE4 myself!
make sure you set the "send mail as text only" property somewhere
obscure in the settings.
--
Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling
you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her...
Very interesting. Please elaborate. My reasons for disliking OOP
stems from the fact that a Windows app in C++ is much harder to
understand than one in plain non-oop code. Who started oop anyway?
>I'be not tried VB, and almost zero Java, but I had to use Ada for three
years.
> Ada 95 has a lot of OO features (though you needn't use it that way).
It is
>my most unfavourite language. Some of us have described Ada as a
read-only
>language (cf. C as a write-only language).
>
>--
>
>Pete Peter Turnbull
> Dept. of Computer Science
> University of York
>
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>> make sure you set the "send mail as text only" property somewhere
>> obscure in the settings.
>
>Doesn't that shut down HTML for ALL mail though? You'd think a person could
>specify what type messages (easily) to each person individually instead of
>as a whole.--
You CAN. The IE bashing is ill-informed. It's a great product. However,
in specific response to the above, you simply select that mail is responded
to in the format it was sent. Quite simple and obvious.
A
On Mar 16, 9:10, Max Eskin wrote:
> >2. Things such as the Symbolics LISP machine, specifically designed for
> > AI research and with all sorts of spiffy hardware features that make
> > it automatic to do some really nice things (such as actual machine-level
> > "objects" that aren't just locations in memory but are real data types.
> I HATE object oriented stuff. Hate it, hate it, hate it. At least in
> C++, Java, and Visual Basic, which have been my only expoures to it.
I'be not tried VB, and almost zero Java, but I had to use Ada for three years.
Ada 95 has a lot of OO features (though you needn't use it that way). It is
my most unfavourite language. Some of us have described Ada as a read-only
language (cf. C as a write-only language).
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
