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Why?

"Computer Collector" wrote:

> Actually, Im basicly interested in a lot of old stuff, especially old
> electronics. For some reason I like to collect and use stuff thats been
> rejected by society. Perhaps its my way of "rebelling".

Glad I'm not the old one. But geez, I'm only 27 & computing has changed since I was more or less into it back in the 1980s & 1990s. These programs for Windows 2000 are shocking, you can't even type a letter in Word or something & it changes it to a little symbol. For example I typed in 1A (space), instantly this A is changed into a tiny A. To undo this I have to go back, type it again & have some other letter after it, then space, then arrow back & delete the second letter, then arrow back to my spot. I have no idea how to change this, but this is highly annoying.
I mean if I wanted something bloody well done to that letter, I'd alter it myself. Sometimes it also gets me when the computer reconizes a word typed incorrectly & changes it to the correct spelling - but what if I wanted a word typed incorrectly?
Anyway there must be a way of changing it to manual - after all I don't want this stupid system guessing everying I want.

Well anyway that's my little Rant!
CP/M User.
 
CP/M User:Word...
Click to expand...

It's one of the AutoCorrect options, and you should be able to turn it off. Should be under tools->Autocorrect or tools->options->.... depending on version. If you can't find it, PM me and I'll try to walk you through.
I gotta keep all of that stuff turned off or I go outa my gourd. Well, not all. I will say I like the turn 1/2 into a proper looking fraction one, but all the rest gotta go.

If you're tired of word, there's write, which is bare-bones, or Textpad, which is more a programmers editor, but has a spell-checker, tons of non-Word stuff to use when you want to get some work done, instead of trying to figure out how formatting flows from section to section.

patscc
 
Alot of this stuff is going to disappear unless someone saves it. That's the impetus for me when it involves a long drive, or I'm just bored with it on that particular day. Not too many people find the compatibles or not-so-compatibles as that unique or interesting -HMMMMM, MAYBE A VERY GOOD REASON I NEED TO WORK HARDER!!! Software, being so much more volatile in nature then the hardware, is even more precious :D in my book. Right, like you all don't talk all nice to your old puters!
I have this project in the back of my mind. I generally avoid things with custom ic's, being that they're harder to replace than stock chips. But what about that one unit you'd like to see run way into the future. Now most of us don't have access to fab plants, but all this stuff started out as big boards of discrete logic. It would be fun (and probably crazy) to replicate some irreplaceable chips function with a bunch of standard chips.
 
The reason I have my old TRS-80 and Tandy laptops is that I use them! They're great for typing up a letter, and I love getting my alarm program out and hacking out a new version of it. These things will run for well over 30 hours on one charge of 4 NiMH AAs. And I do "flying laptop" demonstrations with them every once in a while. Try that with your new Dell!
 
kdulcimer said:
The reason I have my old TRS-80 and Tandy laptops is that I use them! They're great for typing up a letter, and I love getting my alarm program out and hacking out a new version of it. These things will run for well over 30 hours on one charge of 4 NiMH AAs. And I do "flying laptop" demonstrations with them every once in a while. Try that with your new Dell!
Click to expand...

I have a fairly recent (2000) hand-held that I'll go head-to-head with you in the drop test, if you'll compare coffee-spilled-on-the-keyboard results with me. (I've done both with my Itronix 5200, but it really sux for typing on).

--T
 
RE WHY?

RE WHY?

i GUESS i HAVE POSTED TO THIS QUESTION BEFORE, BUT IN RE-READING THE POSTS TODAY SOMETHING OCCURED TO ME THAT MAY BE WORTH WHILE STATING HERE.
fOR MANY YEARS I HAVE BEEN SAYING (MOSTLY TO DEAF EARS, I ADMIT) THAT "THE REASON THAT COMPUTERS ARE SO FASCINATING AND SO MUCH FUN IS THAT A COMPUTER IS THE NEAREST THING MAN HAS EVER MADE OR PROBABLY EVER WILL MAKE TO A MACHINE WITH AN INFINTE NUMBER OF STATES.
RAY
 
Do other people than computer scientists and alike understand that message? I would rather say something like "a computer can do so many things, almost infinite number of different tasks". I do recoginze that speaking about states is technically more correct but at least for the people I know, it would "go unnoticed above their heads".
 
re Why

re Why

Anders;
I know what you mean, and I don't entirely disagree, but it took me quite some time to come up with the fewest words I could to express the whole idea. It sort of remnds me of "An infinate number of monkeys "Another version of that says: Give a thousand programmers a problem with instructions for each one to write a program to solve the problem. You will rrd up with a thousand different programs, each of which will solve the problem (Of course they all have to have identical computers and program in Assembly Language)

Ray[/b]
 
Ayep, I know what you mean. In one of the newsgroups I read, someone issued a task which most seasoned programmers thought impossible, despite that the issuer offered several hundred or thousands of dollars to anyone who could write him the program. Like money can make your computer better.. well, without investing it on hardware.

Anyway, we had a self-proclaimed programmer - who had not managed to publish a single, working program - who took on the task and start to post progress reports saying that 27% of the program was done and so on. I'm not sure he even had drawn the loading screen. The he started to post nonsense machine code snippets that were clearly cut'n'pasted from a web page.

Someone else, who was long-time tired of this self-proclaimed joker, challenged him and everyone else on a programming task: implement bubble sort in assembly language, something that should take you far less than 30 minutes if you are skilled, maybe even 5 minutes if you are up to date. The question was in how many ways you can write this routine without someone accusing you of copying someone else's code. All the entries were published on a secret web page which you got access to after submitting your own entry.

Not surprisingly, all entries looked different to some point, and the non-working code the super programmer finally came up with was three times as long as anyone else's.. :roll: Since then, I think the close to impossible project was scrapped.

This challenge had other side effects; after I had implemented bubble sort in machine code, I spent a few days to implement quick sort too. Someone else implemented quick sort, merge sort, shell sort and some more. It could maybe become a code base. His and mine quick sort looked completely different and was of different complexity too.
 
re Why

re Why

I, on the other hand, couldn't program my way out of a paper bag!
The only progams I ever wrote that were of any use to anyone but me were Interrupt processing routines and/or Mag. Tape handleers. Most of my efforts were in writing trouble shooting routines. I was pretty damn good at debugging other people's programs One learns that skill when one has to prove to pogrammers that it doesn't matter how adamant they are about not having made any changes in the software, if there are errors in the output, the software must be the culprit. So one takes the programmer's listings and sits down and studies them until one finds the buggy code and shows it to the programmer who says:"but I only changed one non-critical statement in the source code and that shouldn't cause any errors in the output".
I hope that makes sense. The font is so small and my old eyes are so bad that I am not always sure.
Ray
 
I've on occasion taken a Panasonic 1400 to work, with concept code hacked out in SNAP. For some reason, when you shove a 20+ plus year old machine under a managers nose, and generate a print out, and say 'look, the problem is really not that complicated, this has been done before' that seems to give management more confidence to say, 'Uh, okay, maybe we're going overboard on this, maybe we can make it simpler'
In any field, understanding history means you are aware of the mistakes that have been made. That is an important part of education.
It also teaches humility, there's nothing like figuring out how to do something, and to then later discover that someone did it x number of years ago.

patscc
 
re WHY?

re WHY?

You are right, of course, but I thought you might get a kick out of what happened to me along those lines in about 1968,
At the time we were looking for pointing devices and coordinate digitizing devices. It occured to me that this might be a perfect applicatiion for the new (at that time) conductive plastics. So I sat mt boss down over coffee a couple days later and told hime about my idea and that it could lead toa patent, so competitors could not simply buy the original designs and have them manufactured to specs., while we could, assuming we got it developed first. Well, he thought it was a very good idea and asked me to keep working on it and he would get back to me in a week or so to see how I was doing. He called me into his office a few days later and told me he had some good news and some bad news. The good news was tha tmy idea was sound and such a device would probably make it's inventor of record famous and maybe rich. The bad news was that someone in Italy had already done almost exactly what I had proposed and had already applied for a patent on it.
Old stuff may embarass a user occasionally. But new ideas can also embarass and hurt a fellow even ,more.
Ray
 
I'm reminded about my professor in digital electronics who always referred to the CPU as a "mighty machine that is only limited by your ability to use it". When he would express "MIGHTY" he would open each arms as to a god.

Lawrence
 
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