Driver to drive?

[Joerg]

Hi Jim,

On a side note,it would be nice if you set your news agent to post at or
less than the standard 80 characters width.

I know, I know. The Mozilla I am using is set to 65 characters but about
one out of fifty posts is being messed up. That's better than with some
other news agents I tried. I do not know why. Well, it's Windows stuff.
This never happened in the 'old days'.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[Joerg]

Hi John,

My Pentium has over 1000x the compute power of my original 4.77 MHz
8-bit PC-XT, and only takes about 15 times as long to boot the OS.

But how much of that 1000-fold increase is wasted on bloatware routines
that simply weren't there 10 years ago?

Boot time: That old Compaq from the early 90's could keep its RAM up
with just a trickle of battery juice. This meant the 'boot time' was
close to zilch, or about the time it took to move my hand over to the
power button.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 01:52:17 GMT, Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote:

Hi John,

My Pentium has over 1000x the compute power of my original 4.77 MHz
8-bit PC-XT, and only takes about 15 times as long to boot the OS.



But how much of that 1000-fold increase is wasted on bloatware routines
that simply weren't there 10 years ago?

15,000:1, obviously. Pretty big factor, no?

Boot time: That old Compaq from the early 90's could keep its RAM up
with just a trickle of battery juice. This meant the 'boot time' was
close to zilch, or about the time it took to move my hand over to the
power button.

Microsoft never could get "suspend" to work, so they eventually
disappeared the key from the keyboards. And booting is sufficiently
tedious and hazardous that many PCs are left full-on all the time.
I've seen the estimate that 4% of the electric power used in the USA
is for running PCs that are left on 24/7.

John

 

[Robert Baer]

Joerg wrote:

Hi Winfield,

Not that I want to sound too critical here but in the old days (early 90's) you could get by with a lot less RAM than the 16MB that they proudly announced after the 'Retro Hardware Party'.

When I ran the Mosaic browser one of my PCs had a mere 4MB of RAM. Another held 8MB and was later upgraded to 16MB. This didn't make a bit of a difference in browser behavior or the behavior of any other software. The only reasons for more memory were large Spice simulations. Also, I often had several other windows open with other apps. I could do the same kind of work that I do today. But today everything needs a gazillion MB and the ritzy Li-Ion battery is sucked dry in under two hours, versus six hours with the ol' NiCads in the 90's.

Oh, and then we did a QNX project at work. The kernel was, I believe, under 40k and the browser was around a megabyte. It handled web pages at the same speed as 'modern' browsers with one subtle difference. It never crashed...

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Exactly. QNX appears to be the only OS that is bug-free and crashless.
But then again "home security" does not care, all they really want is
Mc Carthy power.

 

[Paul Hovnanian P.E.]

Jim Yanik wrote:

Joerg <notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote in
news:IINpd.49830$QJ3.36832@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com:

Hi Winfield,

Not that I want to sound too critical here but in the old days (early
90's) you could get by with a lot less RAM than the 16MB that they
proudly announced after the 'Retro Hardware Party'.

On a side note,it would be nice if you set your news agent to post at or
less than the standard 80 characters width.

Yeah. Some of us with teletypes can't read those long lines. ;-)

--
Paul Hovnanian mailtoaul@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
When I was in high school, I remember boys and girls slept
together all the time. We called it algebra class. -- Jay Leno

 

[Guy Macon]

Robert Baer wrote:

Exactly. QNX appears to be the only OS that is bug-free and crashless.

QNX and a few other real-time OSs.

You can actually upgrade to a new version of QNX without rebooting.
You can also have your hot-swap video card die, crashing the video
driver, put in a new card of a different brand, tell QNX over the
network to terminate the video driver and start up a different
video driver, and continue - all without rebooting and all while
continuously running a robotic assembly line.

 

[Rich Grise]

On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 03:12:25 +0000, Robert Baer wrote:

Joerg wrote:
....
You are right, many folks let their PCs idle even over a weekend. How
sad. It seems that software deficiencies lead to wasteful behavior. Then
the mfgs cram all kinds of power savers in there that turn off monitors
and so on. Like they do with 'new technology' hybrid vehicles to get to
45mpg, where even a 10 year old VW turbo diesel could get well over
50mpg. Progress....?


And, do not forget the MPG of Stanley Steamers...

Wouldn't that be MPBF, Miles Per Board-Foot?

;-)
Rich

 

[Terry Given]

Hal Murray wrote:

that would make a nice set for an inverter to do 12DC to 120 AC


Major power lines switch to DC and then back to AC at the other end.

What sort of parts do they use? Are they listed in catalogs?
Can I purchase them?

Humungous stacks of SCRs or GTOs all in series, driven by fibre-optics.
The failure mode of a hockey puck device is short circuit, so they have
a hell of a lot more than necessary for voltage rating alone, and just
ignore them when they break.

You can buy them, but they aint cheap. Especially when you want say 1.

Cheers
Terry

 

[Winfield Hill]

classd101 wrote...

Exactly. QNX appears to be the only OS that is bug-free and crashless.
But then again "home security" does not care, all they really want is
Mc Carthy power.

All that will no doubt change once MS releases Longhorn, with its
sleek, trim, and sure to be zippy 3D desktop, we'll finally be able to
see what the latest in hardware can really do, and I firmly believe
the cost of RAM will plumet as everyone will be trying to unload all
that extra RAM they'll no longer require on EBAY, and Bill Gate's
prediction of never needing more than 640K will finally become
reality.

Yes, have no doubts, longhorn (rumored to be released as Pinochio)
will put linux and any of its derivatives on the shelf next to Beta
as we sail off into the new age at blistering, bug free speeds. Where,
I ask, where would we be today without theme based operating systems?

No doubt it'll be yet another case of the cowboys leading us astray.


--
Thanks,
- Win

 

[Joel Kolstad]

"Robert Baer" <robertbaer@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:41A7EFC2.3152EF15@earthlink.net...

Exactly. QNX appears to be the only OS that is bug-free and crashless.

It's a lot easier to keep a 40kB kernel bug free than one that's tens?
hundreds? of megabytes as Windows, Linux, etc. are these days. The bigger
OSes provide more features of course, but in many applications you may not
need them. Moral of the story: Don't buy a bigger OS than you need?

 

[Joel Kolstad]

"classd101" <c_bielek@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:73347787.0411270432.7a7fec53@posting.google.com...

Where, I
ask, where would we be today without theme based operating systems?

In a world where companies aren't more or less forced to upgrade their OSes
every 3 years to keep the Microsoft cash cow running? In a world where a
shockingly large percentage of programmers lose their jobs?

 

[legg]

On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 11:52:01 -0500, John Popelish <jpopelish@rica.net>
wrote:

At 60 hz, a 1 uf cap has an impedance of about 377 ohms. Put that in
series with 170 ohms, and the total impedance has a magnitude of about
414 ohms, so the current is .29 amperes. the resistor power is 14.3
watts.

1 / ( 2 x pi x f x C) gives 2K65 as Z for 1uF.

A series 170 ohm resistor has little effect on 60Hz current, which
will be 90mA @240VAC, producing 1.4W static loss on a non-switching
circuit.

If this combination snubs a triac, firing at all possible line
peaks, worst case loss due to the snubbing energy, if the circuit is
damped effectively by the values used, is

C x Vp^2 x f / 2 = Pd

1E-6 x 340Vsqred x 120hz /2 = 7W

RL

 

[Joerg]

Hi Robert,

And, do not forget the MPG of Stanley Steamers...

They didn't get much over 15mpg but that wasn't bad for cars 100 years
ago. The best is that these were pretty much the only passenger vehicles
of that era that would be able to 'earn' you a speeding ticket on
today's freeways. I believe the Stanley brothers souped one up to do
150mph but it ended in a crash.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[Ian Stirling]

Marcus <mr271@gmx.net> wrote:

hello,
i want to implement an algorithm for an universal reed solomon decoder as
described in "A Universal Reed-Solomon Decoder" by R.E. Blahut, IBM J. Res.
Develop. Vol.28 No.2 March 1984. (free download)[1]
This is a time domain implementation of the berlekamp algorithm and the
forney algorithm.
the berlekamp algorithm computes the error locator polynomial, its formal
derivative and the error evaluator polynomial in the time domain.
after that, the errors are corrected using the forney algorithm.
snip
Everything works fine with my decoder as long as i only correct errors. the
decoder corrects up to 8 errors as it should be.
but when i want to correct erasures the decoder fails.

By erasure, do you mean that you take a bit out of a longer sequence,
shortening it?
I'm almost certain that RS will not correct tat.

 

[Guy Macon]

Joerg wrote:

They didn't get much over 15mpg but that wasn't bad for cars 100 years
ago. The best is that these were pretty much the only passenger vehicles
of that era that would be able to 'earn' you a speeding ticket on
today's freeways. I believe the Stanley brothers souped one up to do
150mph but it ended in a crash.

Maximum torque at zero RPM - vvaY kE\/\/w1 d0oD!

 

[YD]

On 25 Nov 2004 18:45:20 -0800, adrian@rivaband.com (Sean Bartholomew)
wrote:

also a thought just occured to me.
theoretically, if i build TWO regulated 5V supplies from a single 9V
transformer supply, i should be able to connect the positive of one to
the negative (0) of the other treating THAT as ground ref. then id
have +5V, 0 and -5V.

but wouldnt that:
A- simply just short out the ground and the +5V of one of the supplies
since both their grounds are connected?
B- theoretically give me 10V diff total WITHOUT any reclocking from a
9V supply?

If your wallwart supplies AC rather that DC you can do it like this:



7805
.-----.
-------+---|<---+------| ----- +5V
| | '-----'
From | | |
Xfmr | --- ===
| --- GND
--+ | | 100uF
| | |
=== | ===
GND | GND
|
|
| 7905
| .-----.
---->|---+------| |---- -5V
| '-----'
| |
--- ===
--- GND
| 100uF
|
===
GND

created by Andy´s ASCII-Circuit v1.22.310103 Beta www.tech-chat.de

Of course, you can always open the wallwart and remove any rectifiers
and filters inside it. If you don't expect to draw more than 100 mA
use 7xL05's.

- YD.

--
Remove HAT if replying by mail.

 

[David Lesher]

"Joel Kolstad" <JKolstad71HatesSpam@Yahoo.Com> writes:

I am building a device that should include a USB-Host. As a USB-Host, it
should supply 5V x 500mA.

That's slightly wishful thinking. Download the USB spec from www.usb.org
... you'll see that it specifies 4.75V for most nominal connections but can
get as low as 4.4V if you're at the end of a bunch of lower power hubs.
Transiently, it can drop to 4.07V. The upshot of all this is that powering
5V logic off of the USB bus directly is a little iffy... in actuality, it
wil usually work, but it is poor engineering practice and shouldn't be used
on commercial products.

I'm told that Mac Powerbooks come up short; to the extent at least
one external disk supplier provides a Y cable so it can tap two USB
ports.

What's the story on IEEE-1394 power; what can it furnish?
--
A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <fvqhq058sgqhme3p86bv4r31verhcesr7o@4ax.com>,
YD <yd.techHAT@techie.com> wrote:
[...]

Of course, you can always open the wallwart and remove any rectifiers
and filters inside it. If you don't expect to draw more than 100 mA
use 7xL05's.

Never use 7XLXX regulators. If you are going to the bother of wiring up 3
pins use a 7XXX regulator. They don't cost enough more to worry about,
they are harder to break and the heatsink hole makes them easier to mount.

--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

[John Smith]

"Joerg" <notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote in message
news:kq4qd.50120$QJ3.2384@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com...

Hi Rich,

And, do not forget the MPG of Stanley Steamers...


Wouldn't that be MPBF, Miles Per Board-Foot?


ROFL. Actually they used kerosene, plus a little gasoline for the pilot.
Oh, plus a gallon of water per 10 miles on the condenser equipped vehicles
and a whole lot more on older non-condenser cars.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

I thought pilots drank bourbon.

John

 

[JeffM]

Linux...You can still compile a kernel that'll fit on
a couple of 1.4MB floppies
Rich Grise

....or even 1 floppy:
http://www.google.com/search?&q=Tiny-Linux+Peanut-Linux+Feather-Linux+1.44+OR+1.44MB