Rare Apple I computer sells for $216,000 in London

[jmfbahciv]

Joe Pfeiffer wrote:

Joe Thompson <spam+@orion-com.com> writes:

On 2011-01-24, Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote:
Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote
- until NT Windows wasn't an OS,

Thats a lie.

MSDOS was the OS and Windows was an addon.

Another lie.

Were you even around in the pre-Win95 days? The way it worked was that
DOS would boot, then you'd start Windows (or AUTOEXEC.BAT would do it)
using the WIN command. Windows 3.x and its antecedents were really just
DOS shells with fancy APIs available, kinda like GNOME is not the same
as the underlying OS but adds its own APIs.

It wasn't until WinNT/Win95 that you could boot Windows directly as a
bare-metal OS. -- Joe

I don't think you could with W95 (nor 98 nor ME) -- those were still the
old code base. They may have done a better job of hiding DOS under it.

Right.

/BAH

 

[Morten Reistad]

In article <PM00049AAC6A67C33C@ac82005f.ipt.aol.com>,
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> wrote:

Jim Brown wrote:
Charlie Gibbs wrote
(Joe Thompson) writes:

Nor is it a choice in environments where other people
are sending you files in proprietary Microsoft formats.

There have been ages since I couldn't read a document. It still
happens all the time that it formats strangely. But that happens
on other MS installations as well; where the setup for the
details is different from what the original author intended.

I meet this all the time as a consultant, working with customers
and customers' customers that have all sorts of different layouts.

And I am often chosen to be the one that generates these "microsoft"
documents, because whatever is generated when the open tools save
as "windows" formats and prints well on all the windows and mac
platforms. I just use ooffice, koffice, abiword or pages and
save in "windows 97" format.

If you need more formatting than what the windows 97 format
gives you, then you need another tool, like a typesetter (TeX), or
an editor for clip-art(inkscape) or an image editor (gimp), or
a pdf (hundreds of tools).

There was a change in this tide around 2006. This was when
Microsoft got tangled in their own web of proprietariness and
incompatible formats.

The defining moment was when I plugged a MICROSOFT brand mouse
into debian, and debian asked 'new mouse "Microsoft ..model" detected.
Do you want to make this your primary pointing device? (Y/N/Defer)' [1]
but the next to latest windows model gave a "unknown hardware
detected. Insert hardware diskette" (and none was found in their
packaging). [2]

[1] And the mouse was perfectly functional, it just took second fiddle
when multiple mice were moved. [2] And the mouse did NOT work.

You can obviously use something that can handle those.

Sigh! Proprietary meant that the formats were not published.
To translate that sentence for you, it meant that nobody
knew what the formats were and, thus, could not write code
to read those formats unless they were ble$$ed by MS.

We have come a long way. Primary thanks to the EU commision
who have forced MS to publish detailed specifications into the
public domain for every bit they force on us.

This should have been the US Judge, but someone padded the
coffers of some politicians.

-- mrr

 

[Joe Thompson]

On 2011-01-24, Jim Brown <jb45678@gmail.com> wrote:

Scott Lurndal wrote
Why should I pay microsoft for something I've no intention of ever using?

Because few bother to cater for those of you that prefer a different OS.

You might as well whine about having to pay for heated seats when
you want to use a car in a place like Hawaii that never needs them.

But I can certainly order a car that doesn't have them, I may just have
to wait longer (it will often be cheaper as well unless the dealer
really wants the one with heated seats off the lot and is willing to eat
the cost of them to do it).

Or child restraint anchor points in your new car when
you dont have any kids and never have kids in your car.

I actually have heard several childless people complain about safety
features aimed at children driving up the cost. -- Joe
--
Joe Thompson -
E-mail addresses in headers are valid. | http://www.orion-com.com/
"...the FDA takes a dim view of exploding pharmaceuticals..." -- Derek Lowe

 

[Roland Hutchinson]

On Tue, 25 Jan 2011 14:34:57 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Jim Brown wrote:
Charlie Gibbs wrote
(Joe Thompson) writes:
Jim Brown <jb45678@gmail.com> wrote
Seebs wrote

Back in the day, I once spent a day and a half trying to find a
vendor who was willing to sell me a non-Windows laptop.

But was so stupid that you couldnt even manage to work out that even
you should be able to add anything you liked to the hardware.

It doesn't count as a "real choice" unless it's on the same terms. If
I have to pay for Windows even though I intend to wipe the drive and
install another OS before Windows ever boots, I do not have a real
choice.

Nor is it a choice in environments where other people are sending you
files in proprietary Microsoft formats.

You can obviously use something that can handle those.

Sigh! Proprietary meant that the formats were not published. To
translate that sentence for you, it meant that nobody knew what the
formats were and, thus, could not write code to read those formats
unless they were ble$$ed by MS.

Even the published ones require reverse engineering to implement. Have
you looked at the scandal that is OOXML, Barb?

--
Roland Hutchinson

He calls himself "the Garden State's leading violist da gamba,"
.... comparable to being ruler of an exceptionally small duchy.
--Newark (NJ) Star Ledger ( http://tinyurl.com/RolandIsNJ )

 

[Roland Hutchinson]

On Tue, 25 Jan 2011 14:34:44 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
On Mon, 24 Jan 2011 16:12:19 +0000, Joe Thompson wrote:

On 2011-01-24, Jim Brown <jb45678@gmail.com> wrote:
Seebs wrote
However, a "real choice" in economic terms suggests that, say, you
basically get to choose which products to buy.

And that is precisely what you got when the alternative is quite
literally free.

Not when there is a product one cannot choose not to buy.

If the only way to get a burger king burger were to buy a burger
from McD's, at which point you could throw the burger out but keep
the carton, then go to BK and have them put a free burger in the
carton, that would not be a "real choice"

Corse it would be.

Not unless McDonald's gave me a refund for the unwanted burger, so
that my free burger was actually free. -- Joe

I'm sorry, but your burger was licensed only for eating out of the
original carton. It has no value by itself.

But it didn't have a mouse ball.

Are you sure?

--
Roland Hutchinson

He calls himself "the Garden State's leading violist da gamba,"
.... comparable to being ruler of an exceptionally small duchy.
--Newark (NJ) Star Ledger ( http://tinyurl.com/RolandIsNJ )

 

[Rod Speed]

Jasen Betts wrote

Stan Barr <plan.b@dsl.pipex.com> wrote
Joe Thompson <spam+@orion-com.com> wrote
Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote
Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote
- until NT Windows wasn't an OS,

Thats a lie.

MSDOS was the OS and Windows was an addon.

Another lie.

Were you even around in the pre-Win95 days? The way it worked was
that DOS would boot, then you'd start Windows (or AUTOEXEC.BAT
would do it) using the WIN command. Windows 3.x and its
antecedents were really just DOS shells with fancy APIs available,
kinda like GNOME is not the same as the underlying OS but adds its
own APIs.

It wasn't until WinNT/Win95 that you could boot Windows directly as a bare-metal OS.

Indeed. And I remember thinking when W95 came out (late!) how much Microsoft
had "borrowed" from MacOS, AmigaOS, Next and the *nix window managers.

95 and 98 were still DOS underneath,

Only for booting, not for normal ops once booted.

you could close 95 and get back to the dos prompt,
with a little tweaking you could do the same in 98

Irrelevant to what did the work once 9x was booted.

And even NT, XP etc use a relatively primitive system
for the boot phase that isnt used once they are booted.

So does *nix.

 

[Rod Speed]

Jasen Betts wrote

Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote

It wasn't until WinNT/Win95 that you could boot Windows directly as a bare-metal OS.

I don't think you could with W95 (nor 98 nor ME) -- those were still the old code base.

No they werent. Particularly when they installed device drivers for
all the hardware and even rescanned for drives visible, and didnt
use the bios or dos functionality at all, even for the keyboard etc.

So did DOOM, that doesn't make it an operating system.

Yes, but the others clearly are OSs.

 

[Rod Speed]

Mike Pumford wrote

Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote:
greenaum wrote
Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote

Yes, the approach OS/2 took to not allowing dos apps to do anything
they liked with the hardware was certainly the way to go stability wise,

Don't see why,

Basically because you cant trap illegal behaviour
if apps can do anything they like with the hardware.

AIUI since the 386 all IO and memory access has been virtualisable

The OS doing hardware access that way is an entirely separate issue.

(there's some points in Scrabble!).

Not enough to matter, its not that uncommon a word in english.

You don't need to really give them access, just let them
try then interrupt away to a handling / emulating routine.

Not all direct hardware access involves interrupts.

Tho I suppose that routines need writing, and cycles to run in.

And is a lot harder to do when interrupts arent involved.

Then again AGAIN, if IBM hadn't done such a crappy job with their
BIOS, nobody would have needed to write straight to hardware.

Win stopped using the bios LONG ago. Its basically just used in the boot phase now.

Actually in modern PC's there is an increase in BIOS use.

Not to anything like the level seen with DOS.

Windows and other 32bit protected mode operating systems stopped using
the BIOS as the BIOS vendors never wrote protected mode friendly code.

They stopped using the BIOS for a lot more reasons than that.

A modern PC with an ACPI BIOS provides a bytecode that can be executed
in the OS kernel to do chipset specific operations in an OS neutral way.

And there arent all that many chipset specific ops to do with normal ops.

ATI also do a similar thing in their video card
ROMS for certain setup operations as well.

Irrelevant to what is being discussed.

Suspending and resuming a modern laptop is done this way as
are a lot of the motherboard device discovery/power managment.

Irrelevant to what is being discussed.

This bytecode approach gives the OS vendor a way of controlling the
processor mode and leaves it up to the OS to make sure the bytecode
interpreter is suitable for the OS environment. These BIOSs are not
without their bugs but the situation is getting better especially since
newer versions of Windows don't tolerate bugs in these bits of code.

Makes you wish they had done it this way in the first place although
I'd imagine the performance penalty on even a 486 would be shocking.

And thats why it wasnt done that way.

 

[Jim Brown]

jmfbahciv wrote

Jim Brown wrote
Charlie Gibbs wrote
(Joe Thompson) writes:
Jim Brown <jb45678@gmail.com> wrote
Seebs wrote

Back in the day, I once spent a day and a half trying to find
a vendor who was willing to sell me a non-Windows laptop.

But was so stupid that you couldnt even manage to work out that
even you should be able to add anything you liked to the hardware.

It doesn't count as a "real choice" unless it's on the same terms.
If I have to pay for Windows even though I intend to wipe the drive
and install another OS before Windows ever boots, I do not have a
real choice.

Nor is it a choice in environments where other people
are sending you files in proprietary Microsoft formats.

You can obviously use something that can handle those.

Sigh!

Heavy breathing aint gunna save your bacon.

Proprietary meant that the formats were not published.

Duh. NTFS support etc is perfectly possible anyway.

To translate that sentence for you, it meant that nobody knew what the formats were

How odd that plenty managed to work them out anyway. It aint rocket science, stupid.

and, thus, could not write code to read those formats unless they were ble$$ed by MS.

How odd that so many did anyway.

Try again.

 

[Jim Brown]

Joe Thompson wrote

Jim Brown <jb45678@gmail.com> wrote
Scott Lurndal wrote

Why should I pay microsoft for something I've no intention of ever using?

Because few bother to cater for those of you that prefer a different OS.

You might as well whine about having to pay for heated seats when
you want to use a car in a place like Hawaii that never needs them.

But I can certainly order a car that doesn't have them,

You can order anything you like, and some manufacturers refuse to
supply the car without that and certainly dont give you a price reduction.

I may just have to wait longer

It wont ever happen with some manufacturers.

(it will often be cheaper as well unless the dealer
really wants the one with heated seats off the lot
and is willing to eat the cost of them to do it).

And thats just as true of a laptop that comes with Win.

Or child restraint anchor points in your new car when
you dont have any kids and never have kids in your car.

I actually have heard several childless people complain
about safety features aimed at children driving up the cost.

Corse some fools whine like that. But you cant order the car without that, you
get to like that or lump it, just like you do with laptops that come with Win.

And you can certainly get a chinese laptop that doesnt pay MS a cent for anything anyway.

 

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:

There have been ages since I couldn't read a document. It still
happens all the time that it formats strangely. But that happens
on other MS installations as well; where the setup for the
details is different from what the original author intended.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#4 Rare Apple I computer sells for $216,000 in Londn

regarding Melinda's pages with some mainframe historic documents moving
.... there was some comment that princeton was removing her pages because
of possible hate crimes issues ... over her comments about MVS.
http://web.me.com/melinda.varian/

she had a multi-file postscript version that was many tens of megabytes
(with lots of pictures) that I converted to PDF (4mbytes) and did an
awz/kindle conversion. frequently kindle conversion becomes smaller file
.... but with all the images, the kindle version is twice as large
(9mbytes, as pdf).

other of the PDF files with figures that are line-drawings using
characters didn't convert nearly as well (and converted to smaller
files) for kindle ... with the characters in the drawings being
"flowed".

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

 

[Scott Lurndal]

"Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> writes:

Mike Pumford wrote
Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote:
greenaum wrote
Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote

Yes, the approach OS/2 took to not allowing dos apps to do anything
they liked with the hardware was certainly the way to go stability wise,

Don't see why,

Basically because you cant trap illegal behaviour
if apps can do anything they like with the hardware.

AIUI since the 386 all IO and memory access has been virtualisable

The OS doing hardware access that way is an entirely separate issue.

(there's some points in Scrabble!).

Not enough to matter, its not that uncommon a word in english.

You don't need to really give them access, just let them
try then interrupt away to a handling / emulating routine.

Not all direct hardware access involves interrupts.

Tho I suppose that routines need writing, and cycles to run in.

And is a lot harder to do when interrupts arent involved.

Then again AGAIN, if IBM hadn't done such a crappy job with their
BIOS, nobody would have needed to write straight to hardware.

Win stopped using the bios LONG ago. Its basically just used in the boot phase now.

Actually in modern PC's there is an increase in BIOS use.

Not to anything like the level seen with DOS.

Actually, probably even more so. Sometime you should try to broaden
your horizens and spend some time looking into SMM. The SMM handler
which is part of the BIOS executes _very_ frequently (and invisibly)
while Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS/2, et. al. are executing, particularly
when the power saving features of the system are in use.

And most operating system interactions with the hardware platform are
handled by the ACPI bytecode as others have noted.

scott

 

[Rod Speed]

Scott Lurndal wrote

Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote
Mike Pumford wrote
Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote:
greenaum wrote
Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote

Yes, the approach OS/2 took to not allowing dos apps to do anything
they liked with the hardware was certainly the way to go stability wise,

Don't see why,

Basically because you cant trap illegal behaviour
if apps can do anything they like with the hardware.

AIUI since the 386 all IO and memory access has been virtualisable

The OS doing hardware access that way is an entirely separate issue.

(there's some points in Scrabble!).

Not enough to matter, its not that uncommon a word in english.

You don't need to really give them access, just let them
try then interrupt away to a handling / emulating routine.

Not all direct hardware access involves interrupts.

Tho I suppose that routines need writing, and cycles to run in.

And is a lot harder to do when interrupts arent involved.

Then again AGAIN, if IBM hadn't done such a crappy job with their
BIOS, nobody would have needed to write straight to hardware.

Win stopped using the bios LONG ago. Its basically just used in the boot phase now.

Actually in modern PC's there is an increase in BIOS use.

Not to anything like the level seen with DOS.

Actually, probably even more so.

Wrong with normal ops like reads and writes to the drives etc.

Sometime you should try to broaden your horizens and spend some time looking into SMM.

No need, I know what its about.

The SMM handler which is part of the BIOS executes _very_ frequently
(and invisibly) while Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS/2, et. al. are executing,
particularly when the power saving features of the system are in use.

And most operating system interactions with the hardware platform
are handled by the ACPI bytecode as others have noted.

Pity the drive ops aint. Video in spades. Comms in spades. Etc etc etc.

 

[SG1]

"Roland Hutchinson" <my.spamtrap@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:ihmr78$m5g$22@news.eternal-september.org...

On Tue, 25 Jan 2011 14:34:44 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
On Mon, 24 Jan 2011 16:12:19 +0000, Joe Thompson wrote:

On 2011-01-24, Jim Brown <jb45678@gmail.com> wrote:
Seebs wrote
However, a "real choice" in economic terms suggests that, say, you
basically get to choose which products to buy.

And that is precisely what you got when the alternative is quite
literally free.

Not when there is a product one cannot choose not to buy.

If the only way to get a burger king burger were to buy a burger
from McD's, at which point you could throw the burger out but keep
the carton, then go to BK and have them put a free burger in the
carton, that would not be a "real choice"

Corse it would be.

Not unless McDonald's gave me a refund for the unwanted burger, so
that my free burger was actually free. -- Joe

I'm sorry, but your burger was licensed only for eating out of the
original carton. It has no value by itself.

But it didn't have a mouse ball.

Are you sure?

Yes the cooks are female mice.

--
Roland Hutchinson

He calls himself "the Garden State's leading violist da gamba,"
... comparable to being ruler of an exceptionally small duchy.
--Newark (NJ) Star Ledger ( http://tinyurl.com/RolandIsNJ )

 

[SG1]

How odd that plenty managed to work them out anyway. It aint rocket
science, stupid.

and, thus, could not write code to read those formats unless they were
ble$$ed by MS.

I remember the "Works" and "Orifice" incompatability. Strange both were M$.

 

[Joe Pfeiffer]

"Jim Brown" <jb45678@gmail.com> writes:

jmfbahciv wrote
Jim Brown wrote
Charlie Gibbs wrote
(Joe Thompson) writes:
Jim Brown <jb45678@gmail.com> wrote
Seebs wrote

Back in the day, I once spent a day and a half trying to find
a vendor who was willing to sell me a non-Windows laptop.

But was so stupid that you couldnt even manage to work out that
even you should be able to add anything you liked to the hardware.

It doesn't count as a "real choice" unless it's on the same terms.
If I have to pay for Windows even though I intend to wipe the drive
and install another OS before Windows ever boots, I do not have a
real choice.

Nor is it a choice in environments where other people
are sending you files in proprietary Microsoft formats.

You can obviously use something that can handle those.

Sigh!

Heavy breathing aint gunna save your bacon.

Proprietary meant that the formats were not published.

Duh. NTFS support etc is perfectly possible anyway.

To translate that sentence for you, it meant that nobody knew what the formats were

How odd that plenty managed to work them out anyway. It aint rocket science, stupid.

and, thus, could not write code to read those formats unless they were ble$$ed by MS.

How odd that so many did anyway.

Try again.

How much odder that even Microsoft software fails to correctly interpret
Word documents across versions.
--
As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should
be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours;
and this we should do freely and generously. (Benjamin Franklin)

 

[Patrick Scheible]

Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:

How much odder that even Microsoft software fails to correctly interpret
Word documents across versions.

That's not odd at all. That's how Microsoft forces people to upgrade
and breaks open source compatibility. Being able to get away with
that kind of stunt is one way you can know they have a monopoly.

-- Patrick

 

[Joe Thompson]

On 2011-01-25, SG1 <lostitall@the.races> wrote:

I remember the "Works" and "Orifice" incompatability. Strange both
were M$.

I think Works originally wasn't. -- Joe
--
Joe Thompson -
E-mail addresses in headers are valid. | http://www.orion-com.com/
"...the FDA takes a dim view of exploding pharmaceuticals..." -- Derek Lowe

 

[Morten Reistad]

In article <w9zwrls3564.fsf@zipcon.net>,
Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> wrote:

Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:

How much odder that even Microsoft software fails to correctly interpret
Word documents across versions.

That's not odd at all. That's how Microsoft forces people to upgrade
and breaks open source compatibility. Being able to get away with
that kind of stunt is one way you can know they have a monopoly.

In real life, the Open Source alternatives generally read the
MS formats reasonably well, and access the data inside them better
than any divergent MS version. The issues are with formatting
and making stuff look good.

I see large organisatons getting hard-earned lessons about the
storage of old documents these days.

-- mrr

 

[Rod Speed]

Morten Reistad wrote

Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> wrote
Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> wrote

How much odder that even Microsoft software fails
to correctly interpret Word documents across versions.

That's not odd at all. That's how Microsoft forces people to upgrade
and breaks open source compatibility. Being able to get away with
that kind of stunt is one way you can know they have a monopoly.

In real life, the Open Source alternatives generally read
the MS formats reasonably well, and access the data
inside them better than any divergent MS version.

Thats a lie with the lastest version from MS and the free readers in spades.

The issues are with formatting and making stuff look good.

Nope, not with the lastest version from MS and the free readers in spades.

I see large organisatons getting hard-earned lessons
about the storage of old documents these days.

No you dont. They are always readable.