Trying to design low level hard disk manipulation program
|
From: jmfbahciv on 10 Oct 2006 06:48 In article <1000.508T2774T7266515(a)kltpzyxm.invalid>, "Charlie Gibbs" <cgibbs(a)kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote: >In article <egdco1$8qk_013(a)s891.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>, >jmfbahciv(a)aol.com (jmfbahciv) writes: > >> I still get culture shock when I think of that. I have a >> VAX in plastic that somebody gave JMF. I would have never >> thought that I could put a CPU on my fireplace mantle next >> to the liquid ball of snow. > >I had that happen when I built my IMSAI. The CPU chip that came >with the kit was defective. (But only slightly - conditional return >instructions were all unconditional, but aside from that it worked >fine.) I went to the local supplier and asked for a replacement. >The guy behind the counter went into the back and came out with a >tube of CPU chips, shook one out, and handed it to me. A tube full >of CPUs - now that was culture shock. Good grief, josephine. That one is worse. Instead of buying Tic-Tacs at the register, we'll be able to buy flip-flops. /BAH
From: Charles Richmond on 11 Oct 2006 10:30 FredK wrote: > > "David Wade" <g8mqw(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:d9-dncYD4srylLXYRVny3g(a)eclipse.net.uk... > > > > "Eric P." <eric_pattison(a)sympaticoREMOVE.ca> wrote in message > > news:452806c6$0$1346$834e42db(a)reader.greatnowhere.com... > > > prep(a)prep.synonet.com wrote: > > > > > > > > VMS has all of the above. > > > > > > > > Welcome to 1978. > > > > > > Yeah, its just that some aspects of WNT make me > > > pine for the fjords of VMS. > > > > > > > At the risk of getting black balled from this group, I would like to say > > that I have never looked back to VMS with any thing other than a > wonderment > > on how clunky and user unfriendly it was. > > > > Nah. I'd say while there are a few old-timers here with fond VMS memories, > very few have even seen a VMS system in a decade. > At my PPoE in 1999, they were using a microvax in a soft realtime transaction processing appication. They had a MicroVAX in house to do development on, but only two or three developers using it in timesharing mode. The lead programmer of this group had the requisite "orange wall" of manuals. 1999 is a while ago, but *not* quite a decade. Even at that time, the "orange wall" was available on a pricey CD-ROM. The MicroVAX used the crappy TK-50 tape for backup. It was slow, the cartridges were expensive, and even were difficult to find sometimes. Who came up with this cartidge tape system in DEC??? -- +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Charles and Francis Richmond richmond at plano dot net | +----------------------------------------------------------------+
From: Stephen Fuld on 11 Oct 2006 12:07 <jmfbahciv(a)aol.com> wrote in message news:egftq3$8qk_009(a)s934.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com... > In article <1000.508T2774T7266515(a)kltpzyxm.invalid>, > "Charlie Gibbs" <cgibbs(a)kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote: >>In article <egdco1$8qk_013(a)s891.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>, >>jmfbahciv(a)aol.com (jmfbahciv) writes: >> >>> I still get culture shock when I think of that. I have a >>> VAX in plastic that somebody gave JMF. I would have never >>> thought that I could put a CPU on my fireplace mantle next >>> to the liquid ball of snow. >> >>I had that happen when I built my IMSAI. The CPU chip that came >>with the kit was defective. (But only slightly - conditional return >>instructions were all unconditional, but aside from that it worked >>fine.) I went to the local supplier and asked for a replacement. >>The guy behind the counter went into the back and came out with a >>tube of CPU chips, shook one out, and handed it to me. A tube full >>of CPUs - now that was culture shock. > > Good grief, josephine. That one is worse. Instead of buying > Tic-Tacs at the register, we'll be able to buy flip-flops. I heard yesterday that last year, the world produced more "transistors" than grains of rice, and that each transistor costs less than a grain of rice. -- - Stephen Fuld e-mail address disguised to prevent spam
From: Brian Inglis on 11 Oct 2006 21:34 On Wed, 11 Oct 2006 09:30:17 -0500 in alt.folklore.computers, Charles Richmond <richchas(a)comcast.net> wrote: >FredK wrote: >> >> "David Wade" <g8mqw(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message >> news:d9-dncYD4srylLXYRVny3g(a)eclipse.net.uk... >> > >> > "Eric P." <eric_pattison(a)sympaticoREMOVE.ca> wrote in message >> > news:452806c6$0$1346$834e42db(a)reader.greatnowhere.com... >> > > prep(a)prep.synonet.com wrote: >> > > > >> > > > VMS has all of the above. >> > > > >> > > > Welcome to 1978. >> > > >> > > Yeah, its just that some aspects of WNT make me >> > > pine for the fjords of VMS. >> > At the risk of getting black balled from this group, I would like to say >> > that I have never looked back to VMS with any thing other than a >> wonderment >> > on how clunky and user unfriendly it was. >> Nah. I'd say while there are a few old-timers here with fond VMS memories, >> very few have even seen a VMS system in a decade. >> >At my PPoE in 1999, they were using a microvax in a soft realtime >transaction processing appication. On a uVAX it must have positively flabby; and how can you combine realtime (on a uVAX?!) with TP (on a uVAX?!) in any meaningful sense? >The lead programmer of this group had the >requisite "orange wall" of manuals. 1999 is a while ago, but *not* >quite a decade. Even at that time, the "orange wall" was available >on a pricey CD-ROM. What was CD-ROM support and access like on a uVAX? >The MicroVAX used the crappy TK-50 tape for backup. It was slow, >the cartridges were expensive, and even were difficult to find >sometimes. Who came up with this cartidge tape system in DEC??? Someone who realized that management would go for cheap and slow as long as it was called a "tape drive" and they never had to deal with the results directly. Remember Digital also offered the TU58 DECtape II, a QIC DC150 data cartridge drive attached to a serial line: that must have been even slower, and I've no idea of the speed; most PC systems attached them to diskette controllers; never experienced one myself, thank $DEITY. Of course, the system manager probably ran mainly incremental backups onto it, kept months of backup tapes around, did a full backup of applications and data only maybe once a month and kept them around for years, and kept all the backup logs around on disk, so they wouldn't ever have to refer to the tapes unless they were really up the creek. Then management wonder why their costs are so high, buying more tapes every month, and adding disks every year? -- Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada Brian.Inglis(a)CSi.com (Brian[dot]Inglis{at}SystematicSW[dot]ab[dot]ca) fake address use address above to reply
From: Andrew Reilly on 11 Oct 2006 23:51
On Thu, 12 Oct 2006 01:34:09 +0000, Brian Inglis wrote: > Remember Digital also offered the TU58 DECtape II, a QIC DC150 data > cartridge drive attached to a serial line: that must have been even > slower, and I've no idea of the speed; most PC systems attached them > to diskette controllers; never experienced one myself, thank $DEITY. I had quite an epiphany about the relationship between storage and communications, years ago: I was doing a project on an old (even then) 6802 system that used a pair of 8" floppies for main storage. I had occasion to check out the floppy disk controller board one day, and realized that I recognized the main chip as an HDLC UART, rather than one of the commonly available floppy disc controller parts. The head stepper control was separate, in discrete logic, but data transfer within a track was just communications at something like a 250kb/s data rate. Sector ID was just packet header overhead... Cheers, -- Andrew |