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From: Jim on 19 Feb 2010 06:22 On 2010-02-19, Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie(a)sometimes.sessile.org> wrote: >> >>That matches my experience. The idea was sound but the implementation >>was...less so. > > I don't know what you're talking about. Who couldn't love a storage > media that gets more capacious as you use it? Look, I still _use_ tape drives in my day-to-day work. Mostly Travan and DAT, but a few older DC6150 stuff as well. I bloody hate the lot of them. They're all One Big Point Of Failure. Jim -- http://www.ursaMinorBeta.co.uk http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK "Get over here. Now. Might be advisable to wear brown trousers and a shirt the colour of blood." Malcolm Tucker, "The Thick of It"
From: Jaimie Vandenbergh on 19 Feb 2010 06:33 On Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:22:09 +0000, Jim <jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: >On 2010-02-19, Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie(a)sometimes.sessile.org> wrote: >>> >>>That matches my experience. The idea was sound but the implementation >>>was...less so. >> >> I don't know what you're talking about. Who couldn't love a storage >> media that gets more capacious as you use it? > >Look, I still _use_ tape drives in my day-to-day work. Mostly Travan and >DAT, but a few older DC6150 stuff as well. > >I bloody hate the lot of them. They're all One Big Point Of Failure. I gave up on tapes when hard drives got cheaper than comparable size DLTs. I gave up on tapes even more four years ago when I got out of the sysadmin business. Although there's still a couple of tape units kicking around in the basement, I don't think I have anything I can plug them into any more. Cheers - Jaimie -- "So overall I don't think either you or I got it right, which is still doing better than average for a Usenet exchange" -- J Nebus, rasfw
From: Rowland McDonnell on 19 Feb 2010 07:04 David Sankey <David.Sankey(a)stfc.ac.uk> wrote: > real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid (Rowland McDonnell) wrote: > > > 2ns is `accurate to 2 feet'. Ish. (1' is 1ns at lightspeed, ish) > > Yip. I suppose I should have expected you to be fully aware of the fact. > > Are you really getting `time on the ground' or `time where the > > satellites are', or what? > > Time on the ground (why you need 4 satellites rather than 3). Ah! I had an idea it might be that cunning. Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Rowland McDonnell on 19 Feb 2010 07:04 Jim <jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: [snip] > I was fairly ok with the ZX80/81's keyboard (also the Atari 400). I *hated* > the Spectrum's - somehow the pretence at a full keyboard was somehow worse > (to me) than the membrane keyboards. It felt more horrible, but I could work it better - c.f. ZX81s. > The best keyboards of that era (IMHO) were on the Tandy model 1/2/3 > machines. Good, full sized, full travel jobbies whose only problem (on the > model 1 at least) was a tendency towards bounce - you'd type 'z' and > sometimes get 'zzz' Did you never try the early IBM PC keyboards? They date from that era. Best computer keyboards that I've ever met, some of them. Some of them were even better than the keyboard on my mother's IBM Selectric typewriter, and that was fantastic; but I met an IBM PC keyboard one day that was so incredibly gorgeous it very nearly gave me the horn. Well, maybe not quite, but still... > Commodore VIC20 and C64s were pretty good as well, if a bit 'heavy' for my > tastes. I much preferred the BBC Micro keyboard for typing on, although those Commodore keyboards seemed `higher quality' somehow. Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Rowland McDonnell on 19 Feb 2010 07:04
Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > Rowland McDonnell wrote: > > Woody<usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > > > >> Rowland McDonnell<real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > >> > >>> Jim<jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: > > [snip] > > > >>> I never heard that Sinclair shipped faulty /computers/[1]. Okay, so the > >>> shipping dates were always a nonsense. > >>> > >>> [1] The QL microdrives were trouble for some. But aside from that? > >>> All the computers were competently designed and worked properly and if > >>> they didn't, it was just some re-soldering work that needed doing and > >>> Sinclair would sort that out promptly and with a smile if you asked 'em. > >> > >> Spectrums weren't. I used to have a nice sideline in one job fixing > >> spectrums. I would do about 10 a month. > > > > What broke them? > > > >> i just needed to keep a stack of > >> two transistors (it was actually just one that would originally go, but > >> sometimes it would take the other one out. > > > > So what made 'em die? I never met a Speccy that died that way, and I > > knew a lot of people who owned 'em. > > Normally it was vibration of the unit from typing when there was a ram > (or other) pack fitted to the back. The internal PSU componants had no > protection on them and one of the transistors would just pop. <puzzled> What electrical activity caused the problem, then? > One diode > or a couple of resistors would have prevented it happening I've added that sort of thing to stop things going pop. There was a time when I could make static sensitive kit blow up by looking at it. Honest - or so it seemed, to all observing. > but it stayed > the same all the time sinclair had them (I think it was fixed in one of > the plus 128 models, but by then the world had moved to 16bit machines > and the spectrum didn't have the quantities it did). Uhuh. > On the plus side, it was possible to fix them in a matter of minutes as > there wasn't much holding them together! There's more holding a ZX Spectrum together than holds my Performa 475 together - that thing doesn't even have a screw to hold the lid on! > >> The microdrives were pretty well trouble for all. > > > > Based on tried and tested technology, though. The LEO had tape drives > > like that back in the 1950s. > > Tried and trusted technology doesn't help if the item itself doesn't > work. The technology was not flawed in itself, as I picked up some third > party drives that worked in a similar way that were actually ok, but the > sinclair units didn't. Indeed - but the point is that they suffered from the standard Sinclair problem of `A bloody good basic idea implemented with a usually okay design but made badly from duff parts' rather than `being fundamentally a really bad idea'. Sinclair really didn't have a clue about production engineering, and he really needed to have had one. Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking |