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From: Peter Ceresole on 19 Feb 2010 11:17 Jim <jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: > 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' For me the goodie was the Amstrad CPC 6128. Not perfect, the key travel was just a bit short- none of that era were perfect until you got into the HEAVY metal and the EXCRUCIATING prices. But using the CPC, Protext (Aaaah!) on sideways ROM along with other utilities, and in the end CP/M on sideways ROM too, for when I used it (mainly for comms) plus 256K RAM drive for swapping; in that config I used it for years to write loads of scripts. I could type for hours on that keyboard and derive nothing but pleasure- and a working script. I tried Peter Snow's IBM XT (he and I at the time were the only two people at Lime Grove using their own computers) and it was nice enough. Good keyboard. But Wordstar (his WP) was't nearly as good as Protext and I reckon I had the better setup. At a fraction of the price. -- Peter
From: Jim on 19 Feb 2010 11:32 On 2010-02-19, Peter Ceresole <peter(a)cara.demon.co.uk> wrote: > Jim <jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: > >> > 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. >> >> That matches my experience. The idea was sound but the implementation >> was...less so. > > That's what I heard too. I liked the idea of the Microdrives, especially > as it overlapped my time with tape loading onto a ZX-81. Oh god that was > agonising... Tape loading on the Tandy model 1 wasn't much better. Mind you, at least it gave you some feedback as to what was happening. It worked like this: when you started loading a tape you got two *'s in the top right of the screen. If the rightmost one started flshing then the tape was loading ok. If it didn't then the volume was wrong. And if it turned to a 'C' then it had hit a CRC error. Rather effective. > Anyway, at one time I considered getting a QL, which used Microdrives. > But instead I bought, much older tech, a CPC 6128, which however > actually worked in a useful way in spite of being inherently jolly > slow... Thing being, they had the built in 360K SD floppy, and although > too slow and small for words, it was a revelation. It also meant they > had a built in floppy controller and I just plugged in a 750K double > sided drive. Between that and a RAM drive it was a fabulous setup. First disk drive I had was for my Tandy model 1. It stored something like 80K and sounded like something had come loose in an ironworks. > Afterwards, everybody I discussed it with said that the QL was a much > better machine than its reputation, and that Microdrives, when they > worked, were remarkably good, but that an irritating proportion of them > simply didn't work properly. The QL was really strange machine. Very good on paper, but the reality was a strange mix of good and bad. I *hated* the keyboard. And, as you say, the Microdrives were too unreliable to be trusted. Ah, now I'm getting all misty-eyed over the Memotech MTX512... 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: Peter Ceresole on 19 Feb 2010 11:36 Duncan Kennedy <nospam(a)nospam.otterson-bg.couk> wrote: > I didn't remember - it wasn't exactly IBM quality keys - perhaps Peter C > will remember - wasn't cheap. I got the Maplin one, which was a kit and *was* cheap. Can't remember exactly how much. Hundreds of soldered joints to make but I learnt to solder properly, which I could already do but this gave me a lot of practice and the joints were all okay. I made a box for it out of some thin board and plastic glue. It didn't look that bad (not that good, either, as all surfaces were flat) but the main thing was that it was *so* much nicer. -- Peter
From: David Sankey on 19 Feb 2010 11:47 In article <1je62ae.u2c9y5z9rlubN%real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid>, real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid (Rowland McDonnell) wrote: > David Sankey <David.Sankey(a)stfc.ac.uk> wrote: > > > real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid (Rowland McDonnell) wrote: > > > > > David Sankey <David.Sankey(a)stfc.ac.uk> wrote: > > > > > > > real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid (Rowland McDonnell) wrote: > > > [snip] > > > > > > > > The data's not just held at CERN. It's a *BIG* job, a vast ocean of > > > > > numbers, and it's backed up all over the globe! It's staggering! Big > > > > > enough to make even Google blink. > > > > > > > > We still lose tapes. > > > > > > CERN's got robots on the job. > > > > No, we still lose tapes. We're one of the sites providing primary > > offsite copies and take some 10% of CERN data, but tapes still break. > > Ah - /that/ kind of lossage. Righto. > > > That said, more often it's the metadata getting snarled so the data > > still exist, you just don't know where. > > > > Also we tend to have more on disk, our pool for January being 2.9PB disk > > vs 2.2PB tape. > > <goggles> Wha? Whee! > > Any idea how much power it takes to keep 2.9PB of HDDs running? I could > do an approximation, but - what's /really/ the case? These are mainly 500GB and 750GB drives. I can't remember if they are in the high power density or low power density room. We've got a few thousand CPU in there as well. The rooms aren't full yet and the current system is good for around a MW (CERN machine room is 2.7 to 2.9 MW I think). Our leccy bill over the Christmas break was �80k. The accelerators were in shutdown, they are the real power hogs. > > Disks being continuously on tend to fail more often than > > tapes, we lost some 400 disks last year. RAID saves you, file system > > loss was only 4. > > I can remember thinking that a 20MB HDD was stupidly big. I'm thinking > how stupid I was. And am. Ye gods! We put 5MB RAM in our first Mac II. My recollection is it cost somewhere north of �4k. We're currently wondering whether we can afford to put 64GB in our latest worker nodes...
From: Rowland McDonnell on 19 Feb 2010 12:56
Jim <jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: > Duncan Kennedy <nospam(a)nospam.otterson-bg.couk> wrote: > >> > >>I can remember thinking that a 20MB HDD was stupidly big. I'm thinking > >>how stupid I was. And am. Ye gods! > >> > > I still have my STE HD - all of 25MB - SCSI converted to Atari socket. > > I found the invoice a few weeks ago - 343 GBP about 20 years ago. > > > > I did a lot of work using that drive - graphics, video etc - and never > > used above 12.5 MB. > > I have a Tandy external 5MB hard disk drive. It's the size of a video > recorder. An _old_ video recorder. I've got a Mac Plus with a 20 MB HDSC. I got it long after that rig was obsolete so filled it up pretty quickly. 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 |