tenser wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
My clicky FOCUS 2001 keyboard - I miss that to this day!
Hey! I had one of those; loved that thing!
Hi there. I'm scarface from New Zealand. I'm pretty new to BBS's, mainly j been playing the games (poorly haha). I've also been lurking the message b
Hi there. I'm scarface from New Zealand. I'm pretty new to BBS's, mainly j
I'm a child of the late 80's, brought up with a mix of DOS, Debian, and va window's starting from 3.11. I've gotten to know a lot more about computer ever since, but always know there is heaps more out there to learn.
In recent years, I mainly use linux, but dabble in other OS's in VM's. I'v also made a decent effort at my own OS for the x86, purely for the learnin opportunity of learning x86 assembly.
Anyhow, that's me. Using SyncTERM from ubuntu. Happy for recommendations o other clients to enjoy this though!
From what I remember, it wasn't common practice for CPUs until Intel start their Core i3/i5/i7 line (in 2009, I think?) and they started making new versions every year. I remember with the 286, 386, etc., it was maybe 3-4 years between new generations of a CPU, and in the meantime, you'd mainly see faster versions (higher megahertz) and different variants sometimes, s as SX and DX, etc..
Digital Man wrote to Nightfox <=-And don't forget -
3. Swapping out the UART chips on the MB (or expansion serial card) to use the high-speed 16550 UARTs, to properly use 19200/33600,56K modem speeds.
4. On my first PC (a Kaypro PC), I upgraded the 8088 CPU to a VIC-20
and it was a noticeable speed increase.
6. Massive, complicated batch files to run a mailer and BBS package for FidoNet. For me it was FrontDoor (and later Intermail) and PCBoard. LOTS of errorlevels and branches for mail/callers/doors/maintenance. I still have my masterpiece batch file that made it all work together.
Ahhhhh - the good old days!! :-)
hyjinx wrote to Gamgee <=-
4. On my first PC (a Kaypro PC), I upgraded the 8088 CPU to a VIC-20
and it was a noticeable speed increase.
I think you mean V20 :) A VIC-20 is quite a different thing!
6. Massive, complicated batch files to run a mailer and BBS package for FidoNet. For me it was FrontDoor (and later Intermail) and PCBoard.
LOTS of errorlevels and branches for mail/callers/doors/maintenance. I still have my masterpiece batch file that made it all work together.
Ahhhhh - the good old days!! :-)
I was just about to say the same!
(I am writing this on an IBM 5160 XT though!)
8088 was the OG IBM PC CPU and that was a subset of the 1979-based 8086. I have a feeling that the 80186 was fairly early too, but that never saw much use. The 80286 was 1982 IIRC. The 80386 was 1985. The 80486 was 1989. Pentium was 1993, P2 1997, P3 1999, and then it started to change. This is around the time when I started to lose interest in PC hardware.
Hi there. I'm scarface from New Zealand. I'm pretty new to BBS's, mai
Hi from Wellington :)
Very cool that you got into assembly. I always found x86 a massive PITA
to be honest, just couldn't get the hang of doing everything in reverse. Coding in x86 real mode as well... urghh. How did you find it? What
tools did you use, and what books/resources did you use (i.e. did it
make learning it any easier?)
SyncTerm is great. NetRunner is probably the only other one that comes close, but SyncTerm is mostly what people these days use.
tenser wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
My clicky FOCUS 2001 keyboard - I miss that to this day!
Hey! I had one of those; loved that thing!
I think it was Northgate that made a similar keyboard. Clicky, but with
a light feel. I think it helped that I was single when I had it - with
my office adjacent open to my living room, I tried bringing out my
trusty IBM model M keyboard and was quickly vetoed.
I'm typing on a Logitech MX Master now, miss the klicky bits.
Re: Re: Hi all!
By: hyjinx to Nightfox on Sun Sep 07 2025 09:35 pm
Pentium was 1993, P2 1997, P3 1999, and then it started to change. Th around the time when I started to lose interest in PC hardware.
When you say you lost interest in PC hardware, did you switch to Mac? And around 2006 or so, Apple started using Intel processors for the Mac, so it basically using PC hardware too..
When computers started to become more about tools rather than objects of fun and tinkering. That's probably when I lost interest in the hardware.
By: hyjinx to Nightfox on Thu Sep 11 2025 09:01 pm
When computers started to become more about tools rather than objects fun and tinkering. That's probably when I lost interest in the hardwa
When was that? I feel like they're often still for fun and tinkering. I like they've been both for fun and tools for a long time.. You can still your own desktop PC if you want to, and these days, there are also DIY pro you can make with a Raspberry Pi board & similar things - There are a lot fun projects you can work on. And there are still good games for computer
Normal consumer computing (so, I wouldn't consider the RaspberryPI part of that) was fun and interesting. Every other month, you were wondering what new amazing tech was coming along - new graphics like the advances from 4 colours to 16, to 256, to millions, new CPUs which were significant marks better than the ones before. Exciting new operating systems that did things that no others did before it in some way or another. Untold amounts of tinkering, just for tinkerings sake.
Now Windows has been amounted to a big pile of advertising, CPUs are all pretty much meh, all the same, Graphics cards, whilst insane, are all just doing the same thing, just faster, PCs encouraged tinkering and upgrading, different computer types still existed on the market - Acorn Archimedes, Macintosh PPC/64k, Atari ST, Amiga and the 8 bits before them. Linux has been turned into a big lot of boring blah - enterprise kubernetes containerised IoT function deployers.
hyjinx wrote to Nightfox <=-
Now Windows has been amounted to a big pile of advertising, CPUs are
all pretty much meh, all the same, Graphics cards, whilst insane, are
all just doing the same thing, just faster, PCs encouraged tinkering
and upgrading, different computer types still existed on the market - Acorn Archimedes, Macintosh PPC/64k, Atari ST, Amiga and the 8 bits
before them. Linux has been turned into a big lot of boring blah - enterprise kubernetes containerised IoT function deployers.
I miss the days of Audacious Hardware Design. Give me a MIPS-powered
Silicon Graphics box in some fever-dream color, Pee-Wee's
playhouse-derived case design, and a kick-ass keyboard. Or a Sun Sparc.
Or one of those industrial design looking IBM RS/6000s.
tenser wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
I miss the days of Audacious Hardware Design. Give me a MIPS-powered
Silicon Graphics box in some fever-dream color, Pee-Wee's
playhouse-derived case design, and a kick-ass keyboard. Or a Sun Sparc.
Or one of those industrial design looking IBM RS/6000s.
No love for DEC? Their later Alpha boxes looked pretty slick.
In 2000, I ran a company off of a Sun Enterprise 250 - Purple, gray,
big vents, a big door with a key... we replaced it with a bunch of
white boxes running Linux. :(
hyjinx wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
Now it's a sea of beige, and a sea of beige operating systems.
tenser wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
No love for DEC? Their later Alpha boxes looked pretty slick.
A friend of mine couldn't bear to see a DEC Alpha being tossed out at work, so he brought it home. It ran NT 3.51 and IIS for way longer than
it should have - but it would not die.
When computers started to become more about tools rather than objects of fun and tinkering. That's probably when I lost interest in the hardware.
Now it's a sea of beige, and a sea of beige operating systems. Even
Linux has ceded ownership largely to a few big corps when it comes down
to it, excluding the kernel, for the most part anyway. But even that has parts coded by IBM, Microsoft, Google and others. Nothing is free any more. No more cathedral and the bazaar.
Why not upstream all of that? A great question, with a few different answers. One is that some of it couldn't; some stuff had been done
in collaboration with a vendor, under NDA, and Google was legally
barred from sending that code upstream. Some was because, even
though there was no significant intellectual property concerns, code
might be so Google-specific that it didn't make sense to send upstream; much of that is historical baggage, but getting rid of it takes time.
But probably the biggest reason was that it wasn't economically viable
for a lot of stuff. Google might make a change that was a win, but
for a specific, constrained use-case. It may be cool to upstream, but when it's sent someone looks at it and says, "yeah, this is neat, but
it only works for n=1; you should generalize it for any n." Except
that doing that generalization might be 10x the work of the current
patch: the engineer can't justify the investment because it provides
no additional value to Google, so it's easier to just float the patch.
Of course, over time, that decision is more expensive than doing the
work and getting the thing upstreamed, but we're talking about a 5-10
year timeline here.
This is a really interesting insight. I bet more people would like to
know the inner workings of contribution in the corporate fed open source world. If you'd ever consider wrapping this convo into dialogue that
you'd be willing to share to a wider audience, I'd love to interview you for the YouTube channel. Let me know if you're interested.
Heh, I don't know if you really want to interview me; I'm pretty
boring. But I'd be happy to chat with you some time if you'd like
to explore further.
Heh, I don't know if you really want to interview me; I'm pretty boring. But I'd be happy to chat with you some time if you'd like
to explore further.
Hehe, I disagree. You are definitley not boring. At least to the right target audience ;P
Seriously though, you seem to have a wealth of knowledge and experience and it's an absolute privilege to be able to get your insights into things.
I'd definitly watch an interview with you.
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