Stop Microsoft
Operating Systems => Linux and UNIX => Topic started by: WaWAR_FA on 1 July 2002, 06:59
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l33t \/3ry l33t.
|-|yp3r|)4t4 |3la(|< & \/\/|-|it3 310 l4pt()p r|_||\||\|i|\|g r3|)|-|4t 7.1 66|\/||-|z 16|\/|3g r4|\/|.
try t|-|i5 4t |-|()|\/|3 i |)4r3 y()|_|!!!
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My uncle had a stacy II atari laptop. It wasnt running linux though... it recently died in a flood.
Are you actually running X on it?? I couldnt get redhat to install on anything with less than 32 MB of RAM. I had to upgrade my server from 16 to 32 MB. FreeBSD will run on 5 MB of RAM (actually it will run on 4MB, but the installer needs 5MB)
[ June 30, 2002: Message edited by: Master of Reality / Bob ]
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To the "1337 h4x0r" challenged:
l33t \/3ry l33t.
|-|yp3r|)4t4 |3la(|< & \/\/|-|it3 310 l4pt()p r|_||\||\|i|\|g r3|)|-|4t 7.1 66|\/||-|z 16|\/|3g r4|\/|.
try t|-|i5 4t |-|()|\/|3 i |)4r3 y()|_|!!!
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Elite, very elite.
Hyperdata black and white 310 (dunno) laptop running Red Hat 7.1 66mhz 16meg ram.
Try this at home, I dare you!!!
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4t4ri
i |3()\/\/ |33f()r3 y()|_|r |_||\|(l35 l33t 5|<ill5
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Agreed, 0ld$k00l in teh house! Ok I heard someone mention about Linux running on a Cray? Cray, isn't that some pretty old system? What is the record for the oldest and weakest system to ever run Linux correctly on?
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either the i386, or the m68k.
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80286 surely! Or maybe even the 8086 or 80186, does anybody know what the earliest intel chip it will run on is? it was designed on a 386 was it not, but would possibly run on earlier kit if you got the right stuff...
will linux run on those old home/toy computers with no hard drive from the eighties? You know like Acorns, Atari STs, Amigas and so on...
[ July 01, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]
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i though linux was a 32 bit os only
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there is a linux version which runs on a commodore 64 iirc
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\/3ry ()l|) |>i3(3 ()f 5|-||t.
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j|-|5t g()t |)()|\|3 (|-|3(|<||\|g.
|\/\/45 \/\/r()|\|g.
|t \/\/45 t|-|3 /\/\4|\|(|-|35t3r /\/\4r|< 1.
(r34t3|) ||\| 1948, 4|34|\||)()|\|3|) ||\| 1951.
r35t4rt3|) ||\| 1986 4|\||) \/\/45 r3/\/\4|)3 t() r|_||\| |_||\||x.
|<||)5, t|-||5 \/\/45 4|\| ()l|) |3()x.
64|< t()t4l 5|>4(3.
|3|_|t |t |)||) \/\/()r|<.
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christ! that must be harder to write than it is to read! please! have mercy!
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Well on other forums they would flame the shit out of you and say fuck you and ban you. ;)
Ok lesse /attempts to decrypt
"Oldest known computer running Linux was a Radio Shack TRS 80 model.
Very old piece of shit."
Damn word for word 100pct! My 31337 5|<!11z r0><0r.
Second translation
"Just got done checking.
I was wrong.
It was the Manchester Mark 1.
Created in 1948, abandoned in 1951.
Restarted in 1986 and was remapped to run Linux.
Kids, this was an old box.
64 k total space.
But it did work."
Hmmm amazing. I heard this in another thread and was in shock.
1)Explain how they made it work
2)What exactly is this Manchester thing anyways? A desktop sized computer?
3)What version of Linux?
4)Who did this marvelous feat?
5)What implications does this have for Linux on modern day PC's?
6)How is it an OS that can be jury rigged to run on a Manchester, does not have a Windows program emulator that is near flawless? That's like saying "we can send a man to the moon, but we can't..."
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(http://www.thocp.net/hardware/pictures/whirlwind_3_small.jpg)
1948 Manchester Mark I (1st stored-program digital computer), Whirlwind at MIT
(http://www.thocp.net/hardware/pictures/manchester_mark1.gif)
Manchester Mark 1 1944
both pictures taken from this excellent page here. (http://www.thocp.net/hardware/supercomputers.htm)
Here's a little page with instructions for using a Manchester Mar 1 (http://www.computer50.org/mark1/program.html) I have yet to see anything that suggests it can run linux however, also it looks as if it was around since 1935 or thereabouts, certainly earlier than 1948...
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the drum drives were all converted to tape by some guys at mit in like 86 or 87 then forgotten until 95 or 96.
some other guys took the whole thing and repaired it to run non gui linux.
im not typing in l33t5|>34|< because that crap is really hard on my brain.
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l33t l4ngu4ge i5 l4m3 d00d...
Normal English will do just fine...
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or normal dutch! ;)
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1939 was the Atanasoff-Berry in iowa
manchester mark1 was in england in 1948
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While cleaning out the basement, I found a Commodore 64 with a 5 1/4 disk drive AND a casette tape drive (WOW). I will send it to you for $2,746.32 if you will also pay the shipping and handling. You could either experiment with it to see if it will run some version of Linux, or you could take it to the folks on "Antiques Roadshow" and see what the Sothby people might assume that it would bring at auction. By the way, it would also make an attractive doorstop.
Does the fun never stop?
Sleeping Dog
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I have two commodore 64s in my basement right now. It wouldnt be worth anything on the antique roadshow because so many of them were made. You can run LUnix on C64, it is based on windows... AH HA HA HA HA HA HA, yeah right!!! seriously, its on Unix (of course)
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PS
There is still some "argument" as to what was truly the first "computer" as we now think of the word. There was a gay guy who worked for British intelligence during WWII named Turing (sp) who developed a machine for cracking the German Enigma code. The brilliant little queen killed himself a few years later after getting popped on a morals charge by the Bobbies.
There was also ENIAC, which was developed during WWII on money from Uncle Sam. Its original purpose was to electronically calculate the trajectory of land based and naval artillery shells more rapidly than the mechanical calculators could do it,....thus increasing accuracy and rate of fire. It never went on line during that war because the war was over before they really got it to work right.
I had the distinct pleasure (?) in 1968 of taking a pioneer class at my high school called "Computer Programming" We learned a language called ITTRAN (father of FORTRAN). It ran on a vacuum tube computer that occupied the entire basement of a high-rise bank building (nearly an acre). The machine had the equiv. of 64 meg of RAM. All programs had to be quadruple checked by 4 different people before we could run them because, if anything put it in a loop (like factoring the square root of 2) they would have to shut it down to stop it. A shut-down meant that the techs had to go through the entire system and visually/manually check every vacuum tube in the system on restart.
I would be willing to bet three Oreos that there is still some brilliant old SOB out there who could trim enough fat off of Linux to make it run on that thing. Only problem is.....that old computer has probably now been recycled into at least 60 Chevy's that have already made it to the junkyard.
Keep the Fourth
Sleeping Dog
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64 MEGS is tons of room for unix. LUnix runs on a C64 with only 64K of memory.
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Baby Doll..........
I think that those folks heated the entire building building (30 floors) with that thing during the winter months.
We were just little high school students, but when we left that place, we glowed in the dark.
SD
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By the way....I meant 64 K.
I have not used the "K" in so long that I have forgotten where it is.
Sleeping Dog
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quote:
Originally posted by Sleeping Dog:
I had the distinct pleasure (?) in 1968 of taking a pioneer class at my high school called "Computer Programming" We learned a language called ITTRAN (father of FORTRAN).
That's interesting. Do you know where I can find out more info on this? I programmed professionally on mainframes using FORTRAN 66 and 77. I thought FORTRAN 1 was orginally developed from scratch in the mid 50's.
[ July 01, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]
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When we took the class in 1968, they were shuffling all of their data from the vacuum tube computer to a new IBM mainframe on an upper floor that used a tape drive system with an air brake (WOW). That is why we could get "Time" on their computer late at night.
I doubt if much documentation about the class exists at my high school because back then, few people had heard of or even cared about computers.
The bank has changed ownership at least four times that I know of in the last 34 years and I doubt that anyone there remembers the old machine, much less, cares or would want to admit it. However, I will ask around. There may be some old fart in a nursing home somewhere who would love to talk about it. If so, I will take a video cam with me. Historical stuff like this should not be lost forever.
Sleeping Dog
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Yeah, I programmed FORTRAN on the IBM 3090. It was water cooled, we had over 100,000 9-track 1/2" tapes. A huge room full of disk drives. The drives were oil filled and I believe held around 360MB of data, but the cabinets were about 6 feet tall by 2 feet wide by about 4 feet deep. But, the thing could process some data!
I was more interested in the language that you said you used. I had never heard of it and like I said, I had heard FORTRAN was developed from scratch, not derived from another language.
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Considering the time frame and the very few people who were really working on this stuff back then, ITTRAN may have been mutually exclusive to a manufactuer. You have made me want to set the Wayback Machine and detail this experience in more detail.
My most vivid memory of the "commputer tech's" there at the time was that they looked like they had been crawling around under my car. (nasty)
Most of the commands were FORTRAN'ish but there were some stop codes that were a bit quirky. Hey....that was a long time ago on a planet far, far away.
I will still try to investigate the past. You have tweaked my curiosity about what they tried to teach to us.
SD
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Sleeping Dog, you took this shit in High school?! Geez some people here are old, im still just off the skateboard. Although im too heavy to use a skateboard correctly. That's for those tiny guys. ;)
Oh and Linux on C64? If you got one hanging around then go put Newcomer on it. www.newcomer.hu (http://www.newcomer.hu) (http://smile.gif)
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what about babbage?
he had a pre-computer back in like 1884.
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quote:
There is still some "argument" as to what was truly the first "computer" as we now think of the word. There was a gay guy who worked for British intelligence during WWII named Turing (sp) who developed a machine for cracking the German Enigma code. The brilliant little queen killed himself a few years later after getting popped on a morals charge by the Bobbies.
How many geniuses have met a premature tragic end, due to their socially backward society, eh?
As to the first computer, the first time the concept was used was during the French Revolution. The bureaucracy required to turn the entire nation around, calculating tax, and so on, and all the numerous details that the new regime demanded required a huge amount of calculation. This was acheived by hiring a large number of accountants and arranging them all strictly in physical order, with each one having a specific task to do, and all those with like tasks arranged just so, in order to get the massive efficiency required.
These men were called computers, and it is said that Babbage witnessed this arrangement first hand, which gave him the idea for his difference engine, some info about which can be found here (http://home.clara.net/mycetes/babbage/), and which he got to try out when the Astronomical Society of London commissioned a table of the stars to be worked out.
Here's a good history of the difference engine by the way (http://home.clara.net/mycetes/babbage/histde1.htm). It was never finished, due to money and, again, social circumstances.
I'm sure there must have been other independent thinkers who thought along the same lines, oblivious to the work of Babbage and Herschel. For instance, were the stone circles of Europe really big calculators? Utilising the alignment of the heavenly bodies for mathematical purposes? Who knows.
(http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~pl1/kuvat/difference.engine.2.gif)(http://www.fathom.com/media/2678_babbage3_SM.jpg)
Difference Engine No 2. and Difference Engine No 1.
Link to image (http://www.informallearning.com/photos/South%20Kensington,%20UK/005%20Babbage's%20Difference%20Engine.JPG)
Link to image (http://www.informallearning.com/photos/South%20Kensington,%20UK/005%20Babbage's%20Difference%20Engine.JPG)
Links to pictures of the Difference Engine No 2.
[ July 02, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]
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quote:
Originally posted by lazygamer:
Oh and Linux on C64? If you got one hanging around then go put Newcomer on it.
Not "Linux", but "Lunix" (notice the "u"). He got me on this one too. Lunix is not Linux but it is an attempt at a UNIX like OS.
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I think the first programmable computer was built in England.
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You are spot-on right about Babbage, Calum. I should have been more specific and said "electronic computer" when referring to Alan Turing's "Colossus". There was even a mechanical "calculating machine" used, I believe, in the 1900 US census that employed punch cards that were stacked and "read". The US Navy also used a machine on submarines during WWII for aiming torpedoes that was part mechanical and part electronic in its computing function.
By the way, Void Man. I was chatting with one of my old High School chums who was in that class with me. He pointed out that I had misspelled IITRAN. The IIT part of it stood for Illinois Institute of Technology. Prior to our getting time on the machine at the bank, we had to send the programs there to be run. There was a 10 day turn around to get the results back in the mail.
Sleeping Dog
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Back when "snail mail" was as fast as electronic messaging. (http://smile.gif) Very interesting story. Thanks for sharing!
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One other funny thing my friend reminded about....the computer at the bank stored information by literally punching holes in a metal tape. The thing sounded like a freight train.
Sleeping Dog
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First: Voidmain; I've got acouple of books here that belonged to my cousin (now deceased). Their titles are: "Systems Programming" by John J. Donovan pub. 1972 and"Digital Logic and Computer Design" by M. Morris Mano pub.1979; they"re complete Greek (or geek) to me, I never got the basics.
Second: When I was in the Navy, I knew a Gunners Mate that was older 'n God- a real 30-year man; he told me that during the '50's the U.S.S. Iowa did some tests on the fire control system for the 16-inch rifles. The fire control system was a big calculator that took about a billion bits of information about the firing problem (i.e. ships speed, sea conditions, target speed etc, etc.) chewed on it, and spit out a solution. This guy claimed that at 30 miles, the Iowa could place 9- 16 inch rounds in a 50 yard circle. Now, as far as I'm concerned, that's a pretty sophisticated analog computer.
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I once visited the battleship North Carolina off the coast of North Carolina. Here it is: http://www.battleshipnc.com/ (http://www.battleshipnc.com/)
[ July 03, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]
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I was going to mention the battleship computers earlier but I refrained. However, now that you brought it up....The Iowa class battleships had a mechanical computer used for fire control that employed gears, cams and rotating dials to resolve a fire solution. Many of the older battleships (Including the Tennessee, Alabama and North Carolina) were retro-fitted with this same mechanical computer.
In the battle of Surragao (sp) Straits (Phillipines 1945), an auxillary force of old battleships that had been relegated to pre-invasion duty just "happened" to catch the last vestiages of the Japanese Navy trying to sneak in the back door. Admiral Oldendorf employed the tactic of "crossing the T" with that fleet of old boats and blew everything except a light cruiser and a destroyer out of the water. They also had the advantage of what was then called advanced fire control radar used in conjunction with the mechanical fire control computers. It was also probably the last "battleship against battleship" engagement that the world will ever see.
For the sake of the upcomming holiday I will add this note.....Five of the big boats under Oldendorf's command had previously been sunk or badly damaged at Pearl Harbour.
Talk about sweet revenge......
Sleeping Dog
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quote:
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There is still some "argument" as to what was truly the first "computer" as we now think of the word. There was a gay guy who worked for British intelligence during WWII named Turing (sp) who developed a machine for cracking the German Enigma code. The brilliant little queen killed himself a few years later after getting popped on a morals charge by the Bobbies.
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How many geniuses have met a premature tragic end, due to their socially backward society, eh?
Again you are right, Calum, about misunderstood people. I am not gay and I do not understand the behavior, but the travesty done to Turing, who should have been celebrated as a hero, is rivaled only by the way the US Government treated the principals of the Manhattan project during the McCarthay era. (Despite the fact that the Rosenbergs were as guilty as sin.)
Witch hunts really only condemn the hunters.
Sleeping Dog
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I should really dust off my C64, rewire the disk drive (a loose connection on the switch) and play with it. Then i should find a keyboard for my C128 and play with it too.
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Yo Bob.......the infancy of gaming included the C-128.
She and I used to lie naked in bed with one of those C-128's on a crisp Sunday morning and try to get out of some cyber issue that we had gotten ourselves into.
She got her degree in programming. I got the bills from the credit card commpany.
(By the way.....it was worth it!)
I wrote some BASIC stuff that would run on a C-64. The last programming that I did was a routine that spit everything out to a large spreadsheet plotted on an HP pen plotter. It informed each tenaant in as rather large building about their rent obligastions regarding the space that they both occupied and shared. It was all math and cooked pretty fast.
The funny part was that, at the time, I personally only had a printer that could do 8 1/2 by 11 sheets. We taped them together and had large (E-sized) sepias run. We manually cleaned up the sepias, ran blue line copies and distributed them to the client(s). They paid - we got paid. (See there....problem solved).
But Damn....that E sized spreadsheet sure looked impressive.
Amazing what you can do when you are poor and need to eat.
Sleeping Dog
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this has turned out to be a really interesting thread!
re: the US 1900 census - I am surprised (although i suppose i shouldn't be) to hear of one such as that so early, were IBM responsible? Did they exisdt then? I have a feeling they may have been starting up around that time, and i saw a book once about IBM being hired by the German nazi party in the thirties to provide not only computers, but also technicians so that the nazis could conduct an accurate census (ie so they could easily check out everybody's personal details and kill everybody they didn't like the sound of).
The book was saying that IBM should take responsibility but i reckon that there's nobody at IBM now that was involved, so why worry?
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I am not really sure when IBM was founded. I do know that they made mechanical calculators in the 30's and 40's. During WWII they even produced 30 cal. M1 carbine rifles. In the early 50's, they produced the first practical electric typewriters. Those machines put them on the big corporate map even before they got into the computer biz.
I worked for IBM in the early 70's. Strange company. On one hand, their R&D was on the bloody edge of technology.....on the other, they released some really stupid (in retrospect)products.
I attended the "roll-out" for the mag-card typewriters. I was seated at the table with three VP's and the Regional Director of Sales. After watching the propaganda movie about these new typewriters, the RDS posed the following question to the VP's.
"How do you expect us to go out there and sell these things. People are going to look at us and laugh. Then they will tell us that they can go down here to Radio Shack and buy five TRS-80 computers with printers for the money that we are asking for just one of these typewriters. A TRS-80 will run circles around this thing."
One of the VP's countered with, "You aren't just selling a product....you are selling the IBM reputation for service and support."
The RDS then said "Yeah right.....business people out there are not that gullible. They are going to tell my salesmen that for the same money we want for a year's service contract on these things, they can afford to throw away three TRS-80's if they break and go buy new ones."
The RDS was prophetically right. Those machines were in the base line of IBM office products for a shorter time than anything else that they ever built. Not long after that came the Commodores, Atari's, Apples and then the XT in the eighties. The rest is history.
I began subscribing to the IBM Journal of Research and Development in 1973. Back then, they were trying to perfect a computing technology called "bubble memory". Last year I saw a story on Discovery Channel about IBM's "new bubble memory technology" and how it may soon revolutionize computing. I had to laugh out loud. Some person or people in the R&D department have made a 30 year career out of bubble memory and it still isn't really "out there" yet.
Cheers and beers...
Sleeping Dog
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Back in the mists of my memory (LOTTA fog there, I'm 55), I remember hearing that the ancestor of IBM (the name escapes me) was started because of the success of the 1900 census; I really wish I could remember more detail (that happens fairly often), but I believe that the roots of IBM stretch back to the first decade of the 20TH century.
Regarding "magnetic bubble" memory, I first heard of it around 1975; I worked in the map department of a local county government, and the department next door was the computer department. I got friendly with one of the programmers, and we'd talk. Most of the things he talked about were WAY beyond me, but I do remember him talking about this new, revolutionary concept that would change EVERYTHING about computers. I've mentioned it a few times to various computer people since then, and the reaction was usuall "HUH?, never heard of it." This is the first time I've ever heard anyone mention it in YEARS, and I had no idea that it was still a viable idea.
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Magnetic stuff is amazing! If I was an inventor my computer would have to utilize bumps or holes of some sort. It would be totally mechanical. Such concepts of the modern computer with silicon, microsizes, electricity carrying data and magenetic storage baffle the mind!
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quote:
Originally posted by lazygamer:
Magnetic stuff is amazing! If I was an inventor my computer would have to utilize bumps or holes of some sort. It would be totally mechanical. Such concepts of the modern computer with silicon, microsizes, electricity carrying data and magenetic storage baffle the mind!
You're like me; if I can watch it work, I understand it. I'll never be a Linux guru; I can't SEE it work, but I can rebuild any kind of mechanical device. Let's see if we can come up with an analog Linux distro, then maybe I'll get the intricacies.
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You know......I have tried and tried.....but I still can't find a distro of Linux that will load and run on this abacus.
Sleeping Dog
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quote:
Originally posted by Sleeping Dog:
You know......I have tried and tried.....but I still can't find a distro of Linux that will load and run on this abacus.
Sleeping Dog
Nah; I was thinkin' of one of those battleship fire control computers. My reasoning: They've de-commisioned all the Iowa- class boats (SOB!), so I could buy one for a song through government surplus.
Then, when I got AnalogLinux up and running, I could drop 16- inch rounds on any boxes running a MicroSoft OS within a 30 mile radius.
Good thinking, Huh?
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one thing i always wonder about, what were they using as computers for the space programs? they had people in space in the fifties and sixties, and people on the moon in the sixties and seventies, and if unix was just coming about in 1969, and ITS was what they had, what the hell were they running for the spacwe program? you know they have banks of computers and so on, what software did they use? how did they store data? et c et c...
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Three theories.
1)Something else.
2)Getting into and out of space isn't as complex as it seems, and all the calculations can be handled by some human math and instinct/training.
3)This is some proof that we might not of gone to space as early as we think we did.
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quote:
Originally posted by lazygamer:
Three theories.
1)Something else.
2)Getting into and out of space isn't as complex as it seems, and all the calculations can be handled by some human math and instinct/training.
3)This is some proof that we might not of gone to space as early as we think we did.
Just to illustrate what a gap there is between now and the bulk of the space program ('60's-'70's), watch "Apollo 13". There'a scene that shows JUST how different things are. As a background, I was an adult in 1970, I was a 23-year old Navy vet with 2 kids.
Anyway, thre's a scene in the movie where Jim Lovell is doing some astro-navigation; he's tired and cold, so he's a little skittish about making a decision that, if wrong, will kill him and the other 2 occupants of the capsule. He asks Mission control to check his math; they all whip out SLIDE RULES and start figuring like mad. Now, the first time I watched that movie, I distinctly remember thinking "Why are they using slide rules? Where's their calculators" Then I remembered- there were NO hand-held calculators on the market in 1970. Do you see my point; I was an ADULT in 1970, and yet I had to think about why they ere using slide rules, even though, as a machinist, I used one regularly at that time.
As far as whether the space program actually did what they perported to do in the 1960's, yeah, I think they did; remember, digital computers didn't exist in a practical form then, but there were analog systems that, while not as flexible, were accurate to the point of being usable for space flight.
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Just a note about what I recall from the space program:
Yuri Gaugarin (sp), the Russian cosmonaut credited with being the "first" man in space, made his three orbit flight in 1963 (If I am not grossly mistaken.) However, there were American pilots from the X-15 program who were later awarded Astronaut wings (very quietly by Congress). Much of the data from the X-15 program of the 50's and 60's is STILL classified.
The Lunar Lander with Neil Armstrong on board had a flight control computer with 64K of RAM. It was linked to the navigational radar and inertial guidance system as well as a data output string that was fed back to the Cape. I believe that it ran a form of UNIX. If the system memory got within about 90% of capacity from too much input, a red light on the pilots control panel would come on to let him know that the computer was near crashing from input overload. There were a couple of times when they had to slow down what they were doing during landing to let the computer catch up.
Hope you folks had a fun and safe holiday.
Sleeping Dog
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i thought Yuri Gagarin was in space in 1959? i bet the soviet union tried to get a man in space before that too, but cataclysmically failed and hushed up the evidence of several destroyed "first men in soace". We may never truly know who the real first man in space was.
Re: 1959/63, i know nothing! but that was what i heard...
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Yuri Gagarin reached orbit around earth on 12 April, 1961. I still remember quite vividly, sitting in the classroom and the schooll broadcast system cut through with fanfares and a principal's speach about the achievements of our dearest soviet brethren (I grew up behind the iron curtain -- Czechoslovakia).
However, there is a story that he was not the first. If I remember correctly, it may have been the architect of the russian space program, Korovlev, that got there first, about 4 months earlier. The only problem is that no one knew if he would be successful (SU could not admit a failure) and secondly, he was this unpersonable geek. Since the risk of failure was low after the first successfull attempt (there were 3 other atempts between 1957-1959, all failures and fatal), the decision was made that this Gagarin dude is the best PR material.
And so, as it was with many instances before and after, PR got a priority, beating the historical truth.
[ July 05, 2002: Message edited by: rsd ]
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Thanks for the date correction RSD. I remember hearing a pre-Yuri news story when I was a kid that the Russians had sent another dog into space. However, the telemetry being sent back indicated a human (not canine) heartbeat.
I also remember that the international "rules" for laying claim to being the first into "space" were that the pilot had to return to earth in his "ship". Yuri did not do this. He bailed out and parachuted to the ground. The Russians got around this "condition" simply by lying about it. As with so much other dis-information, the truth has only come to light since the collapse of the "Iron Curtain".
Cheers and Beers
Sleeping Dog
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So my lady and I are reposing there in bed....enjoying the after-glow of a Leno monologue (yeah....that was the afterglow....right) So I decide to channel-surf as she drifts off into ZZZ-land.
I hit the History Channel and they are doing a thing about WWII American submarines. Next thing I see, they are giving more details about the computer that we were talking about earlier in this thread. I grabbed a pen and wrote down all that I could.
Here it is:
It was called a TDC (Torpedo Data Computer). They were produced by a company called ARMA and the first one (the Mark I) was installed into an American Fleet Submarine in 1936. They were so large that they were initially put in an area of the main hull below the conning tower. They were electro-mechanical computers that calculated such input as range, speed, course, angle on the bow, etc. If all of this info did not correlate properly, the machine would return an error message requiring new data input. (Would you call that a deep-blue screen of death?)
The next version of the TDC came in 1940 and was put into the conning tower of the `Pacific Fleet Boats'. It was smaller, but still necessitated lengthening the conning towers of the submarines by at least a foot. It was called the Mark III.
Despite the fact that this was the most sophisticated "computer based" torpedo aiming system ever devised up until that time, the American pig boats were hampered by faulty torpedoes (Mark 14's) that had a 50+% failure rate until mid 1943 (Must have been manufactured by Microsoft) After mid-43, the US submarines did to the Japanese what the Germans failed to do to the British.....they shut down the system by shutting down merchant shipping. (and they proably hurt their self-esteem too...)
The only surviving example of a TDC that still survives is in the USS Pompano that is at permanent "museum" moorings at Fishermans Wharf in California. The TDC has been restored by a university prof named Terry ______ (did not get the last name) Supposedly, the thing is still/now working.
Don't know if you really care....but I felt obligated to share this additional info considering everyone else's input into this thread.
Have a Great Weekend
Sleeping Dog