Things are hectic under the Red Maple leaf as of late.
I feel bad for my six fans for the lack of posting and especially the lack of stuff that goes "Boom!" posting. On the subject of gun posts, the reason is pretty straightforward.
I haven't been shooting. Other than my recent trip to Quantico a couple of weeks ago to squeeze off a few rounds of crappy 8mm Mauser, I am just staying away from the range. The reason is simple and most shooters will understand it. It's simply too expensive for me to do so. With ammo prices continuing their upward trend, the thinking is "Why do I want to shoot off 100 rounds of .223 today when it will cost me another 10 to 20 percent premium later to replace it?".
I'm to the point where my ammo is more valuable in the cans than being sent downrange for my pleasure. I just don't have it in the quantities I would like to feel laissez faire about shooting off a few magazines and not feel guilty. Given I need to keep a minimum of 210 rounds available as untouchable, that doesn't leave a lot out of the remaining pile to waste.
Yes, I could shoot my Mosins but only half of my ammo is suitable for indoor and where I can shoot it outdoor, the current rules disallow Soviet calibers. So they stay locked away. The only guns I can really shoot are my .22s (at least I have an AR upper in that caliber) and my 8mm Mauser. That caliber is still plentiful and cheap as surplus and I have a ton of Romanian steel case.
At the rate I'm going, I won't be shocked if the majority of my shooting turns out to be black powder muzzleloader.
Plus with my wedding on the horizon, I've just been too distracted lately. Especially between that and work. They've been reorg'ing us at work and we're trying to figure out where we fit in. No layoffs (never in the history of the company and states it simply doesn't happen on the public website so I trust them on that) but just that "What do we do now?" kind of mentality. Just grinding.
Fortunately, I am no longer in Robb's shoes with regard to messed-up software development. I feel for him though as I have definitely been there.
So rather than shoot, I've been strumming my guitar and reliving my childhood and formative years, computer-wise. Spent the weekend trying to get three old computers up and running. Here's how we fared...
My Tandy 1500HD is functional but the hard disk apparently weakens with age. I got it with no OS but managed to get FreeDOS running on it prior to it going into storage two years ago. Pull it out and the OS is gone yet again. However, age has caught up to it and now the floppy drive won't boot anymore. Now I have no way to get an OS on this machine short of a floppy drive replacement. Going to try a second hard drive and get it bootable on an old PC and transplant it in.
That's harder than it sounds. Look up the pricing and availability of Conner CP2024 hard drives sometime. Same goes for the Matsushita EME-263G floppy drive the 1500HD uses. This machine may well wind up being a functional display piece. Still, they are pretty machines for their time. The old GRiD laptops, by the way, used the same case.
Had better luck with the Apple PowerBook 5300c. We will pause now to permit the screaming and clawing of eyes to relax. This is actually the 1500HD's stablemate. I got them both for $1 each off eBay. Don't ever offer a cash local pickup option. Yes, I got them both for $2 hence why I'm not terribly upset about functionality or lack thereof.
However, the 5300c is fully functional. I had gotten the special SCSI cable for it so I could hook a CD-ROM up to it. Turns out my old 50 pin SCSI CD-ROM that I use on early SGI workstations works fine on Apple hardware. And the machine boots fine from it as well as the floppy drive.
However, I'm not an Apple guru. My System 7.5.5 CD boots up on the machine fine but since it is marked for PowerBooks other than mine, it refuses to install the system software. Apple offers System 7.5.3 for download but I was unsuccessful in creating a good boot disk or usable CD-ROM image from my old iBook. So I am begging for help from my wife-to-be's office (they're a Mac shop) and their Apple guru. Hopefully I can ressurect this member of the top ten worst Apple computers of all time. Still, learned an awful lot about how Mac OS boots. Just don't have the techniques down to do it on my own.
Lastly, the Thinkpad 560Z. I got three as a trash rescue and cobbled two functional machines together. High-end, ultraportable hardware circa 1998. Pentium II 300Mhz, 128MB RAM, 6GB hard disk, color 800x600 LCD, USB and Ethernet (on the dock only). However, it was made in what I call the Great Software Desert that ruled the PC universe from the late 1970s until the late 1990s. This is the time when magnetic media dominated software distribution. This Thinkpad was created towards the end of the transition period to optical discs being the dominant software distribution medium.
Which means that although it supports CD-ROM and USB, it cannot boot from either source natively. Floppy drive is how software gets onto this machine.
Do you know how hard it is today to find a boot floppy for Linux (or any other OS) that can find and install from a USB CD-ROM that otherwise cannot be booted from? Harder than you might think. I want to run Ubuntu Linux on it and so far that particular combination is not supported with their floppy boot option. Damn Small Linux (DSL) does this but I can't find information on how they built their boot disks. That applies in general to finding a straightforward HOWTO on how to create your own Linux floppy boot disk. If I can find that, I can get my system to work. I just need USB and CD-ROM support.
That difficulty in finding straightforward, non-Linux geek documentation is a complaint I've often had against finding information on doing tasks with the OS. Writing English instructions that a someone who isn't a kernel developer or OS builder is apparently too much to ask. If someone can describe or show me the steps, I can write the documentation myself to save others the pain.
So the Thinkpads are still running DSL until I can find a way to get them to boot from a floppy that will let me use a USB CD-ROM. Interesting tidbit about these machines. To keep weight down, they use a slim external USB CD-ROM. I have several good batteries, the external battery charger, dock, several proprietary floppy drives and two of the slimline CD-ROM drives and three Thinkpads. All total, this lot might fetch $50-$100 on eBay. But the slimline CD-ROMs use a special IBM USB cable that also powers the drive. This cable is extremely rare. So rare, in fact, that you can find the slimline CD-ROMs cheaply because the cable is missing. Useless hardware without it. That cable alone as a replacement part from electronics houses that stock it runs anywhere from $80 to $150. For a six inch cable with a special IBM connector on one end.
The cable alone costs more than all the combined hardware it is meant to be used with. It took me six months to source one on eBay and I paid a hefty premium for it but nowhere as bad as it could have been. Sadly, not atypical. Hence why I'm keeping this hardware together since it is a relatively complete snapshot of the state of laptop technology in the late 90s. Perhaps in 2025 a museum might be interested in obtaining it. I may put OS/2 on one of them just to keep it historically accurate. I have a "blue spine" edition of OS/2 3.0 Warp on hand.
Vintage hardware can be fun. I'm going even older though. Try making a VIC-20 or Commodore 64 talk to a modern PC or just trying to get software that can run on them. That what I mean by the "Great Software Desert". Lots of programs for computers in this era used magnetic media like floppy disks. Media that weakens and goes bad over time. So even though numerous functional examples of this hardware exist and can be had cheaply, it is only going to get harder and harder to demonstrate them in action as time goes on due to the fact that even pristine example of their software will be less likely to be usable because of natural decay.
Ironically, paper and cartridges may be our best long-term preservation mechanisms. Hence my fondness for my 2nd computer, the Commodore VIC-20. A lot of its software was produced on ROM cartridges and those don't go bad. Even nearly 30 years later, I can plug those in and they still work. Same applies for ROM-based systems like the Tandy 100/102, 1100FD and similar machines. Their ROM-based designs allow them to preserve their software and state-of-the-art for future generations as functional time capsules. Same goes for books with programs in them. Even after floppies and cassettes fail and fade away, the option will always remain to let us type in a program and run it to see these old machines in action. As long as they can power up, they can still live on.
Modern technology has also helped us to breathe new life into these machines though. Hobbyists are producing hardware that bridge the gap between the old and the new. Things like Ultimate 1541 and the NADSBox. These devices use modern flash cards to allow old computers to use them as native filesystems or hardware. Thus, a modern PC can be used to transfer data back and forth and the old machines don't know the difference. I think it is really neat and might help keep these old machines alive.
Frankly, I think they make great teaching tools. I'd argue the best way to train future computer programmers is to engage them in the fundamentals of computing. Even a little exposure to the hardware in even obsolete hardware can engage them and make them understand what goes on under the hood. Back when I grew up, this was almost unavoidable.
Today, you can train programmers who have no concept that memory, CPU and disk are finite resources and there are best practices for how to manage them. Understanding how a microprocessor runs a program and how memory is allocated even in an ancient 8-bit processor can be invaluable experience. And lest you think such outmoded technology has any place in our world, I would point out the Sojourner rover that went to Mars in 1995 used an Intel 80C85 8-bit processor. State-of-the-art when I first began using computers. Why? Because it could survive the rigors of the trip against physical forces as well as cosmic radiation. You'll often find that such old hardware going into space for that reason. Modern CPUs have very serious issues in such environments.
Plus, an 8-bit machine is small and simple enough that a group of middle school or high school students, with proper teaching, can write a simple operating system for it. Imagine how inspirational that can be to future computer science majors or simply to spark their creativity and interest in science in general. You can't put a price on that. In fact, I still thank my computer science teacher in my last year of high school for teaching more about computer programming and approaching it that anything else I learned later either in college or in the two decades of professional work since. That's tomorrow's story.
Sorry for the rant. Sometimes I just enjoying nattering way. Then again, isn't that what blogs are for?
I feel bad for my six fans for the lack of posting and especially the lack of stuff that goes "Boom!" posting. On the subject of gun posts, the reason is pretty straightforward.
I haven't been shooting. Other than my recent trip to Quantico a couple of weeks ago to squeeze off a few rounds of crappy 8mm Mauser, I am just staying away from the range. The reason is simple and most shooters will understand it. It's simply too expensive for me to do so. With ammo prices continuing their upward trend, the thinking is "Why do I want to shoot off 100 rounds of .223 today when it will cost me another 10 to 20 percent premium later to replace it?".
I'm to the point where my ammo is more valuable in the cans than being sent downrange for my pleasure. I just don't have it in the quantities I would like to feel laissez faire about shooting off a few magazines and not feel guilty. Given I need to keep a minimum of 210 rounds available as untouchable, that doesn't leave a lot out of the remaining pile to waste.
Yes, I could shoot my Mosins but only half of my ammo is suitable for indoor and where I can shoot it outdoor, the current rules disallow Soviet calibers. So they stay locked away. The only guns I can really shoot are my .22s (at least I have an AR upper in that caliber) and my 8mm Mauser. That caliber is still plentiful and cheap as surplus and I have a ton of Romanian steel case.
At the rate I'm going, I won't be shocked if the majority of my shooting turns out to be black powder muzzleloader.
Plus with my wedding on the horizon, I've just been too distracted lately. Especially between that and work. They've been reorg'ing us at work and we're trying to figure out where we fit in. No layoffs (never in the history of the company and states it simply doesn't happen on the public website so I trust them on that) but just that "What do we do now?" kind of mentality. Just grinding.
Fortunately, I am no longer in Robb's shoes with regard to messed-up software development. I feel for him though as I have definitely been there.
So rather than shoot, I've been strumming my guitar and reliving my childhood and formative years, computer-wise. Spent the weekend trying to get three old computers up and running. Here's how we fared...
My Tandy 1500HD is functional but the hard disk apparently weakens with age. I got it with no OS but managed to get FreeDOS running on it prior to it going into storage two years ago. Pull it out and the OS is gone yet again. However, age has caught up to it and now the floppy drive won't boot anymore. Now I have no way to get an OS on this machine short of a floppy drive replacement. Going to try a second hard drive and get it bootable on an old PC and transplant it in.
That's harder than it sounds. Look up the pricing and availability of Conner CP2024 hard drives sometime. Same goes for the Matsushita EME-263G floppy drive the 1500HD uses. This machine may well wind up being a functional display piece. Still, they are pretty machines for their time. The old GRiD laptops, by the way, used the same case.
Had better luck with the Apple PowerBook 5300c. We will pause now to permit the screaming and clawing of eyes to relax. This is actually the 1500HD's stablemate. I got them both for $1 each off eBay. Don't ever offer a cash local pickup option. Yes, I got them both for $2 hence why I'm not terribly upset about functionality or lack thereof.
However, the 5300c is fully functional. I had gotten the special SCSI cable for it so I could hook a CD-ROM up to it. Turns out my old 50 pin SCSI CD-ROM that I use on early SGI workstations works fine on Apple hardware. And the machine boots fine from it as well as the floppy drive.
However, I'm not an Apple guru. My System 7.5.5 CD boots up on the machine fine but since it is marked for PowerBooks other than mine, it refuses to install the system software. Apple offers System 7.5.3 for download but I was unsuccessful in creating a good boot disk or usable CD-ROM image from my old iBook. So I am begging for help from my wife-to-be's office (they're a Mac shop) and their Apple guru. Hopefully I can ressurect this member of the top ten worst Apple computers of all time. Still, learned an awful lot about how Mac OS boots. Just don't have the techniques down to do it on my own.
Lastly, the Thinkpad 560Z. I got three as a trash rescue and cobbled two functional machines together. High-end, ultraportable hardware circa 1998. Pentium II 300Mhz, 128MB RAM, 6GB hard disk, color 800x600 LCD, USB and Ethernet (on the dock only). However, it was made in what I call the Great Software Desert that ruled the PC universe from the late 1970s until the late 1990s. This is the time when magnetic media dominated software distribution. This Thinkpad was created towards the end of the transition period to optical discs being the dominant software distribution medium.
Which means that although it supports CD-ROM and USB, it cannot boot from either source natively. Floppy drive is how software gets onto this machine.
Do you know how hard it is today to find a boot floppy for Linux (or any other OS) that can find and install from a USB CD-ROM that otherwise cannot be booted from? Harder than you might think. I want to run Ubuntu Linux on it and so far that particular combination is not supported with their floppy boot option. Damn Small Linux (DSL) does this but I can't find information on how they built their boot disks. That applies in general to finding a straightforward HOWTO on how to create your own Linux floppy boot disk. If I can find that, I can get my system to work. I just need USB and CD-ROM support.
That difficulty in finding straightforward, non-Linux geek documentation is a complaint I've often had against finding information on doing tasks with the OS. Writing English instructions that a someone who isn't a kernel developer or OS builder is apparently too much to ask. If someone can describe or show me the steps, I can write the documentation myself to save others the pain.
So the Thinkpads are still running DSL until I can find a way to get them to boot from a floppy that will let me use a USB CD-ROM. Interesting tidbit about these machines. To keep weight down, they use a slim external USB CD-ROM. I have several good batteries, the external battery charger, dock, several proprietary floppy drives and two of the slimline CD-ROM drives and three Thinkpads. All total, this lot might fetch $50-$100 on eBay. But the slimline CD-ROMs use a special IBM USB cable that also powers the drive. This cable is extremely rare. So rare, in fact, that you can find the slimline CD-ROMs cheaply because the cable is missing. Useless hardware without it. That cable alone as a replacement part from electronics houses that stock it runs anywhere from $80 to $150. For a six inch cable with a special IBM connector on one end.
The cable alone costs more than all the combined hardware it is meant to be used with. It took me six months to source one on eBay and I paid a hefty premium for it but nowhere as bad as it could have been. Sadly, not atypical. Hence why I'm keeping this hardware together since it is a relatively complete snapshot of the state of laptop technology in the late 90s. Perhaps in 2025 a museum might be interested in obtaining it. I may put OS/2 on one of them just to keep it historically accurate. I have a "blue spine" edition of OS/2 3.0 Warp on hand.
Vintage hardware can be fun. I'm going even older though. Try making a VIC-20 or Commodore 64 talk to a modern PC or just trying to get software that can run on them. That what I mean by the "Great Software Desert". Lots of programs for computers in this era used magnetic media like floppy disks. Media that weakens and goes bad over time. So even though numerous functional examples of this hardware exist and can be had cheaply, it is only going to get harder and harder to demonstrate them in action as time goes on due to the fact that even pristine example of their software will be less likely to be usable because of natural decay.
Ironically, paper and cartridges may be our best long-term preservation mechanisms. Hence my fondness for my 2nd computer, the Commodore VIC-20. A lot of its software was produced on ROM cartridges and those don't go bad. Even nearly 30 years later, I can plug those in and they still work. Same applies for ROM-based systems like the Tandy 100/102, 1100FD and similar machines. Their ROM-based designs allow them to preserve their software and state-of-the-art for future generations as functional time capsules. Same goes for books with programs in them. Even after floppies and cassettes fail and fade away, the option will always remain to let us type in a program and run it to see these old machines in action. As long as they can power up, they can still live on.
Modern technology has also helped us to breathe new life into these machines though. Hobbyists are producing hardware that bridge the gap between the old and the new. Things like Ultimate 1541 and the NADSBox. These devices use modern flash cards to allow old computers to use them as native filesystems or hardware. Thus, a modern PC can be used to transfer data back and forth and the old machines don't know the difference. I think it is really neat and might help keep these old machines alive.
Frankly, I think they make great teaching tools. I'd argue the best way to train future computer programmers is to engage them in the fundamentals of computing. Even a little exposure to the hardware in even obsolete hardware can engage them and make them understand what goes on under the hood. Back when I grew up, this was almost unavoidable.
Today, you can train programmers who have no concept that memory, CPU and disk are finite resources and there are best practices for how to manage them. Understanding how a microprocessor runs a program and how memory is allocated even in an ancient 8-bit processor can be invaluable experience. And lest you think such outmoded technology has any place in our world, I would point out the Sojourner rover that went to Mars in 1995 used an Intel 80C85 8-bit processor. State-of-the-art when I first began using computers. Why? Because it could survive the rigors of the trip against physical forces as well as cosmic radiation. You'll often find that such old hardware going into space for that reason. Modern CPUs have very serious issues in such environments.
Plus, an 8-bit machine is small and simple enough that a group of middle school or high school students, with proper teaching, can write a simple operating system for it. Imagine how inspirational that can be to future computer science majors or simply to spark their creativity and interest in science in general. You can't put a price on that. In fact, I still thank my computer science teacher in my last year of high school for teaching more about computer programming and approaching it that anything else I learned later either in college or in the two decades of professional work since. That's tomorrow's story.
Sorry for the rant. Sometimes I just enjoying nattering way. Then again, isn't that what blogs are for?
3 comments:
Your comment about playing guitar reminded me of what prodded you into taking lessons for it, so I thought you'd find this entertaining.
I've always avoided the Guitar Hero games, because the premise of using something that is only shaped like a guitar to play the game bothered me. But Guitar Hero:World Tour is a totally different beast to me.
When I was 15 or 16, during a two-week stretch in summer camp, I was in a cabin with two guys that had been playing drums for years. While they were messing around, I got them to start teaching me stuff. After about 30 minutes of this, one of them pointed out that it had taken him two or three months to learn what I picked up in 30 minutes. When I got home, I told me Dad about this, and asked about lessons. I'm not sure it's humanly possible for someone to say "NO" any faster.
I've had GH:WT for about two weeks now, and I'm already up to medium. Once things slow down at work in a couple more weeks, I'm going to start taking lessons.
I wonder how much money has been spent nationwide on real instruments because of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games.
I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Joannah
http://2gbmemory.net
I'm in the same boat regarding ammo and shooting. I have kept from shooting anything for a few months now with the exception of maybe a handful of rounds here and there.
I have stopped with bulk reloading and have settled on accuracy reloading which keeps me doing stuff that's shooting related, but takes up a lot of time. Ten to twenty perfect rounds at a time is a welcome relief to not doing anything.
Soon the groundhogs will be receiving a round or two of my super accurate loads at a time, which is about the most economical way of shooting that I know of.
Hang in there, things will level out soon enough.
Congrats on getting married too, BTW!
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