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#21
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Stupid computer reviews
In article , Alan Browne
wrote: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943 what's amazing is how someone so stupid could be president of ibm. That's not stupidity, it's perception. What a "computer" was in 1943 was a handwired to task monster. Change programs? Start re-wiring for a few days and de-bugging for many more. sure, but anyone with even half a clue would have realized technology would advance beyond that. thinking that's how it would always be is why it's so stupid. |
#22
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Stupid computer reviews
On 2017-09-17 05:51, Paul Carmichael wrote:
El 16/09/17 a las 19:50, nospam escribió: In article , Paul Carmichael wrote: I had an ISA memory expansion board designed for a 386 that I was able to get working in the machine and expanded the memory to 16megs...that's the maximum amount a 286 can address. I did it just for the sake of doing it. That said, would it have been possible to put 16 megs of memory in a 286 at the time it was built, probably only Bill Gates could have afforded it! it might have been possible, but it wasn't particularly useful because of segmented memory, a problem inherent to x86 back then. I was programming back then, and XMS was useful. Not very fast though. A lot faster than MFM hard drives, so better than "virtual memory". it was still a royal pain in the ass and comparing it to vm is silly. 4k pages. Not that different. x86 didn't get a linear address space until much later. I was an assembler programmer. Huge pointers were for girls. Real men used segmentffset. Everything had its place and 64k segments were plenty big enough for most stuff. Been there. Assembler and mixed Pascal/assembler. (Even a mixed Pascal/Fortran project - but that was on a VAX-785). Today I use Pascal (fpc) and the 64k segment limit is happily gone. In 32 bit I can allocate 3 GB of heap w/o a worry and build monster trees or other linked lists that allow for near instant location/sort of data in myriad ways. If I compile for 64 bit, well, then ... X86 never got a flat memory model. Actually, I suppose that .com programs were flat model in their way :-) They were limited. I had projects in the late 80's/early 90's that needed a lot of programming care to stay inside the 64k segments. Mind you: CS, DS, ES, SS @ 64kB each made for some fairly large program spaces if needed on a bare bones 286 machine with enough memory. Also Turbo Pascal supported code swapping so a careful selection of "swappable" code sections could be handy and efficient even in a real time case. If you were brave and clever you could even use the opposite end of the stack space temporarily setting ES equal to the SS and just taking care to start at 0 and allocate upwards (which was natural for statically assigned memory). That section of code would push the ES onto the stack, copy the SS to ES, then use the lower portion of that segment. Pop the ES when exiting that code block. I did that experimentally but never in a "deliverable". |
#23
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Stupid computer reviews
On 2017-09-17 10:10, nospam wrote:
In article , Alan Browne wrote: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943 what's amazing is how someone so stupid could be president of ibm. That's not stupidity, it's perception. What a "computer" was in 1943 was a handwired to task monster. Change programs? Start re-wiring for a few days and de-bugging for many more. sure, but anyone with even half a clue would have realized technology would advance beyond that. Thousands of well clued people of the day never predicted it. Why should Watson? To think some executive of IBM in wartime would see the future of computers in a commercial context, at a time when Turing and Von Neumann were still working out the concept and details is too much of a stretch. |
#24
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Stupid computer reviews
In article , Alan Browne
wrote: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943 what's amazing is how someone so stupid could be president of ibm. That's not stupidity, it's perception. What a "computer" was in 1943 was a handwired to task monster. Change programs? Start re-wiring for a few days and de-bugging for many more. sure, but anyone with even half a clue would have realized technology would advance beyond that. Thousands of well clued people of the day never predicted it. Why should Watson? they weren't very clued. it doesn't take much of a clue to realize that things would not remain stagnant. To think some executive of IBM in wartime would see the future of computers in a commercial context, at a time when Turing and Von Neumann were still working out the concept and details is too much of a stretch. not at all. |
#25
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Stupid computer reviews
On 2017-09-17 10:45, nospam wrote:
In article , Alan Browne wrote: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943 what's amazing is how someone so stupid could be president of ibm. That's not stupidity, it's perception. What a "computer" was in 1943 was a handwired to task monster. Change programs? Start re-wiring for a few days and de-bugging for many more. sure, but anyone with even half a clue would have realized technology would advance beyond that. Thousands of well clued people of the day never predicted it. Why should Watson? they weren't very clued. it doesn't take much of a clue to realize that things would not remain stagnant. To think some executive of IBM in wartime would see the future of computers in a commercial context, at a time when Turing and Von Neumann were still working out the concept and details is too much of a stretch. not at all. Hindsight and all that... laughable premise. |
#26
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Stupid computer reviews
On 09/16/2017 07:00 PM, Savageduck wrote:
ever seen so many indians in all my life. George A. Custer, 1876. You, and your damn theater tickets. Abraham Lincoln to Mary Todd Lincoln, 1865. Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play? |
#27
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Stupid computer reviews
On Sun, 17 Sep 2017 10:06:08 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote: On 2017-09-16 20:16, nospam wrote: In article , Eric Stevens wrote: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943 what's amazing is how someone so stupid could be president of ibm. That's not stupidity, it's perception. What a "computer" was in 1943 was a handwired to task monster. Change programs? Start re-wiring for a few days and de-bugging for many more. IBM did not make Turing/Von Neumann machines at the time (nobody did) and nobody at the business end of the stick had vision about what they could do. It was all tabulation and automation - very specific to task and IBM made oodles at it. The few "computers" that existed in 1943 were hardwire programmed (ENIAC for example) to do a specific thing (ballistics, or some such). Re-programming (not reloading) was an arduous task taking many days. The business of IBM was to support business. The method of it was not important. Indeed that's IBM today. They are not a computer company. They are a business information company. They never fell victim to the buggy whip. There was also Colossus http://tinyurl.com/ydap2f59 -- Regards, Eric Stevens |
#28
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Stupid computer reviews
On 9/17/2017 6:24 PM, Eric Stevens wrote:
On Sun, 17 Sep 2017 10:06:08 -0400, Alan Browne wrote: On 2017-09-16 20:16, nospam wrote: In article , Eric Stevens wrote: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943 what's amazing is how someone so stupid could be president of ibm. That's not stupidity, it's perception. What a "computer" was in 1943 was a handwired to task monster. Change programs? Start re-wiring for a few days and de-bugging for many more. IBM did not make Turing/Von Neumann machines at the time (nobody did) and nobody at the business end of the stick had vision about what they could do. It was all tabulation and automation - very specific to task and IBM made oodles at it. The few "computers" that existed in 1943 were hardwire programmed (ENIAC for example) to do a specific thing (ballistics, or some such). Re-programming (not reloading) was an arduous task taking many days. The business of IBM was to support business. The method of it was not important. Indeed that's IBM today. They are not a computer company. They are a business information company. They never fell victim to the buggy whip. There was also Colossus http://tinyurl.com/ydap2f59 Hmm, wrong Colossus. you had me thinking "Colossus: The Forbin Project" Then that got me thinking of the 1950's TV show "Top Secret" ~ The show intro: ~ "This is the automatic mass integer calculator known to it's friends as AMIC. It can solve a complex mathematical problem in 30 seconds, that would take 100 mathematicians, working continuously around the clock 30 years..." And then of course, they introduced the crew. ~~ Damn, I seem to be getting old.... == -- Later... Ron C -- |
#29
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Stupid computer reviews
On 9/16/2017 8:16 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Eric Stevens wrote: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943 what's amazing is how someone so stupid could be president of ibm. He was far from stupid. f you owned stock in IBM, I guess you would have preferred that he announce to the world that technology will improve. Don't get bogged down in contracts with us,. etc. -- PeterN |
#30
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Stupid computer reviews
On 9/17/2017 9:56 AM, Paul Carmichael wrote:
El 17/09/17 a las 12:49, nospam escribió: In article , Paul Carmichael wrote: I had an ISA memory expansion board designed for a 386 that I was able to get working in the machine and expanded the memory to 16megs...that's the maximum amount a 286 can address. I did it just for the sake of doing it. That said, would it have been possible to put 16 megs of memory in a 286 at the time it was built, probably only Bill Gates could have afforded it! it might have been possible, but it wasn't particularly useful because of segmented memory, a problem inherent to x86 back then. I was programming back then, and XMS was useful. Not very fast though. A lot faster than MFM hard drives, so better than "virtual memory". it was still a royal pain in the ass and comparing it to vm is silly. 4k pages. Not that different. virtual memory is completely different. x86 didn't get a linear address space until much later. I was an assembler programmer. Huge pointers were for girls. Real men used segmentffset. then it was even more of a pain in the ass. My donkey's fine thanks. Everything had its place and 64k segments were plenty big enough for most stuff. except for stuff that spanned 64k boundaries, like graphics or database apps. X86 never got a flat memory model. Actually, I suppose that .com programs were flat model in their way :-) yes it did. Ok. Kind of. Selectorffset programming felt much like segmentffset programming. But with giant segments. Why the hell am I talking to you about programming? I'll stop now. We have seen more of his programs than his photos. Oops! I forgot. -- PeterN |
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