Speaking of Henry Spencer

In sci.space.history Eric Chomko wrote:
Okay, since you are a DCer, can I blame you for the Nationals' lousy
record?

Former DCer, when I was young, DC still had the Senators (not sure if
that was the MkI or the MkII team, and I left years the Nationals.
When I was a resident the basketball team was still called the Bullets.

rick jones
--
The computing industry isn't as much a game of "Follow The Leader" as
it is one of "Ring Around the Rosy" or perhaps "Duck Duck Goose."
- Rick Jones
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway...
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...

Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 30, 7:57 am, kT wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 23, 11:36 am, kT wrote:
Hi Everybody? Is the STICK dead yet?
Just a quick update, the Fujitsu hard disk in the 'Henry Spencer' died,
a head crash worse than I have ever before witnessed in my entire life,
probably a result of lack of use, and so I put the SCSI disk drive back
into the beloved Henry Spencer, and then I went out on eBay and bought a
used AMD K6-2+ CPU for $0.25 (yes 25 cents, plus $4.00 shipping, lol)
and reset the voltage to 2.0 volts, and the multiplier to 4.5 (450 MHz)
and the Henry Spencer experienced an epiphany, a transformation, a real
upgrade in performance. Plus it runs a lot cooler now, this is the chip
with the on chip fast cache RAM and fabbed at 0.18 microns, they sell
like hotcakes on eBay, flap jacks. The German guy who was selling K6-3+s
for $30.00 bucks brand new just sold out, and another guy has a tray of
10 brand new K6-2+s already bid up to $50.00. Smaller is better, Henry.
That SCSI hard disk is still cranking out a lot of heat, though.
Look here kT, we both like Henry and we both know that Henry's system
is less than he deserves. I know you're willing to donate a system,
but so am I. I live in a college town (University of Maryland, College
Park). That said, I recently acquired a 2.6 GHz E-Systems computer
complete with Windows XP, that I am willing to donate to a useful
cause. E-Systems is not a top of the line system, however, it is
better than what you are trying to send to Henry and better than what
he has now.
I'll donate what I have, but I want to make sure it gets into good
hands...
I'm pretty sure Henry, like the rest of us, got past his K-6 bottleneck.

I only run the 'Henry Spencer' because I am a 'computer enthusiast'.
I needed to prove to myself that I've still got the 'right stuff'.
Besides, it's a K6-2+, those chips are still selling for $20.00.

I suggest you check out the trade in old and obsolete CPUs.
People all over the world are doing this, it's fun as hell!
That being said, I still draw the line at K6-3+s and PIIIs.

The whole "Classic Computer" (see my collection he
http://home.comcast.net/~pne.chomko/comp_list.htm) thing has gone into
a case where the older systems cutoff point from a timeline
perspective is not moving forward. What this means is that unless you
have something from before mid 1980s and earlier, you have nothing
from a collectable computer perspective.

I guess my "War Games" IMSAIs still have some value, then. And maybe my
Radio Shack "Pocket PC."

--
Bill Davidsen

Bill Davidsen wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 30, 7:57 am, kT wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 23, 11:36 am, kT wrote:
Hi Everybody? Is the STICK dead yet?
Just a quick update, the Fujitsu hard disk in the 'Henry Spencer'
died,
a head crash worse than I have ever before witnessed in my entire
life,
probably a result of lack of use, and so I put the SCSI disk drive
back
into the beloved Henry Spencer, and then I went out on eBay and
bought a
used AMD K6-2+ CPU for $0.25 (yes 25 cents, plus $4.00 shipping, lol)
and reset the voltage to 2.0 volts, and the multiplier to 4.5 (450
MHz)
and the Henry Spencer experienced an epiphany, a transformation, a
real
upgrade in performance. Plus it runs a lot cooler now, this is the
chip
with the on chip fast cache RAM and fabbed at 0.18 microns, they sell
like hotcakes on eBay, flap jacks. The German guy who was selling
K6-3+s
for $30.00 bucks brand new just sold out, and another guy has a
tray of
10 brand new K6-2+s already bid up to $50.00. Smaller is better,
Henry.
That SCSI hard disk is still cranking out a lot of heat, though.
Look here kT, we both like Henry and we both know that Henry's system
is less than he deserves. I know you're willing to donate a system,
but so am I. I live in a college town (University of Maryland, College
Park). That said, I recently acquired a 2.6 GHz E-Systems computer
complete with Windows XP, that I am willing to donate to a useful
cause. E-Systems is not a top of the line system, however, it is
better than what you are trying to send to Henry and better than what
he has now.
I'll donate what I have, but I want to make sure it gets into good
hands...
I'm pretty sure Henry, like the rest of us, got past his K-6 bottleneck.

I only run the 'Henry Spencer' because I am a 'computer enthusiast'.
I needed to prove to myself that I've still got the 'right stuff'.
Besides, it's a K6-2+, those chips are still selling for $20.00.

I suggest you check out the trade in old and obsolete CPUs.
People all over the world are doing this, it's fun as hell!
That being said, I still draw the line at K6-3+s and PIIIs.

The whole "Classic Computer" (see my collection he
http://home.comcast.net/~pne.chomko/comp_list.htm) thing has gone into
a case where the older systems cutoff point from a timeline
perspective is not moving forward. What this means is that unless you
have something from before mid 1980s and earlier, you have nothing
from a collectable computer perspective.

I guess my "War Games" IMSAIs still have some value, then. And maybe my
Radio Shack "Pocket PC."

You mean this?

http://www.imsai.net/

That was nothing, we always had a couple of Sinclair ZX-80s in the
drawer, and does anybody remember the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-99

If you could make that work, you knew you were great. And people did.

I actually ran across the Editor Assembler for that P.O.S. in a discount
bin at K-Mart, which saved me, because I was pretty damn well ****ed off
at that thing at that point, and had it disemboweled and mounted on the
side of a desk in the shop. So I actually did get it going for a while.

That and the VIC 20 were the only machines I ever used tape drives with.
My hydrodynamics adviser and I used to laugh about the IBM punchcards.

Once I got into the Apple ][ and Commodore it was heaven, because they
were superbly documented with schematics and source code for everything.

Our astrodynamics professor challenged us to write an orbiter simulator
for it. That was way back in 1980. He laughed out load when he said it.

The first thing I did was cross compile and hand assemble polyFORTH II
onto them, and nothing else mattered at that point anymore, I was set.
What happened was that I ended up smoking disk drives left and right.

The first laptop I got was a Toshiba T-100. We were buying them through
mail order houses, and running them on solar panels with no hard drive.
I decided to pass on the Radio Shack Model 100, it just wasn't up to my
standards, but I was intensely curious about those things nevertheless.

The first modern hard disk I ever got my hands on, beyond old eight inch
platters, was a Maxtor SCSI 170 MB, this was right around the time this
neat new company appeared on the scene; Adaptec (SCSI controllers). Soon
it was just a matter of how many top of the line software titles that
you could cram into a 200 MB disk with Windows 3.1, and then 500 MB with
Windows 95, then you could barely get Windows 98 to run on 500 MB disks.

For a long time I was running telephony applications on old Seagate 20
MB disks that had to be 'spinrited' periodically to realign the head.

The rest is history. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

The 'Henry Spencer' is still an awesome computer. I'm gonna upgrade it
to a K6-3+ as soon as I can get another one of those remarkable chips.
And an old girlfriend is giving me yet another 'Henry Spencer', so soon
there will be two of them (assuming I can find some more chips for it).

It's still the slowest computer in the shop, but it's the most beloved.

The next version of Orbiter Space Flight Simulator is going to be great,
although I'm still working through a lot of bugs in the current version.

On Sep 6, 11:07*pm, Bill Davidsen wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 30, 7:57 am, kT wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 23, 11:36 am, kT wrote:
Hi Everybody? Is the STICK dead yet?
Just a quick update, the Fujitsu hard disk in the 'Henry Spencer' died,
a head crash worse than I have ever before witnessed in my entire life,
probably a result of lack of use, and so I put the SCSI disk drive back
into the beloved Henry Spencer, and then I went out on eBay and bought a
used AMD K6-2+ CPU for $0.25 (yes 25 cents, plus $4.00 shipping, lol)
and reset the voltage to 2.0 volts, and the multiplier to 4.5 (450 MHz)
and the Henry Spencer experienced an epiphany, a transformation, a real
upgrade in performance. Plus it runs a lot cooler now, this is the chip
with the on chip fast cache RAM and fabbed at 0.18 microns, they sell
like hotcakes on eBay, flap jacks. The German guy who was selling K6-3+s
for $30.00 bucks brand new just sold out, and another guy has a tray of
10 brand new K6-2+s already bid up to $50.00. Smaller is better, Henry.
That SCSI hard disk is still cranking out a lot of heat, though.
Look here kT, we both like Henry and we both know that Henry's system
is less than he deserves. I know you're willing to donate a system,
but so am I. I live in a college town (University of Maryland, College
Park). That said, I recently acquired a 2.6 GHz E-Systems computer
complete with Windows XP, that I am willing to donate to a useful
cause. E-Systems is not a top of the line system, however, it is
better than what you are trying to send to Henry and better than what
he has now.
I'll donate what I have, but I want to make sure it gets into good
hands...
I'm pretty sure Henry, like the rest of us, got past his K-6 bottleneck.

I only run the 'Henry Spencer' because I am a 'computer enthusiast'.
I needed to prove to myself that I've still got the 'right stuff'.
Besides, it's a K6-2+, those chips are still selling for $20.00.

I suggest you check out the trade in old and obsolete CPUs.
People all over the world are doing this, it's fun as hell!
That being said, I still draw the line at K6-3+s and PIIIs.

The whole "Classic Computer" (see my collection he
http://home.comcast.net/~pne.chomko/comp_list.htm) thing has gone into
a case where the older systems cutoff point from a timeline
perspective is not moving forward. What this means is that unless you
have something from before mid 1980s and earlier, you have nothing
from a collectable computer perspective.

I guess my "War Games" IMSAIs still have some value, then. And maybe my
Radio Shack "Pocket PC."


Sure both of them. The Pocket PC as long as the keys' letters haven't
been worn off from lots of use. Both sell on eBay. I have been trying
to actually get the Pocket computer from RS for awhile.

On Sep 7, 12:35*am, kT wrote:
Bill Davidsen wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 30, 7:57 am, kT wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 23, 11:36 am, kT wrote:
Hi Everybody? Is the STICK dead yet?
Just a quick update, the Fujitsu hard disk in the 'Henry Spencer'
died,
a head crash worse than I have ever before witnessed in my entire
life,
probably a result of lack of use, and so I put the SCSI disk drive
back
into the beloved Henry Spencer, and then I went out on eBay and
bought a
used AMD K6-2+ CPU for $0.25 (yes 25 cents, plus $4.00 shipping, lol)
and reset the voltage to 2.0 volts, and the multiplier to 4.5 (450
MHz)
and the Henry Spencer experienced an epiphany, a transformation, a
real
upgrade in performance. Plus it runs a lot cooler now, this is the
chip
with the on chip fast cache RAM and fabbed at 0.18 microns, they sell
like hotcakes on eBay, flap jacks. The German guy who was selling
K6-3+s
for $30.00 bucks brand new just sold out, and another guy has a
tray of
10 brand new K6-2+s already bid up to $50.00. Smaller is better,
Henry.
That SCSI hard disk is still cranking out a lot of heat, though.
Look here kT, we both like Henry and we both know that Henry's system
is less than he deserves. I know you're willing to donate a system,
but so am I. I live in a college town (University of Maryland, College
Park). That said, I recently acquired a 2.6 GHz E-Systems computer
complete with Windows XP, that I am willing to donate to a useful
cause. E-Systems is not a top of the line system, however, it is
better than what you are trying to send to Henry and better than what
he has now.
I'll donate what I have, but I want to make sure it gets into good
hands...
I'm pretty sure Henry, like the rest of us, got past his K-6 bottleneck.

I only run the 'Henry Spencer' because I am a 'computer enthusiast'.
I needed to prove to myself that I've still got the 'right stuff'.
Besides, it's a K6-2+, those chips are still selling for $20.00.

I suggest you check out the trade in old and obsolete CPUs.
People all over the world are doing this, it's fun as hell!
That being said, I still draw the line at K6-3+s and PIIIs.

The whole "Classic Computer" (see my collection he
http://home.comcast.net/~pne.chomko/comp_list.htm) thing has gone into
a case where the older systems cutoff point from a timeline
perspective is not moving forward. What this means is that unless you
have something from before mid 1980s and earlier, you have nothing
from a collectable computer perspective.

I guess my "War Games" IMSAIs still have some value, then. And maybe my
Radio Shack "Pocket PC."

You mean this?

http://www.imsai.net/

That was nothing, we always had a couple of Sinclair ZX-80s in the
drawer, and does anybody remember the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-99

The TI 99/8 which was never released but still made in small quantity
is thr real collectors item.
http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=268

Also the TI/4 rather than the TI/4A is the rarer of those two. Try and
find the former.


If you could make that work, you knew you were great. And people did.

I actually ran across the Editor Assembler for that P.O.S. in a discount
bin at K-Mart, which saved me, because I was pretty damn well ****ed off
at that thing at that point, and had it disemboweled and mounted on the
side of a desk in the shop. So I actually did get it going for a while.

Yes the TI 99/4A was more or less a toy.


That and the VIC 20 were the only machines I ever used tape drives with.
My hydrodynamics adviser and I used to laugh about the IBM punchcards.

Once I got into the Apple ][ and Commodore it was heaven, because they
were superbly documented with schematics and source code for everything.

Our astrodynamics professor challenged us to write an orbiter simulator
for it. That was way back in 1980. He laughed out load when he said it.

The first thing I did was cross compile and hand assemble polyFORTH II
onto them, and nothing else mattered at that point anymore, I was set.
What happened was that I ended up smoking disk drives left and right.

The first laptop I got was a Toshiba T-100. We were buying them through
mail order houses, and running them on solar panels with no hard drive.
I decided to pass on the Radio Shack Model 100, it just wasn't up to my
standards, but I was intensely curious about those things nevertheless.

The first modern hard disk I ever got my hands on, beyond old eight inch
platters, was a Maxtor SCSI 170 MB, this was right around the time this
neat new company appeared on the scene; Adaptec (SCSI controllers). Soon
it was just a matter of how many top of the line software titles that
you could cram into a 200 MB disk with Windows 3.1, and then 500 MB with
Windows 95, then you could barely get Windows 98 to run on 500 MB disks.

Windows 3.1 was not worth running and 98 was an improvement over 95. I
don't recall having trouble running Win95 or Win98 in 100MB.


For a long time I was running telephony applications on old Seagate 20
MB disks that had to be 'spinrited' periodically to realign the head.

Are you talking about lower-level formatting the HD? That just made
disk access more efficient and really didn't "fix" anyting in
hardware. Oh, it did mark bad sectors and removed fragmentation, thus
reducing disk thrashing.

The rest is history. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

The 'Henry Spencer' is still an awesome computer. I'm gonna upgrade it
to a K6-3+ as soon as I can get another one of those remarkable chips.
And an old girlfriend is giving me yet another 'Henry Spencer', so soon
there will be two of them (assuming I can find some more chips for it).

It's still the slowest computer in the shop, but it's the most beloved.

The next version of Orbiter Space Flight Simulator is going to be great,
although I'm still working through a lot of bugs in the current version.

I have been meaning to look at that orbital space flight simulator. In
what manner does it simulate orbital spaceflight?

Eric

Eric Chomko wrote:
On Sep 7, 12:35 am, kT wrote:
Bill Davidsen wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 30, 7:57 am, kT wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 23, 11:36 am, kT wrote:
Hi Everybody? Is the STICK dead yet?
Just a quick update, the Fujitsu hard disk in the 'Henry Spencer'
died,
a head crash worse than I have ever before witnessed in my entire
life,
probably a result of lack of use, and so I put the SCSI disk drive
back
into the beloved Henry Spencer, and then I went out on eBay and
bought a
used AMD K6-2+ CPU for $0.25 (yes 25 cents, plus $4.00 shipping, lol)
and reset the voltage to 2.0 volts, and the multiplier to 4.5 (450
MHz)
and the Henry Spencer experienced an epiphany, a transformation, a
real
upgrade in performance. Plus it runs a lot cooler now, this is the
chip
with the on chip fast cache RAM and fabbed at 0.18 microns, they sell
like hotcakes on eBay, flap jacks. The German guy who was selling
K6-3+s
for $30.00 bucks brand new just sold out, and another guy has a
tray of
10 brand new K6-2+s already bid up to $50.00. Smaller is better,
Henry.
That SCSI hard disk is still cranking out a lot of heat, though.
Look here kT, we both like Henry and we both know that Henry's system
is less than he deserves. I know you're willing to donate a system,
but so am I. I live in a college town (University of Maryland, College
Park). That said, I recently acquired a 2.6 GHz E-Systems computer
complete with Windows XP, that I am willing to donate to a useful
cause. E-Systems is not a top of the line system, however, it is
better than what you are trying to send to Henry and better than what
he has now.
I'll donate what I have, but I want to make sure it gets into good
hands...
I'm pretty sure Henry, like the rest of us, got past his K-6 bottleneck.
I only run the 'Henry Spencer' because I am a 'computer enthusiast'.
I needed to prove to myself that I've still got the 'right stuff'.
Besides, it's a K6-2+, those chips are still selling for $20.00.
I suggest you check out the trade in old and obsolete CPUs.
People all over the world are doing this, it's fun as hell!
That being said, I still draw the line at K6-3+s and PIIIs.
The whole "Classic Computer" (see my collection he
http://home.comcast.net/~pne.chomko/comp_list.htm) thing has gone into
a case where the older systems cutoff point from a timeline
perspective is not moving forward. What this means is that unless you
have something from before mid 1980s and earlier, you have nothing
from a collectable computer perspective.
I guess my "War Games" IMSAIs still have some value, then. And maybe my
Radio Shack "Pocket PC."
You mean this?

http://www.imsai.net/

That was nothing, we always had a couple of Sinclair ZX-80s in the
drawer, and does anybody remember the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-99

The TI 99/8 which was never released but still made in small quantity
is thr real collectors item.
http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=268

Also the TI/4 rather than the TI/4A is the rarer of those two. Try and
find the former.

If you could make that work, you knew you were great. And people did.

I actually ran across the Editor Assembler for that P.O.S. in a discount
bin at K-Mart, which saved me, because I was pretty damn well ****ed off
at that thing at that point, and had it disemboweled and mounted on the
side of a desk in the shop. So I actually did get it going for a while.

Yes the TI 99/4A was more or less a toy.

That and the VIC 20 were the only machines I ever used tape drives with.
My hydrodynamics adviser and I used to laugh about the IBM punchcards.

Once I got into the Apple ][ and Commodore it was heaven, because they
were superbly documented with schematics and source code for everything.

Our astrodynamics professor challenged us to write an orbiter simulator
for it. That was way back in 1980. He laughed out load when he said it.

The first thing I did was cross compile and hand assemble polyFORTH II
onto them, and nothing else mattered at that point anymore, I was set.
What happened was that I ended up smoking disk drives left and right.

The first laptop I got was a Toshiba T-100. We were buying them through
mail order houses, and running them on solar panels with no hard drive.
I decided to pass on the Radio Shack Model 100, it just wasn't up to my
standards, but I was intensely curious about those things nevertheless.

The first modern hard disk I ever got my hands on, beyond old eight inch
platters, was a Maxtor SCSI 170 MB, this was right around the time this
neat new company appeared on the scene; Adaptec (SCSI controllers). Soon
it was just a matter of how many top of the line software titles that
you could cram into a 200 MB disk with Windows 3.1, and then 500 MB with
Windows 95, then you could barely get Windows 98 to run on 500 MB disks.

Windows 3.1 was not worth running and 98 was an improvement over 95. I
don't recall having trouble running Win95 or Win98 in 100MB.

If you can cram Windows 98 SE into 100 MB that would be a trick.

What was left of it when you were finished? How much did you cut out?

For a long time I was running telephony applications on old Seagate 20
MB disks that had to be 'spinrited' periodically to realign the head.

Are you talking about lower-level formatting the HD? That just made
disk access more efficient and really didn't "fix" anyting in
hardware.

No, it fixed things in magnetism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite

Oh, it did mark bad sectors and removed fragmentation, thus
reducing disk thrashing.

I see, and you disassembled Steve's spin code, rite?

Dude, you have no idea who you are talking to.

Stick with the antique computers.

I'm the guy who fixes them.

The rest is history. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

The 'Henry Spencer' is still an awesome computer. I'm gonna upgrade it
to a K6-3+ as soon as I can get another one of those remarkable chips.
And an old girlfriend is giving me yet another 'Henry Spencer', so soon
there will be two of them (assuming I can find some more chips for it).

It's still the slowest computer in the shop, but it's the most beloved.

The next version of Orbiter Space Flight Simulator is going to be great,
although I'm still working through a lot of bugs in the current version.

I have been meaning to look at that orbital space flight simulator. In
what manner does it simulate orbital spaceflight?

Eric

On Sep 8, 10:17*am, kT wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Sep 7, 12:35 am, kT wrote:
Bill Davidsen wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 30, 7:57 am, kT wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 23, 11:36 am, kT wrote:
Hi Everybody? Is the STICK dead yet?
Just a quick update, the Fujitsu hard disk in the 'Henry Spencer'
died,
a head crash worse than I have ever before witnessed in my entire
life,
probably a result of lack of use, and so I put the SCSI disk drive
back
into the beloved Henry Spencer, and then I went out on eBay and
bought a
used AMD K6-2+ CPU for $0.25 (yes 25 cents, plus $4.00 shipping, lol)
and reset the voltage to 2.0 volts, and the multiplier to 4.5 (450
MHz)
and the Henry Spencer experienced an epiphany, a transformation, a
real
upgrade in performance. Plus it runs a lot cooler now, this is the
chip
with the on chip fast cache RAM and fabbed at 0.18 microns, they sell
like hotcakes on eBay, flap jacks. The German guy who was selling
K6-3+s
for $30.00 bucks brand new just sold out, and another guy has a
tray of
10 brand new K6-2+s already bid up to $50.00. Smaller is better,
Henry.
That SCSI hard disk is still cranking out a lot of heat, though.
Look here kT, we both like Henry and we both know that Henry's system
is less than he deserves. I know you're willing to donate a system,
but so am I. I live in a college town (University of Maryland, College
Park). That said, I recently acquired a 2.6 GHz E-Systems computer
complete with Windows XP, that I am willing to donate to a useful
cause. E-Systems is not a top of the line system, however, it is
better than what you are trying to send to Henry and better than what
he has now.
I'll donate what I have, but I want to make sure it gets into good
hands...
I'm pretty sure Henry, like the rest of us, got past his K-6 bottleneck.
I only run the 'Henry Spencer' because I am a 'computer enthusiast'..
I needed to prove to myself that I've still got the 'right stuff'.
Besides, it's a K6-2+, those chips are still selling for $20.00.
I suggest you check out the trade in old and obsolete CPUs.
People all over the world are doing this, it's fun as hell!
That being said, I still draw the line at K6-3+s and PIIIs.
The whole "Classic Computer" (see my collection he
http://home.comcast.net/~pne.chomko/comp_list.htm) thing has gone into
a case where the older systems cutoff point from a timeline
perspective is not moving forward. What this means is that unless you
have something from before mid 1980s and earlier, you have nothing
from a collectable computer perspective.
I guess my "War Games" IMSAIs still have some value, then. And maybe my
Radio Shack "Pocket PC."
You mean this?

http://www.imsai.net/

That was nothing, we always had a couple of Sinclair ZX-80s in the
drawer, and does anybody remember the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-99

The TI 99/8 which was never released but still made in small quantity
is thr real collectors item.
http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=268

Also the TI/4 rather than the TI/4A is the rarer of those two. Try and
find the former.

If you could make that work, you knew you were great. And people did.

I actually ran across the Editor Assembler for that P.O.S. in a discount
bin at K-Mart, which saved me, because I was pretty damn well ****ed off
at that thing at that point, and had it disemboweled and mounted on the
side of a desk in the shop. So I actually did get it going for a while..

Yes the TI 99/4A was more or less a toy.

That and the VIC 20 were the only machines I ever used tape drives with.
My hydrodynamics adviser and I used to laugh about the IBM punchcards.

Once I got into the Apple ][ and Commodore it was heaven, because they
were superbly documented with schematics and source code for everything.

Our astrodynamics professor challenged us to write an orbiter simulator
for it. That was way back in 1980. He laughed out load when he said it..

The first thing I did was cross compile and hand assemble polyFORTH II
onto them, and nothing else mattered at that point anymore, I was set.
What happened was that I ended up smoking disk drives left and right.

The first laptop I got was a Toshiba T-100. We were buying them through
mail order houses, and running them on solar panels with no hard drive..
I decided to pass on the Radio Shack Model 100, it just wasn't up to my
standards, but I was intensely curious about those things nevertheless..

The first modern hard disk I ever got my hands on, beyond old eight inch
platters, was a Maxtor SCSI 170 MB, this was right around the time this
neat new company appeared on the scene; Adaptec (SCSI controllers). Soon
it was just a matter of how many top of the line software titles that
you could cram into a 200 MB disk with Windows 3.1, and then 500 MB with
Windows 95, then you could barely get Windows 98 to run on 500 MB disks.

Windows 3.1 was not worth running and 98 was an improvement over 95. I
don't recall having trouble running Win95 or Win98 in 100MB.

If you can cram Windows 98 SE into 100 MB that would be a trick.

What was left of it when you were finished? How much did you cut out?

According to this I couldn't have done it!
http://members.iquest.net/~tbennett/...5-2/01/01.html


For a long time I was running telephony applications on old Seagate 20
MB disks that had to be 'spinrited' periodically to realign the head.

Are you talking about lower-level formatting the HD? That just made
disk access more efficient and really didn't "fix" anyting in
hardware.

No, it fixed things in magnetism.

Show me from the FAQ: http://www.grc.com/sr/faq.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite

Oh, it did mark bad sectors and removed fragmentation, thus
reducing disk thrashing.

I see, and you disassembled Steve's spin code, rite?

Dude, you have no idea who you are talking to.

And you do?! At least my antiques have value. Your middle-of-the-road
systems lost their values years ago and will NEVER be collectros items
in your lifetime!


Stick with the antique computers.

I'm the guy who fixes them.

Any damn fool can replace one old board with another old board. When
was the last time you used a soldering iron?

Oh, and as much time as you're spending fixing those bugs in your
orbital simulator I would have written it right the first time.

Eric

Eric Chomko wrote:
On Sep 8, 10:17 am, kT wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Sep 7, 12:35 am, kT wrote:
Bill Davidsen wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 30, 7:57 am, kT wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 23, 11:36 am, kT wrote:
Hi Everybody? Is the STICK dead yet?
Just a quick update, the Fujitsu hard disk in the 'Henry Spencer'
died,
a head crash worse than I have ever before witnessed in my entire
life,
probably a result of lack of use, and so I put the SCSI disk drive
back
into the beloved Henry Spencer, and then I went out on eBay and
bought a
used AMD K6-2+ CPU for $0.25 (yes 25 cents, plus $4.00 shipping, lol)
and reset the voltage to 2.0 volts, and the multiplier to 4.5 (450
MHz)
and the Henry Spencer experienced an epiphany, a transformation, a
real
upgrade in performance. Plus it runs a lot cooler now, this is the
chip
with the on chip fast cache RAM and fabbed at 0.18 microns, they sell
like hotcakes on eBay, flap jacks. The German guy who was selling
K6-3+s
for $30.00 bucks brand new just sold out, and another guy has a
tray of
10 brand new K6-2+s already bid up to $50.00. Smaller is better,
Henry.
That SCSI hard disk is still cranking out a lot of heat, though.
Look here kT, we both like Henry and we both know that Henry's system
is less than he deserves. I know you're willing to donate a system,
but so am I. I live in a college town (University of Maryland, College
Park). That said, I recently acquired a 2.6 GHz E-Systems computer
complete with Windows XP, that I am willing to donate to a useful
cause. E-Systems is not a top of the line system, however, it is
better than what you are trying to send to Henry and better than what
he has now.
I'll donate what I have, but I want to make sure it gets into good
hands...
I'm pretty sure Henry, like the rest of us, got past his K-6 bottleneck.
I only run the 'Henry Spencer' because I am a 'computer enthusiast'.
I needed to prove to myself that I've still got the 'right stuff'.
Besides, it's a K6-2+, those chips are still selling for $20.00.
I suggest you check out the trade in old and obsolete CPUs.
People all over the world are doing this, it's fun as hell!
That being said, I still draw the line at K6-3+s and PIIIs.
The whole "Classic Computer" (see my collection he
http://home.comcast.net/~pne.chomko/comp_list.htm) thing has gone into
a case where the older systems cutoff point from a timeline
perspective is not moving forward. What this means is that unless you
have something from before mid 1980s and earlier, you have nothing
from a collectable computer perspective.
I guess my "War Games" IMSAIs still have some value, then. And maybe my
Radio Shack "Pocket PC."
You mean this?
http://www.imsai.net/
That was nothing, we always had a couple of Sinclair ZX-80s in the
drawer, and does anybody remember the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-99
The TI 99/8 which was never released but still made in small quantity
is thr real collectors item.
http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=268
Also the TI/4 rather than the TI/4A is the rarer of those two. Try and
find the former.
If you could make that work, you knew you were great. And people did.
I actually ran across the Editor Assembler for that P.O.S. in a discount
bin at K-Mart, which saved me, because I was pretty damn well ****ed off
at that thing at that point, and had it disemboweled and mounted on the
side of a desk in the shop. So I actually did get it going for a while.
Yes the TI 99/4A was more or less a toy.
That and the VIC 20 were the only machines I ever used tape drives with.
My hydrodynamics adviser and I used to laugh about the IBM punchcards.
Once I got into the Apple ][ and Commodore it was heaven, because they
were superbly documented with schematics and source code for everything.
Our astrodynamics professor challenged us to write an orbiter simulator
for it. That was way back in 1980. He laughed out load when he said it.
The first thing I did was cross compile and hand assemble polyFORTH II
onto them, and nothing else mattered at that point anymore, I was set.
What happened was that I ended up smoking disk drives left and right.
The first laptop I got was a Toshiba T-100. We were buying them through
mail order houses, and running them on solar panels with no hard drive.
I decided to pass on the Radio Shack Model 100, it just wasn't up to my
standards, but I was intensely curious about those things nevertheless.
The first modern hard disk I ever got my hands on, beyond old eight inch
platters, was a Maxtor SCSI 170 MB, this was right around the time this
neat new company appeared on the scene; Adaptec (SCSI controllers). Soon
it was just a matter of how many top of the line software titles that
you could cram into a 200 MB disk with Windows 3.1, and then 500 MB with
Windows 95, then you could barely get Windows 98 to run on 500 MB disks.
Windows 3.1 was not worth running and 98 was an improvement over 95. I
don't recall having trouble running Win95 or Win98 in 100MB.
If you can cram Windows 98 SE into 100 MB that would be a trick.

What was left of it when you were finished? How much did you cut out?

According to this I couldn't have done it!
http://members.iquest.net/~tbennett/...5-2/01/01.html

Like I said, that would be a neat trick. We used to load it over a
network on laptops with no CDs, and still had trouble getting any amount
of software on top of it. It can be done with 500 MB, but it's a hassle.

For a long time I was running telephony applications on old Seagate 20
MB disks that had to be 'spinrited' periodically to realign the head.
Are you talking about lower-level formatting the HD? That just made
disk access more efficient and really didn't "fix" anyting in
hardware.

No, it fixed things in magnetism.

Show me from the FAQ: http://www.grc.com/sr/faq.htm

"But this is only possible on very old non-servo based MFM and RLL
drives with capacities up to a few hundred megabytes."

Like I said, old Seagate 20 MB hard drives. We ran these things for a
decade, all they required was periodic spinriting with *Spinrite 4.0*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite

Oh, it did mark bad sectors and removed fragmentation, thus
reducing disk thrashing.
I see, and you disassembled Steve's spin code, rite?

Dude, you have no idea who you are talking to.

And you do?! At least my antiques have value. Your middle-of-the-road
systems lost their values years ago and will NEVER be collectros items
in your lifetime!

But they will fly Orbiter Space Flight Simulator at high fidelity.

I threw away the Commodore 64s and Apple IIs years ago.

Stick with the antique computers.

I'm the guy who fixes them.

Any damn fool can replace one old board with another old board. When
was the last time you used a soldering iron?

Yesterday. It's still early, I'm still drinking coffee, and I have an
important 1:00 PM meeting today :

http://www.wid.wisc.edu/research/the...mpetition.html

When was the last time you fried a boot ROM or BIOS?

Oh, and as much time as you're spending fixing those bugs in your
orbital simulator I would have written it right the first time.

Wow, you have the coding equivalent of hundreds of thousands of highly
paid programmers? That too would be a neat trick :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLL_hell

I'm sure Dr. Schweiger wants to talk to you right away.

Just take an old ME computer with an AGP slot, put a 32 MB AGP graphics
card in it, and load up Orbiter with all the med res stuff you can find.

You'll be greatly surprised. I'm surprised you haven't done it yet.

To answer your previous question, it does it in a DX7 sort of way.

Since you are such a hotshot programmer, get onto Sourceforge and
download the beta and start writing DX10 code for it right away!

The Orbiter community is anxiously awaiting your arrival!

You ain't got nothin on Henry Spencer, Eric.

Here are the 'Henry Spencer' specs :

An eMachines 300 with a Trigem Delhi III motherboard, updated with Jan
Jan Steunebrink's BIOS (it takes two BIOS updates from the original) and
then upgraded to a 1.6 Volt AMD K6-3+ overclocked and overvolted to run
at 600 MHz (I haven't actually done that yet) with a 10 Mbit ISA network
card, an a PCI nVidia GeForce 4 MX-400 and Adaptec SCSI bus controller,
and all the K6-2 and VIA or ALI utilities (depending on whatever board).

http://www.k6plus.com/

http://compatlist.k6plus.com/

http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm

http://www.e4allupgraders.info/dir1/...7/delhi3.shtml

Like I said, this is the slowest computer in my shop, but the most
collectable, useful and beloved computer around. I'm building another.

There are lots of ways to do this with an old super socket seven board
with an AGP slot, but it wouldn't be as cute or elegant as the Henry.

I am so very grateful to Henry Spencer for bringing to my attention the
'Henry Spencer Effect', the analysis of which resulted in this machine.

I also just refurbished an eMachines EOne. Anybody remember that baby?
Apple Computer was so threatened by that, they sued eMachines and won!

These are machines that are going to be useful for another decade.

So get out there and bid, Eric :

http://cgi.ebay.com/Lot-of-10-AMD-AM...QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/K6-III-450-APZ-K...2em118Q2el1247

And download Orbiter and get started :

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/

http://orbitervis.wiki.sourceforge.net/

http://orbitervis.wiki.sourceforge.net/D3D7Client

http://orbitervis.wiki.sourceforge.n...iterPublicBeta

On Sep 8, 12:02*pm, kT wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Sep 8, 10:17 am, kT wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Sep 7, 12:35 am, kT wrote:
Bill Davidsen wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 30, 7:57 am, kT wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 23, 11:36 am, kT wrote:
Hi Everybody? Is the STICK dead yet?
Just a quick update, the Fujitsu hard disk in the 'Henry Spencer'
died,
a head crash worse than I have ever before witnessed in my entire
life,
probably a result of lack of use, and so I put the SCSI disk drive
back
into the beloved Henry Spencer, and then I went out on eBay and
bought a
used AMD K6-2+ CPU for $0.25 (yes 25 cents, plus $4.00 shipping, lol)
and reset the voltage to 2.0 volts, and the multiplier to 4.5 (450
MHz)
and the Henry Spencer experienced an epiphany, a transformation, a
real
upgrade in performance. Plus it runs a lot cooler now, this is the
chip
with the on chip fast cache RAM and fabbed at 0.18 microns, they sell
like hotcakes on eBay, flap jacks. The German guy who was selling
K6-3+s
for $30.00 bucks brand new just sold out, and another guy has a
tray of
10 brand new K6-2+s already bid up to $50.00. Smaller is better,
Henry.
That SCSI hard disk is still cranking out a lot of heat, though..
Look here kT, we both like Henry and we both know that Henry's system
is less than he deserves. I know you're willing to donate a system,
but so am I. I live in a college town (University of Maryland, College
Park). That said, I recently acquired a 2.6 GHz E-Systems computer
complete with Windows XP, that I am willing to donate to a useful
cause. E-Systems is not a top of the line system, however, it is
better than what you are trying to send to Henry and better than what
he has now.
I'll donate what I have, but I want to make sure it gets into good
hands...
I'm pretty sure Henry, like the rest of us, got past his K-6 bottleneck.
I only run the 'Henry Spencer' because I am a 'computer enthusiast'.
I needed to prove to myself that I've still got the 'right stuff'..
Besides, it's a K6-2+, those chips are still selling for $20.00.
I suggest you check out the trade in old and obsolete CPUs.
People all over the world are doing this, it's fun as hell!
That being said, I still draw the line at K6-3+s and PIIIs.
The whole "Classic Computer" (see my collection he
http://home.comcast.net/~pne.chomko/comp_list.htm) thing has gone into
a case where the older systems cutoff point from a timeline
perspective is not moving forward. What this means is that unless you
have something from before mid 1980s and earlier, you have nothing
from a collectable computer perspective.
I guess my "War Games" IMSAIs still have some value, then. And maybe my
Radio Shack "Pocket PC."
You mean this?
http://www.imsai.net/
That was nothing, we always had a couple of Sinclair ZX-80s in the
drawer, and does anybody remember the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-99
The TI 99/8 which was never released but still made in small quantity
is thr real collectors item.
http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=268
Also the TI/4 rather than the TI/4A is the rarer of those two. Try and
find the former.
If you could make that work, you knew you were great. And people did..
I actually ran across the Editor Assembler for that P.O.S. in a discount
bin at K-Mart, which saved me, because I was pretty damn well ****ed off
at that thing at that point, and had it disemboweled and mounted on the
side of a desk in the shop. So I actually did get it going for a while.
Yes the TI 99/4A was more or less a toy.
That and the VIC 20 were the only machines I ever used tape drives with.
My hydrodynamics adviser and I used to laugh about the IBM punchcards.
Once I got into the Apple ][ and Commodore it was heaven, because they
were superbly documented with schematics and source code for everything.
Our astrodynamics professor challenged us to write an orbiter simulator
for it. That was way back in 1980. He laughed out load when he said it.
The first thing I did was cross compile and hand assemble polyFORTH II
onto them, and nothing else mattered at that point anymore, I was set.

Eric Chomko wrote:
On Sep 8, 12:02 pm, kT wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Sep 8, 10:17 am, kT wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Sep 7, 12:35 am, kT wrote:
Bill Davidsen wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 30, 7:57 am, kT wrote:
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jul 23, 11:36 am, kT wrote:
Hi Everybody? Is the STICK dead yet?
Just a quick update, the Fujitsu hard disk in the 'Henry Spencer'
died,
a head crash worse than I have ever before witnessed in my entire
life,
probably a result of lack of use, and so I put the SCSI disk drive
back
into the beloved Henry Spencer, and then I went out on eBay and
bought a
used AMD K6-2+ CPU for $0.25 (yes 25 cents, plus $4.00 shipping, lol)
and reset the voltage to 2.0 volts, and the multiplier to 4.5 (450
MHz)
and the Henry Spencer experienced an epiphany, a transformation, a
real
upgrade in performance. Plus it runs a lot cooler now, this is the
chip
with the on chip fast cache RAM and fabbed at 0.18 microns, they sell
like hotcakes on eBay, flap jacks. The German guy who was selling
K6-3+s
for $30.00 bucks brand new just sold out, and another guy has a
tray of
10 brand new K6-2+s already bid up to $50.00. Smaller is better,
Henry.
That SCSI hard disk is still cranking out a lot of heat, though.
Look here kT, we both like Henry and we both know that Henry's system
is less than he deserves. I know you're willing to donate a system,
but so am I. I live in a college town (University of Maryland, College
Park). That said, I recently acquired a 2.6 GHz E-Systems computer
complete with Windows XP, that I am willing to donate to a useful
cause. E-Systems is not a top of the line system, however, it is
better than what you are trying to send to Henry and better than what
he has now.
I'll donate what I have, but I want to make sure it gets into good
hands...
I'm pretty sure Henry, like the rest of us, got past his K-6 bottleneck.
I only run the 'Henry Spencer' because I am a 'computer enthusiast'.
I needed to prove to myself that I've still got the 'right stuff'.
Besides, it's a K6-2+, those chips are still selling for $20.00.
I suggest you check out the trade in old and obsolete CPUs.
People all over the world are doing this, it's fun as hell!
That being said, I still draw the line at K6-3+s and PIIIs.
The whole "Classic Computer" (see my collection he
http://home.comcast.net/~pne.chomko/comp_list.htm) thing has gone into
a case where the older systems cutoff point from a timeline
perspective is not moving forward. What this means is that unless you
have something from before mid 1980s and earlier, you have nothing
from a collectable computer perspective.
I guess my "War Games" IMSAIs still have some value, then. And maybe my
Radio Shack "Pocket PC."
You mean this?
http://www.imsai.net/
That was nothing, we always had a couple of Sinclair ZX-80s in the
drawer, and does anybody remember the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-99
The TI 99/8 which was never released but still made in small quantity
is thr real collectors item.
http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=268
Also the TI/4 rather than the TI/4A is the rarer of those two. Try and
find the former.
If you could make that work, you knew you were great. And people did.
I actually ran across the Editor Assembler for that P.O.S. in a discount
bin at K-Mart, which saved me, because I was pretty damn well ****ed off
at that thing at that point, and had it disemboweled and mounted on the
side of a desk in the shop. So I actually did get it going for a while.
Yes the TI 99/4A was more or less a toy.
That and the VIC 20 were the only machines I ever used tape drives with.
My hydrodynamics adviser and I used to laugh about the IBM punchcards.
Once I got into the Apple ][ and Commodore it was heaven, because they
were superbly documented with schematics and source code for everything.
Our astrodynamics professor challenged us to write an orbiter simulator
for it. That was way back in 1980. He laughed out load when he said it.
The first thing I did was cross compile and hand assemble polyFORTH II
onto them, and nothing else mattered at that point anymore, I was set.
What happened was that I ended up smoking disk drives left and right.
The first laptop I got was a Toshiba T-100. We were buying them through
mail order houses, and running them on solar panels with no hard drive.
I decided to pass on the Radio Shack Model 100, it just wasn't up to my
standards, but I was intensely curious about those things nevertheless.
The first modern hard disk I ever got my hands on, beyond old eight inch
platters, was a Maxtor SCSI 170 MB, this was right around the time this
neat new company appeared on the scene; Adaptec (SCSI controllers). Soon
it was just a matter of how many top of the line software titles that
you could cram into a 200 MB disk with Windows 3.1, and then 500 MB with
Windows 95, then you could barely get Windows 98 to run on 500 MB disks.
Windows 3.1 was not worth running and 98 was an improvement over 95. I
don't recall having trouble running Win95 or Win98 in 100MB.
If you can cram Windows 98 SE into 100 MB that would be a trick.
What was left of it when you were finished? How much did you cut out?
According to this I couldn't have done it!
http://members.iquest.net/~tbennett/...5-2/01/01.html
Like I said, that would be a neat trick. We used to load it over a
network on laptops with no CDs, and still had trouble getting any amount
of software on top of it. It can be done with 500 MB, but it's a hassle.

For a long time I was running telephony applications on old Seagate 20
MB disks that had to be 'spinrited' periodically to realign the head.
Are you talking about lower-level formatting the HD? That just made
disk access more efficient and really didn't "fix" anyting in
hardware.
No, it fixed things in magnetism.
Show me from the FAQ:http://www.grc.com/sr/faq.htm
"But this is only possible on very old non-servo based MFM and RLL
drives with capacities up to a few hundred megabytes."

Like I said, old Seagate 20 MB hard drives. We ran these things for a
decade, all they required was periodic spinriting with *Spinrite 4.0*

I have several Seagate 20 MB (ST-225) including a SCSI version instead
of the MFM version. They are very relaible. One just sold on eBay for ~
$24.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite
Oh, it did mark bad sectors and removed fragmentation, thus
reducing disk thrashing.
I see, and you disassembled Steve's spin code, rite?
Dude, you have no idea who you are talking to.
And you do?! At least my antiques have value. Your middle-of-the-road
systems lost their values years ago and will NEVER be collectros items
in your lifetime!
But they will fly Orbiter Space Flight Simulator at high fidelity.

What does the simulator do? Provide telemetry numbers? Show an orbit
using graphics?

I threw away the Commodore 64s and Apple IIs years ago.

Sorry to hear that. I suspect that I have picked a few up in thrift
stores from folks like you
that threw them away.

Stick with the antique computers.
I'm the guy who fixes them.
Any damn fool can replace one old board with another old board. When
was the last time you used a soldering iron?
Yesterday. It's still early, I'm still drinking coffee, and I have an
important 1:00 PM meeting today :

http://www.wid.wisc.edu/research/the...mpetition.html

When was the last time you fried a boot ROM or BIOS?

Fried or burned? Frying means made unusable due to shorting out the
PROM. Like most electronic components there usually is a nasty burnt
odor. Burning means transferring a software program to an EPROM via an
EPROM burner to create a piece of firmware that gets placed into a
socket to execute low-level code usually during power on boot up or
reset.

Ever use your tongue as a capacitance tester?

I have fried many electronic components but never a PROM. The last
PROM I burned was a copy of S-Bug in my SWTPC 6809 system (circa 1979)
as a backup. The chip was a 2716 EPROM.

Ever build a prototype board? I have. I made a 32 KB RAM card using a
single 32 KB by 8 bit SRAM chip, some 7400 series glue logic, 8 bit
latch, 7805 voltage regulator all on a SS-50 prototype board. Soldered
every joint and it worked! I am actually in the process of building a
similar PROM board.

Dude, that is so mid 70s. Get yourself a good programmer.

Oh, and as much time as you're spending fixing those bugs in your
orbital simulator I would have written it right the first time.
Wow, you have the coding equivalent of hundreds of thousands of highly
paid programmers? That too would be a neat trick :

No, more like 3-5. How many programmer hours does it take to write
your orbital simulator?

Let's see, his first release was 2000, he probably had a year or two
into it at that point, let's call it 10 man years. And he claimed it
didn't take off until he opened up the API and brought everyone else on
board, that was at the five year mark or so, and now he's planning on
opening up the DX graphics so that he can concentrate on the physics.

So let's say 50 man years.

That's your challenge, bring that number down.

Or alternatively, try 8 core implementations using the Orbiter model.

Remember, something like this barely flies on the Henry Spencer.

This thing will maximally work any CPU you feed it to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLL_hell

I'm sure Dr. Schweiger wants to talk to you right away.

Just take an old ME computer with an AGP slot, put a 32 MB AGP graphics
card in it, and load up Orbiter with all the med res stuff you can find.

You'll be greatly surprised. I'm surprised you haven't done it yet.

To answer your previous question, it does it in a DX7 sort of way.

Since you are such a hotshot programmer, get onto Sourceforge and
download the beta and start writing DX10 code for it right away!

Let me run the thing first and see if it has any value for me.

Go for it. Soon. You won't be disappointed.

The Orbiter community is anxiously awaiting your arrival!

I'm busy with CCSDS stuff right now. Frames and packets.

Too busy to fly orbiter? Even I took the time to sort it out.

Here is the frankencoder :

http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2210

You ain't got nothin on Henry Spencer, Eric.

I never claimed to. In fact that is about as goofy as me telling you
that you have nothing on Steve Wozniack.

Of course not, I didn't turn my frequency counter into a 500 million
dollar business. I only claim to vaguely remember being there.

I'll admit it, I didn't even invest in Intel when I saw RAM chips
exponentially growing in size in the backs of electronics magazines.

Didn't I tell you? I'm originally an RF guy.

Motorola! That's my problem.

Surely you know about Nicolet Instruments.

We had an entirely different mindset back then, it was geographical.
It's nice to see RF making a bit of resurgence nowadays.
We don't build our own SSB transceivers anymore.

Here are the 'Henry Spencer' specs :

An eMachines 300 with a Trigem Delhi III motherboard, updated with Jan
Jan Steunebrink's BIOS (it takes two BIOS updates from the original) and
then upgraded to a 1.6 Volt AMD K6-3+ overclocked and overvolted to run
at 600 MHz (I haven't actually done that yet) with a 10 Mbit ISA network
card, an a PCI nVidia GeForce 4 MX-400 and Adaptec SCSI bus controller,
and all the K6-2 and VIA or ALI utilities (depending on whatever board).

Sounds lile a $50 system from a thrift store. LOL!!

Five bucks. All the cards I either got for free or a buck.

The computer I found sitting in the rain and mud just over a year ago.

(No offense, Henry).

http://www.k6plus.com/

I know and like the AMD K6 series. I own a few chips myself and my
Linux box has one in it. You'll like this. My Linux box has an Asus MB
(forget spec #) that has the orginal AT KB connector, but it runs at
over 500 MHz, using a AMD K6 processor. I'm pretty sure it has an AGP
slot as well. It has been awhile since I have been inside the thing.

Look it up on the list. Update the BIOS and put an AMD k6-2+ in it.

With the AGP slot even a Pentium II will fly like crazy.

Actually, that's my second favorite computer, but it's a hair faster
than the Spencer. It's collectability derives from the Ultra Cool
Computer City Logo Case. That's an underclocked 450 Pentium II running
at 66 MHz in an original Intel AL440LX, overclocked to 360 with SoftFSB.
That has a small case fan but no processor fan, just the big heat sink.

I had great luck with a GTS Pro, 30 FPS.

I am thinking about upgrading to a dual 1 GHz Intel MB for my Linux
box. But all my time these days is being taken up by my Sun Blade
2000: http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/sunblade2000/

(Sorry, didn't mean to brag so loudly. BSEG)

Retro is cool, people all over the world are doing this.

http://compatlist.k6plus.com/

http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm

http://www.e4allupgraders.info/dir1/...7/delhi3.shtml

Socket 7 was cool. I have since gone on...

Super socket seven was even cooler. I've moved on as well, tracking down
the Henry Spencer effect was the last thing I did in this area, after
that I took the whole pile of socket 7 boards and a bunch of peripherals
and gave them to an artist to make some sort of sculpture.

Back then you couldn't get much cooler than 0.18 microns at 1.6 volts.

Like I said, this is the slowest computer in my shop, but the most
collectable, useful and beloved computer around. I'm building another.

Put Linux on the damn thing! At least people will WANT to use the
thing in years to come.

Write a linux orbiter and I will.

There are lots of ways to do this with an old super socket seven board
with an AGP slot, but it wouldn't be as cute or elegant as the Henry.

I am so very grateful to Henry Spencer for bringing to my attention the
'Henry Spencer Effect', the analysis of which resulted in this machine.

I also just refurbished an eMachines EOne. Anybody remember that baby?

eMachines? Isn't that one of the cheapest and least reliable
systems?!

Apple Computer was so threatened by that, they sued eMachines and won!

Why did Apple sue?

Because it vaguely looked like an IMac, except faster and cheaper and
cooler all around, plus it ran Windows. It's really a cool computer :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EOne

Anyways, Eric, your computers will be worth more than my computers, but
my computers will minimally fly orbiter and stream jazz and crunch text
and wiki and google for many years to come. The trick is a quiet fan, or
even better, no fan at all.

Before you know it, another 10 years will have passed you by.

Ten years Eric, and you too could be another Google.

Think it through, Eric, you can do it!

How much will your computers be worth in ten years?