Text 244, 66 rader
Skriven 2005-02-17 20:15:30 av Roy J. Tellason (1:270/615.0)
     Kommentar till en text av Greg Mayman
Ärende: FAN OF TRUE MULTITASKING
================================
Greg Mayman wrote in a message to August Abolins:

 GM> And as a side issue, their power supply would work from 80 volts 
 GM> to 260 volts, no changes necessary apart from adapters to fit the 
 GM> power outlets in different countries.

I've wondered how something could be designed to do that...

I ran across one VCR that was sold in Europe,  has a European-style plug on it
with US adapter,  and was supposed to deal with a wide range of input voltages.
 Here I found out that it's using a relay (!) to switch configurations when you
get to the higher end of things.  Not exactly what I was looking for.

 AA> I have several old pc's laying around too.  But I don't like it!   The
 AA> machines are really too slow and unreliable to be considered for
 AA> anything serious.  I have 2 fine 486dx2/50's, but the maximum ram they
 AA> can hold is 32meg each!

 GM> My golly goodness! How horrible! The machine I'm using right at
 GM> this moment has only 16meg of RAM! And it works!!!!

So does this BBS machine,  which also has only 16M in it.  I guess it all
depends on what you want to do with it.

 AA>  I ran OS/2 2.1 and Warp on those.. and they were wonderful performers.

 GM> And then they suddenly stopped working?

Heh.

 AA> But today..  a 32meg ram pc can accomplish much.

There are more "computers" out there with lower numbers of bits (like 4,  or 8)
in embedded applications than in all of the desktop and bigger systems around. 
LOTS more.  And 32K in something like that is still useful,  it all depends on
what you want to do.

 AA> My plan was to revitalize one of them as a wireless remote pc for 
 AA> the occasional access to the network that I would like to enjoy 
 AA> from elsewhere in the house, but 32meg ram and 50mHz pc would be
 AA> disappointing in the long run.

Why?  What sort of bandwidth would you need for something like that?

 GM> But I'll bet it would work just as well as it did in days gone by.
 GM> The problem is not in the computer, it is in the user's mind. 

 GM> My (now disassembled) 486DX33 was faster than I am for my word
 GM> processing and many other functions that needed input from me, and
 GM> still pretty darn fast for all the other stuff I wanted
 GM> to do.

 GM> The reason I'm not using it is that I needed a second computer with
 GM> more hard disk capacity. I bought one for $20, but the floppy drive
 GM> and CD-ROM died soon after I set it up, and I had to rob the ones
 GM> from the 486. As soon as I can get replacements, the 486 goes back
 GM> together and it can take over some of my other jobs. 

 GM> I'm not running Windoze on these machines, so I don't have the
 GM> massive speed and space penalty that it gives.

There you go.  If you can deal with a command line then there's a lot of usable
power out there,  cheap.

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 * Origin: TANSTAAFL BBS 717-838-8539 (1:270/615)