More Groaning (Jun 10 2009)

Playing around installing the new Fedora Core on my desktop today. So far so good. It seems any time anybody in any context mentions a specific flavor of linux this inspires discussion, usually in an incredulous tone, about why in god's name would you even consider using version x instead of version y, etc. I understand the pros and cons, and we're not going to change anytime soon, if ever. Personally I'm waiting for the day when operating systems disappear and we can all get back to work.

Still haven't gotten any of the Intel systems up and running for various reasons. I'm abandoning all of them for now. Very frustrating - every time I solve one problem another takes its place.

And the inability to collect data at Arecibo continues - the problem has been narrowed down to the (very old) EDT card working on a newer OS. The good folks atEDT are working on it (even though they don't even sell this card anymore, I don't think...).

- Matt

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-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

Thanks for the update.

As to O/S everyone touts what they run.

I don't quite see how to get rid of the file clerk completely so I suspect there will always be an O/S. Might be remote, but it will be there.

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The current science apps are equivilant to what used to be called the "command line" versions in seti classic. Boinc's function is to perform the network communications to the seti servers and schedule the work units to be crunched and maintain your cache setting. In seti classic third party software performed the same functions as boinc but boinc is much more capable than what was available for classic.
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Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....

Why can't we go back to the good ol'e days of the applications accessing the hardware directly? :p It was much more efficient to just get rid of the middleman (kernel).

Kidding. Having the middleman keeps a total system lockup from happening as often. Much easier to just kill a problem process and leave the others running.

Heck even the IBM1130 I used had "Monitor" as an O/S. Of course if you didn't have the disk pac then it didn't.

Yea, but it only went up to 01E0 in memory. you could list the whole thing on a few pages of paper. Of corse if you used one of the other disk routines, it went a little higher. IBM 1130

Heck even the IBM1130 I used had "Monitor" as an O/S. Of course if you didn't have the disk pac then it didn't.

Yea, but it only went up to 01E0 in memory. you could list the whole thing on a few pages of paper. Of corse if you used one of the other disk routines, it went a little higher. IBM 1130

These young kids today with their gigabytes of RAM don't know what real computing is like. You want graphics? Send it to the plotter!

Those were the days....

Heck even the IBM1130 I used had "Monitor" as an O/S. Of course if you didn't have the disk pac then it didn't.

Yea, but it only went up to 01E0 in memory. you could list the whole thing on a few pages of paper. Of corse if you used one of the other disk routines, it went a little higher. IBM 1130

These young kids today with their gigabytes of RAM don't know what real computing is like. You want graphics? Send it to the plotter!

Those were the days....

Not to mention the fun of dropping the stack of punch card as you prepare to load your latest program.

Heck even the IBM1130 I used had "Monitor" as an O/S. Of course if you didn't have the disk pac then it didn't.

Yea, but it only went up to 01E0 in memory. you could list the whole thing on a few pages of paper. Of corse if you used one of the other disk routines, it went a little higher. IBM 1130

These young kids today with their gigabytes of RAM don't know what real computing is like. You want graphics? Send it to the plotter!

Those were the days....

Heck even the IBM1130 I used had "Monitor" as an O/S. Of course if you didn't have the disk pac then it didn't.

Yea, but it only went up to 01E0 in memory. you could list the whole thing on a few pages of paper. Of corse if you used one of the other disk routines, it went a little higher. IBM 1130

These young kids today with their gigabytes of RAM don't know what real computing is like. You want graphics? Send it to the plotter!

Those were the days....

Plotter??? You were a bit advanced weren't you? The first "Word Processing" app I worked with used "dot" commands embedded in the text for formatting and I had to write the RS232 driver (in assembler) to create graphics with a mangled "!" character on a Qume daisy-wheel printer - we mangled that character because the constant battering flattened the plastic full-stop character but the spot on the exclamation mark was brass to provide registration of the position of the daisy-wheel as it spun. Outputting circles on that printer taught me what aspect ratio meant.

F.

Plotter??? You were a bit advanced weren't you? The first "Word Processing" app I worked with used "dot" commands embedded in the text for formatting and I had to write the RS232 driver (in assembler) to create graphics with a mangled "!" character on a Qume daisy-wheel printer - we mangled that character because the constant battering flattened the plastic full-stop character but the spot on the exclamation mark was brass to provide registration of the position of the daisy-wheel as it spun. Outputting circles on that printer taught me what aspect ratio meant.

F.

Nothing as advanced as a daisy-wheel on the 1620. It used what looked very much like a standard electric typewriter. We used it for all of our IO for the first year, and it tended to shed hammers. We were all pretty good at replacing them.

Plotter??? You were a bit advanced weren't you? The first "Word Processing" app I worked with used "dot" commands embedded in the text for formatting and I had to write the RS232 driver (in assembler) to create graphics with a mangled "!" character on a Qume daisy-wheel printer - we mangled that character because the constant battering flattened the plastic full-stop character but the spot on the exclamation mark was brass to provide registration of the position of the daisy-wheel as it spun. Outputting circles on that printer taught me what aspect ratio meant.

F.

Nothing as advanced as a daisy-wheel on the 1620. It used what looked very much like a standard electric typewriter. We used it for all of our IO for the first year, and it tended to shed hammers. We were all pretty good at replacing them.

Yes. Standard output was on a matrix printer (hence the need for me to write the driver), but I was trying to sell the idea of "Word Processing" for commercial technical specifications that were to be sent to potential suppliers for contractual purposes. This was to get around physical "cut-and-paste" using paper and cow-gum followed by multiple cycles through the typing pool.

F.

Not to mention the fun of dropping the stack of punch card as you prepare to load your latest program.

I worked at a place where we got quite nifty at using a card punch which didn't have a keyboard - instead you had to remember the hole combinations. Colleagues checked each other's cards. We found we could fix mistakes by placing a piece of chad in the hole and rubbing it in with a pencil. This was fine until the card reader on the mainframe was changed and decided to knock out all the loose pieces of chad.