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Nice. Firesign Theatre.

That's the second biggest video card I've ever seen.

(and no, I'm not kidding)

--
Toro

I want one. It reminds me of the ODEX 1 robot from the early 1980s. However, this one is a lot more capable.

I guess I'll have to get a few more motors and build one myself.

methinks this is not the first 3D mouse. (that one sucked, too.) so much marketing bullshit...

Back when Plus Hard Card was new thing there were no such thing as IRQ 14 or 15 on typical PC. IBM PC was still running on 4,77MHz and using 8-bit slots with IRQ's 2-7. It was not even possible to install it to 16-bit slot of IBM AT because 16-bit part of ISA slot was blocked by frame of card. Of course most AT systems had also 8-bit slots for this particular reason so installation was still possible.

They didn't use IDE-like drives either. Controller part of board was fairly complex with multiple large chips.

There were lot of clones that were'nt as plug-and-play as original Plus Hard Card was. Clones were just 8-bit MFM/RLL (and later 16-bit MFM/RLL/IDE/ESDI/SCSI) controllers mounted to metal plate with normal 3,5" HDD.

Quantum bought Hard Card manufacturer eventually as someone already wrote.

Hard Cards from various manufacturers lasted quite long. I'd say around 10 years eg. from 1985 to mid 90's. I considered 10 years pretty long time in computer industry.

There's link to photo of original card. Text talks about smallest being 20 MB, but first model was actually 10 MB.
http://incolor.inebraska.com/bill_r/hardcard.htm

Spider-Man in a giant robot, folks. I kid you not.

Plus, while we sipped beers and waited for Spiderman II to begin, instead of the usual barrage of ads they were showing episodes of a hilariously bad Japanese Spiderman knock-off. (I had no idea Spiderman owned a rocket-car or a giant battle-robot!)

Old news! No one care about it then, not one will care now....

Everyone repeat after me: Cyberman Did it have some problems with implementation? Sure it could have been manufactuired better and even better designed, but it worked. Full access to 6 axis of movement and if you were really crazy you could use one in each hand and have 12 axis of rotation ( I used to do this for movement and zoom in VRML apps)

Here. Mmmm, vacuum-fluorescent. I still have one in my basement.

Odetics wanted to sell it to the US military as a guard robot - it never sleeps, and if someone shoots it, there isn't a telegram to be sent to the parents. Alas, it cost too much.

386DX20
4 MB RAM
60 MB HDD
PCDOS 7.0 (It had Win3.1, but on a PS/2 P70, win31 is more useless than usual, as the entire display is the same shade of red). So...

>cd Windows
>del *.*

Just because software environments have become more complex doesn't mean that the opportunity for learning in a simpler environment has vanished. Those old 8-bit micros might not be good for teaching 3D rendering, but they're still good for teaching microprocessor fundamentals. There's no need to go antique shopping on eBay, either: emulators for these simple machines can be found all over the web. How about an Altair, an IMSAI, or a COSMAC ELF for your Windows system? Or emulating an Apple II on OS X? I've even written an ELF emulator for Palm handhelds, and secured permission to publish Tom Pittman's "A Short Course in Programming" to help educate the curious on the good old CDP1802.

The problem isn't that the educational tools of the past have disappeared, it's that there's a wide gulf between learning the fundamentals and writing modern software. What I wonder, however, is just what sort of foundation is really necessary to become a programmer these days. Hardware guys benefit from understanding things like a microprocessor's addressing modes and register usage, as do compiler developers... but to the average programmer, what difference does it make?

I don't think there's any single correct answer, any more than there's one single curriculum that will cover the full breadth of today's software technologies. The challenge of knowing where to start is knowing where you want to end up. Once you know that, the tools and literature needed to acquire that knowledge are all readily available.

Really, it was just plain cool. Description here. As I understand it, Odetics thought it would make a good robot to sell to the military, as a guard unit. It could stand guard all night, never falling asleep, and it can walk about anywhere to get a closer look at 'anomalies'.

The standard demo for it was to crawl out of a pickup truck bed, and then lift the end of the pickup truck off the ground. Tell me this guard 'bot wouldn't be intimidating. ;-) It was built around 1983.

To my knowledge there is no way in heck they can detect another computer behind a Nat. It sounds like BS or a scare tactic. Absolutely ridiculous.

While I on the subject of crappy ISP's I don't understand what is the point of all these conditions. I have friends that work for a fairly large (state-wide), very profitable, ISP that has none of this. Heck they even allow you to resell the service if you so desire. As they say, as long as they make money why should they care? As they see it these restrictive terms drive people directly to them. For instance they started reselling Time Warner's Cable service. TW prohibits Web Servers and such but they do not. Result - alot of customers switching over to them because of the less restrictive terms of use.

If you are in Nebraska, or western edge of Iowa some areas of south dakot and Kansas, I highly recommend Internet Nebraska, they provide DSL, dialup, and cable and their terms and conditions are extremely reasonable. Not to mention they are nice people. =)

To my knowledge there is no way in heck they can detect another computer behind a Nat. It sounds like BS or a scare tactic. Absolutely ridiculous.

While I on the subject of crappy ISP's I don't understand what is the point of all these conditions. I have friends that work for a fairly large (state-wide), very profitable, ISP that has none of this. Heck they even allow you to resell the service if you so desire. As they say, as long as they make money why should they care? As they see it these restrictive terms drive people directly to them. For instance they started reselling Time Warner's Cable service. TW prohibits Web Servers and such but they do not. Result - alot of customers switching over to them because of the less restrictive terms of use.

If you are in Nebraska, or western edge of Iowa some areas of south dakot and Kansas, I highly recommend Internet Nebraska, they provide DSL, dialup, and cable and their terms and conditions are extremely reasonable. Not to mention they are nice people. =)

My ISP, Internet Nebraska uses Postini, a service which intercepts all incoming email and uses content-based filters to block out nearly all spam e-mail. There are other programs that do the same thing, such as MailAgent. Postini even scans for viruses. For this service, Internet Nebraska charges me a fee of $1 per month which I am more than happy to pay. I now receive one to three spam e-mails per day as opposed to about 50 before I signed up for Postini. My question is this: Why don't more ISPs use services that are available, like Postini? It's a no-brainer to me, and I can't think of many good reasons not to use it.

yes, DSL is LSD backwards. what's your point? your sig just makes you look like a tard, billd@inebraska.com.

In San Francisco, though, the local IMAX is operated by Lowe's Cinemas in the Sony Metreon, so it's strictly commercial.

From my understanding we would treat this just like any other unauthorized access into our system, and put an end to it as it arose.

On Tue, 20 Aug 2002, Andy Ringsmuth wrote:

http://www.informationwave.net/news/20020819riaa .p hp

I'm wondering if IN would ever consider something such as this.
-Andy Ringsmuth
andyring@inebraska.com

Internet Nebraska System Manager - manager@inebraska.com
6942

Secondly, I'd imagine 911 would work, much as it does on a cell phone, but you're never quite sure what 911 center it will be routed to, and as of yet, there's no E911 (allowing a dispatcher to see your address, etc.). But, there are easy ways around that as well. Simply look up the number for the police dispatch and call that, in larger cities it's manned 24/7, and I'd imagine they can send out units or transfer you right to the local 911 dispatcher.

Personally, as soon as my local ISP is able to offer service via cable (sometime later this year, I've heard, instead of AOL TimeWarner exclusively), I will ditch DSL and phone service entirely, ridding myself of another monopoly, and likely saving a few $ in the end.

You young whippershnappers have no idea how easy you have it. Back in my day if you needed portable storage that went beyond a floppy we used hardcards. They were full sized ISA bus cards with a 20 to 80 meg hard drive attached. None of this newfangled USB, hot swappable plug and play for us.

I remember transferring lots of files this way. It was fun.

This Classic Computers site is probably a good starting place.

Not a direct answer, but as I remember it, the first magazines to carry computer coverage were electronics "what's new" and hobby magazines, stuff like Popular Electronics. I actually still have most of them in a box somewhere.
RCA COSMAC VIP, be still my heart :)

Google Cache to main page (not all about the glasses)

Related

Front Page of Glasses page.

This is a third generation covert HMD display. Through these sunglasses, I have a monochrome 320x240 VGA display superimposed right in front of me. I can see normally. If I were looking at you, I would see a computer screen floating over your face, centered on your nose.

My first generation displays were crude and bulky in comparison - but many of my first generation displays also contained a video camera in addition to the display.

The second generation displays were much improved and incorporated a beam splitter (half-silvered mirror) into the design rather than a front-silvered optical mirror. The main lens was also customized.

The third generation design fits well in my sunglasses and is more rugged, smaller in overall dimensions, and has custom parts for everything - including the backlight for the display itself.

The third generation covert display is also a leap forward in appearance. Previous generations either required oversized safety glasses to house the display, or had pieces or wires very exposed. The third generation display looks almost completely normal from the front as well as from the side that houses the display. The single thin, flexible black cable - easily concealed - is the biggest hint there is more than meets the eye!

A look through the glasses

This is what it looks like to look through the glasses. Here you can see the "pine" mail program running while I look at my good friend Jack Daniels. This is an actual unedited (but cropped) picture taken with a digital camera through the display. It sees what your eye would see. (The white bar at the bottom is a video artifact due to the modeline I was using to supply the video signal)

The display itself uses a beamsplitter to reflect the image into your eye. The unique properties allow it a "see-though" effect (demonstrated in the following links with a second-generation display) that makes the reflector display an image when the unit is powered on, and appear transparent when the display is off.

Fourth-Generation?

So, what is next? Right now there is no immediate path forward to a fourth-generation display, but it will doubtlessly incorporate one or several of the following advances:

Color
Higher resolution
Even smaller optical assembly
re-intruduction of embedded video camera

The ultimate display would be able to fit unnoticed in a regular pair of untinted eyeglasses.

YES! I build third-generation displays for people! I don't have the info on the web yet, so please email me if you are interested!

You can also take a quick look at my For Sale page, where I currently have services listed for building Second-Generation displays.

I tend to wonder why major robitic systems haven't been deployed, but I am certain there are good reasons.

I know of one system that was developed a while back (for the DOD, I believe) that involved a targetable mortar mounted on a remote controlled (it may have even been autonomous to a point) 4 wheel ATV. I saw some test videos of this on various shows, and even found some small articles about it in Popular Mechanics.

Odetics, Inc, in Anaheim, CA produced at one time (at least some finished prototypes) a six-legged robotics system called the Odex-1 - the picture of the Odex-1 getting into/out of a pickup isn't staged - there was video taken of it broadcast on national TV through shows like "That's Incredible" and "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" - which I have also seen. It was set to be a defence robotics platform, with weapons mounted on it. Whatever happened to this machine is a mystery - I haven't been able to find any information on it...

Anyhow, a friend of mine described a software system he developed, which I have no doubts about him doing, as I have other code he worked on for an earlier, more benign system.

Basically, it was a GA/AE system, in which he created a "tank" simulation. Each tank in the simulation had sensors and outputs. The sensors could sense such things as the location of the other units in the simulation, as well as turret position of the other units. The outputs controlled the firing of the cannon, and moving the tank.

Each tank was "driven" by a custom bit of code. Each tank was given a bit of semi-random code to execute, and the simulation was ran. After so many rounds of simultation, those tanks that had done the best were replicated and "bred" - exchanging bits of code (ala DNA/genes) - to fight in the next run of simulation.

Note that this sim wasn't run real-time with graphics - he said he ran it "in-memory" to attain the fastest speed, and had a logging playback system to slow it down for human consumption and study.

None of this is new or unique (well, other than the fact that he was playing around with this back in 1992 or so, as a senior in high school), but the results he related to me were suprising:

The tanks, after so many runs, started displaying curious behavior. First, a communications of sorts was "discovered", that involved "turret-waggling" and "bee-dancing" behavior. Soon after that, flock and group strategies for eliminating opponents (essentially, learning to operate as teams) came about. He said late in the runs, the tanks learned to exploit a bug in his VM for the scripts each tank used, a buffer overrun that allowed the tanks to "teleport" behind their enemies to close in for the "kill".

He told me he stopped the sim at that point - uncertain about continuing it.

He since lost the code, but I doubt it would take much to replicate it. Like I said, I have other code he worked on which was more benign, and involved the same sort of system, except this time with "bugs" competing against each other, and an environment (that both grows good "grass", and bad "poison grass"), as well as breeding and dying - a very fascinating simulation in and of itself. I have no reason to doubt that he went the next step.

What I wonder is whether such stuff has been developed for use on a real battlefield - matching the ATV mortars with such software, bred inside the "dismounted soldier" training system the DOD uses for training, etc - could such a system be used for real warfare? Anyone care to comment on effectiveness, problems, ways the enemy could use it against the aggressor?

Finally - I tend to wonder if such a system could be applied to a Battlebot/Robot War competition...

So, who's going to port Stella to PS2?

In this "robot".

In /. for posting this story.

Why?

This has to be the lamest robot "story" on the planet. Similar "security" robots have been built by companies and individuals for years. I remember several companies in the 80's doing this, when robots were the "thing" of the "future".

GPS? Why GPS? A white or black line (or even one done in a flourescent "invisible" paint or something) would be much cheaper for navigation. In a new building, a buried wire under the floor or carpet could be used. Coded tags at doors could further aid navigation (UPC or IR "active" tags).

Nomadic Technologies used to sell research robots with this kind of use in mind (sadly, I just found that they stopped production).

IRobot has a research robot that seems ideal for this as well.

Of course, nothing would beat Odetic's Odex-1 for the "scare" factor in security - too bad this 80's robot never went into production...

Now, homebrew bots - that is where the action is:

Karl Williams seems to have many projects of the type that would make interesting security platforms - or at least something to build off of (mount the vortex cannon or coil gun onto the home drone - yikes!).

This machine might even be better for security - simply because it could be smaller and faster for such a job.

The truth is that there are a lot of homebrew and commercial robots that can easily do what this robot does - probably at a fraction of the cost (actually, some of the commercial bots are quite expensive). There were many robots built in the 80's that were capable as well.

That is the article I want to see. Somehow I was hoping for a two legged chicken walker (not ED-209 sized, but something) patrolling the halls, maybe packing low powered pea shooters for "defense" (actually, one homebrewer managed to build such a robot with a "pea-shooter"-style, multi barrel "gun" - it couldn't hurt you, but it could knock over empty pop cans - I wish I had a link to it - probably do, but it is buried in my link list somewhere deep).

Oh well...

Worldcom - Generation Duh!