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IMSAI Series Two
Dino writes "You can actually pre-order a new IMSAI here. These folks bought the rights to produce the IMSAI in the late seventies, and provided the unit used in Wargames. It has a genuine S100 bus, but also has modern features as well, the most interesting being a driver that will allow you to access an ATX motherboard via the parallel port as a disk drive."
OK... Maybe I'm just not nerdy enough... but... what would you actually do with one of these? There's surely not all that much you can do with an old 8080 these days... especially not anything that would warrent spending almost $1K on it anyways.
I fully appreciate the cool factor... being the machine used in Wargames doesn't get much better... (On a flight between the US and Australia recently they were playing the movie in flight... fine movie, damn fine movie) but I just can't see why anyone would actually pay for anything but the original as used in the movie...
I remember being really impressed when the dude broke out with the 8-inch floppies in WarGames. I even remember that they were Elephant brand on the sleeve. Most of the stuff he did on the computer was possible too. The war dialer, the awful speech synthesis (although for some reason it improved halfway through the movie as if the dude learned how to talk correctly), the acoustic modem, etc. Even the trick he used on the door to the infirmary seems like it would be possible but I'm not an EE so I wouldn't know for sure. Definately a great movie.
Some people are into computers because they have a pure thirst for knowledge. These people learn things that are useful, and things that are useless...its all part of the same continuum for these people. To those that do, computers are toys. They may be apt to learn php or AmigaDOS. This doesn't mean they often will forego something useLESS at the expense of learning something useFULL. But time permitting, its fun to tinker... It used to be that the computer field was filled with enthusiasts who knew their shit. But ever since the unwashed masses learned there was a paycheck attached to this knowlege, the industry was inundated with carpetbaggers who don't know what the fuck they are doing. But these carpetbaggers get jobs anyway, because they have MCSEs or A(asshole)+ certs... So are you just collecting a paycheck, bub? I would assume not, or I doubt you would be on this site. Which is why I am a little puzzled, I suppose...
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
...I'd rather have an old PDP 8E.
Basil
No, you get a complete (though, no disk drives), working IMSAI system, that just happens to be able to have a PC ATX motherboard alongside all the IMSAI parts.
So, basically, you use the ATX mobo running Linux to download some IMSAI software from the internet, switch over to the IMSAI, and the included drivers for CP/M (an OS) will allow you to access the programs. Complicated? Maybe. Easier than trying to connect an 8-inch floppy drive to a PC, using some CP/M disk utils for Windows/Linux/whatever to put the progs onto the disk, re-connect the disk drive to the IMSAI, boot CP/M on the IMSAI, then run the programs? Definately.
Please try to explain WTF it is you're talking about in your summary of your news article. Slashdot just passes lots of this stuff through without adding any useful commentary, and I know you think you're being cool and all by using acronyms that only you and a few of your friends are familiar with, but please do the rest of us a favor by making your submissions easier to read.
... where it looks like the poster has just wanted to sound cool by not bothering to explain to the 99% of the population that isn't familiar with their pet little hobby, WTF they are talking about.
"IMSAI Series 2"? WTF is that??? And then the rest of the caption goes on to spew more unintelligable stuff about this IMSAI thing? It has an S100 bus? Great! What does that mean?!?!
I've just seen too many of these stories posted on Slashdot lately
How about this:
"KLV Chip Gets MOD4 Scoping"
F-Wad writes "Dysgen Inc. has begun shipping a new KLV chip with MOD4 scoping, allowing a bandwidth increase of over 50% in many cases. This should allow those of us without an interswitch to copy G6-level data nearly as fast as a real TTI-Mark IX!"
This could have come right off of the front page of Slashdot, I swear.