This is true if your signal attenuates quickly, (2.4ghz band...) or if you are trying to overcome ambient RF noise (powerlines, solar wind hitting the atmosphere, sparkgaps in momentary contact motors, etc...), but for cellphones the impetus is usually just to shout over the sea of other similar devices, the makers of which all all do exactly the same, negating any potential benefit.
Further, any percieved benefit for longer effective range for handset will be lost due to more people on fewer towers.
I believe the implication of GP was to use lower signal thresholds, reduce number of people per tower, increase battery life, and build more infrastructure.
The issue you raise is exactly the inverse: be cheap bastards, waste energy needlessly, be pennywise and pound foolish, jam everybody from an extended service area onto a single shared network cell, and get shittier battery life.
Lt me think about that one for a moment..... nope, GP's idea is just all around better and more reasonable.
Nearly all code is C. C++ is frowned on in their codebase. Assembler only in places it is really, really needed.
They aren't very interested in usermode apps for the OS. Their philosophy is that app makers should target windows instead of ROS, and therefor be useful test programs for improving ROS functionality. They are still fiddling with what's under the hood, and aren't interested in new paintjobs at the moment.
This drives away most of the win32 developer crowd, because outside of redmond, there aren't many win32k kernel mode programmers.
How can a nostalgist for old hardware *not* be welcome on a geek forum? The *reason* people play old atari 2600 games is *becuase* they remember playing them as kids, and want to relive the experience. Emulators make that possible when you no longer have the hardware. I am totally down with that. They also let you play them when the hardware is too large to travel with. I have a PSP FAT running CFW that I use on airplanes. Works great.
[One day it will die]
Yes, it will. And on that day I will use emulation. I am not down on emulators, I just prefer the real thing when available. I back up the contents of the memory card regularly with ulaunchelf, so when it does blow the magic smoke, my saved games are safe, and I can switch to emulation without any overly horrible duress.
[Not sure where to go here so I won't.]
If you can't see the benefit of no longer needing the dvd drive in terms of extending the useful life of a classic console, I can't help you. Sorry.
[Talk to me when I am on the phone..]
No, that is rude.
[But I will be using emulators when I am on the plane.]
Yes, me too. That is a nonsequitor. This was intended for in the living room.
[You will move...]
Doubtful. I love my bachelor pad, and have no interest in a significant other of either gender. It is in a quiet backwater community, and is reasonably safe and unrestricting. I love it here. Not moving. I don't care about some bullshit "american dream" involving realestate. I own my house, don't rent, and am happy where I am. I don't mind a motley abortion of old consoles stuffed in the tv stand. I don't have a significant other who does, and have no interest in getting one. Argument fail.
Universally recognized hit titles are things like GT, (gran Tourismo) resident evil series, crash bandicoot, suikoden series, some people were partial to the.hack series, and others I've met loved darkcloud 2.
Others are things like katamari damaci (which is hard to classify as a genre...) god of war, shadow of the collosus, and pals.
For shooters, you have medal of honor and a few others.
Also, the PS2 supports HD component video, and *CAN* drive a widescreen TV.
It just isn't HDMI, and uses analog component. Really new TVs might not support it due to paranoia from media companies wanting to plug their "analog holes".
But I hooked up a ps2 to a new TV just a few months ago for a friend's dad, who is a diehard console gamer. He is one of the people I shelled out money to get a network adaptor for so I could hook him up with an internal disk drive. His old game display was an eye-cancer and myopia inducing crt with blurry focus. I replaced it with a 42 inch LCD that was on sale as a "because whatever" present. Hooked him up with component video and a switcher box, and now he's not squinting to play his games anymore.
Just thought I would mention that a PS2 can drive an HDtv just fine.
Yeah, openloader and hdloader use a real internal IDE hdd, and at full speed. Load windows pop for maybe 4 seconds. (Instead of the half minute or so with a real disc.)
Again though, for the real nostalgia fix, the lack of those emulator features (save/load state, et al) is preferable in my opinion. Part of the fun in games is the difficulty.
Actually, I cooked the memory card because the dvd's laser assembly is weak. I do use winhiip to dump the discs I buy. (These days ps2 games are like, 5$. Why pirate?)
Same story with the console my friend gave to his kid. Laser unit is completely dead in that one. Open loader let's it still work, and the fact the kid doesn't need original discs is only a plus.
I will switch to an emulator when the console does finally die. (I use ulaunchelf to dump my memory card saves periodically just as a precaution too.)
But until my console dies, I don't see a reason to retire it.
That is because the modchip is associated with the dreaded spectre of "piracy". Nevermind that no mainstream media house has produced a PS2 title in years, and that the SDK for small devs relies on homebrew ability to run.
Just list it as a PS2 Fat. Don't mention the modded nature, except in private with buyers.
In 20 years, the console will be 40 years old almost.
The IDE drive will have failed before then!
Sure, I could probably use a laptop sata drive with an IDE adaptor and a special power cable with the network module instead, but getting that to fit in the expansion bay would be hard.
Again, if you note, I wasn't belittling PCSX2. I think it is awesome, but I prefer to keep my console gaming on consoles. Call me old fashioned. I play old NES games using FCEMU on my hacked Wii for instance, using the classic controller. I could do that if the FCEMU codebase had not existed. Kudos to EMU developers. However, I still would prefer to dig out an old NES if possible. My NES died from a broken card slot and dead wallwart years ago. I would still use it if I could.
The PS2 is still sufficiently young as a console that people may well still have them. I have one still, and so to many people I know. I cooked some magic memory cards for them, and now they are more convenient. (One friend gave his memory card equipped console to his kid as an emulation box for classic games, since freemcboot let's you run emulators easly from the menu.)
The question was more "I still have the console, why not use it?" Rather than any implied "emulators suck.". Emulators DO NOT suck. They are awesome. Always. The very idea is awesome.
Just that for nostalgia, I think its better to have the real thing.
No contest on the higher resolution rendering. The PS2 just doesn't have the guts to push that kind of resolution. (But then again, the TV is unlikely to drive higher than 1080p anyway. If you can afford an actual computer monitor in the 40inch and larger LCD category, and can drive at high PC resolutions, you have way more money than I do.)
The wireless controller support is nice, again no real contest. (Though the wired experience is *part* of the nostalgia.)
As for HDLoader being kludgy and buggy-- you should check out the open loader. It has support for both HDLoader and USBAdvance disc dumps, and has much better game support than both.
Why would I want to use an emulator on the classic windows game box I have in the living room, when I have the genuine article in there already?
I have a PS2 Fat, with the network module, a 500gb IDE drive stuck in the expansion bay, and a magic memory card in card slot 1.
FreeMCBoot is free. It exploits a little known feature in fat PS2s that allow it to boot from the memory card (this was used for japanese kareoke software), which gives me access to homebrew, and HD loader, OpenHDLoader, and USB advance.
Between the 3, I no longer need to use the actual DVD disc drive to play my games, and the console will last almost forever in this state.
I can play my PS2 games on the actual PS2, and have the convenience of picking the game I want to play without leaving the couch. It runs at full speed, because it is running on the native hardware.
Why would I use an emulator? FreeMCBoot is free. Give me a memory card, and I can make it magic for you too. Not problems. I did it for several friends. You can make one yourself if you have skillz disc swapping or have an action replay disc. If you don't, there is a community who will cook your card for you for free.
Not belittling PCSX2 or anything: for people that ditched their old console, it offers a good nostalgia fix, and also serves as a code base for emulators running on other consoles, (like the PS3, now that it is hopelessly smashed security wise.) That is *always* a good thing.
This feature alone is why I can choose not to use verizon. I can keep my big city friendly cell number in a long distance area, which makes it much more convenient for my employer, my friends, and my family to call me.
Thank you t-mobile. Thank you.
Att, verizon, and pals: you suck. The technology is there. You are too greedy to let go and accept infrastructure outside your miserly control.
The solution to a limited spectrum allotment is to reduce broadcast power but increase the number of servicing towers.
Analogy:
Humans have small vocal chords. They can talk, and even yell to a large auditorium. They can effectively share the small hearing spectrum with 8 billion other humans globally, without resorting to licenses. They can do this, because their voices do not carry more than a dozen meters in normal practice. As such, two people talking, as long as there is sufficient isolation, does not pose a significant barrier to the communication.
Compare to Cellular Telephone:
A few important people with a megaphone YELL through the thing, and blanket an entire city. People have a hard time communicating because of the loud signal. The signal is loud to overcome the "noise" of all the private discussions. The government regulates the use of the spectrum, and says that only megaphone using humans, and humans with the appropriate communication licenses can now talk.
Better solution: Deploy smaller cells, but with greater density. The smaller cells can handle more direct data traffic, because they have wired infrastructure behind them. They service maybe 300 people tops, and cover about a quarter mile at the extreme. People using this service can expect more of the bandwidth available, because fewer people are jammed into it. Deploy these smaller cells with greater regularity. Health issues are considerably reduced due to the lower broadcast power. The cells do not interfere with each other because the signal falls into background just as the next tower's reception zone occurs. THIS IS THE WAY CELLULAR WAS DESIGNED TO WORK.
Stop telling me about "Oh, we dont have enough band!" Yes you do, you just arent using your band efficiently, because efficient use would require a greater infrastructure cost to implement.
Instead, you want "A small number of REAAAAAALY strong towers, that we jam *ALL* the customers onto, so we have fewer service points to take care of, have to buy less property, and can make more money!"
I understand that I am a vocal minority, and that most share holders are completely driven by liquid asset flow.
However, the construction of the towers in other people's neighborhoods is directly in line with my own interests in having a telephone company, and am able to see this as an investor.
Land that is serviceable for the installation of such infrastructure, especially in dense urban areas, is very scarce, and suffers a high price at market to develop. As such, the more you wait on installation, the more likely you are that a competitor will acquire the property, install the tower, and then remove that potential growth from this company's reach. As an investor, I want my investments to grow. That means spending some of the liquidity I expect to receive in my dividend cheque on growing the enterprise.
Please dont try to pump and dump investors by offering fat dividend cheques, and neglecting your infrastructure, only to then offer poor service, lose customers, and devalue the investments of my fellow investors.
As an informed investor, I prefer stable and reliable growth that factors in the costs of properly growing and maintaining the enterprise I have invested in. In short, Directors of the Phone Company, I am interested in the long term profitablility of the enterprise, and not the short term stock price. This is why I am drawing dividend cheques, and not day trading. Day traders are obcessed with fluid stock prices to game the stock trade system. I am a long term investor. I want stable investments in my 401k and other portfolios.
Please stop trying to claim that you are doing these things in my best interests, when it is blatantly obvious that these activities result in a poor quality of service from your enterprise, and drive away customers. This is clearly NOT in my interest as an investor.
Please build the damn towers, and do it before RivalCorp buys all the suitable properties.
There is NOTHING wrong with the strategy! It will make us BILLIONS! You stinking customers just aren't responding to our offerings IN THE CORRECT WAY!
Simply because we provide a bandwidth hungry digital communication platform, that basically embodies excess, wealth, and high standards of living-- then turn around and shamelessly state that you CAN watch streaming video over our BLAZING FAST network, does NOT IN ANY WAY imply that we actually WANT you little wage slaves to actually USE the devices in that fashion!
Is it so hard for you to consume THE WAY WE WANT you to!? Really, we have a lot of money on the line here! Dont you care about the economy!?
My first computer was dad's IBM PcJr. Lack of ISA, bizzare IRQ scheme, freakish sidecar bus, chicklet keyboard and all.
But hey, it had EGA graphics, dad's had the rare Racore second disk drive, memory and DMA controller upgrade, and it had a primitive synthesizer for multichannel audio instead of just a tweeting internal speaker.
I spent many hours playing with ROM basic on it. I have very fond memories of that old fishtank. I fully understand where computers have come from, and recognize the pioneering from the altair days, as well as the nostalgia people have for old computers.
But would I whip out JrPaint on cartridge to make pixel art? Certainly not!
I suppose that since it has all the circuits defined in the manual, and has serial ports, a TRS-80 could be used to programmatically control lights, the air conditioner, house fans and a few other neat things like that.
But then again, you could do all that with a raspberry pi using a usb serial cable at a fraction the size, heat, and power...
I do consider entertainment to be a "useful" application, so I suppose that designing a system of homebrew upgrades and other fun things for nerds would make the TRS-80 a useful platform for entertainment... (I did a thought experiment on how to implement an LIM-EMS addon for a PC-Jr using the cartridge slot once, and it was fun. Hardware limitations make things more interesting.)
So, I guess there are some useful things you could still do on one, but I still don't see the need for fanfare.
Oh, I fully appreciate hardware abstraction at the OS level, protected memory access, and the whole slew of modern improvements.
I even appreciate how programmers did so much with so little.
That wasn't really the question though.
(Also, "offtopic"? Really? Remember kids, "-1 offtopic", and "-1 troll" are not substitutes for the missing "-1 don't like" moderation.:D)
The question is if the celebration of this hardware's 30th aniversary of hitting store shelves really deserves more than just a small bit of nostalgia, and some idle curiosity, such as one gets from a museum.
I was asking if you could really do useful work on a TRS-80 model 1 these days.
While they are cool from a history point of view, and many did very clever hardware hacks and tricks to increase performance with less silicon, really they aren't much more than museum pieces.
Slashdot Mirror
This is true if your signal attenuates quickly, (2.4ghz band...) or if you are trying to overcome ambient RF noise (powerlines, solar wind hitting the atmosphere, sparkgaps in momentary contact motors, etc...), but for cellphones the impetus is usually just to shout over the sea of other similar devices, the makers of which all all do exactly the same, negating any potential benefit.
Further, any percieved benefit for longer effective range for handset will be lost due to more people on fewer towers.
I believe the implication of GP was to use lower signal thresholds, reduce number of people per tower, increase battery life, and build more infrastructure.
The issue you raise is exactly the inverse: be cheap bastards, waste energy needlessly, be pennywise and pound foolish, jam everybody from an extended service area onto a single shared network cell, and get shittier battery life.
Lt me think about that one for a moment..... nope, GP's idea is just all around better and more reasonable.
Gpl v2.
Nearly all code is C. C++ is frowned on in their codebase. Assembler only in places it is really, really needed.
They aren't very interested in usermode apps for the OS. Their philosophy is that app makers should target windows instead of ROS, and therefor be useful test programs for improving ROS functionality. They are still fiddling with what's under the hood, and aren't interested in new paintjobs at the moment.
This drives away most of the win32 developer crowd, because outside of redmond, there aren't many win32k kernel mode programmers.
Are you using the rf modulator/rca composite video option?
The PS2 supports using component video which can drive at higher resolutions, including 16:9 widescreen mode.
Just saying.
[..you don't belong here..]
How can a nostalgist for old hardware *not* be welcome on a geek forum? The *reason* people play old atari 2600 games is *becuase* they remember playing them as kids, and want to relive the experience. Emulators make that possible when you no longer have the hardware. I am totally down with that. They also let you play them when the hardware is too large to travel with. I have a PSP FAT running CFW that I use on airplanes. Works great.
[One day it will die]
Yes, it will. And on that day I will use emulation. I am not down on emulators, I just prefer the real thing when available. I back up the contents of the memory card regularly with ulaunchelf, so when it does blow the magic smoke, my saved games are safe, and I can switch to emulation without any overly horrible duress.
[Not sure where to go here so I won't.]
If you can't see the benefit of no longer needing the dvd drive in terms of extending the useful life of a classic console, I can't help you. Sorry.
[Talk to me when I am on the phone..]
No, that is rude.
[But I will be using emulators when I am on the plane.]
Yes, me too. That is a nonsequitor. This was intended for in the living room.
[You will move...]
Doubtful. I love my bachelor pad, and have no interest in a significant other of either gender. It is in a quiet backwater community, and is reasonably safe and unrestricting. I love it here. Not moving. I don't care about some bullshit "american dream" involving realestate. I own my house, don't rent, and am happy where I am. I don't mind a motley abortion of old consoles stuffed in the tv stand. I don't have a significant other who does, and have no interest in getting one. Argument fail.
News to me. The PS2 section at walmart has stopped being in the glass case, and has stuff like cabela's classic huntd in it.
If game houses are still releasing titles for a console that by this time next year will be 2 genrations old, I wonder about their thought processes.
Universally recognized hit titles are things like GT, (gran Tourismo) resident evil series, crash bandicoot, suikoden series, some people were partial to the .hack series, and others I've met loved darkcloud 2.
Others are things like katamari damaci (which is hard to classify as a genre...) god of war, shadow of the collosus, and pals.
For shooters, you have medal of honor and a few others.
Also, the PS2 supports HD component video, and *CAN* drive a widescreen TV.
It just isn't HDMI, and uses analog component. Really new TVs might not support it due to paranoia from media companies wanting to plug their "analog holes".
But I hooked up a ps2 to a new TV just a few months ago for a friend's dad, who is a diehard console gamer. He is one of the people I shelled out money to get a network adaptor for so I could hook him up with an internal disk drive. His old game display was an eye-cancer and myopia inducing crt with blurry focus. I replaced it with a 42 inch LCD that was on sale as a "because whatever" present. Hooked him up with component video and a switcher box, and now he's not squinting to play his games anymore.
Just thought I would mention that a PS2 can drive an HDtv just fine.
Yeah, openloader and hdloader use a real internal IDE hdd, and at full speed. Load windows pop for maybe 4 seconds. (Instead of the half minute or so with a real disc.)
Again though, for the real nostalgia fix, the lack of those emulator features (save/load state, et al) is preferable in my opinion. Part of the fun in games is the difficulty.
Actually, I cooked the memory card because the dvd's laser assembly is weak. I do use winhiip to dump the discs I buy. (These days ps2 games are like, 5$. Why pirate?)
Same story with the console my friend gave to his kid. Laser unit is completely dead in that one. Open loader let's it still work, and the fact the kid doesn't need original discs is only a plus.
I will switch to an emulator when the console does finally die. (I use ulaunchelf to dump my memory card saves periodically just as a precaution too.)
But until my console dies, I don't see a reason to retire it.
That is because the modchip is associated with the dreaded spectre of "piracy". Nevermind that no mainstream media house has produced a PS2 title in years, and that the SDK for small devs relies on homebrew ability to run.
Just list it as a PS2 Fat. Don't mention the modded nature, except in private with buyers.
In 20 years, the console will be 40 years old almost.
The IDE drive will have failed before then!
Sure, I could probably use a laptop sata drive with an IDE adaptor and a special power cable with the network module instead, but getting that to fit in the expansion bay would be hard.
Again, if you note, I wasn't belittling PCSX2. I think it is awesome, but I prefer to keep my console gaming on consoles. Call me old fashioned. I play old NES games using FCEMU on my hacked Wii for instance, using the classic controller. I could do that if the FCEMU codebase had not existed. Kudos to EMU developers. However, I still would prefer to dig out an old NES if possible. My NES died from a broken card slot and dead wallwart years ago. I would still use it if I could.
The PS2 is still sufficiently young as a console that people may well still have them. I have one still, and so to many people I know. I cooked some magic memory cards for them, and now they are more convenient. (One friend gave his memory card equipped console to his kid as an emulation box for classic games, since freemcboot let's you run emulators easly from the menu.)
The question was more "I still have the console, why not use it?" Rather than any implied "emulators suck.". Emulators DO NOT suck. They are awesome. Always. The very idea is awesome.
Just that for nostalgia, I think its better to have the real thing.
No contest on the higher resolution rendering. The PS2 just doesn't have the guts to push that kind of resolution. (But then again, the TV is unlikely to drive higher than 1080p anyway. If you can afford an actual computer monitor in the 40inch and larger LCD category, and can drive at high PC resolutions, you have way more money than I do.)
The wireless controller support is nice, again no real contest. (Though the wired experience is *part* of the nostalgia.)
As for HDLoader being kludgy and buggy-- you should check out the open loader. It has support for both HDLoader and USBAdvance disc dumps, and has much better game support than both.
Why would I want to use an emulator on the classic windows game box I have in the living room, when I have the genuine article in there already?
I have a PS2 Fat, with the network module, a 500gb IDE drive stuck in the expansion bay, and a magic memory card in card slot 1.
FreeMCBoot is free. It exploits a little known feature in fat PS2s that allow it to boot from the memory card (this was used for japanese kareoke software), which gives me access to homebrew, and HD loader, OpenHDLoader, and USB advance.
Between the 3, I no longer need to use the actual DVD disc drive to play my games, and the console will last almost forever in this state.
I can play my PS2 games on the actual PS2, and have the convenience of picking the game I want to play without leaving the couch. It runs at full speed, because it is running on the native hardware.
Why would I use an emulator? FreeMCBoot is free. Give me a memory card, and I can make it magic for you too. Not problems. I did it for several friends. You can make one yourself if you have skillz disc swapping or have an action replay disc. If you don't, there is a community who will cook your card for you for free.
Not belittling PCSX2 or anything: for people that ditched their old console, it offers a good nostalgia fix, and also serves as a code base for emulators running on other consoles, (like the PS3, now that it is hopelessly smashed security wise.) That is *always* a good thing.
But I still prefer the real thing.
I live in a rural area but can get dsl.
This feature alone is why I can choose not to use verizon. I can keep my big city friendly cell number in a long distance area, which makes it much more convenient for my employer, my friends, and my family to call me.
Thank you t-mobile. Thank you.
Att, verizon, and pals: you suck. The technology is there. You are too greedy to let go and accept infrastructure outside your miserly control.
Go fuck yourselves. I will never switch.
Nevermind the AC, he clearly has some form of Tourette syndrome, and cant stop spewing verbal diarrhea.
We should pity him, and hope that he gets the care he so clearly needs, then move on.
The solution to a limited spectrum allotment is to reduce broadcast power but increase the number of servicing towers.
Analogy:
Humans have small vocal chords. They can talk, and even yell to a large auditorium. They can effectively share the small hearing spectrum with 8 billion other humans globally, without resorting to licenses. They can do this, because their voices do not carry more than a dozen meters in normal practice. As such, two people talking, as long as there is sufficient isolation, does not pose a significant barrier to the communication.
Compare to Cellular Telephone:
A few important people with a megaphone YELL through the thing, and blanket an entire city. People have a hard time communicating because of the loud signal. The signal is loud to overcome the "noise" of all the private discussions. The government regulates the use of the spectrum, and says that only megaphone using humans, and humans with the appropriate communication licenses can now talk.
Better solution: Deploy smaller cells, but with greater density. The smaller cells can handle more direct data traffic, because they have wired infrastructure behind them. They service maybe 300 people tops, and cover about a quarter mile at the extreme. People using this service can expect more of the bandwidth available, because fewer people are jammed into it. Deploy these smaller cells with greater regularity. Health issues are considerably reduced due to the lower broadcast power. The cells do not interfere with each other because the signal falls into background just as the next tower's reception zone occurs. THIS IS THE WAY CELLULAR WAS DESIGNED TO WORK.
Stop telling me about "Oh, we dont have enough band!" Yes you do, you just arent using your band efficiently, because efficient use would require a greater infrastructure cost to implement.
Instead, you want "A small number of REAAAAAALY strong towers, that we jam *ALL* the customers onto, so we have fewer service points to take care of, have to buy less property, and can make more money!"
*THAT* is the problem.
Dear Phone Company,
I understand that I am a vocal minority, and that most share holders are completely driven by liquid asset flow.
However, the construction of the towers in other people's neighborhoods is directly in line with my own interests in having a telephone company, and am able to see this as an investor.
Land that is serviceable for the installation of such infrastructure, especially in dense urban areas, is very scarce, and suffers a high price at market to develop. As such, the more you wait on installation, the more likely you are that a competitor will acquire the property, install the tower, and then remove that potential growth from this company's reach. As an investor, I want my investments to grow. That means spending some of the liquidity I expect to receive in my dividend cheque on growing the enterprise.
Please dont try to pump and dump investors by offering fat dividend cheques, and neglecting your infrastructure, only to then offer poor service, lose customers, and devalue the investments of my fellow investors.
As an informed investor, I prefer stable and reliable growth that factors in the costs of properly growing and maintaining the enterprise I have invested in. In short, Directors of the Phone Company, I am interested in the long term profitablility of the enterprise, and not the short term stock price. This is why I am drawing dividend cheques, and not day trading. Day traders are obcessed with fluid stock prices to game the stock trade system. I am a long term investor. I want stable investments in my 401k and other portfolios.
Please stop trying to claim that you are doing these things in my best interests, when it is blatantly obvious that these activities result in a poor quality of service from your enterprise, and drive away customers. This is clearly NOT in my interest as an investor.
Please build the damn towers, and do it before RivalCorp buys all the suitable properties.
Thank you.
(sarcasm)
There is NOTHING wrong with the strategy! It will make us BILLIONS! You stinking customers just aren't responding to our offerings IN THE CORRECT WAY!
Simply because we provide a bandwidth hungry digital communication platform, that basically embodies excess, wealth, and high standards of living-- then turn around and shamelessly state that you CAN watch streaming video over our BLAZING FAST network, does NOT IN ANY WAY imply that we actually WANT you little wage slaves to actually USE the devices in that fashion!
Is it so hard for you to consume THE WAY WE WANT you to!? Really, we have a lot of money on the line here! Dont you care about the economy!?
(/sarcasm)
American CEOs live by the Golden Parachute philosophy:
Attain a high level position on the board, if not the CEO chair itself.
Enact short sighted, but highly lucrative policies for the short term.
Rack up a HUGE "profit".
BAIL! BAIL! BAIL!
Eject from the burning enterprise as it crashes into insolvency, and deploy the golden parachute.
Majestically float into the next board meeting at the next fortune 500 corporation.
I'm younger, but still in the "old" generation.
My first computer was dad's IBM PcJr. Lack of ISA, bizzare IRQ scheme, freakish sidecar bus, chicklet keyboard and all.
But hey, it had EGA graphics, dad's had the rare Racore second disk drive, memory and DMA controller upgrade, and it had a primitive synthesizer for multichannel audio instead of just a tweeting internal speaker.
I spent many hours playing with ROM basic on it. I have very fond memories of that old fishtank. I fully understand where computers have come from, and recognize the pioneering from the altair days, as well as the nostalgia people have for old computers.
But would I whip out JrPaint on cartridge to make pixel art? Certainly not!
Agreed.
I suppose that since it has all the circuits defined in the manual, and has serial ports, a TRS-80 could be used to programmatically control lights, the air conditioner, house fans and a few other neat things like that.
But then again, you could do all that with a raspberry pi using a usb serial cable at a fraction the size, heat, and power...
I do consider entertainment to be a "useful" application, so I suppose that designing a system of homebrew upgrades and other fun things for nerds would make the TRS-80 a useful platform for entertainment... (I did a thought experiment on how to implement an LIM-EMS addon for a PC-Jr using the cartridge slot once, and it was fun. Hardware limitations make things more interesting.)
So, I guess there are some useful things you could still do on one, but I still don't see the need for fanfare.
*shrug*
Oh, I fully appreciate hardware abstraction at the OS level, protected memory access, and the whole slew of modern improvements.
I even appreciate how programmers did so much with so little.
That wasn't really the question though.
(Also, "offtopic"? Really? Remember kids, "-1 offtopic", and "-1 troll" are not substitutes for the missing "-1 don't like" moderation. :D)
The question is if the celebration of this hardware's 30th aniversary of hitting store shelves really deserves more than just a small bit of nostalgia, and some idle curiosity, such as one gets from a museum.
I was asking if you could really do useful work on a TRS-80 model 1 these days.
As far as I know, you really can't.
Yes. Fishnet, green labcoat, white pearls, and grossly oversexed behavior and all.
Has happened to me more than once when trying to watch TV after work on cable. (I work second shift.)
While they are cool from a history point of view, and many did very clever hardware hacks and tricks to increase performance with less silicon, really they aren't much more than museum pieces.
What can you really do with a TRS-80 these days?