What sort of PCI modem did you find? It's hard to find one that isn't a WinModem, let alone has all the features.
I'm using a Hayes Accura, but it is ISA. I found it seems to implement the relevant specs the best (fax class 2.0, voicemail works well, can supposedly tell the difference between fax/data/voice calls, caller ID works well, etc.)
How about a very quick "please leave a message" followed by the SIT tones in lieu of the usual single beep? Would their software still recognize the SIT tones, or would know better because it was preceded by some speech? And ordinary callers would just think you have a funny answering machine that plays something musically interesting instead of just a beep.
I began to implement this. vgetty can call an external program before writing the voicemail file; I modified the code a little to call the external program a little sooner. Then I wrote an external program which sends the broadcast message. But I haven't written any clients yet. For Gnome there is gtele, might be a good candidate for modification (currently it works only with a special daemon that requires a dedicated modem just for caller ID). I want one for KDE, and one for the Audrey internet appliance (runs QNX).
I'd like your thoughts on the merits of Forth vs. Postscript and Lisp or Scheme. It seems to me the VM's for these are somewhat similar; Postscript may in fact be Forth underneath, but I'm not sure? And it also seems that prefix languages are more popular than postfix languages, maybe for psychological reasons. (And infix languages are even more popular, of course.) But I suspect you believe that the implementation of postfix languages like Forth is much more efficient. Can you explain why?
Have you ever debated the merits of the two approaches with Richard Stallman?
Would it be possible to write a compiler which goes from an infix source like Java, to a Forth VM instead of a Java VM? What advantages would that have?
PNG includes some compression techniques a lot like that used in fax transmission, so it's an easy conversion, I think. Some fax-to-email software already converts faxes to PNG format. And PNG includes some metadata capabilities (comment fields) which could be used for the phone numbers ("station ID's" in fax terminology) etc.
I thought of this one a long time ago, but have also found next to nothing available... but I'm very glad to see those two links posted so far. But I'm more interested in running PC's from DC continuously (for use of solar power at home, MP3 players in cars, etc.) without the built-in charging circuit and inverter... just 12 or 24 VDC input and appropriate outputs for an ATX supply. Somebody mentioned -48V telco power... I did a search and found this:
http://www.arisecomputer.com/ps/html/index.htm
Looks like they've got models for just about any voltage you want. Now I gotta see how much it will cost...
BTW don't use deep-cycle batteries or car batteries for a home DC power system; as electric-vehicle enthusiasts will readily tell you, golf-cart batteries give you the biggest bang for the buck. They are bigger, and handle deep-cycling better than so-called deep-cycle batteries. Car batteries can't handle deep-cycling at all.
12V is convenient for being able to also run a lot of automotive and RV type accessories from your home DC system (flourescent lights, lots of small electronics that normally use wall-warts which output 12V, a few old laptops, radio equipment, etc.) but a computer will demand a lot of current at such a low voltage. I'm wondering how many I can realistically run from a couple of golf-cart batteries, and might need big bus bars too instead of wire.
If I upgrade to woody, or last week if I used stock Potato and install Ximian, Netscape 4.x doesn't work anymore... I get a bus error. Some other things also don't work. I suspect it's because of the libc upgrade. Has this been fixed? Anyone here actually install Ximian on Potato and then use non-gnome apps?
So far the best I've come up with is one of these. I've bought several touchscreen machines - this, plus two of this seller's 386-based ones, and several IBM RoadRiders (no longer available AFAIK... LCD, 386-25, 2 megs RAM (!) and 5 megs FLASH), and two CRT touchscreens with Macintosh ADB controllers. But I think this latest aquisition is the most promising; it's fast enough to run X, I can expand the RAM, it has a nice amount of FLASH, ISA slots so I can install a soundcard, ethernet built-in, and the display is very cool EL amber, so I can make a UI that looks like LCARS (Star Trek)... what more could I want? Color, maybe (too expensive).
I hope to build a fast, portable remote-UI system to use on such systems. It will run on DOS, Linux and Macintosh at least; maybe the Palm too. If I get it done some day, there will probably be a link to it here.
Speaking of Palms... they are a better alternative to the GameBoy someone else mentioned, IMO. Old ones can be cheap on ebay; and they have a real touchscreen.
Of course, use an iButton to securely store login credentials.
A combination of transparent conductors and transparent LEDs (or LCD pixels) would permit development of a cube made of layers of transparent displays, for a true 3D image. I realized this about 15 years ago, and now the final requirement has been met; it can be done now, provided these are truly transparent, not just somewhat.
I've been using an Electrohome ECP2000 at home for a couple years now. I love it. I hung it from the ceiling (yes, it was some work, this thing is huge), and it projects onto a 10' wall at one end of the room; the image fills the whole wall. Mostly I watch TV and movies on it, but it can also be used with computer video as long as the resolution isn't too great. The thing about 3-CRT projectors is the 3 CRTs have to be adjusted so that you get a "converged" picture, so the dots all line up; and over time, it drifts and has to be re-adjusted. With mine, I can't get it focused and converged sharply enough to read fine text on a high-res display. I have successfully gotten it to sync to a 1280x1024 video signal, but 640x480 is the highest practical resolution. But there are better CRT projectors than the ECP2000. If it ever dies, I will probably try to get an LCD or DLP projector; but mine was a very good start, since I got it used for a fraction of the cost, and it beats the hell out of any TV I've ever seen. I also got a DVD player with RGB outputs, so that I can see movies at their best resolution. And I have also used a TV card in one of the computers, with xawtv, and a wireless keyboard, so I can do other things during commercial breaks. I think the picture looks better that way too, rather than using a non-line-doubled NTSC decoder.
But it's not as bright as a TV; I need to darken the room or watch it at night (fine with me, daytime TV sucks and I'm usually at work until after dark).
Something I remember about a physics prof saying that a carbon-filament lightbulb has a reverse temperature coefficient of resistance, so that as the bulb heats up the resistance goes down.... I wonder if diamond has this property too.
His argument that corporations will pursue only profit at all costs, fails to take into account that this is only a slightly different motivation than that of a government official; in either case, in order to be successful, the bureaucrat or the corporation must keep the customer happy. But for the corporation, this relationship is much more direct; the repercussions to bad decisions happen immediately instead of only at certain times (such as elections, appointments, or Congressional decisions) when the gov't official becomes vulnerable to outside forces capable of removing him from office. And corporations compete whereas the gov't is a monopoly. Either entity will try to manipulate people into doing things favorable to it, if given the chance; therefore the more feedback from the people, the better. Reputation-tracking software will probably evolve to help keep the corporations accountable, and those who always tell the truth will be more favored. If there is a need, in the free market it will tend to get fulfilled; but problems in gov't are harder to get fixed.
There are better ways to fix this problem, such as put a battery backup on system RAM, so that the OS won't need to be reloaded at all; it can pick up where it left off when power to the CPU comes back on.
And if computer power supplies were also designed for battery-backup (dual-voltage, can run on either 120VAC or say 24VDC) then the complexity of the UPS (converting DC to AC just so the computer can convert it back to DC again) would be eliminated, and the result would be more reliable. There should be a standard connector so an external lead-acid battery can be plugged into the back of every computer, and the power supply would be responsible for keeping it charged, and switching to using it when the power fails. (But there should be a switch to turn off the charging feature in case you have several computers hooked to one large battery with a separate external charger.) Then maybe when the power fails the OS would be notified, and it could finish doing any uncommitted writes before powering off the disks and CPU; the battery would continue to backup the memory for a very long time since it would be such a small load compared to the whole system. That way the two battery-backup systems could be combined. (Or not... maybe a separate memory backup would be more reliable.)
You could build a security system using these. The advantage over a normal loop-of-switches setup (where if one switch is opened, the loop stops carrying current, and the alarm is tripped) is that you can identify which switch was opened. There is also the TINI, a microcontroller with Ethernet, one-wire, serial, and a Java virtual machine. More info here and here.
First of all 386's are not worthless; they can run Linux. But, you have to ask whether it's a good use of electricity.
I also think recycling should be done for free, and probably is in most decent-sized cities by the scrap dealers (who sometimes actually pay for stuff).
There are people who collect this stuff rather avidly. I'm on the ClassicCmp list, which you can also join in order to find someone who will take it off your hands. You didn't say where you live, but these collectors are pretty widely distributed. Or if you don't want to join, email me and I will post it for you.
Me personally, even though the idea of a hard drive that sounds like a 747 taking off sortof appeals to me, I don't have a spare 20 amp circuit to dedicate to it either, and it would generate too much heat in the Phoenix summers. How big is it? If it's just one rack and happens to be in Phoenix, I might be tempted anyway.
BTW which $10 voice modems off ebay do you like the best?
It's hard to find one which does everything correctly; especially one which is able to distinguish voice, fax and data calls AND has class 2 fax capabilities. I got a Hayes Accura 33.6 which is supposed to be one of the better ones for this but haven't tried to distinguish all 3 types of calls yet. I did have it doing voice and fax correctly. But when vgetty initializes the modem, it times out while trying to detect its type, and then takes a guess (correctly) that it's a Rockwell. So that's sortof lame. And I went round and round with isapnp with this modem, before finally getting it to settle on a fairly odd IO-interrupt combination (didn't want it on the standard serial port settings, because I wanted to be able to use both serial ports at the same time as the modem). A hardware-configurable modem which lets me put it on IRQ5 or something would be better.
Yeah this problem is a pretty easy one compared to all that vgetty can do. You don't even have to get it to record any incoming audio, only play audio... it's trivial.
The biggest problem is the dearth of easy-to-use audio tools for Linux; something like GoldWav for Windows. I've been working on a vgetty project, and spent more time mucking around with sox and the pvf* tools than anything.
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Unfortunately we don't seem to have a state-wide no-call list but I found this info about the existing law: http://www.sosaz.com/business_services/ts/TeleSoli cit_brochure.htm
What sort of PCI modem did you find? It's hard to find one that isn't a WinModem, let alone has all the features.
I'm using a Hayes Accura, but it is ISA. I found it seems to implement the relevant specs the best (fax class 2.0, voicemail works well, can supposedly tell the difference between fax/data/voice calls, caller ID works well, etc.)
How about a very quick "please leave a message" followed by the SIT tones in lieu of the usual single beep? Would their software still recognize the SIT tones, or would know better because it was preceded by some speech? And ordinary callers would just think you have a funny answering machine that plays something musically interesting instead of just a beep.
I began to implement this. vgetty can call an external program before writing the voicemail file; I modified the code a little to call the external program a little sooner. Then I wrote an external program which sends the broadcast message. But I haven't written any clients yet. For Gnome there is gtele, might be a good candidate for modification (currently it works only with a special daemon that requires a dedicated modem just for caller ID). I want one for KDE, and one for the Audrey internet appliance (runs QNX).
I'd like your thoughts on the merits of Forth vs. Postscript and Lisp or Scheme. It seems to me the VM's for these are somewhat similar; Postscript may in fact be Forth underneath, but I'm not sure? And it also seems that prefix languages are more popular than postfix languages, maybe for psychological reasons. (And infix languages are even more popular, of course.) But I suspect you believe that the implementation of postfix languages like Forth is much more efficient. Can you explain why?
Have you ever debated the merits of the two approaches with Richard Stallman?
Would it be possible to write a compiler which goes from an infix source like Java, to a Forth VM instead of a Java VM? What advantages would that have?
PNG includes some compression techniques a lot like that used in fax transmission, so it's an easy conversion, I think. Some fax-to-email software already converts faxes to PNG format. And PNG includes some metadata capabilities (comment fields) which could be used for the phone numbers ("station ID's" in fax terminology) etc.
http://www.arisecomputer.com/ps/html/index.htm
Looks like they've got models for just about any voltage you want. Now I gotta see how much it will cost...
BTW don't use deep-cycle batteries or car batteries for a home DC power system; as electric-vehicle enthusiasts will readily tell you, golf-cart batteries give you the biggest bang for the buck. They are bigger, and handle deep-cycling better than so-called deep-cycle batteries. Car batteries can't handle deep-cycling at all.
12V is convenient for being able to also run a lot of automotive and RV type accessories from your home DC system (flourescent lights, lots of small electronics that normally use wall-warts which output 12V, a few old laptops, radio equipment, etc.) but a computer will demand a lot of current at such a low voltage. I'm wondering how many I can realistically run from a couple of golf-cart batteries, and might need big bus bars too instead of wire.
If I upgrade to woody, or last week if I used stock Potato and install Ximian, Netscape 4.x doesn't work anymore... I get a bus error. Some other things also don't work. I suspect it's because of the libc upgrade. Has this been fixed? Anyone here actually install Ximian on Potato and then use non-gnome apps?
I hope to build a fast, portable remote-UI system to use on such systems. It will run on DOS, Linux and Macintosh at least; maybe the Palm too. If I get it done some day, there will probably be a link to it here.
Speaking of Palms... they are a better alternative to the GameBoy someone else mentioned, IMO. Old ones can be cheap on ebay; and they have a real touchscreen.
Of course, use an iButton to securely store login credentials.
My project Nettebook is intended to do this someday, but it's taking me a while to get around to it.
A combination of transparent conductors and transparent LEDs (or LCD pixels) would permit development of a cube made of layers of transparent displays, for a true 3D image. I realized this about 15 years ago, and now the final requirement has been met; it can be done now, provided these are truly transparent, not just somewhat.
I've been using an Electrohome ECP2000 at home for a couple years now. I love it. I hung it from the ceiling (yes, it was some work, this thing is huge), and it projects onto a 10' wall at one end of the room; the image fills the whole wall. Mostly I watch TV and movies on it, but it can also be used with computer video as long as the resolution isn't too great. The thing about 3-CRT projectors is the 3 CRTs have to be adjusted so that you get a "converged" picture, so the dots all line up; and over time, it drifts and has to be re-adjusted. With mine, I can't get it focused and converged sharply enough to read fine text on a high-res display. I have successfully gotten it to sync to a 1280x1024 video signal, but 640x480 is the highest practical resolution. But there are better CRT projectors than the ECP2000. If it ever dies, I will probably try to get an LCD or DLP projector; but mine was a very good start, since I got it used for a fraction of the cost, and it beats the hell out of any TV I've ever seen. I also got a DVD player with RGB outputs, so that I can see movies at their best resolution. And I have also used a TV card in one of the computers, with xawtv, and a wireless keyboard, so I can do other things during commercial breaks. I think the picture looks better that way too, rather than using a non-line-doubled NTSC decoder.
But it's not as bright as a TV; I need to darken the room or watch it at night (fine with me, daytime TV sucks and I'm usually at work until after dark).
Something I remember about a physics prof saying that a carbon-filament lightbulb has a reverse temperature coefficient of resistance, so that as the bulb heats up the resistance goes down.... I wonder if diamond has this property too.
His argument that corporations will pursue only profit at all costs, fails to take into account that this is only a slightly different motivation than that of a government official; in either case, in order to be successful, the bureaucrat or the corporation must keep the customer happy. But for the corporation, this relationship is much more direct; the repercussions to bad decisions happen immediately instead of only at certain times (such as elections, appointments, or Congressional decisions) when the gov't official becomes vulnerable to outside forces capable of removing him from office. And corporations compete whereas the gov't is a monopoly. Either entity will try to manipulate people into doing things favorable to it, if given the chance; therefore the more feedback from the people, the better. Reputation-tracking software will probably evolve to help keep the corporations accountable, and those who always tell the truth will be more favored. If there is a need, in the free market it will tend to get fulfilled; but problems in gov't are harder to get fixed.
There are better ways to fix this problem, such as put a battery backup on system RAM, so that the OS won't need to be reloaded at all; it can pick up where it left off when power to the CPU comes back on.
And if computer power supplies were also designed for battery-backup (dual-voltage, can run on either 120VAC or say 24VDC) then the complexity of the UPS (converting DC to AC just so the computer can convert it back to DC again) would be eliminated, and the result would be more reliable. There should be a standard connector so an external lead-acid battery can be plugged into the back of every computer, and the power supply would be responsible for keeping it charged, and switching to using it when the power fails. (But there should be a switch to turn off the charging feature in case you have several computers hooked to one large battery with a separate external charger.) Then maybe when the power fails the OS would be notified, and it could finish doing any uncommitted writes before powering off the disks and CPU; the battery would continue to backup the memory for a very long time since it would be such a small load compared to the whole system. That way the two battery-backup systems could be combined. (Or not... maybe a separate memory backup would be more reliable.)
I tried it too, for a Debian system which has ReiserFS as the root partition.
But how do you get it to put the VGA into 43-line mode before starting the kernel?
It should be possible to burn a CDV with a normal CD-R drive, and some DVD players can play CDVs. The quality isn't as good though.
The TINI has a 32-bit processor; one of their custom 8051 variants. But maybe the Java iButton is 8-bit, I'm not sure.
You could build a security system using these. The advantage over a normal loop-of-switches setup (where if one switch is opened, the loop stops carrying current, and the alarm is tripped) is that you can identify which switch was opened. There is also the TINI, a microcontroller with Ethernet, one-wire, serial, and a Java virtual machine. More info here and here.
You can't move your head that far without losing the best view of the monitor.
How old is your daughter? Is she single? Sounds like my kinda girl. :-)
I also think recycling should be done for free, and probably is in most decent-sized cities by the scrap dealers (who sometimes actually pay for stuff).
There are people who collect this stuff rather avidly. I'm on the ClassicCmp list, which you can also join in order to find someone who will take it off your hands. You didn't say where you live, but these collectors are pretty widely distributed. Or if you don't want to join, email me and I will post it for you.
Me personally, even though the idea of a hard drive that sounds like a 747 taking off sortof appeals to me, I don't have a spare 20 amp circuit to dedicate to it either, and it would generate too much heat in the Phoenix summers. How big is it? If it's just one rack and happens to be in Phoenix, I might be tempted anyway.
BTW which $10 voice modems off ebay do you like the best?
It's hard to find one which does everything correctly; especially one which is able to distinguish voice, fax and data calls AND has class 2 fax capabilities. I got a Hayes Accura 33.6 which is supposed to be one of the better ones for this but haven't tried to distinguish all 3 types of calls yet. I did have it doing voice and fax correctly. But when vgetty initializes the modem, it times out while trying to detect its type, and then takes a guess (correctly) that it's a Rockwell. So that's sortof lame. And I went round and round with isapnp with this modem, before finally getting it to settle on a fairly odd IO-interrupt combination (didn't want it on the standard serial port settings, because I wanted to be able to use both serial ports at the same time as the modem). A hardware-configurable modem which lets me put it on IRQ5 or something would be better.
Yeah this problem is a pretty easy one compared to all that vgetty can do. You don't even have to get it to record any incoming audio, only play audio... it's trivial.
The biggest problem is the dearth of easy-to-use audio tools for Linux; something like GoldWav for Windows. I've been working on a vgetty project, and spent more time mucking around with sox and the pvf* tools than anything.