This isn't so much of a "hacking analog" as just plain "hacking," but repairing and programming ancient computers qualifies as a "lost art," I think...
I recently got a PDP-8/E (circa early-mid 1970s). How many people these days know how to program a system in octal using only the front panel switches and indicator lights, hand assembling code on the fly? It's a real thrill for me to do this kind of thing, even if the end result just makes the accumulator lights strobe like the front of Kitt from "Knight Rider."
Windows 1.0 in CGA mode was 600x200 black and white, if you had colors at all it was running in 16-color EGA mode. It also came with Paint, and a very early version of Win 3.1's File Manager, which was the main way to launch apps. And let's not forget Reversi:).
The Lisa was black and white, not grayscale. And yes, The Lisa 7/7 OS had a brilliant UI, and was a much more robust OS than MacOS would be for years to come. The UNIX variant it ran was Xenix (not sure if Microsoft had any involvement with it at the time.)
I was at work, stripping down an old Pentium 100 desktop machine, trying to salvage parts. Took the processor out of its socket and noticed a black burn mark on the socket -- one pin on the CPU had bent against another when the processor was installed, causing a short which melted the socket and the pin. The amazing thing is that the machine worked fine, and had been in use like this for years.
I find it amazing that people clamor around the concept of one type of LINUX, but yet will buy a specific VCR, Refrigerator, TV, car clothes.
Yes, but if you compare a $50 Panophonic TV with a $5000 Sorny TV, you'll notice something: they work the same way. The "interface" for all TVs is extremely consistent. Channel Up, Channel Down. Power. Some buttons with numbers on them. A few coax and A/V inputs on the back. A nice standard 2-prong AC plug.
Now compare, say, configuring the network on Slackware vs SuSE. Completely different. I get so frustrated when friends of mine ask me how to install a new network driver on some mysterious Linux distribution I've never used -- I have no idea how it should (properly) be done. Maybe I need to recompile the kernel or modules and edit some modules.conf somewhere, maybe I need to run "config" or "setup" or "yast" or "netconfig." The best I can suggest over the phone or IM is to RTFM (which I loathe doing). I just don't have the time or energy to learn how 20 different distributions work so I can help people out.
The argument, in my mind, is not that we need all distributions to be the exact same thing -- we need the distributions and the various UIs to conform to a few standards with regards to software installation/removal, configuration, and locations of files.
Just get an old Macintosh SE/30, upgrade the RAM and the hard drive and install m68klinux or NetBSD (of course it runs NetBSD!). I did and I'm currently running a webserver on it (well, at least until the end of the semester) here. Yeah, it's slow. But nothing beats running X on a 512x384 black and white screen.
Hmm, no, it's not like lying in your customer's face.
Hypothetically, Intel could take the trusty old 386, remanufacture it in a 13 micron die size using modern fabrication methods, and run it at 5Ghz. (Ok, maybe not, but just suspend disbelief here) Would it perform better than even a 1Ghz P3 or Athlon? Probably not. But it would legitimately be running at 5Ghz. And people would buy it, because 5Ghz seems on sight to be much more impressive than 2.2Ghz.
Now, a 1.667Ghz Athlon XP provides similar (or greater) performance than a 2Ghz Pentium 4. Yet people will buy the P4, because it has a bigger number. AMD knows that consumers buy based on Mhz rating, so they've started using the PR ratings to even the playing field. It's not lying -- it's simply comparing the Athlon's performance to the P4's performance.
Yeah, I understand this, I was replying to the submitted desciption ("data transmitted through modems and routers can be remotely reconstructed"), not the article. I made an assumption that most switches, hubs, and routers do not reflect the digital data in their LEDs. Of course, I haven't seen every switch, hub, and router in the world so if you know of a counterexample...
Forget the iPod for piracy, just take one of these LED readers and use it to copy data off hard drives by reading the blinking hard drive LED on the front of cases! Imagine the possibilities!
Next: LEDs a violation of the SSSCA...
Yeah. If the lights on my switch are any indication, I'm getting about 20bps throughput on my network. Last I checked, the LEDs simply indicated activity, they didn't represent the binary pattern of data going through the ports or any other pertinent information.
I've seen more than a few posts along the lines of..."I saw a demo for System X, and it looked _so much better_ than System Y! I'm going to buy System X because it's the best, cuz it has an 800THz processor and SuperMegaMagnaRamulon RAM!" I don't understand the popular belief that the console with the best graphical quality and CPU power will be the "winner". History does not support this... consider these consoles:
- Atari VCS/2600 vs. Intellvision, Colecovision, etc..
- NES vs. Sega Master System (even Atari 7600!)
- Gameboy vs. GameGear, Lynx, and TurboGrafx Express
- Genesis vs. SNES (though this was close)
- Playstation vs. N64
In all of these cases, it was not the quality of the graphics or the CPU power of the system that claimed victory for it. It was one or more of a few factors such as user base, marketing, and licensing schemes, not to mention management incompetence. I'm not saying who's going to be the winner in the latest console battle, but I am saying that it's silly to base a console's dominance soley on its CPU power and graphics quality. If anything, I'm scared that with Microsoft's backing, the XBox will crush everything else (eventually) and leave us with no choices in the marketplace.
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This isn't so much of a "hacking analog" as just plain "hacking," but repairing and programming ancient computers qualifies as a "lost art," I think...
I recently got a PDP-8/E (circa early-mid 1970s). How many people these days know how to program a system in octal using only the front panel switches and indicator lights, hand assembling code on the fly? It's a real thrill for me to do this kind of thing, even if the end result just makes the accumulator lights strobe like the front of Kitt from "Knight Rider."
Just to nitpick a bit... :)
:).
Windows 1.0 in CGA mode was 600x200 black and white, if you had colors at all it was running in 16-color EGA mode. It also came with Paint, and a very early version of Win 3.1's File Manager, which was the main way to launch apps. And let's not forget Reversi
The Lisa was black and white, not grayscale. And yes, The Lisa 7/7 OS had a brilliant UI, and was a much more robust OS than MacOS would be for years to come. The UNIX variant it ran was Xenix (not sure if Microsoft had any involvement with it at the time.)
I was at work, stripping down an old Pentium 100 desktop machine, trying to salvage parts. Took the processor out of its socket and noticed a black burn mark on the socket -- one pin on the CPU had bent against another when the processor was installed, causing a short which melted the socket and the pin. The amazing thing is that the machine worked fine, and had been in use like this for years.
I find it amazing that people clamor around the concept of one type of LINUX, but yet will buy a specific VCR, Refrigerator, TV, car clothes. Yes, but if you compare a $50 Panophonic TV with a $5000 Sorny TV, you'll notice something: they work the same way. The "interface" for all TVs is extremely consistent. Channel Up, Channel Down. Power. Some buttons with numbers on them. A few coax and A/V inputs on the back. A nice standard 2-prong AC plug. Now compare, say, configuring the network on Slackware vs SuSE. Completely different. I get so frustrated when friends of mine ask me how to install a new network driver on some mysterious Linux distribution I've never used -- I have no idea how it should (properly) be done. Maybe I need to recompile the kernel or modules and edit some modules.conf somewhere, maybe I need to run "config" or "setup" or "yast" or "netconfig." The best I can suggest over the phone or IM is to RTFM (which I loathe doing). I just don't have the time or energy to learn how 20 different distributions work so I can help people out. The argument, in my mind, is not that we need all distributions to be the exact same thing -- we need the distributions and the various UIs to conform to a few standards with regards to software installation/removal, configuration, and locations of files.
Just get an old Macintosh SE/30, upgrade the RAM and the hard drive and install m68klinux or NetBSD (of course it runs NetBSD!). I did and I'm currently running a webserver on it (well, at least until the end of the semester) here. Yeah, it's slow. But nothing beats running X on a 512x384 black and white screen.
Hmm, no, it's not like lying in your customer's face.
Hypothetically, Intel could take the trusty old 386, remanufacture it in a 13 micron die size using modern fabrication methods, and run it at 5Ghz. (Ok, maybe not, but just suspend disbelief here) Would it perform better than even a 1Ghz P3 or Athlon? Probably not. But it would legitimately be running at 5Ghz. And people would buy it, because 5Ghz seems on sight to be much more impressive than 2.2Ghz.
Now, a 1.667Ghz Athlon XP provides similar (or greater) performance than a 2Ghz Pentium 4. Yet people will buy the P4, because it has a bigger number. AMD knows that consumers buy based on Mhz rating, so they've started using the PR ratings to even the playing field. It's not lying -- it's simply comparing the Athlon's performance to the P4's performance.
Yeah, I understand this, I was replying to the submitted desciption ("data transmitted through modems and routers can be remotely reconstructed"), not the article. I made an assumption that most switches, hubs, and routers do not reflect the digital data in their LEDs. Of course, I haven't seen every switch, hub, and router in the world so if you know of a counterexample...
Forget the iPod for piracy, just take one of these LED readers and use it to copy data off hard drives by reading the blinking hard drive LED on the front of cases! Imagine the possibilities! Next: LEDs a violation of the SSSCA...
Yeah. If the lights on my switch are any indication, I'm getting about 20bps throughput on my network. Last I checked, the LEDs simply indicated activity, they didn't represent the binary pattern of data going through the ports or any other pertinent information.
I've seen more than a few posts along the lines of ..."I saw a demo for System X, and it looked _so much better_ than System Y! I'm going to buy System X because it's the best, cuz it has an 800THz processor and SuperMegaMagnaRamulon RAM!" I don't understand the popular belief that the console with the best graphical quality and CPU power will be the "winner". History does not support this... consider these consoles:
- Atari VCS/2600 vs. Intellvision, Colecovision, etc..
- NES vs. Sega Master System (even Atari 7600!)
- Gameboy vs. GameGear, Lynx, and TurboGrafx Express
- Genesis vs. SNES (though this was close)
- Playstation vs. N64
In all of these cases, it was not the quality of the graphics or the CPU power of the system that claimed victory for it. It was one or more of a few factors such as user base, marketing, and licensing schemes, not to mention management incompetence. I'm not saying who's going to be the winner in the latest console battle, but I am saying that it's silly to base a console's dominance soley on its CPU power and graphics quality. If anything, I'm scared that with Microsoft's backing, the XBox will crush everything else (eventually) and leave us with no choices in the marketplace.