I never thought that the power supply might be linear. I have a feeling it is not. If it is, it has good overload protection, I've grounded it a couple times on accident and it shuts off nicely. I may crack it open one day and see for sure though.
You're right, it is only 3.5A.. I guess that includes the monitor power too... amazing that thing even could boot up. I know I ran a 486 motherboard in it at one point years ago.
Mine is mostly just a shell these days, the keyboard part is only a tray, since the original keyboard was MIA when I got the system and the previous user had found a standard keyboard that would fit in the tray when its case was removed.
The motherboard that was in it was originally an 8088, but I'm not sure if it was original either, IIRC it had a non-intel 8088 in it.
BTW- S/N 109505-5155 You searching for your long lost computer?
I've still got an old IBM portable case in the basement similar to the Osborne.
It has a 6 inch screen or so, and without drive already weighs at least 30 pounds. Decked out with full height floppies or a hard disk and a floppy, weighs more like 50.
The really amazing part is the power supply. Now, I can't quite judge where the power supply ends and the monitor begins, since it's all one piece, but the power supply only puts out something like 65 watts, and is freakin huge. Judging from other IBM PC power supplies from the same era, this one was actually small and compact for the time.
It's really amazing how much switching power supply technology has advanced, that we can get 550-600 watts into an ATX form factor PS these days.
They could start using five 8 guage wires instead of the many small ones:)
Eliminating the negative voltages that aren't really used anymore for much could help. Most modern implementations of RS-232 cheat and use inverted TTL anyway.
they have only observed it over a approximately 20-year period
One, it's more like 25 years from the late 70s.
That means about 1.25% increase. That doesn't sound insignificant to me. Remember, the sun is pumping energy into the earth 24 hours a day, every little bit adds up.
I've read that they really don't stick very closely to the real world as far as physics go. Sure, the capability is there to make it more "real", but I don't think they want to. Being able to only jump 2 feet vertically kinda sucks, etc.
Maybe they should put a link on the amazing future ones that says "Dupe" and if a story gets more than a couple "Dupe" votes from logged in paid members, it would be automatically delayed until an editor re-approved it?
Community-use, rather than commercial/political-use, for instance, and no 'community' use that reverses its intent
The courts would just love making those kind of subjective calls. They would love it so much that they would likely declare the whole scheme invalid after the first case came up.
I always heard they did that because in the "olden days", you generally had a parity and stop bit. Of course, that might be wrong, that's just what I have heard a lot.
Heh, like the Wiki philosophy. If anyone can blow your data away with no skills whatsoever, no one will bother trying to "break" in.
Slashdot could take a lesson from this. It wasn't until they started trying to use technical measures to "defeat trolls" that the trolls and crapflooders really started to kick it into high gear. At least it looks like the crapflooders got bored, and all that's left are some pretty high quality trolls.
They used to have the sort of setup you are talking about, notice how some mostly older power supplies have the female IDC connector in addition to the male power in? In many power supplies, that power connection was switched on and off along with the main power switch.
I haven't seen that option available with newer ATX power supplies, so it looks like you are correct in your assumption that it is assumed the monitor will power itself down enough on signal loss.
More concerning is the trend to eliminate the parallel port, the serial port, the PS/2 ports... etc.
These days all those functions are on one super-IO chip the computer must have anyway, so at least throw us a bone and give us headers we can connect our "legacy" devices to.
Well that's the good thing about vapor phase. The refigerant always boils at the same temperature at a given pressure, so the chip will get no colder than the boiling point of the refigerant. Fluorinert is usually used for this kind of cooling. From what I can tell, you can get it in various forms with different boiling points.
As an example, imagine your chip is a pot holding water. If you put it on the stove, the pot won't go higher than 100C as long as there is still a significant amount of water in it. Same idea I think.
Suppose you memorize all the relevant knowledge in a non-fiction book, then return it to the library. Pretty normal and legal, wouldn't you say? Is that a theft of intellectual property?
Now suppose you use a computer to help you remember all the relevant knowledge from the book. Or even better, just told the computer to remember every word in the book, to make sure you don't miss something. Is that different in any way but degrees?
It's not really power user fare to want to just type the name of a program to run it. AOL users remember various "keywords" that they type into a box to go to part of the AOL service.
If AOLers can handle it, normal OS users can too.
MS has given people the mindset that the GUI is the end all of everything, when in reality, sometimes a little text communication is very much more efficient.
Why is it so important to build a house that would last long after you're dead? Why would you want to make it difficult for your children and grandchildren to sell the house, or for anyone to tear it down?
Well, too bad there isn't a -1 wrong mod. In any case, these are unencrypted, publicly available transmissions. Back in grade school our tech lab had a NOAA satellite setup to get satellite images via something similar to ham slow scan TV. The satellites were not geostationary, so sometimes you only got a piece of the image, and it came in at something like 1200 bps.
Slashdot Mirror
I never thought that the power supply might be linear. I have a feeling it is not. If it is, it has good overload protection, I've grounded it a couple times on accident and it shuts off nicely. I may crack it open one day and see for sure though.
You're right, it is only 3.5A.. I guess that includes the monitor power too... amazing that thing even could boot up. I know I ran a 486 motherboard in it at one point years ago.
Mine is mostly just a shell these days, the keyboard part is only a tray, since the original keyboard was MIA when I got the system and the previous user had found a standard keyboard that would fit in the tray when its case was removed.
The motherboard that was in it was originally an 8088, but I'm not sure if it was original either, IIRC it had a non-intel 8088 in it.
BTW- S/N 109505-5155 You searching for your long lost computer?
I've still got an old IBM portable case in the basement similar to the Osborne.
It has a 6 inch screen or so, and without drive already weighs at least 30 pounds. Decked out with full height floppies or a hard disk and a floppy, weighs more like 50.
The really amazing part is the power supply. Now, I can't quite judge where the power supply ends and the monitor begins, since it's all one piece, but the power supply only puts out something like 65 watts, and is freakin huge. Judging from other IBM PC power supplies from the same era, this one was actually small and compact for the time.
It's really amazing how much switching power supply technology has advanced, that we can get 550-600 watts into an ATX form factor PS these days.
"This Driver is not digitally signed" comes up, or even today, the lady that called to ask how to find the CD Key for her Black ICE Defender.
Those kind of people should not be using computers anyway. Can anyone say "code red"... "Melissa".... "Klez"?
You wouldn't let a blind person drive a car, so why let an inept person get on the Internet?
Heh, you are right... oops.
They could start using five 8 guage wires instead of the many small ones :)
Eliminating the negative voltages that aren't really used anymore for much could help. Most modern implementations of RS-232 cheat and use inverted TTL anyway.
I often created self-extracting archives with an explicit recommended decompression path.
That's great for closed source software, but for something platform independant like MP3s, it's exceedingly stupid.
Tar is available on every modern computing platform, and doesn't waste time trying to compress uncompressible files.
Sometimes it's easy to forget there's more to packaging utilities than ZIP.
they have only observed it over a approximately 20-year period
One, it's more like 25 years from the late 70s.
That means about 1.25% increase. That doesn't sound insignificant to me. Remember, the sun is pumping energy into the earth 24 hours a day, every little bit adds up.
I've read that they really don't stick very closely to the real world as far as physics go. Sure, the capability is there to make it more "real", but I don't think they want to. Being able to only jump 2 feet vertically kinda sucks, etc.
We shouldn't specify data transmission mediums in Bytes.. because they send bits.
:)
Unless you are talking about parallel.
Maybe they should put a link on the amazing future ones that says "Dupe" and if a story gets more than a couple "Dupe" votes from logged in paid members, it would be automatically delayed until an editor re-approved it?
Community-use, rather than commercial/political-use, for instance, and no 'community' use that reverses its intent
The courts would just love making those kind of subjective calls. They would love it so much that they would likely declare the whole scheme invalid after the first case came up.
I always heard they did that because in the "olden days", you generally had a parity and stop bit. Of course, that might be wrong, that's just what I have heard a lot.
Heh, like the Wiki philosophy. If anyone can blow your data away with no skills whatsoever, no one will bother trying to "break" in.
Slashdot could take a lesson from this. It wasn't until they started trying to use technical measures to "defeat trolls" that the trolls and crapflooders really started to kick it into high gear. At least it looks like the crapflooders got bored, and all that's left are some pretty high quality trolls.
Also the fact that only suckers (Miguel de Icaza) would contribute to a MS open source project.
It does that when the database is down and it is flying on the static parts only.
They used to have the sort of setup you are talking about, notice how some mostly older power supplies have the female IDC connector in addition to the male power in? In many power supplies, that power connection was switched on and off along with the main power switch.
I haven't seen that option available with newer ATX power supplies, so it looks like you are correct in your assumption that it is assumed the monitor will power itself down enough on signal loss.
Not offtopic moderators. Don't mod if you don't get it.
:)
I just like it that they convinced Gore to say "Wang":
Gore: That wang to the head should have killed you.
Don't ask, don't tell, right Gore?
More concerning is the trend to eliminate the parallel port, the serial port, the PS/2 ports... etc.
These days all those functions are on one super-IO chip the computer must have anyway, so at least throw us a bone and give us headers we can connect our "legacy" devices to.
Well that's the good thing about vapor phase. The refigerant always boils at the same temperature at a given pressure, so the chip will get no colder than the boiling point of the refigerant. Fluorinert is usually used for this kind of cooling. From what I can tell, you can get it in various forms with different boiling points.
As an example, imagine your chip is a pot holding water. If you put it on the stove, the pot won't go higher than 100C as long as there is still a significant amount of water in it. Same idea I think.
Suppose you memorize all the relevant knowledge in a non-fiction book, then return it to the library. Pretty normal and legal, wouldn't you say? Is that a theft of intellectual property?
Now suppose you use a computer to help you remember all the relevant knowledge from the book. Or even better, just told the computer to remember every word in the book, to make sure you don't miss something. Is that different in any way but degrees?
Well, yes, within reason. I was referring more to the "going out of your way to make the land useless for any other purpose" parts.
It's not really power user fare to want to just type the name of a program to run it. AOL users remember various "keywords" that they type into a box to go to part of the AOL service.
If AOLers can handle it, normal OS users can too.
MS has given people the mindset that the GUI is the end all of everything, when in reality, sometimes a little text communication is very much more efficient.
Why is it so important to build a house that would last long after you're dead? Why would you want to make it difficult for your children and grandchildren to sell the house, or for anyone to tear it down?
I just don't understand the motivation here.
Well, too bad there isn't a -1 wrong mod. In any case, these are unencrypted, publicly available transmissions. Back in grade school our tech lab had a NOAA satellite setup to get satellite images via something similar to ham slow scan TV. The satellites were not geostationary, so sometimes you only got a piece of the image, and it came in at something like 1200 bps.