Back in the late 70's there was a new OS, CP/M 80 Version 2. Included in the BIOS support was a simple and very effctive sector blocking / Deblocking algorithm. The default support was 128 byte sectors on the common disk environment, 8 inch floppy disks. With the sector blocking and deblocking code, any size of physical sectors could be supported. On my Morrow Thinker Toy's double density controller, I was able to go from 256 byte sectors to 1024 byte sectors gaining a nice huck of space. In 1981 I worked for Micromation and had a chance to play with a 14 inch winchester hard drive, which had a huge 20 megabyte capacity. It had a "fixed" 512 byte sector size. After a little messing around with the drive, I found that the drive really could support larger physical sectors. I went from the 20 megabyte tot disk size to 1024 byte sectors and go another 6 megabytes for a total 26 MB out of a 20 MB drive just by enlarging the sector size.
In the earliest years, the world was 6502 dominated - Apple, Commodore, etc. There wasn't any need to reverse engineer Apple Software, because they published it all in the Apple ][ red manual.
BZZT! WRONG!
The first usable computer was the Altair 8800 from MITS introduced in Popular Electronics Magazine in the January 1975 issue (on newstands December 1974). Bill and Paul wrote a Basic interpeter for MITS, and that later bacame Micro-Soft.
The 6502's from MOS technology, came in a number of odd systems, but later after the 8080, 6800 (from Motorola). Steve and Steve were well after, about 6 months after the dominate 8080 was spreading through the market. Several companies were doing non-8080 based systems, but the the king of the hill was MITS Altair 8800. The first clone, the IMSAI 8080, came in December 1975
Once the 8080 came out (and its competitor the Z80) there still wasn't any need to reverse engineer software as CP/M was effectively open source.
BZZT! WRONG!
CP/M from Digital Research, was NOT open source. It wasn't until about 10 years ago that CP/M was Opened up for all to see the insides. I am not sure of the exact date that CP/M was opened up. It cost money for it and was disk based (read:expensive at the time). When I first saw an 8" disk drive, the drive alone was about $1000. My first disk system, a NorthStar Disk, cost was $699 for a single sided single density 5 1/4 drive anda controller and a simple os with a decent Basic interpreter. Disk space about 78K bytes.
Now the market was a tad "free" with software, and the most expensive software was some of the first to become "available." Software like MITS Basic was the software that could be obtained very easliy. Heck the Southern California Computer Society (SCCS), ran a class disassembling a popular interpreter and documenting the entire thing. They were passing out copies of the documented source at meetings.
So if the movie theater takes a picture of the patron when paying for the movie, then once or twice during the movie, takes a picture of the audience during some bright scene, and then uses the audio watermark to identify the camcorder, then they would have a picture of the thief. Then they could deny that person, from entering the theater in the future.
So, based upon the fact that speed of light is the maximum, then multi-generational ships are heading our way. Time to get those space based weapons on line.
Back it the late 70's (1979?) Digital Research of CP/M fame, provided the same capability in CP/M 2.0. They called it their Sector Blocking / Deblocking algorithm. As you increase the sector size, which has NOTHING to do with the minimum allocated size the OS uses, you get more disk space per track. I played around with sector blocking / deblocking on my (still functioning) Thinker Toy's 2D disk controller (double density floppy disk controller). I was able to increase the size of the sector from 256 bytes to 1024 bytes which gave me extra space. I don't remember the differences now, but disk space went from something like 490 KB to 596 KB for a single sided 8 inch floppy. A few years later, I had access to the Shugart 14 inch Winchester Hard disk, which at 256 bytes per sector gave 20 MB of space. The drive allowed bigger sectors and I played around with 1024 byte sectors, and it gave over 26 MB of disk space.
Since the OS determines the size of the minumum number of "logical" sectors per allocation unit, this determines how efficient the file system is. Also big files like big allocation units, while small files like small allocation units. It's just a trade off for speed against performance.
Ah, I see you haven't been around government projects very long. If the Planetary Society needs $250K, then NASA would need something like $250 million. You know, cost over runs, incompenent / lazy workers, the "it ain't my job" syndrome, etc.
Nah. I already have the best sound effects - the supercharged big block Chevy with open pipes sound effect - standard equipment on my truck. Now that is a sound effect.
About the floppy / CDROM / hard drive screws and why are they mixed. When I was working for Olivetti back in the early 80's, we saw some of the first 3-1/2 inch floppy drives from ALPS and Sony. Since these came from Japan, and Japan uses metric sizes, they designed them with metric screws. The original 5-1/4 floppy drives came from the USA from Shugart (the original designers). The first Winchester hard drives originally came from IBM, IIRC, and since IBM is a US company, they used #6 screws. When Shugart and others (mostly US companies) started to build 5 1/4 hard drives, which are the same size as the 5 1/4 floppy drives, they used the same screws and mounting pattern as the Shugart "standard." They also used the same power connector so things would connect together with a minimum of odd connectors. So when manufactures started to build 3 1/2 sized hard drives, they used the same screw as the 5 1/4 hard drives. CDROM drives first came from Japanese / European manufactures (IIRC - Sony / Phillips), so they used "proper" screws - metric, not the holdout, oddball USA, still using the now outdated English sizing.
One note about CDROM screws - IIRC, Floppy screws and CDROM screws both come in the short M5 4mm length. It seems that some of the early CDROM drives could get ruined if long (greater that 4mm) were used. The electronics were packed right up to the edges, and one could short out things inside if one used long screws. This problem has gone away, since the shrinking of the electronics, and dumb people who used the long M5 (greater than 5mm length) screws ruined the drives.
Right now the US Navy has only two type of ships that are nuclear powered. Submarines and Aircraft carriers, and not all of the current 12 active carriers are nuclear powered. The non-nuclear carriers are the USS Shitty Kitty (former crew member) USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63) and the USS John F. Kennedy CV-67.
USS John F. Kennedy (CV 67)
See "Navy Fact File: Airecraft Carriers" for more info.
Well that it was done in 2003, is no real cool thing. However, when I worked for Olivetti in the 80's (about 1985-1987), we used a toaster oven to reflow solder paste to mount capacitors, resistors transistors and IC's. We designed a "Pick and Place" tool to first, paste all of the pads in which we were going to mount a device. Then we placed all of the componets in there proper place. then off to a preheated toaster oven. After a few moments, the solder reflowed. Removed the pcb and let it cool down. Then we could solder all of the normal IC's to the board. This was R&D, not production, but zero failures.
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As per the lack of NASA manned space funding...
from "The Right Stuff"
No Bucks, No Buck Rogers" or in this case "No Buck Rogers, No Bucks"
Back in the late 70's there was a new OS, CP/M 80 Version 2. Included in the BIOS support was a simple and very effctive sector blocking / Deblocking algorithm. The default support was 128 byte sectors on the common disk environment, 8 inch floppy disks. With the sector blocking and deblocking code, any size of physical sectors could be supported. On my Morrow Thinker Toy's double density controller, I was able to go from 256 byte sectors to 1024 byte sectors gaining a nice huck of space. In 1981 I worked for Micromation and had a chance to play with a 14 inch winchester hard drive, which had a huge 20 megabyte capacity. It had a "fixed" 512 byte sector size. After a little messing around with the drive, I found that the drive really could support larger physical sectors. I went from the 20 megabyte tot disk size to 1024 byte sectors and go another 6 megabytes for a total 26 MB out of a 20 MB drive just by enlarging the sector size.
In the earliest years, the world was 6502 dominated - Apple, Commodore, etc. There wasn't any need to reverse engineer Apple Software, because they published it all in the Apple ][ red manual.
BZZT! WRONG!
The first usable computer was the Altair 8800 from MITS introduced in Popular Electronics Magazine in the January 1975 issue (on newstands December 1974). Bill and Paul wrote a Basic interpeter for MITS, and that later bacame Micro-Soft. The 6502's from MOS technology, came in a number of odd systems, but later after the 8080, 6800 (from Motorola). Steve and Steve were well after, about 6 months after the dominate 8080 was spreading through the market. Several companies were doing non-8080 based systems, but the the king of the hill was MITS Altair 8800. The first clone, the IMSAI 8080, came in December 1975
Once the 8080 came out (and its competitor the Z80) there still wasn't any need to reverse engineer software as CP/M was effectively open source.
BZZT! WRONG!
CP/M from Digital Research, was NOT open source. It wasn't until about 10 years ago that CP/M was Opened up for all to see the insides. I am not sure of the exact date that CP/M was opened up. It cost money for it and was disk based (read:expensive at the time). When I first saw an 8" disk drive, the drive alone was about $1000. My first disk system, a NorthStar Disk, cost was $699 for a single sided single density 5 1/4 drive anda controller and a simple os with a decent Basic interpreter. Disk space about 78K bytes.
Now the market was a tad "free" with software, and the most expensive software was some of the first to become "available." Software like MITS Basic was the software that could be obtained very easliy. Heck the Southern California Computer Society (SCCS), ran a class disassembling a popular interpreter and documenting the entire thing. They were passing out copies of the documented source at meetings.
So if the movie theater takes a picture of the patron when paying for the movie, then once or twice during the movie, takes a picture of the audience during some bright scene, and then uses the audio watermark to identify the camcorder, then they would have a picture of the thief. Then they could deny that person, from entering the theater in the future.
Thank god that Cowboy Neal survived or who else could we pick on polls?
So, based upon the fact that speed of light is the maximum, then multi-generational ships are heading our way. Time to get those space based weapons on line.
Lots of people in the U.S. government are quite insightful and intelligent. It's just that the insane ones get all the press.
No, you got it wrong, the insane ones just get promoted!
NMCI - No More Computer Infrastructure.
Back it the late 70's (1979?) Digital Research of CP/M fame, provided the same capability in CP/M 2.0. They called it their Sector Blocking / Deblocking algorithm. As you increase the sector size, which has NOTHING to do with the minimum allocated size the OS uses, you get more disk space per track. I played around with sector blocking / deblocking on my (still functioning) Thinker Toy's 2D disk controller (double density floppy disk controller). I was able to increase the size of the sector from 256 bytes to 1024 bytes which gave me extra space. I don't remember the differences now, but disk space went from something like 490 KB to 596 KB for a single sided 8 inch floppy. A few years later, I had access to the Shugart 14 inch Winchester Hard disk, which at 256 bytes per sector gave 20 MB of space. The drive allowed bigger sectors and I played around with 1024 byte sectors, and it gave over 26 MB of disk space.
Since the OS determines the size of the minumum number of "logical" sectors per allocation unit, this determines how efficient the file system is. Also big files like big allocation units, while small files like small allocation units. It's just a trade off for speed against performance.
Ah, I see you haven't been around government projects very long. If the Planetary Society needs $250K, then NASA would need something like $250 million. You know, cost over runs, incompenent / lazy workers, the "it ain't my job" syndrome, etc.
Nah. I already have the best sound effects - the supercharged big block Chevy with open pipes sound effect - standard equipment on my truck. Now that is a sound effect.
About the floppy / CDROM / hard drive screws and why are they mixed. When I was working for Olivetti back in the early 80's, we saw some of the first 3-1/2 inch floppy drives from ALPS and Sony. Since these came from Japan, and Japan uses metric sizes, they designed them with metric screws. The original 5-1/4 floppy drives came from the USA from Shugart (the original designers). The first Winchester hard drives originally came from IBM, IIRC, and since IBM is a US company, they used #6 screws. When Shugart and others (mostly US companies) started to build 5 1/4 hard drives, which are the same size as the 5 1/4 floppy drives, they used the same screws and mounting pattern as the Shugart "standard." They also used the same power connector so things would connect together with a minimum of odd connectors. So when manufactures started to build 3 1/2 sized hard drives, they used the same screw as the 5 1/4 hard drives. CDROM drives first came from Japanese / European manufactures (IIRC - Sony / Phillips), so they used "proper" screws - metric, not the holdout, oddball USA, still using the now outdated English sizing. One note about CDROM screws - IIRC, Floppy screws and CDROM screws both come in the short M5 4mm length. It seems that some of the early CDROM drives could get ruined if long (greater that 4mm) were used. The electronics were packed right up to the edges, and one could short out things inside if one used long screws. This problem has gone away, since the shrinking of the electronics, and dumb people who used the long M5 (greater than 5mm length) screws ruined the drives.
Right now the US Navy has only two type of ships that are nuclear powered. Submarines and Aircraft carriers, and not all of the current 12 active carriers are nuclear powered. The non-nuclear carriers are the USS Shitty Kitty (former crew member) USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63) and the USS John F. Kennedy CV-67. USS John F. Kennedy (CV 67) See "Navy Fact File: Airecraft Carriers" for more info.
Well that it was done in 2003, is no real cool thing. However, when I worked for Olivetti in the 80's (about 1985-1987), we used a toaster oven to reflow solder paste to mount capacitors, resistors transistors and IC's. We designed a "Pick and Place" tool to first, paste all of the pads in which we were going to mount a device. Then we placed all of the componets in there proper place. then off to a preheated toaster oven. After a few moments, the solder reflowed. Removed the pcb and let it cool down. Then we could solder all of the normal IC's to the board. This was R&D, not production, but zero failures.