Cool. I can turn my $2000 PC into a disk drive for my 20 year old piece of shit Commodore 64. Sign me up baby! Will this work on the
Vic-20?
To answer your sarcastic question, yes it works for the Vic-20 also. The 1541 drive uses a serial interface that was present on most of the 8-bit Commodore machines. So you could use the same drive on the 128, PET, VIC, and so on.
As far as the general attitude of "why the hell don't you work on something more important?", I think people that still hack old machines are like people that still restore classic cars - they do it because they can. People who want to do stuff like port a Web browser to a machine that has no practical purpose are like people who climb mountains for no reason other than to say they did. Don't knock it - someday you'll be pining for the old days, too.
Most people still hacking at C64's use a cable that goes from the printer port on a PC to the drive cable on the 64. It's called an x1541 cable. You run a small bit of software on your PC, and then your C64 thinks your PC is a disk drive. The PC program lets you load and save image files of 1541 disks. So you could pull down a bunch of disk images from the 'net to your PC's drive, and your C64 would treat them as floppy disks in the 8 drive or 9 drive or whatever. It's pretty cool, especially considering about a million of those tiny little SS/SD disk images could be downloaded in seconds on a 56K modem...
But still, wouldn't circulation be a better metrics
Magazines print sometimes up to twice as many copies as they sell, and it's hard to determine exactly how many sales are made at newsstands and stores. I'm not 100% but I think newsstands just chuck their old issues, so the magazine doesn't really get a count of how many were sold. Also, it's easier to track regional demographics when you've got a mailing list in front of you. Someone like Wired could almost instantly tell a potential ad customer how many geeks subscribe in the Bay Area by doing a simple search of their list, and those numbers really help sell ads.
I haven't looked into this yet, but what about hacking one of those RSI scripts so it pops up a little window every so often that says "sit up!" or something?
I would agree with others on exercise, and on stress relief. Chronic back pain is just as much mental as it is physical, and a neato desk or a fistful of drugs won't help that. Take breaks, chill out, go for a walk, and learn to meditate, even if it's just closing your eyes and repeating "it's almost Friday" a few dozen times.
Like a couple of others mentioned, you can get iDSL to work over a fiber/copper mix. It's usually used when folks had ISDN and wanted to switch. I don't think the telcos do iDSL, but I know Covad does/did. A check of the speakeasy.net DSL price chart shows them doing 144/144 iDSL for $89.99 a month (residential).
Lots of people who live in huge cookiecutter subdivisions plopped down in the middle of old dairy farms in the 1980's usually have this problem, because they've usually got a bit of fiber split into a bunch of copper. And if you live in the city, your phone is full of bridge taps and doesn't have a clean signal. And if you live in the country, you're too far away from a CO. Otherwise, you're one of the dozen people who have DSL....
FWIW, McDonald's has gone quite a ways to avoid using GE food. They have been pushing to go GE-free, which has somewhat thrown the farmers who grow genetically-engineered crops. Look here for a good article on this.
This is a lot like that old story that McDonald's uses worm meat instead of beef in their burgers. In reality, McD has more ties to the beef industry than Bush has to the oil industry, and it's probably cheaper for them to use cows instead of worms.
I had a VW Rabbit diesel about ten years ago, and even though the car was a piece of junk, it got a reliable 50mpg, which is a big deal when you are in school. I lived in Indiana, and never had problems finding a truck stop that had diesel. Plus they were always open 24 hours, and had those ultra-high velocity pumps so the semi drivers could fill their 100 gallon tanks in less than a day. Made filling my dinky 8 gallon tank a quick job, and I always had plenty of hose on the pump in case I pulled in the island backward.:)
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Cool. I can turn my $2000 PC into a disk drive for my 20 year old piece of shit Commodore 64. Sign me up baby! Will this work on the Vic-20?
To answer your sarcastic question, yes it works for the Vic-20 also. The 1541 drive uses a serial interface that was present on most of the 8-bit Commodore machines. So you could use the same drive on the 128, PET, VIC, and so on.
As far as the general attitude of "why the hell don't you work on something more important?", I think people that still hack old machines are like people that still restore classic cars - they do it because they can. People who want to do stuff like port a Web browser to a machine that has no practical purpose are like people who climb mountains for no reason other than to say they did. Don't knock it - someday you'll be pining for the old days, too.
-J
Most people still hacking at C64's use a cable that goes from the printer port on a PC to the drive cable on the 64. It's called an x1541 cable. You run a small bit of software on your PC, and then your C64 thinks your PC is a disk drive. The PC program lets you load and save image files of 1541 disks. So you could pull down a bunch of disk images from the 'net to your PC's drive, and your C64 would treat them as floppy disks in the 8 drive or 9 drive or whatever. It's pretty cool, especially considering about a million of those tiny little SS/SD disk images could be downloaded in seconds on a 56K modem...
-Jon
But still, wouldn't circulation be a better metrics
Magazines print sometimes up to twice as many copies as they sell, and it's hard to determine exactly how many sales are made at newsstands and stores. I'm not 100% but I think newsstands just chuck their old issues, so the magazine doesn't really get a count of how many were sold. Also, it's easier to track regional demographics when you've got a mailing list in front of you. Someone like Wired could almost instantly tell a potential ad customer how many geeks subscribe in the Bay Area by doing a simple search of their list, and those numbers really help sell ads.
-Jon
I haven't looked into this yet, but what about hacking one of those RSI scripts so it pops up a little window every so often that says "sit up!" or something?
I would agree with others on exercise, and on stress relief. Chronic back pain is just as much mental as it is physical, and a neato desk or a fistful of drugs won't help that. Take breaks, chill out, go for a walk, and learn to meditate, even if it's just closing your eyes and repeating "it's almost Friday" a few dozen times.
Like a couple of others mentioned, you can get iDSL to work over a fiber/copper mix. It's usually used when folks had ISDN and wanted to switch. I don't think the telcos do iDSL, but I know Covad does/did. A check of the speakeasy.net DSL price chart shows them doing 144/144 iDSL for $89.99 a month (residential).
Lots of people who live in huge cookiecutter subdivisions plopped down in the middle of old dairy farms in the 1980's usually have this problem, because they've usually got a bit of fiber split into a bunch of copper. And if you live in the city, your phone is full of bridge taps and doesn't have a clean signal. And if you live in the country, you're too far away from a CO. Otherwise, you're one of the dozen people who have DSL....
FWIW, McDonald's has gone quite a ways to avoid using GE food. They have been pushing to go GE-free, which has somewhat thrown the farmers who grow genetically-engineered crops. Look here for a good article on this.
This is a lot like that old story that McDonald's uses worm meat instead of beef in their burgers. In reality, McD has more ties to the beef industry than Bush has to the oil industry, and it's probably cheaper for them to use cows instead of worms.
-JI had a VW Rabbit diesel about ten years ago, and even though the car was a piece of junk, it got a reliable 50mpg, which is a big deal when you are in school. I lived in Indiana, and never had problems finding a truck stop that had diesel. Plus they were always open 24 hours, and had those ultra-high velocity pumps so the semi drivers could fill their 100 gallon tanks in less than a day. Made filling my dinky 8 gallon tank a quick job, and I always had plenty of hose on the pump in case I pulled in the island backward. :)