new to the list

From: Miles O'Neal <meo_at_netads.com>
Date: Fri Jan 8 18:36:13 1999

Victor the Cleaner said...

|I'm new in these parts, having been referred to the list during a quest
|for some (very) old Data I/O programming equipment.

``I can't imagine why you'd want one. After all, [personal preference here]''

But so what?

|I can't imagine why you'd want one.

Doug pretty well covered my reasons.

But beyond that, the ones I used never broke. They just didn't.
Oh, they glitched out occasionally, and you had to reboot, but what
didn't? For that matter, today, what Micro-based OS (besides BSD
and Linux) won't?

But so what?

|One of the worst excuses for a roll-yer-own switcher
|I've ever seen, and nonexistent development software.

Development software? DEVELOPMENT SOFTWARE???

The OS was a BASIC with disk commmands, like most fo the other
usable micros at the time. What development software? You
boot. You type. It did cool stuff.

[As opposed to everything that had development tools, which let
you do big projects, but often took a week to get to the point
that you had anything moving around the screen in an interesting
fashion.]

*That's* the way to get kids interested in graphics
programming. If I can't get a Compucolor, I'll offer
to buy my Mom's Mac ][, but I'd much rather have the
Compucolor. (I suppose I could go dig the Sinclair
out of the unopened boxes from three moves back...)

[I thought the floppies were 8", not 5 1/4"...]


|Words of advice:
|If you want to learn graphics, go track down an SGI Indigo - the purple
|cube. They're down in the couple-of-hundred-bucks zone now, and one of
|the most elegantly built machines I've touched in almost 25 years in the
|biz.

No, I want my *kids* to explore their interest in graphics,
and in programming. And I just want to play.

Meanwhile, if someone wants to give me a decent line on a
functioning Indigo for two hundred bucks, I won't argue
with that, either.

|On the subject of home-supers,...

``I can't imagine why you'd want one.''

[OK, so I'm lying, now!]

I'd love a Cyber, esp. if I could get ahold of Ga. Tech's
heavily modified operating system.

-Miles, who'd love a VAX, too, but turned down a free 780
    a few years ago because he didn't have the budget to
    get 3 phase power and A/C in his basement, and who
    later wished he'd gotten it, anyway.


[Hmmm. I wonder of V the C is trying to scare us off the Compucolor
 market so he can corner it. 8^P ]
Received on Fri Jan 08 1999 - 18:36:13 GMT