Tech Rumors/Legends?

From: Doug Coward <dcoward_at_pressstart.com>
Date: Thu Jun 1 15:33:32 2000

Hi All,
 One the nice things about this list is the variety of
first hand experience that can be called upon to clear
up those nagging second hand rumors that you keep dragging
around for years, unable to track down a definitive answer.

Up for review:
1. "The person that designed the Mindset PC later designed
the Amiga." I realize that computers like the Amiga are not
designed by just one person, but does anyone know anything
about the people that helped design these computers?

2. About 1982 I started hearing that it was possible to
build a camera for your pc by "cooking" an EPROM under
UV light for an extended period until the memory cells
were still light sensitive but would no long hold a
charge. Then by placing a len over the EPROM's window,
you had a real time low-res video image mapped right into
memory. Again this is one that quite a few people had
heard about but no one knew anyone that had ever done it.

3. This has probably been discussed here before, but ....
I've heard that the old 8 inch 32 sector hard sector floppy
diskettes, the ones with the sector holes around the outside
edge of the diskette, and the big notch in one corner, is
is an early version of the 8 inch floppy - maybe the first
form the 8 inch floppies from IBM took.

4. I've heard somewhere, and the source is lost to age,
that - the Altair for the January 1975 article was just
a empty case and that no regular orders for the Altair
8800 where filled until April 1, 1975.
(Sure, I drooled on the magazine at the time, but it
 might as well costs a million dollars, I was a single
 sailor collecting $151.00 every two weeks, saving to
 get married at the end of April.)
 
Comments welcome, I would like to deallocate the space
for the ones that have no real basis in fact.
 Regards,
 --Doug
=========================================
Doug Coward
Press Start Inc.
Sunnyvale,CA
=========================================
Received on Thu Jun 01 2000 - 15:33:32 BST

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