Bet you can't Name that connector...

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Wed Aug 29 14:55:07 2001

> > > No, that makes it biased in your favour. It is trivial to find cards that
> > > nobody else will guess.... In at least one game of this type (having to
> > > guess something set by another person), the rules are worded so that it
> > > is in the interests of the setter to pick said thing (the machine
> > > configuration in this case) so that 1 or 2 people guess it correctly, but
> > > no so easy that everyone gets it.

Rather than assemble a machine with my weirdest cards, (which WOULD be an
unfair challenge), I described a machine that was in daily use in my
office (until I closed the office a year ago). That way, I thought that I
DID make it such that a few people could guess them. But so far, you seem
to be the only one. Some of that stuff will be available at VCF, if
anybody is interested.


> > Look, Fred can HAVE 300 5.25" floppies even if he loses! I mean, who the

On Wed, 29 Aug 2001, Tony Duell wrote:
> Sure, but a contest that nobody can possibly win is not much fun IMHO.

There's still the possibility of proportional distribution. Since you're
the only one who has even tried, we can split the disks. You've already
won a significant portion of them. IF anybody ever actually comes through
with them!

To improve the odds slightly:
a major hint (relating to more than one card):
there has never been a parallel (centronics style) printer connected to
the machine, although there could have been. Since that gives away that a
female DB25 is, indeed, a parallel port, then based on what you already
know about the machine, what IS connected there?


> > hell really WANTS 300 5.25" floppies anyway!?
> Err, since 5.25" floppies are not easy to find any more, and since most
> of use on thls list have at least one machine that uses them, then I
> would guess many people here could use them.
> I bought 3 plastic carrier bags full of bulk-erased RX50 disks a few
> years back and I am darn glad I did. 80 cylinder 5.25" disks are
> particularly hard to find now.

I'm surprised at the level of problems that you have had with using 360K
(300 Oerstedt) diskettes as 720K (300 Oerstedt) disks, particularly since
a number of manufacturers freely acknowledge that they are chemically the
same, and differ only in testing requirements (If there were NO flaws,
they are the same). Could they really be that close to the edge of
testing specs?

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred        cisin_at_xenosoft.com
Received on Wed Aug 29 2001 - 14:55:07 BST

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