Ok folks, read the following post from Dick and tell me what's wrong. BTW:
if it's not that easy, here's a hint: the guy whom passes judgement on
spelling and grammar makes at least one spelling mistake and at least one
grammatical error in his little quip. Practicing what one might make a sad
attempt at preaching might help here. I will see if I can wrangle up some
Sylvan Learning center coupons for Dick.
Continue to read on for points to what I mean. On another note: I just hit
the reply button on my Eudora for the classiccmp posts. Why? Because I
really don't care as long as you can read the damned thing.
At 05:36 AM 4/29/02, you wrote:
>Well, Sir, I apologize for the inappropriate attribution of that inane set of
>remarks to you. I have to admit it surprised me that something of that nature
>could come from you, particularly in light of the generally sensible posts I'm
>accustomed to seeing with your name.
>
>That post to which I was replying did, however, start out with
>"
> > From: r. 'bear' stricklin <red_at_bears.org>
>
> > On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Richard Erlacher wrote:
>
> > > The year I got my first PC/AT (I used 'em at work all the time, but
>didn't get
> > > one at home for a while.) I bought a 25 MHz clone (NEAT architecture)
>with 8 ..."
>
>The fact that Mr. Goodwin's format was so confusing as to throw me off at the
>same time he complained about my experimenting with the various formats people
>had suggested, doesn't help.
>
>It's interesting that you mention the Northwest Computer Products as a source,
>since I do seem to recall that they were the source of the '286/25 motherboard
>to which I referred. I bought this hardware from a local guy who took my list
>of items and reference prices and then set about to gather up all the pieces
>for me and then take a small profit on the work. That motherboard, as I
>previously indicated was a board complete with the IIT coprocessor and 4 MB of
>DIP ram, all provided by NCP (if that's the right outfit) and the remaining 4
>MB of SIPP memory was from a local vendor who supplied many of the sellers who
>advertised in Computer Shopper, though he happily sold to us and anyone else
>who asked him, at the same prices as those he charged the mail-order vendors
>he supplied.
>
>The video board was a 1Kx768x16-color Genoa 5400, I believe (I saw the box
>earlier today, though I don't have the card any longer). Those were not
>cheap, but were readily obtainable if one had the connections, at a price on
>the order of $139 or so. The advertised price at the time was on the order of
>$199, but it wasn't unusual to find someone who wanted to sell them and would
>take $60 less just to turn their inventory.
>
>As I previously mentioned, we'd been designing with 25 MHz 'C286 processors
>since '87 or so, for the satcom biz. I designed ground equipment, but the
>selected Harris CPU was used in both ground and flight app's and it was so
<pay attention here>
>widely avaialble that we didn't think anything about using it. The "official"
<ok, notice that?>
>25 MHz part did come a bit later, but that was only a couple of years later,
>and really wasn't a die change or shrink. I think it was just a ground-rule
>change where the performance spec's were concerned.
>
>I took a look at the motherboard, BTW, and found that the C&T chips on the
>board were marked 20 MHz, but there's a sticker on the board that clearly says
>"25 MHz." This suggests the boards were selected for that rate.
>
>I don't know how you and your friends went about buying hardware back then. I
>shopped around because I didn't want to have to do it again. I didn't like
>paying more than 30% of retail prices, and seldom had to do that. I went back
>and checked the prices from Orca, and find their Q1 pricing on 1 MB SIMMs and
>SIPPs were, indeed, in the range of $35-37 at the time (September '89), as I
>have it penciled in the margin of their spec's. I did, after all, buy my
<ok, now pay attention here as well>
>first '386 motherboard from them, and complete with RAM.
<ok, see this too?>
<snippity-snip, snip-snip: got tired of reading this drivel. Maybe I'll
print it and use it to line my cat box.>
Dick: the 'and' should not be there. ..."motherboard from them, complete
with RAM". That should be your sentence. Ok, now that we have nit-picked,
etcetera; are we ready to get back to discussing classic computers, or are
we going to continue to be pricks?
(Yes, I know 'pricks' is poor English and used quite possibly in bad
grammar, but isn't that my point right now?)
-John
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Received on Mon Apr 29 2002 - 07:18:42 BST