"Toy" computers http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules

From: Raymond Moyers <rmoyers_at_nop.org>
Date: Wed May 1 02:41:28 2002

On Tuesday 30 April 2002 10:11, you wrote:

> I didn't mean to say it wasn't. Just that you made it sound like
> one could completely replace a 390 with a peesee.

 A 360 you could. a 370 soon, and thats doing emulation
 on the bare metal a PC is faster than the total run of
 360's ever built combined many times over, and that
 includes the I/O.

 when the switched fabric bus becomes the norm,,
  I can see things getting to the point where the differences
 become moot for very technical reasons like propagation delay,
 where the smaller you get the faster you can go,
 at the far end of the performance destination a large box
 cant go as fast, and so on.

 Remember this was in the line of flap about "toy computers"

 I have 5 of my old trs80 M1's left, and like simh xtrs emulates
 them far faster than you could ever have pushed the hardware
 even after getting em to run at 6mhz.

 Before that i had a pdp11/05 ( the OEM version of the 11/10)
 an altair and an imsai

 The pdp11 was part of a contraption called a co-ordiante
 measuring machine, i didnt want the machine, i didnt
 want the pdp11 that much at the time, but it came with
 an asr33 teleiprinter reader punch, and i wanted it for
 my altair and imsai. the 11/05 had 16 kwords of core,
 and the asr33 with its paper tape was its only I/O.

 The trs80's are all I have left of those days.

 So, lets see, Was ENIAC a toy ?

 One of the viewpoints was that any machine packaged with
 less than xxx or lacking xxx must be a toy, despite the aim
 of the fellow employing it.

 Lets crankup the dreamscape generator and take a trip.
 somewhat like in the movie Total Recall, have some
 fun making an argument in a silly way.


 It is in the year 2012, the end of the Myan calendar
 and doomsday for many modern cults, ufo nuts, and
 the hot monthly topic for the past 10 Years of the ArtBell
 radio show.

 You have just finished your time machine and have spent
 the last 4 days of your personal linear time in short trips
 of a day to an hour, adjusting and debugging your navigation
 instruments im preparation for your first trip for real.

 You enter the final corrections on the tiny little keyboard
 of a hacked pda, its all the machine anyone can
 have after Tom Dashels green PC clause in the energy
 conservation law passed after signing the koyoto treaty.

 One more liittle trip, and a compare to see if our travel
 clock tracks the control hanging on the wall, close enough
 to guide me to the right year, you mutter to yourself.

 Suddenly ! everything changes around you during your
 next short hop thru time, you see a blur sweep over the
 image of the clock you was watching do its merry spin,

 Pitch blackness,,, now sunlight and you find yourself
 on the bald prairie with nothing but grass and weeds
 as far as the eye can see, you are still moving,,,
 the sun is quite visibly moving in the sky.
 
 Something bad has happend, you look down at the timenav
 display and see a distortion in space time spreading from the
 past, the wavefront has just passed you, You reach down
 to the small little keyboard to command your timesled to stop.
 
 You find yourself on open grassland with a slightly gusty
 wind in your face. nothing but grass and weeds is seen
 for miles. juat as you are thinking about stepping out
 a low hum is heard overhead.

 looking up you find a small round something is decending
 opon you, the wind that was in your face is pushing this
 odd looking thing around a bit as it desends. just as you
 are making out some if its odd looking mechanical features
 comes a clearly synthethic voice with the power of a bullhorn

 "Halt This is a wildlands area You are in Violation
 of the International Socialist Decree for Sustainable
 Development, Halt "
 
 You freaze but now this thing is shooting at you, rod
 like crackling violet beams are flashing past you and
 hitting the grass making a pulses of noise that sound
 like a blowtorch, if not for the wind buffeting this droid
 from hell you would be dead !

 You jerk your foot back into the sled as you dive your paws
 onto your little keyboard, your moving again. you look up
 and to see the horrble thing trace its descent in reverse,
 lets go home you say aloud, your already moving backwards
 in time, but again its all wrong, you have already passed the
 time you started and still no house.

 Your jaw is agape as the the days tick backwards then the
 years. then unfamiliar buildings are all around you. there
 is now the blur of people moving, but the buildings are clearly
 marked here and there with hanging banners with swasitkas.

 It dawns on you, its clear what has happened, with the invention
 of the stasis field generator, you not the only one who got the
 bright idea of turning it inside out, there must be another time
 machine and only the protection of your warp bubble prevented
 you from being erased along with everything else that went
 with the old reality.

 Just as clear to you is what to do, next stop, 1938 to lookup
 John Mauchly and Presper Eckert, the builders of the legendary
 ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania. two men obsessed
 with the idea of using electricity to make computing machines
 "think." Ridiculed and ignored by their colleagues, they found
 unlikely benefactors in the U.S. Army, desperate to find some way
 to calculate artillery shell trajectories as the Allies were getting
 chopped to bits attacking entrenched German positions.

 It was 1,000 times faster than any numerical calculator,
 500 times faster than any existing computing machine. In thirty
 seconds, ENIAC could calculate a trajectory, something that
 would require twenty hours with a desk calculator, or fifteen
 minutes on the machine then called the Differential Analyzer.
 
 Commissioned at the beginning of the War, Mauchly and Eckert
 didn't finish it until the fall of 1945, too late to help in the war effort,
 
 But that was going to change, you look around at the hobby
 electronics on your sled, First stop, University of PA, then
 perhaps New Mexico and Bletchley Park.

 Your little toy pda has more computing power than the total
 that will exist on earth for a decade or three after that war.

 As your sled races back in time, your thinking
 of the best way to connect all the teliprinter terminals,
 whatever happened, perhaps you can restore the ballance.

 -------------------------------------------------
 
 You are racing forward in time, the past 8 years filled with
 too many 16 hour and 24 hour days showing their toil on you,
 but you feel great, so far stops along the way shows everying
 as it should be as far as you can tell National Socialism
 is defeated and lives in disgrace, the berlin wall went up but came
 came back down on time. the bloodstain of communism
 stands for all to see to the lefts disgrace.

 things are looking better and better, perhaps your neigborhood
 will be there, perhaps even your house, you still cant imagine
 your luck could have been so good, such a subtle change
 as better trajectories during the war, and what was a once
 an errant bomb was dead on target killing the other time
 traveler in berlin just as he was arriving, and before he was
 able to alter time.

 With your stuff collected and riding back with you, and with
 John and Presper's pledge to keep the secret you are hoping
 that you might just find things as before.

 The blur of moving time slows, you are almost home !
 you are in the room ! you look over and the familiar clock
 is spinning away in a fuzzy blur and then the pop as your
 warp bubble generator shuts off. you stick out yor foot..

 ...... ......

  Someone is calling to you, its the nurse ! How was your trip ?
 your eyesight clears and you remember where you are.

 It all comes back, those 8 years of wear and tear are gone out
 of your back, you stand up thanking the nurse for the best time
 you have had in a long while..

 Near the end of a long drive home your uplift is crushed
 somewhat, the same condemnation signs, every where
 you look, Condemned, UN WildLands project. it seems
 the worlds victory over the left is nothing but an implanted
 dream.

 You are one of the last hangers on,,, enduring endless
 harrasment to get you out. "No way im gonna live
 in those high rise stacks of flats where they are cramming
 all of humanity",,, you say to yourself.

 You pull into your drive at the end of your deserted street,
 as you step out of the car you notice your front door is
 boarded up,,, there is a condemation sign in the yard,
 
 you hear a strangly familliar hum overhead, a horrid chill
 goes up your spine.
 
"Halt This is a Wildlands area You are in Violation
 of the United Nations World Treaty for Sustainable
 Development, Halt "
 
Received on Wed May 01 2002 - 02:41:28 BST