Operating old Mainframes was RE: Collection policy

From: TeoZ <teoz_at_neo.rr.com>
Date: Sun May 25 10:23:00 2003

Thats another point, miniturization and design optimization. Today there are
chips that do what a whole box of chips did before. Older machines had a
seperate circuit for each function, and were easier to follow what was going
on. Newer equipment just has a data in and final product out and nobody
knows how it does anything inside because it is proprietary and you dont get
schematics. Also techs coming out of school today troublshoot a product to a
circuit board and swap that out (usually there is only 1 board in the whole
device), unlike in years past where they had the knowledge to find and
repair any problem using the schematics that were easy to obtain. Everything
in computing today (except maybe some embedded designs) are built using
tools that use preprogrammed routines that are many layers away from the
actual hardware. I know quite a few programmers today who have no clue how
their hardware operates, I know nobody that started programming on the C64
that didnt have a good understanding of the hardware they used.

----- Original Message -----
From: "ben franchuk" <bfranchuk_at_jetnet.ab.ca>
To: <cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2003 11:03 AM
Subject: Re: Operating old Mainframes was RE: Collection policy


> Tim wrote:
>
> > The aim of a business is to make money - and most would agree that
> > homo-sapiens is essentially a lazy creature (at least, I am)! In terms
> > of hardware and software design and production, this means more and more
> > layers of abstraction between the basic computational structures and the
> > functions that users desire. Doesn't it seem like a natural progression
> > then, that not only do fewer and fewer people understand less and less
> > about machine and system architecture, but given sufficient time, the
> > nature of the IO devices and operations has/is becoming so different
> > from the earliest systems, that it is becoming a non-trivial task to
> > understand even their function, let alone their correct modus operandi
> > (e.g. how many hardware engineers today would recognise, let alone
> > understand the detail in the design of a mercury delay line)?
> >
> Forget that delay line ... I want a comparsion chart of the latest
> DVD players. A schematic too EVEN! Right now I am looking for a
> mid-priced player with good audio out , not some 39 cent part for audio.
> This is true of computers, I want to know just what I buying!
> Ben.
Received on Sun May 25 2003 - 10:23:00 BST