507 private links
Sometimes you come across one of those ideas that at first appear to have to be some kind of elaborate joke, but as you dig deeper into it, it begins to make a disturbing kind of sense. This is where the idea of diagonally-oriented displays comes to the fore. Although not a feature that is generally supported by operating systems, [xssfox] used the xrandr (x resize and rotate) function in the Xorg display server to find the perfect diagonal display orientation to reach a happy balance between the pros and cons of horizontal and vertical display orientations.
The era of mainframe computers and directly programming machines with switches is long past, but plenty of us look back on that era with a certain nostalgia. Getting that close to the hardware and knowing precisely what’s going on is becoming a little bit of a lost art. That’s why [Phil] took it upon himself to build this homage to the mainframe computer of the 70s, which all but disappeared when PCs and microcontrollers took over the scene decades ago.
The machine, known as PlasMa, is not a recreation of any specific computer but instead looks to recreate the feel of computers of this era in a more manageable size.
The Internet started in the 1960s as a way for government researchers to share information. Computers in the '60s were large and immobile and in order to make use of information stored in any one computer, one had to either travel to the site of the computer or have magnetic computer tapes sent through the conventional postal system.
Another catalyst in the formation of the Internet was the heating up of the Cold War. The Soviet Union's launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred the U.S. Defense Department to consider ways information could still be disseminated even after a nuclear attack. This eventually led to the formation of the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the network that ultimately evolved into what we now know as the Internet. ARPANET was a great success but membership was limited to certain academic and research organizations who had contracts with the Defense Department. In response to this, other networks were created to provide information sharing.
January 1, 1983 is considered the official birthday of the Internet. Prior to this, the various computer networks did not have a standard way to communicate with each other. A new communications protocol was established called Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol (TCP/IP). This allowed different kinds of computers on different networks to "talk" to each other. ARPANET and the Defense Data Network officially changed to the TCP/IP standard on January 1, 1983, hence the birth of the Internet. All networks could now be connected by a universal language.
PhilipStorry Ars Scholae Palatinae 19y 998 Subscriptor++
So why aren’t banks jumping at the opportunity to cast off their mainframes and move to the cloud? Risk and conversion cost. As a rule, banks are risk-averse. They are often trailing adopters for new technology and only do so when under competitive or regulatory pressure.
And more importantly, IBM understands this.
Would it be cheaper to run your processes on someone's cloud? Maybe. Will you spend the next two decades tweaking and rewriting as those cloud services get changed or replaced? Definitely.
I'd love to see a proper study into how much a 1990's/2000s Java replacement for an old Mainframe COBOL program has cost so far in terms of redevelopment for later JVMs and other maintenance. Has anyone seen such a thing?
If there's one thing IBM offers it's a kind of platform stability that can be measured in decades. You're not going to worry so much about what works with the latest OS version - this isn't that kind of environment.
Is that a good or a bad thing? We'll see both views in the comments here. But IBM's mainframes are the extreme expression of "If it's working today, it will work for years to come". And for some processes, that stability is very attractive - much more attractive than the costs of constant improvement and the risks it brings.
A brief comparison of z/OS and UNIX
z/OS concepts
What would we find if we compared z/OS® and UNIX®? In many cases, we'd find that quite a few concepts would be mutually understandable to users of either operating system, despite the differences in terminology.
For experienced UNIX users, Mapping UNIX to z/OS terms and concepts provides a small sampling of familiar computing terms and concepts. As a new user of z/OS, many of the z/OS terms will sound unfamiliar to you. As you work through this information center, however, the z/OS meanings will be explained and you will find that many elements of UNIX have analogs in z/OS.
Nobody minded for 20 years or so, until another student took action. //
Have you ever been asked to fix unofficial apps, written one yourself, or delivered mission-critical services while still a student? If so, click here to send On Call an email and we'll consider your story for a future instalment.
Don't be shy – we always need more yarns to consider. And remember: you'll always be anonymous.
There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. -- Phil Karlton
Long a favorite saying of mine, one for which I couldn't find a satisfactory URL.
Like many good phrases, it's had a host of riffs on it. A couple of them I feel are worth adding to the page
Leon Bambrick @secretGeek
·
There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors.
9:20 AM · Jan 1, 2010
Mathias Verraes @mathiasverraes
·
There are only two hard problems in distributed systems: 2. Exactly-once delivery 1. Guaranteed order of messages 2. Exactly-once delivery
2:40 PM · Aug 14, 2015
They're rarely helpful. Actually, they usually add insult to injury. But what would computing be without 'em? Herewith, a tribute to a baker's dozen of the best (or is that worst?).
"To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.” So goes an old quip attributed to Paul Ehrlich. He was right. One of the defining things about computers is that they–or, more specifically, the people who program them–get so many things so very wrong. Hence the need for error messages, which have been around nearly as long as computers themselves..
In theory, error messages should be painful at worst and boring at best. They tend to be cryptic; they rarely offer an apology even when one is due; they like to provide useless information like hexadecimal numbers and to withhold facts that would be useful, like plain-English explanations of how to right want went wrong. In multiple ways, most of them represent technology at its most irritating. //
- Abort, Retry, Fail? (MS-DOS)
In many ways, it remains an error message to judge other error messages by. It’s terse. (Three words.) It’s confusing. //
[UPDATE: Almost four hundred people have chimed into this discussion, and many nominated other error messages that are at least as worthy of celebration as the ones in the story. So celebrate ’em we did–please check out The 13 Other Greatest Error Messages of All Time.]
tl;dr: Non-spec DisplayPort cables were feeding back power from the monitor to the video card, causing my computer to reboot during POST. Buy this cable. //
When I got down on the floor to look inside the case, I saw something moving.
The case fan was spinning.
The freaking case fan was spinning. And I was holding the unplugged power cable in my hand. How is this even possible?!
I unplugged all of the PSU cords from my motherboard, and things shut down. The GPU light turned off, and the fan died.
The next day, I returned to Google, and for the hell of it, searched “computer is on even when unplugged.” I know, it sounds ridiculous, but it lead me to the answer I had been looking for (in addition to a funny meme of The Pope casting holy water for someone with a similar issue).
I scrolled, and scrolled, pages and pages and URL after URL of articles on something called The DisplayPort Pin 20 problem started showing up. It felt so funny to search for months with no solution and then to almost be assaulted by the number of posts on the same issue I was having.
It turns out that cable manufacturers who don’t adhere directly to the official DisplayPort spec end up connecting the 20th pin in the cable on both sides. That pin, carries – you guessed it – power!
This issue was serious. Enough power had been backflowing from my monitors into my GPU to run my case fans when the system was off.
The venerable PDP-11 minicomputer is still spry to this day, powering GE nuclear power-plant robots - and will do so for another 37 years.
That's right: PDP-11 assembler coders are hard to find, but the nuclear industry is planning on keeping the 16-bit machines ticking over until 2050 – long enough for a couple of generations of programmers to come and go.
Now that you've cleaned up the coffee spills and finished laughing, take a look here, at Vintage Computer forums, where GE's Chris Issel has resorted to seek assembly programmers for the 1970s tech.
Wednesday 19th June 2013 08:28 GMT
John Smith 19Gold badge
Coat
PDP 11 odds and ends.
The PDP 11 (like the PARC Alto) had a main processor built from standard 4 bit TTL "ALU" parts and their companion "register file." So 2nd, 3rd,4th sourced. I'm not sure how many mfg still list them on their available list in the old standard 0.1" pin spacing.
El Reg ran a story that Chorus (formerly British Steel) ran them for controlling all sorts of bits of their rolling mills but I can't recall if they are
I think the core role for this task is the refueling robots for the CANDU reactors. CANDU allows "on load" refuelling. The robots work in pairs locked onto each end of the pressurized pipes that carry the fuel and heavy water coolant/moderator. They then pressurize their internal storage areas, open the ends and one pushes new fuel bundles in while the other stores the old ones, before sealing the ends. However CANDU have been working on new designs with different fuel mixes (CANDU's special sauce (C Lewis Page) is that it's run with unenriched Uranium, which is much cheaper and does not need a bomb making enrichment facility) and new fuel bundle geometries, so time for a software upgrade.
And 128 users on a PDP 11/70. Certain customers ran bespoke OSes in the early 90s that could get 300+ when VMS could only support about less than 20 on the same spec.
Note for embedded use this is likely to be RSX rather than VMS, which also hosted the ICI developed RTL/2, which was partly what hosted the BBC CEEFAX service for decades.
Yes, it's an anorak.. //
Wednesday 19th June 2013 18:20 GMT
Jamie JonesSilver badge
Thumb Up
Who's laughing?
I feel much better knowing this.
What is the alternative? Buggy software written by the "'Have you tried switching it off and on again" generation?
RSX11M - Dave Cutler
Anyone who read the RSX11M sources (driver writers especially) realised that Dave Cutler was a very very good programmer long before he worked on VMS and later Windows NT. He managed to get a multiuser protected general purpose operating system to work with a minimum memory footprint of under 32kbytes on machines with about the same CPU power as the chip on a credit card. (A 96kByte PDP 11/40 (1/3 mip) with 2 RK05 disks (2.4Mbyte each) could support 2 concurrent programmers - a PDP 11/70 (1 mip) with 1Mbyte and 2 RM03 disk packs (65Mbyte each) could support 10 or more.) During the many years that the CEGB used PDP-11 computers with RSX11M, I did not hear of a single OS failure that was not caused by a hardware fault - I wish that current systems were as good. //
Wednesday 19th June 2013 15:09 GMT
annodomini2
Reply Icon
FAIL
Re: there are alternatives
They would never redesign the system, if the system has issues, they are known and fixes are well known.
Changing the system design introduces potential risks and unknowns into the system.
It's not about Zero failure, it's about safe and predictable failure. //
Wednesday 19th June 2013 07:53 GMT
Bob Dunlop
Hey I was taught assembler programming using a pdp11 .
After it's nice clean structure, the mess that was 8086 code came as quite a shock.
Wednesday 19th June 2013 20:24 GMT
bscottm
Reply Icon
Re: It just costs money
It's not the GHz clock cycle that is the problem. It's the smaller feature size of the transistors that increases the single event upset (SEU) rate. Yes, the two are inter-related, but one could conceivably build multi-core, chip symmetric multiprocessors based on the PDP-11 at today's feature sizes and not have GHz clock cycle times (and still end up with significant SEU rates.)
A couple of years ago, a NASA/JPL scientist pointed out that the alpha particles (helium nuclei) from lead solder were causing interesting issues with current x86_64 I/O pins -- radiation issues on commodity hardware.
The VGA default palette in the 256 colour mode (Mode 13h) first has 16 color entries from CGA (which is also same as default 16-color EGA palette and the only palette for 320x200 EGA mode)
Next 16 color entries are 16 shades of gray.
And the next 216 color entries has been already mentioned; they are sets of 24 hues, in 3 different saturation values, and in 3 different brightness values. 24 × 3 × 3 = 216.
The final 8 colour entries are black, or maybe left undefined so BIOS does not overwrite them when changing modes.
24pin DC-DC ATX PSU
150 Watts; 12V input; Over 96% efficiency
100% silent, fanless; Plugs into 24 pin ATX connector
PC connector/port dust & static covers
PC computer screws
https://www.moddiy.com/categories/Screws-and-Bits/
Thermaltake
- Motherboard Compatibility Micro ATX
- Case Type Mini-Tower
- Color Black
- Material Alloy Steel
- Power Supply Mounting Type Bottom Mount
- Cooling Method Air
- Item Weight 10.16 Pounds
- Item Dimensions LxWxH 15.35 x 8.07 x 14.96 inches
- Number of Expansion Slots 4
- Mini-Tower chassis for motherboard supports Supermicro size Mini-ITX 6.75-inch x 6.75-inch
- Storage Chassis: 4x 3.5-inch hot-swap SAS/SATA, 2x 2.5-inch fixed drive bay
all the tags from https://b.plas.ml
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