Re: [9fans] dull question #1

Re: [9fans] dull question #1

[dmr]

 > You can't do anything to make Hell tolerable.
 > 1200-baud modems can be made tolerable by using a Blit.

As a user for several years of Jerq and Blit technology
at 1200 bps, I'd testify likewise that they were quite usable
in use.  One real problem was the long startup time:
about 9 minutes to download the system, which had to be
done perhaps daily because neither of the terminals had
more than a small ROM (no flash, no floppy).  The earliest
ones were also dreadfully susceptible to static electricity,
so in the winter one developed the habit of placing a
hand on the metal case before shifting in the chair or
shuffling the feet.  9.6kbps was indeed better.

	Dennis

Re: [9fans] dull question #1

[Boyd Roberts]

From: <dmr@plan9.bell-labs.com>
> 9.6kbps was indeed better.

512/128 kbit is pretty cool with one of those motorola wavesurfs
(or whatever), 'cept the power supply [12v @ 0.5a] runs at 60c.
third degree burn and transformer winding meltdown city.

mine lives in the fridge, where it runs at 40c.

bad crimes with digital thermometers (sp?).

Re: [9fans] dull question #1

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

dmr@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
> in use.  One real problem was the long startup time:
> about 9 minutes to download the system, which had to be
> done perhaps daily because neither of the terminals had
> more than a small ROM (no flash, no floppy).

In later commercial versions, the "layers" system was
preloaded (in terminal ROM), which helped a lot.

By the way, I have a bunch of 5620s and a coule of 630s
I plan to restore then find good homes for.  If anybody
has others (also 730s) they want to contribute, feel
free to contact me about shipping/pickup.

Re: [9fans] dull question #1

[Gregg Wonderly]

"Douglas A. Gwyn" wrote:

> dmr@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
> > in use.  One real problem was the long startup time:
> > about 9 minutes to download the system, which had to be
> > done perhaps daily because neither of the terminals had
> > more than a small ROM (no flash, no floppy).
>
> In later commercial versions, the "layers" system was
> preloaded (in terminal ROM), which helped a lot.
>
> By the way, I have a bunch of 5620s and a coule of 630s
> I plan to restore then find good homes for.  If anybody
> has others (also 730s) they want to contribute, feel
> free to contact me about shipping/pickup.

I wrote a window manager for the 730 that made it possible to
tile windows so that you could get more apps loaded on the
terminal without having to size/resize windows to small boxes
when you weren't using them.  We (at Indian Hill and other
exptools users) used the 730 (and 630) at 9600 baud for many
years and then they made us switch to ISDN D-channel.

The only cool thing about ISDN was that we got 7 virtual ports
(ethernet did too) out of it so that you could connect
to 7 different machines (if they had X-25 packet interfaces for
D-channel traffic) at the same time and start layers and then
open 7 different windows to those hosts.  If you had the 4MB
memory upgrade, this was perfectly wonderful.  With a few
other apps loaded the terminal just rocked!  Too bad that it was
cancelled by NCR when they took control of it...  It truely was
one of the first examples of an awesome network appliance!

Wow, just had to get that off my chest...

Gregg Wonderly

Re: [9fans] dull question #1

[Fariborz 'Skip' Tavakkolian]

For purely nostalgic reasons, induced by this thread, I fired up my old
3B2/400,
630 and an ancient 5620. It reaffirmed why I liked the 630 so much. In fact
the last program I wrote that had any graphical elements in it was for the
630.

The reminiscing also convinced me that, having Plan9,  I don't miss any of it.

At 08:40 AM 9/3/2001 GMT, Gregg Wonderly wrote:
>
>
>"Douglas A. Gwyn" wrote:
>
>> dmr@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
>> > in use.  One real problem was the long startup time:
>> > about 9 minutes to download the system, which had to be
>> > done perhaps daily because neither of the terminals had
>> > more than a small ROM (no flash, no floppy).
>>
>> In later commercial versions, the "layers" system was
>> preloaded (in terminal ROM), which helped a lot.
>>
>> By the way, I have a bunch of 5620s and a coule of 630s
>> I plan to restore then find good homes for.  If anybody
>> has others (also 730s) they want to contribute, feel
>> free to contact me about shipping/pickup.
>
>I wrote a window manager for the 730 that made it possible to
>tile windows so that you could get more apps loaded on the
>terminal without having to size/resize windows to small boxes
>when you weren't using them.  We (at Indian Hill and other
>exptools users) used the 730 (and 630) at 9600 baud for many
>years and then they made us switch to ISDN D-channel.
>
>The only cool thing about ISDN was that we got 7 virtual ports
>(ethernet did too) out of it so that you could connect
>to 7 different machines (if they had X-25 packet interfaces for
>D-channel traffic) at the same time and start layers and then
>open 7 different windows to those hosts.  If you had the 4MB
>memory upgrade, this was perfectly wonderful.  With a few
>other apps loaded the terminal just rocked!  Too bad that it was
>cancelled by NCR when they took control of it...  It truely was
>one of the first examples of an awesome network appliance!
>
>Wow, just had to get that off my chest...
>
>Gregg Wonderly
>
>

Re: [9fans] dull question #1

[Boyd Roberts]

From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" <DAGwyn@null.net>
> You can't do anything to make Hell tolerable.
> 1200-baud modems can be made tolerable by using a Blit.

you can if it runs locally (which it does) and if you have
enough ram you can have bunch of stuff code/data _without_
the comms link.

but a buggered telco full of boofheads will (n)ever get that right!?

Re: [9fans] dull question #1

[Dan Cross]

In article <20010814153039.D468819A72@mail.cse.psu.edu> you write:
>> >Hell has nothing to do with it.  1200 baud modems do.
>> Please explain, by modern standards, the difference between the two.
>
>I didn't think I needed to point out the lack of distinction.  Rhetoric,
>doncha know.

Oh Yah.  I uhh, think I'm gonna have to disagree with your police work
there, Rob.

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] dull question #1

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <20010814124750.E6F4619A4F@mail.cse.psu.edu> you write:
> >Hell has nothing to do with it.  1200 baud modems do.
> Please explain, by modern standards, the difference between the two.

You can't do anything to make Hell tolerable.
1200-baud modems can be made tolerable by using a Blit.

Re: [9fans] dull question #1

[rob pike]

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> >Hell has nothing to do with it.  1200 baud modems do.
> Please explain, by modern standards, the difference between the two.

I didn't think I needed to point out the lack of distinction.  Rhetoric, doncha know.

-rob


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From: Dan Cross <cross@math.psu.edu>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [9fans] dull question #1
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 10:52:03 -0400 (EDT)
Message-ID: <200108141452.KAA02436@augusta.math.psu.edu>

In article <20010814124750.E6F4619A4F@mail.cse.psu.edu> you write:
>Hell has nothing to do with it.  1200 baud modems do.

Please explain, by modern standards, the difference between the two.

	- Dan C.

(``And for your crimes against humanity, I sentence you to eternity
   running X11 over a 1200 baud modem....''  :-)

Re: [9fans] dull question #1

[Dan Cross]

In article <20010814124750.E6F4619A4F@mail.cse.psu.edu> you write:
>Hell has nothing to do with it.  1200 baud modems do.

Please explain, by modern standards, the difference between the two.

	- Dan C.

(``And for your crimes against humanity, I sentence you to eternity
   running X11 over a 1200 baud modem....''  :-)

Re: [9fans] dull question #1

[nigel]

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Button 2, selection <rio> swaps the sam snarf buffer with the rio snarf buffer.
There is a small sleep() encoded to simulate the time taken at 1200 baud
for backward compatibilty.


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From: pac <cej@cejchan.gli.cas.cz>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] dull question #1
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 15:12:53 +0200
Message-ID: <cej-1010814151252.A04246@cejchan.gli.cas.cz>

Thanks to Rob for the answer! However, couldn't sam have both snarf buffers? If this last question is too stupid, just type "too stupid" as an answer.
I promise to learn to think 9'ish, with_a_little_help_of_my_friends (== you all).

Cheers, Peter.


--
Peter A Cejchan
biologist
Acad. Sci., Prague, CZ
<cej at cejchan dot gli dot cas dot cz>

Re: [9fans] dull question #1

[pac]

Thanks to Rob for the answer! However, couldn't sam have both snarf buffers? If this last question is too stupid, just type "too stupid" as an answer.
I promise to learn to think 9'ish, with_a_little_help_of_my_friends (== you all).

Cheers, Peter.


--
Peter A Cejchan
biologist
Acad. Sci., Prague, CZ
<cej at cejchan dot gli dot cas dot cz>

[9fans] dull question #1

[pac]

Hi,
could anyone explain me, why (the hell) is the snarf buffer in sam different from the system-wide snarf buffer (or is it just rio's?)

Regards, Peter.

--
Peter A Cejchan
biologist
Acad. Sci., Prague, CZ
<cej at cejchan dot gli dot cas dot cz>

Re: [9fans] dull question #1

[rob pike]

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> could anyone explain me, why (the hell) is the snarf buffer in sam
> different from the system-wide snarf buffer (or is it just rio's?)

Hell has nothing to do with it.  1200 baud modems do.  Sam was originally
written for the Blit, which had a 1200-baud connection.  It was decided that
updating the global snarf buffer for every cut or paste would make cutting
and pasting too slow, so sam has its own snarf buffer.

People got used to it, and there are advantages (and disadvantages) to
keeping them separate.  For example, one can have a ready-to-send
compilation command in the window system's snarf buffer and not have
to re-snarf it every time you edit: just sam away, then go to the shell and
hit 'send' with button 2.

But the real answer is 1200-baud history.

-rob


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From: pac <cej@cejchan.gli.cas.cz>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: [9fans] dull question #1
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 14:50:18 +0200
Message-ID: <cej-1010814145018.A03246@cejchan.gli.cas.cz>

Hi,
could anyone explain me, why (the hell) is the snarf buffer in sam different from the system-wide snarf buffer (or is it just rio's?)

Regards, Peter.

--
Peter A Cejchan
biologist
Acad. Sci., Prague, CZ
<cej at cejchan dot gli dot cas dot cz>