Reminiscing

[Andrew Farnsworth]

Does anyone else remember when the trial size storage offered by companies like google, backblaze, etc was actually useful?  Today it is still around the same 10 Gb size, but that is much less useful today than it was 20 years ago :-).  Back then, it was HUGE.  Today it is so small I'm not even willing to give it a trial as my personal NAS has 3 orders of magnitude more storage.  10 Gb would let me store one small VM virtual drive.

More as it happens...

Andy F

[Jack Coats]

Welcome to 'data creep'.  There was the day that we counted bytes of code in a program or data, now we just think in megabytes.  

IMHO, as we have more capability, we use it, sometimes squander it.  

  One of my history examples, I came up with a cost analysis of having datacenters and terminals being cheaper than the gen1 (or 2) PCs on everyone's desk at the major company where I was working.  My boss told me to trash the study because we were going to use desktops no matter what the facts were. ... Such is life.

  Since then the costs have changed and individual computers are now cheaper.  Mainframes still have their place in real production (huge amounts of I/O or certain problems in engineering that can't be easily functionally decomposed for multiple small processors, etc, but their value for the more common efforts are dwindling as smaller/distributed machines make more sense on a case by case basis.

Just my thoughts. ... I'm retired, so my opinion doesn't matter much to anyone but me. <<grin>>

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><> ... Jack

If you are not paying for something, you are not a consumer, you are the product. - Chamath Palihapitiya

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." - Ben Franklin

[Michael Chaney]

My younger son is at Alabama working on an EE degree (you may remember him as a baby 20 years ago when the wife and kids showed up to a meeting).  Last semester he had a class on microcontrollers, and they specifically used PIC series microcontrollers.  He (and I) bought this evaluation package that comes with four different microcontrollers:

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/microchip-technology/DM330013-2/2802029?s=N4IgTCBcDaILYEsDGAnA9gZwC7INYAIEEQBdAXyA

They're interesting because the package contains the CPU along with some amount of RAM and a little bit of flash.  All of the external pins on the package are IO pins, except for the required power and clock pins.  The IO pins are remappable and come in a couple of flavors - some can do analog and pretty much all can be digital.  They have a couple of built in UARTs.  The whole thing is amazing.

For the 16-bit versions the RAM tends to be a few K, program size is 32-128K or so.  It's a Harvard architecture where the program space and data space are separated, so the program reads from flash.  With that much memory loading in libraries is iffy at best.  I tend to write simple code to handle cases that a library function would normally handle.  It's the opposite of modern programming where we go find a "module" or whatever to handle every little task.

Their programs are simple.  The big one at the end was a clock with a few buttons for setting the time and alarm.

I've done hardware interfacing like this on an R-Pi, but there's something just very different when doing it on a simple 16-bit RISCy cpu with limited everything.  I had to go all out because they were still doing some remote learning and the kids weren't really getting it.

I also have an arduino which is awesome, but someone has written code for pretty much everything already and I'm not convinced that's the way for kids to learn.  It's a great way to get them involved, but the stuff I've seen is the equivalent of putting together legos.  If you learn it's a side-effect.  Of course, you can still write all your own code and all that - just have to convince kids to do that if they want to learn.

Anyway, it was interesting getting back to the basics.  And kind of cathartic to actually care about data and program space usage.

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Michael Darrin Chaney, Sr.
mdch...@michaelchaney.com
http://www.michaelchaney.com/

[Jack Coats]

Yea, to me anymore small 'control' computers are good fun.  And big business for IoT and control systems.

I wanted to do control systems (CompSci major and ME minor in college) but got sucked into doing busness

apps then systems on mainframes.  I started to get my own minicomputer back in the day when the Altair 8800

came out (8 bit Intel 8080 processor, 256bytes static ram, front panel switches to start with, in a kit from MITS) 

but I eventually maxed it out before moving to a 'big' z-80.  Used full size floppies, 64K ram (another kit from 

Processor Technology, also their 3P+S interface board kit), a TV Typeriter 2 (kit from Southwest Technology in San Antonio), 

Heathkit Printer, even a DCHayes modem (300 baud!), but it all worked.  A friend and I put in a 2K EPROM 

board to put a bios in (Intel Intelec compatible) so we could run CP/M on it.  Eventually had a AI Cybernetics speach

synthesizer board, and a Cercia Circuit Cellar camera.  Eventually more computers using the

serial cable based $25Network (that did surprisingly well with little overhead).

Yea, memories.  Now I have a pi or 3 around, some gathering dust, some being useful and more toys

than I have time to deal with.

So goes life.  Thanks for bringing back some memories.

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[Curt Lundgren]

In 1976 my first computer was the Netronics Elf II, with the RCA 'COSMAC' 1802 processor.  It ran from a cheap 3.58 MHz TV color crystal and typically took 16 clock cycles to execute a two-byte instruction.  Long jump instructions that could address the full 64k address space were three bytes.  So figure perhaps 117,000 instructions/second.  It had 256 bytes of RAM and a Pixie chip for video output.  Input was a hex keypad with a load/run switch.  You could actually write a program that generated graphics that fit in the supplied memory.

It was later upgraded to 7K of RAM, the 8th kilobyte never did work right.  I used it to expand the memory of our Datavision D3000 character generator at the TV station so we could display and update election results.  The graphic artist later gratefully told me it saved him two weeks of work, preparing for the election.

Another wire-wrapped custom version of the 1802 computer served as our machine control system at the TV station for several years.  A single 4,800 baud serial cable ran to local interfaces on VTRs, film projectors, slide projectors and the Ampex ACR-25B spot player.  Software was done in assembly, with source and destination cassette players.

My first PC was probably assembled by Michael Dell, at PC Designs - it was a 10 MHz 286 with an incredible one megabyte of RAM.  Then the 30 MB CDC Wren drive was added and I was cooking with gas.

Now I'm enjoying an 8 GB Pi 4 with its 500 GB external boot drive, both cheaper and vastly faster than those computers of earlier days.

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[Jack Coats]

And almost all of us carry a phone that rivaled or exceeds all but the local I/O capabilities of the first mainframe I worked on!

Life is a wonderful ride.  Just wish I could see what the next 70 years would bring!

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[Andrew Farnsworth]

Ah the nostalgia... Sinclair ZX-80 with 1k RAM and no long term storage... oh, wait... a Tape Interface where you ran a separate tape machine manually with the audio out -> audio in on both the computer and the tape machine.  Note machine, not drive.  In no way was that a drive.... :-). So much fun way back when.

RAM and disk space are so abundant today that even compiling Hello World causes you to end up with a "massive" executable (> 64Kb) that would not even load in the memory of any computer prior to the mid-80s.

I can buy (read that as already have bought a baker's dozen) a 32-bit microcontroller with camera module for <=$10 that has more RAM and processing power, and storage, let alone the other capabilities like io etc than anything from the early days that a person could afford (i.e. <= price of a new car).

I have fun working with these and hope to be able to interest my young children in them and their capabilities as they mature.

Oh yeah... a bunch of you probably don't know that I have a 5yr old girl and a 3 yr old boy...

Andy F

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[Jack Coats]

Every time I did a full cost analysis of my 'home computing' setup before moving to TN, I had about $5k in it.

Altair 8800 started it but the time it was 'all built out' upgraded a few times (memory, floppy disks, video monitor/keyboard,

printer, and addons like speech synthesizer, camera, modems, etc, and a bit of software (and lots of downloads over

300 or 2400 or even 9600 baud connections) and a massive library and catalog of 8" floppys (think thousand or more), 

then I moved to PC era, with a Columbia with an 8088, upgraded to 386's and more, laser printer (still had the Heathkit though),

color display with some graphics, sound card, better modems, and some software, and the first hard drives, 5M then a huge 20M drive, yeah, another $5K

Eventually networking everything, my first home linux dialout router (Slackware 0.98 or .096, can't remember, on a small form

factor PC with 396SX running headless with an ethernet card and wired the rest of the house with a dedicated phone line.

I owned a small mainframe in here at one time... but never could have the money or time to hook it  up so gave it

away for scrap to be hauled off (IBM system 3 with card reader/punch, band printer,  and disk.  And a couple of tape drives 

(not common on system 3 as I remember).

At first it called out for UUCP links to the local unix users group system that had usenet and email free for members.

Then I got an ISP with dialup. Had an Apache server locally, local web cashing, and cached DNS, and did dial out on demand.   
Eventually DSL.  Big upgrade to AT&T Wireless  (a short lived WISP before DSL was well implemented. but was shut down

as a 'business decision'.) so back to DSL but with better implementation and a different ISP.

Never used cable based ISP, but did get a pretty good DSL in Houston.  Still the WISP connection was better, but AT&T decided

they wanted out of that business and just halted it.

By the time we left Houston, I had put another 5K into computers.  (Justified it to myself and the wife as 'continuing education')

Then we moved to TN.  Dialup was sometimes up to 2400 baud, only Sprint worked where we lived (on a Girl Scout Camp

between Ashland City and Pleasant View on Sycamore Creek.  Combination of bad wires from the phone company.

Went through a couple of iterations of satellite connections (expensive bandwidth, horrible latency, and service that doesn't care)

'remotely' (I learned about using ubiquiti routers to be my own WISP for camp!).

Now my wife and I are retired in Clarksville with the 'cheap' internet service from the power company.  Has been quite reliable through

CDELightband.  A couple of issues but mostly my own in-house wifi problems.  I haven't broken down and gone pro-sumer

still 'cheaping out' with retail level components.

I should know better by now!  Cheaper isn't always more inexpensive over the life span.

Not cheap but still I spend $1K/yr on learning for me.  Just to make me feel good about myself.  

Economically, the $5K in the 70-80s was more than the $5K in the 80-90s or time since.  Or the money since then.

We moved to TN in 2005, at camp till 2018.  Still having fun and frustrated with my tech as usual <<grin>>.

BTW latest 'fights' are internal wifi issues, and getting my 3D printer in shape again.  I also play with some

in-home IoT gadgets.  Just keeping life interesting but the only pressure these days is what I put on me.

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[Jonathan Sheehan]

Michael Chaney wrote:
> My younger son is at Alabama working on an EE degree (you may remember him
> as a baby 20 years ago when the wife and kids showed up to a meeting).

Yeah, I believe he unseated Brandon as "Youngest NLUG Member" at the time. :-)
-J'n

On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 1:12 PM 'Michael Chaney' via NLUG
<nlug...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/CAAtfUtEON95u6oA833Aqz_dgssPtgXcXXxE6-yANLuTT%2BcwHAQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[ri...@dicksonlife.com]

On 5/27/2021 1:12 PM, 'Michael Chaney' via NLUG wrote:
> My younger son is at Alabama working on an EE degree (you may remember
> him as a baby 20 years ago when the wife and kids showed up to a
> meeting).  Last semester he had a class on microcontrollers, and they
> specifically used PIC series microcontrollers.  He (and I) bought this
> evaluation package that comes with four different microcontrollers:
>
> https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/microchip-technology/DM330013-2/2802029?s=N4IgTCBcDaILYEsDGAnA9gZwC7INYAIEEQBdAXyA
> <https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/microchip-technology/DM330013-2/2802029?s=N4IgTCBcDaILYEsDGAnA9gZwC7INYAIEEQBdAXyA>
>
> They're interesting because the package contains the CPU along with
> some amount of RAM and a little bit of flash.  All of the external
> pins on the package are IO pins, except for the required power and
> clock pins.  The IO pins are remappable and come in a couple of
> flavors - some can do analog and pretty much all can be digital.  They
> have a couple of built in UARTs.  The whole thing is amazing.

PIC Microcontrollers are pretty amazing. I got a chance to work with
them back in the early 2000s. Huge variety of package types and
functionality and they've only improved since then. Also relatively
cheap and they had a "free sample" program that was very handy on occasion.

If you want to jump into that side of things now, I'd recommend trying
one of the ESP packages. They have an SDK based off of the Arduino one
(I.e. C/C++ like) though there is some Python support and possibly other
higher-level languages, I think.

Rich

[Kevin Griffis]

At the intersection of FPGAs and retro computing, has anyone ever messed with this?

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki

I'm thinking about giving it a spin.

Regards,

Kevin Griffis

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