Heinlein "Starman Jones"

[a425couple]

We went on a vacation to the Caribbean recently.
I've often found pleasure in reading a nice simple Heinlein
juvinile (as someone earlier called them = comfort food).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinlein_juveniles

This time I took about the only one I'd not earlier read,
his 1953 Starman Jones. (7th of the 12).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starman_Jones

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman

Sorry, but to me, this one was the least pleasant of all of the juviniles.
Perhaps it was just too many totally unlikely events,
that even with his Eidetic memory seemed implausable.
One reading of large mathamatical tables & totally knew
and could recall & at near speed of light adjust.,,, ??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory

From stable hand to ship's captain in one quick step,,,
or only one trip. oh yeah!

[Mike Dworetsky]

A lot of "Starman Jones" was closely based on Samuel Clemens' (Mark Twain)
book "Life on the Mississippi", which is based on the dramas in the pilot
house of a riverboat. Navigators had to know every shifting sandbank on the
long river, by memory.

And the point about becoming acting captain was based on actual precedents
in the US Navy, when if all the officers are killed or incapacitated except
for one midshipman, being an officer he is wholly responsible for the safety
of the ship. (Other navies also).

It doesn't ring true today because of the prevalence of electronic
computers, but that is a minor plot-point that could be rationalized away.

--
Mike Dworetsky

(Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)

[A.G.McDowell]

Many computer devices which you might naturally expect to take the
responsibility for the service they are automating in fact claim to be
only aids, and identify a human who is - at least for the purposes of
their disclaimers - responsible for e.g. the safety of the ship. The
cost of producing software sufficiently reliable to be given legal
responsibility for safety of life is at least an order of magnitude
greater than that of producing software which claims only to be an aid
to a human. I am aware of navigation software which claims to be no more
than a convenience, and is not - legally - intended to replace paper
charts, let alone a human being.

Here is a related requirement from
http://www.imo.org/OurWork/Safety/Navigation/Pages/Charts.aspx: "But the
ship must also carry back up arrangements if electronic charts are used
either fully or partially."

I haven't read "Starman Jones" for some time, but I remember enjoying
it, as a good example of the SF coming of age in the universe story,
complete, if I remember rightly, with a hard-bitten but low status elder
providing common sense wisdom about real life in the Navy, or whatever
it was he ended up in.

[Shawn Wilson]

On Sunday, April 26, 2015 at 6:52:25 PM UTC-7, a425couple wrote:


> From stable hand to ship's captain in one quick step,,,
> or only one trip. oh yeah!

It isn't like he was promoted for merit. Literally everyone else legally qualified for the post was gone. It was him or no one.

[Steve Coltrin]

begin fnord

"A.G.McDowell" <andrew-...@o2.co.uk> writes:

> Many computer devices which you might naturally expect to take the
> responsibility for the service they are automating in fact claim to be
> only aids, and identify a human who is - at least for the purposes of
> their disclaimers - responsible for e.g. the safety of the ship. The
> cost of producing software sufficiently reliable to be given legal
> responsibility for safety of life is at least an order of magnitude
> greater than that of producing software which claims only to be an aid
> to a human. I am aware of navigation software which claims to be no
> more than a convenience, and is not - legally - intended to replace
> paper charts, let alone a human being.

At least relatively recently, and as far as I know still, the Navy
considered LORAN, GPS et multiple seq to be useful gizmos, and if
they agreed with the guys looking at landmarks with spotter scope and
pelorus, and the guy at the chart with protractor and ruler, goody goody.

_CAUTION_: Positions obtained from Omega are highly suspect, unless
substantiated by information from another source. In recent years,
a number of costly and embarrassing groundings have been directly
attributable to trusting Omega. _No_ drastic decisions are _ever_
to be made on unsubstantiated Omega fixes withoug the explicit
permission of the navigator.

--
Steve Coltrin spco...@omcl.org Google Groups killfiled here
"A group known as the League of Human Dignity helped arrange for Deuel
to be driven to a local livestock scale, where he could be weighed."
- Associated Press

[Michael Black]

At least you had a book that you'd never read before.

The problem with the juveniles is that they are relatively light, and can
be read quite fast, not enough there to last a week's vacation. Of
course, a never before read book might be somewhat better.

I like the book. He goes from a sort of TVA in the depression situation
into space. He visits a hobo camp, has trouble with unions, and gets into
space.

Yes, I can overlook the fact that he just remembers things he read and
that is good enough to get him the astrogation job. Knowing facts isn't
the same thing as thinking, or having experience. He is basically a
nobody and moves right up. But on the other hand, if he'd been portrayed
as a skilled scholar, albeit home grown version, he'd not have gotten that
job except through "cheating" either, since it had nothing to do with
skill, but whether you could get into the union.

Michael

[J. Clarke]

In article <mhltb9$qqs$1...@dont-email.me>, andrew-...@o2.co.uk
says...

But you do not see people standing around with books open reading
numbers out for other people to type into computers that are solving
navigation problems in realtime.

In Starman Jones, Heinlein totally missed the concept of "mass storage".

[Chris Zakes]

Quoting from the introduction to the Virginia Edition of "Starman
Jones"...

"I must tell you another story about 'Starman Jones': its basic plot
is factual. About the middle of the last century [i.e. the 1800s] two
New England farm boys ran away from home, made their way to Boston,
and signed on as seamen in a China clipper, just sailing for the Far
East. Two years later this ship returned to its home port... with one
of those two lads as its *captain.* His natural ability, plus a series
of fatal accidents to the ship's officers, had brought him to the top
in only two years."

-Chris Zakes
Texas
--

GNU Terry Pratchett

[Steve Coltrin]

begin fnord

Chris Zakes <dont...@gmail.com> writes:

> On Sun, 26 Apr 2015 18:52:01 -0700, an orbital mind-control laser
> caused "a425couple" <a425c...@hotmail.com> to write:

Not according to our logs we didn't.
||||
vvvv

[lal_truckee]

On 4/27/15 6:16 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
> But you do not see people standing around with books open reading
> numbers out for other people to type into computers that are solving
> navigation problems in realtime.

IIRC Heinlein was importing ideas and descriptions from analog computers
used to aim the big Guns on battleships circa pre-WWII, building on
personal experience.
There were other methods of computing in use before digital systems came
to dominate. Mustn't fall into the fallacy that what is defines what was
and what will be. That way lies madness, or at least Newtonian physics.

[Gary R. Schmidt]

On 27/04/2015 11:52 AM, a425couple wrote:
> We went on a vacation to the Caribbean recently. I've often found
> pleasure in reading a nice simple Heinlein juvinile (as someone earlier
> called them = comfort food).
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinlein_juveniles
>
> This time I took about the only one I'd not earlier read, his 1953
> Starman Jones. (7th of the 12). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starman_Jones
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman
>
> Sorry, but to me, this one was the least pleasant of all of the
> juviniles. Perhaps it was just too many totally unlikely events, that
> even with his Eidetic memory seemed implausable. One reading of large
> mathamatical tables & totally knew and could recall & at near speed of
> light adjust.,,, ??
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory

I was at goshwhattauniversity where/when several lecturers had
previously memorised large chunks of these things called "logarithmic
tables", which enabled them to solve certain types of problems quite
quickly.

Of course, the arrival of hand-held calculators - about the same time I
landed there - made their knowledge almost useless, but still entirely
reliable when batteries became flat or the power went off!

Cheers,
Gary B-)

--
When men talk to their friends, they insult each other.
They don't really mean it.
When women talk to their friends, they compliment each other.
They don't mean it either.

[Cryptoengineer]

"J. Clarke" <j.clark...@gmail.com> wrote in
news:MPG.2fa8a9757...@news.eternal-september.org:

> In article <mhltb9$qqs$1...@dont-email.me>, andrew-...@o2.co.uk
> says...

[...]

>
> But you do not see people standing around with books open reading
> numbers out for other people to type into computers that are solving
> navigation problems in realtime.
>
> In Starman Jones, Heinlein totally missed the concept of "mass
> storage".

I'll give him a pass on that.

In 1953, digital magtapes were only a couple of years old, and
hard drives were still in the future.

It boggles me that I can carry thousands of books on my
keychain, and all the printed works of the library of congress
in a suitcase.

pt

[J. Clarke]

In article <mhmp3t$ovm$2...@dont-email.me>, lal_t...@yahoo.com says...

>
> On 4/27/15 6:16 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
> > But you do not see people standing around with books open reading
> > numbers out for other people to type into computers that are solving
> > navigation problems in realtime.
> IIRC Heinlein was importing ideas and descriptions from analog computers
> used to aim the big Guns on battleships circa pre-WWII, building on
> personal experience.

So? He's writing about the future and he suffered a major failure of
vision with the notion that people would be reading books into computers
in realtime during critical computations.

I don't recall having to read numbers out of books to aim the guns on a
WWII destroyer though, which also had an analog fire control computer.

> There were other methods of computing in use before digital systems came
> to dominate. Mustn't fall into the fallacy that what is defines what was
> and what will be. That way lies madness, or at least Newtonian physics.

Any computer that requires that one read numbers from a book into the
computer while attempting to perform precise maneuvers at near the speed
of light is doomed to fail.

[J. Clarke]

In article <XnsA48A5DDB6...@216.166.97.131>,
treif...@gmail.com says...

>
> "J. Clarke" <j.clark...@gmail.com> wrote in
> news:MPG.2fa8a9757...@news.eternal-september.org:
>
> > In article <mhltb9$qqs$1...@dont-email.me>, andrew-...@o2.co.uk
> > says...
> [...]
> >
> > But you do not see people standing around with books open reading
> > numbers out for other people to type into computers that are solving
> > navigation problems in realtime.
> >
> > In Starman Jones, Heinlein totally missed the concept of "mass
> > storage".
>
> I'll give him a pass on that.
>
> In 1953, digital magtapes were only a couple of years old, and
> hard drives were still in the future.

Punch cards were more than 200 years old at the time. Paper tape was
more than 100 years old. Mag tape was invented in the '20s and drum in
the '30s.

> It boggles me that I can carry thousands of books on my
> keychain, and all the printed works of the library of congress
> in a suitcase.

However he was referring to something akin to a set of log tables.

[Mike Dworetsky]

J. Clarke wrote:
> In article <mhmp3t$ovm$2...@dont-email.me>, lal_t...@yahoo.com says...
>>
>> On 4/27/15 6:16 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
>>> But you do not see people standing around with books open reading
>>> numbers out for other people to type into computers that are solving
>>> navigation problems in realtime.
>> IIRC Heinlein was importing ideas and descriptions from analog
>> computers used to aim the big Guns on battleships circa pre-WWII,
>> building on personal experience.
>
> So? He's writing about the future and he suffered a major failure of
> vision with the notion that people would be reading books into
> computers in realtime during critical computations.

>
> I don't recall having to read numbers out of books to aim the guns on
> a WWII destroyer though, which also had an analog fire control
> computer.

Destroyer actions were usually close-up.

Corrections were needed to correct battleship artillery for the deflection
due to the Coriolis effect (rotation of the Earth), which was indeed
something that could be read from tables. In a major WW1 sea battle near
the Falklands, the Royal Navy found that its large guns were missing their
targets, and a later enquiry found that it was because the tables they used
for Coriolis corrections were tabulated for the northern hemisphere, and the
sign needed to be changed south of the equator.

>> There were other methods of computing in use before digital systems
>> came to dominate. Mustn't fall into the fallacy that what is defines
>> what was and what will be. That way lies madness, or at least
>> Newtonian physics.
>
> Any computer that requires that one read numbers from a book into the
> computer while attempting to perform precise maneuvers at near the
> speed of light is doomed to fail.

[David DeLaney]

On 2015-04-28, Steve Coltrin <spco...@omcl.org> wrote:
> begin fnord
> Chris Zakes <dont...@gmail.com> writes:
>> On Sun, 26 Apr 2015 18:52:01 -0700, an orbital mind-control laser
>> caused "a425couple" <a425c...@hotmail.com> to write:
>
> Not according to our logs we didn't.
> ||||
> vvvv
>--
>Steve Coltrin spco...@omcl.org Google Groups killfiled here

Per-haps Chris has confused your worthy and scary devices with the a.r.k
Death Ray? It tends to get into wacky hijinks if not watched carefully...

Dave, will mentally puppeteer for food

ps: begin dronf
--
\/David DeLaney posting thru EarthLink - "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://gatekeeper.vic.com/~dbd/ -net.legends/Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

In article <XnsA48A5DDB6...@216.166.97.131>, Cryptoengineer

<treif...@gmail.com> writes:

> > In Starman Jones, Heinlein totally missed the concept of "mass
> > storage".
>
> I'll give him a pass on that.
>
> In 1953, digital magtapes were only a couple of years old, and
> hard drives were still in the future.
>
> It boggles me that I can carry thousands of books on my
> keychain, and all the printed works of the library of congress
> in a suitcase.

You know you're reading old science fiction when, the farther into the
future one goes, the computers get bigger and bigger, instead of smaller
and smaller. :-)

[J. Clarke]

In article <6o2dnaBi7YEHoaLI...@supernews.com>, platinum198
@pants.btinternet.com says...

>
> J. Clarke wrote:
> > In article <mhmp3t$ovm$2...@dont-email.me>, lal_t...@yahoo.com says...
> >>
> >> On 4/27/15 6:16 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
> >>> But you do not see people standing around with books open reading
> >>> numbers out for other people to type into computers that are solving
> >>> navigation problems in realtime.
> >> IIRC Heinlein was importing ideas and descriptions from analog
> >> computers used to aim the big Guns on battleships circa pre-WWII,
> >> building on personal experience.
> >
> > So? He's writing about the future and he suffered a major failure of
> > vision with the notion that people would be reading books into
> > computers in realtime during critical computations.
>
> >
> > I don't recall having to read numbers out of books to aim the guns on
> > a WWII destroyer though, which also had an analog fire control
> > computer.
>
> Destroyer actions were usually close-up.

<facepalm>

[William December Starr]

In article <mhltb9$qqs$1...@dont-email.me>,

"A.G.McDowell" <andrew-...@o2.co.uk> said:

> Here is a related requirement from
> http://www.imo.org/OurWork/Safety/Navigation/Pages/Charts.aspx:
> "But the ship must also carry back up arrangements if electronic
> charts are used either fully or partially."

Sort of related: Cordwainer Smith's "The Burning of the Brain
(1958), in which (not a spoiler) a starship's Go-Captain discovered,
belatedly, that where he was supposed to have a complete set of star
maps on microfiche-equivalent, what he actually had was a zillion
identical copies of Page One. Oops.

-- wds

[William December Starr]

In article <MPG.2fa8ff527...@news.eternal-september.org>,

"J. Clarke" <j.clark...@gmail.com> said:

> So? He's writing about the future and he suffered a major failure
> of vision with the notion that people would be reading books into
> computers in realtime during critical computations.

Or, the "all-powerful Guilds" makes the whole failure of vision
thing go away. (Well, most of it. It's reasonable to still expect
narrator Max to have _mentioned_ e-storage, in the context of its
"usage on starships forbidden by the Guild of Astrogators" status.
So yeah, a failure of vision, but not a deal-killer in my opinion.)

-- wds

[Quadibloc]

On Monday, April 27, 2015 at 7:16:13 PM UTC-6, J. Clarke wrote:

> But you do not see people standing around with books open reading
> numbers out for other people to type into computers that are solving
> navigation problems in realtime.

> In Starman Jones, Heinlein totally missed the concept of "mass storage".

He was writing science fiction for people living in an age before pocket
calculators, and the protagonist's ability to memorize the contents of the
books of tables was a major plot device.

So I think the error is forgivable - it was a very common one in those days.

John Savard

[Michael Black]

And there really are officers who shouldn't be officers.

There wsa the Tonquin, bought by John Jacob Astor for his fur company in
the pacific northwest. Captain Thorn seems to be a horrible person, trying
to shipwreck some of the fur company people on the Falkland Islands circa
1811. The only reason he went back to get them was a fur company official
aimed a pistol at the captain and told him to turn back.

But Thorn died up around Vancouver Island later that year, mistreating the
natives to they attacked.

Michael

[Michael Black]

On Tue, 28 Apr 2015, Gary R. Schmidt wrote:

> On 27/04/2015 11:52 AM, a425couple wrote:
>> We went on a vacation to the Caribbean recently. I've often found
>> pleasure in reading a nice simple Heinlein juvinile (as someone earlier
>> called them = comfort food).
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinlein_juveniles
>>
>> This time I took about the only one I'd not earlier read, his 1953
>> Starman Jones. (7th of the 12). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starman_Jones
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman
>>
>> Sorry, but to me, this one was the least pleasant of all of the
>> juviniles. Perhaps it was just too many totally unlikely events, that
>> even with his Eidetic memory seemed implausable. One reading of large
>> mathamatical tables & totally knew and could recall & at near speed of
>> light adjust.,,, ??
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory
>
> I was at goshwhattauniversity where/when several lecturers had previously
> memorised large chunks of these things called "logarithmic tables", which
> enabled them to solve certain types of problems quite quickly.
>
> Of course, the arrival of hand-held calculators - about the same time I
> landed there - made their knowledge almost useless, but still entirely
> reliable when batteries became flat or the power went off!
>

But there were always the books of tables.

If they'd really been stuck, without the books and without Max's memory,
they'd just have to remake the books, doing the calculations and then
putting the answers in a notebook. Repetitive and boring, but the
information can be worked out that way. After all, that's how the books
of tables were made in the first place.

The same with the tables for converting between decimal and binary (or
whatever the conversions in the book were). Those take less effort, but
it's still tedious.

Michael

[lal_truckee]

On 4/28/15 12:38 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
> However he was referring to something akin to a set of log tables.
>

For old times sake I still have a couple of nostalgic volumes of log
tables, including the tables my mother purchased for classwork when she
arrived at Berkeley in 1938.

[a425couple]

"Mike Dworetsky" <plati...@pants.btinternet.com> wrote in...

> Corrections were needed to correct battleship artillery for the deflection
> due to the Coriolis effect (rotation of the Earth), which was indeed
> something that could be read from tables. In a major WW1 sea battle near
> the Falklands, the Royal Navy found that its large guns were missing their
> targets, and a later enquiry found that it was because the tables they
> used for Coriolis corrections were tabulated for the northern hemisphere,
> and the sign needed to be changed south of the equator.

Interesting point, and really, I do not wish to be a twit,
but you might want to read the following:

"Coriolis Effect
An annoying urban legend persists that the Royal Navy's shooting at the
Battle of the Falklands was poor due to their equipment applying corrections
for Coriolis effect in the wrong direction, as the action was in the
southern
hemisphere rather than the northern. The truth is, however, that no
contemporary aspect of Royal Navy equipment or procedure took
Coriolis effect into consideration, ----"
http://dreadnoughtproject.org/tfs/index.php/Battle_of_the_Falkland_Islands

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <mhoco...@news6.newsguy.com>,

If this is the battle I'm thinking of it was interesting too in that
the RN beached its main gunship in order to have a stable platform.
At that point it was almost a fortress vs ship battle.
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

[a425couple]

"Ted Nolan <tednolan>" <t...@loft.tnolan.com> wrote in message...

Well,,,,
"The obsolete pre-dreadnought battleship-HMS Canopus-had been
grounded at Stanley to act as a makeshift defence battery for the area."
She had bigger guns than the more modern and faster German ships,
so would probably have been OK as a fortress to protect Stanley.

"Fortunately for the British, the Germans were surprised by gunfire from
an unexpected source: Canopus, which had been grounded as a guardship
and was behind a hill. This was enough to check the Germans' advance."

But that was pretty much a moot point.
The big modern British battlecruisers had arrived just before the
German ships arrived to do their silly raid, and they lost their only
possible advantage of having initiative.
The RN battlecruisers hunted Von Spee's slightly slower and vastly
undergunned ships down and sequentually sank them.
Basicly the Battle of Coronel had been repeated, with shoes on other feet.
One started, not much doubt of these outcomes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Falkland_Islands

[Alan Baker]

You seem very familiar with how that works.

Is that how you got to claim you're an economist?

:-)

[Mark Bestley]

A.G.McDowell <andrew-...@o2.co.uk> wrote:

> On 27/04/2015 08:28, Mike Dworetsky wrote:

> > a425couple wrote:
> >> We went on a vacation to the Caribbean recently.
> >> I've often found pleasure in reading a nice simple Heinlein
> >> juvinile (as someone earlier called them = comfort food).
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinlein_juveniles
> >>

> >

> > A lot of "Starman Jones" was closely based on Samuel Clemens' (Mark
> > Twain) book "Life on the Mississippi", which is based on the dramas in
> > the pilot house of a riverboat. Navigators had to know every shifting
> > sandbank on the long river, by memory.
> >
> > And the point about becoming acting captain was based on actual
> > precedents in the US Navy, when if all the officers are killed or
> > incapacitated except for one midshipman, being an officer he is wholly
> > responsible for the safety of the ship. (Other navies also).
> >
> > It doesn't ring true today because of the prevalence of electronic
> > computers, but that is a minor plot-point that could be rationalized away.
> >
> Many computer devices which you might naturally expect to take the
> responsibility for the service they are automating in fact claim to be
> only aids, and identify a human who is - at least for the purposes of
> their disclaimers - responsible for e.g. the safety of the ship. The
> cost of producing software sufficiently reliable to be given legal
> responsibility for safety of life is at least an order of magnitude
> greater than that of producing software which claims only to be an aid
> to a human. I am aware of navigation software which claims to be no more
> than a convenience, and is not - legally - intended to replace paper
> charts, let alone a human being.
>

> Here is a related requirement from
> http://www.imo.org/OurWork/Safety/Navigation/Pages/Charts.aspx: "But the
> ship must also carry back up arrangements if electronic charts are used
> either fully or partially."
>

relevant to this is this current story
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32513066>
Planes grounded by iPad error


Well not the iPad but the software not being able to deal with bad data

"The issue was caused by a duplicate chart for Reagan National Airport
in American's chart database," said Mike Pound.
"The app could not reconcile the duplicate, causing it to shut down.
"We were able to remedy the situation quickly, and instruct pilots to
uninstall and reinstall the app.
"Until the chart database is updated, AA pilots flying to or from
National will use PDF [portable document format] images of the chart,
outside of the app."



--
Mark

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Tue, 28 Apr 2015 12:55:13 +1000, "Gary R. Schmidt"
<grsc...@acm.org> wrote:

[snip]

>I was at goshwhattauniversity where/when several lecturers had
>previously memorised large chunks of these things called "logarithmic
>tables", which enabled them to solve certain types of problems quite
>quickly.

I have some logarithms memorised. Not too many, mind, but it
makes some estimating much easier.

>Of course, the arrival of hand-held calculators - about the same time I
>landed there - made their knowledge almost useless, but still entirely
>reliable when batteries became flat or the power went off!

Not so. Such knowledge can be very useful as a sanity check on
results.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

[David DeLaney]

On 2015-05-02, Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:
> "Gary R. Schmidt"<grsc...@acm.org> wrote:
>>I was at goshwhattauniversity where/when several lecturers had
>>previously memorised large chunks of these things called "logarithmic
>>tables", which enabled them to solve certain types of problems quite quickly.
>
> I have some logarithms memorised. Not too many, mind, but it
> makes some estimating much easier.

Log 2 is .30103; this is all we know, and all we need to know.

Dave, will build infinitely high castles on nothing-at-all for food

[Joy Beeson]

On Sat, 02 May 2015 14:59:28 -0700, Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net>
wrote:

> Not so. Such knowledge can be very useful as a sanity check on
> results.

I'm still using the sixth-grade art of progressive approximation every
time I go shopping. But I rarely carry to an exact answer, only to
"that's about right", or "the half-gallons are cheaper than the
gallons".

When I took my radio-license tests, we were supposed to show that our
calculators didn't have ponys in them. I displayed a sheet of blank
paper -- I knew that the questions were all designed to have numbers
that are easy to work with; a calculator would have slowed me down.

Not to mention that the test was multiple guess; calculations need be
carried out only far enough to rule out three of the four answers.


--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sat, 02 May 2015 22:28:01 -0500, David DeLaney
<davidd...@earthlink.net> wrote
in<news:K-CdnT97wIlcCNjI...@earthlink.com> in
alt.fan.heinlein,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.books.arthur-clarke:

> On 2015-05-02, Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:

[...]

>> I have some logarithms memorised. Not too many, mind,
>> but it makes some estimating much easier.

> Log 2 is .30103; this is all we know, and all we need to know.

0.30103, 0.47712, 0.84510.

Brian
--
It was the neap tide, when the baga venture out of their
holes to root for sandtatties. The waves whispered
rhythmically over the packed sand: haggisss, haggisss,
haggisss.

[Shawn Wilson]

On Saturday, May 2, 2015 at 8:28:03 PM UTC-7, David DeLaney wrote:


> Log 2 is .30103; this is all we know, and all we need to know.

I'm an economist. Rule of 72 or use a machine. NATURAL logarithm of 2 is... well, not 72 (0.69314718055994530941723212145818) but the natural log of numbers close to 1 is a little less than the interest rate in question in such a way that if you use 72 and the interest rate you get pretty close to the right number.

Ie ln2 / ln1.06 = 11.895661045941885608282017876032

(Of course I am SO AWESOME I solved that in my head rather than using any hypothetical calculator function that may or may not be installed on any computer I may or may not be using at this time)

72 / 6 = 12.

[Quadibloc]

I had to look the rule of 72 up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_72

John Savard

[Shawn Wilson]

On Sunday, May 3, 2015 at 3:24:21 PM UTC-7, Quadibloc wrote:

> I had to look the rule of 72 up:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_72

It isn't important, it's just a shorthand approximation. I am morally opposed to the Rule of 69/69.3/70 though. Yes it is closer to the true value of Ln2, BUT Ln1.0r is systematically different than just r. So you can make an ad hoc adjustment to every single interest rate, or you can just round Ln2 up a little to compensate.

If you want or need actual accuracy use a fucking machine.

[Robert A. Woodward]

In article <1g69dkhvgqrdz$.4mes53wh...@40tude.net>,

"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

> On Sat, 02 May 2015 22:28:01 -0500, David DeLaney
> <davidd...@earthlink.net> wrote
> in<news:K-CdnT97wIlcCNjI...@earthlink.com> in
> alt.fan.heinlein,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.books.arthur-clarke:
>
> > On 2015-05-02, Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >> I have some logarithms memorised. Not too many, mind,
> >> but it makes some estimating much easier.
>
> > Log 2 is .30103; this is all we know, and all we need to know.
>
> 0.30103, 0.47712, 0.84510.
>

Why did you skip 0.69897?

--
Robert Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com>
<http://robertaw.drizzlehosting.com>

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 03 May 2015 23:06:23 -0700, "Robert A. Woodward"
<robe...@drizzle.com> wrote
in<news:robertaw-190FA1...@news.individual.net>
in
alt.fan.heinlein,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.books.arthur-clarke:

> In article <1g69dkhvgqrdz$.4mes53wh...@40tude.net>,
> "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

>> On Sat, 02 May 2015 22:28:01 -0500, David DeLaney
>> <davidd...@earthlink.net> wrote
>> in<news:K-CdnT97wIlcCNjI...@earthlink.com> in
>> alt.fan.heinlein,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.books.arthur-clarke:

>>> On 2015-05-02, Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:

>> [...]

>>>> I have some logarithms memorised. Not too many, mind,
>>>> but it makes some estimating much easier.

>>> Log 2 is .30103; this is all we know, and all we need to know.

>> 0.30103, 0.47712, 0.84510.

> Why did you skip 0.69897?

For the same reason that I skipped 0.60206, 0.77815, and
0.90309: the three that I mentioned give me everything
through 10.

[David DeLaney]

On 2015-05-04, Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> "Robert A. Woodward" <robe...@drizzle.com> wrote

>> "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

>>> David DeLaney <davidd...@earthlink.net> wrote

>>>> Log 2 is .30103; this is all we know, and all we need to know.
>
>>> 0.30103, 0.47712, 0.84510.
>
>> Why did you skip 0.69897?
>
> For the same reason that I skipped 0.60206, 0.77815, and
> 0.90309: the three that I mentioned give me everything through 10.

Ah, so those must be 2, 3 and 7 then.

Dave, "why not 5?" "... ... really? REALLY?"

[a425couple]

"Michael Black" <et...@ncf.ca> wrote in message...

Thank you Chris for adding that.

> And there really are officers who shouldn't be officers.

Yes, indeed.

> There wsa the Tonquin, bought by John Jacob Astor for his fur company in
> the pacific northwest. Captain Thorn seems to be a horrible person, trying
> to shipwreck some of the fur company people on the Falkland Islands circa
> 1811. The only reason he went back to get them was a fur company official
> aimed a pistol at the captain and told him to turn back.
> But Thorn died up around Vancouver Island later that year, mistreating the
> natives to they attacked.

Yes.
Despite what any might think based on this vacations readings
(3 Sci-Fi books & a WEB Griffin ((military & police)) )
this winter I was on a Lewis & Clark kick (1803-06):
The Way to the Western Sea / Lewis & Clark Across
the Continent, David Lavender
The Course of Empire, Bernard DeVoto
Undaunted Courage, Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson
and the Opening of the american West, Stephen Ambrose.
True exploration of the unknown & adventure!!

Strange Trivia, when the hunting was good, and it most often was,
the men of the expedition averaged eating 7 to 9 pounds of
meat a piece each day!

[Michael Black]

Actually, my great, great, great grandfather was on the Tonquin, he was
one of the people left behind at the Falkland Island.

They stopped off in the Sandwich Island on the way to the pacific
northwest, and some islanders joined the ship. SO bold "you're going that
way? We'll go along for the ride, see what's there", but also so risky,
how did they know they'd get a chance to return?

When Astoria had their 200th anniversary in 2011, the Astor descendants
got an invite, I didn't. Fort Astor went up in 1811, just five years
after Lewis & Clark got to about the same point on the Pacific.

Washington Irving wrote a book about Fort Astoria, it's at Project
Gutenberg. There is a recent book about Fort Astoria, I've been meaning
to get it, since I'm curious where my great, great, great grandfather fits
in.

A few months ago I discovered that one of the people who was on the
Tonquin was a Payette, an ancestor of someone who started a radio parts
store here in Montreal. I used to go to that store, though it closed a
few years after I discovered it.

Michael

[Rhino]

When I started programming in the early 80s at an insurance company, the
old-timers told me about the hardware they'd had 20 or 30 years earlier.
In those days, you could actually WALK THROUGH the larger devices. I
don't recall if it was the CPU, the printer or some other peripheral but
they told me there was an access port so that technicians could go
inside to do maintenance. People getting tours of the data center could
actually go walk through this access port. I remember when mainframe
gear was big enough that you could at least imagine such things but I
don't think a millenial would ever really conceive that such a thing was
possible....

And why should he? His/her cell phone probably has more computing power
than our whole data center did in those days.

--
Rhino

[John Dallman]

In article <mjaj0f$dt2$1...@dont-email.me>,

no_offline_c...@example.com (Rhino) wrote:

> And why should he? His/her cell phone probably has more computing
> power than our whole data center did in those days.

It was 1997 or 1998 when I realised I had more CPU power and storage on
my desk than my entire university campus had when I graduated in 1983. It
was about ten more years before I had that on my phone.

John

[Greg Goss]

I remember a point in time when someone pointed out that a Pentium II
had more computing power than a Cray-1. It's been hard to shock me
since.

Not long after that, our Y2K project replaced our mainframe 370 with
three boards in a P2 box. Performance dramatically INCREASED.
--
We are geeks. Resistance is voltage over current.

[Cryptoengineer]

j...@cix.co.uk (John Dallman) wrote in
news:memo.20150517...@jgd.cix.co.uk:

Measured on the Linpack floating point benchmark, an iPad 2 has about the
power of a Cray 2.

pt

[J. Clarke]

In article <mjaj0f$dt2$1...@dont-email.me>,
no_offline_c...@example.com says...

The early vacuum tube and relay machines had to have internal access--
parts had to be replaced on a daily basis (they also sometimes had to be
debugged, i.e. the moths had to be removed from the relays that had
closed on them).

[David DeLaney]

On 2015-05-17, Rhino <no_offline_c...@example.com> wrote:
> And why should he? His/her cell phone probably has more computing power
> than our whole data center

^W^W
planet

> did in those days.

Fixed that for you.

Dave, Moore's Law - TERRIFYING if you actually understand exponential growth

[Chris Zakes]

I can recall getting something copied in the late 1960s. We had to go
to a place across town (and this was in Houston, not some town with a
population of 800.) The copy machine was enormous--about the size of a
car--and it was a two-stage process to get a workable print.

Nowadays I have to walk across the room to get to the
copier/printer/fax/scanner which is maybe 1.5 feet square.

-Chris Zakes
Texas
--

GNU Terry Pratchett

[pete...@gmail.com]

Odd. In the same period (1965-68) there was a copier in my Dad's office. It
was no bigger than a large commercial copier of today. This was in Stockholm,
btw. I thought it was a very cool toy.

pt

[Greg Goss]

Chris Zakes <dont...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I can recall getting something copied in the late 1960s. We had to go
>to a place across town (and this was in Houston, not some town with a
>population of 800.) The copy machine was enormous--about the size of a
>car--and it was a two-stage process to get a workable print.

My mother took me in to her office to see the copier in about 1968.
It was about the size of a moderm MFC printer, but used a two-step
process. You roll the original sheet and a blank (you hope) negative
sheet of pink waxy-feeling paper through the top slot, then take the
pink sheet (no visible changes) and roll it together with a special
white sheet through the bottom slot, and what comes out is a photocopy
with lousy contrast. I'm not sure if the pink "negative" could be
reused for multiple copies.

[Michael Black]

I can't remember when I first saw a photocopying machine, but it surely
was at the local library. It was fairly big, but no bigger than more
recent machines (so I suspect recent machines kept the size even if they
didn't need it, or maybe put more paper and other supplies inside). But
it was a horrible photocopy, black and white (and I dont' remember a lot
of shades of grey) and on some weird paper. Maybe like those cash
register slips that would fade rapidly. These machines were great,
because suddenly you could photocopy something and use it in a project,
but they were awful compared to what came later. While I can't remember
the exact point where I first used one, they were certainly there around
1970.

I remember later machines, and being so impressed, the paper looked like
real paper.

Michael

[Kevrob]

This is what I remember, also. Long Island, 60 miles from Times Square.
I was allowed to use the Young Adult section of the town library starting
about 1968, and had access to the adult reference room. The library had a
coin operated copier, probably a Xerox, but it might have been a competing
machine. Xerox's patents started to expire in the early 70s, so other
companies were jumping in to supply machines at lower price points.

> I remember later machines, and being so impressed, the paper looked like
> real paper.

If I remember correctly, the 1960s tech was thermal printed. It looked
and felt like a cross between a Polaroid snapshot and regular paper.
It also came off a roll, and had a tendency to curl.

Plain paper copies were so much an improvement.

Kevin R

[Cryptoengineer]

Michael Black <et...@ncf.ca> wrote in

news:alpine.LNX.2.02.1...@darkstar.example.org:

There's two different technologies. Thermal paper, like that used
in cash register and ATM receipts, has no pigment - it turns blaok
when warmed up (and tends to fade quickly). The 'printing' head just
has elements which heat up.

Xerography electrostatically charges up a selenium coated drum then
exposes the surface to the image being copied. The light causes the
charge in the exposed areas to be discharged. The drum then gets dusted
with toner powder, which sticks to the still-charged areas (which were
dark). Finally, the partially toner coated drum is pressed against the
paper by a heating roller, which melts the toner to the paper.

In older system, the paper had to be slick-smooth, and came out of
the machine hot from the fuser. While it has some resemblence to
thermal printing, the technologies are quite different.

pt

[J. Clarke]

In article <39266a8c-f7bc-4085...@googlegroups.com>,
kev...@my-deja.com says...

The ones on the shiny paper that curled and faded were Thermofax, from
3M, and later clones of same. Thermofax (according to wiki) first
shipped in 1950. The Xerox 914 shipped in 1959 and I remember seeing
one in the mid '60s in the office where my mother worked. Thermofax
stayed around because it was adequate for some purposes and cost a lot
less to run than Xerox.

[Quadibloc]

On Sunday, May 17, 2015 at 7:28:18 PM UTC-6, David DeLaney wrote:

> Dave, Moore's Law - TERRIFYING if you actually understand exponential growth

1) From the 4004 to the Core 2 Quad, the number of transistors on a chip has actually taken 26, not 24 or 18, months to double, I was just reading.

2) In order for Moore's Law to continue holding... Intel has got to pull enough rabbits out of its hat to make chips with 7nm features... with light that has a wavelength of 135nm. Maybe they'll manage it with "double patterning", but if extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is so painful that they'd rather bend the laws of physics... Moore's Law *may* have only five years left to go.

Yes, the doomsayers have been wrong before - Intel has poured money at the problem, and made it go on for longer than anyone could have foreseen - but the technology *will* mature.

This does not mean, though, that improvement in computing power will _stop_. It will just slow down, giving new materials with greater potential time to reach parity with silicon, while silicon still improves in areas like yield - allowing larger die sizes, so the number of transistors per chip will still increase, just more slowly.

John Savard

[Raymond Daley]

"Quadibloc" <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote in message
news:e1d3a982-7612-4c18...@googlegroups.com...

On Sunday, May 17, 2015 at 7:28:18 PM UTC-6, David DeLaney wrote:

2) In order for Moore's Law to continue holding... Intel has got to pull
enough rabbits out of its hat to make chips with 7nm features... with light
that has a wavelength of 135nm. Maybe they'll manage it with "double
patterning", but if extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is so painful that
they'd rather bend the laws of physics... Moore's Law *may* have only five
years left to go.

Intel could have EASILY released duel core processors much earlier than they
actually did.
They bought out a company called Strongarm who first developed the idea of
more than 1 core per chip.
And then sat on the tech for about 8 yrs, until everything they'd had in
development had been sold to the current market.
If you haven't heard of Strongarm or can't find any references to them
online, don't be surprised.

It's for the exact same reason you won't find any evidence that Microsoft
once bribed a judge a million dollars to find in their favour in the
legendary "Look And Feel" GUI court case against Apple/Macintosh.

Those are the ones you either read about at the time, or will never know of.

[Greg Goss]

"Raymond Daley" <raymon...@ntlworld.com> wrote:

>They bought out a company called Strongarm who first developed the idea of
>more than 1 core per chip.

...

>If you haven't heard of Strongarm or can't find any references to them
>online, don't be surprised.

I was always surprised that when a consumer computer company decided
to invent their own processor, their product owned the
low-power-consumption market for a decade or two. It's not what I
would have expected to be their strength.

"Acorn Risc Machine" is apparently the biggest selling CPU design
around, vastly outselling 8086 based processors in terms of number
sold.

(Well, it became "Advanced Risc Machines" when the CPU design division
was spun off from the consumer computer company.)

[Quadibloc]

On Thursday, May 21, 2015 at 4:42:36 PM UTC-6, Raymond Daley wrote:

> Intel could have EASILY released duel core processors much earlier than they
> actually did.

But what's so wonderful about a dual core processor?

I doubt that Intel could have easily released chips with X transistors on the
same die, whether X is 500 million or one billion or whatever, "much earlier

than they actually did".

So the fact that they could have put two smaller processors on one die when
they were instead putting one more powerful processor on a die... means that
they were doing exactly the right thing.

Essentially, the Pentium 4, for example, which had a higher clock frequency,
but which required more cycles per instruction, was another way to provide the
power of more Pentium III computers in parallel - but with tighter coupling
than a dual-core chip would provide.

And putting four single-core chips on a motherboard, instead of one four-core chip, is cheaper - the main reason that isn't preferred is because of Microsoft's licensing policies (although I'll have to admit that cache coherency counts for something as well).

John Savard

[hamis...@gmail.com]

On Friday, May 22, 2015 at 8:42:36 AM UTC+10, Raymond Daley wrote:
>
> Intel could have EASILY released duel core processors much earlier than they
> actually did.

Probably, however dual core chips aren't a solution for everything and most programs weren't written for parallel processing.
For a long time improvements in single core design were providing more bang for their buck than dual core would have done.
Eventually that changed.

> They bought out a company called Strongarm who first developed the idea of
> more than 1 core per chip.

Actually Rockwell International did it in the 80s.
Sun released multi-core processors in the 90s...

> And then sat on the tech for about 8 yrs, until everything they'd had in
> development had been sold to the current market.

Much more likely they worked on developing both single and multi-core and released multi-core when they felt that they were going to get better results from it than the single core.
They aren't going to sit on a better option for 8 years because of the risk of somebody else getting in first and making huge inroads.

> If you haven't heard of Strongarm or can't find any references to them
> online, don't be surprised.

Strongarm appears to be a family of microprocessors developed by DEC in the 90s, looks like they were low power chips rather than multicore.
Intel bought them as part of a legal settlement.

>
> It's for the exact same reason you won't find any evidence that Microsoft
> once bribed a judge a million dollars to find in their favour in the
> legendary "Look And Feel" GUI court case against Apple/Macintosh.

Yeah, because it didn't happen.
Note that the Apple vs Microsoft case went through multiple appeals and was finally settled.

>
> Those are the ones you either read about at the time,

In magazines selling aluminium hats...

[Greg Goss]

hamis...@gmail.com wrote:

>> If you haven't heard of Strongarm or can't find any references to them
>> online, don't be surprised.
>
>Strongarm appears to be a family of microprocessors developed by DEC in the 90s, looks like they were low power chips rather than multicore.
>Intel bought them as part of a legal settlement.

DEC? I've been assuming that "StrongARM" was a later generation of
the ARM, designed by the guys who built the BBC retail computer.

[hamis...@gmail.com]

On Friday, May 22, 2015 at 2:08:31 PM UTC+10, Greg Goss wrote:
> hamis...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> >> If you haven't heard of Strongarm or can't find any references to them
> >> online, don't be surprised.
> >
> >Strongarm appears to be a family of microprocessors developed by DEC in the 90s, looks like they were low power chips rather than multicore.
> >Intel bought them as part of a legal settlement.
>
> DEC? I've been assuming that "StrongARM" was a later generation of
> the ARM, designed by the guys who built the BBC retail computer.
>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM
"The StrongARM was a collaborative project between DEC and Advanced RISC Machines to create a faster ARM microprocessor."
it was based off the ARM 4 instruction set architecture but it looks like the ownership ended up with DEC (based on the fact that they sold it to microsoft)

[Anthony Frost]

In message <cs7ods...@mid.individual.net>

Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:

> hamis...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> >> If you haven't heard of Strongarm or can't find any references to them
> >> online, don't be surprised.
> >
> >Strongarm appears to be a family of microprocessors developed by DEC in the 90s, looks like they were low power chips rather than multicore.
> >Intel bought them as part of a legal settlement.
>
> DEC? I've been assuming that "StrongARM" was a later generation of
> the ARM, designed by the guys who built the BBC retail computer.

ARM have never manufactured their designs, DEC had some Interesting
Stuff that turned out to work well with the ARM structure and also the
capability to make the resulting processor. Intel kept the production
going after they absorbed DEC but weren't interested in taking the
development any further.

The Acorn RISC Machine -> Advanced RISC Machine name change and spin out
of ARM from Acorn came about when Apple wanted to use the ARM processor
in the Newton.

Disclaimer: I worked for Acorn at the time, and Random Factoid: I'm
typing this on an ARM based desktop machine that had a processor upgrade
from standard ARM to StrongARM with the aid of staff discount.

Anthony

[Quadibloc]

On Friday, May 22, 2015 at 4:06:10 AM UTC-6, Anthony Frost wrote:

> ARM have never manufactured their designs,

Indeed, and with XScale, Intel manufactured ARM chips for a while. But they sold
off that division - and now they're trying to convince people that Android ported
to x86 is a viable alternative.

John Savard

[Scott Lurndal]

Actually, while ARM primarily sells the IP, they do
create test chips for internal evaluation.

They don't, however, sell the chips commercially.

[Greg Goss]

sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:

>Actually, while ARM primarily sells the IP, they do
>create test chips for internal evaluation.
>
>They don't, however, sell the chips commercially.

I once had PCs with an Intel nameplate on the front. I presume that a
small number of retail computers were sold as demonstrators of the
386?

[Lynn McGuire]

On 5/22/2015 4:37 PM, Greg Goss wrote:
> sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>
>> Actually, while ARM primarily sells the IP, they do
>> create test chips for internal evaluation.
>>
>> They don't, however, sell the chips commercially.
>
> I once had PCs with an Intel nameplate on the front. I presume that a
> small number of retail computers were sold as demonstrators of the
> 386?

Intel CPUs used to come with an adhesive label for placing their logo on your beige case.

Lynn

[William December Starr]

In article <cruphh...@mid.individual.net>,

Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> said:

> My mother took me in to her office to see the copier in about
> 1968. It was about the size of a moderm MFC printer, but used a
> two-step process. You roll the original sheet and a blank (you
> hope) negative sheet of pink waxy-feeling paper through the top
> slot, then take the pink sheet (no visible changes) and roll it
> together with a special white sheet through the bottom slot, and
> what comes out is a photocopy with lousy contrast. I'm not sure
> if the pink "negative" could be reused for multiple copies.

Did the white paper have a faint pink outline of a rose on one side,
to cue the user as to which side was (or wasn't, I forget which)
supposed to be in contact with the pink sheet? I have very faint
memories of seeing a copy machine in use at Nyack Hospital where my
grandfather the doctor was a big poo-bah, in what was probably 1963
(me = five or six years old), and I distinctly remember that rose
symbol. Unless it was a tulip.

-- wds

[John F. Eldredge]

The first printer that was available for the Sinclair ZX80 used an even-
less-well-designed method. The entire roll of paper was covered in black
ink. A thin aluminum-foil layer was then glued on top of the black ink.
When printing, an electrical arc would vaporize a series of holes through
the foil, making the black layer show through. If you handled the paper
very much, more of the foil would rub off, rendering it unreadable.

[Greg Goss]

I'm not talking about the "Intel Inside" sticker. I mean branded as
Intel brand computers.

[Greg Goss]

I never noticed that, if it was present.

[J. Clarke]

In article <mjoebo$sc4$1...@dont-email.me>, l...@winsim.com says...

They did, but Intel also sold the pieces to build complete systems at
one time, including cases.

[Quadibloc]

I've never heard of any with the 80286 or later chips. I know that Intel did
build some microcomputers based on its very early chips for development
purposes.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

I thought the symbol was supposed to represent a flame. I owned one of those
copiers, having bought it at a thrift shop or somewhere, for a while. It seemed
to produce nice copies.

John Savard

[J. Clarke]

In article <b7a16a9d-c326-4fb4...@googlegroups.com>,
jsa...@ecn.ab.ca says...

I have downstairs an Intel Cabrillo-C case containing an Intel C440GX
motherboard with two 400MHZ Xeons on it, and I forget how many SCSI
drives.

It's a nice machine, just about everything that's likely to malfunction
is hot pluggable and redundant--triple power supply for example.
Downside, it makes as much noise as the Concorde in full burner.

[Greg Goss]

These were 386s in the standard sheet-metal two-tone beige case of all
eighties PCs. I bought a stack of 'em at a clearance for a buck each
and thought they'd have some collectible value. But everyone thought
I was just talking about an "intel inside" sticker.

[John Dallman]

In article <csc6c7...@mid.individual.net>, go...@gossg.org (Greg Goss)
wrote:

> These were 386s in the standard sheet-metal two-tone beige case of
> all eighties PCs. I bought a stack of 'em at a clearance for a buck
> each and thought they'd have some collectible value. But everyone
> thought I was just talking about an "intel inside" sticker.

Intel habitually builds some machines - a few hundred - as early
development systems each time they come out with a new series of
processors that won't fit existing boards. These go to OS and software
development partners, and aren't on public sale.

John

[Scott Lurndal]

Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> writes:
>sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>
>>Actually, while ARM primarily sells the IP, they do
>>create test chips for internal evaluation.
>>
>>They don't, however, sell the chips commercially.
>
>I once had PCs with an Intel nameplate on the front. I presume that a
>small number of retail computers were sold as demonstrators of the
>386?

Intel builds something called a PDK (Platform Development Kit), which
is usually the first mainboard built for a new processor and which is
provided to partners that need early access to the new processor.