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| To Ubuntu or not to Ubuntu; that is the question. |
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| philf:
--- Quote from: AdeV on April 21, 2014, 06:10:42 PM ---That reminds me, I _must_ come around to collect that vice & have a chin-wag.... --- End quote --- Hi Ade, It's still here waiting patiently! --- Quote ---I still have a working MicroVAX 3100 here, another cracking machine, if only it didn't need re-licencing annually, a procedure I forget how to do every damn year. --- End quote --- We had many MicroVAXes at work controlling our diffusion furnaces. We only had one guy (strangely enough also called Ade!) who really understood them. He was once on holiday and a hard disk went down. I and another guy tried with some expert telephone and email help from the States to get it running again by configuring a new hard drive. We wasted the best part of a week and got absolutely nowhere. :scratch: They're definitely not for the faint hearted. I keep looking at an upgrade to the BBC which gives it USB connectivity and thus access to vast amounts of solid state storage: http://www.retroclinic.com/acorn/datacentre/datacentre.htm I do have the free version of BBC Basic for Windows which allows me to keep my hand in and to use some old programs I wrote in the 80s. The paid for version allows you to compile your basic progs into an executable. The paid for version is only £29.99. You haven't said if you want the Compaq! Cheers. Phil. |
| BaronJ:
Hi Phil, Don't let the old days put you off ! Linux today is nothing like it was, even five years ago. Go and download yourself a live CD/DVD image and burn it to a disc. Stick it into the drive and boot from it. There are plenty of distributions to choose from. Over 300 at last count. My current preference is PCLinuxOS with the Trinity Desktop. The whole idea of a live CD is so that you can have a look and see. It won't make any changes to your machine unless you tell it to. The software on the CD will examine your machine and configure itself to suit. If you have an active internet connection you should be able to surf the web from the off. |
| garym:
Hi, My first computer was a Microtan 65 built from a kit in the early eighties. It was based on the 6502 processor like the BBC models. It had a whopping 1K RAM and 1K ROM. I also bought the extension board Tanex which gave me another 7K of RAM. The two boards between them had about 2000 soldered joints. I remember taking an afternoon off work to finish the soldering, I was that excited about getting it working. I reluctantly threw it in the bin a few years ago after keeping it on top of a cupboard for thirty years. Gary |
| BaronJ:
--- Quote from: garym on April 22, 2014, 10:24:21 AM ---Hi, My first computer was a Microtan 65 built from a kit in the early eighties. It was based on the 6502 processor like the BBC models. It had a whopping 1K RAM and 1K ROM. I also bought the extension board Tanex which gave me another 7K of RAM. The two boards between them had about 2000 soldered joints. I remember taking an afternoon off work to finish the soldering, I was that excited about getting it working. I reluctantly threw it in the bin a few years ago after keeping it on top of a cupboard for thirty years. Gary --- End quote --- Hi Gary, I know what you mean ! I'm going through that process at the moment. I've still got my original IBM XT and really its just junk collecting dust... |
| awemawson:
..he ..he ... back in the late 1970's we got the entire white goods warehouse stock and stock control program of Eastern Electricity, and the necessary code to drive automatic order picking cranes onto a 1.37 mega BIT Sperry drum store attached to a Ferranti Argus 500. Ran for years very reliably. That was at Waltham Cross, but now demolished. Programmers appreciated memory in those days and weren't profligate with it - the machine had 16K of store - magnetic core store. Had the advantage I could load a test program in the office, drive to site, run the test with no loading up, and be sure that the customers program was untouched :) Programs were written in Coral66 - I bet not many people can do that these days. |
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