I have always designed my projects using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and
(lots of) eraser. I have a somewhat more complicated job I want to do now.
There is a design for an entertainment center in FWW that I want to adapt. I
would like to take the measurements from the article, enter them on a
computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend who
uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that sophisticated.
I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time on a CAD program
unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a product that one of
you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil, and eraser?
TIA.
Dick Snyder
In article <[email protected]>,
Doug Winterburn <[email protected]> wrote:
>[email protected] wrote:
>>
>> Must have been a first. The /360 was announced in '64. I didn't use the /75
>> until '67 (I was a Junior in high school ;).
>
>It was an IBM punch card I/O Fortran IBM machine we used in college in
>'64 - can't remember the IBM model number.
a 7090? mebbie it's predecessor, a 709?
In article <[email protected]>,
Morris Dovey <[email protected]> wrote:
>On 4/12/2010 8:24 AM, [email protected] wrote:
>
>> I'm not sure when they were introduced into the 370s, but yeah, they
>> were used for /158 microcode. I remember interviewing at CDC in early
>> '74. They had a /158 with its covers off, with a bunch of people
>> reverse-engineering the floppy drive. The /158 was their pride and
>> joy, which I thought odd. The whole place was "odd" and I told them
>> so before I left (didn't get an offer ;).
>
>You're right - I went digging and found that there had been a /Minnow/
>R/O floppy drive with diminished capacity released in 1972. I'm guessing
>it was an early /Igar/ prototype.
>
>Yuppers on the oddness - my impression was that the CDC management team
>had never quite been able to decide what they wanted to do when they
>grew up. At one point they were even in the windmill business. :)
And they built computers that couldn't add!
They faked addition by 'complement and subtract'. (true!!)
That said, they were some of my favorite hardware to work on.
The high-level architecture was positively elegant in it's simplicity and
regularity.
the closer to the hardware they got, the *stranger* things got.
On Apr 11, 6:18=A0pm, Swingman <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 4/11/2010 5:14 PM, Robatoy wrote:
>
> > Some self reflection is in order, however, but I am a bit confused as
> > to who should be doing the reflecting.
>
> Here ya go, Bubba. Let me help you out:
>
> "For things that are essentially boxes - like kitchen cabinets and,
> perhaps, your entertainment center CNC has acquired a substantial
> following. "
>
> A ridiculously ignorant, superficial remark, showing a decided lack of
> depth of understanding, eh?
>
> Now, live with it ... lol
>
That is not the original text from Morris' quote.
On Apr 16, 12:37=A0pm, "Lee Michaels"
<leemichaels*[email protected]> wrote:
> "Robatoy" =A0wrote
>
> LOL...I have made some facsimiles of furniture and stuff. I own a hand
> plane and a scorp, not to mention an adz. I have created adztech.
>
> =A0=3D=3D=3D
> I just can't help myself.
>
> Adztech, eh?
>
> Have you made an adztech calendar?
>
> <ouch>
I have.
On Apr 12, 2:20=A0am, Morris Dovey <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 4/12/2010 12:23 AM, Doug Winterburn wrote:
>
> > It was an IBM =A0punch card I/O Fortran IBM machine we used in college =
in
> > '64 - can't remember the IBM model number.
>
> Hmm - sounds like my favorite old machine: an IBM-1130. If so, you
> probably had a 1442 card reader/punch and an 1132 [POS!] printer to go wi=
th.
The original personal computer. ;-)
On Apr 16, 9:25=A0am, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Apr 16, 10:12=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I *DESIGN* the stuff. =A0Yes, I know what I'm talking about.
>
> You're probably very good at what you do. Your social skills need
> work, so you might come across as less of of a dick.
> You're probably just misunderstood.
From a socialist thief like you, that's a compliment.
On Apr 12, 12:18=A0pm, Larry Blanchard <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:18:42 -0500, Morris Dovey wrote:
> > You're right - I went digging and found that there had been a /Minnow/
> > R/O floppy drive with diminished capacity released in 1972. I'm guessin=
g
> > it was an early /Igar/ prototype.
>
> I'm beginning to wonder how many old computer jocks and card pushers
> there are in this group :-). =A0Is there some mystical connection between
> computers and woodworking?
Not so much computers and woodworking, I think, rather electronics and
woodworking. I noticed a correlation some time back (maybe it's just
that design is design - doesn't matter much what). Computers, to me,
were just a way to get paid to design circuits. ;-)
> BTW, to see the 1st computer I programmed (and helped assemble) go to:
>
> http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61.html#TOC
>
> and click on Readix. =A0I worked on one at Science Research Associates in
> the late '50s.
>
> --
> Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
On Apr 13, 11:02=A0am, Bill <[email protected]> wrote:
> Robatoy wrote:
> > They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>
> One could probably find a more respectful way to describe what is going
> on. =A0You're basically casting a black shadow over All Artists...
>
> Bill
There are waaaay too many people who call themselves artists. They do
all the casting of the black shadows all by themselves.
On Apr 15, 4:58=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi) wrote:
> In article <[email protected]=
.com>,
>
>
>
> [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> >On Apr 13, 4:40 =A0 =A0 pm, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi) =
wrote:
> >> In article
> ><38e09aeb-5506-4604-aaba-e56c31a5a...@y17g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
>
> >> [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> >On Apr 13, 1:33 =A0 =A0 am, Puckdropper <puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com=
> wrote:
> >> >> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote
> >> >innews:[email protected]:
>
> >> >> > That's not unusual at all. =A0 =A0 =A0Subtraction *is* adding the=
negative
> >> >> > (complement).
>
> >> >> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add, Didn't Even
> >> >> > Try). =A0 =A0 =A0It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all, =
rather used an
> >> >> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. =A0 =A0 =A0Want a dif=
ferent
> >> >> > operator? =A0 =A0 =A0Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, sometimes =
on purpose,
> >> >> > even.
>
> >> >> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD circuits are u=
sually
> >> >> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're used more oft=
en. =A0 =A0 =A0
> >> >> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being used to emulate
> >> >> addition.
>
> >> >Not true. =A0 =A0 =A0The (add and subtract) operations use the same l=
ogic.
>
> >> Really? =A0 =A0 =A0I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtraction d=
irectly. =A0 =A0 =A0'Adder'
> >> chips, however, are common as dirt.
>
> >Really. =A0Really? You haven't looked very hard.
> >http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/MC10H180-D.PDF
>
> And, you sir, "don't know what you don't know."
>
> That chip does -not- do *actual* subtraction. =A0The spec sheet makes tha=
t
> fact abundantly clear (expressly stated in the 2nd para. of the descripti=
on).
> That chip is an 'adder' with added logic to 'invert' one of the inputs, s=
o
> that it can _simulate_ subtraction (by internal 'complement and add').
Wrong. Once again, Invert <> Complement. The inverter is used in the
Carry/Borrow logic *NOT* as a complement.
BINARY FULL ADDER:
__
A --++---------------\\ \
| __ ||XOR|o------Sum
B --|--+---\\ \ +-//__/
| | ||XOR|o-+
Ci--|--|--+//__/ |
| | | | __
| | | +-| \
| | | |AND)+-+ __
| | +---------+|__/ ++\ \
| | __ |OR|- Carry
| +------------+| \ +-/__/
| |AND)+-+
+---------------+|__/
Full Adder
Full Subtractor:
__
Bin -------------------------+-\\ \
__ | ||XOR|------------------ Dif
A ---+-------\\ \ +-|-//__/
| ||XOR|-+----+ | __
B ---|--+----//__/ | +--| \
| | | |\ |AND)--+ __
| | +-+| >O---|__/ +-\ \
| | |/ | OR|---------Borrow
| | __ +|/__/
| +---------------------| \ |
| |\ |AND)---
+---------| >O-----------|__/
|/
They look pretty much alike to me.
> >> You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a bunch of inver=
ters
> >> on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
>
> And _that_ is what the MC10H180, in fact, does.
>
Wrong.
>
> >> True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because the states in t=
he
> >> operation table do not collapse as well.
> >> =A0 =A0Addition: =A0 operand1 =A0OR operand2 =3D=3D 0 =A0 =A0 =A0=3D> =
zero result, zero carry
> >> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0operand1 XOR operand2 =3D=3D 1 =A0 =A0 =
=A0=3D> one =A0result, zero carry
> >> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0operand1 AND operand2 =3D=3D 1 =A0 =A0 =
=A0=3D> zero result, one =A0carry
>
> >> =A0 Subtraction: operand1 EQ operand2 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0=3D> zero=
result, zero borrow
> >> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0operand1 EQ 1 AND operand2 EQ 0 =3D> on=
e =A0result, zero borrow
> >> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0operand1 EQ 0 AND operand2 EQ 1 =3D> on=
e =A0result, one =A0borrow
>
> >...which are the same operations.
>
> Demonstrating, yet again, what you "don't know you don't know" about digi=
tal
> logic circuit design.
>
> They are _not_ 'the same operations'. They cannot be implemented with the
> same logic. =A0They cannot even be implemented with the same number of ga=
tes.
*VERY* similar. Close enough to be the *SAME LOGIC*
> The -results- of the operations are "mathematically equivalent", but they=
are
> *NOT* the same operations. =A0 "In theory", this is a difference that sho=
uld
> make no difference, but "in practice", there _is_ a difference, when you =
have
> to implement in the real world.
No, there is no difference in the real world.
> >> To expound on the 'difference' between addition and subtraction, consi=
der
> >> hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. =A0 =A0 =A0Where the =
'negative' of
> >> a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits of the positi=
ve
> >> value. =A0 =A0 =A0e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
>
> >So what? =A0Are you trying to prove your prowess with useless
> >information?
>
> Useless? =A0Do you know how many *BILLIONS* of dollars of scientific/engi=
neering
> computers were built using that -exact- logic, over a period of several
> decades?
Absolutely irrelevant.
> Those of us who actually _used_ those kinds of machines had to deal with =
this
> "useless" behavior on a day-to-day basis.
I *DESIGN* the stuff. Yes, I know what I'm talking about.
> Those machines *all* used _NATIVE_SUBTRACTION_, with addition being 'simu=
lated'
> by 'complement and subtract'. =A0
What machines? CADET (the subject, BTW) didn't do either, "natively".
> To be absolutely explicit, on those machines _addition_ was done by runni=
ng
> the second operand through an inverter and then feeding that result to th=
e
> 'native' subtraction circuitry. =A0It was -not- done by disabling inverte=
rs
> in front of a 'native' adder circuit. =A0 I'm sure even _you_ can see the
> stupidity of running a set of (front-end) inverters =A0before a set of
> (internal to simulated subtraction logic) inverters that fed an 'adder'
> circuit to generate the result.
> Those who claim otherwise are ignorant of the FACTS of computing history.
On Apr 14, 12:05=A0pm, "Bill" <[email protected]> wrote:
> <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> news:1b5297ef-4d8a-449f-bf11-73bcb28b818c@b33g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
> Idiot. =A0A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn't
> relevant when
>
> FWIW, and I won't wish to get dragged into any muck, the algorithm for
> performing of translating to negative numbers (assuming 2s complement
> representation) IS relevant if one will evaluate expressions of the form
> A-B =A0as A+(-B).
Only if you're doing invert-add to perform subtraction. The topic was
specifically about hardware subtraction (or addition =3D complement-
subtract), *not* invert-add.
> Since bitwise negation can be performed by a single transistor, I would
> expect that that a value in a register could be negated VERY fast. =A0I t=
hink
> just a few clock cycles.
Above you use 2's complement representations in your example. Now you
switch tracks to 1's complement representation of negative numbers
(the only format where negation =3D inversion).
Yes, bitwise *INVERSION* can be done by a single transistor (indeed it
takes zero clock cycles to invert a signal), but this is a negation
only if you're doing 1's complement arithmetic. You still have to do
the end-around carry for the addition (two carry propagations). OTOH,
if you're doing 2's complement arithmetic negation is invert AND ADD
ONE, which also takes two carry propagation periods (complement, add).
TANSTAAFL.
On Apr 14, 8:56=A0am, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Apr 14, 9:36=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > On Apr 13, 4:40=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi) wrote=
:
>
> > > In article <[email protected]=
oups.com>,
>
> > > [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > >On Apr 13, 1:33=A0am, Puckdropper <puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com> wro=
te:
> > > >> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote
> > > >innews:[email protected]:
>
> > > >> > That's not unusual at all. =A0Subtraction *is* adding the negati=
ve
> > > >> > (complement).
>
> > > >> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add, Didn't Eve=
n
> > > >> > Try). =A0It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all, rather =
used an
> > > >> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. =A0Want a different
> > > >> > operator? =A0Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, sometimes on purp=
ose,
> > > >> > even.
>
> > > >> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD circuits are =
usually
> > > >> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're used more of=
ten. =A0
> > > >> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being used to emulat=
e
> > > >> addition.
>
> > > >Not true. =A0The (add and subtract) operations use the same logic.
>
> > > Really? =A0I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtraction directly=
. =A0'Adder'
> > > chips, however, are common as dirt.
>
> > Really. =A0Really? You haven't looked very hard.http://www.onsemi.com/p=
ub_link/Collateral/MC10H180-D.PDF
>
> > > You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a bunch of inve=
rters
> > > on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
>
> > > True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because the states in =
the
> > > operation table do not collapse as well.
> > > =A0Addition: =A0 =A0operand1 =A0OR operand2 =3D=3D 0 =A0=3D> zero res=
ult, zero carry
> > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 XOR operand2 =3D=3D 1 =A0=3D> on=
e =A0result, zero carry
> > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 AND operand2 =3D=3D 1 =A0=3D? ze=
ro result, one =A0carry
>
> > > =A0Subtraction: operand1 =A0EQ operand2 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0=3D> z=
ero result, zero borrow
> > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 1 AND operand2 EQ 0 =3D> o=
ne =A0result, zero borrow
> > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 0 AND operand2 EQ 1 =3D> o=
ne =A0result, one =A0borrow
>
> > ...which are the same operations.
>
> > > To expound on the 'difference' between addition and subtraction, cons=
ider
> > > hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. =A0Where the 'negati=
ve' of
> > > a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits of the posit=
ive
> > > value. =A0e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
>
> > So what? =A0Are you trying to prove your prowess with useless
> > information?
>
> Are you showing off that the information is useless to YOU because
> your prowess is so elevated?
Idiot. A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn't
relevant when discussing the difference/similarity between subtraction
and addition. I wouldn't expect you to know anything about it.
OTOH, you are up to your usual standards in cashing checks with your
mouth that you ass can't cover.
On Apr 15, 8:39=A0am, Upscale <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 06:29:11 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
>
> >> Oh, I see... a liberal.
>
> >I know you're stupid. =A0You don't have to constantly demonstrate the
> >fact.
>
> You mean in the same way you demonstrate how to be a red neck?
I was just thinking about who could possibly be dumber than RoboTwat,
and who shows up...
On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 06:29:11 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
>> Oh, I see... a liberal.
>
>I know you're stupid. You don't have to constantly demonstrate the
>fact.
You mean in the same way you demonstrate how to be a red neck?
On Apr 13, 10:44=A0pm, "LDosser" <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Robatoy" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> news:4aff1073-f156-42d7-a66a-eea55e9f2b8f@b33g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
> On Apr 13, 4:35 am, "LDosser" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > "Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> >news:[email protected]...
>
> > > Bill wrote:
>
> > >> I'm the same person, but somehow I'm a more learned person--that's o=
ne
> > >> of
> > >> great things about staying young is you get to keep on learning! :)
>
> > >> Bill
>
> > > I've been reading James Krenov's book, "A Cabinet Makers Notebook".
> > > I just finished the first chapter on "Wood". He gives the reader
> > > plenty of opportunity to "learn something"! : )
>
> > > During my own reflection I observed that the beauty of using tools
> > > is in using them well. They sing their own song (but please don't
> > > tell anyone I said that)!
>
> > I'll get roasted for this, but it seems to me Krenov made a career out =
of
> > one medicine cabinet. A very nice cabinet and one I wish I'd done, but =
the
> > same one over and over. Variations on a theme. Same as some authors, Ja=
mes
> > Patterson comes to mind, write the same book over and over.
>
> Few creative artists stray from an established theme. It is the core
> of their creativity and they will strive to 'better' that core, offer
> variations, but mostly their art will have identity of some sort. A
> Moore sculpture is relatively easy to identify. Many painters have a
> 'style' (some even call theirs 'De Stijl'.) Krenov had a style. Van
> Gogh had a style and to have the nerve to say that he did the same
> painting over and over will get you shot at dawn.
>
> How many careers revolve around One Hit? (Now they call them a
> 'signature song'.)
>
> They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
-
>
> Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
I agree Warhol took chances and broke new ground. I quite like his
stuff.
On Sat, 1 May 2010 22:15:02 -0700, the infamous " Rumple Stiltskin"
<[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>"Larry Jaques" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>> On Sat, 01 May 2010 15:58:12 -0400, the infamous Marty
>> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>>
>>>I have used Quick CAD (no longer available) for a years but
>>>have started to use Sketchup. I struggled with it for a time, set it
>>>aside, viewed the tutorials, tried it again, set it aside, and
>>>tried it again with the idea I would learn it some how.... Then while
>>>browsing in a book store found Skechup 7 for Dummies ($25). What an eye
>>>opener!!! Much better then what can be found online and really has
>>>helped understanding its use. Very clear and concise with many
>>>illustrations.
>>>
>>>Recommended, this time I won't set it aside.
>>>
>>>Marty
>>
>> I'm glad you posted that, Marty. As I scanned the Amazon page for the
>> Dummies book, I found a copy of _Google Sketchup: The Missing Manual_
>> for $1.25 and ordered it.
>>
>> $5.24 total delivered price. 608 minty-fresh pages, 2009 vintage!
>
>The online reviews of this are on the fluffy side. Perhaps you could post a
>review after using it?
Can do, but it may be a while.
--
Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.
-- Raymond Lindquist
On Apr 13, 1:33=A0am, Puckdropper <puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote innews:msq7s55b=
[email protected]:
>
>
>
> > That's not unusual at all. =A0Subtraction *is* adding the negative
> > (complement).
>
> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add, Didn't Even
> > Try). =A0It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all, rather used an
> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. =A0Want a different
> > operator? =A0Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, sometimes on purpose,
> > even.
>
> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD circuits are usually
> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're used more often. =
=A0
> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being used to emulate
> addition.
Not true. The (add and subtract) operations use the same logic. Now,
multiply and divide are a whole different kettle...
On Apr 16, 11:48=A0am, "Lee Michaels"
<leemichaels*[email protected]> wrote:
> "Robatoy" wrote
>
> A growth business? Hell yes. The guys at Vectric have done a fantastic
> job creating the Aspire software making it, in relative terms, a lot
> easier to create works of art. Even though my cnc is a General, the
> ShopBot community is just incredible with help for newbs like myself.
> =3D=3D=3D
>
> You make a lousy neander.
LOL...I have made some facsimiles of furniture and stuff. I own a hand
plane and a scorp, not to mention an adz. I have created adztech.
>
> =3D=3D=3D
> I just wish I had done this 10+ years ago.
> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>
> I would guess that the technology, support, CNC machines, etc are much
> better today than ten years ago. =A0And Morris had not built his machine =
and
> begun his CNC subversiveness.
>
> Oh well...., =A0better late than never.
It *is* indeed Morris' fault. Absolutely. I will be forever grateful
for his subversiveness. Sometimes I need a nudge. I was always cnc-
curious. Damned machines made way too much sense but were boat-loads
of money when I last looked at them. Those machines were always a
proposition that included fully booked work schedules, trained staff
and very expensive software. Now they make sense on a more one-off
custom level.
http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o290/Robatoy/VV2part.jpg
Oops! Not quite correct.
It's free for a trial period, then needs to be registered and paid for.
Doug
"DougVL" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> DeltaCad is free. I downloaded it and tried it once last winter, but it's
> on a different, currently inaccessible computer just now or I'd try it
> again for a minute to see how it looks.
>
> Maybe there are some online reviews or comments about it.
>
> Doug
>
>
> "Marty" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:qI%[email protected]...
>>I have used Quick CAD (no longer available) for a years but
>> have started to use Sketchup. I struggled with it for a time, set it
>> aside, viewed the tutorials, tried it again, set it aside, and
>> tried it again with the idea I would learn it some how.... Then while
>> browsing in a book store found Skechup 7 for Dummies ($25). What an eye
>> opener!!! Much better then what can be found online and really has
>> helped understanding its use. Very clear and concise with many
>> illustrations.
>>
>> Recommended, this time I won't set it aside.
>>
>> Marty
>>
>> On 4/10/2010 7:07 AM, Dick Snyder wrote:
>>> I have always designed my projects using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and
>>> (lots of) eraser. I have a somewhat more complicated job I want to do
>>> now.
>>> There is a design for an entertainment center in FWW that I want to
>>> adapt. I
>>> would like to take the measurements from the article, enter them on a
>>> computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend who
>>> uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that
>>> sophisticated.
>>> I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time on a CAD
>>> program
>>> unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a product that one
>>> of
>>> you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil, and eraser?
>>>
>>> TIA.
>>>
>>> Dick Snyder
>>>
>>>
>
>
"Dick Snyder" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>I have always designed my projects using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and
>(lots of) eraser. I have a somewhat more complicated job I want to do now.
>There is a design for an entertainment center in FWW that I want to adapt.
>I would like to take the measurements from the article, enter them on a
>computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend who
>uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that
>sophisticated. I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time
>on a CAD program unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a
>product that one of you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil,
>and eraser?
>
> TIA.
>
> Dick Snyder
>
I do not care for Sketchup either. I downloaded DoubleCAD and have been
using it for a while.
http://www.doublecad.com/
Greg
On Apr 12, 2:03=A0am, Morris Dovey <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 4/11/2010 11:02 PM, [email protected] wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:26:41 -0500, Morris Dovey<[email protected]> =A0w=
rote:
>
> >> You might get a kick out of learning that the floppy disk was original=
ly
> >> developed to load the microcode into the ill-fated object-based FS (fo=
r
> >> Future System) machines.
>
> > Nah, floppies were used on the 370/158s to load microcode, well before =
FS.
>
> Are you sure? The 158 was announced in August 2, 1972 about the time
> Dept 71J in East Fishkill received a bare (no electronics) /Igar/ drive
> from Boulder, and at that time the folks at Boulder were still having
> difficulties producing diskettes (something about the jacket lining
> abrading the oxide).
I'm not sure when they were introduced into the 370s, but yeah, they
were used for /158 microcode. I remember interviewing at CDC in early
'74. They had a /158 with its covers off, with a bunch of people
reverse-engineering the floppy drive. The /158 was their pride and
joy, which I thought odd. The whole place was "odd" and I told them
so before I left (didn't get an offer ;).
> In 1972, D/71J was working on the UC0 and UC.5 controllers and firmware
> drivers for not only /Igar/, but also for /Gulliver/ (the new sealed
> hard drive from Hursley), /Lynx/ (a new band printer to succeed the
> print-chain 1403), and an SDLC adapter - and all of these were being
> developed (primarily) as building blocks for FS.
I worked on FS for a few months, before it was killed. I started in
P'ok in June of '74. IIRC it was killed that fall and the 308x
started using the hardware. FS was a *bad* idea and would have killed
any other company.
> It was the guy across the hall from me who came up with the
> motor+geneva+leadscrew drive to implement seeks (clack, clack, clack) on
> /Igar/, which was later replaced with a (quiet) voice coil seek mechanism=
.
>
> They all underwent final product test at the same time in Kingston
> during, IIRC, 1974. We worked 12 hours on and twelve hours off with a
> long commute, through that entire 6-week test process - it was an
> exhausting experience (I remember waking up one morning on the way back
> from Kingston - driving down the shoulder of US9 doing 65).
I did a lot of 12/12 projects in my time at IBM. In a department
meeting my boss announced that he had good news and bad news. The
good news was that starting immediately, we would be working half
days. The bad news was that there were 24 hours in a day. I'd
already been working 70-hour weeks, for months, so no change.
> The evolved /Igar/ drive graduated as the 33FD. I still have some of the
> diskettes. :)
On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:26:58 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
<[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>"Larry Jaques" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:44:56 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
>> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>>
>>>Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
>>
>> Andy Warhol's work SUCKED. He and Picasso can go piss up a rope.
>
>Now There's an idea!
Quite the evocative phrase, wot?
--
STOP THE SLAUGHTER! Boycott Baby Oil!
On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:41:15 -0500, the infamous Steve Turner
<[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>On 04/14/2010 12:16 PM, Larry Jaques wrote:
>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:44:56 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
>> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>>
>>> Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
>>
>> Andy Warhol's work SUCKED. He and Picasso can go piss up a rope.
>
>Larry, that was sheer poetry. I'm getting a little misty here.
Better'n Keats, wot? <polishes fingernails on his shirt>
--
STOP THE SLAUGHTER! Boycott Baby Oil!
On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:27:15 -0400, the infamous "Bill"
<[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>
>"Larry Jaques" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:44:56 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
>> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>>
>>>Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
>>
>> Andy Warhol's work SUCKED. He and Picasso can go piss up a rope.
>
>
>Gosh, I'm not even going to mention Cindi Lauper, then! ; )
Loved her in "Vibes".
--
STOP THE SLAUGHTER! Boycott Baby Oil!
On Apr 13, 4:35=A0am, "LDosser" <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> news:[email protected]...
>
> > Bill wrote:
>
> >> I'm the same person, but somehow I'm a more learned person--that's one=
of
> >> great things about staying young is you get to keep on learning! :)
>
> >> Bill
>
> > I've been reading James Krenov's book, "A Cabinet Makers Notebook".
> > I just finished the first chapter on "Wood". =A0He gives the reader
> > plenty of opportunity to "learn something"! =A0: )
>
> > During my own reflection I observed that the beauty of using tools
> > is in using them well. =A0They sing their own song (but please don't
> > tell anyone I said that)!
>
> I'll get roasted for this, but it seems to me Krenov made a career out of
> one medicine cabinet. A very nice cabinet and one I wish I'd done, but th=
e
> same one over and over. Variations on a theme. Same as some authors, Jame=
s
> Patterson comes to mind, write the same book over and over.
Few creative artists stray from an established theme. It is the core
of their creativity and they will strive to 'better' that core, offer
variations, but mostly their art will have identity of some sort. A
Moore sculpture is relatively easy to identify. Many painters have a
'style' (some even call theirs 'De Stijl'.) Krenov had a style. Van
Gogh had a style and to have the nerve to say that he did the same
painting over and over will get you shot at dawn.
How many careers revolve around One Hit? (Now they call them a
'signature song'.)
They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
"Dick Snyder" <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:
> I have always designed my projects using graph paper, ruler, pencil,
> and (lots of) eraser. I have a somewhat more complicated job I want to
> do now. There is a design for an entertainment center in FWW that I
> want to adapt. I would like to take the measurements from the article,
> enter them on a computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I
> have a friend who uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and
> not that sophisticated. I don't want to invest the money and a lot of
> learning time on a CAD program unless I can get a recommendation on
> this group for a product that one of you likes to use. Should I stick
> to my paper, pencil, and eraser?
>
> TIA.
>
> Dick Snyder
>
>
If you're familiar with drafting, a program called CadStd will get you
going right away. It's basically computer drafting. A little quirky at
first, but once you get used to the interface it's easy to use.
Sketchup takes a bit to get used to, also. I had to take the time to get
used to the 3D aspect, but didn't find anything too difficult. The
interface is a little quirky as well, but not terrible. (Zooming, for
example, is done by selecting the Zoom tool and moving the mouse up or
down.)
CadStd has a Lite version that does quite a bit, or a Pro version for
around $50. Sketchup is free, with a Pro version that costs around $500
(I think). For the base program in either case, you're out only your
time to try it.
Puckdropper
--
Never teach your apprentice everything you know.
Somebody wrote:
> Akshooly, it was '66 when I went to work for IBM and went to 360 OS
> school in Endicott (DOS), and then Poughkeepsie (OS). Classrooms
> full
> of ashtrays and smoke so thick, you could barely see the blackboard
> and
> the instructor with his [bad] hairpiece. Cigs were $0.35 a pack in
> the
> vending machines in the hallways with 2 cents taped to each pack
> making
> them $0.33.
-------------------------------------------
To put that in a little perspective, one of my first jobs was in a
cigar/sporting goods store in the early 50's.
One of my jobs was to pick up the tobacco order from the wholesale
house around the corner.
Wholesale cost for cigarettes was $1.98/carton for Pall Mall and
$1.96/carton for all other brands.
Sold for $0.25/pack or $1.95/carton across the counter.
Kept trying to raise the carton price to $2.05, but it didn't stick.
Vending machine price was also $0.25/pack.
55+ years have brought a few changes, thankfully.
Lew
Morris Dovey wrote:
> On 4/12/2010 12:23 AM, Doug Winterburn wrote:
>
>> It was an IBM punch card I/O Fortran IBM machine we used in college in
>> '64 - can't remember the IBM model number.
>
>
> Hmm - sounds like my favorite old machine: an IBM-1130. If so, you
> probably had a 1442 card reader/punch and an 1132 [POS!] printer to go
> with.
>
Wasn't the 1442 a prototype for the office paper shredder?
--
Jack Novak
Buffalo, NY - USA
[email protected]
"[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:
>
> That's not unusual at all. Subtraction *is* adding the negative
> (complement).
>
> OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add, Didn't Even
> Try). It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all, rather used an
> index into a lookup table in memory to add. Want a different
> operator? Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, sometimes on purpose,
> even.
>
In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD circuits are usually
smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're used more often.
That's what was so weird about the subtractor being used to emulate
addition.
Puckdropper
--
Never teach your apprentice everything you know.
On 2010-04-12 16:16:12 -0400, Bill <[email protected]> said:
> I've been reading James Krenov's book, "A Cabinet Makers Notebook".
> I just finished the first chapter on "Wood". He gives the reader
> plenty of opportunity to "learn something"! : )
While Krenov's work is certainly inspirational, that's about the
ugliest job of book design... or it would be, had "The Fine Art of
Cabinetmaking" not been published. Both just scream the worst of late
'70s design. (Thank goodness neither is set in ITC Souvenir.)
On 2010-04-13 09:11:55 -0400, Larry Jaques <[email protected]> said:
>> Same as some authors, James Patterson comes to mind, write the same
>> book over and over.
>
> Never having read him, I Amazoned his work and see that he may be a
> 3-trick pony. Alex Cross, Woman's Murder Club, and Maximum Ride.
> Or are they all riding the same pony?
Worse yet, Patterson now just sketches out the plot and has someone
else do the writing. Of course, Norman Rockwell's later work was
completed by studio assistants... Maybe like another Norm's never-seen
shop assistants, eh?
On 2010-04-13 10:48:57 -0400, Bill <[email protected]> said:
> In case anyone is would like to know, something that makes these books
> special is the Reverence with which he wrote
> about his craft.
I'll see your Krenov and raise you a Nakashima.
On 2010-04-13 22:30:35 -0400, Larry Jaques <[email protected]> said:
> All I can say is
> http://www.poopreport.com/BMnewswire/complex_shit.html
http://gizmodo.com/205693/japanese-golden-poop-cellphone-charm
"[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:58:38 -0500, [email protected]
> (Robert Bonomi) wrote:
*trim*
>>I agree that subtraction, GENERALLY, "*is* adding the negative".
>
> Not generally. That is one way to do it, but certainly not the only
> way. Hardware subtraction is no more difficult than addition. They're
> really the same logic (twisted, but really the same).
>
>>Now go back and read what _this_ machine actually did. <grin>
>
> There have been many such things talked about here. Specifically, the
> IBM 1620, knows as the CADET, had a table look-up for addition. It
> couldn't subtract, either.
>
>>I repeat, this multi-million-dollar super-computer "couldn't ADD".
>
> The 1620 wasn't a "multi-million-dollar super-computer". It was, in
> fact, rather mundane. That's the reason it couldn't add - they didn't
> want to spend money on an adder. Note that it had no subtractor,
> either.
>
Well that's completely different! Using a look up table for addition...
And apparently an extensive one if my 10 second internet search is worth
anything.
Puckdropper
--
Never teach your apprentice everything you know.
On 2010-04-15 00:06:51 -0400, "Bill" <[email protected]> said:
> I had a more difficult time with Tage Frid's first book. I found the
> pictures very difficult to follow. Didn't make it very far before
> I had to return it to the library. Maybe next time.
Whas that "Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking, Book 1: Joinery"? I found it
very clear, in spite of some reproduction problems with the pix...
though it's taken me about a year to resolve the cover illustration
into a dovetail joint. Kept reading it as some abstract illustration --
no longer able to see that, now that I know what it's supposed to be!
"Robatoy" wrote
Get your facts straight. I was an independent small business owner
with a staff of 4. It was the third business I built from the ground
up and then sold for a nice lump of coin. I now have one business
left, my CNC millwork business.
=====================
Congrats on another biz success/transition.
You must be a lousy retiree.
Did you get kicked out of your shop?
Just how is the CNC biz in your neighborhood? Do you see this as a growth
biz?
"Robatoy" wrote
A growth business? Hell yes. The guys at Vectric have done a fantastic
job creating the Aspire software making it, in relative terms, a lot
easier to create works of art. Even though my cnc is a General, the
ShopBot community is just incredible with help for newbs like myself.
===
You make a lousy neander.
===
I just wish I had done this 10+ years ago.
=========
I would guess that the technology, support, CNC machines, etc are much
better today than ten years ago. And Morris had not built his machine and
begun his CNC subversiveness.
Oh well...., better late than never.
On Apr 12, 11:18=A0am, Morris Dovey <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 4/12/2010 8:24 AM, [email protected] wrote:
>
> > I'm not sure when they were introduced into the 370s, but yeah, they
> > were used for /158 microcode. =A0I remember interviewing at CDC in earl=
y
> > '74. =A0They had a /158 with its covers off, with a bunch of people
> > reverse-engineering the floppy drive. =A0The /158 was their pride and
> > joy, which I thought odd. =A0The whole place was "odd" and I told them
> > so before I left (didn't get an offer ;).
>
> You're right - I went digging and found that there had been a /Minnow/
> R/O floppy drive with diminished capacity released in 1972. I'm guessing
> it was an early /Igar/ prototype.
It was R/O (forgotten that detail). The floppy writers were a desk-
sized contraption that connected to an internal use only computer
(RSTS?) from Rochester, IIRC. It was IUO because it would put shame
to the S/7 and there were a *lot* of S/7s, unsold, in the warehouse.
> Yuppers on the oddness - my impression was that the CDC management team
> had never quite been able to decide what they wanted to do when they
> grew up. At one point they were even in the windmill business. :)
It was obviously run by a bunch of MBA kids, still wet behind the
ears. The treated candidates like grade school kids. Just amazing.
On Apr 11, 10:32=A0am, Swingman <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 4/11/2010 4:45 AM, Morris Dovey wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 4/11/2010 2:01 AM, Swingman wrote:
> >> On 4/10/2010 8:49 PM, Morris Dovey wrote:
>
> >>> Tracing an image and skipping definition of contoured surfaces don't
> >>> work for me.
>
> >> The "tracing" of a component, imported into a project from an outside
> >> source, is routinely done as a matter of convenience and is a common
> >> practice to speed up a project, with any design software, and is one o=
f
> >> the reasons for an "import" feature.
>
> >> Furthermore, it is inarguable that if the software contains the tools =
to
> >> effectively "trace" a component, it therefore has the tools/ability to
> >> "draw" it instead, should you chose to do so, as this software indeed
> >> does.
>
> >> Your argument in that regard falls flatly on its face ...
>
> > Yeah fine. Give this easy one a whirl:
>
> > Draw parabola with curve length of 96" between intersections with the
> > latus rectum (a line through the focus perpendicular to another line
> > passing through both focus and vertex). Points separated by 0.0100"
> > along the x-axis, and accurate to +/-0.0005". I don't care whether you
> > draw or trace, only that all requirements be met, so that I can export
> > it as a DXF (the format needed for my 'Bot) and machine it accurately.
>
> Obfuscation par excellence ... and totally, and ridiculously, irrelevant.
>
> >> Your arguments thus far do nothing to disprove that.
>
> > Eh? Why should I have any interest in proving or disproving anything?
>
> Yep, it's indeed a mystery why you bothered in the first place. You've
> made it plain in the past that you have little use for the software;
> that you don't use it; have minimum experience with it and are ignorant
> of its capabilites for the most part.
>
> So, what's behind this obsession with taking snide shots at every
> opportunity that presents itself?
>
> Hell, it wasn't even a good troll, so why bother muddying the water with
> ignorance?
>
> A little self reflection might be in order there, Bubba ...
>
> --www.e-woodshop.net
> Last update: 10/22/08
> KarlC@ (the obvious)
I'm a little late to the party, but 'snide shots', 'obsession',
'troll' and 'ignorance' are not words I can associate with the Morris
*I* know.
Some self reflection is in order, however, but I am a bit confused as
to who should be doing the reflecting.
On Apr 16, 10:38=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Apr 16, 9:25=A0am, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > On Apr 16, 10:12=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > > I *DESIGN* the stuff. =A0Yes, I know what I'm talking about.
>
> > You're probably very good at what you do. Your social skills need
> > work, so you might come across as less of of a dick.
> > You're probably just misunderstood.
>
> From a socialist thief like you, that's a compliment.
Get your facts straight. I was an independent small business owner
with a staff of 4. It was the third business I built from the ground
up and then sold for a nice lump of coin. I now have one business
left, my CNC millwork business. I own this business outright. No debt,
no bank-loans, just a huge amount of supplier credit and goodwill. I
have never collected a dime from any social assistance programs and
vote conservative unless there's an asshole like you who's running for
a political position under the guise of conservatism. The (small)
liberal side of me believes that I should help those less fortunate
than I. So you are wrong, wrong, wrong, fuck-face.
"Dick Snyder" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>I have always designed my projects using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and
>(lots of) eraser. I have a somewhat more complicated job I want to do now.
>There is a design for an entertainment center in FWW that I want to adapt.
>I would like to take the measurements from the article, enter them on a
>computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend who
>uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that
>sophisticated. I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time
>on a CAD program unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a
>product that one of you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil,
>and eraser?
>
> TIA.
>
> Dick Snyder
Your freind has not given the latest version of Sketchup a chance.
I have been using CAD programs since 1986. I used AutoCad LT from
1996-2008. I have been using Sketchup exclusively since 2008. I am not
going back!
First off as with any drawing program experience and or formal training is
an asset. There are numerous tutorials on line that will teach you what you
need to know for free. I highly recomend Sketchup. I recently designed and
built a bedroom project, 6 major components with probably 700-800 seperate
parts and I found the program drawings to be completely accurate.
While not the most sophisticated drawing program, most any wood working
project needs no more than what Sketchup has to offer.
On Apr 13, 11:18=A0am, Bill <[email protected]> wrote:
> Robatoy wrote:
> > They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>
> Economics suggests that as long as marginal gain exceeds marginal cost,
> there will be production. =A0That's as simple as it gets.
...as long as there is nothing else with a higher profit.
In article <[email protected]>,
Scott Lurndal <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>The early BCD burroughs machines (medium systems) would do BCD math on
>BCD fields that contained 'undigits' (i.e. 1010b - 1111b); needless
>to say, the results were unusual.
I've known of a number of micro-processors whee the 'BCD' opcodes were
usable on any hex nybbles. Yeah, results were *NOT* "intuitively
obvious' when what you call 'undigits' were involved, but they -were-
consistent -- at least within the same processor model.
The CDC 6000 series didn't have BCD math hardware, but *somebody* had
worked out some magic incantations whereby you could do simple arithmetic
(addition/subtraction) on character strings of digits. i.e. take words with
the strings '0000012345' and '0000056789' in them, perform a binary addition
operation on them, followed by the 'magic incantation' instructions, and
end up with a word holding the string '0000069134'.
I also knew folks that had worked out some _very_ creative uses for the
'undigit' handling done by some specific microprocessor chips.
> Later versions of the architecture
>would 'catch a cow' (report Undigit Arithmetic Exception) if such a thing
>was attempted.
sounds like a 'no bull' attempt to me. :)
On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:14:05 -0700 (PDT), Robatoy
<[email protected]> wrote:
>On Apr 11, 10:32 am, Swingman <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On 4/11/2010 4:45 AM, Morris Dovey wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > On 4/11/2010 2:01 AM, Swingman wrote:
>> >> On 4/10/2010 8:49 PM, Morris Dovey wrote:
>>
>> >>> Tracing an image and skipping definition of contoured surfaces don't
>> >>> work for me.
>>
>> >> The "tracing" of a component, imported into a project from an outside
>> >> source, is routinely done as a matter of convenience and is a common
>> >> practice to speed up a project, with any design software, and is one of
>> >> the reasons for an "import" feature.
>>
>> >> Furthermore, it is inarguable that if the software contains the tools to
>> >> effectively "trace" a component, it therefore has the tools/ability to
>> >> "draw" it instead, should you chose to do so, as this software indeed
>> >> does.
>>
>> >> Your argument in that regard falls flatly on its face ...
>>
>> > Yeah fine. Give this easy one a whirl:
>>
>> > Draw parabola with curve length of 96" between intersections with the
>> > latus rectum (a line through the focus perpendicular to another line
>> > passing through both focus and vertex). Points separated by 0.0100"
>> > along the x-axis, and accurate to +/-0.0005". I don't care whether you
>> > draw or trace, only that all requirements be met, so that I can export
>> > it as a DXF (the format needed for my 'Bot) and machine it accurately.
>>
>> Obfuscation par excellence ... and totally, and ridiculously, irrelevant.
>>
>> >> Your arguments thus far do nothing to disprove that.
>>
>> > Eh? Why should I have any interest in proving or disproving anything?
>>
>> Yep, it's indeed a mystery why you bothered in the first place. You've
>> made it plain in the past that you have little use for the software;
>> that you don't use it; have minimum experience with it and are ignorant
>> of its capabilites for the most part.
>>
>> So, what's behind this obsession with taking snide shots at every
>> opportunity that presents itself?
>>
>> Hell, it wasn't even a good troll, so why bother muddying the water with
>> ignorance?
>>
>> A little self reflection might be in order there, Bubba ...
>>
>> --www.e-woodshop.net
>> Last update: 10/22/08
>> KarlC@ (the obvious)
>
>I'm a little late to the party, but 'snide shots', 'obsession',
>'troll' and 'ignorance' are not words I can associate with the Morris
>*I* know.
>
>Some self reflection is in order, however, but I am a bit confused as
>to who should be doing the reflecting.
I wondered about this a little myself. Then I remembered his
daughters eye surgery and a few other comments so I'm going to cut him
some slack. He's usually very helpful, and shares his info. Shit
happens on usenet where everything is lost in translation. These are
two great people so I think it will work out.
Mike M
In article <[email protected]>,
Larry Blanchard <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:54:58 -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:
>
>> It took a while to establish cause-and-effect, because *nobody* was
>> willing to believe that that 'innocent little job" -- nothing more than
>> 4 standard statements in the system control language -- could _possibly_
>> be the culprit. Until they ran it as the _only_ job in the system, and
>> watched the machine crash.
>>
>> The entire job consisted of:
>> 1) request a tape mount
>> 2) copy a file from disk to the tape
>> 3) rewind the tape
>> 4) copy from the tape back to a new file.
>
>The original Univac I had tape drives that maintained tension with
>springs and pulleys rather than vacuum columns. Those drives, as well as
>the vacuum column model that replaced them on Univac II, could read both
>forwards and backwards. There were 10 drives.
>
>One of the programmers (no, not me) wrote a program that issued a write
>command, followed by a read backwards, followed by a skip a block. That
>sequence apparently exceeded the response of the strings and pulleys and
>they wound up in a heap at the bottom of the drive.
>
>The resident (yep, 24 hours a day) CEs wouldn't believe him when he
>described the problem. So he wrote a little program to demonstrate the
>problem, called in the CEs, and ran the program, dumping *all 10* tape
>drives. He wasn't very popular with the CEs after that, but when he told
>them he had a problem, they listened :-).
>
>I sometimes think all us old computer nerds should start a website and
>record all these stories before we all die and the stories are lost.
There is also the story about a university student who got the engineering
plans for an IBM mainframe disk drive (one of the washing-machine-size units),
_carefully_ calculated the mass involved, and wrote a channel program that
consisted of 'seek to outermost track', pause, 'seek to innermost track',
pause, and "repeat indefinitely". The 'pause' times were carefully calculated
to the 'resonant frequency of the drive unit. Reportedly, the unit 'walked'
almost *THREE*FEET* across the floor, _towards_the_operator_, before they
managed to find and kill the offending task. I'm given to understand that
the operators were 'a bit nervous' for some days thereafter.
On Apr 16, 10:12=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I *DESIGN* the stuff. =A0Yes, I know what I'm talking about.
>
You're probably very good at what you do. Your social skills need
work, so you might come across as less of of a dick.
You're probably just misunderstood.
On Apr 14, 4:33=A0am, "LDosser" <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Steve Turner" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> news:[email protected]...
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 4/13/2010 9:45 PM, LDosser wrote:
> >> "Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >>news:[email protected]...
> >>> Robatoy wrote:
>
> >>>> They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>
> >>> One could probably find a more respectful way to describe what is
> >>> going on. You're basically casting a black shadow over All Artists...
>
> >>> Bill
>
> >> Craftsmen. Not artists. An Artist will take risks.
>
> > Yeah, well I'm with Robatoy on this one. =A0There are far too many
> > self-proclaimed "artists" out there whose idea of "taking risks" is see=
ing
> > how much of their no-talent crap we will swallow before we start
> > questioning their right to call it "art". =A0For my part, if I don't se=
e the
> > artistic _talent_ it took to create something, then I don't see any "ar=
t"
> > at all.
>
> Not all risk takers are artists. Some just produce, well, shit.
Thatsa forshure. Most produce product that, well, in their minds is
art, but really?
Then there is that faction that is highly skilled in certain
disciplines, like bronze casting, throwing pots, building medicine
cabinets, but do they have the creativity to have it become art? I
realize that some of that becomes extremely difficult to see. A local
guy makes these doorknobs on his lathe. Basically balls on a bolt.
Art? Then we have this thing every year called Art In The Park. I
assure you that shit comes in many shapes, materials and colours. I
have yet to see any of that kind of 'art' in the National in London
(UK), Rijksmuseum or the Taft. That is not to say that I like all I
have travelled to see, just no shit. At least no shit by my definition
of shit.....and shit is in the eye of the beholder, n'est pas?
On Apr 14, 11:46=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Apr 14, 8:56=A0am, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Apr 14, 9:36=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > > On Apr 13, 4:40=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi) wro=
te:
>
> > > > In article <[email protected]=
groups.com>,
>
> > > > [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > > >On Apr 13, 1:33=A0am, Puckdropper <puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com> w=
rote:
> > > > >> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote
> > > > >innews:[email protected]:
>
> > > > >> > That's not unusual at all. =A0Subtraction *is* adding the nega=
tive
> > > > >> > (complement).
>
> > > > >> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add, Didn't E=
ven
> > > > >> > Try). =A0It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all, rathe=
r used an
> > > > >> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. =A0Want a differen=
t
> > > > >> > operator? =A0Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, sometimes on pu=
rpose,
> > > > >> > even.
>
> > > > >> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD circuits ar=
e usually
> > > > >> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're used more =
often. =A0
> > > > >> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being used to emul=
ate
> > > > >> addition.
>
> > > > >Not true. =A0The (add and subtract) operations use the same logic.
>
> > > > Really? =A0I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtraction direct=
ly. =A0'Adder'
> > > > chips, however, are common as dirt.
>
> > > Really. =A0Really? You haven't looked very hard.http://www.onsemi.com=
/pub_link/Collateral/MC10H180-D.PDF
>
> > > > You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a bunch of in=
verters
> > > > on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
>
> > > > True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because the states i=
n the
> > > > operation table do not collapse as well.
> > > > =A0Addition: =A0 =A0operand1 =A0OR operand2 =3D=3D 0 =A0=3D> zero r=
esult, zero carry
> > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 XOR operand2 =3D=3D 1 =A0=3D> =
one =A0result, zero carry
> > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 AND operand2 =3D=3D 1 =A0=3D? =
zero result, one =A0carry
>
> > > > =A0Subtraction: operand1 =A0EQ operand2 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0=3D>=
zero result, zero borrow
> > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 1 AND operand2 EQ 0 =3D>=
one =A0result, zero borrow
> > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 0 AND operand2 EQ 1 =3D>=
one =A0result, one =A0borrow
>
> > > ...which are the same operations.
>
> > > > To expound on the 'difference' between addition and subtraction, co=
nsider
> > > > hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. =A0Where the 'nega=
tive' of
> > > > a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits of the pos=
itive
> > > > value. =A0e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
>
> > > So what? =A0Are you trying to prove your prowess with useless
> > > information?
>
> > Are you showing off that the information is useless to YOU because
> > your prowess is so elevated?
>
> Idiot. =A0A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn't
> relevant when discussing the difference/similarity between subtraction
> and addition. =A0 =A0I wouldn't expect you to know anything about it.
> OTOH, you are up to your usual standards in cashing checks with your
> mouth that you ass can't cover.
Yup, you're one of 'them' alright. You ain't much.
On Apr 12, 12:23=A0am, Doug Winterburn <[email protected]> wrote:
> [email protected] wrote:
> > On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 21:16:41 -0700, Doug Winterburn <dlwinterb...@yahoo=
.com>
> > wrote:
>
> >> Morris Dovey wrote:
> >>> On 4/10/2010 9:05 PM, LDosser wrote:
> >>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >>>>news:[email protected]...
>
> >>>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing softw=
are
> >>>>> (link in sig),
> >>>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
> >>> You win - besides, the 70/45 was just a thin film approximation to a
> >>> 360/30 (same instruction set and I/O devices, but had a sexier front
> >>> panel) :)
>
> >> By "thin film", do you mean it also had the cros (capacitance read onl=
y
> >> memory) instruction set as the 360/30? =A0It was punch card size mylar
> >> with copper traces that were punched out on one of four sides of a
> >> squeare or some such. =A0The first time I saw the 30 power on and the =
cros
> >> "pump up" to push the cros punch card ros together, I wondered "WTF"?
>
> >> Then there was the 360/40 with the "tros" micro programmed instruction
> >> set...
>
> > Then there was the 360/75 with no microcode.
>
> >> That's the one I started with in '64.
>
> > Must have been a first. =A0The /360 was announced in '64. =A0I didn't u=
se the /75
> > until '67 (I was a Junior in high school ;).
>
> It was an IBM =A0punch card I/O Fortran IBM machine we used in college in
> '64 - can't remember the IBM model number.
>
> Akshooly, it was '66 when I went to work for IBM and went to 360 OS
> school in Endicott (DOS), and then Poughkeepsie (OS). =A0Classrooms full
> of ashtrays and smoke so thick, you could barely see the blackboard and
> the instructor with his [bad] hairpiece. =A0Cigs were $0.35 a pack in the
> vending machines in the hallways with 2 cents taped to each pack making
> them $0.33.
Lots of Beamers around these parts. I feel like the kid listening to
the old war stories (started in P'ok in '74, moved to BTV in '93, and
retired in '06). ;-)
On Apr 16, 8:17=A0am, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Apr 16, 9:04=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Apr 15, 5:43=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi) wrote=
:
>
> > > In article <[email protected]=
oups.com>,
>
> > > Robatoy =A0<[email protected]> wrote:
> > > >On Apr 14, 4:30=A0pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrot=
e:
> > > >> On Apr 14, 3:21=A0pm, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > > >> > On Apr 14, 11:46=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]>=
wrote:
>
> > > >> > > On Apr 14, 8:56=A0am, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > > >> > > > On Apr 14, 9:36=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]=
om> wrote:
>
> > > >> > > > > On Apr 13, 4:40=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert =
Bonomi) wrote:
>
> > > >> > > > > > In article
> > > ><38e09aeb-5506-4604-aaba-e56c31a5a...@y17g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
>
> > > >> > > > > > [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > >> > > > > > >On Apr 13, 1:33=A0am, Puckdropper
> > > ><puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
> > > >> > > > > > >> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> w=
rote
> > > >> > > > > > >innews:[email protected]:
>
> > > >> > > > > > >> > That's not unusual at all. =A0Subtraction *is* addi=
ng the
> > > >negative
> > > >> > > > > > >> > (complement).
>
> > > >> > > > > > >> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Ad=
d,
> > > >Didn't Even
> > > >> > > > > > >> > Try). =A0It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at=
all,
> > > >rather used an
> > > >> > > > > > >> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. =A0Want=
a different
> > > >> > > > > > >> > operator? =A0Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, some=
times
> > > >on purpose,
> > > >> > > > > > >> > even.
>
> > > >> > > > > > >> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD
> > > >circuits are usually
> > > >> > > > > > >> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're
> > > >used more often. =A0
> > > >> > > > > > >> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being u=
sed
> > > >to emulate
> > > >> > > > > > >> addition.
>
> > > >> > > > > > >Not true. =A0The (add and subtract) operations use the =
same logic.
>
> > > >> > > > > > Really? =A0I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtrac=
tion
> > > >directly. =A0'Adder'
> > > >> > > > > > chips, however, are common as dirt.
>
> > > >> > > > > Really. =A0Really? You haven't looked very
> > > >hard.http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/MC10H180-D.PDF
>
> > > >> > > > > > You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a
> > > >bunch of inverters
> > > >> > > > > > on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
>
> > > >> > > > > > True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because t=
he
> > > >states in the
> > > >> > > > > > operation table do not collapse as well.
> > > >> > > > > > =A0Addition: =A0 =A0operand1 =A0OR operand2 =3D=3D 0 =A0=
=3D> zero result, zero carry
> > > >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 XOR operand2 =3D=3D=
1 =A0=3D> one =A0result, zero carry
> > > >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 AND operand2 =3D=3D=
1 =A0=3D? zero result, one =A0carry
>
> > > >> > > > > > =A0Subtraction: operand1 =A0EQ operand2 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =
=A0 =A0=3D> zero
> > > >result, zero borrow
> > > >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 1 AND operand=
2 EQ 0 =3D> one
> > > >=A0result, zero borrow
> > > >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 0 AND operand=
2 EQ 1 =3D> one
> > > >=A0result, one =A0borrow
>
> > > >> > > > > ...which are the same operations.
>
> > > >> > > > > > To expound on the 'difference' between additn and
> > > >subtraction, consider
> > > >> > > > > > hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. =A0Wher=
e the
> > > >'negative' of
> > > >> > > > > > a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits=
of
> > > >the positive
> > > >> > > > > > value. =A0e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
>
> > > >> > > > > So what? =A0Are you trying to prove your prowess with usel=
ess
> > > >> > > > > information?
>
> > > >> > > > Are you showing off that the information is useless to YOU b=
ecause
> > > >> > > > your prowess is so elevated?
>
> > > >> > > Idiot. =A0A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn=
't
> > > >> > > relevant when discussing the difference/similarity between sub=
traction
> > > >> > > and addition. =A0 =A0I wouldn't expect you to know anything ab=
out it.
> > > >> > > OTOH, you are up to your usual standards in cashing checks wit=
h your
> > > >> > > mouth that you ass can't cover.
>
> > > >> > Yup, you're one of 'them' alright. You ain't much.
>
> > > >> What a moron, RoboTwat, but I already knew that.
>
> > > >Yup, you're right to the core. I find it interesting that the bulk o=
f
> > > >your comments are degrading and condescending to justabout anybody
> > > >here. You must really think you're something. Welll... I'm here to
> > > >tell you that you are not nice.
>
> > > I would have to concede Keith's expertise on the subject of morons.
>
> > Yes, with the three stooges (Uppity, RoboTwat, and you), I now know a
> > *lot* about morons.
>
> > > *NOBODY* has the degree of _first-hand_ experience on the matter that
> > > he does.
>
> > Yes, my first-hand experience in computer architecture sure makes you
> > look like a fool, but the kicker is that you can't read. =A0Uppity and
> > RoboTwat are simply leftist thieves.
>
> (Pretty soon all of us will be labeled stooges by keith...
> institutions are full of guys(?) like him.)
No, you're special. Short-bus special.
On Apr 11, 2:17=A0am, "LDosser" <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> news:[email protected]...
>
>
>
> > On 4/11/2010 12:27 AM, LDosser wrote:
> >> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >>news:[email protected]...
> >>> On 4/10/2010 9:05 PM, LDosser wrote:
> >>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >>>>news:[email protected]...
>
> >>>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing softw=
are
> >>>>> (link in sig),
>
There is another free option, but I should mention that there is a
bit of a learning curve to get started. The virtual world of Second
Life allows one to build. You may enter exact dimensions, create
multiple pieces, and it is free. There are tons of in world
tutorials. I made my living for 3 years building spaces in SL for
corporate clients, so that is where I design most of my stuff. The
nice thing about SL is that you could build in groups, if your
woodworking friends also joined. As for curves and such, no problem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DsuGykJIBLZU This is a video showing
things that either I personally built or my workers built. There are
lots of bits of furniture.
I also love Google Sketchup and 3Ds Max.
Good luck,
Brian
http://extremelyaverage.com
On Apr 16, 12:17=A0pm, Morris Dovey <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 4/16/2010 10:48 AM, Lee Michaels wrote:
>
> > I just wish I had done this 10+ years ago.
>
> 8-|
>
> > =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>
> > I would guess that the technology, support, CNC machines, etc are much
> > better today than ten years ago. =A0And Morris had not built his machin=
e and
> > begun his CNC subversiveness.
>
> Subversive... moi? <snicker>
>
> > Oh well...., =A0better late than never.
>
> True, and I'm wishing I'd learned earlier just how to go about being
> "subversive"...
>
> ...I'm just now starting to have real fun with this stuff:
>
> =A0 =A0http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/Stirling/
>
> Rob, when/if you tire of the CNC, you're welcome to play along with a
> really interesting group of "subversives". :)
>
Looks like you hit the ground running. Excellent!
On Apr 16, 11:13=A0am, "Lee Michaels"
<leemichaels*[email protected]> wrote:
> "Robatoy" =A0wrote
>
> Get your facts straight. I was an independent small business owner
> with a staff of 4. It was the third business I built from the ground
> up and then sold for a nice lump of coin. I now have one business
> left, my CNC millwork business.
> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>
> Congrats on another biz success/transition.
>
> You must be a lousy retiree.
>
> Did you get kicked out of your shop?
>
> Just how is the CNC biz in your neighborhood? =A0Do you see this as a gro=
wth
> biz?
Thank you. I do not know how to to do nothing.
I still have my shop and my office. I will be here till the new owners
are properly trained and certified, probably till fall. Meanwhile it
has become obvious to me that the demand for CNC work is a lot more
varied than I had even dreamt possible. From a commemorative plaque in
1-1/2 walnut to 1200 round pvc tags for a cattle farmer. Then a huge
16 x 4 ft carved sign for a marina (pics to follow once a local artist
paints it.) and now somebody wants barber-poles of all things. I am
learning about different feedrates in different materials (yet to
break a bit) the software learning curve is easy initially but pretty
steep if you want some really cool stuff. (Vectric Aspire) I will be
adding an 'a-axis' spindle/indexer for more fun stuff.
In the next 18 months, the last daughter will be off to school, and
Angela will be done with her NP. Then we will consolidate everything
and build somewhere where I can work with my CNC from home where Ang
will hang her shingle as well. Maybe Maritimes, maybe British
Columbia. Who knows.
A growth business? Hell yes. The guys at Vectric have done a fantastic
job creating the Aspire software making it, in relative terms, a lot
easier to create works of art. Even though my cnc is a General, the
ShopBot community is just incredible with help for newbs like myself.
I just wish I had done this 10+ years ago.
On Apr 15, 5:13=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi) wrote:
> In article <[email protected]=
.com>,
>
> [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >> Are you showing off that the information is useless to YOU because
> >> your prowess is so elevated?
>
> >Idiot. =A0A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn't
> >relevant when discussing the difference/similarity between subtraction
> >and addition. =A0 =A0
>
> Liar. =A0It is *extremely*relevant* when discussing _real_world_ implemen=
tations
> of hardware to do the task.
Moron. Not when that wasn't the issue at hand. Of course you can
always bring a strawman to any argument if you think it makes you look
smart. It doesn't.
> > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 I wouldn't expect you to know anything =
about it.
>
> Something you *obviously* know nothing about.
Enough.
On Sat, 01 May 2010 15:58:12 -0400, the infamous Marty
<[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>I have used Quick CAD (no longer available) for a years but
>have started to use Sketchup. I struggled with it for a time, set it
>aside, viewed the tutorials, tried it again, set it aside, and
>tried it again with the idea I would learn it some how.... Then while
>browsing in a book store found Skechup 7 for Dummies ($25). What an eye
>opener!!! Much better then what can be found online and really has
>helped understanding its use. Very clear and concise with many
>illustrations.
>
>Recommended, this time I won't set it aside.
>
>Marty
I'm glad you posted that, Marty. As I scanned the Amazon page for the
Dummies book, I found a copy of _Google Sketchup: The Missing Manual_
for $1.25 and ordered it.
$5.24 total delivered price. 608 minty-fresh pages, 2009 vintage!
--
Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.
-- Raymond Lindquist
On Apr 14, 11:05=A0pm, Puckdropper <puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote innews:b92ds5hl=
[email protected]:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:58:38 -0500, [email protected]
> > (Robert Bonomi) wrote:
> *trim*
> >>I agree that subtraction, =A0GENERALLY, =A0"*is* adding the negative".
>
> > Not generally. =A0That is one way to do it, but certainly not the only
> > way. Hardware subtraction is no more difficult than addition. =A0They'r=
e
> > really the same logic (twisted, but really the same).
>
> >>Now go back and read what _this_ machine actually did. =A0 <grin>
>
> > There have been many such things talked about here. =A0Specifically, th=
e
> > IBM 1620, knows as the CADET, had a table look-up for addition. =A0It
> > couldn't subtract, either.
>
> >>I repeat, this multi-million-dollar super-computer "couldn't ADD".
>
> > The 1620 wasn't a "multi-million-dollar super-computer". =A0It was, in
> > fact, rather mundane. =A0That's the reason it couldn't add - they didn'=
t
> > want to spend money on an adder. =A0Note that it had no subtractor,
> > either.
>
> Well that's completely different! =A0Using a look up table for addition..=
.
> And apparently an extensive one if my 10 second internet search is worth
> anything.
Huh?
On Apr 10, 7:06=A0pm, GarageWoodworks <[email protected]>
wrote:
> On Apr 10, 7:07=A0am, "Dick Snyder" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > I have always designed my projects using graph paper, ruler, pencil, an=
d
> > (lots of) eraser. I have a somewhat more complicated job I want to do n=
ow.
> > There is a design for an entertainment center in FWW that I want to ada=
pt. I
> > would like to take the measurements from the article, enter them on a
> > computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend wh=
o
> > uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that sophistic=
ated.
> > I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time on a CAD pr=
ogram
> > unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a product that one =
of
> > you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil, and eraser?
>
> > TIA.
>
> > Dick Snyder
>
> I routinely use TurboCAD before starting any woodworking project (w/
> the exception of a cutting board, etc.).
> I have tried Sketchup and I also found it difficult to use/learn
> coming from TurboCAD. =A0If I invested more time I'm sure I could learn
> to use it, but I couldn't see investing the time considering I already
> know TC.
>
> Good luck.
For examples of my work w/ included CAD renderings see:
http://www.garagewoodworks.com/ (I always forget to whore my website)
Dick Snyder wrote:
> I have always designed my projects using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and
> (lots of) eraser. I have a somewhat more complicated job I want to do now.
> There is a design for an entertainment center in FWW that I want to adapt.
> I would like to take the measurements from the article, enter them on a
> computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend who
> uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that
> sophisticated. I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time
> on a CAD program unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a
> product that one of you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil,
> and eraser?
>
Running under Linux, I use VariCAD www.varicad.com
I've been very happy with its speed and ease of use
--
There is never a situation where having more rounds is a disadvantage
Rob Leatham
[email protected] wrote:
> On Apr 12, 12:18 pm, Larry Blanchard <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:18:42 -0500, Morris Dovey wrote:
>>> You're right - I went digging and found that there had been a /Minnow/
>>> R/O floppy drive with diminished capacity released in 1972. I'm guessing
>>> it was an early /Igar/ prototype.
>> I'm beginning to wonder how many old computer jocks and card pushers
>> there are in this group :-). Is there some mystical connection between
>> computers and woodworking?
>
> Not so much computers and woodworking, I think, rather electronics and
> woodworking. I noticed a correlation some time back (maybe it's just
> that design is design - doesn't matter much what). Computers, to me,
> were just a way to get paid to design circuits. ;-)
I was in the computer software development/support side, but I did
design & build most of my ham radio gear - vacuum tubes no less.
>
>> BTW, to see the 1st computer I programmed (and helped assemble) go to:
>>
>> http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61.html#TOC
>>
>> and click on Readix. I worked on one at Science Research Associates in
>> the late '50s.
>>
>> --
>> Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
>
Robert Bonomi wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> Doug Winterburn <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Robert Bonomi wrote:
>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>>> Larry Blanchard <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:54:58 -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> It took a while to establish cause-and-effect, because *nobody* was
>>>>> willing to believe that that 'innocent little job" -- nothing more than
>>>>> 4 standard statements in the system control language -- could _possibly_
>>>>> be the culprit. Until they ran it as the _only_ job in the system, and
>>>>> watched the machine crash.
>>>>>
>>>>> The entire job consisted of:
>>>>> 1) request a tape mount
>>>>> 2) copy a file from disk to the tape
>>>>> 3) rewind the tape
>>>>> 4) copy from the tape back to a new file.
>>>> The original Univac I had tape drives that maintained tension with
>>>> springs and pulleys rather than vacuum columns. Those drives, as well as
>>>> the vacuum column model that replaced them on Univac II, could read both
>>>> forwards and backwards. There were 10 drives.
>>>>
>>>> One of the programmers (no, not me) wrote a program that issued a write
>>>> command, followed by a read backwards, followed by a skip a block. That
>>>> sequence apparently exceeded the response of the strings and pulleys and
>>>> they wound up in a heap at the bottom of the drive.
>>>>
>>>> The resident (yep, 24 hours a day) CEs wouldn't believe him when he
>>>> described the problem. So he wrote a little program to demonstrate the
>>>> problem, called in the CEs, and ran the program, dumping *all 10* tape
>>>> drives. He wasn't very popular with the CEs after that, but when he told
>>>> them he had a problem, they listened :-).
>>>>
>>>> I sometimes think all us old computer nerds should start a website and
>>>> record all these stories before we all die and the stories are lost.
>>> There is also the story about a university student who got the engineering
>>> plans for an IBM mainframe disk drive (one of the washing-machine-size units),
>>> _carefully_ calculated the mass involved, and wrote a channel program that
>>> consisted of 'seek to outermost track', pause, 'seek to innermost track',
>>> pause, and "repeat indefinitely". The 'pause' times were carefully calculated
>>> to the 'resonant frequency of the drive unit. Reportedly, the unit 'walked'
>>> almost *THREE*FEET* across the floor, _towards_the_operator_, before they
>>> managed to find and kill the offending task. I'm given to understand that
>>> the operators were 'a bit nervous' for some days thereafter.
>>>
>> I managed to knock a selectric style printer off its stand with a little
>> unfortunate development code.
>
> must have been a rather flimsy stand -- the golf-ball mechanism wasn't that
> massive.
>
>
>
It was the standard table. The ball doesn't have much mass, but the
carriage doing full returns against the stop as fast as possible makes a
lot of noise and did the deed.
On 4/11/2010 5:36 PM, Morris Dovey wrote:
> On 4/11/2010 9:32 AM, Swingman wrote:
>> So, what's behind this obsession with taking snide shots at every
>> opportunity that presents itself?
>
> You exaggerate - I've passed on most of the opportunities, but now that
> I know you're so emotionally involved I'll try to do better. :)
:) ... thanks for the warning. I hereby gird my loins in anticipation,
but be gentle. ;)
--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 10/22/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)
In article <d4b8e497-af04-4fc8-85ab-fa6d6dce4bbc@c36g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
[email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Apr 13, 4:40 pm, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi) wrote:
>> In article
><38e09aeb-5506-4604-aaba-e56c31a5a...@y17g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
>>
>>
>>
>> [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >On Apr 13, 1:33 am, Puckdropper <puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
>> >> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote
>> >innews:[email protected]:
>>
>> >> > That's not unusual at all. Subtraction *is* adding the negative
>> >> > (complement).
>>
>> >> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add, Didn't Even
>> >> > Try). It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all, rather used an
>> >> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. Want a different
>> >> > operator? Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, sometimes on purpose,
>> >> > even.
>>
>> >> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD circuits are usually
>> >> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're used more often.
>> >> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being used to emulate
>> >> addition.
>>
>> >Not true. The (add and subtract) operations use the same logic.
>>
>> Really? I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtraction directly. 'Adder'
>> chips, however, are common as dirt.
>
>Really. Really? You haven't looked very hard.
>http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/MC10H180-D.PDF
And, you sir, "don't know what you don't know."
That chip does -not- do *actual* subtraction. The spec sheet makes that
fact abundantly clear (expressly stated in the 2nd para. of the description).
That chip is an 'adder' with added logic to 'invert' one of the inputs, so
that it can _simulate_ subtraction (by internal 'complement and add').
>> You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a bunch of inverters
>> on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
And _that_ is what the MC10H180, in fact, does.
>>
>> True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because the states in the
>> operation table do not collapse as well.
>> Addition: operand1 OR operand2 == 0 => zero result, zero carry
>> operand1 XOR operand2 == 1 => one result, zero carry
>> operand1 AND operand2 == 1 => zero result, one carry
>>
>> Subtraction: operand1 EQ operand2 => zero result, zero borrow
>> operand1 EQ 1 AND operand2 EQ 0 => one result, zero borrow
>> operand1 EQ 0 AND operand2 EQ 1 => one result, one borrow
>
>...which are the same operations.
Demonstrating, yet again, what you "don't know you don't know" about digital
logic circuit design.
They are _not_ 'the same operations'. They cannot be implemented with the
same logic. They cannot even be implemented with the same number of gates.
The -results- of the operations are "mathematically equivalent", but they are
*NOT* the same operations. "In theory", this is a difference that should
make no difference, but "in practice", there _is_ a difference, when you have
to implement in the real world.
>> To expound on the 'difference' between addition and subtraction, consider
>> hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. Where the 'negative' of
>> a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits of the positive
>> value. e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
>
>So what? Are you trying to prove your prowess with useless
>information?
Useless? Do you know how many *BILLIONS* of dollars of scientific/engineering
computers were built using that -exact- logic, over a period of several
decades?
Those of us who actually _used_ those kinds of machines had to deal with this
"useless" behavior on a day-to-day basis.
Those machines *all* used _NATIVE_SUBTRACTION_, with addition being 'simulated'
by 'complement and subtract'.
To be absolutely explicit, on those machines _addition_ was done by running
the second operand through an inverter and then feeding that result to the
'native' subtraction circuitry. It was -not- done by disabling inverters
in front of a 'native' adder circuit. I'm sure even _you_ can see the
stupidity of running a set of (front-end) inverters before a set of
(internal to simulated subtraction logic) inverters that fed an 'adder'
circuit to generate the result.
Those who claim otherwise are ignorant of the FACTS of computing history.
I'm more of a Sketchup user than a woodworker.
I was a graphic designer. The more I learn about
SKUp, the more sophisticated it gets and the more
intuitive, but a lot different than Photoshop & others
that I'm used to as far as zooming, moving around
the screen, etc. It's easier than 3D programs I've
used, mostly Strata .... well anyway ...
I'm looking forward to getting the Dummies book
that I ordered yesterday. And to building my own
library. You've got to like the price for Sketchup
and it's isn't that limited, especially for real projects
as opposed to presentations and print media -
resolution is lower. The SU library is huge and the
models can be modified (not dynamic models in
free version of SU). I used it to rough out ideas for
my garage workshop. I really don't know the extent
of the library. There seems to be some new area
mentioned somewhere I din't expect that has hundreds
of models ... and everyone seems to be sharing.
"Marty" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:qI%[email protected]...
>I have used Quick CAD (no longer available) for a years but
> have started to use Sketchup. I struggled with it for a time, set it
> aside, viewed the tutorials, tried it again, set it aside, and
> tried it again with the idea I would learn it some how.... Then while
> browsing in a book store found Skechup 7 for Dummies ($25). What an eye
> opener!!! Much better then what can be found online and really has
> helped understanding its use. Very clear and concise with many
> illustrations.
>
> Recommended, this time I won't set it aside.
>
> Marty
>
> On 4/10/2010 7:07 AM, Dick Snyder wrote:
>> I have always designed my projects using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and
>> (lots of) eraser. I have a somewhat more complicated job I want to do
>> now.
>> There is a design for an entertainment center in FWW that I want to
>> adapt. I
>> would like to take the measurements from the article, enter them on a
>> computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend who
>> uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that
>> sophisticated.
>> I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time on a CAD
>> program
>> unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a product that one of
>> you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil, and eraser?
>>
>> TIA.
>>
>> Dick Snyder
>>
>>
DeltaCad is free. I downloaded it and tried it once last winter, but it's
on a different, currently inaccessible computer just now or I'd try it again
for a minute to see how it looks.
Maybe there are some online reviews or comments about it.
Doug
"Marty" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:qI%[email protected]...
>I have used Quick CAD (no longer available) for a years but
> have started to use Sketchup. I struggled with it for a time, set it
> aside, viewed the tutorials, tried it again, set it aside, and
> tried it again with the idea I would learn it some how.... Then while
> browsing in a book store found Skechup 7 for Dummies ($25). What an eye
> opener!!! Much better then what can be found online and really has
> helped understanding its use. Very clear and concise with many
> illustrations.
>
> Recommended, this time I won't set it aside.
>
> Marty
>
> On 4/10/2010 7:07 AM, Dick Snyder wrote:
>> I have always designed my projects using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and
>> (lots of) eraser. I have a somewhat more complicated job I want to do
>> now.
>> There is a design for an entertainment center in FWW that I want to
>> adapt. I
>> would like to take the measurements from the article, enter them on a
>> computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend who
>> uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that
>> sophisticated.
>> I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time on a CAD
>> program
>> unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a product that one of
>> you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil, and eraser?
>>
>> TIA.
>>
>> Dick Snyder
>>
>>
My 2 cents from a Turbocad user:
Unless you plan to use the CAD program often, don't bother. There is
a serious learning curve.
In the company where I worked for a long time, some of the paper and
pencil draftsmen never were able to make the change to CAD.
If you intend to do it:
You need to have a large vocabulary of "special" words to utter under
your breath to bleed off frustration, unless you have mentor handy.
Once you have spent the time and have done the tutorials that some
have suggested, you can't really expect to stay current if you only haul
the program out once a month or so.
To keep myself barely reasonably current, I almost force myself to
invoke the program for even small simple things. I am still finding new
buttons to push after several years at it.
One of the big problems, to me, is that there are so many nesting
levels for all the commands, shortcuts, etc.. You have to learn many of
the them by rote. This means repitition.
And, every time they upgrade, they seem to do it for the highest
level of power users; those who spend a lot of their life at the keyboard.
And some commands seem to be moved around with each upgrade, too.
Okay, no problem. I won't upgrade anymore. Oh yeh? A few years later
they stop supporting that level, or they only put the newbie tech guy on
that product.
ETC.
Not to say "don't do it at all", but just to make you aware.
Using a CAD program, to me, is like using a PC based spreadsheet was 20
years ago. I found that, as soon as I added a few numbers together, I
wondered what would happen if I doubled it, averaged them, etc.. ---The
"what if?"
So I started opening my spreadsheet program (Lotus 1-2-3 1A) whenever I
even started to do some math.
It's the same with CAD. Once you have taken the time to get the
basics of the part/assy on the screen, the sky's the limit in playing
"what if?" there, too.
Pete Stanaitis
-------------------
Dick Snyder wrote:
> I have always designed my projects using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and
> (lots of) eraser. I have a somewhat more complicated job I want to do now.
> There is a design for an entertainment center in FWW that I want to adapt. I
> would like to take the measurements from the article, enter them on a
> computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend who
> uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that sophisticated.
> I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time on a CAD program
> unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a product that one of
> you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil, and eraser?
>
> TIA.
>
> Dick Snyder
>
>
Morris Dovey wrote:
> On 4/10/2010 9:05 PM, LDosser wrote:
>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>
>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing software
>>> (link in sig),
>>
>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
>
> You win - besides, the 70/45 was just a thin film approximation to a
> 360/30 (same instruction set and I/O devices, but had a sexier front
> panel) :)
>
By "thin film", do you mean it also had the cros (capacitance read only
memory) instruction set as the 360/30? It was punch card size mylar
with copper traces that were punched out on one of four sides of a
squeare or some such. The first time I saw the 30 power on and the cros
"pump up" to push the cros punch card ros together, I wondered "WTF"?
Then there was the 360/40 with the "tros" micro programmed instruction
set...
That's the one I started with in '64.
On 4/11/2010 4:45 AM, Morris Dovey wrote:
> On 4/11/2010 2:01 AM, Swingman wrote:
>> On 4/10/2010 8:49 PM, Morris Dovey wrote:
>>
>>> Tracing an image and skipping definition of contoured surfaces don't
>>> work for me.
>>
>> The "tracing" of a component, imported into a project from an outside
>> source, is routinely done as a matter of convenience and is a common
>> practice to speed up a project, with any design software, and is one of
>> the reasons for an "import" feature.
>>
>> Furthermore, it is inarguable that if the software contains the tools to
>> effectively "trace" a component, it therefore has the tools/ability to
>> "draw" it instead, should you chose to do so, as this software indeed
>> does.
>>
>> Your argument in that regard falls flatly on its face ...
>
> Yeah fine. Give this easy one a whirl:
>
> Draw parabola with curve length of 96" between intersections with the
> latus rectum (a line through the focus perpendicular to another line
> passing through both focus and vertex). Points separated by 0.0100"
> along the x-axis, and accurate to +/-0.0005". I don't care whether you
> draw or trace, only that all requirements be met, so that I can export
> it as a DXF (the format needed for my 'Bot) and machine it accurately.
Obfuscation par excellence ... and totally, and ridiculously, irrelevant.
>> Your arguments thus far do nothing to disprove that.
>
> Eh? Why should I have any interest in proving or disproving anything?
Yep, it's indeed a mystery why you bothered in the first place. You've
made it plain in the past that you have little use for the software;
that you don't use it; have minimum experience with it and are ignorant
of its capabilites for the most part.
So, what's behind this obsession with taking snide shots at every
opportunity that presents itself?
Hell, it wasn't even a good troll, so why bother muddying the water with
ignorance?
A little self reflection might be in order there, Bubba ...
--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 10/22/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)
Doug Winterburn wrote:
> Robert Bonomi wrote:
>> In article <[email protected]>,
>> Doug Winterburn <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Robert Bonomi wrote:
>>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>>>> Larry Blanchard <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:54:58 -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> It took a while to establish cause-and-effect, because *nobody* was
>>>>>> willing to believe that that 'innocent little job" -- nothing more than
>>>>>> 4 standard statements in the system control language -- could _possibly_
>>>>>> be the culprit. Until they ran it as the _only_ job in the system, and
>>>>>> watched the machine crash.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The entire job consisted of:
>>>>>> 1) request a tape mount
>>>>>> 2) copy a file from disk to the tape
>>>>>> 3) rewind the tape
>>>>>> 4) copy from the tape back to a new file.
>>>>> The original Univac I had tape drives that maintained tension with
>>>>> springs and pulleys rather than vacuum columns. Those drives, as well as
>>>>> the vacuum column model that replaced them on Univac II, could read both
>>>>> forwards and backwards. There were 10 drives.
>>>>>
>>>>> One of the programmers (no, not me) wrote a program that issued a write
>>>>> command, followed by a read backwards, followed by a skip a block. That
>>>>> sequence apparently exceeded the response of the strings and pulleys and
>>>>> they wound up in a heap at the bottom of the drive.
>>>>>
>>>>> The resident (yep, 24 hours a day) CEs wouldn't believe him when he
>>>>> described the problem. So he wrote a little program to demonstrate the
>>>>> problem, called in the CEs, and ran the program, dumping *all 10* tape
>>>>> drives. He wasn't very popular with the CEs after that, but when he told
>>>>> them he had a problem, they listened :-).
>>>>>
>>>>> I sometimes think all us old computer nerds should start a website and
>>>>> record all these stories before we all die and the stories are lost.
>>>> There is also the story about a university student who got the engineering
>>>> plans for an IBM mainframe disk drive (one of the washing-machine-size units),
>>>> _carefully_ calculated the mass involved, and wrote a channel program that
>>>> consisted of 'seek to outermost track', pause, 'seek to innermost track',
>>>> pause, and "repeat indefinitely". The 'pause' times were carefully calculated
>>>> to the 'resonant frequency of the drive unit. Reportedly, the unit 'walked'
>>>> almost *THREE*FEET* across the floor, _towards_the_operator_, before they
>>>> managed to find and kill the offending task. I'm given to understand that
>>>> the operators were 'a bit nervous' for some days thereafter.
>>>>
>>> I managed to knock a selectric style printer off its stand with a little
>>> unfortunate development code.
>> must have been a rather flimsy stand -- the golf-ball mechanism wasn't that
>> massive.
>>
>>
>>
> It was the standard table. The ball doesn't have much mass, but the
> carriage doing full returns against the stop as fast as possible makes a
> lot of noise and did the deed.
Here's the data sheet for the printer showing the stand:
http://tinyurl.com/y5b6zqc
In article <38e09aeb-5506-4604-aaba-e56c31a5ae84@y17g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
[email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Apr 13, 1:33 am, Puckdropper <puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
>> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote
>innews:[email protected]:
>>
>> > That's not unusual at all. Subtraction *is* adding the negative
>> > (complement).
>>
>> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add, Didn't Even
>> > Try). It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all, rather used an
>> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. Want a different
>> > operator? Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, sometimes on purpose,
>> > even.
>>
>> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD circuits are usually
>> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're used more often.
>> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being used to emulate
>> addition.
>
>Not true. The (add and subtract) operations use the same logic.
Really? I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtraction directly. 'Adder'
chips, however, are common as dirt.
You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a bunch of inverters
on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because the states in the
operation table do not collapse as well.
Addition: operand1 OR operand2 == 0 => zero result, zero carry
operand1 XOR operand2 == 1 => one result, zero carry
operand1 AND operand2 == 1 =? zero result, one carry
Subtraction: operand1 EQ operand2 => zero result, zero borrow
operand1 EQ 1 AND operand2 EQ 0 => one result, zero borrow
operand1 EQ 0 AND operand2 EQ 1 => one result, one borrow
To expound on the 'difference' between addition and subtraction, consider
hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. Where the 'negative' of
a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits of the positive
value. e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
Note well that in _THIS_ number representation scheme there are *TWO* bit-
values that evaluate to -zero-. "0000000' is 'positive zero, and
'11111111' is 'negative zero'.
It is *HIGHLY*DESIRABLE* that numeric computations which give a "zero"
result, have the bit-pattern of 'positive zero'. If you 'subtract'
'00000011' from '00000011' by 'complement and add', you get
'00000011'
+'11111100'
===========
'11111111' which is 'negative zero'
if you do it by 'actual' subtraction
'00000011'
-'00000011'
===========
'00000000' which is 'positive zero', the desired result
To get the 'desired result' of 'positive zero', using _adder_ circuitry,
one has to have an additional stage that examines -every- result for the
'negative zero' bit-pattern, and inverts all the bits.
The 'does addition by complement and subtract' was *NOT* unique to the
CDC machines. *every* machine that used "1's complement" arithmetic
internally did things the same way.
There are advantages to "1's complement" over "2's complement", notably
_all_ numbers have a positive and negative representation. (In 2's
complement math, it is *NOT*POSSIBLE* to represent the complement of the
'largest possible negative negative number'. you _can_ have '-2**n' but
only '+((2**n)-1)'. The disadvantage is that there are -two- values for
'zero'. But that's just 'nothing'. <grin>
On the other side of the fence, there _are_ advantages to "2's complement",
notably that all numbers have a single _unique_ representation. The
disadvantages are that there =is= a negative value that you cannot
represent as a positive number. And 2's complement math _IS_ just a
little bit slower -- by one gate time -- than 1's complement. As
processor speeds became faster, that 'one gate time' difference became
less significant, and the world settled on _not_ dealing with "+/- zero".
On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:16:09 -0400, "Bill" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>"Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>>
>> <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>
>>> Since bitwise negation can be performed by a single transistor, I would
>>> expect that that a value in a register could be negated VERY fast. I
>>> think
>>> just a few clock cycles.
>>
>> Above you use 2's complement representations in your example. Now you
>> switch tracks to 1's complement representation of negative numbers
>> (the only format where negation = inversion).
>> Yes, bitwise *INVERSION* can be done by a single transistor (indeed it
>> takes zero clock cycles to invert a signal), but this is a negation
>> only if you're doing 1's complement arithmetic. You still have to do...
>>
>>
>>
>> That must be one of the reasons they switched to 2s complement, no?
>
>I hate to answer my own question, but the main reason was the duplicity of
>zeros in 1s complement, I think.
Mainly, but the uncertainty of the wrap-around-carry doesn't help. I mot sure
whether some of the fancier adders (carry look-ahead, carry save, etc.) work
well for 1's complement, either (again, the wrap-around issue). Your
observation on the two zeros is spot on, however. That takes an additional
operation in the critical path of most calculations.
On Apr 15, 7:07=A0am, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Apr 14, 11:33=A0pm, "[email protected]"
>
>
>
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:24:12 -0700 (PDT), Robatoy <counterfit...@gmail.=
com>
> > wrote:
>
> > >On Apr 14, 4:30=A0pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >> On Apr 14, 3:21=A0pm, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > >> > On Apr 14, 11:46=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> w=
rote:
>
> > >> > > On Apr 14, 8:56=A0am, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > >> > > > On Apr 14, 9:36=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]=
> wrote:
>
> > >> > > > > On Apr 13, 4:40=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert Bo=
nomi) wrote:
>
> > >> > > > > > In article <38e09aeb-5506-4604-aaba-e56c31a5a...@y17g2000y=
qd.googlegroups.com>,
>
> > >> > > > > > [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >> > > > > > >On Apr 13, 1:33=A0am, Puckdropper <puckdropper(at)yahoo(d=
ot)com> wrote:
> > >> > > > > > >> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wro=
te
> > >> > > > > > >innews:[email protected]:
>
> > >> > > > > > >> > That's not unusual at all. =A0Subtraction *is* adding=
the negative
> > >> > > > > > >> > (complement).
>
> > >> > > > > > >> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add,=
Didn't Even
> > >> > > > > > >> > Try). =A0It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at a=
ll, rather used an
> > >> > > > > > >> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. =A0Want a=
different
> > >> > > > > > >> > operator? =A0Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, someti=
mes on purpose,
> > >> > > > > > >> > even.
>
> > >> > > > > > >> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD ci=
rcuits are usually
> > >> > > > > > >> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're u=
sed more often. =A0
> > >> > > > > > >> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being use=
d to emulate
> > >> > > > > > >> addition.
>
> > >> > > > > > >Not true. =A0The (add and subtract) operations use the sa=
me logic.
>
> > >> > > > > > Really? =A0I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtracti=
on directly. =A0'Adder'
> > >> > > > > > chips, however, are common as dirt.
>
> > >> > > > > Really. =A0Really? You haven't looked very hard.http://www.o=
nsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/MC10H180-D.PDF
>
> > >> > > > > > You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a bu=
nch of inverters
> > >> > > > > > on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
>
> > >> > > > > > True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because the=
states in the
> > >> > > > > > operation table do not collapse as well.
> > >> > > > > > =A0Addition: =A0 =A0operand1 =A0OR operand2 =3D=3D 0 =A0=
=3D> zero result, zero carry
> > >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 XOR operand2 =3D=3D 1=
=A0=3D> one =A0result, zero carry
> > >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 AND operand2 =3D=3D 1=
=A0=3D? zero result, one =A0carry
>
> > >> > > > > > =A0Subtraction: operand1 =A0EQ operand2 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =
=A0 =A0=3D> zero result, zero borrow
> > >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 1 AND operand2 =
EQ 0 =3D> one =A0result, zero borrow
> > >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 0 AND operand2 =
EQ 1 =3D> one =A0result, one =A0borrow
>
> > >> > > > > ...which are the same operations.
>
> > >> > > > > > To expound on the 'difference' between addition and subtra=
ction, consider
> > >> > > > > > hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. =A0Where =
the 'negative' of
> > >> > > > > > a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits o=
f the positive
> > >> > > > > > value. =A0e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
>
> > >> > > > > So what? =A0Are you trying to prove your prowess with useles=
s
> > >> > > > > information?
>
> > >> > > > Are you showing off that the information is useless to YOU bec=
ause
> > >> > > > your prowess is so elevated?
>
> > >> > > Idiot. =A0A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn't
> > >> > > relevant when discussing the difference/similarity between subtr=
action
> > >> > > and addition. =A0 =A0I wouldn't expect you to know anything abou=
t it.
> > >> > > OTOH, you are up to your usual standards in cashing checks with =
your
> > >> > > mouth that you ass can't cover.
>
> > >> > Yup, you're one of 'them' alright. You ain't much.
>
> > >> What a moron, RoboTwat, but I already knew that.
>
> > >Yup, you're right to the core.
>
> > Better than being a leftist loser, so yes, I am right.
>
> > >I find it interesting that the bulk of
> > >your comments are degrading and condescending to justabout anybody
> > >here. You must really think you're something. Welll... I'm here to
> > >tell you that you are not nice.
>
> > I don't give a flying fuck what *you* think. =A0You, in particular. =A0=
Moron. =A0
>
> Oh, I see... a liberal.
I know you're stupid. You don't have to constantly demonstrate the
fact.
On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:24:12 -0700 (PDT), Robatoy <[email protected]>
wrote:
>On Apr 14, 4:30 pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Apr 14, 3:21 pm, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Apr 14, 11:46 am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> > > On Apr 14, 8:56 am, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> > > > On Apr 14, 9:36 am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> > > > > On Apr 13, 4:40 pm, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi) wrote:
>>
>> > > > > > In article <38e09aeb-5506-4604-aaba-e56c31a5a...@y17g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
>>
>> > > > > > [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > > > > > >On Apr 13, 1:33 am, Puckdropper <puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
>> > > > > > >> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote
>> > > > > > >innews:[email protected]:
>>
>> > > > > > >> > That's not unusual at all. Subtraction *is* adding the negative
>> > > > > > >> > (complement).
>>
>> > > > > > >> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add, Didn't Even
>> > > > > > >> > Try). It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all, rather used an
>> > > > > > >> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. Want a different
>> > > > > > >> > operator? Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, sometimes on purpose,
>> > > > > > >> > even.
>>
>> > > > > > >> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD circuits are usually
>> > > > > > >> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're used more often.
>> > > > > > >> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being used to emulate
>> > > > > > >> addition.
>>
>> > > > > > >Not true. The (add and subtract) operations use the same logic.
>>
>> > > > > > Really? I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtraction directly. 'Adder'
>> > > > > > chips, however, are common as dirt.
>>
>> > > > > Really. Really? You haven't looked very hard.http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/MC10H180-D.PDF
>>
>> > > > > > You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a bunch of inverters
>> > > > > > on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
>>
>> > > > > > True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because the states in the
>> > > > > > operation table do not collapse as well.
>> > > > > > Addition: operand1 OR operand2 == 0 => zero result, zero carry
>> > > > > > operand1 XOR operand2 == 1 => one result, zero carry
>> > > > > > operand1 AND operand2 == 1 =? zero result, one carry
>>
>> > > > > > Subtraction: operand1 EQ operand2 => zero result, zero borrow
>> > > > > > operand1 EQ 1 AND operand2 EQ 0 => one result, zero borrow
>> > > > > > operand1 EQ 0 AND operand2 EQ 1 => one result, one borrow
>>
>> > > > > ...which are the same operations.
>>
>> > > > > > To expound on the 'difference' between addition and subtraction, consider
>> > > > > > hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. Where the 'negative' of
>> > > > > > a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits of the positive
>> > > > > > value. e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
>>
>> > > > > So what? Are you trying to prove your prowess with useless
>> > > > > information?
>>
>> > > > Are you showing off that the information is useless to YOU because
>> > > > your prowess is so elevated?
>>
>> > > Idiot. A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn't
>> > > relevant when discussing the difference/similarity between subtraction
>> > > and addition. I wouldn't expect you to know anything about it.
>> > > OTOH, you are up to your usual standards in cashing checks with your
>> > > mouth that you ass can't cover.
>>
>> > Yup, you're one of 'them' alright. You ain't much.
>>
>> What a moron, RoboTwat, but I already knew that.
>
>Yup, you're right to the core.
Better than being a leftist loser, so yes, I am right.
>I find it interesting that the bulk of
>your comments are degrading and condescending to justabout anybody
>here. You must really think you're something. Welll... I'm here to
>tell you that you are not nice.
I don't give a flying fuck what *you* think. You, in particular. Moron.
On Apr 14, 11:33=A0pm, "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:24:12 -0700 (PDT), Robatoy <[email protected]=
m>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> >On Apr 14, 4:30=A0pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> On Apr 14, 3:21=A0pm, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >> > On Apr 14, 11:46=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wro=
te:
>
> >> > > On Apr 14, 8:56=A0am, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >> > > > On Apr 14, 9:36=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> =
wrote:
>
> >> > > > > On Apr 13, 4:40=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert Bono=
mi) wrote:
>
> >> > > > > > In article <38e09aeb-5506-4604-aaba-e56c31a5a...@y17g2000yqd=
.googlegroups.com>,
>
> >> > > > > > [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> > > > > > >On Apr 13, 1:33=A0am, Puckdropper <puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot=
)com> wrote:
> >> > > > > > >> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote
> >> > > > > > >innews:[email protected]:
>
> >> > > > > > >> > That's not unusual at all. =A0Subtraction *is* adding t=
he negative
> >> > > > > > >> > (complement).
>
> >> > > > > > >> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add, D=
idn't Even
> >> > > > > > >> > Try). =A0It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all=
, rather used an
> >> > > > > > >> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. =A0Want a d=
ifferent
> >> > > > > > >> > operator? =A0Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, sometime=
s on purpose,
> >> > > > > > >> > even.
>
> >> > > > > > >> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD circ=
uits are usually
> >> > > > > > >> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're use=
d more often. =A0
> >> > > > > > >> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being used =
to emulate
> >> > > > > > >> addition.
>
> >> > > > > > >Not true. =A0The (add and subtract) operations use the same=
logic.
>
> >> > > > > > Really? =A0I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtraction=
directly. =A0'Adder'
> >> > > > > > chips, however, are common as dirt.
>
> >> > > > > Really. =A0Really? You haven't looked very hard.http://www.ons=
emi.com/pub_link/Collateral/MC10H180-D.PDF
>
> >> > > > > > You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a bunc=
h of inverters
> >> > > > > > on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
>
> >> > > > > > True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because the s=
tates in the
> >> > > > > > operation table do not collapse as well.
> >> > > > > > =A0Addition: =A0 =A0operand1 =A0OR operand2 =3D=3D 0 =A0=3D>=
zero result, zero carry
> >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 XOR operand2 =3D=3D 1 =
=A0=3D> one =A0result, zero carry
> >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 AND operand2 =3D=3D 1 =
=A0=3D? zero result, one =A0carry
>
> >> > > > > > =A0Subtraction: operand1 =A0EQ operand2 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =
=A0=3D> zero result, zero borrow
> >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 1 AND operand2 EQ=
0 =3D> one =A0result, zero borrow
> >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 0 AND operand2 EQ=
1 =3D> one =A0result, one =A0borrow
>
> >> > > > > ...which are the same operations.
>
> >> > > > > > To expound on the 'difference' between addition and subtract=
ion, consider
> >> > > > > > hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. =A0Where th=
e 'negative' of
> >> > > > > > a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits of =
the positive
> >> > > > > > value. =A0e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
>
> >> > > > > So what? =A0Are you trying to prove your prowess with useless
> >> > > > > information?
>
> >> > > > Are you showing off that the information is useless to YOU becau=
se
> >> > > > your prowess is so elevated?
>
> >> > > Idiot. =A0A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn't
> >> > > relevant when discussing the difference/similarity between subtrac=
tion
> >> > > and addition. =A0 =A0I wouldn't expect you to know anything about =
it.
> >> > > OTOH, you are up to your usual standards in cashing checks with yo=
ur
> >> > > mouth that you ass can't cover.
>
> >> > Yup, you're one of 'them' alright. You ain't much.
>
> >> What a moron, RoboTwat, but I already knew that.
>
> >Yup, you're right to the core.
>
> Better than being a leftist loser, so yes, I am right.
>
> >I find it interesting that the bulk of
> >your comments are degrading and condescending to justabout anybody
> >here. You must really think you're something. Welll... I'm here to
> >tell you that you are not nice.
>
> I don't give a flying fuck what *you* think. =A0You, in particular. =A0Mo=
ron. =A0
Oh, I see... a liberal.
"Swingman" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On 4/10/2010 6:07 AM, Dick Snyder wrote:
>
>> computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend who
>> uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that
>> sophisticated.
>> I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time on a CAD
>> program
>> unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a product that one of
>> you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil, and eraser?
>
> First you take the word of someone else instead of making up your own mind
> about a particular program; then you don't want to spend money, or your
> time, on learning a skill to do what you are asking others to advise you
> on?
>
> Best stick to your paper and pencil ...
>
> --
> www.e-woodshop.net
> Last update: 10/22/08
> KarlC@ (the obvious)
Boy that is kind of hostile response. If I had taken the word of my friend,
I wouldn't have bothered with the post. I just don't want to invest a large
amount of time learning a tool if it can't do the job. The replies I have
seen so far indicate that it is worth my time to it out.
On 2010-05-01, Marty <[email protected]> wrote:
> tried it again with the idea I would learn it some how.... Then while
> browsing in a book store found Skechup 7 for Dummies ($25). What an eye
> opener!!! Much better then what can be found online and really has
> helped understanding its use. Very clear and concise with many
> illustrations.
I'd add my recomemendations for the 'sketchup for dummys' book. Despite
the patronising name, it's full of useful techniques for modelling
with sketchup and getting around its oddities.
In article <[email protected]>,
Bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>
><[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:1b5297ef-4d8a-449f-bf11-73bcb28b818c@b33g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
>Idiot. A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn't
>relevant when
>
>
>FWIW, and I won't wish to get dragged into any muck, the algorithm for
>performing of translating to negative numbers (assuming 2s complement
>representation) IS relevant if one will evaluate expressions of the form
>A-B as A+(-B).
The "standard' algorithm, in computer _hardware_ for getting the
2s complement 'negative' of a value is to invert the bits (1's complement
negative) and _ADD_1_ to that value. This algorithm, as does *any*
other possible algorithm, *fails* when the value to be negated is the
'most negative value' that can be represented on the machine.`
>Since bitwise negation can be performed by a single transistor, I would
>expect that that a value in a register could be negated VERY fast. I think
>just a few clock cycles.
Yup. on a 2's complement machine, "NOT" (1's complement negate) is *much*
gaster than "NEG" (2's complement negate). On a 1's complement machine,
the opcodes are synonyms (if the latter code even _exists_, that is).
>
>Bill
>
>
In article <1b5297ef-4d8a-449f-bf11-73bcb28b818c@b33g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>,
[email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Are you showing off that the information is useless to YOU because
>> your prowess is so elevated?
>
>Idiot. A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn't
>relevant when discussing the difference/similarity between subtraction
>and addition.
Liar. It is *extremely*relevant* when discussing _real_world_ implementations
of hardware to do the task.
> I wouldn't expect you to know anything about it.
Something you *obviously* know nothing about.
On 5/1/2010 8:20 PM, DougVL wrote:
> I've downloaded and tried Sketchup too, when wanting to digitize the house
> plan drawings for my mother's house. It seems like it's intended for making
> 3D models rather than construction drawings, though, and I didn't get far
> with it.
I build houses, and for the past few years I've used SU to good purpose
when doing so. When taking on a new project, I now routinely transfer
both traditional architectural and structural drawings to SU for use in
the field on my laptop, often starting out with the site plan, oriented
correctly with GPS information, adding the foundation and using "layers"
to effectively build the entire house adding _all_ plan details and
schedules ... there is nothing like 3D to get folks, including
subcontractors, focused on how things go together.
The program runs extremely well on a laptop, even a small one, and the
file can be freely given to others quickly and easily, with emphasis on
"free". An interested user will find that there are many architectural
and engineering models and resources available on the web, and many
architects have found the benefits of presenting their ideas using the
program, some even migrating to doing complicated construction concepts
entirely with the program using the actual fabrication process using layers.
Here's just one example of a engineering resource that is handy"
http://sketchup.engineeringtoolbox.com/
Last year I built a $350k house using nothing but construction plans
generated _entirely_ in SU, including a full set of architectural and
structural drawings for bidding and building.
As with just about any type of software, the limitations are generally
with the user ... this is especially true with SU.
--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 4/15/2010
KarlC@ (the obvious)
On 4/10/2010 8:38 PM, Dick Snyder wrote:
> "Swingman"<[email protected]> wrote in message
>> First you take the word of someone else instead of making up your own mind
>> about a particular program; then you don't want to spend money, or your
>> time, on learning a skill to do what you are asking others to advise you
>> on?
>>
>> Best stick to your paper and pencil ...
>>
>> --
>> www.e-woodshop.net
>> Last update: 10/22/08
>> KarlC@ (the obvious)
>
> Boy that is kind of hostile response. If I had taken the word of my friend,
> I wouldn't have bothered with the post. I just don't want to invest a large
> amount of time learning a tool if it can't do the job. The replies I have
> seen so far indicate that it is worth my time to it out.
Actually, there was no need for pussyfooting around, it was sound
advice, if taken, will save you wasting your time and money ... advice
based on a good deal of practical experience ... take it or leave it.
The only way to know if something is suitable for your use is to try it
_yourself_, taking the word of someone else is unwise and will only cost
your both time and money ... particularly true of software used for
designing woodworking projects.
What works for me may or may not work for you. AAMOF, you will _never_
find that out by asking here. To find that out with lasting satisfaction
takes a disciplined, internal reality check at the beginning.
`Will I be satisfied with 2D, or do I need 3D capability?
`What is the general consensus of users regarding ease of use and
learning curve?
`What about support, and very important in this day and age, is their an
online community where support and answers to questions are easily
obtainable?
`Is third party support/information/expertise readily available, like
books from bookstores?
`Would it be beneficial to me if the software lends itself easily to
generating things like cutlist's for ordering woodworking material,
optimzing utilization of that material and cutting down on waste?
`Will I ever have the need to collaborate with others on a design?
`If so, is it important that my ultimate choice have the ability to make
that easy, and cheaply done for both parties?
`What do I need as far as features, with particular thought to features
that I will pay for, but never use?
In short, those are just few of the questions you should answer
internally _before_ you spend your money, and your time, both concerns
of yours expressed in your original post.
Again, the answers/results is different for everyone, but if you find a
logical fit and don't spend the time to become facile with the program,
you will have wasted your time, and possibly money, and will indeed will
have been better off sticking with paper and pencil, as first noted.
--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 10/22/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)
[email protected] (Robert Bonomi) writes:
>In article <[email protected]>,
>Morris Dovey <[email protected]> wrote:
>>On 4/12/2010 8:07 PM, Robert Bonomi wrote:
>>> In article<[email protected]>,
>>> Morris Dovey<[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>>> Yuppers on the oddness - my impression was that the CDC management team
>>>> had never quite been able to decide what they wanted to do when they
>>>> grew up. At one point they were even in the windmill business. :)
>>>
>>> And they built computers that couldn't add!
>>>
>>> They faked addition by 'complement and subtract'. (true!!)
>>>
>>> That said, they were some of my favorite hardware to work on.
>>
>>Was it the IBM-650 that was nicknamed the "CADET" for Can't Add, Doesn't
>>Even Try?
>
>Yuppers. It simulated addition via table-look-up. I never programmed on
>one of those.
>>
>>The only CDC machine I ever used was the 6500 at Purdue and it seemed to
>>do crank right along fair reliably.
>
>The 6000 series were nice machines, but they did have their quirks.
>
>I, *unintentionally*, was responsible for one University machine crashing
>nearly _two_dozen_ times in approximately a 1-week period. This accounted
>for over 90% of all the crashes the machine experienced in two years.
><WRY GRIN>
>
>It took a while to establish cause-and-effect, because *nobody* was willing
>to believe that that 'innocent little job" -- nothing more than 4 standard
>statements in the system control language -- could _possibly_ be the culprit.
>Until they ran it as the _only_ job in the system, and watched the machine
>crash.
>
>The entire job consisted of:
> 1) request a tape mount
> 2) copy a file from disk to the tape
> 3) rewind the tape
> 4) copy from the tape back to a new file.
>
>{_first_ time using a mag tape, and was checking my understanding of 'how
> things worked.}
>
>The job _never_ got to step #4
>
>The log file showed a bunch of strange messages, that -nobody- (I took it
>to the help desk, asking "what's thin mean?") understood. The help desk
>would puzzle over the job output, look at the 4 punch-cards, look back
>at the log, say "*OH*!! that was when the system crashed, why don't you
>try running it again." so I did, when I next had a chance. *sigh*
>
>Experimentation showed that it was the "rewind the tape" command, itself,
>that was crashing the system.
>
>>> The high-level architecture was positively elegant in it's simplicity and
>>> regularity.
>>>
>>> the closer to the hardware they got, the *stranger* things got.
>>
>>Speaking of Burroughs... :o)
>
>I think the 6600 had Burroughs beat -- it could *lie* to you in the core-
>dump of a program that aborted due to a hardware exception (e.g. address
>out-of-range, using an 'infinite' operand {result of 'n' divided by zero}
>or using an 'indefinite' operand {result of dividing zero -by- zero}).
The early BCD burroughs machines (medium systems) would do BCD math on
BCD fields that contained 'undigits' (i.e. 1010b - 1111b); needless
to say, the results were unusual. Later versions of the architecture
would 'catch a cow' (report Undigit Arithmetic Exception) if such a thing
was attempted.
scott
On Apr 12, 1:23=A0am, Doug Winterburn <[email protected]> wrote:
> [email protected] wrote:
> > On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 21:16:41 -0700, Doug Winterburn <dlwinterb...@yahoo=
.com>
> > wrote:
>
> >> Morris Dovey wrote:
> >>> On 4/10/2010 9:05 PM, LDosser wrote:
> >>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >>>>news:[email protected]...
>
> >>>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing softw=
are
> >>>>> (link in sig),
> >>>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
> >>> You win - besides, the 70/45 was just a thin film approximation to a
> >>> 360/30 (same instruction set and I/O devices, but had a sexier front
> >>> panel) :)
>
> >> By "thin film", do you mean it also had the cros (capacitance read onl=
y
> >> memory) instruction set as the 360/30? =A0It was punch card size mylar
> >> with copper traces that were punched out on one of four sides of a
> >> squeare or some such. =A0The first time I saw the 30 power on and the =
cros
> >> "pump up" to push the cros punch card ros together, I wondered "WTF"?
>
> >> Then there was the 360/40 with the "tros" micro programmed instruction
> >> set...
>
> > Then there was the 360/75 with no microcode.
>
> >> That's the one I started with in '64.
>
> > Must have been a first. =A0The /360 was announced in '64. =A0I didn't u=
se the /75
> > until '67 (I was a Junior in high school ;).
>
> It was an IBM =A0punch card I/O Fortran IBM machine we used in college in
> '64 - can't remember the IBM model number.
>
> Akshooly, it was '66 when I went to work for IBM and went to 360 OS
> school in Endicott (DOS), and then Poughkeepsie (OS). =A0Classrooms full
> of ashtrays and smoke so thick, you could barely see the blackboard and
> the instructor with his [bad] hairpiece. =A0Cigs were $0.35 a pack in the
> vending machines in the hallways with 2 cents taped to each pack making
> them $0.33.
Oh..MAN!! Do I remember my days at U of Waterloo (yes, home of the
Blackberry) I had a prof who smoked the best part of a pack of
Gauloises in a single session. Brilliant guy (all about dithering pcm)
but he wore a tweed jacket and stank....and I mean STANK.
On Apr 14, 3:21=A0pm, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Apr 14, 11:46=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Apr 14, 8:56=A0am, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > > On Apr 14, 9:36=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote=
:
>
> > > > On Apr 13, 4:40=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi) w=
rote:
>
> > > > > In article <[email protected]=
legroups.com>,
>
> > > > > [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > > > >On Apr 13, 1:33=A0am, Puckdropper <puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com>=
wrote:
> > > > > >> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote
> > > > > >innews:[email protected]:
>
> > > > > >> > That's not unusual at all. =A0Subtraction *is* adding the ne=
gative
> > > > > >> > (complement).
>
> > > > > >> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add, Didn't=
Even
> > > > > >> > Try). =A0It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all, rat=
her used an
> > > > > >> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. =A0Want a differ=
ent
> > > > > >> > operator? =A0Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, sometimes on =
purpose,
> > > > > >> > even.
>
> > > > > >> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD circuits =
are usually
> > > > > >> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're used mor=
e often. =A0
> > > > > >> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being used to em=
ulate
> > > > > >> addition.
>
> > > > > >Not true. =A0The (add and subtract) operations use the same logi=
c.
>
> > > > > Really? =A0I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtraction dire=
ctly. =A0'Adder'
> > > > > chips, however, are common as dirt.
>
> > > > Really. =A0Really? You haven't looked very hard.http://www.onsemi.c=
om/pub_link/Collateral/MC10H180-D.PDF
>
> > > > > You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a bunch of =
inverters
> > > > > on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
>
> > > > > True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because the states=
in the
> > > > > operation table do not collapse as well.
> > > > > =A0Addition: =A0 =A0operand1 =A0OR operand2 =3D=3D 0 =A0=3D> zero=
result, zero carry
> > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 XOR operand2 =3D=3D 1 =A0=3D=
> one =A0result, zero carry
> > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 AND operand2 =3D=3D 1 =A0=3D=
? zero result, one =A0carry
>
> > > > > =A0Subtraction: operand1 =A0EQ operand2 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0=
=3D> zero result, zero borrow
> > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 1 AND operand2 EQ 0 =
=3D> one =A0result, zero borrow
> > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 0 AND operand2 EQ 1 =
=3D> one =A0result, one =A0borrow
>
> > > > ...which are the same operations.
>
> > > > > To expound on the 'difference' between addition and subtraction, =
consider
> > > > > hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. =A0Where the 'ne=
gative' of
> > > > > a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits of the p=
ositive
> > > > > value. =A0e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
>
> > > > So what? =A0Are you trying to prove your prowess with useless
> > > > information?
>
> > > Are you showing off that the information is useless to YOU because
> > > your prowess is so elevated?
>
> > Idiot. =A0A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn't
> > relevant when discussing the difference/similarity between subtraction
> > and addition. =A0 =A0I wouldn't expect you to know anything about it.
> > OTOH, you are up to your usual standards in cashing checks with your
> > mouth that you ass can't cover.
>
> Yup, you're one of 'them' alright. You ain't much.
What a moron, RoboTwat, but I already knew that.
On Apr 15, 10:07=A0am, Upscale <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 06:55:54 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
>
> >> You mean in the same way you demonstrate how to be a red neck?
>
> >I was just thinking about who could possibly be dumber than RoboTwat,
> >and who shows up...
>
> You really like confirming your status as ignorant trailer park trash
> don't you? I know you can't help playing the simpleton idiot because
> of your inbreeding, but at least try to make a token effort will you?
*wiping monitor and keyboard*
On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 06:55:54 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
>> You mean in the same way you demonstrate how to be a red neck?
>
>I was just thinking about who could possibly be dumber than RoboTwat,
>and who shows up...
You really like confirming your status as ignorant trailer park trash
don't you? I know you can't help playing the simpleton idiot because
of your inbreeding, but at least try to make a token effort will you?
In article <[email protected]>,
Upscale <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 06:55:54 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
>>> You mean in the same way you demonstrate how to be a red neck?
>>
>>I was just thinking about who could possibly be dumber than RoboTwat,
>>and who shows up...
>
>You really like confirming your status as ignorant trailer park trash
>don't you? I know you can't help playing the simpleton idiot because
>of your inbreeding, but at least try to make a token effort will you?
Unfortunately, he *can't* do that, no matter how politely anyone asks.
Explanation -- he's not a 'token' inbred simpleton idiot.
On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:58:38 -0500, [email protected] (Robert
Bonomi) wrote:
>In article <[email protected]>,
>[email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
>>On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:07:05 -0500, [email protected] (Robert
>>Bonomi) wrote:
>>
>>>In article <[email protected]>,
>>>Morris Dovey <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>On 4/12/2010 8:24 AM, [email protected] wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I'm not sure when they were introduced into the 370s, but yeah, they
>>>>> were used for /158 microcode. I remember interviewing at CDC in early
>>>>> '74. They had a /158 with its covers off, with a bunch of people
>>>>> reverse-engineering the floppy drive. The /158 was their pride and
>>>>> joy, which I thought odd. The whole place was "odd" and I told them
>>>>> so before I left (didn't get an offer ;).
>>>>
>>>>You're right - I went digging and found that there had been a /Minnow/
>>>>R/O floppy drive with diminished capacity released in 1972. I'm guessing
>>>>it was an early /Igar/ prototype.
>>>>
>>>>Yuppers on the oddness - my impression was that the CDC management team
>>>>had never quite been able to decide what they wanted to do when they
>>>>grew up. At one point they were even in the windmill business. :)
>>>
>>>And they built computers that couldn't add!
>>>
>>>They faked addition by 'complement and subtract'. (true!!)
>>
>>That's not unusual at all. Subtraction *is* adding the negative (complement).
>
>I agree that subtraction, GENERALLY, "*is* adding the negative".
Not generally. That is one way to do it, but certainly not the only way.
Hardware subtraction is no more difficult than addition. They're really the
same logic (twisted, but really the same).
>Now go back and read what _this_ machine actually did. <grin>
There have been many such things talked about here. Specifically, the IBM
1620, knows as the CADET, had a table look-up for addition. It couldn't
subtract, either.
>I repeat, this multi-million-dollar super-computer "couldn't ADD".
The 1620 wasn't a "multi-million-dollar super-computer". It was, in fact,
rather mundane. That's the reason it couldn't add - they didn't want to spend
money on an adder. Note that it had no subtractor, either.
In article <eb0d47fe-5cc6-4e36-be62-72a5844f7d08@r28g2000vbi.googlegroups.com>,
Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Apr 14, 4:30 pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Apr 14, 3:21 pm, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Apr 14, 11:46 am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> > > On Apr 14, 8:56 am, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> > > > On Apr 14, 9:36 am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> > > > > On Apr 13, 4:40 pm, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi) wrote:
>>
>> > > > > > In article
><38e09aeb-5506-4604-aaba-e56c31a5a...@y17g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
>>
>> > > > > > [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > > > > > >On Apr 13, 1:33 am, Puckdropper
><puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
>> > > > > > >> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote
>> > > > > > >innews:[email protected]:
>>
>> > > > > > >> > That's not unusual at all. Subtraction *is* adding the
>negative
>> > > > > > >> > (complement).
>>
>> > > > > > >> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add,
>Didn't Even
>> > > > > > >> > Try). It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all,
>rather used an
>> > > > > > >> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. Want a different
>> > > > > > >> > operator? Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, sometimes
>on purpose,
>> > > > > > >> > even.
>>
>> > > > > > >> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD
>circuits are usually
>> > > > > > >> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're
>used more often.
>> > > > > > >> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being used
>to emulate
>> > > > > > >> addition.
>>
>> > > > > > >Not true. The (add and subtract) operations use the same logic.
>>
>> > > > > > Really? I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtraction
>directly. 'Adder'
>> > > > > > chips, however, are common as dirt.
>>
>> > > > > Really. Really? You haven't looked very
>hard.http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/MC10H180-D.PDF
>>
>> > > > > > You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a
>bunch of inverters
>> > > > > > on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
>>
>> > > > > > True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because the
>states in the
>> > > > > > operation table do not collapse as well.
>> > > > > > Addition: operand1 OR operand2 == 0 => zero result, zero carry
>> > > > > > operand1 XOR operand2 == 1 => one result, zero carry
>> > > > > > operand1 AND operand2 == 1 =? zero result, one carry
>>
>> > > > > > Subtraction: operand1 EQ operand2 => zero
>result, zero borrow
>> > > > > > operand1 EQ 1 AND operand2 EQ 0 => one
> result, zero borrow
>> > > > > > operand1 EQ 0 AND operand2 EQ 1 => one
> result, one borrow
>>
>> > > > > ...which are the same operations.
>>
>> > > > > > To expound on the 'difference' between addition and
>subtraction, consider
>> > > > > > hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. Where the
>'negative' of
>> > > > > > a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits of
>the positive
>> > > > > > value. e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
>>
>> > > > > So what? Are you trying to prove your prowess with useless
>> > > > > information?
>>
>> > > > Are you showing off that the information is useless to YOU because
>> > > > your prowess is so elevated?
>>
>> > > Idiot. A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn't
>> > > relevant when discussing the difference/similarity between subtraction
>> > > and addition. I wouldn't expect you to know anything about it.
>> > > OTOH, you are up to your usual standards in cashing checks with your
>> > > mouth that you ass can't cover.
>>
>> > Yup, you're one of 'them' alright. You ain't much.
>>
>> What a moron, RoboTwat, but I already knew that.
>
>Yup, you're right to the core. I find it interesting that the bulk of
>your comments are degrading and condescending to justabout anybody
>here. You must really think you're something. Welll... I'm here to
>tell you that you are not nice.
I would have to concede Keith's expertise on the subject of morons.
*NOBODY* has the degree of _first-hand_ experience on the matter that
he does.
In article <[email protected]>,
Bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>"Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>>
>> <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>
>>> Since bitwise negation can be performed by a single transistor, I would
>>> expect that that a value in a register could be negated VERY fast. I
>>> think
>>> just a few clock cycles.
>>
>> Above you use 2's complement representations in your example. Now you
>> switch tracks to 1's complement representation of negative numbers
>> (the only format where negation = inversion).
>> Yes, bitwise *INVERSION* can be done by a single transistor (indeed it
>> takes zero clock cycles to invert a signal), but this is a negation
>> only if you're doing 1's complement arithmetic. You still have to do...
>>
>>
>>
>> That must be one of the reasons they switched to 2s complement, no?
>
>I hate to answer my own question, but the main reason was the duplicity of
>zeros in 1s complement, I think.
The 'ambiguous' bit-pattern for 'zero' *was* _the_ compelling reason that
IEEE 'standardized' on 2's complement. The 'test for zero/non-zero' operation
had to check for _two_ bit patterns (all zeroes, all ones), which either
took twice as long as a single check, *or* used up a _lot_ more 'silicon
real-estate'. Even _worse_, a test for "equality" could not simply check
for a bit-for-bit correspondence between the two values, it had to return
'equal' IF one value was all zeroes, and the other was all ones. This
was _really_ "bad news" for limited-capability processors -- you had to
invert one operand, SUBTRACT, and _then_ perform the zero/non-zero check
described above. Suddenly the test for 'equal' is 3 gate times *SLOWER*
than a 'subtract'. This _really_ hurts performance. "Inequality" compares
are also adversely affected, although not to the same degree.
For *big*, 'maximum performance' machines, the cost of the additional
hardware for dealing with unique +0/-0 was small enough (relative to the
_total_ cost of the machine) that it was easy to justify for the performance
benefits. When the IEEE stuck it's oar in, 'budget' computing was a fact
of life -- mini-computers, and micro-processors. It was _important to the
*user* of computing that the results on 'cheap' hardware match *exactly*
that obtained from using the 'high priced spread'. And that _code_ developed
on one machine run *unchanged* on another machine, and produce exactly
the same results.
At the vehement urging of the makers of 'budget' computing systems, as well
as the users thereof, 2's complement arithmetic was selected for the IEEE
standard, *despite* the obvious problem of a _non-symmetric_ representation
scheme. Number 'comparisons' were much more common in existing code than
'negations', thus it 'made sense' to use a representation scheme that favored
the 'more common' operations. In addition, the 'minor problem' of the 'most
negative number' not having a positive counterpart was not perceived to be
a 'killer' issue. "Real-world" data showed that only in *VERY*RARE*
situations did numeric values in computations get 'close' to the 'limit of
representation' in hardware.
I *understand* the decision, although, still to this day, I disagree with it.
<wry grin>
On Apr 16, 9:04=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Apr 15, 5:43=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi) wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > In article <[email protected]=
ps.com>,
>
> > Robatoy =A0<[email protected]> wrote:
> > >On Apr 14, 4:30=A0pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >> On Apr 14, 3:21=A0pm, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > >> > On Apr 14, 11:46=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> w=
rote:
>
> > >> > > On Apr 14, 8:56=A0am, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > >> > > > On Apr 14, 9:36=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]=
> wrote:
>
> > >> > > > > On Apr 13, 4:40=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert Bo=
nomi) wrote:
>
> > >> > > > > > In article
> > ><38e09aeb-5506-4604-aaba-e56c31a5a...@y17g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
>
> > >> > > > > > [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >> > > > > > >On Apr 13, 1:33=A0am, Puckdropper
> > ><puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
> > >> > > > > > >> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wro=
te
> > >> > > > > > >innews:[email protected]:
>
> > >> > > > > > >> > That's not unusual at all. =A0Subtraction *is* adding=
the
> > >negative
> > >> > > > > > >> > (complement).
>
> > >> > > > > > >> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add,
> > >Didn't Even
> > >> > > > > > >> > Try). =A0It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at a=
ll,
> > >rather used an
> > >> > > > > > >> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. =A0Want a=
different
> > >> > > > > > >> > operator? =A0Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, someti=
mes
> > >on purpose,
> > >> > > > > > >> > even.
>
> > >> > > > > > >> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD
> > >circuits are usually
> > >> > > > > > >> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're
> > >used more often. =A0
> > >> > > > > > >> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being use=
d
> > >to emulate
> > >> > > > > > >> addition.
>
> > >> > > > > > >Not true. =A0The (add and subtract) operations use the sa=
me logic.
>
> > >> > > > > > Really? =A0I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtracti=
on
> > >directly. =A0'Adder'
> > >> > > > > > chips, however, are common as dirt.
>
> > >> > > > > Really. =A0Really? You haven't looked very
> > >hard.http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/MC10H180-D.PDF
>
> > >> > > > > > You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a
> > >bunch of inverters
> > >> > > > > > on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
>
> > >> > > > > > True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because the
> > >states in the
> > >> > > > > > operation table do not collapse as well.
> > >> > > > > > =A0Addition: =A0 =A0operand1 =A0OR operand2 =3D=3D 0 =A0=
=3D> zero result, zero carry
> > >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 XOR operand2 =3D=3D 1=
=A0=3D> one =A0result, zero carry
> > >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 AND operand2 =3D=3D 1=
=A0=3D? zero result, one =A0carry
>
> > >> > > > > > =A0Subtraction: operand1 =A0EQ operand2 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =
=A0 =A0=3D> zero
> > >result, zero borrow
> > >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 1 AND operand2 =
EQ 0 =3D> one
> > >=A0result, zero borrow
> > >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 0 AND operand2 =
EQ 1 =3D> one
> > >=A0result, one =A0borrow
>
> > >> > > > > ...which are the same operations.
>
> > >> > > > > > To expound on the 'difference' between additn and
> > >subtraction, consider
> > >> > > > > > hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. =A0Where =
the
> > >'negative' of
> > >> > > > > > a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits o=
f
> > >the positive
> > >> > > > > > value. =A0e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
>
> > >> > > > > So what? =A0Are you trying to prove your prowess with useles=
s
> > >> > > > > information?
>
> > >> > > > Are you showing off that the information is useless to YOU bec=
ause
> > >> > > > your prowess is so elevated?
>
> > >> > > Idiot. =A0A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn't
> > >> > > relevant when discussing the difference/similarity between subtr=
action
> > >> > > and addition. =A0 =A0I wouldn't expect you to know anything abou=
t it.
> > >> > > OTOH, you are up to your usual standards in cashing checks with =
your
> > >> > > mouth that you ass can't cover.
>
> > >> > Yup, you're one of 'them' alright. You ain't much.
>
> > >> What a moron, RoboTwat, but I already knew that.
>
> > >Yup, you're right to the core. I find it interesting that the bulk of
> > >your comments are degrading and condescending to justabout anybody
> > >here. You must really think you're something. Welll... I'm here to
> > >tell you that you are not nice.
>
> > I would have to concede Keith's expertise on the subject of morons.
>
> Yes, with the three stooges (Uppity, RoboTwat, and you), I now know a
> *lot* about morons.
>
> > *NOBODY* has the degree of _first-hand_ experience on the matter that
> > he does.
>
> Yes, my first-hand experience in computer architecture sure makes you
> look like a fool, but the kicker is that you can't read. =A0Uppity and
> RoboTwat are simply leftist thieves.
(Pretty soon all of us will be labeled stooges by keith...
institutions are full of guys(?) like him.)
On Apr 14, 9:36=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Apr 13, 4:40=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi) wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > In article <[email protected]=
ps.com>,
>
> > [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >On Apr 13, 1:33=A0am, Puckdropper <puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote=
:
> > >> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote
> > >innews:[email protected]:
>
> > >> > That's not unusual at all. =A0Subtraction *is* adding the negative
> > >> > (complement).
>
> > >> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add, Didn't Even
> > >> > Try). =A0It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all, rather us=
ed an
> > >> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. =A0Want a different
> > >> > operator? =A0Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, sometimes on purpos=
e,
> > >> > even.
>
> > >> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD circuits are us=
ually
> > >> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're used more ofte=
n. =A0
> > >> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being used to emulate
> > >> addition.
>
> > >Not true. =A0The (add and subtract) operations use the same logic.
>
> > Really? =A0I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtraction directly. =
=A0'Adder'
> > chips, however, are common as dirt.
>
> Really. =A0Really? You haven't looked very hard.http://www.onsemi.com/pub=
_link/Collateral/MC10H180-D.PDF
>
> > You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a bunch of invert=
ers
> > on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
>
> > True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because the states in th=
e
> > operation table do not collapse as well.
> > =A0Addition: =A0 =A0operand1 =A0OR operand2 =3D=3D 0 =A0=3D> zero resul=
t, zero carry
> > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 XOR operand2 =3D=3D 1 =A0=3D> one =
=A0result, zero carry
> > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 AND operand2 =3D=3D 1 =A0=3D? zero=
result, one =A0carry
>
> > =A0Subtraction: operand1 =A0EQ operand2 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0=3D> zer=
o result, zero borrow
> > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 1 AND operand2 EQ 0 =3D> one=
=A0result, zero borrow
> > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 0 AND operand2 EQ 1 =3D> one=
=A0result, one =A0borrow
>
> ...which are the same operations.
>
> > To expound on the 'difference' between addition and subtraction, consid=
er
> > hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. =A0Where the 'negative=
' of
> > a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits of the positiv=
e
> > value. =A0e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
>
> So what? =A0Are you trying to prove your prowess with useless
> information?
>
Are you showing off that the information is useless to YOU because
your prowess is so elevated?
Robert Bonomi wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> Larry Blanchard <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:54:58 -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:
>>
>>> It took a while to establish cause-and-effect, because *nobody* was
>>> willing to believe that that 'innocent little job" -- nothing more than
>>> 4 standard statements in the system control language -- could _possibly_
>>> be the culprit. Until they ran it as the _only_ job in the system, and
>>> watched the machine crash.
>>>
>>> The entire job consisted of:
>>> 1) request a tape mount
>>> 2) copy a file from disk to the tape
>>> 3) rewind the tape
>>> 4) copy from the tape back to a new file.
>> The original Univac I had tape drives that maintained tension with
>> springs and pulleys rather than vacuum columns. Those drives, as well as
>> the vacuum column model that replaced them on Univac II, could read both
>> forwards and backwards. There were 10 drives.
>>
>> One of the programmers (no, not me) wrote a program that issued a write
>> command, followed by a read backwards, followed by a skip a block. That
>> sequence apparently exceeded the response of the strings and pulleys and
>> they wound up in a heap at the bottom of the drive.
>>
>> The resident (yep, 24 hours a day) CEs wouldn't believe him when he
>> described the problem. So he wrote a little program to demonstrate the
>> problem, called in the CEs, and ran the program, dumping *all 10* tape
>> drives. He wasn't very popular with the CEs after that, but when he told
>> them he had a problem, they listened :-).
>>
>> I sometimes think all us old computer nerds should start a website and
>> record all these stories before we all die and the stories are lost.
>
> There is also the story about a university student who got the engineering
> plans for an IBM mainframe disk drive (one of the washing-machine-size units),
> _carefully_ calculated the mass involved, and wrote a channel program that
> consisted of 'seek to outermost track', pause, 'seek to innermost track',
> pause, and "repeat indefinitely". The 'pause' times were carefully calculated
> to the 'resonant frequency of the drive unit. Reportedly, the unit 'walked'
> almost *THREE*FEET* across the floor, _towards_the_operator_, before they
> managed to find and kill the offending task. I'm given to understand that
> the operators were 'a bit nervous' for some days thereafter.
>
I managed to knock a selectric style printer off its stand with a little
unfortunate development code.
On Apr 13, 4:40=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi) wrote:
> In article <[email protected]=
.com>,
>
>
>
> [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> >On Apr 13, 1:33=A0am, Puckdropper <puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
> >> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote
> >innews:[email protected]:
>
> >> > That's not unusual at all. =A0Subtraction *is* adding the negative
> >> > (complement).
>
> >> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add, Didn't Even
> >> > Try). =A0It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all, rather used=
an
> >> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. =A0Want a different
> >> > operator? =A0Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, sometimes on purpose,
> >> > even.
>
> >> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD circuits are usua=
lly
> >> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're used more often.=
=A0
> >> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being used to emulate
> >> addition.
>
> >Not true. =A0The (add and subtract) operations use the same logic.
>
> Really? =A0I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtraction directly. =
=A0'Adder'
> chips, however, are common as dirt.
Really. Really? You haven't looked very hard.
http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/MC10H180-D.PDF
> You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a bunch of inverter=
s
> on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
>
> True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because the states in the
> operation table do not collapse as well.
> =A0Addition: =A0 =A0operand1 =A0OR operand2 =3D=3D 0 =A0=3D> zero result,=
zero carry
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 XOR operand2 =3D=3D 1 =A0=3D> one =
=A0result, zero carry
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 AND operand2 =3D=3D 1 =A0=3D? zero r=
esult, one =A0carry
>
> =A0Subtraction: operand1 =A0EQ operand2 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0=3D> zero =
result, zero borrow
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 1 AND operand2 EQ 0 =3D> one =
=A0result, zero borrow
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 0 AND operand2 EQ 1 =3D> one =
=A0result, one =A0borrow
...which are the same operations.
> To expound on the 'difference' between addition and subtraction, consider
> hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. =A0Where the 'negative' =
of
> a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits of the positive
> value. =A0e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
So what? Are you trying to prove your prowess with useless
information?
<snipped useless '1's complement stuff>
On Apr 10, 7:07=A0am, "Dick Snyder" <[email protected]> wrote:
> I have always designed my projects using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and
> (lots of) eraser. I have a somewhat more complicated job I want to do now=
.
> There is a design for an entertainment center in FWW that I want to adapt=
. I
> would like to take the measurements from the article, enter them on a
> computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend who
> uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that sophisticat=
ed.
> I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time on a CAD prog=
ram
> unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a product that one of
> you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil, and eraser?
>
> TIA.
>
> Dick Snyder
I routinely use TurboCAD before starting any woodworking project (w/
the exception of a cutting board, etc.).
I have tried Sketchup and I also found it difficult to use/learn
coming from TurboCAD. If I invested more time I'm sure I could learn
to use it, but I couldn't see investing the time considering I already
know TC.
Good luck.
On Apr 15, 5:43=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi) wrote:
> In article <[email protected]=
.com>,
>
>
>
> Robatoy =A0<[email protected]> wrote:
> >On Apr 14, 4:30=A0pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> On Apr 14, 3:21=A0pm, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >> > On Apr 14, 11:46=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wro=
te:
>
> >> > > On Apr 14, 8:56=A0am, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >> > > > On Apr 14, 9:36=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> =
wrote:
>
> >> > > > > On Apr 13, 4:40=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert Bono=
mi) wrote:
>
> >> > > > > > In article
> ><38e09aeb-5506-4604-aaba-e56c31a5a...@y17g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
>
> >> > > > > > [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> > > > > > >On Apr 13, 1:33=A0am, Puckdropper
> ><puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
> >> > > > > > >> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote
> >> > > > > > >innews:[email protected]:
>
> >> > > > > > >> > That's not unusual at all. =A0Subtraction *is* adding t=
he
> >negative
> >> > > > > > >> > (complement).
>
> >> > > > > > >> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add,
> >Didn't Even
> >> > > > > > >> > Try). =A0It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all=
,
> >rather used an
> >> > > > > > >> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. =A0Want a d=
ifferent
> >> > > > > > >> > operator? =A0Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, sometime=
s
> >on purpose,
> >> > > > > > >> > even.
>
> >> > > > > > >> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD
> >circuits are usually
> >> > > > > > >> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're
> >used more often. =A0
> >> > > > > > >> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being used
> >to emulate
> >> > > > > > >> addition.
>
> >> > > > > > >Not true. =A0The (add and subtract) operations use the same=
logic.
>
> >> > > > > > Really? =A0I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtraction
> >directly. =A0'Adder'
> >> > > > > > chips, however, are common as dirt.
>
> >> > > > > Really. =A0Really? You haven't looked very
> >hard.http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/MC10H180-D.PDF
>
> >> > > > > > You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a
> >bunch of inverters
> >> > > > > > on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
>
> >> > > > > > True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because the
> >states in the
> >> > > > > > operation table do not collapse as well.
> >> > > > > > =A0Addition: =A0 =A0operand1 =A0OR operand2 =3D=3D 0 =A0=3D>=
zero result, zero carry
> >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 XOR operand2 =3D=3D 1 =
=A0=3D> one =A0result, zero carry
> >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 AND operand2 =3D=3D 1 =
=A0=3D? zero result, one =A0carry
>
> >> > > > > > =A0Subtraction: operand1 =A0EQ operand2 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =
=A0=3D> zero
> >result, zero borrow
> >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 1 AND operand2 EQ=
0 =3D> one
> >=A0result, zero borrow
> >> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 0 AND operand2 EQ=
1 =3D> one
> >=A0result, one =A0borrow
>
> >> > > > > ...which are the same operations.
>
> >> > > > > > To expound on the 'difference' between addition and
> >subtraction, consider
> >> > > > > > hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. =A0Where th=
e
> >'negative' of
> >> > > > > > a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits of
> >the positive
> >> > > > > > value. =A0e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
>
> >> > > > > So what? =A0Are you trying to prove your prowess with useless
> >> > > > > information?
>
> >> > > > Are you showing off that the information is useless to YOU becau=
se
> >> > > > your prowess is so elevated?
>
> >> > > Idiot. =A0A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn't
> >> > > relevant when discussing the difference/similarity between subtrac=
tion
> >> > > and addition. =A0 =A0I wouldn't expect you to know anything about =
it.
> >> > > OTOH, you are up to your usual standards in cashing checks with yo=
ur
> >> > > mouth that you ass can't cover.
>
> >> > Yup, you're one of 'them' alright. You ain't much.
>
> >> What a moron, RoboTwat, but I already knew that.
>
> >Yup, you're right to the core. I find it interesting that the bulk of
> >your comments are degrading and condescending to justabout anybody
> >here. You must really think you're something. Welll... I'm here to
> >tell you that you are not nice.
>
> I would have to concede Keith's expertise on the subject of morons.
Yes, with the three stooges (Uppity, RoboTwat, and you), I now know a
*lot* about morons.
> *NOBODY* has the degree of _first-hand_ experience on the matter that
> he does.
Yes, my first-hand experience in computer architecture sure makes you
look like a fool, but the kicker is that you can't read. Uppity and
RoboTwat are simply leftist thieves.
On Apr 16, 12:48=A0pm, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Apr 16, 12:37=A0pm, "Lee Michaels"
>
> <leemichaels*[email protected]> wrote:
> > "Robatoy" =A0wrote
>
> > LOL...I have made some facsimiles of furniture and stuff. I own a hand
> > plane and a scorp, not to mention an adz. I have created adztech.
>
> > =A0=3D=3D=3D
> > I just can't help myself.
>
> > Adztech, eh?
>
> > Have you made an adztech calendar?
>
> > <ouch>
>
> I have.
http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o290/Robatoy/MayanCalender.jpg
On Apr 14, 4:30=A0pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Apr 14, 3:21=A0pm, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Apr 14, 11:46=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > > On Apr 14, 8:56=A0am, Robatoy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > > > On Apr 14, 9:36=A0am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wro=
te:
>
> > > > > On Apr 13, 4:40=A0pm, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi)=
wrote:
>
> > > > > > In article <[email protected]=
oglegroups.com>,
>
> > > > > > [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > > > > >On Apr 13, 1:33=A0am, Puckdropper <puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)co=
m> wrote:
> > > > > > >> "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote
> > > > > > >innews:[email protected]:
>
> > > > > > >> > That's not unusual at all. =A0Subtraction *is* adding the =
negative
> > > > > > >> > (complement).
>
> > > > > > >> > OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add, Didn=
't Even
> > > > > > >> > Try). =A0It had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all, r=
ather used an
> > > > > > >> > index into a lookup table in memory to add. =A0Want a diff=
erent
> > > > > > >> > operator? =A0Overwrite the "ADD" lookup table, sometimes o=
n purpose,
> > > > > > >> > even.
>
> > > > > > >> In one of my CS classes, it was pointed out that ADD circuit=
s are usually
> > > > > > >> smaller and easier than SUBtract circuits, so they're used m=
ore often. =A0
> > > > > > >> That's what was so weird about the subtractor being used to =
emulate
> > > > > > >> addition.
>
> > > > > > >Not true. =A0The (add and subtract) operations use the same lo=
gic.
>
> > > > > > Really? =A0I've -never- seen an IC chip that did subtraction di=
rectly. =A0'Adder'
> > > > > > chips, however, are common as dirt.
>
> > > > > Really. =A0Really? You haven't looked very hard.http://www.onsemi=
.com/pub_link/Collateral/MC10H180-D.PDF
>
> > > > > > You can -accomplish- subtraction using an 'adder' and a bunch o=
f inverters
> > > > > > on the second input (and ignore the overflow).
>
> > > > > > True 'subtract' logic _is_ more complicated -- because the stat=
es in the
> > > > > > operation table do not collapse as well.
> > > > > > =A0Addition: =A0 =A0operand1 =A0OR operand2 =3D=3D 0 =A0=3D> ze=
ro result, zero carry
> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 XOR operand2 =3D=3D 1 =A0=
=3D> one =A0result, zero carry
> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 AND operand2 =3D=3D 1 =A0=
=3D? zero result, one =A0carry
>
> > > > > > =A0Subtraction: operand1 =A0EQ operand2 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0=
=3D> zero result, zero borrow
> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 1 AND operand2 EQ 0 =
=3D> one =A0result, zero borrow
> > > > > > =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 operand1 =A0EQ 0 AND operand2 EQ 1 =
=3D> one =A0result, one =A0borrow
>
> > > > > ...which are the same operations.
>
> > > > > > To expound on the 'difference' between addition and subtraction=
, consider
> > > > > > hardware that uses "ONES COMPLEMENT" arithmetic. =A0Where the '=
negative' of
> > > > > > a number is represented by simply inverting all the bits of the=
positive
> > > > > > value. =A0e.g. the negative of "00000010" is "11111101".
>
> > > > > So what? =A0Are you trying to prove your prowess with useless
> > > > > information?
>
> > > > Are you showing off that the information is useless to YOU because
> > > > your prowess is so elevated?
>
> > > Idiot. =A0A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn't
> > > relevant when discussing the difference/similarity between subtractio=
n
> > > and addition. =A0 =A0I wouldn't expect you to know anything about it.
> > > OTOH, you are up to your usual standards in cashing checks with your
> > > mouth that you ass can't cover.
>
> > Yup, you're one of 'them' alright. You ain't much.
>
> What a moron, RoboTwat, but I already knew that.
Yup, you're right to the core. I find it interesting that the bulk of
your comments are degrading and condescending to justabout anybody
here. You must really think you're something. Welll... I'm here to
tell you that you are not nice.
On 4/10/2010 8:49 PM, Morris Dovey wrote:
> Tracing an image and skipping definition of contoured surfaces don't
> work for me.
The "tracing" of a component, imported into a project from an outside
source, is routinely done as a matter of convenience and is a common
practice to speed up a project, with any design software, and is one of
the reasons for an "import" feature.
Furthermore, it is inarguable that if the software contains the tools to
effectively "trace" a component, it therefore has the tools/ability to
"draw" it instead, should you chose to do so, as this software indeed does.
Your argument in that regard falls flatly on its face ...
With regard to the 'seat", it was plainly stated why it was not
contoured ... and, even then, for you to bring it up and pretend/insist
that a shop drawing be a photorealistic image to have any value in
woodworking is misleading, irrelevant, and a ploy to bolster a feeble
argument.
On 4/10/2010 7:42 AM, Morris Dovey wrote:
>
> For things that are essentially boxes - like kitchen cabinets and,
> perhaps, your entertainment center SketchUp has acquired a
> substantial following.
> (Well, duh! I never
> said SketchUp was /limited/ to boxes.)
OK, then ... it was an ignorant attempt to imply it.
In short, I gave you a clear, factual and accessible example containing
nothing remotely resembling your "...things that are essentially
boxes...", and which nicely illustrates the ignorance of the software
behind the remark.
Your arguments thus far do nothing to disprove that.
--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 10/22/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)
On Sat, 01 May 2010 15:58:12 -0400, Marty <[email protected]> wrote:
>I have used Quick CAD (no longer available) for a years but
>have started to use Sketchup. I struggled with it for a time, set it
>aside, viewed the tutorials, tried it again, set it aside, and
>tried it again with the idea I would learn it some how.... Then while
>browsing in a book store found Skechup 7 for Dummies ($25). What an eye
>opener!!! Much better then what can be found online and really has
>helped understanding its use. Very clear and concise with many
>illustrations.
>
>Recommended, this time I won't set it aside.
Thanks for the report. I too have put Sketchup down several times. After
hints here about it not being "CAD", rather a modeling package, I got a
somewhat different perspective of it and that helped. Now, sometimes I "get"
it, sorta, and sometimes I just can't seem to grab what I want. Organizing
components still escapes me. Maybe "Dummies" would help.
<...>
On 4/10/2010 6:07 AM, Dick Snyder wrote:
> I have always designed my projects using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and
> (lots of) eraser. I have a somewhat more complicated job I want to do now.
> There is a design for an entertainment center in FWW that I want to adapt. I
> would like to take the measurements from the article, enter them on a
> computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend who
> uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that sophisticated.
> I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time on a CAD program
> unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a product that one of
> you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil, and eraser?
For things that are essentially boxes - like kitchen cabinets and,
perhaps, your entertainment center SketchUp has acquired a substantial
following.
I happen to do relatively little of that type of work and use an old
version of DesignCAD, which lets me draw curves that aren't often seen
in traditional woodworking (parabola, hyperbola, catenaries, sine
curves, etc) and export those shapes in a format that permits CNC machining.
Some folks are working with TurboCAD and like it best.
But everybody seems to use pencil and paper along with any CAD package
they're comfortable with. :)
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 07:42:06 -0500, Morris Dovey wrote:
> I happen to do relatively little of that type of work and use an old
> version of DesignCAD, which lets me draw curves that aren't often seen
> in traditional woodworking (parabola, hyperbola, catenaries, sine
> curves, etc) and export those shapes in a format that permits CNC
> machining.
>
> Some folks are working with TurboCAD and like it best.
And older versions of both are available at a fraction of the original
cost.
--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
On 4/10/2010 8:43 AM, Swingman wrote:
> On 4/10/2010 7:42 AM, Morris Dovey wrote:
>
>> For things that are essentially boxes - like kitchen cabinets and,
>> perhaps, your entertainment center SketchUp has acquired a substantial
>> following.
>
> Meh ... either a thinly veiled insult, or your ignorance is showing, or
> both:
>
> http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/17770/making-a-windsor-settee-armcrest-rail
"Note that I did not scoop the seat in the SketchUp model..."
"I was able to trace over a scanned image of a top view of the Settee to
quickly achieve the flat face shown below."
So it can be used in conjunction with images produced elsewhere to
produce approximate copies of what has already been done with other
(circa 1820!) design tools - big deal.
> "...essentially boxes...", eh? What a crock!
True, as illustrated in this settee example, only if tracing a digitized
image produced by other tools provides sufficient accuracy, and if
representing 3D curved surfaces (like the seat) as planar meets
requirements.
No insult was intended - I was attempting to point out a broad class of
design objects (which included the OP's immediate project) where I felt
SketchUp worked well for its users. If you interpret that as an insult,
perhaps you can explain why...
FWIW, when I /intend/ insult, there's no "thinly veiled" about it. :)
If you maintain that SketchUp is a superior tool for easily producing
accurate mathematical curves/surfaces in three dimensions (as is the
case in the many of _my_ woodworking projects) adequate for precision
production, then I invite you to produce the evidence - or to expand
your woodworking horizons.
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
On 4/10/2010 1:31 PM, Swingman wrote:
> On 4/10/2010 1:05 PM, Morris Dovey wrote:
>
>> No insult was intended - I was attempting to point out a broad class of
>> design objects (which included the OP's immediate project) where I felt
>> SketchUp worked well for its users. If you interpret that as an insult,
>> perhaps you can explain why...
>>
>> FWIW, when I /intend/ insult, there's no "thinly veiled" about it. :)
>>
>> If you maintain that SketchUp is a superior tool for easily producing
>> accurate mathematical curves/surfaces in three dimensions (as is the
>> case in the many of _my_ woodworking projects) adequate for precision
>> production, then I invite you to produce the evidence - or to expand
>> your woodworking horizons.
>
> Come now, Morris ... you've proven yourself too smart a fellow to _not_
> know exactly what you are about.
Whether I was too stupid to grasp SketchUp or SketchUp was
insufficiently capable or user friendly was/is a lot less important to
me than producing a result that met requirements. I did know what the
requirements were, and SketchUp didn't get me there.
> I recall taking the time to cobble up and post a SU tutorial model
> showing you how to do something with curves which you were unable to
> accomplish.
You did - and it was appreciated. My next step in that progression was
to add a tapped hole using the same technique - which sorta worked but
required /way/ too much patchy cleanup. I got the job done, but wasn't
satisfied that something so simple required so much time and piddling.
> Just because you haven't taken to the time to become proficient with the
> program, don't insult the program and, by association, those who have,
> with such ignorant remarks.
Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing software
(link in sig), and using CAD packages for more than half of that time, I
don't feel as ignorant as you portray. I have to admit, though, that I
only started producing actual 3D renderings in wood eight years ago,
when I installed my 'Bot. Sadly, the more I've learned the more ignorant
I've become.
Since you feel that noticing difficulties with software is an insult to
its user, please bypass any and all comments I may ever make about
Microsoft's software products (cough) and practices (cough, cough).
> Nevertheless, I'll spot you the "insult", but the link posted proves
> either one of my contentions to be correct, without necessity for
> further words.
Tracing an image and skipping definition of contoured surfaces don't
work for me. Whatever you think you proved to me with the example went
whoosh - unless it was that a settee isn't a box (Well, duh! I never
said SketchUp was /limited/ to boxes.)
I hoped SketchUp would work for me, too - but it simply wasn't worth
more than 60 hours of my time when I already had a CAD tool doing what,
after all that time, I couldn't get SketchUp to do.
I glad you like it so well for the work you're doing.
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/mrd/mrd_res1.html
"Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing software
> (link in sig),
I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
On 4/10/2010 9:05 PM, LDosser wrote:
> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>
>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing software
>> (link in sig),
>
> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
You win - besides, the 70/45 was just a thin film approximation to a
360/30 (same instruction set and I/O devices, but had a sexier front
panel) :)
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:35:05 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
<[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>"Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>> Bill wrote:
>>
>>> I'm the same person, but somehow I'm a more learned person--that's one of
>>> great things about staying young is you get to keep on learning! :)
>>>
>>> Bill
>>
>>
>> I've been reading James Krenov's book, "A Cabinet Makers Notebook".
>> I just finished the first chapter on "Wood". He gives the reader
>> plenty of opportunity to "learn something"! : )
>>
>> During my own reflection I observed that the beauty of using tools
>> is in using them well. They sing their own song (but please don't
>> tell anyone I said that)!
>
>I'll get roasted for this,
To be sure. Openly taunting the Gods of Woodworking like that can get
you into big trouble, too, Lob. RIP, my friend.
>but it seems to me Krenov made a career out of
>one medicine cabinet. A very nice cabinet and one I wish I'd done, but the
>same one over and over. Variations on a theme.
I think the cabinet was his principle incarnate, and that's what made
him famous. People love it, and that's why his books became widely
read. Yes, lovely cabinet, and I,too, wish I'd created it, but it
wouldn't fit in my house style or lifestyle. David Marks puts out
such a wide variety of articles that I could definitely see some of
his stuff in my home...whenever I get off my arse and clean my shop. I
have copies of some of his plans from when he first released them. I
followed his TV program from start to finish. He's my hero. (You can
keep your flannel-shirted Norms and polying Dresdners, TYVM.)
Do you feel that Maloof was a one-rocker pony, too? <nomex=ON>
>Same as some authors, James
>Patterson comes to mind, write the same book over and over.
Never having read him, I Amazoned his work and see that he may be a
3-trick pony. Alex Cross, Woman's Murder Club, and Maximum Ride.
Or are they all riding the same pony?
--
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace
will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will
blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy,
while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
-- John Muir
>>> I've been reading James Krenov's book, "A Cabinet Makers Notebook".
>>> I just finished the first chapter on "Wood". He gives the reader
>>> plenty of opportunity to "learn something"! : )
FWIW, it was Krenov's book, "The Fine Art of Cabinet Making" that I was
referring too. I've got them both on my "current reading" shelf and
sometimes I alternate. In case anyone is would like to know, something
that makes these books special is the Reverence with which he wrote
about his craft. He also wrote with a sadness about the market for
truly finely made furniture. He was a very thoughtful worker of wood.
Bill
> Dick Snyder wrote:
>> I have always designed my projects using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and
>> (lots of) eraser. I have a somewhat more complicated job I want to do
>> now. There is a design for an entertainment center in FWW that I want to
>> adapt. I would like to take the measurements from the article, enter them
>> on a computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend
>> who uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that
>> sophisticated. I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning
>> time on a CAD program unless I can get a recommendation on this group for
>> a product that one of you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper,
>> pencil, and eraser?
>>
>> TIA.
>>
>> Dick Snyder
FWIW, I like the program a lot. I am a new SketchUp user, but if you would
like to
see how I was able to use it to help model my shop (to be). Click on the
pdf at:
http://web.newsguy.com/MySite/
All of the "fancy items" were download from a library at no cost and resized
as desired.
Bill
On 4/10/2010 11:16 PM, Doug Winterburn wrote:
> By "thin film", do you mean it also had the cros (capacitance read only
> memory) instruction set as the 360/30? It was punch card size mylar
> with copper traces that were punched out on one of four sides of a
> square or some such. The first time I saw the 30 power on and the cros
> "pump up" to push the cros punch card ros together, I wondered "WTF"?
You and nearly everyone else - I've always suspected it was designed by
the same madman who designed the 407... :)
I honestly don't know how RCA implemented the instruction set or the
internals of IPL. I suspect that they may have used ROMs, because IBM
was likely to have the CROS covered every which way with patents.
Thin film refers to (yet another) logic family (like ECL, TTL, MOS,
CMOS, etc). RCA claimed it was cheaper, provided higher yields, and was
more reliable. Of course, when you asked around you discovered that
every company's technology flavor was well above average. :)
You might get a kick out of learning that the floppy disk was originally
developed to load the microcode into the ill-fated object-based FS (for
Future System) machines.
> Then there was the 360/40 with the "tros" micro programmed instruction
> set...
>
> That's the one I started with in '64.
I was away from computers from 62-65 working for Uncle Sam, but IIRC I
was introduced to the 40 (but it could have been a 50) and DEBE at the
same time. :)
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:48:57 -0400, the infamous Bill
<[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>
>>>> I've been reading James Krenov's book, "A Cabinet Makers Notebook".
>>>> I just finished the first chapter on "Wood". He gives the reader
>>>> plenty of opportunity to "learn something"! : )
>
>FWIW, it was Krenov's book, "The Fine Art of Cabinet Making" that I was
>referring too. I've got them both on my "current reading" shelf and
>sometimes I alternate. In case anyone is would like to know, something
>that makes these books special is the Reverence with which he wrote
>about his craft. He also wrote with a sadness about the market for
>truly finely made furniture. He was a very thoughtful worker of wood.
You can buy a copy for only about a grand on Amazon right now. <thud>
http://fwd4.me/LRn -no- indication that they might be signed.
Don't you hate blatant opportunists? These same 3 guys probably sold
bottled water for $25 a pint after Katrina.
--
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace
will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will
blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy,
while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
-- John Muir
Larry Jaques <[email protected]> writes:
>On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:48:57 -0400, the infamous Bill
><[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>
>>
>>>>> I've been reading James Krenov's book, "A Cabinet Makers Notebook".
>>>>> I just finished the first chapter on "Wood". He gives the reader
>>>>> plenty of opportunity to "learn something"! : )
>>
>>FWIW, it was Krenov's book, "The Fine Art of Cabinet Making" that I was
>>referring too. I've got them both on my "current reading" shelf and
>>sometimes I alternate. In case anyone is would like to know, something
>>that makes these books special is the Reverence with which he wrote
>>about his craft. He also wrote with a sadness about the market for
>>truly finely made furniture. He was a very thoughtful worker of wood.
>
>You can buy a copy for only about a grand on Amazon right now. <thud>
>http://fwd4.me/LRn -no- indication that they might be signed.
>Don't you hate blatant opportunists? These same 3 guys probably sold
>bottled water for $25 a pint after Katrina.
A fair deal is when both buyer and seller agree on a price. Amazon
only shows the seller's side. They won't get any bites at that
price.
There's a considerable difference between a non-essential book
and the substance of life (h2o).
I'd take $900+ for my copy of 'The Fine Art of Cabinetmaking' if
anyone offers ...
scott
"Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On 4/10/2010 9:05 PM, LDosser wrote:
>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>
>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing software
>>> (link in sig),
>>
>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
>
> You win - besides, the 70/45 was just a thin film approximation to a
> 360/30 (same instruction set and I/O devices, but had a sexier front
> panel) :)
Operating that 501 was like playing an organ ...
When we got the 70/45s I went to supervision. All the fun had been taken out
of operation. :(
Half decent pic here:
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/RCA/RCA.501.1958.102646273.fc.lg.jpg
Might even be me in the photo - wore a suit just like that. :()
On 4/11/2010 12:27 AM, LDosser wrote:
> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> On 4/10/2010 9:05 PM, LDosser wrote:
>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>
>>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing software
>>>> (link in sig),
>>>
>>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
>>
>> You win - besides, the 70/45 was just a thin film approximation to a
>> 360/30 (same instruction set and I/O devices, but had a sexier front
>> panel) :)
>
> Operating that 501 was like playing an organ ...
>
> When we got the 70/45s I went to supervision. All the fun had been taken
> out of operation. :(
>
> Half decent pic here:
>
> http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/RCA/RCA.501.1958.102646273.fc.lg.jpg
>
> Might even be me in the photo - wore a suit just like that. :()
Hmm - I may have seen one of those. At one point in '65 the outfit I was
working for needed more capacity so one Saturday I was loaded into a cab
with a couple dozen tapes to borrow the 70/45 at NIPSCO (Northern
Illinois Public Service Co).
They still had their pre-Spectra system (just in case) and it looked a
lot like that.
That trip was my intro to RCA's high-speed tape drives - which, as I
discovered, meant that if they glitched they could suck about 250' of
tape into a vacuum column faster than an operator could say ****, and
pack it so tight that it took a letter opener to pry out.
By the third time it'd stopped being even mildly interesting. (Hit the
COIN button, abort the run, pry the tape out of the drive, rewind the
other drives, mount a backup tape, and re-start the program. Ugh. :(
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
"Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On 4/11/2010 12:27 AM, LDosser wrote:
>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>> On 4/10/2010 9:05 PM, LDosser wrote:
>>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>
>>>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing software
>>>>> (link in sig),
>>>>
>>>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
>>>
>>> You win - besides, the 70/45 was just a thin film approximation to a
>>> 360/30 (same instruction set and I/O devices, but had a sexier front
>>> panel) :)
>>
>> Operating that 501 was like playing an organ ...
>>
>> When we got the 70/45s I went to supervision. All the fun had been taken
>> out of operation. :(
>>
>> Half decent pic here:
>>
>> http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/RCA/RCA.501.1958.102646273.fc.lg.jpg
>>
>> Might even be me in the photo - wore a suit just like that. :()
>
> Hmm - I may have seen one of those. At one point in '65 the outfit I was
> working for needed more capacity so one Saturday I was loaded into a cab
> with a couple dozen tapes to borrow the 70/45 at NIPSCO (Northern Illinois
> Public Service Co).
>
> They still had their pre-Spectra system (just in case) and it looked a lot
> like that.
>
> That trip was my intro to RCA's high-speed tape drives - which, as I
> discovered, meant that if they glitched they could suck about 250' of tape
> into a vacuum column faster than an operator could say ****, and pack it
> so tight that it took a letter opener to pry out.
>
> By the third time it'd stopped being even mildly interesting. (Hit the
> COIN button, abort the run, pry the tape out of the drive, rewind the
> other drives, mount a backup tape, and re-start the program. Ugh. :(
Yeah, those babies were Fun. We used to have contests to see how quickly you
could get all the drives off BT and then rewound - using the console. Then
there was the tape mount rodeo! And with 3/4" tape, you did some upper body
work every shift. When we got the Spectras, I wrote some cod to emulate the
tape drives using the spectra disk drives. Really speeded up the stuff we
still had to run using the 501 and 301 emulators. Drove the 501 prototype
for a couple weeks in Camden, NJ. IIRC, RCA had several in Viet Nam.
Supposedly one running in a tent, which I can believe as ours could take all
kinds of a licking and keep on ticking!
Did they have a goony bird paper tape reader? Sometimes you had to use the
eraser on the end of a pencil to keep the pt reader from snapping the tape.
Idea was to use an Unsharpened pencil - DAMHIKT! I used to be able to read
the paper tape manually.
On 4/11/2010 2:17 AM, LDosser wrote:
> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> Hmm - I may have seen one of those. At one point in '65 the outfit I
>> was working for needed more capacity so one Saturday I was loaded into
>> a cab with a couple dozen tapes to borrow the 70/45 at NIPSCO
>> (Northern Illinois Public Service Co).
Brain fart. It couldn't have been NIPSCO - must have been ComEd.
> Did they have a goony bird paper tape reader? Sometimes you had to use
> the eraser on the end of a pencil to keep the pt reader from snapping
> the tape. Idea was to use an Unsharpened pencil - DAMHIKT! I used to be
> able to read the paper tape manually.
No paper tape on the RCA systems I used (thankfully), but the home
system was tape only. The good part about the utility's system was that
they had a disk drive for the operating system. Pure luxury for a TOS
operator. :)
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
On 4/11/2010 2:01 AM, Swingman wrote:
> On 4/10/2010 8:49 PM, Morris Dovey wrote:
>
>> Tracing an image and skipping definition of contoured surfaces don't
>> work for me.
>
> The "tracing" of a component, imported into a project from an outside
> source, is routinely done as a matter of convenience and is a common
> practice to speed up a project, with any design software, and is one of
> the reasons for an "import" feature.
>
> Furthermore, it is inarguable that if the software contains the tools to
> effectively "trace" a component, it therefore has the tools/ability to
> "draw" it instead, should you chose to do so, as this software indeed does.
>
> Your argument in that regard falls flatly on its face ...
Yeah fine. Give this easy one a whirl:
Draw parabola with curve length of 96" between intersections with the
latus rectum (a line through the focus perpendicular to another line
passing through both focus and vertex). Points separated by 0.0100"
along the x-axis, and accurate to +/-0.0005". I don't care whether you
draw or trace, only that all requirements be met, so that I can export
it as a DXF (the format needed for my 'Bot) and machine it accurately.
> With regard to the 'seat", it was plainly stated why it was not
> contoured ...
Oh really? I just re-read the entire thing (4th time) and still don't
see that. Perhaps you would quote that plain statement to make it easier
for me to find.
> and, even then, for you to bring it up and pretend/insist
> that a shop drawing be a photorealistic image to have any value in
> woodworking is misleading, irrelevant, and a ploy to bolster a feeble
> argument.
I not only didn't "pretend/insist" - I never made such an assertion. I'm
not sure what exactly your problem is, but please stick to the truth.
The fact is that I don't care at all about the graphic presentation -
only that the exported DXF meet accuracy requirements. If you assumed
that I was after a pretty picture, then you assumed wrong.
> On 4/10/2010 7:42 AM, Morris Dovey wrote:
> >
> > For things that are essentially boxes - like kitchen cabinets and,
> > perhaps, your entertainment center SketchUp has acquired a
> > substantial following.
>
> > (Well, duh! I never said SketchUp was /limited/ to boxes.)
>
> OK, then ... it was an ignorant attempt to imply it.
No. There was no such attempt - ignorant or otherwise. That issue was
your contribution to the discussion - not mine.
> In short, I gave you a clear, factual and accessible example containing
> nothing remotely resembling your "...things that are essentially
> boxes...", and which nicely illustrates the ignorance of the software
> behind the remark.
Let's see. I said:
"For things that are essentially boxes - like kitchen cabinets and,
perhaps, your entertainment center SketchUp has acquired a substantial
following."
Which part is false or misleading? - or are you in a snit because I
omitted other capabilities you think the OP is likely to need for his
entertainment center?
> Your arguments thus far do nothing to disprove that.
Eh? Why should I have any interest in proving or disproving anything?
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:05:03 -0700, LDosser wrote:
> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>
>
>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing software
>> (link in sig),
>
> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
I'll put in a Univac and a Ramac :-).
--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
Larry Blanchard wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:05:03 -0700, LDosser wrote:
>
>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>
>>
>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing software
>>> (link in sig),
>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
>
> I'll put in a Univac and a Ramac :-).
OK, so throw in the Philco 2000, too...
--
Dick Snyder wrote:
>>> computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend who
>>> uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that
>>> sophisticated.
Sketchup is quite sophisticated and easy to use, once you learn how to
use it. Your friend either didn't spend the time to learn it (most
likely) or is using cad to design something way, way, way more
sophisticated than an "entertainment center" Having said that, cad
programs simply are not all that easy to learn, you must invest a good
bit of effort to learn how they work. Many people go to school to learn
this crap. Sketchup can be learned on line, no school needed.
>>> I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time on a CAD
>>> program
Money is a non-issue as Sketchup is free. Don't let the $600 for the
pro version fool you, the "basic" or free version does more, way more
than any common woodworker needs. And the pro version adds about nothing
useful for the average wood worker. You can export your drawings to
AutoCad, for example... If you have a $10,000 copy of AutoCad laying
around, you might need that ability.
>>> unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a product that one of
>>> you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil, and eraser?
I would guess of of now, more woodworkers use Sketchup as their design
program than any other software. This is really good because the
internet is chock full of free information on its use, as in detailed
tutorials, and components like swivel casters or full blown drawings of
things like entertainment centers.
>> First you take the word of someone else instead of making up your own mind
>> about a particular program; then you don't want to spend money, or your
>> time, on learning a skill to do what you are asking others to advise you
>> on?
> Boy that is kind of hostile response.
Thats unusual for Swingman. He is the one to ask about Sketchup. He
uses it commercially to build everything from full kitchens to complete
houses. He has the pro version so he is the one that can, and will tell
you you probably don't need to spend any cash on that, but is the only
one I know of in this rec that has in depth experience with both the
free, and the pro version.
> If I had taken the word of my friend,
> I wouldn't have bothered with the post. I just don't want to invest a large
> amount of time learning a tool if it can't do the job.
Most that use Sketchup have invested a lot of time learning it. Most
are self taught, so that makes it a bit of work, but, the internet is
full of good tutorials that will get you going fairly fast, IF you take
your time, and loose some of the preconceived notions that thwart
learning something as complicated (and free) as this, you will get there.
It's best to work through these tutorials step by step, pausing and
switching back and forth.
I know because I started, quit, started, quit 4 times before I figured
it out, and most of the problems were with my preconceptions of what a
free program would be able to do. Just about every limitation I
*thought* it had turned out to be wrong, the limitation was with me, not
sketchup.
The replies I have
> seen so far indicate that it is worth my time to it out.
I've been around woodworking and computers for a very long time, and I
can emphatically say yes, it is worth the time. If you're building
kitchens cabinets, living room furniture, tables, chairs, entertainment
centers, computer stations, round stuff, square stuff or about anything
related to basic cabinetmaking, Sketchup is your tool for designing. It
can draw quickly to exact dimensions, show you pretty much what the
finished project will look like, print out pictures in as much detail as
you like and so on.
My big tip for you is if you think it should be able to do something,
and think it can't, you most likely need to learn more about it. Ask
here, or search the net, you eventually will learn it can do most
anything you need quickly and easily.
People like Leon and Swingman (and me) would not be wasting our time
telling people it is a great woodworkers tool if it wasn't. The
naysayers almost always have some combination of lack of knowledge,
investment in other pricey software, or some crazy, over the top needs
that most wood workers don't really have.
YouTube has a lot of good stuff for the beginner:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPHcnIJhcT0&feature=related
Go through some of that, and get familiar with the tools, learn some hot
keys and so on. Once OK with that, I liked this guys methods to build a
simple bookcase:
http://garykatz.blip.tv/file/2375765/
--
Jack
You Can't Fix Stupid, but You Can Vote it Out!
http://jbstein.com
On 4/11/2010 9:32 AM, Swingman wrote:
> On 4/11/2010 4:45 AM, Morris Dovey wrote:
>> On 4/11/2010 2:01 AM, Swingman wrote:
>>> On 4/10/2010 8:49 PM, Morris Dovey wrote:
>>>
>>>> Tracing an image and skipping definition of contoured surfaces don't
>>>> work for me.
>>>
>>> The "tracing" of a component, imported into a project from an outside
>>> source, is routinely done as a matter of convenience and is a common
>>> practice to speed up a project, with any design software, and is one of
>>> the reasons for an "import" feature.
>>>
>>> Furthermore, it is inarguable that if the software contains the tools to
>>> effectively "trace" a component, it therefore has the tools/ability to
>>> "draw" it instead, should you chose to do so, as this software indeed
>>> does.
>>>
>>> Your argument in that regard falls flatly on its face ...
>>
>> Yeah fine. Give this easy one a whirl:
>>
>> Draw parabola with curve length of 96" between intersections with the
>> latus rectum (a line through the focus perpendicular to another line
>> passing through both focus and vertex). Points separated by 0.0100"
>> along the x-axis, and accurate to +/-0.0005". I don't care whether you
>> draw or trace, only that all requirements be met, so that I can export
>> it as a DXF (the format needed for my 'Bot) and machine it accurately.
>
> Obfuscation par excellence ... and totally, and ridiculously, irrelevant.
Perhaps irrelevant to you, but has real relevance to others (a _lot_ of
others!) Photos here:
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/Stirling/Heat.html
It's a real project. No one much cares whether it's relevant to you. I
was merely curious to find out if you and SketchUp were up to the
challenge - and received a clear enough answer.
>>> Your arguments thus far do nothing to disprove that.
>>
>> Eh? Why should I have any interest in proving or disproving anything?
>
> Yep, it's indeed a mystery why you bothered in the first place. You've
> made it plain in the past that you have little use for the software;
> that you don't use it; have minimum experience with it and are ignorant
> of its capabilites for the most part.
I've made clear that I felt it seemed to be a weak tool for some real
problems I was trying to use it to solve, and when I did so I limited my
comments to my specific problem.
Back when I had access to a.b.p.w, I posted SketchUp solutions (the last
I can recall was for dado set storage) and have had SketchUp
illustrations on my web site for quite some time - along with a credit
that some of the drawings had been produced using SketchUp. See
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/LLJ/
If a couple of years of use is "minimum experience", then your statement
is true, otherwise false.
I'll assume you're telling the truth, and so will feel free to warn
newbies that the resident SketchUp disciple pronounced two years of use
"minimal experience".
> So, what's behind this obsession with taking snide shots at every
> opportunity that presents itself?
You exaggerate - I've passed on most of the opportunities, but now that
I know you're so emotionally involved I'll try to do better. :)
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
"Doug Winterburn" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> LDosser wrote:
>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>> On 4/11/2010 12:27 AM, LDosser wrote:
>>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>> On 4/10/2010 9:05 PM, LDosser wrote:
>>>>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing
>>>>>>> software
>>>>>>> (link in sig),
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
>>>>>
>>>>> You win - besides, the 70/45 was just a thin film approximation to a
>>>>> 360/30 (same instruction set and I/O devices, but had a sexier front
>>>>> panel) :)
>>>>
>>>> Operating that 501 was like playing an organ ...
>>>>
>>>> When we got the 70/45s I went to supervision. All the fun had been
>>>> taken
>>>> out of operation. :(
>>>>
>>>> Half decent pic here:
>>>>
>>>> http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/RCA/RCA.501.1958.102646273.fc.lg.jpg
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Might even be me in the photo - wore a suit just like that. :()
>>>
>>> Hmm - I may have seen one of those. At one point in '65 the outfit I
>>> was working for needed more capacity so one Saturday I was loaded into
>>> a cab with a couple dozen tapes to borrow the 70/45 at NIPSCO
>>> (Northern Illinois Public Service Co).
>>>
>>> They still had their pre-Spectra system (just in case) and it looked a
>>> lot like that.
>>>
>>> That trip was my intro to RCA's high-speed tape drives - which, as I
>>> discovered, meant that if they glitched they could suck about 250' of
>>> tape into a vacuum column faster than an operator could say ****, and
>>> pack it so tight that it took a letter opener to pry out.
>>>
>>> By the third time it'd stopped being even mildly interesting. (Hit the
>>> COIN button, abort the run, pry the tape out of the drive, rewind the
>>> other drives, mount a backup tape, and re-start the program. Ugh. :(
>>
>> Yeah, those babies were Fun. We used to have contests to see how quickly
>> you could get all the drives off BT and then rewound - using the
>> console. Then there was the tape mount rodeo! And with 3/4" tape, you
>> did some upper body work every shift. When we got the Spectras, I wrote
>> some cod to emulate the tape drives using the spectra disk drives.
>> Really speeded up the stuff we still had to run using the 501 and 301
>> emulators. Drove the 501 prototype for a couple weeks in Camden, NJ.
>> IIRC, RCA had several in Viet Nam. Supposedly one running in a tent,
>> which I can believe as ours could take all kinds of a licking and keep
>> on ticking!
>>
>> Did they have a goony bird paper tape reader? Sometimes you had to use
>> the eraser on the end of a pencil to keep the pt reader from snapping
>> the tape. Idea was to use an Unsharpened pencil - DAMHIKT! I used to be
>> able to read the paper tape manually.
>
> Ah, the tape emulator idea. We had a 360/40 and got a 7094 free from
> the Navy. Also got an IBM TICU (Tape Intersystem Connecting Unit). It
> connected to the 7094 and looked exactly like 10 tape drives. It also
> connected to the 360 and didn't look like anything without some code
> work. I got the job of writing the tape emulator program on the 360.
> We were running OS/MFT and I had all of 8K for code and buffers. The
> challenge was the 7090 could read/write 32K words of 36 bits in one
> whack. It was an interesting I/O chaining challenge with CCW's imbedded
> in the disk buffers. It also depended on a seek of one cylinder taking
> no more time than one rotation of the disk and not having any
> re-assigned tracks. Those were the days...
We thought they'd never end ... As late as 1983 I was still keying stuff in
on the front panel of an SDS Sigma 7 - using my nose. :o) Had to Manually
calculate overlays and break up the code to fit.
Worked on a port of Unix to PDP Micro J/11 only to find out two years later
that the company hadn't licensed it from ATT. :(
"Larry Blanchard" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:05:03 -0700, LDosser wrote:
>
>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>
>>
>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing software
>>> (link in sig),
>>
>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
>
> I'll put in a Univac and a Ramac :-).
I'll raise you punchboards ...
On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:44:35 -0700, LDosser wrote:
> "Larry Blanchard" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:05:03 -0700, LDosser wrote:
>>
>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>
>>>
>>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing
>>>> software (link in sig),
>>>
>>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
>>
>> I'll put in a Univac and a Ramac :-).
>
> I'll raise you punchboards ...
402,403,407,509,552,077?
--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
"Larry Blanchard" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:44:35 -0700, LDosser wrote:
>
>> "Larry Blanchard" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>> On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:05:03 -0700, LDosser wrote:
>>>
>>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing
>>>>> software (link in sig),
>>>>
>>>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
>>>
>>> I'll put in a Univac and a Ramac :-).
>>
>> I'll raise you punchboards ...
>
> 402,403,407,509,552,077?
>
> --
> Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
407 - but only when forced to = tab shop manager out sick!
On 4/11/2010 5:58 PM, Swingman wrote:
> On another subject, what are you hearing that is new about "spray on"
> solar panels?
I'm not much involved with PV panels, but I do try to keep an eye on
news:alt.solar.photovoltaic for developments - and the concensus there
seems to be that coatings aren't yet ready for prime time.
> This was big news about five years ago in the green building seminars,
> and then disappeared into the noise.
Well, it could be that the folks in a.s.p were right, or it might be
that producers were pricing products higher than the market was willing
to pay for what they got, or even that the expectation of falling prices
for silicon panels made the technology less attractive - or all of the
above.
> Went to another seminar a couple of weeks back and it was brought up by
> the organizers again as a "rapidly emerging technology"?
Methinks that's a favorite label for "anything that might make me some
green in this lousy economy". :)
If you come across something that looks/sounds really good, get a sample
and check it out. If that's not possible, get a demonstration. If they
can't even do that, keep your wallet in your pocket and invite 'em to
call you when they're ready.
> Seems that some manufacturers are coming out with windows coated with a
> spray on product?
Why not? Just remember that only so much energy is delivered to each
square foot. Current silicon panel efficiencies run in the 10% ballpark,
so purchasers are going to need substantial window area to get
worthwhile amounts of electricity.
It wasn't by accident that I chose to build passive solar heating panels
- where efficiencies in the 80% bracket are reasonable.
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
"Robatoy" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:b31d1204-9b8d-442d-b6b4-73a37699b456@b23g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...
On Apr 12, 1:23 am, Doug Winterburn <[email protected]> wrote:
> [email protected] wrote:
> > On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 21:16:41 -0700, Doug Winterburn
> > <[email protected]>
> > wrote:
>
> >> Morris Dovey wrote:
> >>> On 4/10/2010 9:05 PM, LDosser wrote:
> >>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >>>>news:[email protected]...
>
> >>>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing
> >>>>> software
> >>>>> (link in sig),
> >>>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
> >>> You win - besides, the 70/45 was just a thin film approximation to a
> >>> 360/30 (same instruction set and I/O devices, but had a sexier front
> >>> panel) :)
>
> >> By "thin film", do you mean it also had the cros (capacitance read only
> >> memory) instruction set as the 360/30? It was punch card size mylar
> >> with copper traces that were punched out on one of four sides of a
> >> squeare or some such. The first time I saw the 30 power on and the cros
> >> "pump up" to push the cros punch card ros together, I wondered "WTF"?
>
> >> Then there was the 360/40 with the "tros" micro programmed instruction
> >> set...
>
> > Then there was the 360/75 with no microcode.
>
> >> That's the one I started with in '64.
>
> > Must have been a first. The /360 was announced in '64. I didn't use the
> > /75
> > until '67 (I was a Junior in high school ;).
>
> It was an IBM punch card I/O Fortran IBM machine we used in college in
> '64 - can't remember the IBM model number.
>
> Akshooly, it was '66 when I went to work for IBM and went to 360 OS
> school in Endicott (DOS), and then Poughkeepsie (OS). Classrooms full
> of ashtrays and smoke so thick, you could barely see the blackboard and
> the instructor with his [bad] hairpiece. Cigs were $0.35 a pack in the
> vending machines in the hallways with 2 cents taped to each pack making
> them $0.33.
Oh..MAN!! Do I remember my days at U of Waterloo (yes, home of the
Blackberry) I had a prof who smoked the best part of a pack of
Gauloises in a single session. Brilliant guy (all about dithering pcm)
but he wore a tweed jacket and stank....and I mean STANK.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ever on the Paris Metro in the 60's?? We're talking STINK. Galois, stale
wine and BO! Galois, BTW, were real Lung Busters.
<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:44:35 -0700, "LDosser" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>"Larry Blanchard" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>news:[email protected]...
>>> On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:05:03 -0700, LDosser wrote:
>>>
>>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing software
>>>>> (link in sig),
>>>>
>>>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
>>>
>>> I'll put in a Univac and a Ramac :-).
>>
>>I'll raise you punchboards ...
>
> ...on an analog computer.
Nah, but I've touched the Enigma ...
On 4/11/2010 11:02 PM, [email protected] wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:26:41 -0500, Morris Dovey<[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> You might get a kick out of learning that the floppy disk was originally
>> developed to load the microcode into the ill-fated object-based FS (for
>> Future System) machines.
>
> Nah, floppies were used on the 370/158s to load microcode, well before FS.
Are you sure? The 158 was announced in August 2, 1972 about the time
Dept 71J in East Fishkill received a bare (no electronics) /Igar/ drive
from Boulder, and at that time the folks at Boulder were still having
difficulties producing diskettes (something about the jacket lining
abrading the oxide).
In 1972, D/71J was working on the UC0 and UC.5 controllers and firmware
drivers for not only /Igar/, but also for /Gulliver/ (the new sealed
hard drive from Hursley), /Lynx/ (a new band printer to succeed the
print-chain 1403), and an SDLC adapter - and all of these were being
developed (primarily) as building blocks for FS.
It was the guy across the hall from me who came up with the
motor+geneva+leadscrew drive to implement seeks (clack, clack, clack) on
/Igar/, which was later replaced with a (quiet) voice coil seek mechanism.
They all underwent final product test at the same time in Kingston
during, IIRC, 1974. We worked 12 hours on and twelve hours off with a
long commute, through that entire 6-week test process - it was an
exhausting experience (I remember waking up one morning on the way back
from Kingston - driving down the shoulder of US9 doing 65).
The evolved /Igar/ drive graduated as the 33FD. I still have some of the
diskettes. :)
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
On 13 Apr 2010 20:38:49 GMT, the infamous [email protected] (Scott
Lurndal) scrawled the following:
>Larry Jaques <[email protected]> writes:
>>On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:48:57 -0400, the infamous Bill
>><[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>>
>>>
>>>>>> I've been reading James Krenov's book, "A Cabinet Makers Notebook".
>>>>>> I just finished the first chapter on "Wood". He gives the reader
>>>>>> plenty of opportunity to "learn something"! : )
>>>
>>>FWIW, it was Krenov's book, "The Fine Art of Cabinet Making" that I was
>>>referring too. I've got them both on my "current reading" shelf and
>>>sometimes I alternate. In case anyone is would like to know, something
>>>that makes these books special is the Reverence with which he wrote
>>>about his craft. He also wrote with a sadness about the market for
>>>truly finely made furniture. He was a very thoughtful worker of wood.
>>
>>You can buy a copy for only about a grand on Amazon right now. <thud>
>>http://fwd4.me/LRn -no- indication that they might be signed.
>>Don't you hate blatant opportunists? These same 3 guys probably sold
>>bottled water for $25 a pint after Katrina.
>
>A fair deal is when both buyer and seller agree on a price. Amazon
>only shows the seller's side. They won't get any bites at that
>price.
Especially when other copies are available from the same page for $17
and change. <g>
>There's a considerable difference between a non-essential book
>and the substance of life (h2o).
Are you saying that these three sellers are _not_ sleazes, trying to
take advantage of Krenov's recent passing?
>I'd take $900+ for my copy of 'The Fine Art of Cabinetmaking' if
>anyone offers ...
...
-
Press HERE to arm. (Release to detonate.)
-----------
On Apr 13, 10:30=A0pm, Larry Jaques <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:39:53 -0700 (PDT), the infamous Robatoy
> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>
> >On Apr 13, 11:02=A0am, Bill <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> Robatoy wrote:
> >> > They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>
> >> One could probably find a more respectful way to describe what is goin=
g
> >> on. =A0You're basically casting a black shadow over All Artists...
>
> >There are waaaay too many people who call themselves artists. They do
> >all the casting of the black shadows all by themselves.
>
> 3 off the top:
> What you don't like that Meg Belichick was paid $4k for her work
> "mudflap", which consisted of used rectangular rubber sheets and some
> bailing wire? =A0
What colour was it? Makes a difference in price.
> You don't consider scat to be art? =A0
Meh... you seen one pile of shit, you've seen them all.
>And handing out $5
> bills to passersby isn't considered performance art? =A0What's wrong
> with you, Toy?
FIVE bucks only? What a cheap-ass.
>
> All I can say ishttp://www.poopreport.com/BMnewswire/complex_shit.html
>
I would like to know what compelled you enter ANY word in your search
engine that took you to that link?
"Robatoy" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:fac8edc0-c289-4a5c-90ba-c67e90d41174@x12g2000yqx.googlegroups.com...
On Apr 13, 10:30 pm, Larry Jaques <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:39:53 -0700 (PDT), the infamous Robatoy
> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>
> >On Apr 13, 11:02 am, Bill <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> Robatoy wrote:
> >> > They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>
> >> One could probably find a more respectful way to describe what is going
> >> on. You're basically casting a black shadow over All Artists...
>
> >There are waaaay too many people who call themselves artists. They do
> >all the casting of the black shadows all by themselves.
>
> 3 off the top:
> What you don't like that Meg Belichick was paid $4k for her work
> "mudflap", which consisted of used rectangular rubber sheets and some
> bailing wire?
What colour was it? Makes a difference in price.
> You don't consider scat to be art?
Meh... you seen one pile of shit, you've seen them all.
>And handing out $5
> bills to passersby isn't considered performance art? What's wrong
> with you, Toy?
FIVE bucks only? What a cheap-ass.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where and When?
On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:39:53 -0700 (PDT), the infamous Robatoy
<[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>On Apr 13, 11:02 am, Bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Robatoy wrote:
>> > They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>>
>> One could probably find a more respectful way to describe what is going
>> on. You're basically casting a black shadow over All Artists...
>
>There are waaaay too many people who call themselves artists. They do
>all the casting of the black shadows all by themselves.
3 off the top:
What you don't like that Meg Belichick was paid $4k for her work
"mudflap", which consisted of used rectangular rubber sheets and some
bailing wire? You don't consider scat to be art? And handing out $5
bills to passersby isn't considered performance art? What's wrong
with you, Toy?
All I can say is
http://www.poopreport.com/BMnewswire/complex_shit.html
--
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace
will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will
blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy,
while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
-- John Muir
On 4/12/2010 12:23 AM, Doug Winterburn wrote:
> It was an IBM punch card I/O Fortran IBM machine we used in college in
> '64 - can't remember the IBM model number.
Hmm - sounds like my favorite old machine: an IBM-1130. If so, you
probably had a 1442 card reader/punch and an 1132 [POS!] printer to go with.
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
"Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On 4/11/2010 11:02 PM, [email protected] wrote:
>> On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:26:41 -0500, Morris Dovey<[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> You might get a kick out of learning that the floppy disk was originally
>>> developed to load the microcode into the ill-fated object-based FS (for
>>> Future System) machines.
>>
>> Nah, floppies were used on the 370/158s to load microcode, well before
>> FS.
>
> Are you sure? The 158 was announced in August 2, 1972 about the time Dept
> 71J in East Fishkill
Ever run into a guy name of Dick Gomez back there?
On 4/12/2010 8:26 AM, [email protected] wrote:
> On Apr 12, 2:20 am, Morris Dovey<[email protected]> wrote:
>> On 4/12/2010 12:23 AM, Doug Winterburn wrote:
>>
>>> It was an IBM punch card I/O Fortran IBM machine we used in college in
>>> '64 - can't remember the IBM model number.
>>
>> Hmm - sounds like my favorite old machine: an IBM-1130. If so, you
>> probably had a 1442 card reader/punch and an 1132 [POS!] printer to go with.
>
> The original personal computer. ;-)
Y'know, there may be more truth to that than anyone suspects. :)
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
On 4/12/2010 8:24 AM, [email protected] wrote:
> I'm not sure when they were introduced into the 370s, but yeah, they
> were used for /158 microcode. I remember interviewing at CDC in early
> '74. They had a /158 with its covers off, with a bunch of people
> reverse-engineering the floppy drive. The /158 was their pride and
> joy, which I thought odd. The whole place was "odd" and I told them
> so before I left (didn't get an offer ;).
You're right - I went digging and found that there had been a /Minnow/
R/O floppy drive with diminished capacity released in 1972. I'm guessing
it was an early /Igar/ prototype.
Yuppers on the oddness - my impression was that the CDC management team
had never quite been able to decide what they wanted to do when they
grew up. At one point they were even in the windmill business. :)
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:42:35 -0400, the infamous "Lee Michaels"
<leemichaels*nadaspam*@comcast.net> scrawled the following:
>> "Larry Jaques" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:44:56 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
>>> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>>>
>>>>Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
>>>
>>> Andy Warhol's work SUCKED. He and Picasso can go piss up a rope.
>>
>Do you have any idea how much a pissed on rope by Warhol or Picasso would go
>for in today's market?
>
>With modern DNA testing, to test its "provenance", it could go for
>MILLIONS!!
>
>Just saying...
And it would be equally as artful.
Just saying...
--
STOP THE SLAUGHTER! Boycott Baby Oil!
ExtremelyAvg wrote:
> There is another free option, but I should mention that there is a
> bit of a learning curve to get started. The virtual world of Second
> Life allows one to build. You may enter exact dimensions, create
> multiple pieces, and it is free. There are tons of in world
> tutorials. I made my living for 3 years building spaces in SL for
> corporate clients, so that is where I design most of my stuff. The
> nice thing about SL is that you could build in groups, if your
> woodworking friends also joined. As for curves and such, no problem.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suGykJIBLZU This is a video showing
> things that either I personally built or my workers built. There are
> lots of bits of furniture.
>
> I also love Google Sketchup and 3Ds Max.
>
> Good luck,
>
> Brian
> http://extremelyaverage.com
Brian, Look like interesting stuff! What is the best way to learn a
little more about how to use it?
Bill
On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:29:27 -0700, LDosser wrote:
>>>> I'll put in a Univac and a Ramac :-).
>>>
>>> I'll raise you punchboards ...
>>
>> 402,403,407,509,552,077?
>>
>> --
>> Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
>
> 407 - but only when forced to = tab shop manager out sick!
Another operator and I once wired a 407 plugboard to list missing checks
for payroll reconciliation. The checks were punched cards so we were
running them through and listing the ones that weren't there! IBM said
it couldn't be done. There were so many wires (including quite a few one
way wires) we had to pull some and put in the "permanent" wires so we
could get a cover on the board.
It worked fine for several months and suddenly stopped working. We
accosted the IBM CE and he confessed he'd done a "tuneup" and found the
timing was a little off so he fixed it. We convinced him to put it back
the way it was. Thereafter, for at least as long as I worked there,
there was a sign on the 407 that threatened immediate beheading for
anyone who touched it!
BTW, the first payroll system written for the Univac took 8-9 days to
run. For a weekly payroll! Seems table lookups on mag tape were just a
mite too slow :-).
--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 22:23:31 -0700, Doug Winterburn wrote:
>> Then there was the 360/75 with no microcode.
>>
>>> That's the one I started with in '64.
>>
>> Must have been a first. The /360 was announced in '64. I didn't use
>> the /75 until '67 (I was a Junior in high school ;).
>
> It was an IBM punch card I/O Fortran IBM machine we used in college in
> '64 - can't remember the IBM model number.
Might have been an 1130 or maybe a 360/20 which came out about the same
time. But '64 does seem a little early - IIRC, both came out in '65 or
'66.
--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:18:42 -0500, Morris Dovey wrote:
> You're right - I went digging and found that there had been a /Minnow/
> R/O floppy drive with diminished capacity released in 1972. I'm guessing
> it was an early /Igar/ prototype.
I'm beginning to wonder how many old computer jocks and card pushers
there are in this group :-). Is there some mystical connection between
computers and woodworking?
BTW, to see the 1st computer I programmed (and helped assemble) go to:
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61.html#TOC
and click on Readix. I worked on one at Science Research Associates in
the late '50s.
--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:33:55 -0400, the infamous "J. Clarke"
<[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>On 4/14/2010 11:39 PM, Steve wrote:
>> On 2010-04-13 22:30:35 -0400, Larry Jaques <[email protected]>
>> said:
>>
>>> All I can say is
>>> http://www.poopreport.com/BMnewswire/complex_shit.html
>>
>> http://gizmodo.com/205693/japanese-golden-poop-cellphone-charm
>
>The more I learn about the Japanese, the more I realize that they are
>very strange.
I think that may be an Anime reference of some sort, but weird is
global, mon. Global.
--
STOP THE SLAUGHTER! Boycott Baby Oil!
On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 20:08:30 -0700 (PDT), the infamous Robatoy
<[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>On Apr 13, 10:30 pm, Larry Jaques <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:39:53 -0700 (PDT), the infamous Robatoy
>> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>>
>> >On Apr 13, 11:02 am, Bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >> Robatoy wrote:
>> >> > They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>>
>> >> One could probably find a more respectful way to describe what is going
>> >> on. You're basically casting a black shadow over All Artists...
>>
>> >There are waaaay too many people who call themselves artists. They do
>> >all the casting of the black shadows all by themselves.
>>
>> 3 off the top:
>> What you don't like that Meg Belichick was paid $4k for her work
>> "mudflap", which consisted of used rectangular rubber sheets and some
>> bailing wire?
>
>What colour was it? Makes a difference in price.
Black rubber with steel wire, $4,000 "art" http://fwd4.me/Lay
http://fwd4.me/Law Here's one with chrome and everything for only
$16.99.
"Art" has a 2354.326% markup? Gimme a break.
>> All I can say ishttp://www.poopreport.com/BMnewswire/complex_shit.html
>>
>
>I would like to know what compelled you enter ANY word in your search
>engine that took you to that link?
Proving a point about "artists" is all you need to know.
--
STOP THE SLAUGHTER! Boycott Baby Oil!
On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:12:07 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
<[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>"Lee Michaels" <leemichaels*nadaspam*@comcast.net> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>>> "Larry Jaques" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:44:56 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
>>>> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>>>>
>>>>>Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
>>>>
>>>> Andy Warhol's work SUCKED. He and Picasso can go piss up a rope.
>>>
>> Do you have any idea how much a pissed on rope by Warhol or Picasso would
>> go for in today's market?
>>
>> With modern DNA testing, to test its "provenance", it could go for
>> MILLIONS!!
>>
>> Just saying...
>
>But how would one prove it had been pissed Up?
Anything they made had a "pissed-up-a-rope quality" to it.
It's integral to their crap. No proof necessary.
--
STOP THE SLAUGHTER! Boycott Baby Oil!
On 4/12/2010 12:18 PM, Larry Blanchard wrote:
> I'm beginning to wonder how many old computer jocks and card pushers
> there are in this group :-). Is there some mystical connection between
> computers and woodworking?
Good call! I've been convinced for a very long time that systems design
and woodworking use the same circuits. People who're good at one seem to
have a shot at being good at the other.
> BTW, to see the 1st computer I programmed (and helped assemble) go to:
>
> http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61.html#TOC
>
> and click on Readix. I worked on one at Science Research Associates in
> the late '50s.
I like that you don't even have to open the covers to see which board is
on fire. :)
I started programming in '59 on a Bendix G-15, but it was definitely
_not_ as impressive looking as the one in the BRL Report - and it did
require opening the covers to see what was roasting...
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
Morris Dovey wrote:
> On 4/12/2010 12:18 PM, Larry Blanchard wrote:
>
>> I'm beginning to wonder how many old computer jocks and card pushers
>> there are in this group :-). Is there some mystical connection between
>> computers and woodworking?
I guess I qualify except I don't consider myself "old"!!! :)
I actually used paper-tape (over a dumb-terminal) before I "graduated"
to punch cards.
I fully expect that my post-HS woodworking projects will be better my HS
projects of about 30 years ago, but it's hard to explain "why" in words.
I'm the same person, but somehow I'm a more learned person--that's one
of great things about staying young is you get to keep on learning! :)
Bill
Bill wrote:
> I'm the same person, but somehow I'm a more learned person--that's one
> of great things about staying young is you get to keep on learning! :)
>
> Bill
I've been reading James Krenov's book, "A Cabinet Makers Notebook".
I just finished the first chapter on "Wood". He gives the reader
plenty of opportunity to "learn something"! : )
During my own reflection I observed that the beauty of using tools
is in using them well. They sing their own song (but please don't
tell anyone I said that)!
I can solder a good joint too (ya gotta make it flow, baby flow!--my
shop teacher sang that alot).
Lew always says to "have fun"...I think I'm right on track!
Bill
On 4/12/2010 8:07 PM, Robert Bonomi wrote:
> In article<[email protected]>,
> Morris Dovey<[email protected]> wrote:
>> Yuppers on the oddness - my impression was that the CDC management team
>> had never quite been able to decide what they wanted to do when they
>> grew up. At one point they were even in the windmill business. :)
>
> And they built computers that couldn't add!
>
> They faked addition by 'complement and subtract'. (true!!)
>
> That said, they were some of my favorite hardware to work on.
Was it the IBM-650 that was nicknamed the "CADET" for Can't Add, Doesn't
Even Try?
The only CDC machine I ever used was the 6500 at Purdue and it seemed to
do crank right along fair reliably.
> The high-level architecture was positively elegant in it's simplicity and
> regularity.
>
> the closer to the hardware they got, the *stranger* things got.
Speaking of Burroughs... :o)
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:07:05 -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:
>>Yuppers on the oddness - my impression was that the CDC management team
>>had never quite been able to decide what they wanted to do when they
>>grew up. At one point they were even in the windmill business. :)
>
> And they built computers that couldn't add!
>
> They faked addition by 'complement and subtract'. (true!!)
>
>
> That said, they were some of my favorite hardware to work on.
>
> The high-level architecture was positively elegant in it's simplicity
> and regularity.
There was a saying back in those days that the perfect computer would
have CPU by CDC, peripherals by IBM, and software by GE.
--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
"Larry Blanchard" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:18:42 -0500, Morris Dovey wrote:
>
>> You're right - I went digging and found that there had been a /Minnow/
>> R/O floppy drive with diminished capacity released in 1972. I'm guessing
>> it was an early /Igar/ prototype.
>
> I'm beginning to wonder how many old computer jocks and card pushers
> there are in this group :-). Is there some mystical connection between
> computers and woodworking?
>
> BTW, to see the 1st computer I programmed (and helped assemble) go to:
>
> http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61.html#TOC
>
> and click on Readix. I worked on one at Science Research Associates in
> the late '50s.
Did some work with SRA in the early 80s ... Right after I spent an inspiring
year at CACI :(
"Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Bill wrote:
>
>> I'm the same person, but somehow I'm a more learned person--that's one of
>> great things about staying young is you get to keep on learning! :)
>>
>> Bill
>
>
> I've been reading James Krenov's book, "A Cabinet Makers Notebook".
> I just finished the first chapter on "Wood". He gives the reader
> plenty of opportunity to "learn something"! : )
>
> During my own reflection I observed that the beauty of using tools
> is in using them well. They sing their own song (but please don't
> tell anyone I said that)!
I'll get roasted for this, but it seems to me Krenov made a career out of
one medicine cabinet. A very nice cabinet and one I wish I'd done, but the
same one over and over. Variations on a theme. Same as some authors, James
Patterson comes to mind, write the same book over and over.
"Larry Blanchard" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:07:05 -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:
>
>>>Yuppers on the oddness - my impression was that the CDC management team
>>>had never quite been able to decide what they wanted to do when they
>>>grew up. At one point they were even in the windmill business. :)
>>
>> And they built computers that couldn't add!
>>
>> They faked addition by 'complement and subtract'. (true!!)
>>
>>
>> That said, they were some of my favorite hardware to work on.
>>
>> The high-level architecture was positively elegant in it's simplicity
>> and regularity.
>
> There was a saying back in those days that the perfect computer would
> have CPU by CDC, peripherals by IBM, and software by GE.
GE? The Datanet 30?
"Larry Blanchard" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:29:27 -0700, LDosser wrote:
>
>>>>> I'll put in a Univac and a Ramac :-).
>>>>
>>>> I'll raise you punchboards ...
>>>
>>> 402,403,407,509,552,077?
>>>
>>> --
>>> Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
>>
>> 407 - but only when forced to = tab shop manager out sick!
>
> Another operator and I once wired a 407 plugboard to list missing checks
> for payroll reconciliation. The checks were punched cards so we were
> running them through and listing the ones that weren't there! IBM said
> it couldn't be done. There were so many wires (including quite a few one
> way wires) we had to pull some and put in the "permanent" wires so we
> could get a cover on the board.
Used to Stand on the wires to flatten the mess out!! And, invariably, you'd
need one more wire and everything left was too short ...
>
> It worked fine for several months and suddenly stopped working. We
> accosted the IBM CE and he confessed he'd done a "tuneup" and found the
> timing was a little off so he fixed it. We convinced him to put it back
> the way it was. Thereafter, for at least as long as I worked there,
> there was a sign on the 407 that threatened immediate beheading for
> anyone who touched it!
The prototype RCA 501 would sometimes come up with a write memory error and
I complained to the tech. He wander back along the rows of cabinets with a
ball peen hammer banging on doors and yelling "That fix it?" Riffling boards
was another favorite for fixing glitches in those days.
>
> BTW, the first payroll system written for the Univac took 8-9 days to
> run. For a weekly payroll! Seems table lookups on mag tape were just a
> mite too slow :-).
Our year end stuff used to Print for a week. Just Print. What a BORE.
[email protected] wrote:
> On Apr 13, 11:18 am, Bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Robatoy wrote:
>>> They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>> Economics suggests that as long as marginal gain exceeds marginal cost,
>> there will be production. That's as simple as it gets.
>
> ....as long as there is nothing else with a higher profit.
>
I viewed "forsaken opportunities" as part of the marginal cost. Not
being a bonafide economist, I'm not sure whether this is allowed or not.
One probably shouldn't mix micro and macro economics, no?
Bill
Robatoy wrote:
> On Apr 13, 11:02 am, Bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Robatoy wrote:
>>> They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>> One could probably find a more respectful way to describe what is going
>> on. You're basically casting a black shadow over All Artists...
>>
>> Bill
>
>
> There are waaaay too many people who call themselves artists. They do
> all the casting of the black shadows all by themselves.
To which "waaay too many people" are you referring, and what black
shadows are they casting? Let's nail down who you're PO'ed about! : )
On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:54:58 -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:
> It took a while to establish cause-and-effect, because *nobody* was
> willing to believe that that 'innocent little job" -- nothing more than
> 4 standard statements in the system control language -- could _possibly_
> be the culprit. Until they ran it as the _only_ job in the system, and
> watched the machine crash.
>
> The entire job consisted of:
> 1) request a tape mount
> 2) copy a file from disk to the tape
> 3) rewind the tape
> 4) copy from the tape back to a new file.
The original Univac I had tape drives that maintained tension with
springs and pulleys rather than vacuum columns. Those drives, as well as
the vacuum column model that replaced them on Univac II, could read both
forwards and backwards. There were 10 drives.
One of the programmers (no, not me) wrote a program that issued a write
command, followed by a read backwards, followed by a skip a block. That
sequence apparently exceeded the response of the strings and pulleys and
they wound up in a heap at the bottom of the drive.
The resident (yep, 24 hours a day) CEs wouldn't believe him when he
described the problem. So he wrote a little program to demonstrate the
problem, called in the CEs, and ran the program, dumping *all 10* tape
drives. He wasn't very popular with the CEs after that, but when he told
them he had a problem, they listened :-).
I sometimes think all us old computer nerds should start a website and
record all these stories before we all die and the stories are lost.
--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
Morris Dovey <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:
*snip*
> ... and a little program that would seek
> past the innermost track to nudge a little rubber bumper against the
> drive hub - repeatedly - to make a really nasty buzzing sound.
*snip*
That's apparently how the Apple II drive worked. The stepper motor would
seek inwards 40 times, ensuring the head was at track 0. That way, the
drive didn't need any fancy track seeking electronics.
Puckdropper
--
Never teach your apprentice everything you know.
On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:36:54 -0700, LDosser wrote:
>> There was a saying back in those days that the perfect computer would
>> have CPU by CDC, peripherals by IBM, and software by GE.
>
> GE? The Datanet 30?
No, the 400 and 600 series - remember Multics? And the first Codasyl
DBMS?
--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:30:38 -0700, LDosser wrote:
>> BTW, to see the 1st computer I programmed (and helped assemble) go to:
>>
>> http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61.html#TOC
>>
>> and click on Readix. I worked on one at Science Research Associates in
>> the late '50s.
>
> Did some work with SRA in the early 80s ... Right after I spent an
> inspiring year at CACI :(
I think IBM had bought them by then, hadn't they?
--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw
On 4/13/2010 6:37 PM, Larry Blanchard wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:54:58 -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:
>
>> It took a while to establish cause-and-effect, because *nobody* was
>> willing to believe that that 'innocent little job" -- nothing more than
>> 4 standard statements in the system control language -- could _possibly_
>> be the culprit. Until they ran it as the _only_ job in the system, and
>> watched the machine crash.
>>
>> The entire job consisted of:
>> 1) request a tape mount
>> 2) copy a file from disk to the tape
>> 3) rewind the tape
>> 4) copy from the tape back to a new file.
>
> The original Univac I had tape drives that maintained tension with
> springs and pulleys rather than vacuum columns. Those drives, as well as
> the vacuum column model that replaced them on Univac II, could read both
> forwards and backwards. There were 10 drives.
>
> One of the programmers (no, not me) wrote a program that issued a write
> command, followed by a read backwards, followed by a skip a block. That
> sequence apparently exceeded the response of the strings and pulleys and
> they wound up in a heap at the bottom of the drive.
>
> The resident (yep, 24 hours a day) CEs wouldn't believe him when he
> described the problem. So he wrote a little program to demonstrate the
> problem, called in the CEs, and ran the program, dumping *all 10* tape
> drives. He wasn't very popular with the CEs after that, but when he told
> them he had a problem, they listened :-).
>
> I sometimes think all us old computer nerds should start a website and
> record all these stories before we all die and the stories are lost.
The IBM-1130 used a 1-card IPL program that was normally used to fetch a
resident supervisor image from disk, and I kept a stack of 'em on the
console for convenience...
I also made a hobby of writing 1-card boot programs to do things like
making a copy of the supervisor image in the last of three spare
cylinders on the disk, restoring from same, copying card decks,
gang-punching control cards... and a little program that would seek past
the innermost track to nudge a little rubber bumper against the drive
hub - repeatedly - to make a really nasty buzzing sound.
Not exactly sure how it happened to be on top of the stack of boot cards
when our friendly FE came in to do scheduled PM. He grabbed a
"joybuzzer" card to boot up the machine, and totally freaked out a
second time when told "It does that sometimes". :)
He did take it more in stride the time he booted up the machine and the
printer wasted a page to inform him that "Sometimes I feel like a
motherless child"...
He did not take it so well when someone (caugh) patched the resident
supervisor idle loop to do a WAIT when the machine was waiting for work
(could be anything from an empty card reader hopper to the interval
between card columns while actually reading a card). Seems like the
runtime meter (from which IBM billed the school) stopped when the CPU
was in a wait state. The school's billings had suddenly dropped
mysteriously by 90% and the branch office manager was (very) upset about
lost revenue. The FE really was friendly - he negotiated a "Wink, wink,
nod, nod, promise not to share this with other customers and you can
keep the 90% discount" agreement.
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
"Robatoy" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:4aff1073-f156-42d7-a66a-eea55e9f2b8f@b33g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
On Apr 13, 4:35 am, "LDosser" <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> news:[email protected]...
>
> > Bill wrote:
>
> >> I'm the same person, but somehow I'm a more learned person--that's one
> >> of
> >> great things about staying young is you get to keep on learning! :)
>
> >> Bill
>
> > I've been reading James Krenov's book, "A Cabinet Makers Notebook".
> > I just finished the first chapter on "Wood". He gives the reader
> > plenty of opportunity to "learn something"! : )
>
> > During my own reflection I observed that the beauty of using tools
> > is in using them well. They sing their own song (but please don't
> > tell anyone I said that)!
>
> I'll get roasted for this, but it seems to me Krenov made a career out of
> one medicine cabinet. A very nice cabinet and one I wish I'd done, but the
> same one over and over. Variations on a theme. Same as some authors, James
> Patterson comes to mind, write the same book over and over.
Few creative artists stray from an established theme. It is the core
of their creativity and they will strive to 'better' that core, offer
variations, but mostly their art will have identity of some sort. A
Moore sculpture is relatively easy to identify. Many painters have a
'style' (some even call theirs 'De Stijl'.) Krenov had a style. Van
Gogh had a style and to have the nerve to say that he did the same
painting over and over will get you shot at dawn.
How many careers revolve around One Hit? (Now they call them a
'signature song'.)
They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
"Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Robatoy wrote:
>
>> They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>
> One could probably find a more respectful way to describe what is going
> on. You're basically casting a black shadow over All Artists...
>
> Bill
Craftsmen. Not artists. An Artist will take risks.
"Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Robatoy wrote:
>
>> They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>
> Economics suggests that as long as marginal gain exceeds marginal cost,
> there will be production. That's as simple as it gets.
>
> Bill
Is art about production? FWIW, I don't believe Krenov ever claimed to be an
Artist.
"Larry Blanchard" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:30:38 -0700, LDosser wrote:
>
>>> BTW, to see the 1st computer I programmed (and helped assemble) go to:
>>>
>>> http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61.html#TOC
>>>
>>> and click on Readix. I worked on one at Science Research Associates in
>>> the late '50s.
>>
>> Did some work with SRA in the early 80s ... Right after I spent an
>> inspiring year at CACI :(
>
> I think IBM had bought them by then, hadn't they?
I don't think so. CACI was known as the Old Sailor's Home, there were so
many retired revolving door Navy officers there. They had a bunch of Iranian
Navy stuff squirreled away in Pennsylvania. This was during and right after
the Hostage Crisis.
"Robert Bonomi" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> In article <[email protected]>,
> Morris Dovey <[email protected]> wrote:
>>On 4/12/2010 8:07 PM, Robert Bonomi wrote:
>>> In article<[email protected]>,
>>> Morris Dovey<[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>>> Yuppers on the oddness - my impression was that the CDC management team
>>>> had never quite been able to decide what they wanted to do when they
>>>> grew up. At one point they were even in the windmill business. :)
>>>
>>> And they built computers that couldn't add!
>>>
>>> They faked addition by 'complement and subtract'. (true!!)
>>>
>>> That said, they were some of my favorite hardware to work on.
>>
>>Was it the IBM-650 that was nicknamed the "CADET" for Can't Add, Doesn't
>>Even Try?
>
> Yuppers. It simulated addition via table-look-up. I never programmed on
> one of those.
>>
>>The only CDC machine I ever used was the 6500 at Purdue and it seemed to
>>do crank right along fair reliably.
>
> The 6000 series were nice machines, but they did have their quirks.
>
> I, *unintentionally*, was responsible for one University machine crashing
> nearly _two_dozen_ times in approximately a 1-week period. This accounted
> for over 90% of all the crashes the machine experienced in two years.
> <WRY GRIN>
I once caused a 6500 to lock out every other job by 'printing' a dozen or so
boxes of blank paper. :(
"Larry Blanchard" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:36:54 -0700, LDosser wrote:
>
>>> There was a saying back in those days that the perfect computer would
>>> have CPU by CDC, peripherals by IBM, and software by GE.
>>
>> GE? The Datanet 30?
>
> No, the 400 and 600 series - remember Multics? And the first Codasyl
> DBMS?
Maybe before my time.
"LDosser" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> "Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> Robatoy wrote:
>>
>>> They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>>
>> Economics suggests that as long as marginal gain exceeds marginal cost,
>> there will be production. That's as simple as it gets.
>>
>> Bill
>
>
> Is art about production? FWIW, I don't believe Krenov ever claimed to be
> an Artist.
I do not think he would say that he sold "furniture". He called himself a
"worker of wood", as
opposed to a "woodworker". Evidently, to him there was a distiction. He
was aware that
many of his customers were people who might frequent art galleries--people
who appreciated
something finer...
On 4/13/2010 9:45 PM, LDosser wrote:
> "Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> Robatoy wrote:
>>
>>> They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>>
>> One could probably find a more respectful way to describe what is
>> going on. You're basically casting a black shadow over All Artists...
>>
>> Bill
>
>
> Craftsmen. Not artists. An Artist will take risks.
Yeah, well I'm with Robatoy on this one. There are far too many
self-proclaimed "artists" out there whose idea of "taking risks" is seeing how
much of their no-talent crap we will swallow before we start questioning their
right to call it "art". For my part, if I don't see the artistic _talent_ it
took to create something, then I don't see any "art" at all.
--
See Nad. See Nad go. Go Nad!
To reply, eat the taco.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bbqboyee/
"Robatoy" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:3206d6b5-be02-4851-b501-76a48fd039df@g11g2000yqe.googlegroups.com...
On Apr 13, 10:44 pm, "LDosser" <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Robatoy" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> news:4aff1073-f156-42d7-a66a-eea55e9f2b8f@b33g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
> On Apr 13, 4:35 am, "LDosser" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > "Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> >news:[email protected]...
>
> > > Bill wrote:
>
> > >> I'm the same person, but somehow I'm a more learned person--that's
> > >> one
> > >> of
> > >> great things about staying young is you get to keep on learning! :)
>
> > >> Bill
>
> > > I've been reading James Krenov's book, "A Cabinet Makers Notebook".
> > > I just finished the first chapter on "Wood". He gives the reader
> > > plenty of opportunity to "learn something"! : )
>
> > > During my own reflection I observed that the beauty of using tools
> > > is in using them well. They sing their own song (but please don't
> > > tell anyone I said that)!
>
> > I'll get roasted for this, but it seems to me Krenov made a career out
> > of
> > one medicine cabinet. A very nice cabinet and one I wish I'd done, but
> > the
> > same one over and over. Variations on a theme. Same as some authors,
> > James
> > Patterson comes to mind, write the same book over and over.
>
> Few creative artists stray from an established theme. It is the core
> of their creativity and they will strive to 'better' that core, offer
> variations, but mostly their art will have identity of some sort. A
> Moore sculpture is relatively easy to identify. Many painters have a
> 'style' (some even call theirs 'De Stijl'.) Krenov had a style. Van
> Gogh had a style and to have the nerve to say that he did the same
> painting over and over will get you shot at dawn.
>
> How many careers revolve around One Hit? (Now they call them a
> 'signature song'.)
>
> They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
I agree Warhol took chances and broke new ground. I quite like his
stuff.
I like his stuff too...but it is as recognizable as a Van Gogh.
"Steve Turner" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On 4/13/2010 9:45 PM, LDosser wrote:
>> "Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>> Robatoy wrote:
>>>
>>>> They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>>>
>>> One could probably find a more respectful way to describe what is
>>> going on. You're basically casting a black shadow over All Artists...
>>>
>>> Bill
>>
>>
>> Craftsmen. Not artists. An Artist will take risks.
>
> Yeah, well I'm with Robatoy on this one. There are far too many
> self-proclaimed "artists" out there whose idea of "taking risks" is seeing
> how much of their no-talent crap we will swallow before we start
> questioning their right to call it "art". For my part, if I don't see the
> artistic _talent_ it took to create something, then I don't see any "art"
> at all.
Not all risk takers are artists. Some just produce, well, shit.
"Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "LDosser" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> "Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>> Robatoy wrote:
>>>
>>>> They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>>>
>>> Economics suggests that as long as marginal gain exceeds marginal cost,
>>> there will be production. That's as simple as it gets.
>>>
>>> Bill
>>
>>
>> Is art about production? FWIW, I don't believe Krenov ever claimed to be
>> an Artist.
>
> I do not think he would say that he sold "furniture". He called himself a
> "worker of wood", as
> opposed to a "woodworker". Evidently, to him there was a distiction. He
> was aware that
> many of his customers were people who might frequent art galleries--people
> who appreciated
> something finer...
>
As Willy Sutton famously said when asked why he robbed banks: "Because
that's where the money is."
<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:1b5297ef-4d8a-449f-bf11-73bcb28b818c@b33g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
Idiot. A particular method of encoding negative numbers isn't
relevant when
FWIW, and I won't wish to get dragged into any muck, the algorithm for
performing of translating to negative numbers (assuming 2s complement
representation) IS relevant if one will evaluate expressions of the form
A-B as A+(-B).
Since bitwise negation can be performed by a single transistor, I would
expect that that a value in a register could be negated VERY fast. I think
just a few clock cycles.
Bill
"Robatoy" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
On Apr 14, 4:33 am, "LDosser" <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Steve Turner" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> news:[email protected]...
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 4/13/2010 9:45 PM, LDosser wrote:
> >> "Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >>news:[email protected]...
> >>> Robatoy wrote:
>
> >>>> They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>
> >>> One could probably find a more respectful way to describe what is
> >>> going on. You're basically casting a black shadow over All Artists...
>
> >>> Bill
>
> >> Craftsmen. Not artists. An Artist will take risks.
>
> > Yeah, well I'm with Robatoy on this one. There are far too many
> > self-proclaimed "artists" out there whose idea of "taking risks" is
> > seeing
> > how much of their no-talent crap we will swallow before we start
> > questioning their right to call it "art". For my part, if I don't see
> > the
> > artistic _talent_ it took to create something, then I don't see any
> > "art"
> > at all.
>
> Not all risk takers are artists. Some just produce, well, shit.
Thatsa forshure. Most produce product that, well, in their minds is
art, but really?
Then there is that faction that is highly skilled in certain
disciplines, like bronze casting, throwing pots, building medicine
cabinets, but do they have the creativity to have it become art? I
realize that some of that becomes extremely difficult to see. A local
guy makes these doorknobs on his lathe. Basically balls on a bolt.
Art? Then we have this thing every year called Art In The Park. I
assure you that shit comes in many shapes, materials and colours. I
have yet to see any of that kind of 'art' in the National in London
(UK), Rijksmuseum or the Taft. That is not to say that I like all I
have travelled to see, just no shit. At least no shit by my definition
of shit.....and shit is in the eye of the beholder, n'est pas?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
or, don't look up at flocks of geese flying directly overhead ...
<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Since bitwise negation can be performed by a single transistor, I would
> expect that that a value in a register could be negated VERY fast. I think
> just a few clock cycles.
Above you use 2's complement representations in your example. Now you
switch tracks to 1's complement representation of negative numbers
(the only format where negation = inversion).
Yes, bitwise *INVERSION* can be done by a single transistor (indeed it
takes zero clock cycles to invert a signal), but this is a negation
only if you're doing 1's complement arithmetic. You still have to do...
That must be one of the reasons they switched to 2s complement, no?
"Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>
>> Since bitwise negation can be performed by a single transistor, I would
>> expect that that a value in a register could be negated VERY fast. I
>> think
>> just a few clock cycles.
>
> Above you use 2's complement representations in your example. Now you
> switch tracks to 1's complement representation of negative numbers
> (the only format where negation = inversion).
> Yes, bitwise *INVERSION* can be done by a single transistor (indeed it
> takes zero clock cycles to invert a signal), but this is a negation
> only if you're doing 1's complement arithmetic. You still have to do...
>
>
>
> That must be one of the reasons they switched to 2s complement, no?
I hate to answer my own question, but the main reason was the duplicity of
zeros in 1s complement, I think.
Bill
"Steve" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On 2010-04-13 10:48:57 -0400, Bill <[email protected]> said:
>
>> In case anyone is would like to know, something that makes these books
>> special is the Reverence with which he wrote
>> about his craft.
>
> I'll see your Krenov and raise you a Nakashima.
>
Thanks for the suggestion. Hmmm... "The Soul of a Tree". Looks like a book
that
should make it to my reading list someday... What does he teach? No,
seriously!
Bill
"Steve" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On 2010-04-12 16:16:12 -0400, Bill <[email protected]> said:
>
>> I've been reading James Krenov's book, "A Cabinet Makers Notebook".
>> I just finished the first chapter on "Wood". He gives the reader
>> plenty of opportunity to "learn something"! : )
>
> While Krenov's work is certainly inspirational, that's about the ugliest
> job of book design... or it would be, had "The Fine Art of Cabinetmaking"
> not been published. Both just scream the worst of late '70s design. (Thank
> goodness neither is set in ITC Souvenir.)
I had a more difficult time with Tage Frid's first book. I found the
pictures very difficult to follow. Didn't make it very far before
I had to return it to the library. Maybe next time.
"Steve" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On 2010-04-13 09:11:55 -0400, Larry Jaques <[email protected]>
> said:
>
>>> Same as some authors, James Patterson comes to mind, write the same book
>>> over and over.
>>
>> Never having read him, I Amazoned his work and see that he may be a
>> 3-trick pony. Alex Cross, Woman's Murder Club, and Maximum Ride.
>> Or are they all riding the same pony?
>
> Worse yet, Patterson now just sketches out the plot and has someone else
> do the writing. Of course, Norman Rockwell's later work was completed by
> studio assistants... Maybe like another Norm's never-seen shop assistants,
> eh?
>
Now he does that. And the writers get their names on the cover.
On 4/14/2010 11:39 PM, Steve wrote:
> On 2010-04-13 22:30:35 -0400, Larry Jaques <[email protected]>
> said:
>
>> All I can say is
>> http://www.poopreport.com/BMnewswire/complex_shit.html
>
> http://gizmodo.com/205693/japanese-golden-poop-cellphone-charm
The more I learn about the Japanese, the more I realize that they are
very strange.
"Robert Bonomi" <[email protected]> wrote in message "Real-world"
data showed that only in *VERY*RARE*
> situations did numeric values in computations get 'close' to the 'limit of
> representation' in hardware.
I think some would say that if your variables are getting close to their
limits very often, then
it's time to consider looking for a new data structure.
On 4/16/2010 10:48 AM, Lee Michaels wrote:
> I just wish I had done this 10+ years ago.
8-|
> =========
>
> I would guess that the technology, support, CNC machines, etc are much
> better today than ten years ago. And Morris had not built his machine and
> begun his CNC subversiveness.
Subversive... moi? <snicker>
> Oh well...., better late than never.
True, and I'm wishing I'd learned earlier just how to go about being
"subversive"...
...I'm just now starting to have real fun with this stuff:
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/Stirling/
Rob, when/if you tire of the CNC, you're welcome to play along with a
really interesting group of "subversives". :)
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/
"Larry Jaques" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Sat, 01 May 2010 15:58:12 -0400, the infamous Marty
> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>
>>I have used Quick CAD (no longer available) for a years but
>>have started to use Sketchup. I struggled with it for a time, set it
>>aside, viewed the tutorials, tried it again, set it aside, and
>>tried it again with the idea I would learn it some how.... Then while
>>browsing in a book store found Skechup 7 for Dummies ($25). What an eye
>>opener!!! Much better then what can be found online and really has
>>helped understanding its use. Very clear and concise with many
>>illustrations.
>>
>>Recommended, this time I won't set it aside.
>>
>>Marty
>
> I'm glad you posted that, Marty. As I scanned the Amazon page for the
> Dummies book, I found a copy of _Google Sketchup: The Missing Manual_
> for $1.25 and ordered it.
>
> $5.24 total delivered price. 608 minty-fresh pages, 2009 vintage!
The online reviews of this are on the fluffy side. Perhaps you could post a
review after using it?
"Swingman" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> If you have any questions, just ask.
As you know, I am already a very satisfied user of SU; my needs are not
grand. I ran into a question recently while designing a jig for my bandsaw.
At this point it may just be academic, but I would still be interested to
see whatever evidence folks have. Obviously SU will allow one to design a
jig (for cutting on a BS, say). Does it have a mechanism to allow one to
test such a jig (consider, for example, something simple such as a fence)?
I suspect the answer is "not really" (and this may be an unfair expectation
since it is a "design" tool), but I'll put it out there anyway and and
intensionally keep my question vague. BTW, either way, you have already
thoroughly convinced me as to SU's usefulness! : )
Bill
>
> --
> www.e-woodshop.net
> Last update: 4/15/2010
> KarlC@ (the obvious)
On 4/10/2010 3:33 PM, Puckdropper wrote:
> Sketchup takes a bit to get used to, also. I had to take the time to get
> used to the 3D aspect, but didn't find anything too difficult. The
> interface is a little quirky as well, but not terrible. (Zooming, for
> example, is done by selecting the Zoom tool and moving the mouse up or
> down.)
At minimum, a mouse with a wheel works better for most any modern
software of this type. All you have to do to zoom is move the wheel, or
hold it down and move it, and the mouse, to zoom and orbit.
There are a lot of other "input" devices used by CAD jockeys that work
well also.
--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 10/22/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)
In article <[email protected]>,
Puckdropper <puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
>"[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote in
>news:[email protected]:
>
>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:58:38 -0500, [email protected]
>> (Robert Bonomi) wrote:
>*trim*
>>>I agree that subtraction, GENERALLY, "*is* adding the negative".
>>
>> Not generally. That is one way to do it, but certainly not the only
>> way. Hardware subtraction is no more difficult than addition. They're
>> really the same logic (twisted, but really the same).
>>
>>>Now go back and read what _this_ machine actually did. <grin>
>>
>> There have been many such things talked about here. Specifically, the
>> IBM 1620, knows as the CADET, had a table look-up for addition. It
>> couldn't subtract, either.
>>
>>>I repeat, this multi-million-dollar super-computer "couldn't ADD".
>>
>> The 1620 wasn't a "multi-million-dollar super-computer". It was, in
>> fact, rather mundane. That's the reason it couldn't add - they didn't
>> want to spend money on an adder. Note that it had no subtractor,
>> either.
>>
>
>Well that's completely different! Using a look up table for addition...
>And apparently an extensive one if my 10 second internet search is worth
>anything.
Depends on what you mean by 'extensive' it was a 'decimal' (although the
actual 'base' it used for arithmetic operations was programmable!) machine, so
it only needed 100 (2-digit) entries for a 1-digit x 1-digit table (base 10).
1x2 would have required 1000 (3-digit) entires, and 2x2 would have needed
1000 4-digit entires. As the smallest machines had only 20,000 'digits'
of storage, it is clear that the look-up table was a 1x1 matrix (200 digits
total). subtract, and multiply, were also performed using separate look-up
tables.
"Puckdropper" <puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>>
>
> If you're familiar with drafting, a program called CadStd will get you
> going right away. It's basically computer drafting. A little quirky at
> first, but once you get used to the interface it's easy to use.
>
> Sketchup takes a bit to get used to, also. I had to take the time to get
> used to the 3D aspect, but didn't find anything too difficult. The
> interface is a little quirky as well, but not terrible. (Zooming, for
> example, is done by selecting the Zoom tool and moving the mouse up or
> down.)
Actually if you learn the short cuts with the Sketchup program it becomes
much easier to use. I seldom use any icons at all as all can be assiciated
with a keyboard command or mouse jesture. For example, I have always used
a track ball mouse because IMHO it is much quicker to draw with. To zoom I
simply rotate my middle click wheel and hold down the wheel to orbit.
Placing the curser over the spot I want to zoom concentrates the zoom at
that point and rotating the ball with my thumb enables me to orbit at that
spot.
LDosser wrote:
> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> On 4/11/2010 12:27 AM, LDosser wrote:
>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>> On 4/10/2010 9:05 PM, LDosser wrote:
>>>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>>
>>>>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing
>>>>>> software
>>>>>> (link in sig),
>>>>>
>>>>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
>>>>
>>>> You win - besides, the 70/45 was just a thin film approximation to a
>>>> 360/30 (same instruction set and I/O devices, but had a sexier front
>>>> panel) :)
>>>
>>> Operating that 501 was like playing an organ ...
>>>
>>> When we got the 70/45s I went to supervision. All the fun had been taken
>>> out of operation. :(
>>>
>>> Half decent pic here:
>>>
>>> http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/RCA/RCA.501.1958.102646273.fc.lg.jpg
>>>
>>>
>>> Might even be me in the photo - wore a suit just like that. :()
>>
>> Hmm - I may have seen one of those. At one point in '65 the outfit I
>> was working for needed more capacity so one Saturday I was loaded into
>> a cab with a couple dozen tapes to borrow the 70/45 at NIPSCO
>> (Northern Illinois Public Service Co).
>>
>> They still had their pre-Spectra system (just in case) and it looked a
>> lot like that.
>>
>> That trip was my intro to RCA's high-speed tape drives - which, as I
>> discovered, meant that if they glitched they could suck about 250' of
>> tape into a vacuum column faster than an operator could say ****, and
>> pack it so tight that it took a letter opener to pry out.
>>
>> By the third time it'd stopped being even mildly interesting. (Hit the
>> COIN button, abort the run, pry the tape out of the drive, rewind the
>> other drives, mount a backup tape, and re-start the program. Ugh. :(
>
> Yeah, those babies were Fun. We used to have contests to see how quickly
> you could get all the drives off BT and then rewound - using the
> console. Then there was the tape mount rodeo! And with 3/4" tape, you
> did some upper body work every shift. When we got the Spectras, I wrote
> some cod to emulate the tape drives using the spectra disk drives.
> Really speeded up the stuff we still had to run using the 501 and 301
> emulators. Drove the 501 prototype for a couple weeks in Camden, NJ.
> IIRC, RCA had several in Viet Nam. Supposedly one running in a tent,
> which I can believe as ours could take all kinds of a licking and keep
> on ticking!
>
> Did they have a goony bird paper tape reader? Sometimes you had to use
> the eraser on the end of a pencil to keep the pt reader from snapping
> the tape. Idea was to use an Unsharpened pencil - DAMHIKT! I used to be
> able to read the paper tape manually.
Ah, the tape emulator idea. We had a 360/40 and got a 7094 free from
the Navy. Also got an IBM TICU (Tape Intersystem Connecting Unit). It
connected to the 7094 and looked exactly like 10 tape drives. It also
connected to the 360 and didn't look like anything without some code
work. I got the job of writing the tape emulator program on the 360.
We were running OS/MFT and I had all of 8K for code and buffers. The
challenge was the 7090 could read/write 32K words of 36 bits in one
whack. It was an interesting I/O chaining challenge with CCW's imbedded
in the disk buffers. It also depended on a seek of one cylinder taking
no more time than one rotation of the disk and not having any
re-assigned tracks. Those were the days...
In article <[email protected]>,
Morris Dovey <[email protected]> wrote:
>On 4/12/2010 8:07 PM, Robert Bonomi wrote:
>> In article<[email protected]>,
>> Morris Dovey<[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>> Yuppers on the oddness - my impression was that the CDC management team
>>> had never quite been able to decide what they wanted to do when they
>>> grew up. At one point they were even in the windmill business. :)
>>
>> And they built computers that couldn't add!
>>
>> They faked addition by 'complement and subtract'. (true!!)
>>
>> That said, they were some of my favorite hardware to work on.
>
>Was it the IBM-650 that was nicknamed the "CADET" for Can't Add, Doesn't
>Even Try?
Yuppers. It simulated addition via table-look-up. I never programmed on
one of those.
>
>The only CDC machine I ever used was the 6500 at Purdue and it seemed to
>do crank right along fair reliably.
The 6000 series were nice machines, but they did have their quirks.
I, *unintentionally*, was responsible for one University machine crashing
nearly _two_dozen_ times in approximately a 1-week period. This accounted
for over 90% of all the crashes the machine experienced in two years.
<WRY GRIN>
It took a while to establish cause-and-effect, because *nobody* was willing
to believe that that 'innocent little job" -- nothing more than 4 standard
statements in the system control language -- could _possibly_ be the culprit.
Until they ran it as the _only_ job in the system, and watched the machine
crash.
The entire job consisted of:
1) request a tape mount
2) copy a file from disk to the tape
3) rewind the tape
4) copy from the tape back to a new file.
{_first_ time using a mag tape, and was checking my understanding of 'how
things worked.}
The job _never_ got to step #4
The log file showed a bunch of strange messages, that -nobody- (I took it
to the help desk, asking "what's thin mean?") understood. The help desk
would puzzle over the job output, look at the 4 punch-cards, look back
at the log, say "*OH*!! that was when the system crashed, why don't you
try running it again." so I did, when I next had a chance. *sigh*
Experimentation showed that it was the "rewind the tape" command, itself,
that was crashing the system.
>> The high-level architecture was positively elegant in it's simplicity and
>> regularity.
>>
>> the closer to the hardware they got, the *stranger* things got.
>
>Speaking of Burroughs... :o)
I think the 6600 had Burroughs beat -- it could *lie* to you in the core-
dump of a program that aborted due to a hardware exception (e.g. address
out-of-range, using an 'infinite' operand {result of 'n' divided by zero}
or using an 'indefinite' operand {result of dividing zero -by- zero}).
i.e., the program attempted to perform that illegal operation, generated
a hardware exception which triggered a core dump, and there was *NO*
evidence in _any_ register of the 'illegal' data that triggered the
exception.
The systems programmers, just for fun, handcrafted a small assembler-code
program that triggered _all_three_ of the possible exceptions, _and_
entirely covered it's tracks in the core-dump.
In article <[email protected]>,
[email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:07:05 -0500, [email protected] (Robert
>Bonomi) wrote:
>
>>In article <[email protected]>,
>>Morris Dovey <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>On 4/12/2010 8:24 AM, [email protected] wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm not sure when they were introduced into the 370s, but yeah, they
>>>> were used for /158 microcode. I remember interviewing at CDC in early
>>>> '74. They had a /158 with its covers off, with a bunch of people
>>>> reverse-engineering the floppy drive. The /158 was their pride and
>>>> joy, which I thought odd. The whole place was "odd" and I told them
>>>> so before I left (didn't get an offer ;).
>>>
>>>You're right - I went digging and found that there had been a /Minnow/
>>>R/O floppy drive with diminished capacity released in 1972. I'm guessing
>>>it was an early /Igar/ prototype.
>>>
>>>Yuppers on the oddness - my impression was that the CDC management team
>>>had never quite been able to decide what they wanted to do when they
>>>grew up. At one point they were even in the windmill business. :)
>>
>>And they built computers that couldn't add!
>>
>>They faked addition by 'complement and subtract'. (true!!)
>
>That's not unusual at all. Subtraction *is* adding the negative (complement).
I agree that subtraction, GENERALLY, "*is* adding the negative".
Now go back and read what _this_ machine actually did. <grin>
I repeat, this multi-million-dollar super-computer "couldn't ADD".
On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:44:35 -0700, "LDosser" <[email protected]> wrote:
>"Larry Blanchard" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>> On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:05:03 -0700, LDosser wrote:
>>
>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>
>>>
>>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing software
>>>> (link in sig),
>>>
>>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
>>
>> I'll put in a Univac and a Ramac :-).
>
>I'll raise you punchboards ...
...on an analog computer.
On 5/1/2010 5:43 PM, gray asphalt wrote:
> of the library. There seems to be some new area
> mentioned somewhere I din't expect that has hundreds
> of models ... and everyone seems to be sharing.
Not new ... it's called 3DWarehouse and has been around since Google
took over the program.
Here's some stuff I've added to it ... knock yourself out as far as
sharing them:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=c0f1c8d44f47cba8b2c2cd006d206129&prevstart=0
If you have any questions, just ask.
--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 4/15/2010
KarlC@ (the obvious)
I used AutoCad at work for quite a few years, and also did a lot of learning
about how to customize it.
It's a great program for drawings and dimensions, but of course it's a bit
expensive for personal use.
There are free alternatives, like A9CAD, and a 2D program from Siemens whose
name I forget at the moment.
One of the woodworking magazines online forum had an article comparing a few
inexpensive (under $50) cad programs. You might search the web for reviews
like that, too.
I've downloaded and tried Sketchup too, when wanting to digitize the house
plan drawings for my mother's house. It seems like it's intended for making
3D models rather than construction drawings, though, and I didn't get far
with it.
TigerCad is available for download, and I did, but haven't really tried it
yet.
Doug
"Marty" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:qI%[email protected]...
>I have used Quick CAD (no longer available) for a years but
> have started to use Sketchup. I struggled with it for a time, set it
> aside, viewed the tutorials, tried it again, set it aside, and
> tried it again with the idea I would learn it some how.... Then while
> browsing in a book store found Skechup 7 for Dummies ($25). What an eye
> opener!!! Much better then what can be found online and really has
> helped understanding its use. Very clear and concise with many
> illustrations.
>
> Recommended, this time I won't set it aside.
>
> Marty
>
> On 4/10/2010 7:07 AM, Dick Snyder wrote:
>> I have always designed my projects using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and
>> (lots of) eraser. I have a somewhat more complicated job I want to do
>> now.
>> There is a design for an entertainment center in FWW that I want to
>> adapt. I
>> would like to take the measurements from the article, enter them on a
>> computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend who
>> uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that
>> sophisticated.
>> I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time on a CAD
>> program
>> unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a product that one of
>> you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil, and eraser?
>>
>> TIA.
>>
>> Dick Snyder
>>
>>
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:07:05 -0500, [email protected] (Robert
Bonomi) wrote:
>In article <[email protected]>,
>Morris Dovey <[email protected]> wrote:
>>On 4/12/2010 8:24 AM, [email protected] wrote:
>>
>>> I'm not sure when they were introduced into the 370s, but yeah, they
>>> were used for /158 microcode. I remember interviewing at CDC in early
>>> '74. They had a /158 with its covers off, with a bunch of people
>>> reverse-engineering the floppy drive. The /158 was their pride and
>>> joy, which I thought odd. The whole place was "odd" and I told them
>>> so before I left (didn't get an offer ;).
>>
>>You're right - I went digging and found that there had been a /Minnow/
>>R/O floppy drive with diminished capacity released in 1972. I'm guessing
>>it was an early /Igar/ prototype.
>>
>>Yuppers on the oddness - my impression was that the CDC management team
>>had never quite been able to decide what they wanted to do when they
>>grew up. At one point they were even in the windmill business. :)
>
>And they built computers that couldn't add!
>
>They faked addition by 'complement and subtract'. (true!!)
That's not unusual at all. Subtraction *is* adding the negative (complement).
OTOH, the IBM 1620 was known as the CADET (Can't Add, Didn't Even Try). It
had no ADD (or subtract) instruction at all, rather used an index into a
lookup table in memory to add. Want a different operator? Overwrite the
"ADD" lookup table, sometimes on purpose, even.
>That said, they were some of my favorite hardware to work on.
>
>The high-level architecture was positively elegant in it's simplicity and
>regularity.
>
>the closer to the hardware they got, the *stranger* things got.
>
[email protected] wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 21:16:41 -0700, Doug Winterburn <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> Morris Dovey wrote:
>>> On 4/10/2010 9:05 PM, LDosser wrote:
>>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>
>>>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing software
>>>>> (link in sig),
>>>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
>>> You win - besides, the 70/45 was just a thin film approximation to a
>>> 360/30 (same instruction set and I/O devices, but had a sexier front
>>> panel) :)
>>>
>> By "thin film", do you mean it also had the cros (capacitance read only
>> memory) instruction set as the 360/30? It was punch card size mylar
>> with copper traces that were punched out on one of four sides of a
>> squeare or some such. The first time I saw the 30 power on and the cros
>> "pump up" to push the cros punch card ros together, I wondered "WTF"?
>>
>> Then there was the 360/40 with the "tros" micro programmed instruction
>> set...
>
> Then there was the 360/75 with no microcode.
>
>> That's the one I started with in '64.
>
> Must have been a first. The /360 was announced in '64. I didn't use the /75
> until '67 (I was a Junior in high school ;).
It was an IBM punch card I/O Fortran IBM machine we used in college in
'64 - can't remember the IBM model number.
Akshooly, it was '66 when I went to work for IBM and went to 360 OS
school in Endicott (DOS), and then Poughkeepsie (OS). Classrooms full
of ashtrays and smoke so thick, you could barely see the blackboard and
the instructor with his [bad] hairpiece. Cigs were $0.35 a pack in the
vending machines in the hallways with 2 cents taped to each pack making
them $0.33.
On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:26:41 -0500, Morris Dovey <[email protected]> wrote:
>On 4/10/2010 11:16 PM, Doug Winterburn wrote:
>
>> By "thin film", do you mean it also had the cros (capacitance read only
>> memory) instruction set as the 360/30? It was punch card size mylar
>> with copper traces that were punched out on one of four sides of a
>> square or some such. The first time I saw the 30 power on and the cros
>> "pump up" to push the cros punch card ros together, I wondered "WTF"?
>
>You and nearly everyone else - I've always suspected it was designed by
>the same madman who designed the 407... :)
>
>I honestly don't know how RCA implemented the instruction set or the
>internals of IPL. I suspect that they may have used ROMs, because IBM
>was likely to have the CROS covered every which way with patents.
>
>Thin film refers to (yet another) logic family (like ECL, TTL, MOS,
>CMOS, etc). RCA claimed it was cheaper, provided higher yields, and was
>more reliable. Of course, when you asked around you discovered that
>every company's technology flavor was well above average. :)
"Thin film" was a manufacturing process rather than a logic family. IIRC,
everything was RTL at that time. IBM's variety was SLT (Solid Logic
Technology). It *was* RTL. ECL didn't come along until the 370s and "MST"
(Monolithic Solid Technology), which was made by TI.
>You might get a kick out of learning that the floppy disk was originally
>developed to load the microcode into the ill-fated object-based FS (for
>Future System) machines.
Nah, floppies were used on the 370/158s to load microcode, well before FS.
>> Then there was the 360/40 with the "tros" micro programmed instruction
>> set...
>>
>> That's the one I started with in '64.
>
>I was away from computers from 62-65 working for Uncle Sam, but IIRC I
>was introduced to the 40 (but it could have been a 50) and DEBE at the
>same time. :)
> "Larry Jaques" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:44:56 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
>> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>>
>>>Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
>>
>> Andy Warhol's work SUCKED. He and Picasso can go piss up a rope.
>
Do you have any idea how much a pissed on rope by Warhol or Picasso would go
for in today's market?
With modern DNA testing, to test its "provenance", it could go for
MILLIONS!!
Just saying...
On 4/14/2010 5:42 PM, Lee Michaels wrote:
> Do you have any idea how much a pissed on rope by Warhol or Picasso would go
> for in today's market?
>
> With modern DNA testing, to test its "provenance", it could go for
> MILLIONS!!
>
> Just saying...
Hmmm ... wonder if Antiques Roadshow tested that Indian blanket for
smallpox?
--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 10/22/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)
On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11:02:04 -0400, the infamous Bill
<[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>Robatoy wrote:
>
>> They're milking it, folks! Wouldn't you?
>
>One could probably find a more respectful way to describe what is going
>on. You're basically casting a black shadow over All Artists...
A thorn, by any other name...? <titter)
--
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace
will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will
blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy,
while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
-- John Muir
On Apr 14, 10:12=A0pm, "LDosser" <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Lee Michaels" <leemichaels*[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> news:[email protected]...
>
>
>
>
>
> >> "Larry Jaques" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >>news:[email protected]...
> >>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:44:56 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
> >>> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>
> >>>>Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
>
> >>> Andy Warhol's work SUCKED. =A0He and Picasso can go piss up a rope.
>
> > Do you have any idea how much a pissed on rope by Warhol or Picasso wou=
ld
> > go for in today's market?
>
> > With modern DNA testing, to test its "provenance", it could go for
> > MILLIONS!!
>
> > Just saying...
>
> But how would one prove it had been pissed Up?
How long is this rope?
"Larry Jaques" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:44:56 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>
>>Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
>
> Andy Warhol's work SUCKED. He and Picasso can go piss up a rope.
Gosh, I'm not even going to mention Cindi Lauper, then! ; )
"Bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "Larry Jaques" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:44:56 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
>> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>>
>>>Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
>>
>> Andy Warhol's work SUCKED. He and Picasso can go piss up a rope.
>
>
> Gosh, I'm not even going to mention Cindi Lauper, then! ; )
Go listen to "True Colors" over at Amazon, and see if it doesn't move you
in some way! ; )
On 04/14/2010 12:16 PM, Larry Jaques wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:44:56 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>
>> Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
>
> Andy Warhol's work SUCKED. He and Picasso can go piss up a rope.
Larry, that was sheer poetry. I'm getting a little misty here.
--
"Our beer goes through thousands of quality Czechs every day."
(From a Shiner Bock billboard I saw in Austin some years ago)
To reply, eat the taco.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bbqboyee/
"Larry Jaques" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:44:56 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>
>>Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
>
> Andy Warhol's work SUCKED. He and Picasso can go piss up a rope.
Now There's an idea!
"Lee Michaels" <leemichaels*nadaspam*@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>> "Larry Jaques" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:44:56 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
>>> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>>>
>>>>Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
>>>
>>> Andy Warhol's work SUCKED. He and Picasso can go piss up a rope.
>>
> Do you have any idea how much a pissed on rope by Warhol or Picasso would
> go for in today's market?
>
> With modern DNA testing, to test its "provenance", it could go for
> MILLIONS!!
>
> Just saying...
>
>
>
But how would one prove it had been pissed Up?
"Robatoy" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
On Apr 14, 10:12 pm, "LDosser" <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Lee Michaels" <leemichaels*[email protected]> wrote in message
>
> news:[email protected]...
>
>
>
>
>
> >> "Larry Jaques" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >>news:[email protected]...
> >>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:44:56 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
> >>> <[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>
> >>>>Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
>
> >>> Andy Warhol's work SUCKED. He and Picasso can go piss up a rope.
>
> > Do you have any idea how much a pissed on rope by Warhol or Picasso
> > would
> > go for in today's market?
>
> > With modern DNA testing, to test its "provenance", it could go for
> > MILLIONS!!
>
> > Just saying...
>
> But how would one prove it had been pissed Up?
How long is this rope?
--------------------------------------------------------------
Pull on it and the Heavens open up ...
On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:44:56 -0700, the infamous "LDosser"
<[email protected]> scrawled the following:
>Andy Warhol was more an Artist. He took risks.
Andy Warhol's work SUCKED. He and Picasso can go piss up a rope.
--
STOP THE SLAUGHTER! Boycott Baby Oil!
On 5/2/2010 12:15 AM, Rumple Stiltskin wrote:
> "Larry Jaques" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>
>> I'm glad you posted that, Marty. As I scanned the Amazon page for the
>> Dummies book, I found a copy of _Google Sketchup: The Missing Manual_
>> for $1.25 and ordered it.
>>
>> $5.24 total delivered price. 608 minty-fresh pages, 2009 vintage!
>
> The online reviews of this are on the fluffy side. Perhaps you could
> post a review after using it?
"Google SketchUp Cookbook"
Not a basic "how to" book, but an excellent compendium of techniques and
methods for learning to use some of the basic tools and concepts of the
program:
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596155100
Again, not something you would read from cover to cover, but as a
reference when hitting the wall on how to do many things with the
drawing tools.
--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 4/15/2010
KarlC@ (the obvious)
On 4/10/2010 7:42 AM, Morris Dovey wrote:
> For things that are essentially boxes - like kitchen cabinets and,
> perhaps, your entertainment center SketchUp has acquired a substantial
> following.
Meh ... either a thinly veiled insult, or your ignorance is showing, or
both:
http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/17770/making-a-windsor-settee-armcrest-rail
"...essentially boxes...", eh? What a crock!
--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 10/22/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)
On 4/10/2010 6:07 AM, Dick Snyder wrote:
> computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend who
> uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that sophisticated.
> I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time on a CAD program
> unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a product that one of
> you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil, and eraser?
First you take the word of someone else instead of making up your own
mind about a particular program; then you don't want to spend money, or
your time, on learning a skill to do what you are asking others to
advise you on?
Best stick to your paper and pencil ...
--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 10/22/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)
I have used Quick CAD (no longer available) for a years but
have started to use Sketchup. I struggled with it for a time, set it
aside, viewed the tutorials, tried it again, set it aside, and
tried it again with the idea I would learn it some how.... Then while
browsing in a book store found Skechup 7 for Dummies ($25). What an eye
opener!!! Much better then what can be found online and really has
helped understanding its use. Very clear and concise with many
illustrations.
Recommended, this time I won't set it aside.
Marty
On 4/10/2010 7:07 AM, Dick Snyder wrote:
> I have always designed my projects using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and
> (lots of) eraser. I have a somewhat more complicated job I want to do now.
> There is a design for an entertainment center in FWW that I want to adapt. I
> would like to take the measurements from the article, enter them on a
> computer somehow, and then change the things I want. I have a friend who
> uses Google Sketchup. He found it awkward to use and not that sophisticated.
> I don't want to invest the money and a lot of learning time on a CAD program
> unless I can get a recommendation on this group for a product that one of
> you likes to use. Should I stick to my paper, pencil, and eraser?
>
> TIA.
>
> Dick Snyder
>
>
On 4/11/2010 5:36 PM, Morris Dovey wrote:
> http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/LLJ/
On another subject, what are you hearing that is new about "spray on"
solar panels?
This was big news about five years ago in the green building seminars,
and then disappeared into the noise.
Went to another seminar a couple of weeks back and it was brought up by
the organizers again as a "rapidly emerging technology"?
Seems that some manufacturers are coming out with windows coated with a
spray on product?
--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 10/22/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)
On 4/11/2010 5:14 PM, Robatoy wrote:
> Some self reflection is in order, however, but I am a bit confused as
> to who should be doing the reflecting.
Here ya go, Bubba. Let me help you out:
"For things that are essentially boxes - like kitchen cabinets and,
perhaps, your entertainment center CNC has acquired a substantial
following. "
A ridiculously ignorant, superficial remark, showing a decided lack of
depth of understanding, eh?
Now, live with it ... lol
--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 10/22/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)
On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 21:16:41 -0700, Doug Winterburn <[email protected]>
wrote:
>Morris Dovey wrote:
>> On 4/10/2010 9:05 PM, LDosser wrote:
>>> "Morris Dovey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>
>>>> Sorry, but after spending more than a half-century developing software
>>>> (link in sig),
>>>
>>> I'll see your Spectra 70/45 and raise you an RCA 501 and 301. :o)
>>
>> You win - besides, the 70/45 was just a thin film approximation to a
>> 360/30 (same instruction set and I/O devices, but had a sexier front
>> panel) :)
>>
>
>By "thin film", do you mean it also had the cros (capacitance read only
>memory) instruction set as the 360/30? It was punch card size mylar
>with copper traces that were punched out on one of four sides of a
>squeare or some such. The first time I saw the 30 power on and the cros
>"pump up" to push the cros punch card ros together, I wondered "WTF"?
>
>Then there was the 360/40 with the "tros" micro programmed instruction
>set...
Then there was the 360/75 with no microcode.
>That's the one I started with in '64.
Must have been a first. The /360 was announced in '64. I didn't use the /75
until '67 (I was a Junior in high school ;).
"Swingman" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Last year I built a $350k house using nothing but construction plans
> generated _entirely_ in SU, including a full set of architectural and
> structural drawings for bidding and building.
I've used Sketchup drawings to pull City of Houston permits a couple of
times in years past and, more recently, permitted the breezeway addition for
my own house here in the bedroom municipality in NW Houston where I live.
Dave in Houston
In article <[email protected]>,
Doug Winterburn <[email protected]> wrote:
>Robert Bonomi wrote:
>> In article <[email protected]>,
>> Larry Blanchard <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:54:58 -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:
>>>
>>>> It took a while to establish cause-and-effect, because *nobody* was
>>>> willing to believe that that 'innocent little job" -- nothing more than
>>>> 4 standard statements in the system control language -- could _possibly_
>>>> be the culprit. Until they ran it as the _only_ job in the system, and
>>>> watched the machine crash.
>>>>
>>>> The entire job consisted of:
>>>> 1) request a tape mount
>>>> 2) copy a file from disk to the tape
>>>> 3) rewind the tape
>>>> 4) copy from the tape back to a new file.
>>> The original Univac I had tape drives that maintained tension with
>>> springs and pulleys rather than vacuum columns. Those drives, as well as
>>> the vacuum column model that replaced them on Univac II, could read both
>>> forwards and backwards. There were 10 drives.
>>>
>>> One of the programmers (no, not me) wrote a program that issued a write
>>> command, followed by a read backwards, followed by a skip a block. That
>>> sequence apparently exceeded the response of the strings and pulleys and
>>> they wound up in a heap at the bottom of the drive.
>>>
>>> The resident (yep, 24 hours a day) CEs wouldn't believe him when he
>>> described the problem. So he wrote a little program to demonstrate the
>>> problem, called in the CEs, and ran the program, dumping *all 10* tape
>>> drives. He wasn't very popular with the CEs after that, but when he told
>>> them he had a problem, they listened :-).
>>>
>>> I sometimes think all us old computer nerds should start a website and
>>> record all these stories before we all die and the stories are lost.
>>
>> There is also the story about a university student who got the engineering
>> plans for an IBM mainframe disk drive (one of the washing-machine-size units),
>> _carefully_ calculated the mass involved, and wrote a channel program that
>> consisted of 'seek to outermost track', pause, 'seek to innermost track',
>> pause, and "repeat indefinitely". The 'pause' times were carefully calculated
>> to the 'resonant frequency of the drive unit. Reportedly, the unit 'walked'
>> almost *THREE*FEET* across the floor, _towards_the_operator_, before they
>> managed to find and kill the offending task. I'm given to understand that
>> the operators were 'a bit nervous' for some days thereafter.
>>
>
>I managed to knock a selectric style printer off its stand with a little
> unfortunate development code.
must have been a rather flimsy stand -- the golf-ball mechanism wasn't that
massive.
In article <[email protected]>,
LDosser <[email protected]> wrote:
>"Larry Blanchard" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
[[sneck]]
>>
>> BTW, the first payroll system written for the Univac took 8-9 days to
>> run. For a weekly payroll! Seems table lookups on mag tape were just a
>> mite too slow :-).
>
>Our year end stuff used to Print for a week. Just Print. What a BORE.
>
Consider yourself lucky. One brokerage I did work for, the *MONTH-END*
reporting took nearly a week to print -- when the printers weren't
'otherwise occupied' (e.g., overnite reporting, and various stuff that
was needed in 'near real time'), that is. Year-end was something like
6 weeks, and growing.
There was talk of adding additional printers, but _that_ required finding
the space to put them -- the existing computer room was full to the gills,
*and* the A/C was taxed to the limit.
In article <[email protected]>,
Morris Dovey <[email protected]> wrote:
>On 4/16/2010 10:48 AM, Lee Michaels wrote:
>
>> I just wish I had done this 10+ years ago.
>
>8-|
>
>> =========
>>
>> I would guess that the technology, support, CNC machines, etc are much
>> better today than ten years ago. And Morris had not built his machine and
>> begun his CNC subversiveness.
>
>Subversive... moi? <snicker>
>
>> Oh well...., better late than never.
>
>True, and I'm wishing I'd learned earlier just how to go about being
>"subversive"...
It's *EASY*.
You just dive in, and start reciting poetry! (underwater, that is :)
No, i'm not going to explain sub-verse-ive.
On 4/10/2010 1:05 PM, Morris Dovey wrote:
> No insult was intended - I was attempting to point out a broad class of
> design objects (which included the OP's immediate project) where I felt
> SketchUp worked well for its users. If you interpret that as an insult,
> perhaps you can explain why...
>
> FWIW, when I /intend/ insult, there's no "thinly veiled" about it. :)
>
> If you maintain that SketchUp is a superior tool for easily producing
> accurate mathematical curves/surfaces in three dimensions (as is the
> case in the many of _my_ woodworking projects) adequate for precision
> production, then I invite you to produce the evidence - or to expand
> your woodworking horizons.
Come now, Morris ... you've proven yourself too smart a fellow to _not_
know exactly what you are about.
I recall taking the time to cobble up and post a SU tutorial model
showing you how to do something with curves which you were unable to
accomplish.
Just because you haven't taken to the time to become proficient with the
program, don't insult the program and, by association, those who have,
with such ignorant remarks.
Nevertheless, I'll spot you the "insult", but the link posted proves
either one of my contentions to be correct, without necessity for
further words.
--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 10/22/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)