Forget The Pentium, Hack The 68K 181
Mr. Groove writes: "Hey foo, think your PIII is killer? Imagine running Photoshop on one of these!" Frugal or insane -- only you can decide.
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Forget The Pentium, Hack The 68K
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Friction is a drag.
68k is great! (Score:1)
Re:68k is great! (Score:3)
68k is great.. but unfortunately this article is a little mislabelled. The site in question is all about hacking Mac Color Classics, which came with a 68030, to use a PowerPC.
So, sadly, we're not talking about a true believer in the coolness of 68k's.. but rather a true believer in the coolness of a certain size & shape of all-in-one Mac.. oh well..
Trollers' Paradise (Score:5)
I take a look at my karma, realize there's none left
'Cause I've been trolling and flaming so long that
Even Trollmastah thinks that my mind is gone
But I ain't never crossed a post that didn't deserve it
Me be modded up at all, you know that's unheard of
You better watch how Katz's talking, courting the masses
If I ever meet his homies I'll kick their asses
I really hate to troll but I gotta say
VA pays the bills, that means Hemos is gay... fool
I'm the kinda troll that script kiddies wanna be like
On Slashdot in the night, trollin' to set this earth right
They been spending most their lives living in a trollin' paradise
They been spending most their lives living in a trollin' paradise
We been spending most our lives living in a trollin' paradise
We been spending most our lives living in a trollin' paradise
They got the moderation, they rule the nation
I can't post a normal post, I tried -- no route to host!
So I gotta be down with the Slashdoterati
Too much videotape watching got me chasing Natalie
I'm an anonymous fool with hot grits on my mind
Got pancakes in my hand and first posts in my eye
I'm an open source caveman from k-stuff-inchfan
And my homies is down so don't even try that ban
First ain't nothing but a heart beat away
I'm owning you left and right, what can I say
I'm -3; never will I whore to hit 25
The way we're going just won't survive
Tell me why are we so blind to see
That the ones we mod aren't just ACs
They been spending most their lives living in a trollin' paradise
They been spending most their lives living in a trollin' paradise
We been spending most our lives living in a trollin' paradise
We been spending most our lives living in a trollin' paradise
Karma and the stories, stories and the karma
Zealot after zealot, dogma after dogma
Everybody's posting, but half of them ain't thinking
What's going on in Andover, something must be stinking
They say I've got to log in; nobody talks to ACs
If they can't even read it, how can they raise me
I guess they can't
I guess they won't
I guess they front
That's why I know my life is out of luck... fool
Tell me why are we so blind to see
That the ones we mod aren't just ACs
Tell me why are we so blind to see
That the ones we mod aren't just ACs
Once more, how about reading the site before... (Score:1)
This page isn't about 68k @ all (Score:4)
Intresting.. . (Score:1)
Right On! (Score:1)
Makes me want to pop some dual PIII's in an old Pet box.
And so what if the title was a little missleading, it is still the coolest MAC I have ever seen.
What's wrong with 68k? (Score:4)
Of course, my calculator is more powerful than those Macs...
Re:Those machines all share one big disadvantage (Score:1)
That's nothing. (Score:1)
Re:Right On! (Score:1)
Actually, it would be like putting PentiumIIs in a 386 box, witch would not be hard it all, given the modular nature of PCs.... (as opposed to Macs, witch is why this store is anything at all)
Re:68k is great! (Score:1)
Now it's the old MACs that are being flayed. Such is life.
Cutest stunt I saw, though, was a friend of mine who had completed the engineering for fitting a MAC OEM board into a 200MZ PPC laptop, using the case as a heatsink. That was just about the time that Apple decided to skewer their OEMs.
Ditch one laptop (and company!).
--
Re:Trollers' Paradise (Score:1)
My favt is
They say I've got to log in; nobody talks to ACs
If they can't even read it, how can they raise me
I guess they can't
I guess they won't
I guess they front
That's why I know my life is out of luck... fool
modern day geek. [dhs.org]
oh no! (Score:4)
hey there, power mac,
swinging round the mouse so fancy free
nobody you meet could ever see the source code in there...
inside you
hey there, power mac,
why do most fanatics pass you by?
could it be you just don't try?
or is it the case you wear?
you're always window shopping
but never trying to change
this won't get newer people in range.....
as customers..
hey there, power mac,
there's another OS deep inside
BSD is really neat but darwin it came to be...
the world will see....
a new power mac!
[Fade music out]
Um, is this safe? (Score:2)
So why should we care? As was pointed out in the Slashdot story itself, this seems economical -- why buy a whole new computer when you can just stick some new chips in your old Colour (Color, whatever) Classic? I could easily see some clueless MCSE guy deciding to put "mission critical" data on a hacked Colour (Color) Classic Mac that's liable to burn out at any second -- and I don't know about you, but I'd prefer not to have our airplanes and nuclear missiles being run on overclocked 1990s Macintoshes. Ugh.
Hacks are neat and all, but the danger of "burning out" the chips simply outweighs the cost -- in the long run, the Opportunity Cost of using standardized chips is much less.
Yu Suzuki
Re:Intresting.. . (Score:1)
That'll teach me not to stereotype! (Score:3)
Breath of fresh air (Score:4)
Thanks, Slashdot, this story made my day. :)
first Macs in the seventies? (Score:1)
Seth
Sigh. Why mod this down? (Score:3)
I'm not talking about ten page pastes of the same thing over and over or one word attempts at getting a first post. I'm talking about the intelligent trolls. Anyone who reads the above post without cracking a smile - nay, anyone who reads any such post without cracking a smile - has obviously missed the boat.
Trolling on Slashdot has become its own subculture, much like B1FF on Bitnet. OOG, the Don Knotts guy, they are all a part of Slashdot culture.
Trolling has taken a new meaning with Slashdot. Trolling is not necessarily flamebait. Admit it, you've been had by the Don Knotts guy *at least* once, and you felt pretty silly. It was harmless enough, and nobody but you knows you've been had, but thats part of the charm. The OOG posts and poem or song lyric posts, arguably, require intelligence and a certain amount of cleverness to produce.
Most trolls on Slashdot are like graffiti artists; if you let them grow a little bit, they can paint murals that you're somewhat ashamed to envy, like the above spoof of "Gangsta's Paradise."
interesting. (Score:2)
i still wonder if that was real. supposedly there are pictures floating around somewhere.
They look kinda shitty. :( (Score:2)
Maybe I'm just spoiled by my 21" Sony, but I can fit almost 9 of those 640x480 desktops on my screen at once...
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
Yup...holy shit.. (Score:5)
Learn how to make your own 500hp Ugo
John Holmes writes: it's the craziest thing...you have to have m4d sk33lz to figure this out. Basically, we put an engine from a Z28 into an old ass Ugo, we put new headers and an exhaust kit on it, as well as a K&R filter and new plugs and wires. A subframe connecter, and a new racing tranny. But the badges are still the same.
Oops - that's going to be posted on
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Put the crack pipe down and back away slowly... (Score:1)
I like it. It's fun. It's like swapping a VR6 into a first gen. Rabbit and spanking all those turbo civics.
Correction (Score:1)
Hahaha. Cool. (Score:1)
But this one made me grin like hell.
Weird, tho, it's actually got a few _points_; intelligent trolls, who'd've thunk it?
- C. "Everybody's posting, but half of them ain't thinking". Hehe.
Re:This page isn't about 68k @ all (Score:1)
Here's [nifty.ne.jp] a picture.
My all time favorite Mac hack was the PowerMac in an Apple ][ case -- using the green Apple ][ monitor.
Re:Yup...holy shit.. (Score:1)
cat tpe o it (Score:1)
But not to worry, I gave her an 4 year old Mac Clone of my husband's to update it. Now she's zipping along at 150 mHz! :-)
I still have a working Mac Classic, just B&W, as color wasn't available when my parents bought it. It has 80 MB of disk space and 4 MB of RAM, if I recall correctly. I can't manage to throw it away though. I'm still hoping to get some use out of it. :-)
(My sister, on the other hand, still uses the first family computer, a Mac SE, to do her finances in Quicken.)
-- Diana Hsieh
Re:Um, is this safe? (Score:2)
These folks aren't doing it for safety. They're doing it for the sheer thrill of doing it (and it _is_ a fairly wicked hardware hack).
It's not meant to be economical, either. Including time spent to perpetrate the hack, you could probably score more power from an older-model iMac for less money.
It ain't gonna end up in businesses, either, 'cause businesses don't work like that.
Also, you don't know your chips so well; the PowerPC chips run way cooler than any Pentium. Which isn't to say that they're exactly minifridges, but cooling is less of a problem. If the chip does get too toasty, it won't do it for a while to come; and when it does fry, then they'll probably just refine the hack a bit more.
- C. Here, have a Clue. No extra charge. *grin*
now if only... (Score:1)
One Microsoft Way
680x0 as workhorse. (Score:4)
Granted, it sucked at web browsing, but it produced many beautiful images for years.
Its death came (at 21,000 hours total runtime) because a mouse (the furry, wall-chewing kind) moved into the case, leaving droppings on the motherboard. I've since moved on to multitasking systems with more than one mouse button, but I wish I would have had the foresight to duct tape shut the PCI slot that was open.
Then this, too, must be said... (Score:1)
If your religion is any product line, even an Open-Source one, you really have some things to think about.
Re:What's wrong with 68k? (Score:2)
YOu'd be surprised how many people don't even bother to read the article, instead jumping in to rack up some karma whore points.
I don't know where you get your facts, but the 68k never ran macs in the 70s. Try 1983. Try reading the article.
BTW, x86 assembley is "amazingly versatile". That about like saying "the sun is bright." assembly by defination is versitile.
Despite the limitations...what the hell? Despite the inherent crappiness of ANY computer system, a good programmer can do just about what he wants.
Try reading the article first and then posting something that isn't pedantic karma food.
Re:What's wrong with 68k? (Score:1)
Re:Yup...holy shit.. (Score:4)
68k . . (Score:1)
What? it's a chip?
200MHz Apple //e (Score:3)
Geez, does this mean I should get rid of my Athlon (Score:2)
Food for thought: The original TI/99-4A could be expanded to 256K of RAM with a box the size of a small bookcase. Today's inch-high laptops can store 256 megs of RAM. That's an increase of 1000-fold. Pretty amazing stuff.
Re:They look kinda shitty. :( (Score:1)
Re:Geez, does this mean I should get rid of my Ath (Score:1)
Ahh the good 'ol TI-994/A. The secret to expanding it was to buy the ungodly expensive and heavy PEB(perihperal expansion box). most people didn't.
I wish I could get one now. I'd gut that baby out and make it a retro '80s case! Either that or a case made to look like a Pac Man arcade cabinet.
Re:Trollers' Paradise (Score:3)
Re:What's wrong with 68k? (Score:3)
I think that's supposed to be 680x, the 8-bit generation of CPUs which ran stuff from the PET to the Apple, and the C=64. People have told me that the functionality of the chip varied greatly between the versions... but I don't really care.
I know it best as the 6808 in the Heathkits they used in my highschool digital electronics class.
I think the coco also ran the thing.
The first Macs were 68000s or something... and as another poster pointed out.. mid '80s, not late '70s.
Re:Yup...holy shit.. (Score:1)
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
The point is to run Darwin (Score:1)
You see, if you have one of these old Color Macs, you will want to upgrade them to a PPC in order to run Darwin on it. When you think about, there's not much point in keeping an old machine around. It just takes up space. Honestly, what are you going to run on MacOS anyway? MacPaint?
With this incredible modification, you'll be able to run an Open Source Operating System on your previously-68k Mac. The Motorolla chips are notoriously difficult to program for, which hindered the development of Open Source Software on that chip, and is also why MacOS, which runs so well under the PowerPC, is so slow and powerless on the 68k. So with your new chip, you'll be able to run the Open Source OS of choice for Macs: Apple's Darwin. Because it comes from Apple, and you have official Apple hardware, you can always count on getting good support.
Myself, I'll just be excited if I can port Quake, and watch it run on my 9 inch screen
Re:Um, is this safe? (Score:1)
Re:What's wrong with 68k? (Score:1)
Re:What's wrong with 68k? (Score:1)
Atari STs (520 and 130) ran them as well. Jack Tramiel, where are you?
Commodores ran MOS 650x's (Score:1)
The C64 had a 6510, basically the diff was talking to all the support chips. Atari and Apple had base 6502's.
Re:What's wrong with 68k? (Score:1)
No, the Mac wasn't released until 1984, but the 68000 chip, the first of Motorola's 680x0 series, was released in 1979 (or '78; I'm not 100% sure about that, someone correct me if necessary).
The chip was pretty expensive at first, so it was mostly used to run mainframes and the like until it became cheaper. (I think.)
I took a course in 68000 assembler a few years ago and learned a whole lot about its ins and outs. It's a pretty good chip! But why won't it let me perform byte-sized operations on an address register or dereference data registers (to look up values in memory, etc.)? I guess it was Motorola's way of forcing programmers to get a little organized...!
sorry in advance... (Score:5)
and as for all the rest of you, why do so many of you spell "Mac" "MAC"? what do you think it stands for? Mac is short for Macintosh. not McIntosh or even MacIntosh, and certainly isn't an acronym. those of you in the northern US, where an A.T.M. is sometimes called a M.A.C. i can understand, but these are not cash machines!
Re:What's wrong with you? (Score:1)
Now, someone tell me how to do this to my Amiga 500!
(I am only as Red as my beard)
Re:What's wrong with 68k? (Score:1)
So please port Linux to the TI-89/92? This is not the first time I've asked. Thanks very much in advance.
Unexplainable Truths... (Score:3)
Not often...
Why? Because it's cooler to keep them around! How many of you have old Commodore 64's or ColecoVisions that still work? Would you gut it to get a Pentium III crammed in there? Heck no! It's more froody to show it off in working condition during dinner parties...
My point is, the whole reason this is cool and noteworthy is that the old Mac-in-the-boxes were classics. You could turn it into a two-bottle beer cooler using some copper tubing and an air conditioner pump and people would still stand up and take notice because it's nostalgic.
So, let's all Here-Here! for the Mac-in-the-boxes. But, can we perhaps stop throwing a party everytime someone jams something inside that doesn't belong there?
68K > 10MHz, more like 25 or 33! (Score:1)
Re:680x0 as workhorse. (Score:1)
Re:What's wrong with 68k? (Score:1)
Not the C64, as some have mentioned, but the Tandy Color Computer, its (not terribly successful) competitor. Also the Tano Dragon, the UK equivalent (of the Coco, not the Commo).
MC68A09E, to be precise. I used to read the hex dumps and hand-decode its ROMs. Hoo boy.
Correction (Score:2)
Like win16it was multitasking. Almost.
The mac os back then was like win16 in that it didn't split the CPU time up fairly among apps. The app that used it all got it all.
The os had to wait for the cpu to catch up with the app so the app would relinquish control to the OS, which would then apply any mouse clicks or keypresses you did while it was busy.
New Macs and Win32 machines can do that, but only if a) the app is lagged, and b) you're really careful, since it's a lot eaiser to jump out to other apps.
Apple Hardware pretty cool? (Score:5)
For example, I was really impressed when I learned that the Macintosh SE/30 included custom ICs to accelerate the normal windowing GUI operations. This was YEARS before the PC saw any kind of real 2D acceleration... and it was a great idea. Anybody who ever played with an SE/30 and a PC of the same era would see the awesome performance advantage the SE/30 had.
That being said, I was reading through some of "Inside Macintosh" books circa the SE/30 and these guys looked like they were BEASTS to program-- people really had to write assembly language GUI programs? I guess I'm a spoiled product of the OOPY late 90s, but that seems like a deathwish if ever I heard one.
Another interesting tidbit-- the Apple Macintosh OS is more INfamouse than famous, we all know, but those from around the San Jose area will appreciate the code name Apple engineers had for the OS: Winchester Mystery OS -- signal traps and jumps to null addresses etc... I laughed hard at that one...
A hack I'd really like to see... (Score:1)
The IBM Thinkpad 701 (/701C), codenamed "butterfly" was an amazing laptop -- very light and compact, it nevertheless had a full-sized keyboard which "unfolded" when you opened the butterfly's lid.
The only problem is that the butterfly is a little slow, doesn't have much RAM or disk space, has a battery which lasts only a couple hours, and lacks any communications beyond a 14.4Kbps modem. (It was fine back when we were all using 486s, but times have changed.)
If someone could work out how to upgrade the butterfly to be on par with modern laptops -- essentially completely rebuilding it apart from the keyboard and display -- that would be a truely great hack.
Re:680x0 as workhorse. (Score:1)
I'm figuring run time to date at 30,000 hours.
When Chicago pays up on my 1996 False Arrest case, I'll drop the $ for a G4.
What does this do to my Slashdot Purity Index?
Re:They look kinda shitty. :( (Score:1)
Macintosh Classic (Color) Hacks (Score:2)
Don't throw that 6100 out! (Score:1)
Daniel
---
Re:Trollers' Paradise (Score:1)
Of course you can go on Napster and find it, Coolio - Gangstas Paradise, of course you would only do this if you own the CD....
Re:Sigh. Why mod this down? (Score:2)
numb
Why not others... (Score:2)
Might even be more secure incase someone breaks into your house. They'll see the old case and thing that it's a piece of crap and take something else. When in fact you have a state of the art pc inside a case from 10years ago.
I guess the saying "It's not on the outside that counts, it's on the inside." really has a point here.
Re:68K > 10MHz, more like 25 or 33! (Score:1)
Try NetBSD [netbsd.org].
Hilarious (Score:1)
Re:What's wrong with 68k? (Score:1)
Daniel
---
Re:Sigh. Why mod this down? (Score:1)
I modded his post (and yours) down.
Posted via AC because:
1. Crappy moderation rules
2. Not intended for archive
Re:68K > 10MHz, more like 25 or 33! (Score:1)
Randy Rencsok's site at www.channelu.com or thereabouts should have more detailed information, or look for one of Mike Paquette's posts on comp.sys.next.hardware.
William
Hum... (Score:1)
Re:What's wrong with 68k? (Score:1)
Re:Correction (Score:1)
Power Color Classic? (Score:1)
links to the power colo(u)r classic
Didn't Apple do that and call it an iSor^H^H^H^HiMac computer?
Atari ST is more fun (Score:1)
While the processor may be capable of lots of stuff.. My time is honestly worth more than hacking around in an old mac... Hell, I'd rather be hacking around in an old Atari ST ANYWAY. At least there is cool software you can get for the Atari ST, that you just can't get anywhere else.
Re:68k is great! (Score:1)
Seems only fair, after all the pentiums of the time doubled as stoves . . .
This has been a test of the Slashdot Broadcast Network . . .
Re:What's wrong with 68k? (Score:1)
Uh....PalmPilots run on the dragonball processor, not a 680x0 series. Perhaps you are thinking of the TI-89 and TI-92 calculators?
Palm Pilots (I know this for a fact about the IIIx's, I don't know about the others, I'd assume they're similar though) emulate a straight M68k. There's an assembly language course at stanford taught in m68k assembler using palm pilots as the target platform.
And m68k assembler just kicks the crud out of x86... have you ever looked at that stuff? I mean assembler aside, I'm surprised intel can get their chips to power up, let alone run at the speeds they seem to make them run at. x86 assembler is sorta fubar'd, goes well with windows.
Re:Commodores ran MOS 650x's (Score:1)
TI-89..on a Macintosh? (Score:1)
My Post Is Offtopic (Score:3)
freeboxen.com [freeboxen.com] is a site for people to unload the hardware they don't want for people who do. I just stumbled across it in another thread. It could really use some support. What a great idea!
-- --
Stay Tuned Next Week For...
The Adventures of Open Souce Man!
it's already been done. (Score:2)
I don't think the emulator in question actually works on 68k macintoshes, it claims to requrie a 100Mhz PPC, though a VMWare-style hardware abstraction hack with almost no slowdown would be pretty easy to throw together for a 68k mac i'd imagine. Assuming anyone actually was WILLING to.
Re:What's wrong with 68k? (Score:2)
Re:What's wrong with 68k? (Score:3)
Look at Atari and Amiga for real hardware hackery (Score:2)
I know Amiga people got up to loads of stuff (including PowerPC upgrades), but the Atari people did quite a lot too. here [centek.fr] is an example of a modern Atari upgrade; there were lots more in the past. One popular example was putting a 32MHz 68030 into an 8MHz 68000 machine (requiring lots of new circuitry), while others included the addition of modern PCI graphics cards, faster serial ports, HD floppy support in older Ataris, switchable OS upgrades, and so on.
My old ST at home has a 4MB memory upgrade (that involved soldering wires on to the surface-mounted MMU, my ST being of a particularly perverse design) and a TOS 2.06 ROM upgrade (great fun that - a daughterboard soldered directly on to the 68000 itself, and a tiny software utility to switch between the old TOS 1.02 ROMS and the new TOS 2.06 ROM, for compatibility with old games etc). It also has a SCSI host adapter (it looks just like a normal cable, except there's a custom chip inside the SCSI plug end).
It gets on my nerves when people say how brave they were coping with, say, a 50MHz machine. I used my old 8MHz ST for useful stuff, and until recently it was being used by my mum for word-processing with Papyrus. By that I mean full page layout, WYSIWYG, a modern, non-modal interface, TrueType/Speedo vector fonts, 300dpi output (usually) keeping up with a DeskJet 600, etc etc etc. And all fast enough to keep up with my mum's very fast typing. If a program was released for Linux which had an identical interface and identical features, I would get it straight away. And imagine a lot of other people would, too.
The ST was only retired because the keyboard doesn't work so well after 12 years of constant use - the space bar's a bit dead.
Ford Prefect
Re:Commodores ran MOS 650x's (Score:2)
It was an interesting architecture. It had plenty of general purpose registers but they were stored off-chip in RAM. The CPU had a Workspace Pointer register that contained the base address of the general purpose registers. This allowed the programmer to switch register sets by reloading the Workspace Pointer register.
Re:680x0 as workhorse. (Score:2)
Windows can do this.
Re:What's wrong with 68k? (Score:2)
The orignal Indigo used a 68030 I believe
That's nothing! (Score:3)
Re:My Post Is Offtopic -- No, it's not (Score:2)
Re:A hack I'd really like to see... (Score:2)
Re:That's nothing! (Score:2)
Although I think this machine would be the first to pass a turing test
---
Re:What's wrong with 68k? What's wrong with 6502? (Score:2)
The first Mac was released in April 1984. In the late 70's ('79 if I'm correct), the Apple ][ (two) and Apple ][+ were very popular machines, the first home computers to have colour graphics. These machines used the 6502 processor.
Later Apples, the Apple
The first Macs used the Motorola 68000, later Macs had 68020, 68030 or 68040 processors. Unfortunately, in lots of late-68K Macs, Apple put 68LC040s, a 68040 without a copro. The problem with early models of the 68LC040 is that copro emulation wouldn't work due to a bug in the cpu that would destroy the stack pointer. a Bad Thing(tm) indeed.
Now if you'll excuse me, I suffer from acute nostalgia. I'm off to do some vintage computing on one of my Apple ]['s.
Re:Correction (Score:2)
Its precursor, the Lisa, I believe was introduced the year earlier to little fanfair.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:Apple Hardware pretty cool? (Score:2)
They made an awful 'crreeaaaak!!' sound whenever you'd open one. Not one of Apple's best machines.
The 3400, released later, was pretty nice though - as have been all Powerbooks since ('cept the iBook, which is okay for what it is, but I don't really want one).
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Wow (Score:2)
So a few people who actively visit slashdot could handpick the best trolls so that I can show my future kids just how funny OOG was.
Troll's "hack" /. (Score:2)
That's not a headline, but an observation. /. has a very complicated moderation scheme in effect. Trolls like this one seem an awfully lot like hackers -- they find creative ways around the moderation system. And they aren't malicious; rather, the way they've found to hack the system is to post stuff that is so entertaining that moderators mod it up, even though it is off-topic.
They've had to get creative because the system is actively hostile to them and to their speech. And that is a good thing too; not only does it keep most visible discussion on-topic and interesting, it makes the filtering process for the best trolls very rigorous, and keeps troll quality (yes, I said that) high. At least, the quality of trolls that get this far are of high quality. (Or maybe the moderators are just high. On life, of course.)
(I even think of it as an artistic commentary of the dynamics of free speech with a low S/N ratio versus controlled (therefore not completely free) speech with a high S/N ratio. But I doubt that argument will go over highly here....)
That's just my little defense of the trolls; they've had to get so entertaining and creative that they deserve a little praise, IMO. Enjoy tearing it to shreds.
phil (hoping he gets a reply from OOG, and, hey, I didn't need my karma anyway)
For crying out loud, kids (the 8085) (Score:2)
The 8085 was an 8 bit successor to the 8080, but a *very* week response to the z80 from zilog, an upwards-compatible to the 8080 developed by engineers who left intel.
The 8085 had a little bit of serial i/o on chip, and a couple of extra interrupts. It did *not* implement the extended instruction set of the z80.
CP/M ran on the 8080, and therefore the Z80. Most programs were written to the 8080 so that they could run on both; it tended to be only machine specific code that was written in Z80. The z80 was also 5v instead of needing three supplies.
The 8086 was source compatible with the 8080, not the 8085--it didn't have those extras. You could also cross-compile z80 source to the 8086.
The 8088 came out simultaneously with the 8086; it was the same thing (almost) on an 8 bit buss. ISTR that there was a load you could use t see which you were using because a buffer (?) was a different size onthe two chips, which would yield a different result.
If memory serves, the 8085 was announced at the same time as the 8086, but don't hold me to that.
hawk
Re:Apple Hardware pretty cool? (Score:2)
However, they're a little anemic for my tastes. If you don't mind sacrificing the ability to run an external monitor off of it and don't care about the lower-res screen, then it's not so bad.
Of course, there's the color issue. If you don't like the color scheme, you won't like it. The new graphite models look okay though.
Plus, you also have form-factor. They are BIG. I don't mind that really (I am a happy user of a PB G3 Bronze, which is pretty large), but some do.
I'd personally go for a used Powerbook G3, but your mileage may vary.
- Jeff A. Campbell
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