From: Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
Subject: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <rem-2008aug09-002@yahoo.com>
PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last version
of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my Macintosh
Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which compound to make
usage very very painful:
- No way to abort from a loop except by pressing the COLD RESTART
button on the machine.
- Any program that writes too much text to the IDE window triggers
a bug that freezes the machine, which can be remedied only by
pressing the COLD RESTART button on the machine.
- Clover-S (shortcut for File > Save) to save your edit to the disk
FUCKING DOESN'T WORK!!! I lost several hours work when I used
clover-S to save my edit about every five minutes, then
encountered one of the conditions requiring COLD RESTART of the
system, whereupon I discovered that the "saved" file was still
in the same state it had been when I first started PowerLisp
hours before. Fortunately I was developing a very difficult
piece of code during that time, at a time I was just starting to
make good use of PowerLisp, so in all those hours I had only
finished writing one new function, which I had thought and
rethought many times to try to find a way it would work with
PowerLisp, so I was able to quickly re-create what had been lost
in about another half hour.
But anyway, not one of those times that I "saved my edit" did any
of my new code actually end up on the disk. Perhaps it saved it
to a buffer or something, intending to actually write to
physical disk upon exit from the program, but due to condition
requiring COLD RESTART the program was never exited normally so
the file never really got written.
So over a week or so I desperately needed *some* version of LIsp on
my Macintosh Performa 600 (System 7.5.5) to be of practical use,
switching back and forth between XLISP and PowerLisp to try to find
either usable, I finally made some progress with PowerLisp, and
abandoned XLISP forever. Then after losing hours of work several
times, I adopted a new strategy: It's just not worth using clover-S
to save PowerLisp's worksheet. Instead, copy everything I have
so-far over to a McSink edit and save *that* to disk, which really
and truly does write to disk immediately before returning control
to the user. Then when COLD RESTART is needed, all I've lost is
anything newer than the last McSink save. And in addition I've
managed (most of the time) to avoid anything that crashes PowerLisp
or hangs the system etc. requiring COLD RESTART in the first place.
Thursday I think I needed COLD RESTART just once or twice, and
Friday I didn't need it once all day.
So anyway what have I been doing useful with PowerLisp?
- Wrote a patch file that defined three important functions missing
from PowerLisp: REDUCE SLEEP and BREAK
- Converted 2005-7-ranpri-gp.lisp (formerly usable with CMUCL) to
PowerLisp. That's a module to deal with small prime numbers that
can be enumerated in an explicit list to make usage more
efficiently than large numbers that won't all fit in memory thus
must be re-generated on demand and discared when finished with
use.
- Converted 2005-8-readers.lisp (formerly usable with CMUCL) to
work in PowerLisp. That's a module to load five formats of file
into memory as a single "object": Whole file to one big US-ASCII
string, lines of file to list of US-ASCII strings, whole file
one big s-expression, file contains multiple s-expressions that
are loaded to a list, whole file as binary bytes loaded to list
which is then converted to array if desired.
- Wrote 2008-8-cols.lisp, which parses multi-column tabular layout
such as directory listing from FileList.
- Wrote 2008-8-fill.lisp which fills paragraph with prefix copied
to start of each line, essentially what the original EMACS at
MIT used to do.
- One standard usage copies the prefix from the first line. This is
useful for quoting what somebody said before you in a
discussion forum or e-mail. You may have seen me start using
this for newsgroup postings such as where I liberally used it
here:
<http://groups.google.com/group/alt.gossip.celebrities/msg/3c914c5b6ce449ab?hl=en&dmode=source>
= Message-ID: <·················@yahoo.com>
- Another standard usage copies the whitespace indentation from
the second line. This is useful for emulating the indentation
of HTML list items (bullet points) in lynx, or prettyprinting
text inside parenthesized expressions. I used it to format all
the bullet points in *this* article, and to prettyprint a
parenthetical expression elsewhere. I used to manually
prettyprint parenthesised expressions, but it's so much easier
and faster with this new tool!
So is anybody curious to see the paragraph-fill with prefix as a CGI demo?
For example, with this as input:
(input-find-prefix-refill-output 42)
Pascal> For example, the soviets didn't line [typo for "like"?] binary
because it was invented by capitalist dogs. So they built a
computer that worked in ternary. +12V, ~0V, -12V.
the output would be:
Pascal> For example, the soviets didn't
Pascal> line [typo for "like"?] binary
Pascal> because it was invented by
Pascal> capitalist dogs. So they built a
Pascal> computer that worked in ternary.
Pascal> +12V, ~0V, -12V.
And with this as input:
(input-find-second-line-indent-refill-output 78)
SENDER AGREEMENT - By clicking the "VERIFY" button above, and in
consideration for Spam Arrest,
LLC forwarding your e-mail (and any
e-mails you may send in the future) to the intended recipient (the
"Recipient"), you agree to be bound by the following Sender Agreement:
You represent and warrant to Spam Arrest and the Recipient that any
e-mail you desire to send to the Recipient is not "unsolicited
commercial e-mail" i.e., the e-mail does not primarily contain an
advertisement or promotion of a commercial product, service or Web
site; unless the Recipient expressly consented to receive the message,
either in response to a clear and conspicuous request for such consent
or at the Recipient's own initiative.
the output would be:
SENDER AGREEMENT - By clicking the "VERIFY" button above, and in consideration
for Spam Arrest, LLC forwarding your e-mail (and any
e-mails you may send in the future) to the intended
recipient (the "Recipient"), you agree to be bound by the
following Sender Agreement: You represent and warrant to
Spam Arrest and the Recipient that any e-mail you desire to
send to the Recipient is not "unsolicited commercial
e-mail" i.e., the e-mail does not primarily contain an
advertisement or promotion of a commercial product, service
or Web site; unless the Recipient expressly consented to
receive the message, either in response to a clear and
conspicuous request for such consent or at the Recipient's
own initiative.
Or maybe you'd like to play with a CGI demo of any of the other
software modules I've written in recent years?
<http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/WAP/SeekJobAccom.html>
On Aug 9, 12:33 pm, ··················@spamgourmet.com.remove (Robert
Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last version
> of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my Macintosh
> Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which compound to make
> usage very very painful:
You continue to surprise and amaze us with your choice of tools.
Bravo! Engineering this is not ... but art!
From: Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <rem-2008aug09-004@yahoo.com>
REM> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last
REM> version of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my
REM> Macintosh Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which
REM> compound to make usage very very painful:
TFB> You continue to surprise and amaze us with your choice of
TFB> tools. Bravo! Engineering this is not ... but art!
Is that supposed to be satirical or something like that? Most of
the time it's just fine to have to upload everything to my Unix
shell account, have CMUCL process the data, then download it back
to my Macintosh. But for some tasks I really would prefer to be
able to run the data-processing application directly on my
Macintosh. I have only the following software development systems
available here on the Mac:
- HyperCard (with HyperTalk scripting)
- Pocket Forth
- Sesame C (doesn't support arrays or structs or malloc or floats)
- XLISP 2.1g (doesn't support bignums, missing most of CLtL,
application unexpectedly quit with error number <n> very frequently)
- PowerLisp 2.01 68k (includes most of CLtL, has those bugs I mentionned)
Would you recommend that I choose something different from
PowerLisp for applications that require lots of nested-list
management? Really I tried in XLISP to implement BIGNUMs as lists
of bytes with my own algorithms for addition and multiplication,
but it was horribly slow, and still it'd unexpectedly quit about
every half hour.
From: Kenny
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <489e27b6$0$20936$607ed4bc@cv.net>
Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t wrote:
> REM> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last
> REM> version of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my
> REM> Macintosh Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which
> REM> compound to make usage very very painful:
>
> TFB> You continue to surprise and amaze us with your choice of
> TFB> tools. Bravo! Engineering this is not ... but art!
>
> Is that supposed to be satirical or something like that? Most of
> the time it's just fine to have to upload everything to my Unix
> shell account, have CMUCL process the data, then download it back
> to my Macintosh. But for some tasks I really would prefer to be
> able to run the data-processing application directly on my
> Macintosh. I have only the following software development systems
> available here on the Mac:
> - HyperCard (with HyperTalk scripting)
> - Pocket Forth
> - Sesame C (doesn't support arrays or structs or malloc or floats)
> - XLISP 2.1g (doesn't support bignums, missing most of CLtL,
> application unexpectedly quit with error number <n> very frequently)
> - PowerLisp 2.01 68k (includes most of CLtL, has those bugs I mentionned)
> Would you recommend that I choose something different from
> PowerLisp for applications that require lots of nested-list
> management? Really I tried in XLISP to implement BIGNUMs as lists
> of bytes with my own algorithms for addition and multiplication,
> but it was horribly slow, and still it'd unexpectedly quit about
> every half hour.
I would recommend picking up a free as in on the sidewalk PC and
installing Linux and CLisp and SBCL and yadda yadda. Lots of us have old
systems just sitting around that would have to be pretty old to lose out
to a Performa.
kt
--
$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
On Aug 10, 1:00 am, ··················@spamgourmet.com.remove (Robert
Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
> REM> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last
> REM> version of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my
> REM> Macintosh Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which
> REM> compound to make usage very very painful:
>
> TFB> You continue to surprise and amaze us with your choice of
> TFB> tools. Bravo! Engineering this is not ... but art!
>
> Is that supposed to be satirical or something like that?
Sarcastic, yes. You are constantly complaining (at extreme length)
about the strangest problems here, and whenever a solution is given,
you always have an even longer and stranger complaint waiting as to
why it Cannot Possibly Work.
You live in the Bay Area. You can get a junker computer that is 1000x
better than your current for free, or the cost/trouble of taking
public transit. If you have anything at all to barter you can get an
even better one thanks to the wonder that is Craigslist. If you wanted
to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL. I'm sure you
won't, and no I don't want to hear the why.
(Okay, I admit to a perverse curiosity, but I won't help)
From: Kenny
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <489f08e1$0$29508$607ed4bc@cv.net>
Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> You are constantly complaining (at extreme length)
> about the strangest problems here, and whenever a solution is given,
> you always have an even longer and stranger complaint waiting as to
> why it Cannot Possibly Work.
Yes, it is almost like a video game, but in classroom discipline one of
the tricks is to catch the chronic troublemaker doing something good and
reinforce. My theory is that the long days have energized our Eeyore
as they have me, and we must build whatever momentum we can in the man
before the long winter nights return.
Just yesterday evening I noticed it was dark and my heart sank, for I
remember 8:45pm as about the last pitch of the nightly pickup softball
games of my first youth and that we knew it was time to go home when a
fly ball to the outfielder went unseen. I digress.
If we have lost almost an hour, given the rule of twelve things will
unravel degrade quickly now...it is time to act!
" the wonder that is Craigslist."
That is the second recommendation of CL I heard this week. I should
loiter there, it seems.
> If you wanted
> to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL.
I believe I have three licensed MCL4.3 CDs I do not need.
kt
--
$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
From: Kenny
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <489f1ed2$0$29499$607ed4bc@cv.net>
Kenny wrote:
> Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
>> You are constantly complaining (at extreme length)
>> about the strangest problems here, and whenever a solution is given,
>> you always have an even longer and stranger complaint waiting as to
>> why it Cannot Possibly Work.
>
> Yes, it is almost like a video game, but in classroom discipline one of
> the tricks is to catch the chronic troublemaker doing something good and
> reinforce. My theory is that the long days have energized our Eeyore as
> they have me, and we must build whatever momentum we can in the man
> before the long winter nights return.
>
> Just yesterday evening I noticed it was dark ...
oops. insert "at 8pm". :)
> ...and my heart sank, for I
> remember 8:45pm as about the last pitch of the nightly pickup softball
> games of my first youth and that we knew it was time to go home when a
> fly ball to the outfielder went unseen. I digress.
>
> If we have lost almost an hour, given the rule of twelve things will
> unravel degrade quickly now...it is time to act!
>
>
> " the wonder that is Craigslist."
>
> That is the second recommendation of CL I heard this week. I should
> loiter there, it seems.
>
>
>
>> If you wanted
>> to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL.
>
> I believe I have three licensed MCL4.3 CDs I do not need.
>
> kt
>
>
--
$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
On Aug 10, 5:27 pm, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> > You are constantly complaining (at extreme length)
> > about the strangest problems here, and whenever a solution is given,
> > you always have an even longer and stranger complaint waiting as to
> > why it Cannot Possibly Work.
>
> Yes, it is almost like a video game, but in classroom discipline one of
> the tricks is to catch the chronic troublemaker doing something good and
> reinforce. My theory is that the long days have energized our Eeyore
> as they have me, and we must build whatever momentum we can in the man
> before the long winter nights return.
>
> Just yesterday evening I noticed it was dark and my heart sank, for I
> remember 8:45pm as about the last pitch of the nightly pickup softball
> games of my first youth and that we knew it was time to go home when a
> fly ball to the outfielder went unseen. I digress.
>
> If we have lost almost an hour, given the rule of twelve things will
> unravel degrade quickly now...it is time to act!
>
> " the wonder that is Craigslist."
>
> That is the second recommendation of CL I heard this week. I should
> loiter there, it seems.
From selling to trading to bartering everything from apartments to
bikes to bookshelves to sex, it's hard to imagine how the Bay Area
would function without it. I only wish there were something like it in
Paris.
> > If you wanted
> > to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL.
>
> I believe I have three licensed MCL4.3 CDs I do not need.
He'd need to dig further back than that. 3.x was the last of the 68k
MCLs. 4.x was PPC, 5.x was/is OS X. Myself, I'm holding on to my
(single) copy of 4.3 as long as I still have Classic running on my
iBook.
From: Kenny
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <48a2c22e$0$20922$607ed4bc@cv.net>
Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> On Aug 10, 5:27 pm, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> If you wanted
>>> to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL.
>> I believe I have three licensed MCL4.3 CDs I do not need.
>
> He'd need to dig further back than that. 3.x was the last of the 68k
> MCLs. 4.x was PPC, 5.x was/is OS X. Myself, I'm holding on to my
> (single) copy of 4.3 as long as I still have Classic running on my
> iBook.
Ah, sans digging, 3.9 is my earliest. Of course I would do a bundle with
a 4.3 since that was an upgrade of the 3.9.
But I thought we were moving him to an XT and CLisp?
kt
--
$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
On Aug 13, 1:14 pm, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> > On Aug 10, 5:27 pm, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> If you wanted
> >>> to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL.
> >> I believe I have three licensed MCL4.3 CDs I do not need.
>
> > He'd need to dig further back than that. 3.x was the last of the 68k
> > MCLs. 4.x was PPC, 5.x was/is OS X. Myself, I'm holding on to my
> > (single) copy of 4.3 as long as I still have Classic running on my
> > iBook.
>
> Ah, sans digging, 3.9 is my earliest. Of course I would do a bundle with
> a 4.3 since that was an upgrade of the 3.9.
>
> But I thought we were moving him to an XT and CLisp?
Either way. MCL has good documentation and a nice IDE. I'm happy to
put up with Emacs/SLIME as an interface when running on a Huge Sun of
Doom (no I'm not, actually, I bitch about the UI nonstop ... but MCL
doesn't run on said beast). For a desktop, a free PC running Linux
would have much more in terms of compute resources, but oy, the UI. On
the other hand, I think Robert is used to Emacs, so it's probably a
non-issue in reality. So yeah, forget 3.9 ... a contemporary Emacs/
SLIME/SBCL setup is the right solution.
BTW, totally off topic and an inappropriate place to complain about it
but ... why oh why does Franz torture us? ACL would be such a
fantastic environment, if only it would ship with a reasonable IDE. I
mean one that works on machines appropriate for Real Engineering Work.
Windows makes a nice host for running a citrix client...
From: Kenny
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <48a2cd2f$0$20945$607ed4bc@cv.net>
Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> BTW, totally off topic and an inappropriate place to complain about it
> but ... why oh why does Franz torture us? ACL would be such a
> fantastic environment, if only it would ship with a reasonable IDE. I
> mean one that works on machines appropriate for Real Engineering Work.
Is the GTk-based IDE on ?nix not as good as on Win32? Anyway, my guess
is they figure people would just keep on using emacs/slime anyway, why
bother. It's a huge effort.
But if they had listened to me they would have a portable IDE
accelerated by OpenGL by now. And it would make funny sounds.
No one listens to me. Let's me say whatever I want. Where were we?
kt
--
$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
On Aug 13, 2:01 pm, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> > BTW, totally off topic and an inappropriate place to complain about it
> > but ... why oh why does Franz torture us? ACL would be such a
> > fantastic environment, if only it would ship with a reasonable IDE. I
> > mean one that works on machines appropriate for Real Engineering Work.
>
> Is the GTk-based IDE on ?nix not as good as on Win32? Anyway, my guess
> is they figure people would just keep on using emacs/slime anyway, why
> bother. It's a huge effort.
Last time I tried it, it was pretty crappy. I should maybe give it
another shot, since it's officially supported now, the annoying bugs
should at least be gone. But a giant window containing its own series
of pseudo-windows that don't respond to the normal window manager
makes it pretty bad. And it only works on Linux (sigh) which I guess
is reasonable in that that's the obvious Unix to target, but I do tend
to do my interactive work on ?olaris.
But yeah, I'm sure it's a question of market forces going on here and
the low expectations everyone has for Linux.
> But if they had listened to me they would have a portable IDE
> accelerated by OpenGL by now. And it would make funny sounds.
>
> No one listens to me. Let's me say whatever I want. Where were we?
And if they listened to Peter they'd have a portable IDE that supports
remote display :-)
From: Pascal J. Bourguignon
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <7cd4kdgpve.fsf@pbourguignon.anevia.com>
"Thomas F. Burdick" <········@gmail.com> writes:
>> " the wonder that is Craigslist."
>>
>> That is the second recommendation of CL I heard this week. I should
>> loiter there, it seems.
>
> From selling to trading to bartering everything from apartments to
> bikes to bookshelves to sex, it's hard to imagine how the Bay Area
> would function without it. I only wish there were something like it in
> Paris.
http://paris.fr.craigslist.org/
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__
On Aug 13, 12:40 pm, ····@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
wrote:
> "Thomas F. Burdick" <········@gmail.com> writes:
>
> >> " the wonder that is Craigslist."
>
> >> That is the second recommendation of CL I heard this week. I should
> >> loiter there, it seems.
>
> > From selling to trading to bartering everything from apartments to
> > bikes to bookshelves to sex, it's hard to imagine how the Bay Area
> > would function without it. I only wish there were something like it in
> > Paris.
>
> http://paris.fr.craigslist.org/
Now compare and contrast with http://sfbay.craigslist.org/ -- no one
uses CL Paris. There are other places online to look for the various
things people us CL for in the BA. It's that particular magic that
happens when they're all the same site that's missing. To bring this
back on topic, I would not look for an old LE LISP manual on CL Paris,
but the BA site would not be a bad place to start looking for an old
copy of MCL.
On Aug 10, 5:27 pm, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> > You are constantly complaining (at extreme length)
> > about the strangest problems here, and whenever a solution is given,
> > you always have an even longer and stranger complaint waiting as to
> > why it Cannot Possibly Work.
>
> Yes, it is almost like a video game, but in classroom discipline one of
> the tricks is to catch the chronic troublemaker doing something good and
> reinforce. My theory is that the long days have energized our Eeyore
> as they have me, and we must build whatever momentum we can in the man
> before the long winter nights return.
>
> Just yesterday evening I noticed it was dark and my heart sank, for I
> remember 8:45pm as about the last pitch of the nightly pickup softball
> games of my first youth and that we knew it was time to go home when a
> fly ball to the outfielder went unseen. I digress.
>
> If we have lost almost an hour, given the rule of twelve things will
> unravel degrade quickly now...it is time to act!
>
> " the wonder that is Craigslist."
>
> That is the second recommendation of CL I heard this week. I should
> loiter there, it seems.
>
> > If you wanted
> > to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL.
>
> I believe I have three licensed MCL4.3 CDs I do not need.
>
> kt
>
> --
>
> $$$$$:http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
> Cells:http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
> BSlog:http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
Kenny,
If you don't need them, I would be interested ... for sentimental
reasons. I've been using this piece of software at the University and
it would be nice to have it, on my old iBook. Please contact me, if
You really don't need those CD's
regards
Chris
On Aug 10, 4:32 am, "Thomas F. Burdick" <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 10, 1:00 am, ··················@spamgourmet.com.remove (Robert
>
> Maas,http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
> > REM> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last
> > REM> version of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my
> > REM> Macintosh Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which
> > REM> compound to make usage very very painful:
>
> > TFB> You continue to surprise and amaze us with your choice of
> > TFB> tools. Bravo! Engineering this is not ... but art!
>
> > Is that supposed to be satirical or something like that?
>
> Sarcastic, yes. You are constantly complaining (at extreme length)
> about the strangest problems here, and whenever a solution is given,
> you always have an even longer and stranger complaint waiting as to
> why it Cannot Possibly Work.
>
> You live in the Bay Area. You can get a junker computer that is 1000x
> better than your current for free, or the cost/trouble of taking
> public transit. If you have anything at all to barter you can get an
> even better one thanks to the wonder that is Craigslist. If you wanted
> to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL. I'm sure you
> won't, and no I don't want to hear the why.
>
> (Okay, I admit to a perverse curiosity, but I won't help)
How can you blame one Robert Maas?
Let's face it, lispers here are weired and old in general. Rainer,
still uses and trumpet Lisp Machines and its extremely non-ergonomic
keyboard.
On the other hand, there's Kenny, who sells a highschool algebra
software with accolades from the mid 1990s.
Then, there's Pitman, who's purpose is to remind us what he has been
doing in the 1980s.
I'd say Jon Harrop is more of a avant garde here. And, i'm beginning
to enjoy fully, the free-for-all nature of comp.lang.lisp, including,
the dogfight of propriety.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
On Aug 12, 4:29 pm, ·······@gmail.com" <······@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 10, 4:32 am, "Thomas F. Burdick" <········@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Aug 10, 1:00 am, ··················@spamgourmet.com.remove (Robert
>
> > Maas,http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
> > > REM> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last
> > > REM> version of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my
> > > REM> Macintosh Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which
> > > REM> compound to make usage very very painful:
>
> > > TFB> You continue to surprise and amaze us with your choice of
> > > TFB> tools. Bravo! Engineering this is not ... but art!
>
> > > Is that supposed to be satirical or something like that?
>
> > Sarcastic, yes. You are constantly complaining (at extreme length)
> > about the strangest problems here, and whenever a solution is given,
> > you always have an even longer and stranger complaint waiting as to
> > why it Cannot Possibly Work.
>
> > You live in the Bay Area. You can get a junker computer that is 1000x
> > better than your current for free, or the cost/trouble of taking
> > public transit. If you have anything at all to barter you can get an
> > even better one thanks to the wonder that is Craigslist. If you wanted
> > to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL. I'm sure you
> > won't, and no I don't want to hear the why.
>
> > (Okay, I admit to a perverse curiosity, but I won't help)
>
> How can you blame one Robert Maas?
>
> Let's face it, lispers here are weired and old in general. Rainer,
> still uses and trumpet Lisp Machines and its extremely non-ergonomic
> keyboard.
>
> On the other hand, there's Kenny, who sells a highschool algebra
> software with accolades from the mid 1990s.
>
> Then, there's Pitman, who's purpose is to remind us what he has been
> doing in the 1980s.
>
> I'd say Jon Harrop is more of a avant garde here. And, i'm beginning
> to enjoy fully, the free-for-all nature of comp.lang.lisp, including,
> the dogfight of propriety.
>
> Xah
> ∑http://xahlee.org/
>
> ☄- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
And what is your purpose Xah?
bobi
Slobodan Blazeski wrote: «And what is your purpose Xah?».
Well, the Wizard of Oz says: “To confer, converse, and otherwise hob-
nob with my brother wizards.”.
But from my perspective, i'm more inclined to think my purpose being
the Re-education Of Lispers.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:12:54 -0700 (PDT), ·······@gmail.com"
<······@gmail.com> wrote:
>Slobodan Blazeski wrote: �And what is your purpose Xah?�.
>
>Well, the Wizard of Oz says: �To confer, converse, and otherwise hob-
>nob with my brother wizards.�.
>
But don't look behind the curtain.
George
On 12 Ago, 16:29, ·······@gmail.com" <······@gmail.com> wrote:
> How can you blame [a CL-USER]
Most of CL-USERs don't come here at all, and from those who actually
do, only few actually post.
Common Lisping is so much fun for them, that they don't feel the need
for this (only spuriously funny) group.
-PM
From: Kenny
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <48a1bb07$0$20934$607ed4bc@cv.net>
······@gmail.com wrote:
> On Aug 10, 4:32 am, "Thomas F. Burdick" <········@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Aug 10, 1:00 am, ··················@spamgourmet.com.remove (Robert
>>
>> Maas,http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
>>> REM> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last
>>> REM> version of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my
>>> REM> Macintosh Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which
>>> REM> compound to make usage very very painful:
>>> TFB> You continue to surprise and amaze us with your choice of
>>> TFB> tools. Bravo! Engineering this is not ... but art!
>>> Is that supposed to be satirical or something like that?
>> Sarcastic, yes. You are constantly complaining (at extreme length)
>> about the strangest problems here, and whenever a solution is given,
>> you always have an even longer and stranger complaint waiting as to
>> why it Cannot Possibly Work.
>>
>> You live in the Bay Area. You can get a junker computer that is 1000x
>> better than your current for free, or the cost/trouble of taking
>> public transit. If you have anything at all to barter you can get an
>> even better one thanks to the wonder that is Craigslist. If you wanted
>> to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL. I'm sure you
>> won't, and no I don't want to hear the why.
>>
>> (Okay, I admit to a perverse curiosity, but I won't help)
>
> How can you blame one Robert Maas?
>
> Let's face it, lispers here are weired and old in general. Rainer,
> still uses and trumpet Lisp Machines and its extremely non-ergonomic
> keyboard.
>
> On the other hand, there's Kenny, who sells a highschool algebra
> software with accolades from the mid 1990s.
First line of (Microsoft Logo) code, 1985, on an Apple II. (But I
shouldn't be giving rem ideas.)
kt
--
$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
On Aug 12, 4:29 pm, ·······@gmail.com" <······@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 10, 4:32 am, "Thomas F. Burdick" <········@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Aug 10, 1:00 am, ··················@spamgourmet.com.remove (Robert
>
> > Maas,http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
> > > REM> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last
> > > REM> version of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my
> > > REM> Macintosh Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which
> > > REM> compound to make usage very very painful:
>
> > > TFB> You continue to surprise and amaze us with your choice of
> > > TFB> tools. Bravo! Engineering this is not ... but art!
>
> > > Is that supposed to be satirical or something like that?
>
> > Sarcastic, yes. You are constantly complaining (at extreme length)
> > about the strangest problems here, and whenever a solution is given,
> > you always have an even longer and stranger complaint waiting as to
> > why it Cannot Possibly Work.
>
> > You live in the Bay Area. You can get a junker computer that is 1000x
> > better than your current for free, or the cost/trouble of taking
> > public transit. If you have anything at all to barter you can get an
> > even better one thanks to the wonder that is Craigslist. If you wanted
> > to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL. I'm sure you
> > won't, and no I don't want to hear the why.
>
> > (Okay, I admit to a perverse curiosity, but I won't help)
>
> How can you blame one Robert Maas?
By occasionally making snide comments when he finds a particularly
interesting way to defeat himself? I have to say, I was pretty
surprised by the Performa/PowerLisp combination.
> Let's face it, lispers here are weired and old in general. Rainer,
> still uses and trumpet Lisp Machines and its extremely non-ergonomic
> keyboard.
Yep, he uses some wacky old stuff. The difference is that we know that
Rainer is using a Symbolics keyboard with his mac because he posts the
details about how he managed to get that Frankenstein's beast up and
walking. More power to him (Rainer, not the monster). What he did not
do was post 17k word plaints about how it's impossible to work without
his wacky keyboard but impossible to work with it.
> On the other hand, there's Kenny, who sells a highschool algebra
> software with accolades from the mid 1990s.
>
> Then, there's Pitman, who's purpose is to remind us what he has been
> doing in the 1980s.
Yeah, among other thngs those two do. I'm not saying c.l.l is a great
forum for talking about the useful work one is doing right now (it's
not, and you all here don't hear from me on the cool things I'm doing
at work). Wait, what was my point here? Oh yeah, Zidane retired, the
Supersonics look like they'll never again be a challenge to the Lakers
and now they're going to move to Oaklahoma? That's it, I give up, I'm
concentrating on my multi-player Ltk Pong.
> I'd say Jon Harrop is more of a avant garde here. And, i'm beginning
> to enjoy fully, the free-for-all nature of comp.lang.lisp, including,
> the dogfight of propriety.
Dude, the vanguard is a shill? If he were honestly trying to convince
us to switch to ML du jour, I might agree with you; but deeply
dishonest hit-and-run marketing is not the wave of the future, I hope.
From: Kenny
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <48a2c4e5$0$20924$607ed4bc@cv.net>
Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> I have to say, I was pretty
> surprised by the Performa/PowerLisp combination.
You mean "impressed", right? rem more than any of is us doing what he
has to do Lisp. I remember feeling sorry for myself back in Manhattan
sitting on the stoop and looking up to see the guy from the old folks
home up the block making his way along the sidewalk with his walker
three inches at a time. Every day, one trip each way. Turns out he was
just making his way to and from the benches along what used to be Needle
Park. I dialed back on the self-pity.
> but deeply
> dishonest hit-and-run marketing is not the wave of the future, I hope.
F*ck. I need a new business plan.
kenny
--
$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t a man with no life wrote:
a lot of stupid things.
From: Kenny
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <489f09ab$0$29525$607ed4bc@cv.net>
·············@gmail.com wrote:
> Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t a man with no life wrote:
>
> a lot of stupid things.
The self-reference objection prevents me from responding.
(Yes, this has been a responsive non-response.)
:)
kenny
--
$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
I remember I managed to start PowerLisp inside the BasiliskII ( a Mac
emulator for Linux), which will give you many more CPU clock cycles
than a real Mac inspite the emulation overhead.
WARNING: I remember there is a more severe bug in PowerLisp, in that
it treats all variables as dynamic. So beware: not standard-compliant.
I would like to have your code for sleep, tec. Is it free softw.?
Could you email it to me?
From: Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <rem-2008aug31-002@yahoo.com>
> From: ·······@eurogaran.com
> I remember I managed to start PowerLisp inside the BasiliskII (
> a Mac emulator for Linux), which will give you many more CPU
> clock cycles than a real Mac inspite the emulation overhead.
For use on my shell account (FreeBSD Unix), I already have CMUCL,
which works fine, only three bugs I ever found, one of which has
since been fixed (tilde-newline format directive) and another is
easy to patch (sleep of floating point larger than 1) and the third
didn't recur often enough to be a problem (wrong stack frame when
debugging if a local variable masked a global variable). I have no
need of PowerLisp, even if a Mac emulator for Linux can be made to
run there.
For my RedHat Linux laptop, the modem doesn't work, so I have no
way to download anything. All I have there are Gnu EMACS with
ELISP, and Java, so getting any version of Common Lisp working,
maybe even PowerLisp, would be nice. Can you help me diagnose the
modem problem, where the terminal emulator that comes with the
system thinks the modem is already online so it refuses to go
online?
> WARNING: I remember there is a more severe bug in PowerLisp, in
> that it treats all variables as dynamic. So beware: not
> standard-compliant.
Indeed in one of my programs I got symptoms of that, forcing me to
be *very* careful to avoid having local variables by the same names
as global variables. I therefore changed my development habits to
always use x- as prefix on temporary global variables that will
become local variables as soon as I finish line-by-line debugging
and wrap (defun (prog)) around the lines of code, and in fact strip
off the x- prefix at the moment when I wrap (defun (prog)) around
those lines of code, the same time I declare all the prog variables
and search to make sure I didn't forget any. I also now use g- as
prefix of temporary global values I use for debugging which will
*not* become local variables, and continue to use g* as prefix for
globals that are permanent, with each declared via defvar or
defparameter before first use.
When an error happens, I see a context form which looks like the
original use of an association list (alist) to implement shadowing
of special variables, back when *all* variables were special in
interepreted MacLisp, and your warning seems to confirm what I had
guessed from the bug symptoms and the alist in error messages.
> I would like to have your code for sleep, tec. Is it free softw.?
No, I developed it for my own use, using my own unpaid time.
> Could you email it to me?
If you are willing to pay me for some of my time I spent developing
it, I would e-mail it to you and grant you a non-exclusive license
to use it, including right to modify it providing that you show me
your modifications, and right to re-sell it providing that you give
me some reasonable percentage of your gross sales. Is that
acceptable to you?
;Special case of REDUCE that doesn't implement other keyword arguments,
; and doesn't implement case of zero args.
(defun PLreduce (fn args &key (from-end nil)) ...
(you don't want that, you want the full ANSI-CL definition)
SLEEP is all you would want in that file. All the code, plus
liberal comments, plus some test output, and blank lines separating
function definitions, totals 5706 characters in 138 lines. How much
would you be willing to pay me for that code+license? The most I
can accept is US$9.99, because any more than that during a single
calendar month month needs to be reported to the SSA, either as
unearned income
(whereby the *entire* amount is deducted from my SSI)
or as earned income
(whereby you *must* get an IRS employer identification number and
report me to the IRS as your employee, and you *must* collect
withholding taxes and send them to the IRS at the end of the
year, and I *must* report your IRS employer identification number
number to the SSA when I report my earned income so that they can
track you down if you fail to send them the withholding taxes).
But I'll accept less than $9.99 if you can't afford that much or
don't think my software is worth that much. Or you can offer a
prepayment of a smaller amount with shareware-style followup
payment if you decide my software is worth more to you than your
original payment. Or you can send a lower-bound on estimated value
of my software then if you think it's worth more you can post a
letter of recommendation about what wonderful software I provide at
such low prices so that I can maybe find other customers. Please
respond privately by e-mail using any of my public first-contact
SpamGourmet addresses. After I get your e-mail I'll assign you a
private SpamGourmet address for followup e-mail
conversations/negotiations/offers/bids. I won't ask for your cheque
in the mail until after we've agreed upon a code+license price.
Since postage is 42 cents, and I feel it would be unfair if the
postal service got more for my work than I got myself, I won't
accept any offer less than 42 cents. I'll grant first license to
highest bidder within that range $0.42 to $9.99, if there are more
than one bidder.
By the way, PowerLisp hasn't frozen my Mac requiring cold restart
for several weeks, so I guess I've been careful enough not to do
anything that would cause such a problem, such as infinite loop or
too much text output to IDE etc. Meanwhile the tools I wrote for
prefixed fill-paragraph (copy prefix from first line, and copy
indentation from second line) have been very useful since I got
them working, and I use them several times a day when composing
newsgroup articles, in fact I used both tools in my previous
posting. Let me know if you're interested in any of these tools:
;Read text input until end of text indicated by blank line.
;Return list of non-blank lines.
;Note there might be a blank line before the text starts, so it's ignored.
;(Actually, unlimited number of blank lines are ignored before first nonblank.)
(defun gobble-input-text-to-blank-line () ...)
;Given maximum length of lines in filled paragraph:
;Gobble lines of input until blank line(s) after non-blank,
; get prefix from start of first line, re-fill paragraph, and
; write result to output (with special marks at start and end for now).
(defun input-find-prefix-refill-output (maxlen) ...)
;Given maximum length of lines in filled paragraph:
;Gobble lines of input until blank line(s) after non-blank,
; get indent-prefix from start of second line, re-fill paragraph, and
; write result to output (with special marks at start and end for now).
(defun input-find-second-line-indent-refill-output (maxlen) ...)
The file with those utilities is 7132 characters in 173 lines. If
you are running PowerLisp most/all of the time there, would that
code be useful to you? Maybe to save postage, you could offer a bid
for both SLEEP and the fill-paragraph utilities in a single cheque?
Here's a sample run I used in this message:
(input-find-second-line-indent-refill-output 67)
.(whereby you *must* get an IRS employer identification number and
report me to the IRS as your employee, and you *must* collect
withholding taxes and send them to the IRS at the end of the year,
and I *must* report your IRS employer identification number number
to the SSA when I report my earned income so that they can track
you down if you fail to send them the withholding taxes).
***START***
.(whereby you *must* get an IRS employer identification number and
report me to the IRS as your employee, and you *must* collect
withholding taxes and send them to the IRS at the end of the
year, and I *must* report your IRS employer identification number
number to the SSA when I report my earned income so that they can
track you down if you fail to send them the withholding taxes).
***END***
nil
It has one fluke that if the first line begins with whitespace,
that whitespace is lost, causing unexpected results, so I get
around that fluke by replacing the first character of the first
line by some other character, the putting the space back in its
place after filling the paragraph. I can live with that, but can
my first customer?
From: Kaz Kylheku
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <20080812165525.759@gmail.com>
On 2008-08-09, Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
<··················@spamgourmet.com.remove> wrote:
> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last version
> of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my Macintosh
> Performa
You're diving through the wrong dumpsters for equipment.
From: Kenny
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <48a22764$0$29525$607ed4bc@cv.net>
Kaz Kylheku wrote:
> On 2008-08-09, Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
> <··················@spamgourmet.com.remove> wrote:
>> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last version
>> of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my Macintosh
>> Performa
>
> You're diving through the wrong dumpsters for equipment.
dumpster schmumpster, someone would probably give him $10 to take away a
nice system and a couple of 19" monitors.
I just wish he lived nearby. :)
kt
--
$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
On Aug 9, 3:33 am, ··················@spamgourmet.com.remove (Robert
Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last version
> of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my Macintosh
> Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which compound to make
> usage very very painful:
> - No way to abort from a loop except by pressing the COLD RESTART
> button on the machine.
> - Any program that writes too much text to the IDE window triggers
> a bug that freezes the machine, which can be remedied only by
> pressing the COLD RESTART button on the machine.
> - Clover-S (shortcut for File > Save) to save your edit to the disk
> FUCKING DOESN'T WORK!!! I lost several hours work when I used
> clover-S to save my edit about every five minutes, then
> encountered one of the conditions requiring COLD RESTART of the
> system, whereupon I discovered that the "saved" file was still
> in the same state it had been when I first started PowerLisp
> hours before. Fortunately I was developing a very difficult
> piece of code during that time, at a time I was just starting to
> make good use of PowerLisp, so in all those hours I had only
> finished writing one new function, which I had thought and
> rethought many times to try to find a way it would work with
> PowerLisp, so I was able to quickly re-create what had been lost
> in about another half hour.
> But anyway, not one of those times that I "saved my edit" did any
> of my new code actually end up on the disk. Perhaps it saved it
> to a buffer or something, intending to actually write to
> physical disk upon exit from the program, but due to condition
> requiring COLD RESTART the program was never exited normally so
> the file never really got written.
>
> So over a week or so I desperately needed *some* version of LIsp on
> my Macintosh Performa 600 (System 7.5.5) to be of practical use,
> switching back and forth between XLISP and PowerLisp to try to find
> either usable, I finally made some progress with PowerLisp, and
> abandoned XLISP forever. Then after losing hours of work several
> times, I adopted a new strategy: It's just not worth using clover-S
> to save PowerLisp's worksheet. Instead, copy everything I have
> so-far over to a McSink edit and save *that* to disk, which really
> and truly does write to disk immediately before returning control
> to the user. Then when COLD RESTART is needed, all I've lost is
> anything newer than the last McSink save. And in addition I've
> managed (most of the time) to avoid anything that crashes PowerLisp
> or hangs the system etc. requiring COLD RESTART in the first place.
> Thursday I think I needed COLD RESTART just once or twice, and
> Friday I didn't need it once all day.
>
> So anyway what have I been doing useful with PowerLisp?
> - Wrote a patch file that defined three important functions missing
> from PowerLisp: REDUCE SLEEP and BREAK
> - Converted 2005-7-ranpri-gp.lisp (formerly usable with CMUCL) to
> PowerLisp. That's a module to deal with small prime numbers that
> can be enumerated in an explicit list to make usage more
> efficiently than large numbers that won't all fit in memory thus
> must be re-generated on demand and discared when finished with
> use.
> - Converted 2005-8-readers.lisp (formerly usable with CMUCL) to
> work in PowerLisp. That's a module to load five formats of file
> into memory as a single "object": Whole file to one big US-ASCII
> string, lines of file to list of US-ASCII strings, whole file
> one big s-expression, file contains multiple s-expressions that
> are loaded to a list, whole file as binary bytes loaded to list
> which is then converted to array if desired.
> - Wrote 2008-8-cols.lisp, which parses multi-column tabular layout
> such as directory listing from FileList.
> - Wrote 2008-8-fill.lisp which fills paragraph with prefix copied
> to start of each line, essentially what the original EMACS at
> MIT used to do.
> - One standard usage copies the prefix from the first line. This is
> useful for quoting what somebody said before you in a
> discussion forum or e-mail. You may have seen me start using
> this for newsgroup postings such as where I liberally used it
> here:
> <http://groups.google.com/group/alt.gossip.celebrities/msg/3c914c5b6ce...>
> = Message-ID: <·················@yahoo.com>
> - Another standard usage copies the whitespace indentation from
> the second line. This is useful for emulating the indentation
> of HTML list items (bullet points) in lynx, or prettyprinting
> text inside parenthesized expressions. I used it to format all
> the bullet points in *this* article, and to prettyprint a
> parenthetical expression elsewhere. I used to manually
> prettyprint parenthesised expressions, but it's so much easier
> and faster with this new tool!
>
> So is anybody curious to see the paragraph-fill with prefix as a CGI demo?
>
> For example, with this as input:
>
> (input-find-prefix-refill-output 42)
> Pascal> For example, the soviets didn't line [typo for "like"?] binary
> because it was invented by capitalist dogs. So they built a
> computer that worked in ternary. +12V, ~0V, -12V.
>
> the output would be:
>
> Pascal> For example, the soviets didn't
> Pascal> line [typo for "like"?] binary
> Pascal> because it was invented by
> Pascal> capitalist dogs. So they built a
> Pascal> computer that worked in ternary.
> Pascal> +12V, ~0V, -12V.
>
> And with this as input:
>
> (input-find-second-line-indent-refill-output 78)
> SENDER AGREEMENT - By clicking the "VERIFY" button above, and in
> consideration for Spam Arrest,
> LLC forwarding your e-mail (and any
> e-mails you may send in the future) to the intended recipient (the
> "Recipient"), you agree to be bound by the following Sender Agreement:
> You represent and warrant to Spam Arrest and the Recipient that any
> e-mail you desire to send to the Recipient is not "unsolicited
> commercial e-mail" i.e., the e-mail does not primarily contain an
> advertisement or promotion of a commercial product, service or Web
> site; unless the Recipient expressly consented to receive the message,
> either in response to a clear and conspicuous request for such consent
> or at the Recipient's own initiative.
>
> the output would be:
>
> SENDER AGREEMENT - By clicking the "VERIFY" button above, and in consideration
> for Spam Arrest, LLC forwarding your e-mail (and any
> e-mails you may send in the future) to the intended
> recipient (the "Recipient"), you agree to be bound by the
> following Sender Agreement: You represent and warrant to
> Spam Arrest and the Recipient that any e-mail you desire to
> send to the Recipient is not "unsolicited commercial
> e-mail" i.e., the e-mail does not primarily contain an
> advertisement or promotion of a commercial product, service
> or Web site; unless the Recipient expressly consented to
> receive the message, either in response to a clear and
> conspicuous request for such consent or at the Recipient's
> own initiative.
>
> Or maybe you'd like to play with a CGI demo of any of the other
> software modules I've written in recent years?
> <http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/WAP/SeekJobAccom.html>
Old macs are a pleasure to use, old wintel pcs are junk !
(my perspective)
Source code for Powerlisp and xlisp-plus are available.
I have them - I have tried to compile the newer version of xlisp
with the old mac patches merged and failed (it was apparently never
done
as the mac porter left). Also Tom Almy is not interested in xlisp-plus
at all anymore, too much competition he says.
The newer powerlisp also has bug fixes, can it be built for 68k ?
Again
not enough interest by the developer. However he does have a
commercial
lisp and probably cares enough that some kids (of any age) might pick
up the freebie and later buy his commercial product --- so would
probably
accept patches ...
With the source code somebody could fix those bugs. Don't know if
my troubles were my compilers (thinkc/c++ or apple-freebie, not
codewarrior) or my lack of experience with mac programming (a
different
world from unix, although I have compiled perl and extensions for it
on powermacs).
I wish RM would post those codes he describes on his web site,
please ?
Also there is a recent version of linux, called debian etch-m68k that
I have running emacs/slime/ecl. Due to the nature of this setup the
backend
could be run on a faster machine.
ECL plays nice and some how reminds me of the old mac lisps above ...
The advantage to me of those OMLs that they are relatively simple,
even if not complete or buggy, ok for basics with some work arounds.
The old macos is sort of a friendly place compared to linux in some
ways. Anyway since I used to use old sun 3/60 and NeXT I believe
that these old machines should work for the basics and if not then
that
they are a sign to how inefficient we have become since.
From: Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <rem-2008aug31-003@yahoo.com>
> From: ········@gmail.com
> Once I had to process really much data from a Mac Performa from ca.
> 1993, and I did it this way:
> I made an image of the whole hard drive (connecting it physically
> to a Linux PC, and if I remember correctly, using an SCSI card and
> the dd command).
I'm pretty sure my laptop doesn't have any SCSI card, and I don't
think there's any room to fit it in there even if I had the money
to buy one, so that method wouldn't work for me.
My best bet for transferring large files (300-500k each) from my
Mac to the laptop would probably be to buy a new diskette drive for
the laptop, if I had the money, which I don't have, and if they
were still on the market, which they probably aren't, for such an
old model of laptop. But even if I got the data there, I don't have
any version of Common Lisp running there, so my program to process
the data couldn't run there. I'm not sure I would want to download
the entire set of files for the Mac-on-Linux emulator to my Mac and
then move it by diskette to the Linux laptop for installation.
My best bet for processing the data, without any way to transfer
the data en masse to laptop, and no way to process it even if I got
it there, is to use an old technique from circa 1964, as described
in the appx. ten page introduction to computers called "You and the
Computer", which is to start the batch running then go do something
else while it's running then come back when it's done. Depending on
the length of the batch job, taking a nap or shower or washing
dishes or watching a TV program or two or going to sleep overnight
might be suitable. Are you curious how long it actually takes my
PowerLisp software, running on my Mac Performa, to parse all the
lines in REM400-Part1-Text which is 483k bytes?
From: Pascal J. Bourguignon
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <87vdxhqpk1.fsf@hubble.informatimago.com>
··················@spamgourmet.com.remove (Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) writes:
>> From: ········@gmail.com
>> Once I had to process really much data from a Mac Performa from ca.
>> 1993, and I did it this way:
>> I made an image of the whole hard drive (connecting it physically
>> to a Linux PC, and if I remember correctly, using an SCSI card and
>> the dd command).
>
> I'm pretty sure my laptop doesn't have any SCSI card, and I don't
> think there's any room to fit it in there even if I had the money
> to buy one, so that method wouldn't work for me.
>
> My best bet for transferring large files (300-500k each) from my
> Mac to the laptop would probably be to buy a new diskette drive for
> the laptop, if I had the money,
Your best bet would be to use the serial interfaces. Find, buy or
make a serial cable. Transfering 500KB at 112000 b/s takes about 45s.
With a serial connection, you will also be able to configure PPP over
it, and then share your Internet connection from the Mac, so you don't
need the modem in the laptop.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
The mighty hunter
Returns with gifts of plump birds,
Your foot just squashed one.
From: Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <rem-2008sep30-009@yahoo.com>
> > I'm pretty sure my laptop doesn't have any SCSI card, and I don't
> > think there's any room to fit it in there even if I had the money
> > to buy one, so that method wouldn't work for me.
> > My best bet for transferring large files (300-500k each) from my
> > Mac to the laptop would probably be to buy a new diskette drive for
> > the laptop, if I had the money,
> From: ····@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
> Your best bet would be to use the serial interfaces. Find, buy or
> make a serial cable.
None of those are options for me at this time.
Many years ago I had the money to buy the EIA 25-pin connectors, and
I had some scrap telephone wire, so I was able to make a modem cable.
But that's in storage, and it was for EIA at both ends, whereas
neither my Macintosh nor my laptop uses that kind of connector.
(Mac uses DIN, and laptop uses something else I can't figure out.)
> Transfering 500KB at 112000 b/s takes about 45s.
If you have appropriate software at both ends, and the hardware
handshake is correct so that both ends believe the other end is
online.
> With a serial connection, you will also be able to configure PPP
> over it, and then share your Internet connection from the Mac, so
> you don't need the modem in the laptop.
My Mac doesn't have any InterNet connection, and isn't capable of
it in the first place. 8 MB of RAM just isn't enough for any
off-the-shelf PPP service together with Web browser etc.
When I tried it in 1998, it thrashed so badly that it took 20
minutes to download just one Web page and 5 minutes just to scroll
locally when I clicked the MS-IE scroll bar with the mouse.
Now if I could simply connect the serial port of my laptop to the
external modem that I normally use with my Mac for VT-100 emulator,
I might be able to run PPP directly from my laptop. But I seem to
remember that I already tried connecting the serial port of the
laptop to the modem and running the VT100 emulator on the laptop,
and couldn't get it to work, not even dial the phone, so I don't
think I have the hardware expertise needed to connect the laptop
serial port to *anything* and make the connection work.
I wish there was somebody in the Sunnyvale area who knew Linux well
enough to show me how to diagnose whether the problem with the
modem is the modem itself or the OS, so I'd know whether it'd be
worth my time/energy to spend an hour each way commuting by public
transit to Fry's Electronics to buy a new modem that I can't afford
in the first place.
On Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:10:35 +0200, "John Thingstad"
<·······@online.no> wrote:
>P� Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:00:41 +0200, skrev George Neuner
><········@comcast.net>:
>
>>
>> If you want to connect the computers together, you need to make what's
>> called a NULL-modem (aka DTE/DTE) cable - that's a cable where the
>> signals are swapped end to end. Connecting a computer to a modem
>> requires a normal (aka DTE/DCE) cable. You can Google the pin-outs
>> for the various cables easily enough.
>>
>
>Incidentally you can use a twisted pair cable to connect two computers via
>Ethernet as well. This way you don't need a router. There is really
>nothing magical about the cable. If you have a cable pincher you can make
>one yourself. As for mac's I found the followink link:
>http://lowendmac.com/tech/aaui.html
>
>--------------
>John Thingstad
Yes. But Robert seems to be using really old equipment which is
unlikely to have ethernet built-in - I'm sure his Macintosh doesn't
anyway. And if he can't buy a $20 serial cable to connect his
computers, he certainly can't buy ethernet adapters.
George
From: Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
Subject: Re: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2008nov02-003@Yahoo.Com>
> From: George Neuner <········@comcast.net>
> ... Robert seems to be using really old equipment which is
> unlikely to have ethernet built-in
The modem in my laptop which stopped working several years ago (and
I am still looking for somebody who will help me diagnose whether
the problem is hardware or software) also is supposed to be an
EtherNet modem. But there's no EtherNet around here, so I couldn't
try it to see if that part of the modem work even if somebody
loaned me an EtherNet cable.
> I'm sure his Macintosh doesn't anyway.
Correct. It has AppleTalk, which I've never been able to get to
talk to anything, partly because it doesn't "just work" as
documented, and partly because I've never been able to find anyone
to help me diagnose why it doesn't work.
> And if he can't buy a $20 serial cable to connect his computers,
> he certainly can't buy EtherNet adapters.
More seriously, I can't buy a leased-line to connect to anywhere
that has EtherNet available so that I can even test whether
EtherNet works on my laptop. If you happen to own an EtherNet hub,
and another computer that already works with it, and a second
EtherNet cable, please contact me through my Web site to arrange to
visit me to give my laptop an EtherNet test.
On Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:28:45 -0700, ·············@teh.intarweb.org
(Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
>> From: George Neuner <········@comcast.net>
>
>> I'm sure [Robert's] Macintosh doesn't have [Ethernet].
>
>Correct. It has AppleTalk, which I've never been able to get to
>talk to anything, partly because it doesn't "just work" as
>documented, and partly because I've never been able to find anyone
>to help me diagnose why it doesn't work.
AppleTalk does "just work" as documented - it is completely plug and
play and requires somewhere between no configuration and absolutely
minimal configuration (typically just a network name with all other
settings arbitrated automatically). But you need to have other
AppleTalk devices (computer, laser printer, etc.) and proper cabling
to do anything with it.
Apple serial cables do not work for AppleTalk.
George
From: Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
Subject: OT-AppleTalk (was: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has)
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2008nov04-003@Yahoo.Com>
> >> I'm sure [Robert's] Macintosh doesn't have [Ethernet].
> >Correct. It has AppleTalk, which I've never been able to get to
> >talk to anything, partly because it doesn't "just work" as
> >documented, and partly because I've never been able to find anyone
> >to help me diagnose why it doesn't work.
> From: George Neuner <········@comcast.net>
> AppleTalk does "just work" as documented - it is completely plug and
> play and requires somewhere between no configuration and absolutely
> minimal configuration (typically just a network name with all other
> settings arbitrated automatically). But you need to have other
> AppleTalk devices (computer, laser printer, etc.) and proper cabling
> to do anything with it.
> Apple serial cables do not work for AppleTalk.
No, AppleTalk does not *just*work*. I spent about $20 for the
complete set of stuff needed to connect my 9-yr-old Macintosh Plus
to my newly-purchased Macintosh Performa, and spent several days
trying to get either machine to talk to the other, but it didn't
work at all.
Those were a plastic-wrapped package of stuff specifically for
AppleTalk, not serial cables from somewhere else cross-mixed.
From: Thomas A. Russ
Subject: Re: OT-AppleTalk (was: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has)
Date:
Message-ID: <ymifxm6t7d5.fsf@blackcat.isi.edu>
·············@teh.intarweb.org (Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) writes:
> > >> I'm sure [Robert's] Macintosh doesn't have [Ethernet].
> > >Correct. It has AppleTalk, which I've never been able to get to
> > >talk to anything, partly because it doesn't "just work" as
> > >documented, and partly because I've never been able to find anyone
> > >to help me diagnose why it doesn't work.
> > From: George Neuner <········@comcast.net>
> > AppleTalk does "just work" as documented - it is completely plug and
> > play and requires somewhere between no configuration and absolutely
> > minimal configuration (typically just a network name with all other
> > settings arbitrated automatically). But you need to have other
> > AppleTalk devices (computer, laser printer, etc.) and proper cabling
> > to do anything with it.
> > Apple serial cables do not work for AppleTalk.
>
> No, AppleTalk does not *just*work*. I spent about $20 for the
> complete set of stuff needed to connect my 9-yr-old Macintosh Plus
> to my newly-purchased Macintosh Performa, and spent several days
> trying to get either machine to talk to the other, but it didn't
> work at all.
Hmmm. Oddly enough, it used to "just work" for me when I had it. I
used it for a long time at home, until I finally upgraded the laser
printer to work with Ethernet. But that was a long time ago. That
printer has long been replaced, and I have all this useless localtalk
hardware still sitting in a closet somewhere.
--
Thomas A. Russ, USC/Information Sciences Institute
From: Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
Subject: Re: OT-AppleTalk (was: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has)
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2008nov07-007@Yahoo.Com>
> From: ····@sevak.isi.edu (Thomas A. Russ)
> Hmmm. Oddly enough, it used to "just work" for me when I had it.
> I used it for a long time at home, until I finally upgraded the
> laser printer to work with Ethernet. But that was a long time ago.
> That printer has long been replaced, and I have all this useless
> localtalk hardware still sitting in a closet somewhere.
Maybe it "just works" only when connecting a computer to a printer,
as you did, but requires special expertise to set up file sharing
between two computers, as I was attempting. I could never get it to
work, in either direction, and nobody offered me help how to get it
working.
From: George Neuner
Subject: Re: OT-AppleTalk (was: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has)
Date:
Message-ID: <08sbh4tr7qvu8els1pojkhtvgtvjg59pd8@4ax.com>
On Fri, 07 Nov 2008 23:07:17 -0800, ·············@teh.intarweb.org
(Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
>> From: ····@sevak.isi.edu (Thomas A. Russ)
>> Hmmm. Oddly enough, it used to "just work" for me when I had it.
>> I used it for a long time at home, until I finally upgraded the
>> laser printer to work with Ethernet. But that was a long time ago.
>> That printer has long been replaced, and I have all this useless
>> localtalk hardware still sitting in a closet somewhere.
>
>Maybe it "just works" only when connecting a computer to a printer,
>as you did, but requires special expertise to set up file sharing
>between two computers, as I was attempting. I could never get it to
>work, in either direction, and nobody offered me help how to get it
>working.
Then I say again you must have had a damaged OS install because AT
file sharing is designed to be very simple.
George
From: Thomas A. Russ
Subject: Re: OT-AppleTalk (was: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has)
Date:
Message-ID: <ymifxlwd7ry.fsf@blackcat.isi.edu>
·············@teh.intarweb.org (Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) writes:
> > From: ····@sevak.isi.edu (Thomas A. Russ)
> > Hmmm. Oddly enough, it used to "just work" for me when I had it.
> > I used it for a long time at home, until I finally upgraded the
> > laser printer to work with Ethernet. But that was a long time ago.
> > That printer has long been replaced, and I have all this useless
> > localtalk hardware still sitting in a closet somewhere.
>
> Maybe it "just works" only when connecting a computer to a printer,
> as you did, but requires special expertise to set up file sharing
> between two computers, as I was attempting. I could never get it to
> work, in either direction, and nobody offered me help how to get it
> working.
Hmm. That just worked for me, too.
--
Thomas A. Russ, USC/Information Sciences Institute
From: George Neuner
Subject: Re: OT-AppleTalk (was: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has)
Date:
Message-ID: <g7q3h4p4af25fv28ns09ii52c3ll672jbb@4ax.com>
On Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:46:26 -0800, ·············@teh.intarweb.org
(Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
>> >> I'm sure [Robert's] Macintosh doesn't have [Ethernet].
>> >Correct. It has AppleTalk, which I've never been able to get to
>> >talk to anything, partly because it doesn't "just work" as
>> >documented, and partly because I've never been able to find anyone
>> >to help me diagnose why it doesn't work.
>
>> From: George Neuner <········@comcast.net>
>> AppleTalk does "just work" as documented - it is completely plug and
>> play and requires somewhere between no configuration and absolutely
>> minimal configuration (typically just a network name with all other
>> settings arbitrated automatically). But you need to have other
>> AppleTalk devices (computer, laser printer, etc.) and proper cabling
>> to do anything with it.
>> Apple serial cables do not work for AppleTalk.
>
>No, AppleTalk does not *just*work*. I spent about $20 for the
>complete set of stuff needed to connect my 9-yr-old Macintosh Plus
>to my newly-purchased Macintosh Performa, and spent several days
>trying to get either machine to talk to the other, but it didn't
>work at all.
Then one (or both) Macs had damaged OS installations. AppleTalk is
about as simple as can be:
- select which serial port to use for the network
- pick a network name for the computer
- plug the transponder into the right serial port
I can't explain why you have so much trouble - maybe you're cursed
somehow. At one time or another I've networked just about everything
AppleTalk could handle: Macs, LaserWriters, appliance hard disks,
IIgs's, Apple II's with AT card, even WinNT PCs with AT cards. I've
used both Apple's own network hardware and third party systems like
Farralon's PhoneNet.
Except for a broken wire I had once and initially figuring out how to
configure Windows to use AppleTalk (which was not doorknob simple)
I've never had any trouble getting an AppleTalk network running.
George
From: Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
Subject: OT: Laptop and cables, and MacPPP (was: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has)
Date:
Message-ID: <rem-2008oct06-001@yahoo.com>
> From: George Neuner <········@comcast.net>
> I haven't followed the previous thread(s) so please forgive and
> ignore me if you've heard all this before.
Note, my current situation, including computer configuration/status:
<http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/NewPub/mySituation.html>
> Seriously you can't afford a $20 cable? You can make one yourself for
> about $10.
I have no money whatsoever, and I owe $60,000 to credit cards just
for basic living expenses before I got in subsidized low-income
housing. Now all my SSI income goes to basic living expenses and
making payments on credit cards, and unless somebody hires me to
get more income I won't finish paying off credit cards until I'm
234 years old, if I live that long, which I rather doubt. Would be
willing to loan me some money on the condition that I don't have to
start paying you back until after I finish paying off my
credit-card debt? ... Yeah, I didn't think so.
I can't afford to divert even $10 from credit-card payback to
buying a modem cable that I don't know will work because I don't
know if the serial port works at all and I don't know if the system
is wedged and that's why the plug-in internal modem doesn't work
and if I divert money to get a modem cable and it doesn't work I
have no idea how to diagnose why it doesn't work.
> Laptop serial ports are Dsub-9M (aka DB-9M).
On the back of the laptop, there are several connectors:
- EIA female: 12+13 (icon looks like trapezoid with one part filled)
- EIA male: 4+5 (icon looks like |0|0|)
- DIN female: UL2 UR2 Bot2 Center1 Top1 (icon looks like mouse+keyboard)
- EIA female: 5+5+5 (icon looks like rectangle with bar at each end)
- Two rows of appx. 50 tiny closely-spaced pins per row, outer
grounding shield is shaped liked EIA even though inner connector
has same length in each row (no icon)
I assume the DIN connector is for external keyboard and/or mouse,
but I don't think my Macintosh desktop-bus kbd+mouse will fit
there, right? Just to be sure, I tried plugging mouse in there, but
although the outer DIN grounding shield is the same size, the plug
doesn't fit in because the pins don't match the holes.
So can you confirm that DIN socket is for IBM-PC-compatible
keyboard or mouse? What are each of the other sockets for?
If the EIA 12+13 socket is for serial I/O, do you know any program
on either MacOS 7.5.5 or Linux that will set that computer to act
like a DCE, so that if I could borrow a MacDin-to-EIAModem cable
(DTE/DCE) then the two computers could talk to each other that way,
and I wouldn't need a special DTE/DTE cable? I can't use my current
modem cable because it goes directly into the modem, no connector
at that end, just the DIN connector at the Mac end.
I seem to get the idea that you might be an expert at the names of
the various kinds of connectors, hence my questions above, and my
next questions:
The plug-in internal modem uses a connector of 2 closely-spaced
rows of appx. 34 tiny closely-spaced pins each. Do you know the
formal ID of that type of connector? Do all/most laptop computers
use the same type of connector for their plug-in internal modems?
The plug-in internal hard disk uses a connector with plastic outer
EIA-shape (but no protective ground metal), inside of which is a
rectangular void with two rows of appx. 20 pins each on opposite
sides of the void. Do you know the formal ID of that type of
connector? Do all/most laptop computers use the same type of
connector for their plug-in internal hard disks?
> If you want to connect the computers together, you need to make
> what's called a NULL-modem (aka DTE/DTE) cable - that's a cable
> where the signals are swapped end to end. Connecting a computer to
> a modem requires a normal (aka DTE/DCE) cable.
Yeah. I made one of those using EIA 12+13 at each end when I needed
to connect two terminals or two computers together back when I was
actively using my MOS 6502 and my Intel 8080, circa 1976-80, when I
lived in a large studio apartment in East Palo Alto that had room
for both of them. Both computers, and all cables, have been in
storage for years now. Pins 2,3 are the key pins, direct for
male-to-female connectors for DTE/DCE, crossed for male-to-male or
female-to-female connectors for DTE/DTE or DCE/DCE.
> Linux needs to see DCD active but there is a software switch to
> get around that if DCD isn't connected - see stty in the man pages.
Do you know enough about Linux to advise me how to test whether the
modem is actually broken or whether there's some software glitch in
Linux such as lock file that didn't get deleted, before I start
spending money I don't have to buy hardware that won't fit in this
smaller-than-motel-room room I have now? Do you know anyone located
in Sunnyvale (California) who knows enough about Linux to help me
diagnose the problem?
> If you have System 7 or later, you've got PPP built in.
Except it doesn't work and I have no idea how to fix it. When I
start up MS-IE from a CD-ROM, even to view a local file on the
CD-ROM (documentation for the Data/FAX modem), it freezes the whole
machine, requiring cold restart. I suspect MS-IE checks PPP even
before checking whether it'll even need it. (It won't need PPP to
view files on the CD-ROM!!!) Is there anyone located in Sunnyvale
(California) who knows enough about PPP on MacOS 7.5.5 to diagose
why PPP hangs the system? Or do you know all the system files that
are needed for PPP so I can make sure all the files are on the hard
disk in the correct locations? Do you know of any diagnostic
problem that will first make sure all system files for PPP are
present, then check that each is valid, and finally diagnose why
PPP would hang the system if I started MS-IE again?
> Dial-up surfing need not be excruciating. If you can do without
> the graphics and animations you can use a text-mode browser.
I already do that by using VT100 emulator to dial into Unix shell,
then running lynx there. How would MacLynx direct from my Mac be
any better? On Unix I can run CMUCL which has a function for
running sub-processes under it, so I can run lynx under CMUCL to
allow me to write scripts that are responsive to what lynx sends
out and thereby modify the script per circumstances. I don't have
any version of Common Lisp on my Macintosh that has such a
facility.
Also just about the only reason I'd want to have direct PPP access
is so that I can view images from home without needing to first go
to a public lab to edit them down to cellphone size, and so that I
can use sites that require JavaScript. But MacLynx doesn't support
either images or JavaScript, right?
> For Linux there are current versions of Lynx.
My laptop already has a regular Web browser (some really old
version of Netscape Navigator) which seems to work fine with local
Web pages on the laptop. So if I got PPP service on my laptop (if I
got the modem working again), why would I want to use Lynx?
> Are you sure the laptop serial port works?
I have no idea how to test to find out if it does.
> If you have a NULL-modem cable, you can test it with the Mac,
> just fire up the comm software on both sides, select no handshaking
> or software handshaking and see if you can type both ways. If that
> works,
Then I know all the components are working. But if it doesn't work,
I have no way to diagnose what's wrong:
- Hardware for serial port on laptop bad.
- Software for serial port on laptop wedged, possibly the same
software wedge that makes the plug-in internal modem not work.
- I screwed up making the modem cable.
I can't afford to divert money from credit-card repayments to buy
something that might not work and I have no way to diagnose why it
doesn't work hence no way to get my money back if the cable was at
fault.
> If the modem works with the Mac then the problem is with the laptop:
> in the cable, the serial port, or the software configuration.
Yeah, and I have no way to diagnose which is the problem.
I wish there was somebody in the local area who had a laptop with a
plug-in internal modem who would swap modems with me temporarily to
diagnose whether it's the modem itself or the system/software
that's bad.
- If my modem works on their computer, then it's my software that's
wedged, or some hardware other than the modem itself that's broken,
such as a loose ribbon cable. A low-level hardware diagnostic
should be able to verify that the modem works when not going
through the MiniCom program, or tell what cable is loose.
- If their modem works on my computer, then it's my modem that's
broken, and then I might be willing to spend an hour each way
taking public transit to Fry's Electronics to get a new modem
using money I don't have and can't afford to spend.
I wish there was a cheap/free working laptop with working modem,
that took the same kind of plug-in internal hard disk that mine
uses, so that I could just transfer the hard disk to the new laptop
whenever I wanted to upload/download files to/from that hard disk.
With two laptops, I could do work myself on one while using the
other for tutoring another person, or tutor two students at the
same time, and swap hard disks whenever I needed to upload/download
to/from the other hard disk. If the new laptop has a USB port, then
I could copy large amounts of software from one hard disk to the
other via a USB flash drive as temporary storage place. Otherwise
if it has a working diskette drive, then I could copy medium
amounts of software from one hard disk to another using diskettes
as temporary storage places.
From: George Neuner
Subject: Re: OT: Laptop and cables, and MacPPP (was: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has)
Date:
Message-ID: <cj1le49cutn36ght23m6ajtmtb5i9723g0@4ax.com>
On Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:40:58 -0700, ·············@teh.intarweb.org
(Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
>> From: George Neuner <········@comcast.net>
>> I haven't followed the previous thread(s) so please forgive and
>> ignore me if you've heard all this before.
>
>Note, my current situation, including computer configuration/status:
> <http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/NewPub/mySituation.html>
>
>> Seriously you can't afford a $20 cable? You can make one yourself for
>> about $10.
>
>I have no money whatsoever, and I owe $60,000 to credit cards
Sorry to hear that. I hope your situation improves soon.
>> Laptop serial ports are Dsub-9M (aka DB-9M).
>
>On the back of the laptop, there are several connectors:
>- EIA female: 12+13 (icon looks like trapezoid with one part filled)
Parallel port
>- EIA male: 4+5 (icon looks like |0|0|)
Serial port
>- DIN female: UL2 UR2 Bot2 Center1 Top1 (icon looks like mouse+keyboard)
Keyboard and/or mouse
>- EIA female: 5+5+5 (icon looks like rectangle with bar at each end)
Video
>- Two rows of appx. 50 tiny closely-spaced pins per row, outer
> grounding shield is shaped liked EIA even though inner connector
> has same length in each row (no icon)
? Need a picture to be sure but most likely mini-SCSI.
>I assume the DIN connector is for external keyboard and/or mouse,
>but I don't think my Macintosh desktop-bus kbd+mouse will fit
>there, right?
It's an IBM PS/2 connector. Your Mac keyboard and mouse won't fit.
>If the EIA 12+13 socket is for serial I/O,
EIA 4+5 is serial.
>do you know any program
>on either MacOS 7.5.5 or Linux that will set that computer to act
>like a DCE, so that if I could borrow a MacDin-to-EIAModem cable
>(DTE/DCE) then the two computers could talk to each other that way,
>and I wouldn't need a special DTE/DTE cable? I can't use my current
>modem cable because it goes directly into the modem, no connector
>at that end, just the DIN connector at the Mac end.
DTE and DCE are complementary hardware specs. RS-232 signaling is
defined from the terminal's point of view. DCE (modem) equipment does
everything backwards - transmits on RXD, receives on TXD, etc.
Your computers' (Mac and PC) serial ports can only be DTE. The only
solution for connecting them is to get hold of (or make) a NULL-modem
cable.
>I seem to get the idea that you might be an expert at the names of
>the various kinds of connectors, hence my questions above, and my
>next questions:
>
>The plug-in internal modem uses a connector of 2 closely-spaced
>rows of appx. 34 tiny closely-spaced pins each. Do you know the
>formal ID of that type of connector? Do all/most laptop computers
>use the same type of connector for their plug-in internal modems?
No. Expansion board connectors are vendor specific.
>The plug-in internal hard disk uses a connector with plastic outer
>EIA-shape (but no protective ground metal), inside of which is a
>rectangular void with two rows of appx. 20 pins each on opposite
>sides of the void. Do you know the formal ID of that type of
>connector? Do all/most laptop computers use the same type of
>connector for their plug-in internal hard disks?
It's an IDC44 connector: 40 pin IDE + 4 pins for power. It's standard
for 2.5in hard drives. However, there are portables that use other
types of hard drives.
>> Linux needs to see DCD active but there is a software switch to
>> get around that if DCD isn't connected - see stty in the man pages.
>
>Do you know enough about Linux to advise me how to test whether the
>modem is actually broken or whether there's some software glitch in
>Linux
Sorry. I haven't had to do combat with a modem or serial connection
in many years ... and never on Linux.
As far as diagnosing the hardware (modem or serial port), you might
get yourself an old DOS comm program. DOS is still useful for
checking hardware because it's so primitive - it doesn't interfere
with everything like modern OSes do.
http://www.bootdisk.com/ for a DOS boot disk
http://home.att.net/~short.stop/freesoft/comm1.htm
http://www.telix.com/delta/deltacom/tfd/index.html
Linux's Minicom program is a port of Telix.
>Do you know anyone located in Sunnyvale (California) who knows
>enough about Linux to help me diagnose the problem?
Sorry, wrong coast.
>> If you have System 7 or later, you've got PPP built in.
>
>Except it doesn't work and I have no idea how to fix it. When I
>start up MS-IE from a CD-ROM, even to view a local file on the
>CD-ROM (documentation for the Data/FAX modem), it freezes the whole
>machine, requiring cold restart.
A Mac version of IE I hope!
>I suspect MS-IE checks PPP even before checking whether it'll
>even need it. (It won't need PPP to view files on the CD-ROM!!!)
IE tries to open the home page immediately when you launch it. Old
versions frequently did bad things if the connection failed.
You can hit the Command and period keys immediately after launching
IE5/IE6 to stop the home page from loading.
If you are really running IE from CD, it won't do any good to change
the default home page, but with %-. you should be able to at least
start it and use it locally.
>> Dial-up surfing need not be excruciating. If you can do without
>> the graphics and animations you can use a text-mode browser.
>
>I already do that by using VT100 emulator to dial into Unix shell,
>then running lynx there. How would MacLynx direct from my Mac be
>any better?
It won't. I figured you were using IE or Netscape and the graphics
were killing you.
>> Are you sure the laptop serial port works?
>
>I have no idea how to test to find out if it does.
Get a DOS comm program so Linux isn't interfering. Select no flow
control or software flow control. Short RXD and TXD on the DB-9 (EIA
4+5) connector and see if it echoes what you type. You may need extra
hands for this.
1 CD Carrier Detect
2 RXD Receive Data
3 TXD Transmit Data
4 DTR Data Terminal Ready
5 GND System Ground
6 DSR Data Set Ready
7 RTS Request to Send
8 CTS Clear to Send
9 RI Ring Indicator
If simple echoing works, you can enable and test other signals by
shorting them appropriately: RTS/CTS, DTR/DSR, etc. You can use DTR
as a source to test CD and RI. Remember to leave RXD-TXD shorted
while you test the other signals - you need to be able to send and
receive.
>I wish there was a cheap/free working laptop with working modem,
>that took the same kind of plug-in internal hard disk that mine
>uses, so that I could just transfer the hard disk to the new laptop
>whenever I wanted to upload/download files to/from that hard disk.
You can probably get away with that if the OS is Linux and you have a
full OS and driver set installation - like from a bootable CD.
Hard disk OS installations typically only copy the drivers for the
particular hardware you have. Normally you can't boot the drive on
another machine unless the hardware is the same.
George
From: Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
Subject: Re: OT: Laptop and cables, and MacPPP (was: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has)
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2008nov02-004@Yahoo.Com>
> >I have no money whatsoever, and I owe $60,000 to credit cards
> From: George Neuner <········@comcast.net>
> Sorry to hear that. I hope your situation improves soon.
You could help a little if you have some extra money available and
need some work done online. Despite my having over 20 years
experience writing computer software, I'm willing to work at the
legal minimum wage because that's better than getting no earned
income whatsoever.
> >> Laptop serial ports are Dsub-9M (aka DB-9M).
I don't see that listed below.
> >On the back of the laptop, there are several connectors:
> >- EIA female: 12+13 (icon looks like trapezoid with one part filled)
> Parallel port
Hmm, that's strange. That's the kind of connector that is normally
a serial port on external modems, and standalone terminals and
computers that connect to modems. Are these really the same kind of
connectors, or are they slightly different in some way that I
didn't notice? Why waste all that space on a laptop when a DIN
connector like on my Macintosh takes up so much less space?
> >- EIA male: 4+5 (icon looks like |0|0|)
> Serial port
That makes sense, since only 4 pins are needed for uncontrolled
dataflow and a couple extra for flow-control or device ready etc.
so nine makes more sense than the old 25. And the icon looks
vaguely like data in a stream, but it could just as well represent
parallel data sitting side by side since there's no arrow to
indicate flow with time.
> >- DIN female: UL2 UR2 Bot2 Center1 Top1 (icon looks like mouse+keyboard)
> Keyboard and/or mouse
OK, so at least that one is what I guessed from the icon.
> >- EIA female: 5+5+5 (icon looks like rectangle with bar at each end)
> Video
Hmm, I wonder if a VGA monitor such as the one I'm using on my
Macintosh (but with the VGA-to-Mac adaptor removed) would work?
Unplugging the Dell monitor from the adaptor just now I see that
it's the same 5+5+5 staggered EIA_style connector. Should I give it
a try just to satisfy my curiosity? Or is there some known
incompatibility? Would I need to go into root account to configure
the laptop to feed video there, or should it "just work" by
plugging it in?
> >- Two rows of appx. 50 tiny closely-spaced pins per row, outer
> > grounding shield is shaped liked EIA even though inner connector
> > has same length in each row (no icon)
> ? Need a picture to be sure but most likely mini-SCSI.
My camera-cellphone doesn't have good enough resolution to get a
decent photo, so I'll have to pass on identifying this.
I have a SyQuest drive that connects to my Mac via SCSI.
I wonder if with appropriate adaptor it'd work with my laptop?
Would Mac drivers on SyQuest drive work properly with RedHat Linux?
> >I assume the DIN connector is for external keyboard and/or mouse,
> >but I don't think my Macintosh desktop-bus kbd+mouse will fit
> >there, right?
> It's an IBM PS/2 connector. Your Mac keyboard and mouse won't fit.
What sorts of devices would connect to that? Only old obsolete
devices, or anything currently on sale at Target or Circuit City?
> >The plug-in internal modem uses a connector of 2 closely-spaced
> >rows of appx. 34 tiny closely-spaced pins each. Do you know the
> >formal ID of that type of connector? Do all/most laptop computers
> >use the same type of connector for their plug-in internal modems?
> No. Expansion board connectors are vendor specific.
So would any Dell laptop have the same kind of connector, or only
Dell Latitude XPi like I have? Since Dell is the largest (volume)
brand of laptops, there's a good chance somebody else in Sunnyvale
has a Dell laptop. I just need to find somebody with a Dell that
has compatible plug-in-internal modem connector who is friendly
enough to let me try swapping modems.
> >The plug-in internal hard disk uses a connector with plastic outer
> >EIA-shape (but no protective ground metal), inside of which is a
> >rectangular void with two rows of appx. 20 pins each on opposite
> >sides of the void. Do you know the formal ID of that type of
> >connector? Do all/most laptop computers use the same type of
> >connector for their plug-in internal hard disks?
> It's an IDC44 connector: 40 pin IDE + 4 pins for power. It's
> standard for 2.5in hard drives. However, there are portables
> that use other types of hard drives.
What's the chance somebody else with a Dell laptop would have a 2.5
inch internal hard drive like that, so that we could swap hard
drives when uploading/downloading files? (Assuming the other laptop
also has a working diskette drive, or a working modem, or a working
second disk of any type, or a working USB port, etc. etc.)
> As far as diagnosing the hardware (modem or serial port), you
> might get yourself an old DOS comm program. DOS is still useful
> for checking hardware because it's so primitive - it doesn't
> interfere with everything like modern OSes do.
How long would it take to manually key it into the laptop? Remember
that I currently have no way whatsoever to move files to the laptop
from any external source except keyboard. The laptop has GNU Emacs
which includes E-lisp, and Java. I think it also has C compiler. I
don't know if it has any any assembler.
> http://www.bootdisk.com/ for a DOS boot disk
What good would that do me??
> http://home.att.net/~short.stop/freesoft/comm1.htm
Unable to connect to remote host.
> http://www.telix.com/delta/deltacom/tfd/index.html
+ Download ShareWare Version 3.51
o Complete Package(610 k)
There's no way I'm going to be able to manually key in over six
hundred thousand bytes of hexadecimal codes by hand from the
keyboard without making a fatal mistake.
> Linux's Minicom program is a port of Telix.
Is there any way to patch Minicom to offer a diagnostic as to why
it believes the modem is already online when it's been offline for
the past several years and the whole laptop including the power to
the modem has been powered down for most of that time?
> >Except it doesn't work and I have no idea how to fix it. When I
> >start up MS-IE from a CD-ROM, even to view a local file on the
> >CD-ROM (documentation for the Data/FAX modem), it freezes the whole
> >machine, requiring cold restart.
> A Mac version of IE I hope!
Yup, that's what freezes my Mac Performa if I try to run it.
The only other programs which I know freeze my Mac Performa are:
- Macintosh Allegro Common Lisp version 1.2.2
- MacBugs!
- MacPaint
- B&W version of Risk, but I got the color version which works,
except I need to quit the program after every game because it
fails to return system memory and after many games eventually
enough memory is gobbled to crash the machine.
- ResEdit sometimes after I try to do anything serious with it
all of which worked just fine on my Mac Plus.
> >I suspect MS-IE checks PPP even before checking whether it'll
> >even need it. (It won't need PPP to view files on the CD-ROM!!!)
> IE tries to open the home page immediately when you launch it. Old
> versions frequently did bad things if the connection failed.
It's on a CD-ROM. Is there any way I can set a config file on the
regular hard disk to tell it to look *only* locally for the home
page? But the home page is *supposed* to be the toplevel index for
the Data/FAX modem documentation, not anything on the network at
all. So why does it need PPP at all when just starting up?
> You can hit the Command and period keys immediately after
> launching IE5/IE6 to stop the home page from loading.
How fast do I need to do it to avoid freezing the whole machine?
> If you are really running IE from CD, it won't do any good to
> change the default home page, but with %-. you should be able to at
> least start it and use it locally.
But why does it need PPP just to load home page from the CD-ROM
itself?? This all seems fishy. I could do a graceful shut-down of
all my programs, to avoid things being in funny states, then try
what you said, but unless you can explain why it needs to run PPP
just to read home page from CD-ROM that IE itself is on, I don't
think there's any value in doing the experiment at all.
> I figured you were using IE or Netscape and the graphics were killing you.
No, the only time I tried that was during the free month trial of
AT&T WorldNet in 1998, shortly after I bought the Mac Performa and
the data/FAX modem for it. That's when it took 20 minutes just to
download the AT&T WorldNet home page and 5 minutes to refresh the
screen each time I clicked on the local scroll bar in IE. I had
been using InterNet via Lynx on Unix via VT100 emulator before then
and went right back to that after the horrible AT&T WorldNet trial.
And it wasn't even free as they advertised!! They billed me a
surcharge, which I refused to pay, and after several months AT&T
discontinued my long-distance phone service but continued to
collect the Universal Lifeline long-distance tarrif from Pacific
Bell then SBC for the next eight or so years.
> Get a DOS comm program so Linux isn't interfering.
How do I do that on a laptop with no working modem and no working
diskette drive and no CD-ROM drive at all and no USB port and no
other way to hook up an external device of any kind except possibly
a VGA monitor?
> >I wish there was a cheap/free working laptop with working modem,
> >that took the same kind of plug-in internal hard disk that mine
> >uses, so that I could just transfer the hard disk to the new laptop
> >whenever I wanted to upload/download files to/from that hard disk.
> You can probably get away with that if the OS is Linux and you have a
> full OS and driver set installation - like from a bootable CD.
Is it possible that the previous owner of the laptop (an instructor
at De Anza College) has copied all that somewhere on the hard disk,
possibly in some protected directory accessible only from the root
account? If so, where might I look for it? Or I wonder if some
random person in Sunnyvale who lets me try my disk in his/her
laptop would have a CD-ROM drive and also have the installation
CD-ROM to have available during boot attempt? Or am I all confused
about where the drivers would need to be present during attempted
boot of my hard disk in another computer?
> Hard disk OS installations typically only copy the drivers for
> the particular hardware you have. Normally you can't boot the
> drive on another machine unless the hardware is the same.
Which models of Dell laptop have the same/compatible hardware as mine?
Only the Dell Latitude XPi P133ST, but not other Dell Latitude XPi?
Or all Dell Latitude XPi, but not other Dell Latitude?
Or all Dell Latitude, but not other Dell?
Thanks for the info about the various kinds of connectors.
From: George Neuner
Subject: Re: OT: Laptop and cables, and MacPPP (was: Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has)
Date:
Message-ID: <rdeug49gog7m1qt327ig449mleui1jj0mo@4ax.com>
On Sun, 02 Nov 2008 23:44:31 -0700, ·············@teh.intarweb.org
(Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
>> >> Laptop serial ports are Dsub-9M (aka DB-9M).
>
>I don't see that listed below.
Dsub-9 (or D-9) is the common name for the 4+5 connector.
Most people have no clue what the EIA is ... in the micro world
connectors are typically referred to by its function (which you are
presumed to know), or by its shape and number of pins.
Occasionally you also find connectors that are referred to by the name
of the original vendor ... for example the "Centronics" parallel
interface.
>> >On the back of the laptop, there are several connectors:
>> >- EIA female: 12+13 (icon looks like trapezoid with one part filled)
>> Parallel port
>
>Hmm, that's strange. That's the kind of connector that is normally
>a serial port on external modems, and standalone terminals and
>computers that connect to modems. Are these really the same kind of
>connectors, or are they slightly different in some way that I
>didn't notice?
Yes, they are the same connector - a 25-pin D. Historically, the D-25
was the standard connector for both serial and parallel I/O devices.
A 25-wire straight through cable could be used for either a parallel
printer or a modem.
The funny looking icon is probably meant to be a printed page. I
don't go by icons much because they are frequently embossed in the
case and too small and badly contrasted to see well.
I know this particular port is parallel because I know the 9-pin port
is serial. Notebooks rarely have more than one serial port (when they
do, the 2nd port is also 9-pin) and older notebooks (pre-2005) usually
included a parallel printer port.
[Now you're lucky if your notebook even has a serial port. Most have
modems and NICs built-in and almost every device you'd attach is
available in USB or IEEE-1394.]
If there were only one D-25 connector then I'd have to guess, but I'd
still guess parallel unless the machine was very, very old. The first
notebooks had D-25 serial, but it was quickly replaced with D-9.
>Why waste all that space on a laptop when a DIN
>connector like on my Macintosh takes up so much less space?
The Mac port is actually a mini-DIN, but the answer to your question
is "because it needed a parallel port for printing".
>> >- EIA male: 4+5 (icon looks like |0|0|)
>> Serial port
>
>That makes sense, since only 4 pins are needed for uncontrolled
>dataflow and a couple extra for flow-control or device ready etc.
>so nine makes more sense than the old 25. And the icon looks
>vaguely like data in a stream, but it could just as well represent
>parallel data sitting side by side since there's no arrow to
>indicate flow with time.
The 9-pin serial port was introduced on notebooks because the 25-pin
port took up too much space and very few devices required more than
DTR and RTS-CTS. Most of the 25 wires went unused.
>> >- DIN female: UL2 UR2 Bot2 Center1 Top1 (icon looks like mouse+keyboard)
>> Keyboard and/or mouse
>
>OK, so at least that one is what I guessed from the icon.
PS/2 can daisy chain so the port can work a keyboard, a mouse, or
both. You just need the right drivers. Linux should recognize a
mouse if you plug it in ... don't know about a keyboard.
>> >- EIA female: 5+5+5 (icon looks like rectangle with bar at each end)
>> Video
>
>Hmm, I wonder if a VGA monitor such as the one I'm using on my
>Macintosh (but with the VGA-to-Mac adaptor removed) would work?
>Unplugging the Dell monitor from the adaptor just now I see that
>it's the same 5+5+5 staggered EIA_style connector. Should I give it
>a try just to satisfy my curiosity? Or is there some known
>incompatibility? Would I need to go into root account to configure
>the laptop to feed video there, or should it "just work" by
>plugging it in?
VGA is standard ... there should be no harm in plugging it in.
However, the video port is firmware controlled and on most notebooks
it is normally disabled. Some notebooks can recognize that an
external monitor is attached and switch it on automatically, but
usually you need to activate it with a function key. There's no
standard for notebook function keys so you'll have to find it
yourself.
Some notebooks toggle between LCD and monitor and some will let you
use both simultaneously. On some it's a BIOS setting.
>> >- Two rows of appx. 50 tiny closely-spaced pins per row, outer
>> > grounding shield is shaped liked EIA even though inner connector
>> > has same length in each row (no icon)
>> ? Need a picture to be sure but most likely mini-SCSI.
>
>My camera-cellphone doesn't have good enough resolution to get a
>decent photo, so I'll have to pass on identifying this.
It could also be some kind of base-station connector. Base connectors
are usually by themselves with some kind of door to protect them ...
but not always.
>> >I assume the DIN connector is for external keyboard and/or mouse,
>> >but I don't think my Macintosh desktop-bus kbd+mouse will fit
>> >there, right?
>> It's an IBM PS/2 connector. Your Mac keyboard and mouse won't fit.
>
>What sorts of devices would connect to that? Only old obsolete
>devices, or anything currently on sale at Target or Circuit City?
Keyboards, mice, trackballs, numeric keypads, joysticks.
Technically, the PS/2 connector is considered obsolete - it's
functions have been subsumed by USB. But there are still millions of
machines in use with PS/2 keyboards and mice so you can get them most
anywhere. The other stuff is harder to find.
>> >The plug-in internal modem uses a connector of 2 closely-spaced
>> >rows of appx. 34 tiny closely-spaced pins each. Do you know the
>> >formal ID of that type of connector? Do all/most laptop computers
>> >use the same type of connector for their plug-in internal modems?
>> No. Expansion board connectors are vendor specific.
>
>So would any Dell laptop have the same kind of connector, or only
>Dell Latitude XPi like I have? Since Dell is the largest (volume)
>brand of laptops, there's a good chance somebody else in Sunnyvale
>has a Dell laptop. I just need to find somebody with a Dell that
>has compatible plug-in-internal modem connector who is friendly
>enough to let me try swapping modems.
This I can't answer. It's reasonable to think that Dell would reuse
the same connector but I don't know that for certain. You might call
them and ask.
>> >The plug-in internal hard disk uses a connector with plastic outer
>> >EIA-shape (but no protective ground metal), inside of which is a
>> >rectangular void with two rows of appx. 20 pins each on opposite
>> >sides of the void. Do you know the formal ID of that type of
>> >connector? Do all/most laptop computers use the same type of
>> >connector for their plug-in internal hard disks?
>
>> It's an IDC44 connector: 40 pin IDE + 4 pins for power. It's
>> standard for 2.5in hard drives. However, there are portables
>> that use other types of hard drives.
>
>What's the chance somebody else with a Dell laptop would have a 2.5
>inch internal hard drive like that, so that we could swap hard
>drives when uploading/downloading files? (Assuming the other laptop
>also has a working diskette drive, or a working modem, or a working
>second disk of any type, or a working USB port, etc. etc.)
Almost every notebook with a hard disk uses 2.5in drives - there are
very few exceptions. The issue isn't whether you can plug it in, the
issue is whether you can boot from it. Hard disk OS installations are
usually customized to the local hardware - if the disk is moved into a
different machine the OS frequently will not start.
You have some options here:
- there are adaptors to connect 2.5in drives to standard ATA/IDE so
the drive could be connected to any desktop machine as a 2nd drive.
- some notebooks can attach a 2nd drive.
- you can find someone whose notebook has a DVD/CD reader, attach your
drive and boot the machine with a "live" Linux CD so your drive is
just a data device.
- you can try to find someone with identical hardware so your drive
will boot properly.
>> As far as diagnosing the hardware (modem or serial port), you
>> might get yourself an old DOS comm program. DOS is still useful
>> for checking hardware because it's so primitive - it doesn't
>> interfere with everything like modern OSes do.
>
>How long would it take to manually key it into the laptop? Remember
>that I currently have no way whatsoever to move files to the laptop
>from any external source except keyboard.
You have the serial port. And maybe the modem if you can figure out
what's wrong.
>> Linux's Minicom program is a port of Telix.
>
>Is there any way to patch Minicom to offer a diagnostic as to why
>it believes the modem is already online when it's been offline for
>the past several years and the whole laptop including the power to
>the modem has been powered down for most of that time?
Many comm programs use DCD to tell whether a modem is attached and
powered on. The internal modem is powered on whenever the computer is
and probably hardwires DCD on. It doesn't mean the modem's telephone
side has a connection.
>It's on a CD-ROM. Is there any way I can set a config file on the
>regular hard disk to tell IE to look *only* locally for the home
>page?
Once you get it running you can set options to do that.
>But the home page is *supposed* to be the toplevel index for
>the Data/FAX modem documentation, not anything on the network at
>all. So why does it need PPP at all when just starting up?
>
>> You can hit the Command and period keys immediately after
>> launching IE5/IE6 to stop the home page from loading.
>
>How fast do I need to do it to avoid freezing the whole machine?
I would hold them down while launching it.
>> If you are really running IE from CD, it won't do any good to
>> change the default home page, but with %-. you should be able to at
>> least start it and use it locally.
>
>But why does it need PPP just to load home page from the CD-ROM
>itself?? This all seems fishy. I could do a graceful shut-down of
>all my programs, to avoid things being in funny states, then try
>what you said, but unless you can explain why it needs to run PPP
>just to read home page from CD-ROM that IE itself is on, I don't
>think there's any value in doing the experiment at all.
IE does _not_ try to open a web connection unless the URL can't be
found OR the page tries to load something from the web (a graphic or
script, etc.). You are ASSUMING that the page doesn't reference
anything on the web.
You can test this by copying the IE icon and changing the launch
command so IE tries to open something else - a local picture or text
file ... something you _know_ references nothing else.
I don't actually care whether you try it or not. All I can do is make
suggestions ... if you don't want to follow them, that's fine.
>> You can probably get away with that if the OS is Linux and you have a
>> full OS and driver set installation - like from a bootable CD.
>
>Is it possible that the previous owner of the laptop (an instructor
>at De Anza College) has copied all that somewhere on the hard disk,
>possibly in some protected directory accessible only from the root
>account? If so, where might I look for it?
It's very unlikely that a hard disk OS installation has all drivers.
If the laptop came from Dell with Linux preinstalled, then there might
be a recovery partition you could look for with the disk tools, but it
would just reformat the boot partition and reinstall the original
software. If the person installed Linux himself/herself, then there
probably will not be any kind of recovery partition ... very few
non-IT people even think of doing that.
>Which models of Dell laptop have the same/compatible hardware as mine?
>Only the Dell Latitude XPi P133ST, but not other Dell Latitude XPi?
>Or all Dell Latitude XPi, but not other Dell Latitude?
>Or all Dell Latitude, but not other Dell?
I would guess that any XPi is sufficiently compatible. Other models
will probably not be compatible enough to boot your disk.
George