Icon's Massively Parallel Old Boy Computers & Tech KUNG FU™©®

[conmee]

Brethren and Sistren,

I'm gonna init this topic by calling on all ATARIfanatics™©®, AMIGAistos™©®, ALTAIRians™©®, COBOLers™©®, PASCALers™©®, FORTRANnies™©®, C+ians™©®, LISPers™©®, AssemblyBarbarians™©®, AppleIIers™©®, UNIXgeeks (AIX 7 Bitches!)™©®, SUN & Solaris Refugees™©®, ONEHITWONDERS (Coleco, Commodore64+Vic20, TI-99ers, TimexSinclair, TRS80)™©®, MAINFRAMErs™©®, UNIVACians™©®, DOSdweebs™©®, CP/Mers™©®, OS/2ers™©®, WINDOZErs™©®, MacOSers™©®, MAME/MESS Emulatorians™©®, JAVAristas™©®, BASICdorks™©®, PUNCHCARDretirees™©®, TECHIES™©®, GAMERS (PlayStation, XBox, Nintendo, SNES, Atari, PC, all of it)™©®, GUI/ObjectOrientedPussies™©®, and COMMAND LINE GODS™©®!!!!!

This thread is about sharing a) Your Bio & KUNG FU CREDENTIALS™©®; b) Killer Tech Moves and Secrets; c) Gaming Prowess; d) Photos and Stories of Past/Present/Future; e) Serving Hot Cups of SHUTTHEFUCKUP™©® to the ILL-INFORMED™©® and those WITHOUT GAME (Don't Sing It, If You Can't Bring It!)™©®...

That is all.

Icon™©®

[twonabomber]

Commodore 64 checking in!

playing old games via emulation, but i still have the C64 i got for Christmas back in the 80's, and two other systems (with 1702 monitors!) from my friends.

the 1702's work great as regular video monitors, the old Commodore "chroma" and "luma" inputs are an early form of S-Video. make an adapter and you can hook up S-Video DVD players, etc. i currently have one hooked up to a Roland S-760 sampler.

[conmee]

Brethren and Sistren,

Welcome Twonabomber!!!! I completely forgot to mention MAME/MESS Emulation™©®!!!! Will add to the description above...

Here's my response to that HEATHEN™©® Sesh.... which got me motivated to kick off this whole thread in the first place... I'll post a formal BIO™©® shortly...

------------------------

Brethren and Sistren,

Not to DERAIL™©® this GAY™©® THREAD™©® but I must respond to that NO GOOD ATHEIST BODICE-WEARING SCOTTISH SACK LICKER™©® our very own Sesh™©®....

How DARE YE IMPUGN™©® my technical credentials?!?!?! I was KEEPIN' SHIT REAL AND SIMPLE AND REAL SIMPLE™©® for the novices!!!!! You've known for YEARS™©® that my 9TH DEGREE KUNG FU™©® is beyond REPROACH™©®!!!! Who the fuck do you think keeps this shitty site's LINUX SERVER™©® well-oiled and running with more or less 72% UPTIME™©®?!?!?! I started programming Assembly at the TENDER™©® age of 13, was a UNIX MASTURBATOR™©® during university, wrote TERM PAPERS™©® on WORDMOTHERFUCKINGPERFECT 5.1 on MS-DOS 3.31 on these shitty COMPAQ™©® desktops the size of Volkswagens using every conceivable CTRL+ALT+TAB+SHIFT+FN+KEYCOMBO, and have spent 3/4 of my career at IBM and Microsoft... HOW FUCKING DARE YE™©®!??!?!

You know DAMN WELL™©® that I'm no MACTARD™©® and only use the FRUIT-BASED™©® technology because folks in the advertising business look at you like a fucking BEAN COUNTER™©® if you show up to a client briefing with a PC™©®....

I hope all your customers you've LOCKED™©® into Visual Basic/Excel Macro/SQL Hell revolt and burn down your Scottish equivalent of a TRAILER PARK™©®!!!!!

That is fucking all.

Icon™©®

[conmee]

Brethren and Sistren,

I first laid eyes on a BIG FUCKING COMPUTER™©® on the USS Constellation (CV-64 aircraft carrier) that my dad was assigned to in 1976. Just being a YOUNGUN™©®, I can't tell you what the computer was, but I think the yeoman in charge of the thing was none to happy when my little sister and I "organized" his stack of PUNCHCARDS™©®....fucking ENLISTED SEAMEN™©®.... uh huh uh huh...

Ok, so my first USE™©® of a computer came a year later in grade school, when the reward for excellent grades was time on the COMMODORE PET™©® (Personal Electronic Transactor... yeah Computer Marketing needed help in the 70s and 80s). We'd play HANGMAN™©® and ARTILLERY™©® and BATTLESHIP™©®... had to load games with a cassette tape.


http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/af152/conmee/PET.jpg

Of course, everyone my age probably had an Atari 2600... still the GRANDADDY™©® of consoles! While I liked video games, I was one of those PERCOCIOUS™©® kids that liked to take shit apart to see how it worked, and was somewhat adept at putting shit back together without ending up with spare screws and parts afterward. I remember my wonder at looking inside an Apple II. But my favorite childhood computer was the Texas Instruments TI-99/4a Home Computer™©®, a silver and black computer with optional SPEECH SYNTHESIZER™©®... figuring out all the ways to say curse words PHONETICALLY™©® was endless fun. And I thought it looked cooler than the Commodore 64 and VIC 20, it had this HUGE PERIPHERAL EXPANSION BOX™©® that gave it the heft of a MINIFRAME™©®... and a seriously loud fucking fan... back in the day, I wanted my computers LARGE AND LOUD™©®!!! On the veritable TI-99 is when I started programming Assembly™©®, BASIC™©®, PASCAL™©®, and would save my lunch money to buy boards/capacitors/resistors/soldering equipment and build peripherals. One of the first things I built was an RS-232 serial interface so I could hook up this Star Micronix dot matrix printer to my TI-99 via the joystick port! Oh, yeah... and with the analog coupler modem (the kind you actually set a phone handset into), I'd jump onto electronic bulletin boards BBS™©® before there was a public Internet. I can still remember downloading an 8-bit grayscale silhouette of a nude woman... that's right brethren and sistren, I downloaded my FIRST PORN™©® in 1984 off a 200 baud dialup bulletin board...


http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/af152/conmee/TI.jpg

More to come.

Icon™©®

[Nitro Express]

In 1971 my best friend's dad worked on some big ass computer for a mining company. He would bring his old punch cards home. They had this huge living room and we used to make these huge card buildings out of them like you do with a deck of cards. We built a huge card city and then ran the family dog through it to wreck it. Looking back at it we were pretty cheap to entertain.

[conmee]

Brethren and Sistren,

Here's a TWO HUNDRED BAUD ACOUSTIC COUPLER MODEM™©®. This is how old people got "online" back in 1982.

http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/af152/conmee/Modem.jpg

That is all.

Icon™©®

[Seshmeister]

How DARE YE IMPUGN™©® my technical credentials?!?!?! I was KEEPIN' SHIT REAL AND SIMPLE AND REAL SIMPLE™©® for the novices!!!!! You've known for YEARS™©® that my 9TH DEGREE KUNG FU™©® is beyond REPROACH™©®!!!! Who the fuck do you think keeps this shitty site's LINUX SERVER™©® well-oiled and running with more or less 72% UPTIME™©®?!?!?! I started programming Assembly at the TENDER™©® age of 13, was a UNIX MASTURBATOR™©® during university, wrote TERM PAPERS™©® on WORDMOTHERFUCKINGPERFECT 5.1 on MS-DOS 3.31
[/I]

WORDMOTHERFUCKINGPERFECT 5.1? Try writing papers on VI®© and then come back to the NERDPLATE©®™

[conmee]

SESH™©®!!!!

:i

Don't even get me started you KUNT™©®!!!! I have an entire topic on VI/SED/EMACS/EDLIN!!!!

Fuckin' vi... you're gonna come at me with fuckin' vi?!?!?!

[esc]
:wq

That is all.

Icon™©®

[Nitro Express]

Brethren and Sistren,

Here's a TWO HUNDRED BAUD ACOUSTIC COUPLER MODEM™©®. This is how old people got "online" back in 1982.

http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/af152/conmee/Modem.jpg

That is all.

Icon™©®

Yeah but even having one in the day meant you were cooking with gasoline. I remember trying to load programs on my Trash 80 with cassettes. What a pain in the ass that was. When I got my first taste of an Apple II with floppy drives, man. Welcome to the space age!

[Seshmeister]

I downloaded my FIRST PORN™©® in 1984 off a 200 baud dialup bulletin board...

Icon™©®

I don't think I was as early as 1984 with the rude pictures stuff that came later.

As I remember in those days it was stuff like

http://www.phase-5.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/ascii_porn.png

which would do less for even TEENAGE LOVE APPARATUS™© than the lingerie section of the average catalogue.

[Seshmeister]

SESH™©®!!!!

:i

Don't even get me started you KUNT™©®!!!! I have an entire topic on VI/SED/EMACS/EDLIN!!!!

Fuckin' vi... you're gonna come at me with fuckin' vi?!?!?!

[esc]
:wq

That is all.

Icon™©®

It was better than that abortion your pals at HAL came up with - DISPLAYWRITE©

[conmee]

I don't think I was as early as 1984 with the rude pictures stuff that came later.

As I remember in those days it was stuff like

http://www.phase-5.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/ascii_porn.png

which would do less for even TEENAGE LOVE APPARATUS™© than the lingerie section of the average catalogue.

True, SESH™©®, but if you were BEATING OFF™©® to this back in the day, you were BEATING OFF™©® to the POTENTIAL™©® of computer-generated PRON™©®, not to the pixelated silhouette.

That is all.

Icon™©®

P.S. Sesh, you have SERIOUS KUNG FU™©® as well, make sure to tell your story, you FUCKING HACK™©®!!!!

[Seshmeister]

The problem is that I used my SERIOUS KUNG FU™©® for evil rather that taking the path of purity and riches.

Back in the late 80s I decided I was going to become a ROCKSTAR so came up with a plan that I thought was more cunning than a fox that used to be Professor of Cunning at Oxford University(©E.Blackadder)

I wrote a script that looked like the login screen to all the terminals in the computer lab but the first time you logged in it sent your username and password to a text file in my directory, displayed 'incorrect password' and then exited to the login screen.

That may seem like pretty fucking basic SKULLDUGGERY™© nowadays but in 1988 it worked like a dream with people who were typing passwords into computers for the first time in their lives. It allowed me to skip all my classes and steal the code of all the smartest students in the CUNTRY™ leaving the simple job of choosing the best people with different tutors and bolting their code together an hour before each bit of work was due. This allowed me to spend a solid 98% of my time on the music/debauchery.

This was a brilliant plan right up until the point of sitting in an exam hall at the end of the year, having not become a rock star and getting the second lowest mark for programming in the year, a mighty 6%...

PART II - Where our hero leaves the world of computers under a cloud and joins the LAW SCHOOL™© where lying and cheating were seen as positive character traits...

[Panamark]

I played Zork on a Remington main frame.

Command prompt unix...
Thought that was the shiznit at the time...

Lets not forget the Z-80's and TRS-80's if we are talking desktop.
First desktop I played with was a DEC Rainbow.

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/photos/dec_rainbow_100.jpg

[Panamark]

Used to repair computers that had core memory...
Physical mini ferrite cores, each one a magetic "bit"
Eight ferrite rings a "byte"

Great thing was they retained data without power.
Fuck all storage capacity compared to todays ram
modules.

[Panamark]

Prime, DEC, IBM and Data General were all big boys when I started...

[Panamark]

The problem is that I used my SERIOUS KUNG FU™©® for evil rather that taking the path of purity and riches.

Back in the late 80s I decided I was going to become a ROCKSTAR so came up with a plan that I thought was more cunning than a fox that used to be Professor of Cunning at Oxford University(©E.Blackadder)

I wrote a script that looked like the login screen to all the terminals in the computer lab but the first time you logged in it sent your username and password to a text file in my directory, displayed 'incorrect password' and then exited to the login screen.

That may seem like pretty fucking basic SKULLDUGGERY™© nowadays but in 1988 it worked like a dream with people who were typing passwords into computers for the first time in their lives. It allowed me to skip all my classes and steal the code of all the smartest students in the CUNTRY™ leaving the simple job of choosing the best people with different tutors and bolting their code together an hour before each bit of work was due. This allowed me to spend a solid 98% of my time on the music/debauchery.

This was a brilliant plan right up until the point of sitting in an exam hall at the end of the year, having not become a rock star and getting the second lowest mark for programming in the year, a mighty 6%...

PART II - Where our hero leaves the world of computers under a cloud and joins the LAW SCHOOL™© where lying and cheating were seen as positive character traits...

Masterful ! lol... Ahead of your time Seshman.

[conmee]

Brethren and Sistren,

I think BenJammin mentioned being a COBOLer™©® and droppin' names like UNIVAC™©® and Honeywell... Well... when I was a UNIX (AIX)™©® MASTURBATOR™©® in the early 90s at a credit union, we had this old ass HONEYWELL/BULL DPS/6 computer to do all our processing, and it was the size of a couple refrigerators and a backyard BBQ™©® all in one. In one cabinet, we had the magnetic tape drives. In the evening, I'd MOUNT™©® these 10" tape reels and backup the daily transaction data and other system config info. The DPS/6 was running a PICK OS™©® (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system) and Pick/BASIC™©® environment for some financial apps package called ULTRAFis™©® by a defunct company called ULTRAData™©®.

Here's a photo (not of the credit union DPS/6) to give you an idea of this ancient technology. You'll also notice some of the 10" tape reels hanging on a stand in the background...


http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/af152/conmee/HBDPS6.png

This thing had a SHITLOAD™©® of wires and multiplexers aka MUXes™©® in the back of one of the refrigerators and under the FALSE FLOOR™©®. This is where the 120 or so WYSE™©® terminals jacked into the DPS/6. These WYSE terminals were basically VT100 DUMB TERMINALS™©® that had green or amber phosphor screens and a keyboard. If shit got out of control or locked up, desk side support was simple: "Turn the terminal off and back on." Done.


http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/af152/conmee/HBDPS6Wiring.jpg

In 1992, we finally got the hell rid of that old DPS/6 in favor of a brand spanking new IBM RS/6000™©® with AIX 3 at the time. It also was loaded with a whopping 64MB of RAM and I think we had 120GB of hard drive space RAID5 baby!!!! This was a MONSTER™©® in 1992. We also had IBM PS/2 Computers all over the place in the computer room and they were used to run our voice response (using OS/2) and credit reporting services.


http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/af152/conmee/RS6000.jpg

Because the CREDIT UNION™©® was operating on the cheap in 1992, we spared no expense and bought a boatload of PC clones by a company called PACKARD-BELL™©® which were complete and utter shite! They also all came pre-installed with MS-DOS 6 and Windows For Workgroups 3.11. Christ Almighty™©® the primitive TCP/IP Stack™©® that came from Microsoft (they were pushing NETBIOS™©® and "workgroup" networking) was a bitch and a half and was horrible to troubleshoot. Add in that ACCOUNTING™©® had some LANTastic™©® and Netware (IPX/SPX)™©® departmental servers, and CLUSTERFUCK CENTRAL™©®. Also didn't help that the TOOLS™©® installing our new network weren't exactly WELL-VERSED™©® on TCP/IP and TOKEN RING™©® integration. See, TOKEN RING™©® was IBM's BRAIN FART™©®, and well... I just don't want to RELIVE™©® that era. Bottom line: I learned a hell of a lot about networking, security, and all sorts of other shit about UNIX maintenance, etc.

So on that last photo, you can see on the left our "communications" tower which included some old ass 1200 baud modems to dial up VISA™©® and EXPERIAN™©® and to do some ACH™©® transaction uploads. The four boxes at the bottom were SERIAL MUXES™©® in that they were needed to connect all our SERIAL PRINTERS™©® to the network. These horrible OKIDATA dot matrix units that made all sorts of fucking noise. Although we did have one really cool HUGE industrial printer that would crank out BOXLOADS™©® of financial statements and CERTIFICATES OF DEPOSIT™©®. Moving on, you see the RS/6000 on the floor and it had (at the time) a cool and nifty DAT tape backup, which was much faster and higher capacity than those old 10" reel tapes. Next to the RS/6000 on the floor was the hard drive enclosure. I think we had 10GB drives so it housed 12 drives for a total of 120GB or something like that. You can see a shitload of tapes all over the place. On the far right was an IBM PS/2 computer with MicroChannel Architecture (MCA)™©®, another IBM innovation which was actually better than E/IDE (Compaq/Intel's answer to slow IDE bus and MCA). But just like SONY™©®, IBM priced the PS/2 and MCA right out of being a fucking standard. Boards were costly, so everyone went with E/IDE peripherals and shit.

I worked at this credit union from 1990-1995 until I finished my master's degree. Here is the SALT MINE™©® where I learned and earned my first few degrees of KUNG FU™©®!!!!!

More to come...

Icon™©®

[Panamark]

Ah the Wyse terminals !!! God, I fixed a few Wyse 75's back in the day....
Dumb fucking terminals (literally)

[twonabomber]

one place i worked had the big ol' mainframe i nan air conditioned room, and it had two big disk platter machines next to it. they'd back that sucker up at the end of the day, probably had some tape drives too. our desktop terminals were those blue on black monitors with the keyboard built in, repair guy had the case off and it looked like fiberglass over chicken wire.

[LoungeMachine]

And not ONE of you saw a VAGINA during any of this time......

:gulp:

[Panamark]

And not ONE of you saw a VAGINA during any of this time......

:gulp:

Not on the screens....
After hours, I had a perma-girlfriend at the time..

It wasnt that nerdy I would surround myself with the rackmount frames
when I was stoned so the boss couldnt see my really red eyes.
That worked until he called me in for my "review" and I was
so stoned I just sat there and said nothing. Then he said I
was good and gave me a pay rise ?? :biggrin:

[Yount]

My dad got a T 86 similar to this one. That was my first look at a computer. Used to play heaps of Micro League Baseball as the 1982 Brewers and enter the stats into Lotus. Played 162 game season 2 or 3 times. Vuckovich would never pitch like his stats, he'd always get hammered. In fact the whole pitching staff besides Sutton and Fingers was very suspect. Ah memories.


I can't compete with any of you tech heads though :clap::)

[conmee]

Okay, Lounge, that was actually funny.

But as fate would have it, much like Panamark, I turned that computer room into a den of iniquity on weekend evenings. In fact, I committed acts of FORNICATION™©® with one of the credit union tellers on that very DESK™©® that is currently occupied by those PCs and the IBM PS/2 in the photo above.

That is all.

Icon™©®

[FORD]

Still have my old Atari 2600 and a dozen or so game cartridges, but the Commodore 64, and Vic 20 are long gone, and I don't think I ever even took the Timex/Sinclair 1000 out of the goddamn box.

Tried using that MAME emulator a few years back, but I never got any decent games to work with it, so I got bored with it. Maybe they have improved it since then. Might be easier to try to figure that out than attempting to plug the old Atari into a modern TV.

[Panamark]

I still have the Atari 2600, Nintendo 64 and the Sega !
They all still work, Atari is great for a real Space Invaders hit,
my fave game was Superman, blocky graphics and all.
Sonic Hedgehog was trippy and in the Nintendo
range, Tysons Knockout, Duck Hunt, mario Bros and Rad
Racer were most excellent when participating in herbal enjoyment !

[Panamark]

Its cool seeing "Baud Rate" being spoken in public again :)

[Panamark]

Those old dumb terminals, had to have the right protocol, baud rate, parity bit etc
or you would literally receive gibberish on the screen. A Hard disk change involved
5 men. The disks themselves were in huge vacuum platters. I am officially
an old fuck I realise. Why am I suddenly thinking terminal mode and ASCII.
An old door just opened in the grey matter. It was not always RS232 either.
Oh yes I know you all think RS232 rocks, mwahahahah Thats all those Uarts could
do !!!! hehehehehhe YOU ARE ALL WRONG there was other protocols
dammit !!!

[conmee]

Those old dumb terminals, had to have the right protocol, baud rate, parity bit etc
or you would literally receive gibberish on the screen. A Hard disk change involved
5 men. The disks themselves were in huge vacuum platters. I am officially
an old fuck I realise. Why am I suddenly thinking terminal mode and ASCII.
An old door just opened in the grey matter. It was not always RS232 either.
Oh yes I know you all think RS232 rocks, mwahahahah Thats all those Uarts could
do !!!! hehehehehhe YOU ARE ALL WRONG there was other protocols
dammit !!!

Ah yes and setting the DIP switches, to select baud rates on modems and change timing on old school motherboards?

Icon™©®

[Panamark]

Ah yes and setting the DIP switches, to select baud rates on modems and change timing on old school motherboards?

Icon™©®

I think the last DIP switch was always Parity......

[Panamark]

Or (it gets deep now)

odd or even parity !

[Panamark]

Lets not go all CRC, parity was the bytemaster !

[twonabomber]

And not ONE of you saw a VAGINA during any of this time......

:gulp:

not true here either.

one of the lunchroom ladies at HS ran a BBS on their Apple II. her daughter was a hot ginger with big tits. they threw a BBQ at the beach one summer and the daughter and i spent most of it groping each other in the lake.

then at the job with the mainframe, my then GF would come downtown after i got done so we could go to a concert or something. we'd kill a little time before the show on the exec secretary's desk, or on the big "sample table" down in the sewing room. being the last one there had it's advantages sometimes. :D

[ELVIS]

Brethren and Sistren,

I'm gonna init this topic by calling on all ATARIfanatics™©®, AMIGAistos™©®, ALTAIRians™©®, COBOLers™©®, PASCALers™©®, FORTRANnies™©®, C+ians™©®, LISPers™©®, AssemblyBarbarians™©®, AppleIIers™©®, UNIXgeeks (AIX 7 Bitches!)™©®, SUN & Solaris Refugees™©®, ONEHITWONDERS (Coleco, Commodore64+Vic20, TI-99ers, TimexSinclair, TRS80)™©®, MAINFRAMErs™©®, UNIVACians™©®, DOSdweebs™©®, CP/Mers™©®, OS/2ers™©®, WINDOZErs™©®, MacOSers™©®, MAME/MESS Emulatorians™©®, JAVAristas™©®, BASICdorks™©®, PUNCHCARDretirees™©®, TECHIES™©®, GAMERS (PlayStation, XBox, Nintendo, SNES, Atari, PC, all of it)™©®, GUI/ObjectOrientedPussies™©®, and COMMAND LINE GODS™©®!!!!!

This thread is about sharing a) Your Bio & KUNG FU CREDENTIALS™©®; b) Killer Tech Moves and Secrets; c) Gaming Prowess; d) Photos and Stories of Past/Present/Future; e) Serving Hot Cups of SHUTTHEFUCKUP™©® to the ILL-INFORMED™©® and those WITHOUT GAME (Don't Sing It, If You Can't Bring It!)™©®...

That is all.

Icon™©®

The language in this post alone is frightening...

When you tekkies were having green screen visions of command prompt sugar plums™©® dancing through your heads, I was ripping guitars apart, re-wiring, re-painting, trying to convert right hand whammy bars to the proper left hand, ect...

I was anti-school, anti-computer...

I used to skip school with a bunch of kids and we would go to my house, smoke weed, and I would jam out for them until we had to go back to school so we could catch the bus back home...:biggrin:

Those were the days...

Not dissin' just sayin'


:elvis:

[FORD]

Hey, I had a guitar too.... I just never could play the goddamn thing :(

[twonabomber]

Still have my old Atari 2600 and a dozen or so game cartridges, but the Commodore 64, and Vic 20 are long gone, and I don't think I ever even took the Timex/Sinclair 1000 out of the goddamn box.



we had a 2600 but wanted to get a ColecoVision when they came out. mom said we could get one if we found someone to buy the 2600, and we had to put the funds gained toward the 2600 adapter. friend of ours loved to play Video Pinball, so we sold the 2600 and pinball cart to him. still have the CV and the adapter, the original boxes are still in my mom's attic. i gotta get over there one day and grab those.

later mom was at a local appliance store and they were blowing out the Bally Astrocade systems, she grabbed one and a pile of games all for under $100. i shoulda took that when i moved out of her place in '89, not sure if it's still there. there is a cool vintage toy store in Cleveland and he usually has an Astrocade but he wants stupid money for it.

got the C64 for Christmas, i went to what used to be Children's Palace to buy the disk drive. they were what, over $200? so i go in there with a wad of lunch money i'd saved up. i remember getting maybe under $20 back in change and the cashier making a joke about being careful with that much money. dad cheaped out and bought me the tape drive and i struggled with that for maybe a month.


Tried using that MAME emulator a few years back, but I never got any decent games to work with it, so I got bored with it. Maybe they have improved it since then. Might be easier to try to figure that out than attempting to plug the old Atari into a modern TV.

if you just want to play 2600 games, get Stella. it's the best 2600 emu out there. the ROMS are easy to find, too.

i bought a Wii just to mod it to run emulators. i have 2600, 7800, CV, MAME, Sega Genesis, and C64. can't remember the last time i even had that sucker plugged in, though.

may not be easy finding a new TV with the correct inputs. i modded my ColecoVision to work on composite inputs, there is a mod for most of the major systems. the 26" Vizio i bought for a PC monitor has composite in, but the 46" i have in the living room only has HDMI, component, and VGA ins.

[Seshmeister]

I think BenJammin mentioned being a COBOLer™©® and droppin' names like UNIVAC™©® and Honeywell... Well... when I was a UNIX (AIX)™©® MASTURBATOR™©® in the early 90s at a credit union, we had this old ass HONEYWELL/BULL DPS/6 computer to do all our processing, and it was the size of a couple refrigerators and a backyard BBQ™©® all in one.

Oh man Honeywell™©® brings back mammaries...

After rejecting the world of law after my first job being with a Grisham style FIRM™©® I bluffed my way into an IT job way way over my head at the city's maternity hospital not realising I would be the only guy there doing IT Support.

Around the second day their Honeywell monster thing which took up half a room went down, no one could register new babies in the city. I puzzled over this for a while. I tracked the network cable all around the building, this thing was on a COAX ring network so if the connection to any terminal in the hospital came loose the whole thing went down, genius!

I distinctly remember having to move placentas out of the way to get behind these things to check the connections. It all looked fine so I went back and sat down looking at this big brown slab of a thing for a bit.

I didn't even have a root password for it and then was inspired. I independently came to the most important law of IT support. I switched it off and on again. I know this sounds so obvious a thing to do to the kids these days but when you are doing it by flicking a switch half the size of your arm back then ending a huge amount of whirring and droning it seemed a brave thing to do.

Needless to say it worked a treat and from that day all the staff in the hospital thought I was a fucking genius GURU™©® who could save them the expensive call out and long waits for the Honeywell engineers.

I never ever switched it on and off in front of witnesses to give away my secret and did it on demand every week or two for 18 months...

[twonabomber]

I independently came to the most important law of IT support. I switched it off and on again.

at Progressive i'd call the help desk when my PC would jam up during a quote. they'd go through three things to try and then they'd tell you to reboot...so i quit calling the help desk and would just reboot.

[FORD]

Anybody else remember dialing into this with their 1200 baud modem?

http://toastytech.com/guis/c64gquantumlink.gif

This was the company which eventually became America Online. And yes, they sucked then too!

[FORD]

Q-link software came bundled with something called GEOS, which was the C-64 attempt to run a GUI at the time when the original Macintosh was getting popular.....

http://toastytech.com/guis/c64gmenu5.gif

[Seshmeister]

For some reason the Atari 2600™ game that I always remember is Adventure™.

I think it's because of the extraordinary difference between the packaging and marketing

http://www.warrenrobinett.com/adventure/adv_box.jpg


and the game itself which had somewhat limited graphics and gameplay. Even then I was somehow expecting a fully immersive D&D style adventure game travelling an alternate universe, fighting dragons and winning their treasure.

Out of the box some of you will remember you were confronted with stuff like this where our intrepid adventurer is in the catacombs of the White Castle, carrying the White Key and being chased by the dragon, Grundle...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f3/Atariadventure.png

[Seshmeister]

[Panamark]

On a serious note, any of you guys looking after XP networks at the moment ?
MS have sent out several forced IE8 updates that have nuked the iertutil.dll file
causing explorer to not even load on boot. Trigger seems to be PC's that
had IE8 already, being forced to reinstall IE8.

Its a bitch, I thought we had malware in one of our updates,
some googling today revealed people all over the world
are getting it. Not all PC's though, I reckon 30% of a very
large network I look after... MS have said "something"
but I have no idea if they have fixed it, or are even attempting
to.. Anyone else copping this ??

PC hangs at desktop with Explorer.exe error iertutil.dll file
missing....

[Seshmeister]

I haven't heard about that one yet, I haven't looked after a network for years and my knowledge of even AD is diminishing rapidly.

I am convinced though that security updates and AV software cause far far more damage and expense each year than security violations or viruses.

[Seshmeister]

Dp!!!!

[clarathecarrot]

INKEY$ ( don't remeber anything else, but lots of function key learning and forgetting to initiate this or that function and screwing up all our basic programs, some keys had like 5 functions..lol)
My buds all bought one each of these they were about 25$ back in 82'. We wrote programs and ran them onto a little cassette tape recorders because when you turned this thing off everything you had done was gone forever. Hooked up to a TV thru the external antena connection.






http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/Zx81-timex-manipulated.jpg/280px-Zx81-timex-manipulated.jpg

We were mowing lawns for about 75 BUCKS™©®,.. each as a team and would DRINK COFFEE™©® and get stoned play atari asteroids till about 3 pm each day and then go mow 5 large lawns in about 4 hrs..damn to be 22 agian..fuck..I can still remember getting to the dude with the riding mowers house at 6am knowing we would be stoned and coffee jacked all day. Damn Good Times™©®.
I still have mine and a cassette player to load a pretty fun aiplane flight simulator program..If I just had a, 40 YEAR OLD T.V. TO PLUG IT INTO™©®,,,lol,,,,lol,

EDIT: I believe I also have a couple magazines that TS put out that had programs written for people to copy i think it was called SYNC..magazine.fun stuff. Oh jeez and the 16K ram addon pak ..jeez

[twonabomber]

Brethren and Sistren,

Here's a TWO HUNDRED BAUD ACOUSTIC COUPLER MODEM™©®. This is how old people got "online" back in 1982.

http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/af152/conmee/Modem.jpg

That is all.

Icon™©®

i have one of those, too. this was made by GE:

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r169/mdallas07/boat017.jpg

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r169/mdallas07/boat023.jpg

that's the modem my friend used. i ran the Vicmodems.

took the pics to put it on Ebay, turns out they go for $20 or so.

[Coyote]

I'm clearly out of my league here...

Closest I ever got to being a ULTRAGEEK™© was when I tried installing Linux on my PC... I've stuck to guitars, music and mmmpussy since that...

[kwame k]

On a serious note, any of you guys looking after XP networks at the moment ?
MS have sent out several forced IE8 updates that have nuked the iertutil.dll file
causing explorer to not even load on boot. Trigger seems to be PC's that
had IE8 already, being forced to reinstall IE8.

Its a bitch, I thought we had malware in one of our updates,
some googling today revealed people all over the world
are getting it. Not all PC's though, I reckon 30% of a very
large network I look after... MS have said "something"
but I have no idea if they have fixed it, or are even attempting
to.. Anyone else copping this ??

PC hangs at desktop with Explorer.exe error iertutil.dll file
missing....

This has been going on for quite some time, Marky!

I started seeing IE8 as a forced M$ upgrade back when I was an IT tech at ConCa$t and that was back in '09.

It reeks havoc on people's pc's.......

[Panamark]

This has been going on for quite some time, Marky!

I started seeing IE8 as a forced M$ upgrade back when I was an IT tech at ConCa$t and that was back in '09.

It reeks havoc on people's pc's.......


In their wisdom MS have decided to do two consecutive forced IE8 upgrades
in Feb 2012. I suspect there was another in Jan. You are right, its the same bullshit they
did in 09. We run our workstations in a locked mode anyway so that users cant fuck
with certain things. One of the things I lock out is Task managers ability to launch
new tasks. (via ctrl-alt-del) I have found a tedious fix for this issue, but the only
way is via the taskmanager. So we have no option other than to box swap.
MS's official stance is "we know about it, but it only affects a small amount of users
and our engineers are looking at it"... WTF ?? How about, "Ok theres a problem we
will stop shoving that update out there, as of todays date and our engineers
are working on a fix" Not that the fix would help us as it kills explorer (and USB too !)
so theres no way the fix would get downloaded as it craps itself before reaching
a point of network connection.

[Seshmeister]

It's amazing how many big organisations will still only use IE.

It's hideous.

[ZahZoo]

My first operations job in 1980 was with IBM System 370's and my work space looked almost identical to this...

http://cdn3.explainthatstuff.com/ibm-370-mainframe-1981.jpg

[Seshmeister]

I always imagined the banks of whirring tapes in 1970s TV shows was a bit exaggerated... :)

[neuralfraud]

Ok guys.. i was going to type this wonderful BIO and then fucking firefox the miserable, insufferable piece of shit that it is, crashed... noone cares anyhow, not like i did anything remotely cool except for waste my adolescence learning to program and tinkering with linux and bashing out php/mysql websites...OTOH at least I have a good paying job so it can't have been THAT bad, right?

Anyhow, some very cool stories in this thread; keep it up.

maybe i'll type something up in a more reliable program and then paste it in here when im ready ;)

[clarathecarrot]

I was very INTO IT™©®.

Then I ended up with a RODE JOB™©®---- 4 MONEY ™©® as in Road..on the. Got busy traveling and found a different carreer in 1984™©® and didn't get back into computer ( " as "-in the computer-" see movie, Zoolander") until 1995 and well I felt like I was to far behind to reboot that system and travel the way of the brainiac.

So, I guess I became a, END USER™©®. and that leaves me feeling like a nerd in a room of geeks, most silly.Thank good ness for Plug and Play. I try to talk shit and I know they all are just planning to slap a doof sticker on my back and ditch me later .

...and thank goodness for Icon and the letting (stolen) of me to use the, CR THINGY™©®. He is the man.

"™©®-THINGY" ™©® is a fun time. I copy and paste it the NEW FASHIONED WAY™©®. I do miss the KEYPOKE™©®, but it just doesn't lift and seperate like the little cursor in the lookie box.

I do still also have a Horse Handicapping program for the TRS 80 hand held, still written on the yellow legal pad papers in storage somewhere.( see pic, below)

http://www.vintagecalculators.com/assets/images/RadioShackTRS80PC1_2.jpg

[Panamark]

Wow the Ipad-TRS80 !

[ZahZoo]

I always imagined the banks of whirring tapes in 1970s TV shows was a bit exaggerated... :)

For what they were depicting on TV it was probably exaggerated...

We were still using the old tape drives in that pic up into the early 90's. Mostly for archival of weekly software development builds for one of the first unix variants to run as a guest on heavy metal (mainframes). Back then the new automated tape cartridge drives were in production... but we could get the old reel models for free and fully depreciated to hold cost down. Those things were built to last...

This was the time when the 486 processor for PC's was just released... remember running processor performance baseline tests on a little desktop PC that was out performing huge mainframes 20x...

[FORD]

Somehow I must have missed the handheld trash-80. Think my grandpa had the regular trash80 with the rubber chiclet keyboard......

http://www.retrocomputermuseum.co.uk/screenshots/tandy_trs80.jpg

[clarathecarrot]

GIZZMO!!!!

WTF..!!!

Oh shit did I leave the batteries in these GIZZMO'S 15 years ago what about my Ebay'z BUCKS!!!

Honey get the flashlight I am going in!!!

[Hardrock69]

On a relevant note, Microsoft is now becoming exceedingly desperate to get people to abandon Windows XP, to the point of now even publicly trying to scare people by saying it is a piece of shit, insecure operating system.

Thing is, people do not need anything more advanced than XP for general every day activities. You only have a certain percentage (like yours truly) who are power users, and a majority of people have no need for anything more advanced than that.

I recently got Win 7 on my main machine. It was a BITCH trying to get my older hardware to work with it, and there is still one piece of hardware I have (an analog to digital video capture box) that STILL will not work with it, even though it has Windows 7 drivers.

Just had been reading nothing but rave reviews about it, and wanted to check it out. It is definitely faster than XP.....a worthy successor (fuck Vista...that was a piece of shit), but the only reason I really got it was to have DirectX 11 for gaming and video stuff.

Oh well...enough about my crap....here is the article:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/microsoft-begs-users-to-leave-windows-xp-gives-them-until-2014-to-do-it/


Microsoft begs users to leave Windows XP – gives them until 2014 to do it
Jeffrey Van Camp July 12, 2011 By Jeffrey Van Camp

After a decade, Microsoft is finally ending support for Windows XP, but not for another three years.

In yet another valiant effort to get people off Windows XP and onto Windows 7, Microsoft is finally ending its “extended support” for the decade-old PC operating system. Unlike Apple, however, when Microsoft puts its foot down, it gives users 1,000 days to get out of the way. The company won’t officially stop supporting XP until April 8, 2014–a year and a half after Windows 8 is expected to roll out. The company will not issue any security patches after this date.

While there are plenty of home users still running XP, Microsoft’s big concern is the large number of businesses that haven’t yet upgraded to Windows 7. Despite its lenient timeline, the Redmond giant is so desperate to get people off XP that it now routinely insults the OS, posting up an entire video called “Is Windows XP Good Enough? Really?” which we’ve embedded below.

To scare those concerned with the bottom line, Microsoft quotes a Gartner report as well, which indicates that “more than 50 [percent] of organizations that do not start deploying Windows 7 by early 2012 will not complete their deployments before Windows XP support ends, and will incur increased support costs.”

So why are people still running XP, a platform that was released in 2001? There are a number of reasons, beginning with how bad a reputation Windows Vista gained when it launched in late 2006. Another may be the lack of overall change in the design of Windows over the years. To many, XP may look like it is current enough to do the trick and businesses know that compatibility with older programs is not an issue. Until the smartphone and tablet revolution began a few years ago, the evolution of PCs seemed to be moving at a snails pace.

In any case, Microsoft is beginning to get desperate. Earlier this year it refused to support XP with the release of Internet Explorer 9. You can bet further measures are being taken. Apple, meanwhile, does not support its 2005 OS X “Tiger,” will soon end Security Updates for its 2007 “Leopard” OS, and will likely end full support for its 2009 “Snow Leopard” when OS X “Lion” hits shelves shortly.

Is this the beginning of a less lenient Microsoft? We’re not so sure. The company has already somewhat encouraged businesses to run Windows 7 after the release of Windows 8, saying that the two operating systems will be fully compatible.

[Seshmeister]

I still run XP on half my machines and I prefer it.

[Panamark]

Agree with Sesh.

We have not even gone to Win7.
Why should we pay for unecessary updated hardware, non supported devices
etc etc. Especially when XP is now pretty solid and does it all..

Grab any PC/Laptop that has been released with Vista/Win7
reformat and load XP. Guarantee the same PC will run 100% faster
and more efficiently.

[Seshmeister]

I'm posting from a 64 bit Windows 7 thing and it does weird shit all the time. It crashes and then recovers itself a few times a day - whoope fucking do, I would prefer the just not crashing in the first place.

Also I frequently might want to search say for a file I know that is an mp3 that I added in the last month. I don't know how to do that on Windows 7, thanks a fucking bunch M$.

And while I'm ranting I fucking hate the last two versions of Office and ribbons in particular.

Why is it someone that has been using their shit for 20 years now has to go to a help file to find out how to add page numbers to the footer in Word?

Using Access 2010 is like sitting beside a 16 week old abortion being eaten by maggots at a Sammy Hagar gig.

With a hangover.

[conmee]

Brethren and Sistren,

Apologies for my absence... I'm up here in my old stomping grounds in Seattle. Met with some friends at Micro$oft, got a group of H1Bs in my old office. Anyhow, I worked on the team that sold Windows Client (XP, Vista, etc) annuity agreements called Software Assurance. We would sell large organizations 3-year agreements that blanket covered their entire corporate install base. It also included some cool management tools, and when I got to Microsoft, we also purchased a virtualization company and started adding virtual tools to Software Assurance. Anyhow, I can tell you as an INSIDER™©® that Micro$oft's bread and butter is keeping everyone in UPGRADE HELL™©®. If people knew they could get 8-10 years out of an OS, revenue would drop substantially. And that's exactly what happened with Micro$oft's corporate business when I arrived. The biggest complaint corporations had every time we'd show up asking for three more years of fees, was that they felt they were paying TWICE™©® for the operating system since EVERY new machine came with Windows pre-installed, they wondered why they should have to pay ADDITIONAL over three years (we eventually tried and in some cases were successful in convincing them that our throwaway bag of "tools" and the "Enterprise" version of the OS were sufficient to justify the annuity agreement. In fact, we took OUT key features like multi-language support and ONLY put it in Enterprise to create the illusion that corporations were getting the "special" version tuned just for enterprises... muaahahahaha!). Anyhow, if you've ever tried to buy a machine from a brand name manufacturer that didn't include Windows, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's almost impossible to order a computer from Dell or Lenovo or HP without the "Windows License" even if they don't install it. And you don't get "credit" for it. In fact, I worked with our OEM team and it was like taking candy from babies. Even if you were able to buy a Dell or Lenovo with Linux pre-installed, the "Windows tax" was still there. Why? How? Well, we worked very closely with Intel to ensure that the BIG BOYS™©® received "co-marketing" investments/dollars. If they didn't have a mix of Windows-to-non-Windows PC unit sales, of at least 95% at one point, they would forfeit millions in "co-marketing" cash from Micro$oft's horde. As a result, even when Dell and a few other big names started pre-installing Linux, they would just pass the roughly $50/pc OEM cost onto the end user (even if it was a Linux box!!!), to keep the Windows "mix" high. I know a lot of other dirt, that I may share over time. For now though, back to the point...

One of the things we battled with Windows XP was that companies like EDS, Accenture, etc had made a business out of building toolsets that would manage XP infrastructures. It wasn't just a product cost to these companies, they INVESTED™©® in ways to streamline deployment and management of XP. Also, XP is super solid. When I joined Micro$oft in 2005, I'd say we still had 75% of the INTERNAL TEAMS™©® running XP or DUAL BOOTING™©® when we launched Vista. The driver/video/security model changed, shit didn't work right or as fast as XP, took up a lot more memory, even if much of that footprint was being used as cache. Shit, Sesh can tell you all his headaches, we'd chat on MSN years ago when I was at "The '$oft"™©® and I could hear him drinking and crying via MSN. Hell, I think it was Micro$oft not his wife that drove him to the bottle.

So with all these organizations having invested billions globally to fine tune XP, there's just no way many of them will upgrade. They look at it as a depreciable asset that so long as it runs the mission critical apps internally, why spend money just for new wallpaper, DirectX, etc? At least that's most CIOs' views. And with IE6 being the first M$ browser to really popularize .NET and ActiveX and Micro$oft's "own" ideas about proper HTML, and well... you have a seriously non-standard browser. Anyone who designed websites in the early 2000s knows all the special codes/tricks in HTML needed to make IE render properly. Sometimes it was as simple as the use of a particular command or syntax, other times it was a complete CSS clusterfuck™©®. Bottom line, IE6 made it a PAIN IN THE ASS™©® to create robust websites and incorporate media that would also render correctly on Mac, Linux, etc. There are books on this shit, so I won't go further (and yes, I've oversimplified to make a point, feel free to bring KUNG FU™©® to the discussion and dissect all the bits and pieces).

For Micro$oft, it's a money grab. And their revenue stream from Windows pays for all their other bad ideas and money-losing operations (Xbox, Bing, Zune, WinMobile, WinPhone, etc). In fact, Xbox only began being profitable (on a per unit basis, not counting sunk costs for development/etc) and the 360 has been out since 2006. What we were still trying to overcome when I left Micro$oft was to shorten an ever-lengthening "refresh cycle." In the '90s, the refresh cycle was more or less 2-3yrs. By the middle of this past decade, it was 6-7 in the US and 8-9 in emerging markets like China, India, and Brazil (assuming these fuckers even PAID for their software, which was never a good assumption). Because the refresh cycle was getting longer and almost no one actually buys off the shelf and does an in-place upgrade, we were getting worried about the cash cow. As an aside, what we called FPP (Fully Packaged Product), this is the stuff on display in stores, we really only manufactured that so we would have retail "presence." So you could see we had something for sale on the shelf. But in the big scheme of things, to give you an idea, in 2007, after a full year of Vista, Micro$oft made about $13B from OEM sales (stuff preinstalled on PCs), and about $700M on the FPP stuff. $700M is nothing to throw away, but it is hardly a revenue driver for the company. SO... Micro$oft has been trying to walk the fine line of "support" for venerable XP but nudging people to upgrade software and hardware to keep the coffers full. We tried to deprecate XP and eliminate all support and service as of three years post-Vista launch. We received such scathing PR and corporate customers were so enraged, that we quickly backed off trying to just kill XP. That's why, here we are over 5 years after Vista's launch, and 11 years since XP arrived, it still lives on and Micro$oft continues to try to kill it AND IE6 once and for all. And with how funky IE8 updates make XP, I wouldn't put it past the company to issue "updates" that make the XP experience less than satisfying.

More tales from the crypt to come. Heading to El Gaucho for steak, scotch, and cigars...

That is all.

Icon™©®

[Panamark]

Thanks Conmee, so are microsoft covered legally if they release updates that break PC's ?
Im not enjoying paying for box swaps in remote regions due to their fuckup.
Is there a good place on their website to checkout if they have acknowledged the issue
and are at least working on it ? "Something" for us poor support schmucks to tell the angry customers ?
(Who point the finger at the hardware supplier !)

[Hardrock69]

I do ALWAYS turn OFF Automatic updates. That way, if an update fucks up my machine, I know why. My main thing is that I want to control MY fucking machine, not allow Microshaft to do so. Fuckers.

I wish I could get a 64-bit OS to work on my machine.....could be the memory I have does not wanna play nice (4GB of Geil Black Dragon 1066 DDR2 gaming memory), as with 64-bit I can go for more than just 4GB of memory. But then there are the compatibility issues with hardware and software. I have a lot of software I MUST HAVE, and cannot afford to take time to fuck around with getting it to work. As it was, when I was reinstalling my OS, it took me a month of fucking around, trying 2 different Operating systems before settling on Win 7 32-bit. I wanted to upgrade from XP 32-bit. I am changing my memory soon anyway, so I may try Win 7 64-bit again when I do. Such a hassle though.

[conmee]

HR69,

There are a couple real-mode parity test programs out there that more or less run in DOS/command prompt. Run a few patterns on your memory to see if there are any errors. Panamark may be able to point you to some free tools online if you don't have any. If you have a brand name computer from Dell, etc, you can also usually download some diagnostics tools. I'm sure you know this, but I'd double-check all your hardware. In general, if you can't get Win Vista/7 64bit to work, it usually comes down to memory parity errors, or in some cases, if you have an Intel motherboard AND a graphics card, manually disable the internal via BIOS, as sometimes memory areas get claimed by Intel's integrated graphics, and occasionally Win 64bit gets testy. Lastly, depending how your drives are configured, you may need to set the drive to ATA/SATA interface v. AHCI to get the OS to install. For some minor boards and configs, Windows x64 needs to install with the older storage drivers first (if you have a very unique config, you might even have to supply drivers). I'm sure you've done all the above, just putting it out there.

I know you don't have the time, but if you boot to a Linux external USB drive, for example, you can also run some tests that way and check if Linux boots 64bit kernel and sees all memory.

On thing I'll say about VMWare is that it is a better option than trying to use compatibility or XP-mode virtualization. VMWare takes up more space, but it can run some older 32-bit apps and games that require XP pretty well on newer rigs. I'm running Parallels (VMWare competitor) on my MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Quad Core, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD... and I get a Windows Experience Index score of 5.4 in Win 7 64-bit and that's in a virtual environment (faster than my ThinkPad). I'm able to play all of my old games and some new ones. I highly recommend 64-bit, double your RAM and just run an XP instance in VMWare and allocate 4GB just to the virtual machine. You should see pretty good results. Even running VMWare on my ThinkPad works well (for shits and giggles I created DOS 6, Win98, and WinXP images all work great).

More to come.

Icon™©®

[FORD]

Was amazed to find out the other day that the local hospital was still using XP on their machines, at least the ones in the patient rooms and at the nurses station. Didn't have a chance to ask what they were running on the servers. Don't think it's a case of the hospital being broke, because they just did some major remodels there. They apparently just don't trust Windows 7 yet.

[Nitro Express]

Lot's of people still using XP. I still have one machine in my office still running some book keeping software on XP. For security reasons I personally leave that system off the internet. Everything in the Windows world was pretty much shit until Windows 7 came out. I got a new system with 7 and frankly it's probably the best version of Windows I have used. It still locks up here and there but that's to be expected.

[Nitro Express]

Brethren and Sistren,

Apologies for my absence... I'm up here in my old stomping grounds in Seattle. Met with some friends at Micro$oft, got a group of H1Bs in my old office. Anyhow, I worked on the team that sold Windows Client (XP, Vista, etc) annuity agreements called Software Assurance. We would sell large organizations 3-year agreements that blanket covered their entire corporate install base. It also included some cool management tools, and when I got to Microsoft, we also purchased a virtualization company and started adding virtual tools to Software Assurance. Anyhow, I can tell you as an INSIDER™©® that Micro$oft's bread and butter is keeping everyone in UPGRADE HELL™©®. If people knew they could get 8-10 years out of an OS, revenue would drop substantially. And that's exactly what happened with Micro$oft's corporate business when I arrived. The biggest complaint corporations had every time we'd show up asking for three more years of fees, was that they felt they were paying TWICE™©® for the operating system since EVERY new machine came with Windows pre-installed, they wondered why they should have to pay ADDITIONAL over three years (we eventually tried and in some cases were successful in convincing them that our throwaway bag of "tools" and the "Enterprise" version of the OS were sufficient to justify the annuity agreement. In fact, we took OUT key features like multi-language support and ONLY put it in Enterprise to create the illusion that corporations were getting the "special" version tuned just for enterprises... muaahahahaha!). Anyhow, if you've ever tried to buy a machine from a brand name manufacturer that didn't include Windows, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's almost impossible to order a computer from Dell or Lenovo or HP without the "Windows License" even if they don't install it. And you don't get "credit" for it. In fact, I worked with our OEM team and it was like taking candy from babies. Even if you were able to buy a Dell or Lenovo with Linux pre-installed, the "Windows tax" was still there. Why? How? Well, we worked very closely with Intel to ensure that the BIG BOYS™©® received "co-marketing" investments/dollars. If they didn't have a mix of Windows-to-non-Windows PC unit sales, of at least 95% at one point, they would forfeit millions in "co-marketing" cash from Micro$oft's horde. As a result, even when Dell and a few other big names started pre-installing Linux, they would just pass the roughly $50/pc OEM cost onto the end user (even if it was a Linux box!!!), to keep the Windows "mix" high. I know a lot of other dirt, that I may share over time. For now though, back to the point...

One of the things we battled with Windows XP was that companies like EDS, Accenture, etc had made a business out of building toolsets that would manage XP infrastructures. It wasn't just a product cost to these companies, they INVESTED™©® in ways to streamline deployment and management of XP. Also, XP is super solid. When I joined Micro$oft in 2005, I'd say we still had 75% of the INTERNAL TEAMS™©® running XP or DUAL BOOTING™©® when we launched Vista. The driver/video/security model changed, shit didn't work right or as fast as XP, took up a lot more memory, even if much of that footprint was being used as cache. Shit, Sesh can tell you all his headaches, we'd chat on MSN years ago when I was at "The '$oft"™©® and I could hear him drinking and crying via MSN. Hell, I think it was Micro$oft not his wife that drove him to the bottle.

So with all these organizations having invested billions globally to fine tune XP, there's just no way many of them will upgrade. They look at it as a depreciable asset that so long as it runs the mission critical apps internally, why spend money just for new wallpaper, DirectX, etc? At least that's most CIOs' views. And with IE6 being the first M$ browser to really popularize .NET and ActiveX and Micro$oft's "own" ideas about proper HTML, and well... you have a seriously non-standard browser. Anyone who designed websites in the early 2000s knows all the special codes/tricks in HTML needed to make IE render properly. Sometimes it was as simple as the use of a particular command or syntax, other times it was a complete CSS clusterfuck™©®. Bottom line, IE6 made it a PAIN IN THE ASS™©® to create robust websites and incorporate media that would also render correctly on Mac, Linux, etc. There are books on this shit, so I won't go further (and yes, I've oversimplified to make a point, feel free to bring KUNG FU™©® to the discussion and dissect all the bits and pieces).

For Micro$oft, it's a money grab. And their revenue stream from Windows pays for all their other bad ideas and money-losing operations (Xbox, Bing, Zune, WinMobile, WinPhone, etc). In fact, Xbox only began being profitable (on a per unit basis, not counting sunk costs for development/etc) and the 360 has been out since 2006. What we were still trying to overcome when I left Micro$oft was to shorten an ever-lengthening "refresh cycle." In the '90s, the refresh cycle was more or less 2-3yrs. By the middle of this past decade, it was 6-7 in the US and 8-9 in emerging markets like China, India, and Brazil (assuming these fuckers even PAID for their software, which was never a good assumption). Because the refresh cycle was getting longer and almost no one actually buys off the shelf and does an in-place upgrade, we were getting worried about the cash cow. As an aside, what we called FPP (Fully Packaged Product), this is the stuff on display in stores, we really only manufactured that so we would have retail "presence." So you could see we had something for sale on the shelf. But in the big scheme of things, to give you an idea, in 2007, after a full year of Vista, Micro$oft made about $13B from OEM sales (stuff preinstalled on PCs), and about $700M on the FPP stuff. $700M is nothing to throw away, but it is hardly a revenue driver for the company. SO... Micro$oft has been trying to walk the fine line of "support" for venerable XP but nudging people to upgrade software and hardware to keep the coffers full. We tried to deprecate XP and eliminate all support and service as of three years post-Vista launch. We received such scathing PR and corporate customers were so enraged, that we quickly backed off trying to just kill XP. That's why, here we are over 5 years after Vista's launch, and 11 years since XP arrived, it still lives on and Micro$oft continues to try to kill it AND IE6 once and for all. And with how funky IE8 updates make XP, I wouldn't put it past the company to issue "updates" that make the XP experience less than satisfying.

More tales from the crypt to come. Heading to El Gaucho for steak, scotch, and cigars...

That is all.

Icon™©®

I have some friends that work for Microsoft. I lived in Redmond for awhile. One of my friends is working with the Microsoft House project. He tells me there are a lot of bands composed of various employees and they jam in the MS auditorium. I heard MS has a big project going in Moses Lake setting up a above the cloud server center. It's going to take so much juice to run they wanted to be close to the Columbia river dams. I guess Google has a facility in The Dalles for the same reason. I have yet to see anything real innovative from Microsoft. Office is still their biggest money maker. I don't know, Steve Balmer never really impressed me as being that great of a CEO. Gates was good at exploiting opportunities. It never really ever was that much of an innovative company. Just good at stealing other people's technology or buying it cheap and marketing it.

[Nitro Express]

My first operations job in 1980 was with IBM System 370's and my work space looked almost identical to this...

http://cdn3.explainthatstuff.com/ibm-370-mainframe-1981.jpg

That old IBM iron was built like a brick shit house though.

[Nitro Express]

Somehow I must have missed the handheld trash-80. Think my grandpa had the regular trash80 with the rubber chiclet keyboard......

http://www.retrocomputermuseum.co.uk/screenshots/tandy_trs80.jpg

I had a job after school doing book keeping. Everything was done on some big silver Radio Shack computer that used big floppy disks. It never gave me any trouble. In fact, that system and old dot matrix printer gave me less fits than the new shit we have today. LOL! I've had two inkjet printers go hay wire this year alone. Anyways, the owner of the business upgraded to an IBM AT. Man. Everyone came over to see that baby. I just remember the system not being the cheap plastic and you couldn't beat those old IBM keyboards with their nice crisp keys.

[Nitro Express]

On a relevant note, Microsoft is now becoming exceedingly desperate to get people to abandon Windows XP, to the point of now even publicly trying to scare people by saying it is a piece of shit, insecure operating system.

Thing is, people do not need anything more advanced than XP for general every day activities. You only have a certain percentage (like yours truly) who are power users, and a majority of people have no need for anything more advanced than that.

I recently got Win 7 on my main machine. It was a BITCH trying to get my older hardware to work with it, and there is still one piece of hardware I have (an analog to digital video capture box) that STILL will not work with it, even though it has Windows 7 drivers.

Just had been reading nothing but rave reviews about it, and wanted to check it out. It is definitely faster than XP.....a worthy successor (fuck Vista...that was a piece of shit), but the only reason I really got it was to have DirectX 11 for gaming and video stuff.

Oh well...enough about my crap....here is the article:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/microsoft-begs-users-to-leave-windows-xp-gives-them-until-2014-to-do-it/

I just don't bother to upgrade the operating system. I did that once and said never again due to hardware problems. As cheap as computers are now, I just get a whole new system usually every five years.

[Nitro Express]

On a serious note, any of you guys looking after XP networks at the moment ?
MS have sent out several forced IE8 updates that have nuked the iertutil.dll file
causing explorer to not even load on boot. Trigger seems to be PC's that
had IE8 already, being forced to reinstall IE8.

Its a bitch, I thought we had malware in one of our updates,
some googling today revealed people all over the world
are getting it. Not all PC's though, I reckon 30% of a very
large network I look after... MS have said "something"
but I have no idea if they have fixed it, or are even attempting
to.. Anyone else copping this ??

PC hangs at desktop with Explorer.exe error iertutil.dll file
missing....

LOL! So Microsoft is downloading viruses as updates to kill off XP. It probably will piss so many people off they will just buy an Apple next time. LOL!

[Nitro Express]

I remember spending countless hours in the computer lab at the college of business. We already had networks but there was talk about world wide networks. Most of us said oh, how nice while we went back to our various assignments and attempts to pad our resumes so we could actually get a job after we graduated. Then the dean came in and had a binder the size of a small microwave oven saying the business school was spending a fortune to have internet access and nobody was using it. We had no idea what the internet was and unless it was going to get us a job and make us money ok, Mr. dean that's nice. Anyways one of the nerdy computer types got the binder and started playing around. You had to use HTML codes and there were no search engines. So it was useless because you needed to know exactly where you were going to find what you needed. Then one day he was all excited. There's porn on this thing! The codes went out. People were viewing porn. Really nasty porn in the computer lab. The next thing we know the dean is telling us anyone guilty of viewing porn will be expelled. I don't think anything really moves forward until people find they can get porn on it.

[Panamark]

HR69,

There are a couple real-mode parity test programs out there that more or less run in DOS/command prompt. Run a few patterns on your memory to see if there are any errors. Panamark may be able to point you to some free tools online if you don't have any. If you have a brand name computer from Dell, etc, you can also usually download some diagnostics tools. I'm sure you know this, but I'd double-check all your hardware. In general, if you can't get Win Vista/7 64bit to work, it usually comes down to memory parity errors, or in some cases, if you have an Intel motherboard AND a graphics card, manually disable the internal via BIOS, as sometimes memory areas get claimed by Intel's integrated graphics, and occasionally Win 64bit gets testy. Lastly, depending how your drives are configured, you may need to set the drive to ATA/SATA interface v. AHCI to get the OS to install. For some minor boards and configs, Windows x64 needs to install with the older storage drivers first (if you have a very unique config, you might even have to supply drivers). I'm sure you've done all the above, just putting it out there.

I know you don't have the time, but if you boot to a Linux external USB drive, for example, you can also run some tests that way and check if Linux boots 64bit kernel and sees all memory.

On thing I'll say about VMWare is that it is a better option than trying to use compatibility or XP-mode virtualization. VMWare takes up more space, but it can run some older 32-bit apps and games that require XP pretty well on newer rigs. I'm running Parallels (VMWare competitor) on my MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Quad Core, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD... and I get a Windows Experience Index score of 5.4 in Win 7 64-bit and that's in a virtual environment (faster than my ThinkPad). I'm able to play all of my old games and some new ones. I highly recommend 64-bit, double your RAM and just run an XP instance in VMWare and allocate 4GB just to the virtual machine. You should see pretty good results. Even running VMWare on my ThinkPad works well (for shits and giggles I created DOS 6, Win98, and WinXP images all work great).

More to come.

Icon™©®

On the tools.

Memtest
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Memory-Tweak/MemTest.shtml

And I would highly recommend "Hirens" boot CD as its has just about every useful
tool and diagnotic you could ever dream of, can also set it up to boot on a USB stick.
Can access NTFS filesystems, I have literally cured crashed drives with this awesome
boot cd.. Yes there are mem tests on there. Shit I cant think of a diag that is missing
even allows you to run Mini XP, XP from a USB stick !, a must have for computer heads.

[Seshmeister]

In the world somewhere there must be a guy who is a multimillionaire and was in charge of Internet Explorer at Microsoft over the last few years.

I'd love to meet that guy just to see what his attitude is. To fuck up your job to that extent while getting paid that amount of money is truly fucking mind boggling. It would be cool if he's just a party animal who gives a fuck I had fun kind of guy but more likely he's a pencil neck fuckstump who doesn't even realise how utterly useless he is.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Usage_share_of_web_browsers_%28Source_StatCounter% 29.svg

[Panamark]

Maybe Icon met him ?

[twonabomber]

we're still running XP at work. our site IT guy says they have no plans to change any time soon. not sure what version of Explorer, though, i keep forgetting to look. whatever one they introduced the tabbed browsing on.

i get memory dumps on this Win 7 box every now and then, i feel like if i ignore the "updates available" reminder for a couple weeks there is a blue screen coming. i rarely shut this machine off.

[Seshmeister]

Maybe Icon met him ?

Maybe it was Icon... :)

[conmee]

I have some friends that work for Microsoft. I lived in Redmond for awhile. One of my friends is working with the Microsoft House project. He tells me there are a lot of bands composed of various employees and they jam in the MS auditorium. I heard MS has a big project going in Moses Lake setting up a above the cloud server center. It's going to take so much juice to run they wanted to be close to the Columbia river dams. I guess Google has a facility in The Dalles for the same reason. I have yet to see anything real innovative from Microsoft. Office is still their biggest money maker. I don't know, Steve Balmer never really impressed me as being that great of a CEO. Gates was good at exploiting opportunities. It never really ever was that much of an innovative company. Just good at stealing other people's technology or buying it cheap and marketing it.

Nitro,

There were two projects I was aware of before leaving Microsoft. One is Microsoft House which was aligned with our "environmental sustainability" efforts, so measuring and managing power usage, carbon footprint, etc. Microsoft recently abandoned some software that was to complement the effort called Microsoft Hohm (may in fact have been the same thing). But then there is the OTHER Microsoft Home Of The Future at the Executive Briefing Center on campus. That's where we had the leather chairs and conference tables and unlimited catered food and shite to wine and dine executives. I'd present product roadmaps and talk about strategy, blah blah. But one thing we'd do to "wow" some of the visiting execs was take them on a tour of the Home Of The Future. We incorporated all sorts of voice, gesture, and touch technology to do things like project keyboard and virtual displays on countertops, allowing you to essentially type on any surface. Some really cool stuff with LEDs to simulate (but not quite get there) things like holographic images (Princess Leia and R2-D2 in Star Wars), biometric/hand/eye/voice/authentication... various mood lighting and dynamic wall imagery to change with time of day and music being played (thing of Asians running around in lowered cars with Tek-9s if you were to play China Town as an example). Media or family rooms that had all sorts of interaction, "study rooms" where kids could start their homework or lessons and then move to a dining table or other surface and pull up their current assignment. And of course, some cool things that were very Minority Report in the home office. We also showcase some of the "backend analytics" and "intelligence" built into the house. So when grandma or grandpa are trying to figure out which vitamins or pills to take, they could just dump some out and an infrared scanner would identify which were vitamins and which were medicine to keep granny from ODing. So really some cool stuff, but Microsoft, like IBM and the federal govt has come up with some innovative and cool ideas, but the challenge is to make them easy to use and marketable. A lot of the ideas were still a level or two away from being "appliance easy" and cost prohibitive.

Also I took a look at the numbers and Microsoft office now brings in about 15% or so more than Windows. This never used to be the case. In 2005 and when Vista launched in late 2006, Windows was much larger than Office. Looks like they've encountered pricing pressure since unit sales aren't down much considering the recession. For Microsoft, it was always easier to discount the operating system rather than dilute the value of Office, which we always fought with the Office guys. They always argued, "Hey Windows is on every computer already so you ALWAYS get a slice of the revenue. But if we need to discount for a large order, we're gonna cut the Software Assurance part first rather than weaken our Office pricing power." So it looks like that approach, combined with the recession has finally led to Office overtaking Windows. Wow. Seriously, for the casual observer that is a HUGE development. For most of Microsoft's existence, the Big Boy was always Windows. I just read through the 10Q earnings report... still PHENOMENAL operating marring at 61% for Windows!!!!!! That is CRAZY GOOD! But top line revenue has come down vis-a-vis Office the past five years.

More to come.

Icon™©®

[conmee]

Brethren and Sistren,

Before "Building 37" was built on the Microsoft campus (still don't know how the numbering evolved since I started at Microsoft in "Building 50" and "Building 37" wasn't built for a few years later, but I digress), I spent a few months in Building 50 before finally the Windows team was moved into Building 4. This was an historic building because it was part of a cluster of buildings, 1 thru 4. Here was literally the first Redmond buildings after Microsoft moved from downtown Bellevue in early 80s. Between these buildings is a small pond "Lake Bill" which has some koi fish and geese and shit and a little trail and benches (you can see it if you zoom in on the Microsoft campus using Google maps, etc). Anyhow, story has it that once Microsoft came out with their MSN offering (back in the day it was a portal, email service, and some other shite), and this was before Microsoft bought Hotmail, the servers and cords and shit were literally just lined up in the hallway, a total mess. Well, Ballmer being his usual high-energy self, barrels down one of the hallways and damn near breaks his neck tripping over one of the servers. He goes into a fit, and starts yelling what the fuck are these machines doing taking up all the damn hall space. And finally some manager or director tells him that it's "MSN"... no, not a server, the ENTIRE FUCKING SERVICE was right there in the hall. He damn near blew a gasket, given his trip up could have brought down the entire online presence for Microsoft uh huh uh huh...

So little stories like that I learned about during my time in Building 4. Ah... the good ol' days.

More to come.

Icon™©®

[conmee]

Oh, and just a point of clarification. I don't think Microsoft would knowingly introduce blatantly faulty code or "viruses" to annoy XP users. However, I do think they aren't above introducing new code that "improves" security but at the expense of running something else reliably. As an example, you might download a Service Pack or some other security patch that "inadvertently" introduces some new operating dependency that all of the sudden "breaks" some legacy app. Then Microsoft will say, "Uh, well you can either opt for MORE security using the patch or roll back and be less secure OR... ask the app vendor to "fix" their software" even though it wasn't the app vendor's fault. So enough of this type of shenanigans will eventual cause people to throw up their lunches and just fucking upgrade. As to the issue of liability, the EULA is pretty specific about the terms and conditions and is designed SOLELY to protect Microsoft and Microsoft IP. You are "granted" a "license" to use the software, you don't "own" it. You also agree that if anything fucks up there's no liability because you are accepting use of the software more or less as is. When it comes to updates, you are "voluntarily" allowing Microsoft to provide you with these updates and all possible side effects.

As an example, when I was at IBM, I got a call at 3am one morning back in 2004 or 2005, I think. It was when XP SP2 or SP3 came out. Anyhow, some moron at EDS evidently left some port open and ALL the XP machines at all 26 manufacturing plants at General Motors started UPDATING!!!! Keep in mind, this kind of thing should NEVER HAPPEN! These computers that operate plant floor assembly and such have to be rock solid. Well.. SP2/3 introduced all sorts of shit and brought ALL their manufacturing offline!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!! So even though IBM wasn't responsible, GM called EVERY vendor all hands on deck to rectify the situation. IBM because we owned the backup software, EMC because they owned the backup drives/SAN storage, Oracle and HP just fucking because, and of course EDS got TORN UP in a vendor review! Luckily there wasn't "significant" downtime to restore the servers in the plants, but it did cost GM "millions" of dollars in lost productivity. And here's the kicker: In all that mess... the executives CURSED Microsoft's name, but the Microsoft dudes didn't even show up on site to help or at least offer moral support! Hhahaa. Absolutely NO liability on Microsoft's part. Granted, EDS should have been blocking that shit, but you'd think with this kind of scenario, Microsoft would have been somehow held accountable? Nope. This is another reason people and large corporations hate Microsoft.

More to come.

Icon™©®

[ashstralia]

this is great and fascinating reading. thanks everyone, especially you Icon!

[Panamark]

Icon, this is great stuff !

Hey as of today we are still getting that bug, seems to have come from a massive security patch
for IE8. If you are curious, google

iertutil.dll 2012

And the closest I can find to acknowledgement from MS

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_xp-performance/resolved-explorerexe-unable-to-locate-componentthe/126b493c-2466-40be-9c3c-a42e55877b8b

No admittance of wrong doing to be seen. The roadmaps dont work for us as we lockout explorer and task manager so douchebags dont hack the filesystem
on the locked down PC's. Im happy with a modified bootable USB with linux that will read NTFS and run a batch file to restore the dll,
I can buy a bunch of 1gig USB sticks for $2 each and send out. Much cheaper than another PC. It restores the dll and away she goes.
So I found my solution, interestingly, this update breaks windows before it loads properly, so even if MS figured out what they did,
they cant send it out, cos that broken box dont get to the point of being able to grab that fix. Overriding the HDD with linux was
my way out.. lol.. God bless Linux distros and bootable USB !

[Hardrock69]

Will read the above posts in detail later. Am on another machine than my own at present.

I have to wonder why in the fuck anyone would PAY ACTUAL MONEY to own MS Office, when Sun Microsystems' OpenOffice has ALL the functionality MS Office does, and then some.

And it is FREE. Why waste several hundred bucks for something you can have for free? Does not make sense to me.:doh: