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And lo on Tue, 05 Feb 2008 03:47:20 -0000, Darren New <dne### [at] san rrcom>
did spake, saying:
> Phil Cook wrote:
>> I mean sure things have got better superficially. I opened the case by
>> hand rather then by screwdriver, and... um yeah that's about the only
>> difference I noted.
>
> That's because you haven't been around long enough to solder your own
> components on the board. Two words: wire wrap.
Yes I'm not that old :-) Even with that looking at it from a non-geek
viewpoint compare the hardware then to the hardware now, repeat for the
'software'.
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/
>
> You can get a Dell with stuff like that for $3000. It's not *that*
> expensive. You can get a 4T hard drive case for like $250 or something
> (without the 4T of drives, of course).
Oh, "only" $3,000. Bargin. ;-)
>> If you buy something like a HP BladeCenter you can slot more CPUs,
>> RAM, HDs, etc. into and out of it without even powering it off. But
>
> Or buy a Tandem computer, where when a part fails, it dials up Tandem,
> and they ship you a new one with instructions on where to put it, before
> you even know it failed.
Oh, that's cute. (Are they still going?)
> The ones that boggle my mind are the ones where you can upgrade the OS
> without stopping any of the programs. I'm not quite sure how that works.
Neither do I - but people claim that functional programming is going to
revolutionise the industry by making this kind of thing standard.
[insert sarcasm here]
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible wrote:
]
> over voodoo dolls. Today you can pretty much just plug in a PCI card and
> *expect* it to work immediately - or at least as soon as you put the CD
> in. No IRQ conflicts, no driver mismatches, IT JUST WORKS!!
>
Unless you're the dumbass that used to work where I currently work and
plug in the card without first shutting down the computer. Yeah, that
magic smoke ... that's what used to make it work, you let it out.
Thankfully that person quit, saving the management the difficult task of
canning them. Not a single line of their code exists here, anymore,
either. :)
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Invisible wrote:
> And let's not even get started on all those USB goodies that YOU JUST
> PLUG IN AND THEY GO! It wasn't like that before. Had to turn off the
> whole PC to connect or disconnect anything...
If I had a nickel for every time that was patently false.
Sure, flash drives work easily enough, but any other piece of hardware
usually requires you follow a specific sequence before you even plug the
device in. Otherwise, Windows (not sure how this works on other
platforms) will do magically bad things, such as install a persistent
incorrect driver that takes several steps and a few sacrificed chickens
to remove.
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Invisible wrote:
>
> What, you'd like the CPU to teleport itself into the socket instead? :-D
>
Remember the days before ZIF sockets? Seat the processor, jam it down
with enough pressure to potentially crack the main board, and hope to
hell you didn't just bend half a dozen pins. Ohh, and there were also
fun memory upgrades, using individual DIP chips crammed into sockets.
And god forbid if you had to remove one... Then there was SIP modules,
with their delicate pins which you had to align precisely or you'd bend
one. SIMMs and DIMMs are a much better improvement, especially with the
lift and snap-in insertion that many have today. The straight down syle
still required some pressure to get them to click in, but removal is a
breeze.
>
> In the Old Days, if you suddenly plugged or unplugged a device, you
> would likely fry the interface circuitry. Today we use interfaces that
> are expressedly designed to support such actions. That one is purely a
> hardware thing. (Although obviously the software needs to support it too.)
>
Oh, you still can, today .. see above. That is the nice thing about USB
is that devices are hot-swappable. Of course, so are devices that hang
off of the serial port, or parallel port. (and they have been for a very
long time ...)
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Stephen wrote:
> Ouch! That woke me up is much more common than You deaded me.
> Having said that you do need some common sense.
Popping open a camera can have a similar effect. Most cameras have an
onboard flash, which means they have a rather sizable capacitor. Touch
the wrong thing ...
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> Stephen wrote:
>
>> Ouch! That woke me up is much more common than You deaded me.
>> Having said that you do need some common sense.
>
> Popping open a camera can have a similar effect. Most cameras have an
> onboard flash, which means they have a rather sizable capacitor. Touch
> the wrong thing ...
I did that!!!
I had a very old Polaroid camera, and its flash (looked like an optional
you had to plug). Bad idea touching things with the flash box open,
while it had batteries. Me: it has batteries, it's only 3v. My dad: no,
it also has a big capacitor with more energy. I clearly didn't listen.
The it actually did a big *flash*, in the middle of the air, a few cms
above where I touched. Legs shaking for around 10 minutes :D
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Mike Raiford wrote:
> Sure, flash drives work easily enough, but any other piece of hardware
> usually requires you follow a specific sequence before you even plug the
> device in. Otherwise, Windows (not sure how this works on other
> platforms) will do magically bad things, such as install a persistent
> incorrect driver that takes several steps and a few sacrificed chickens
> to remove.
Clearly I don't have enough USB gear - I haven't had that problem.
(Although something similar happened with a SCSI tape drive. But then,
it's a SCSI tape drive...)
Not that anybody cares, but I have an outboard USB sound card, USB MIDI
interface, USB printer and a USB mouse. The mouse keeps not working...
everything else works flawlessly.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible wrote:
>
> Touch the wrong thing and they will scatter your ashes over the place of
> your choice - because you will in fact be fried to a human crisp long
> before you reach any hospital. ;-)
>
Mostly not. You'll need some ultimate stupidity to get your hands around
the PSU so that the shock won't throw them off from the PSU. Possibility
of getting some current trough your heart is the real beast - 50mA can
be enough to kill a healthy man.
--
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
http://www.zbxt.net
aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid
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On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:12:29 -0600, Mike Raiford <mra### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>Stephen wrote:
>
>> Ouch! That woke me up is much more common than You deaded me.
>> Having said that you do need some common sense.
>
>Popping open a camera can have a similar effect. Most cameras have an
>onboard flash, which means they have a rather sizable capacitor. Touch
>the wrong thing ...
Caps should be shorted out before working. Use a resistor or a bucket of water
:)
Drat I can't remember if I lie or tell the truth :)
Regards
Stephen
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