Do you use any computer based tool for doing project layout?

[LDosser]

407 - but only when forced to = tab shop manager out sick!

[Morris Dovey]

I'm not much involved with PV panels, but I do try to keep an eye on news:alt.solar.photovoltaic for developments - and the concensus there seems to be that coatings aren't yet ready for prime time.

Well, it could be that the folks in a.s.p were right, or it might be that producers were pricing products higher than the market was willing to pay for what they got, or even that the expectation of falling prices for silicon panels made the technology less attractive - or all of the above.

Methinks that's a favorite label for "anything that might make me some green in this lousy economy". :)

If you come across something that looks/sounds really good, get a sample and check it out. If that's not possible, get a demonstration. If they can't even do that, keep your wallet in your pocket and invite 'em to call you when they're ready.

Why not? Just remember that only so much energy is delivered to each square foot. Current silicon panel efficiencies run in the 10% ballpark, so purchasers are going to need substantial window area to get worthwhile amounts of electricity.

It wasn't by accident that I chose to build passive solar heating panels

- where efficiencies in the 80% bracket are reasonable.

[Robatoy]

That is not the original text from Morris' quote.

[Mike M]

I wondered about this a little myself. Then I remembered his daughters eye surgery and a few other comments so I'm going to cut him some slack. He's usually very helpful, and shares his info. Shit happens on usenet where everything is lost in translation. These are two great people so I think it will work out.

Mike M

[Lew Hodgett]

------------------------------ I'll huff and I'll puff....................................

Lew

[krw]

Then there was the 360/75 with no microcode.

Must have been a first. The /360 was announced in '64. I didn't use the /75 until '67 (I was a Junior in high school ;).

[krw]

"Thin film" was a manufacturing process rather than a logic family. IIRC, everything was RTL at that time. IBM's variety was SLT (Solid Logic Technology). It *was* RTL. ECL didn't come along until the 370s and "MST" (Monolithic Solid Technology), which was made by TI.

Nah, floppies were used on the 370/158s to load microcode, well before FS.

[krw]

...on an analog computer.

[Doug Winterburn]

It was an IBM punch card I/O Fortran IBM machine we used in college in '64 - can't remember the IBM model number.

Akshooly, it was '66 when I went to work for IBM and went to 360 OS school in Endicott (DOS), and then Poughkeepsie (OS). Classrooms full of ashtrays and smoke so thick, you could barely see the blackboard and the instructor with his [bad] hairpiece. Cigs were $0.35 a pack in the vending machines in the hallways with 2 cents taped to each pack making them $0.33.

[Robatoy]

Oh..MAN!! Do I remember my days at U of Waterloo (yes, home of the Blackberry) I had a prof who smoked the best part of a pack of Gauloises in a single session. Brilliant guy (all about dithering pcm) but he wore a tweed jacket and stank....and I mean STANK.

[LDosser]

Oh..MAN!! Do I remember my days at U of Waterloo (yes, home of the Blackberry) I had a prof who smoked the best part of a pack of Gauloises in a single session. Brilliant guy (all about dithering pcm) but he wore a tweed jacket and stank....and I mean STANK.

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

Ever on the Paris Metro in the 60's?? We're talking STINK. Galois, stale wine and BO! Galois, BTW, were real Lung Busters.

[LDosser]

Nah, but I've touched the Enigma ...

[Lew Hodgett]

------------------------------------------- To put that in a little perspective, one of my first jobs was in a cigar/sporting goods store in the early 50's.

One of my jobs was to pick up the tobacco order from the wholesale house around the corner.

Wholesale cost for cigarettes was $1.98/carton for Pall Mall and $1.96/carton for all other brands.

Sold for $0.25/pack or $1.95/carton across the counter.

Kept trying to raise the carton price to $2.05, but it didn't stick.

Vending machine price was also $0.25/pack.

55+ years have brought a few changes, thankfully.

Lew

[Morris Dovey]

Are you sure? The 158 was announced in August 2, 1972 about the time Dept 71J in East Fishkill received a bare (no electronics) /Igar/ drive from Boulder, and at that time the folks at Boulder were still having difficulties producing diskettes (something about the jacket lining abrading the oxide).

In 1972, D/71J was working on the UC0 and UC.5 controllers and firmware drivers for not only /Igar/, but also for /Gulliver/ (the new sealed hard drive from Hursley), /Lynx/ (a new band printer to succeed the print-chain 1403), and an SDLC adapter - and all of these were being developed (primarily) as building blocks for FS.

It was the guy across the hall from me who came up with the motor+geneva+leadscrew drive to implement seeks (clack, clack, clack) on /Igar/, which was later replaced with a (quiet) voice coil seek mechanism.

They all underwent final product test at the same time in Kingston during, IIRC, 1974. We worked 12 hours on and twelve hours off with a long commute, through that entire 6-week test process - it was an exhausting experience (I remember waking up one morning on the way back from Kingston - driving down the shoulder of US9 doing 65).

The evolved /Igar/ drive graduated as the 33FD. I still have some of the diskettes. :)

[Morris Dovey]

Hmm - sounds like my favorite old machine: an IBM-1130. If so, you probably had a 1442 card reader/punch and an 1132 [POS!] printer to go with.

[LDosser]

Ever run into a guy name of Dick Gomez back there?

[Morris Dovey]

If I did, I've forgotten. :(

[Nova]

Wasn't the 1442 a prototype for the office paper shredder?

[keithw86]

rote:

I'm not sure when they were introduced into the 370s, but yeah, they were used for /158 microcode. I remember interviewing at CDC in early '74. They had a /158 with its covers off, with a bunch of people reverse-engineering the floppy drive. The /158 was their pride and joy, which I thought odd. The whole place was "odd" and I told them so before I left (didn't get an offer ;).

I worked on FS for a few months, before it was killed. I started in P'ok in June of '74. IIRC it was killed that fall and the 308x started using the hardware. FS was a *bad* idea and would have killed any other company.

I did a lot of 12/12 projects in my time at IBM. In a department meeting my boss announced that he had good news and bad news. The good news was that starting immediately, we would be working half days. The bad news was that there were 24 hours in a day. I'd already been working 70-hour weeks, for months, so no change.

[keithw86]

The original personal computer. ;-)