[Coco] Another drive question

[Ward Griffiths]

On Saturday 13 December 2003 12:06 am, KnudsenMJ at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 12/10/03 8:46:11 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>
> wdg3rd at comcast.net writes:
> > Geez, I didn't even _try_ to configure (or even install) X on my
> > first Linux box.  386/25 with 4Mb RAM and a 60Mb disk.  SLS Linux
> > from a stack of 5.25" floppies about 5.25" tall.  March 1993,
> > before anybody put a distro on a CD and the kernel had a while to
> > go until release 1.0.
>
> You must win the prize here for the oldest Linux installation!  ISTR
> that a minimum of 8M RAM was advised for X.  And 5" disks, wow.  I
> thought it was cool that my first Linux *booted* off a 3.5" floppy.
>
> > I needed some flavor of Unix, as my 3B1 had died the real death
>
> That was a cool machine.  I was at Bell Labs when it came out, and
> some of my co-workers ended up with one, real cheap, later on.  I
> wanted one for software development (music software), but who would I
> give/sell my programs to, and what would I do when the 3B1 broke (as
> you found out).

Bought my 3B1 from my employer in 1988 (an AT&T reseller with a few left 
over after the line was dropped).  Spent a year and a half with Unisys 
at the old Convergent Technologies campus in San Jose where the Unix PC 
was designed (and was for a while informal internal tech support for 
the machines, there were quite a few on desks around there).

> >  didn't get moved, as well as collecting a bunch of old Tandy Z-80
> > and 68k equipment.
>
> I assume that includes a Tandy Model 16, the first home or small
> office computer to use UNIX?  I knew someone who used one at home for
> his business, and was quite satisfied with it.  Used to see plenty of
> them at the nearby Radio Shack Computer Center, which dealt with
> businesses and schools, but was the place to get the latest OS-9
> releases.

No Mod 16.  I had two during the 80s, both murdered by Southern 
California Edison.  I have a Tandy 6000HD and last year I got a Mod 12 
for spare parts.

Let's see, current Tandy gear: Mod 1 (plus EI, two floppies), Coco 1 
4kCB, Coco 1 16kECB, Coco2 64kECB, Coco3 128k, Coco3 512k, gagloads of 
Tandy and other vendors' stuff for the Cocos, Mod 4p 128k, Mod 2 w/2dr 
disk bay, Mod 100 (at least 4 of those plus a DVI).  Probably some 
stuff I can't bring to mind (CRAFT virus).  Just listing what I can see 
from here (in a 7'x9' room in the basement) (no, not my parents' 
basement -- my wife and I own the place, this is the room she lets me 
use for my worthless hobbies, it's got a door so visitors don't have to 
see her shame -- to piss her off, next week I'm taking the 128k Coco3 
upstairs and plugging it into the big TV in the living room, I feel 
like playing Dungeons of Daggorath with a sound system that lets me 
feel the heartbeats).

Yeah, a few AT&T 7300 boxen (two work, one parts), a Mac SE/30, a Kaypro 
16, a gutted early (as in first model) Compaq "Portable" I plan to 
build one of the Coco 3s into (hey, anybody with a VAIO or a Thinkpad 
can have a portable Linux box, I've got a couple of those, but I want a 
luggable OS-9 system).  An Atari 520.  And of course a bunch of PC 
compatibles of sundry vintages, such as a kit-built (not by me) 
Heath/Zenith 4.77MHz machine.

My wife has several TI 99/4 systems, one still in a shrink-wrapped box.  
She has a soft spot for them because a cassette-based algebra tutorial 
she ran on one way back when got her through the math requirement so 
she could get her nursing degree.  She's the one who runs 'doze systems 
around here despite all attempts by me and Eric Raymond (she's known 
him since they were both in their teens) to get her to switch to Linux.  
If AOL would produce a native Linux client, we'd have a chance.

The only MS stuff I use is BASIC ROMs and Tandy Xenix.  Oh, and 
Multiplan, but as I recall they bought that.

Oh yeah, I started with a TRS-80 Model One a year before it got a model 
number when I was just out of the USAF in '78.  Fell in love with the 
Color Computer within days of starting work as instructor at the RSCC 
just opening in Las Vegas in November '80 and spent a long time where 
it seemed I was the only person in the company who took it seriously, 
enough so to write a semi-regular column about it in the newsletter 
that was circulated to RSCC instructors.  Left RS in '86 when it was 
obvious that everything was going PC compatible and I didn't want to 
lower my standards (one of my several ethical decisions that have given 
me personal pride and financial disaster).

Never been much of a programmer aside from BASIC and Bourne and 
descendant Unix shells.  My only paid publication was in the March '81 
issue of 80-Micro (the letter accepting that article got me the 
instructor job with Radio Shack the previous autumn).
-- 
Ward Griffiths				wdg3rd at comcast.net

The Yen Buddhists are the richest religious sect in the universe.  They
hold that the accumulation of money is a great evil and burden to the
soul.  They therefore, regardless of personal hazard, see it as their
unpleasant duty to acquire as much as possible in order to reduce the
risk to innocent people.           -- Terry Pratchett, _Witches Abroad_