What R you doing today?

[wpt-me]

I still use mine for some stuff, such as my labels.

Bill

 

[cmason1957]

As a Windows Developer, I am very glad that the buggy, inherently unstable, XP is gone, along with the Internet Explorer that it came with. IE was horrible to code for. I just really don't understand the love for XP, I hear that from many users. Can't say that I find Windows 11 all that much different and I haven't had a blue screen of death in many years after Windows 10 came around.

 

[winemaker81]

As a Windows Developer, I am very glad that the buggy, inherently unstable, XP is gone, along with the Internet Explorer that it came with. IE was horrible to code for.

XP had longevity on its side.

Win95 was a total shift from Win 3.x, and quickly had followers. But it didn't last long, as it was quickly followed by Win98, Win98SE, and (oh, gawd!!) Win ME. WinXP was quickly adopted as it was more stable than its predecessors (including WinNT), and it was the first Windows to last more than a few years before being replaced.

Keep in mind that "more stable than" does NOT mean "stable".

XP had 7 years to gain market share before Vista arrived, and Vista sucked so bad it made ME look good! WinXP had 9 years of tenure before a real contender (Win7) arrived, and still had a noticeable market share 6 years later when Win10 arrived on the scene.

Internet Explorer? We generally coded for 2 platforms: all browsers except IE, and IE.

Internet Explorer needed to have a stake driven through its heart, the mouth filled with holy wafers and garlic (posterior orifice as well!), sprinkled with holy water, beheaded, and burned to ashes. Plus anything else you'd do to keep a vampire from rising.

 

[BigDaveK]

I used XP, skipping all the flavors afterward, until my computer died (really really died!) and a new computer came with Win10. And Netscape was my usual browser of choice.

One thing I gotta say about the blue screen of death - it got me into the back-up habit that I still do today.

All kind of memories coming back. Last year I threw away most of my 100MB ZIP drives. WOW, 100MB, I thought I was hotshit!

 

[BigDaveK]

Just started making wine last fall. Since I source raw material from the yard I thought maybe no more batches until later this year. Well....
Yesterday I added the 2nd addition of lemon juice into my FIRST batch of skeeter pee. Today I started my FIRST batch of dragon blood. Never heard of either one till I started hanging out here. To show my appreciation I became a supporting member.
Today I was in the mood for a sandwich so I also baked some bread.



The other thing in the picture? Okay, you old farts, here's one more computer thing. I was in hardware and saved some things over the years. There's a total of 7 circuit boards in the assembly, measures 5 x 7. It's a 16KB (Yes, "KB") core memory from a PDP10.
JesusMaryandJoseph I feel old.

 

[winemaker81]

It's a 16KB (Yes, "KB") core memory from a PDP10.

I haven't seen actual core memory in decades. History lesson time! Each little red circle is an iron "core", and it's set/reset by sending current through both of the wines that pass through the core. At the time it was invented, this was totally revolutionary.

3 modern memory sticks will fit in this same physical space as one board. If using 64 GB sticks, that's 192 GB. That's over 12 million times as much memory.

Three 64 GB sticks currently cost ~$750 USD.

1.5 MB of core memory in the 60's ran about $1.25 million USD. 192 GB of RAM, priced by the KB, would cost $96,000,000 USD in the mid-60's.

Amazing, isn't it?

As for what I'm doing today -- I'm entertaining myself with obscure pricing facts.

 

[BigDaveK]

I haven't seen actual core memory in decades. History lesson time! Each little red circle is an iron "core", and it's set/reset by sending current through both of the wines that pass through the core. At the time it was invented, this was totally revolutionary.

Yes, it WAS revolutionary! We used to be smart.

Every time I look at this thing I'm amazed. Those cores are so small! How the hell did they make this?! I would love to see the process.

 

[sour_grapes]

Yes, it WAS revolutionary! We used to be smart.

Every time I look at this thing I'm amazed. Those cores are so small! How the hell did they make this?! I would love to see the process.

Used to be? I think fitting billions of transistors that are only a few hundred or so atoms wide on a piece of crystal that is more perfect than any found in nature eclipses that achievement.

 

[cmason1957]

I tried to find a reasonably good image to show the evolution of size. It has followed Moore's Law (he's the guy that founded Intel) and it's more of an observation than a Law, but it's essence is -

the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of physics, it is an empirical relationship linked to gains from experience in production.

In actuality that two years is down to about 18 months. So from about 1960 to now is about 60 years so the number of transisters has gone up by 2 raised to the 30th power or 1,073,741,824 times more transistors in the same space. and the space has gone way down also.

 

[sour_grapes]

In the early 2000's, we could see the end of Moore's Law on the horizon. The reason being that, in order to keep scaling at that rate, transistors would reach a fundamental limit, viz., they would would be so thin that their gate insulator would have to be only an atom or two thick! Even before that point, quantum tunneling between the gate and the channel would render them inoperable. But a solution was hatched, viz., use a different insulating material (rather than SiO2) for the gate insulator. If that insulator had a large value for its dielectric constant, the gate could be physically thicker (and eliminate quantum tunneling), but it would work the same way electrically.

The problem was that the entire reason that we use silicon as the semiconductor of choice, rather than one with better electrical properties, is due to the favorable properties of the Si/SiO2 interface. So a large effort went into finding a material or a process that would allow a different insulator, but preserve the desired qualities in the interface. I was one of many people trying to find this solution (and I even have a US patent on one such approach). Whoever developed the method that would be adopted stood to become fabulously wealthy. Alas, let's just say that I am still drinking <$10 bottles of wine.

I think it was IBM that found the first solution (and others found others, I think), and the demise of Moore's Law was delayed for a while.

 

[ChuckD]

Whoever developed the method that would be adopted stood to become fabulously wealthy. Alas, let's just say that I am still drinking <$10 bottles of wine.

That’s OK. Nobody likes those obnoxiously rich Tech Bro’s anyways

 

[sour_grapes]

That’s OK. Nobody likes those obnoxiously rich Tech Bro’s anyways

Yeah, but nobody likes me anyway, and then I could drink like @ibglowin !

 

[ChuckD]

Yeah, but nobody likes me anyway, and then I could drink like @ibglowin !

And your rocket could be shaped like a wine bottle instead of a giant !

Sour Grapes in spaaaaace!

 

[sour_grapes]

And your rocket could be shaped like a wine bottle instead of a giant !

Sour Grapes in spaaaaace!

I cannot stop laughing... My belly hurts!

 

[BigDaveK]

Used to be? I think fitting billions of transistors that are only a few hundred or so atoms wide on a piece of crystal that is more perfect than any found in nature eclipses that achievement.

Yes, there are billions of transistors NOW but originally there was ONE. The late 20th century saw so many incredible innovations and discoveries it's almost mind numbing. What they did with what they had and knew is astounding. It was an era, another Golden Age. Now we seem to be just coasting and improving on what was discovered. That's not a bad thing. That's how it works. The wheel and lever and fulcrum were each the height of technology for a while. Peaks and troughs.

But you know what...for months Amazon would deliver packages to my barn and not my house because that's what the GPS said to do. So, yeah, we used to be smart.

 

[sour_grapes]

I do agree that the late 20th century saw incredible leaps. We can agree to disagree on the 21st. I fail to see evidence of this "coasting" of which you speak.

 

[jswordy]

I feel chagrinned that my post has nothing to do with puters or transistors or electronics or programming. It has to do with tonight and this syrah...



Suckling, 98. Dunnuck, 97, and whoever wrote in Robert Parker's stead, 96 (how I miss RP, rest in peace). Oh I know I should wait and post in "What's in your glass?" and I probably will anyway! But this... THIS... is my sole motivation for enduring this Friday. What I am doing right now is anticipating...

 

[cmason1957]

I feel chagrinned that my post has nothing to do with puters or transistors or electronics or programming. It has to do with tonight and this syrah...

View attachment 84489

Suckling, 98. Dunnuck, 97, and whoever wrote in Robert Parker's stead, 96 (how I miss RP, rest in peace). Oh I know I should wait and post in "What's in your glass?" and I probably will anyway! But this... THIS... is my sole motivation for enduring this Friday. What I am doing right now is anticipating...

My wife and I had a wonderful Sryah last night as well. Michael David 6th Sense Sryah. I think the label said 92 points or something like that, paired with a grilled steak with butter sauce. We were nearly in heaven.

 

[ceeaton]

Just started making wine last fall. Since I source raw material from the yard I thought maybe no more batches until later this year. Well....
Yesterday I added the 2nd addition of lemon juice into my FIRST batch of skeeter pee. Today I started my FIRST batch of dragon blood. Never heard of either one till I started hanging out here. To show my appreciation I became a supporting member.
Today I was in the mood for a sandwich so I also baked some bread.

View attachment 84356

The other thing in the picture? Okay, you old farts, here's one more computer thing. I was in hardware and saved some things over the years. There's a total of 7 circuit boards in the assembly, measures 5 x 7. It's a 16KB (Yes, "KB") core memory from a PDP10.
JesusMaryandJoseph I feel old.

Oh S**t, you brought back memories. Used to work on a PDP 11/70 and a VAX 11/780 when I was working in college... Amazing those two systems used to be the backbone of a small liberal arts college.

 

[cmason1957]

Oh S**t, you brought back memories. Used to work on a PDP 11/70 and a VAX 11/780 when I was working in college... Amazing those two systems used to be the backbone of a small liberal arts college.

PDP 11/70, I used to make robots move around the shop floor at McDonnell Douglas with one of those. What a fine computer. When one of my co-workers retired from MCD, all the folks in our department (30 or so of us) signed the platter of an 80 Mb Hard Drive, As I recall it was 20 inches across or something like that, with 5 or maybe 7 platters. What fun times. Now I carry 1 TB around in something the size of a credit card.