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Man, it's too quiet around here. Let's do a PC vs. Mac thread...

steve.foote

By steve.foote
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ShovelStrokeEd

ShovelStrokeEd

Posted
Posted

I really like my Mac and it's one of the older ones. A Powerbook Titanium G4.

It still runs, even though it is taped together at a couple of places (dropped it twice off airline counters) and the screen hinge is broken.

 

I also like the Toshiba XP Media edition box I'm typing this on. Neither one has ever given me a moment's trouble. I'm gonna have to get a new battery for the Toshiba as I never exercise it and capacity has been lost to constantly running the thing on AC power. I feel no need to upgrade. In fact, I'm starting to prefer the XP box for the things I do with a computer.

 

I really want to like a MAC, there is just something about them that is appealing, kinda like a friendly bloodhound puppy (is there any other kind?). Fact is, there is no particular advantage to running a MAC anymore that I can tell. I haven't had a virus or malware on my PC in 2 years of running it now so that argument is out the window as far as I'm concerned. I don't need or want i-life, the Gimp handles my photo needs and the bundled MS media stuff handles my music and the like just fine.

 

I use my machine for business most of the time and waste some time browsing when in hotels. Either way, the MS Office stuff suits my needs and, since my company's proprietary software won't run on a MAC, I'm forced to stick with a PC based OS for communication with the instruments I work on.

 

Sorry, but not worth the price premium, IMHO.

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smiller

smiller

Posted
Posted
If I knew where my Apple ][+ was, I'd just laugh and laugh...
The Apple ][ was a better deal, you got Integer BASIC in ROM and could then load Applesoft from cassette.
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ghaverkamp

ghaverkamp

Posted
Posted
The Apple ][ was a better deal, you got Integer BASIC in ROM and could then load Applesoft from cassette.

 

Yeah. But you only got 4K, versus 48K.

 

I never really used Integer BASIC; didn't have much use for punch cards, either.

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ghaverkamp

ghaverkamp

Posted
Posted
But you only got 4K, versus 48K.
Who could ever need that much RAM?

 

A lazy Applesoft BASIC programmer.

 

I learned to economize when I switched to 6502 and played in the bootstrap loader.

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mrduck

mrduck

Posted
Posted
But you only got 4K, versus 48K.
Who could ever need that much RAM?

 

A lazy Applesoft BASIC programmer.

 

I learned to economize when I switched to 6502 and played in the bootstrap loader.

 

 

 

 

Am I the only one around here that has no clue to what this is all about? eek.gif

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randys

randys

Posted
Posted

how many old computers you got layin around? 2 PC laptops, about 5 years old. Mac wallstreet laptop, with the hot swappable hd, cd drive, zip drive, and extra battery. G4 desktop mac. Performa 476 mac. Mac II. I think I am forgetting one, lol.

 

Macs are droolworthy

 

 

almost time for a new mac. maybe the Air

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Paul Mihalka

Paul Mihalka

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Posted

You guys and gals don't get it. I'm keying this on a IMAC G5. Why? It's pretty. It fits my wife's home design criteria best. Besides it's a pretty good confuser that does everything I want - which is not much...

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Firefight911

Firefight911

Posted
Posted
But you only got 4K, versus 48K.
Who could ever need that much RAM?

 

A lazy Applesoft BASIC programmer.

 

I learned to economize when I switched to 6502 and played in the bootstrap loader.

 

 

 

 

Am I the only one around here that has no clue to what this is all about? eek.gif

 

Shhhhhhhh, nor does he!!!!!

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Tank

Tank

Posted
Posted
But you only got 4K, versus 48K.
Who could ever need that much RAM?

 

A lazy Applesoft BASIC programmer.

 

I learned to economize when I switched to 6502 and played in the bootstrap loader.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Am I the only one around here that has no clue to what this is all about? eek.gif

tongue.giftongue.gif

 

 

 

 

 

Ya arn't alone Mr. Duck

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AdventurePoser

AdventurePoser

Posted
Posted
PC's RULE!!! Mac's Drool.... tongue.gif

 

wave.gif

 

Why bother...we've got the Never Ending Gun Thread running...

 

Steve in So Cal

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Firefight911

Firefight911

Posted
Posted
PC's RULE!!! Mac's Drool.... tongue.gif

 

wave.gif

 

Why bother...we've got the Never Ending Gun Thread running...

 

Steve in So Cal

 

Yea, but they haven't talked about what OIL they use on their gun yet!! smirk.gifcool.gif

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steve.foote

steve.foote

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Now where did I leave my Sinclair and my Vic-20.....

 

Oooo, VIC-20. Now, there is a legacy machine. thumbsup.gif

 

Those are from the day when programmers actually knew how to optimize a program for memory consumption. Cause there weren't none. grin.gif

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steve.foote

steve.foote

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Yeah, well my commodore 64 beats 'em all.

 

Sam, I still have a Commodore 128 boxed up at the office. Original monitor, floppy drive, mouse and joystick, and tons of software. May have to pull it out now and wax eloquently about the past. cool.gif

 

I do wish I had kept my original 64, though. Lots of great memories on that keyboard.

 

I also had an Atari 1040ST. That thing was waaaay ahead of the game in it's day. Too bad the company sucked so much at marketing. crazy.gif

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steve.foote

steve.foote

Posted
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Posted
PC's RULE!!! Mac's Drool.... tongue.gif

 

wave.gif

 

Why bother...we've got the Never Ending Gun Thread running...

 

Steve in So Cal

 

Don't you have some teachers to discipline? tongue.gif

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Joe Frickin' Friday

Joe Frickin' Friday

Posted
Posted
Yeah, well my commodore 64 beats 'em all.

 

Sam, I still have a Commodore 128 boxed up at the office. Original monitor, floppy drive, mouse and joystick, and tons of software. May have to pull it out now and wax eloquently about the past. cool.gif

 

I do wish I had kept my original 64, though. Lots of great memories on that keyboard.

 

I also had an Atari 1040ST. That thing was waaaay ahead of the game in it's day. Too bad the company sucked so much at marketing. crazy.gif

 

Had an Atari 2600 when I was little; my grandma loved Pac Man. grin.gif Got exposed to Apple Computers at a computer-related summer camp when I was about 13, but Apples were expensive. The next summer I got a Commodore 64 instead - much more affordable for a kid mowing lawns - and eventually a disk drive and a printer. It saw me through four years of undergrad; typed a lot of papers on it. thumbsup.gif

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Hermes

Hermes

Posted
Posted

I learned to economize when I switched to 6502 and played in the bootstrap loader.

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

 

Slight Hijack.

 

You don't know the meaning of economizing if you didn't have to program in Autocoder or Basic Assembly on say, an early IBM with a Card Operating System (and an amazing 16K) soon to be replaced with a progressive Tape Operating System.

 

Who could forget packing and overlaying, registers and bits and bytes, zone punches and multipunches and the ever popular core dump, all 16 K of it. Or the round the clock programmer's days powered by nothing but coffee, pizza and cigarets. Oh how I long for the good ol' days.

Jurgen

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Matts_12GS

Matts_12GS

Posted
Posted
Now where did I leave my Sinclair and my Vic-20.....

 

Oooo, VIC-20. Now, there is a legacy machine. thumbsup.gif

 

Those are from the day when programmers actually knew how to optimize a program for memory consumption. Cause there weren't none. grin.gif

 

Was that back in the day when you had to carry wire and washers in your pocket in case you had to make more memory?

 

1951core.jpg

 

I prefer Hoppe's #9 and think that lead wadcutters (about 240G) leave the prettiest holes in Macbooks... smirk.gifwave.gif

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Lone_RT_rider

Lone_RT_rider

Posted
Posted
PC's RULE!!! Mac's Drool.... tongue.gif

 

wave.gif

 

Why bother...we've got the Never Ending Gun Thread running...

 

Yeah... I un-subscribed to that thread to... wait.. DOH! crazy.gifeek.gifdopeslap.gif

 

Shawn

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SageRider

SageRider

Posted
Posted

Hey Matt,

I got to support systems running on core memory during the late 80's. Except our core memory was nowhere near as compact as that shown...

Aluminum frame with somewhere around 7 by 9 bits (I don't recall for sure other than both dimensions were odd.). Boards were about 10 by 12 inches and very heavy. Had cabinets full of the boards.

thumbsup.gif

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Matts_12GS

Matts_12GS

Posted
Posted

Michael,

Fortunately, I never had to deal with that, but I got introduced to it during my Navy electronics training in the early 80's.

 

I use that photo now to make fun of the main frame guys I work with, while warning them of extinction, and not to step on their tails (get it, dinosaurs....) and then I tell them about fire and how it makes great coffee. lmao.gif

 

I think my winning charisma will take me far in life! dopeslap.gif

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steveknapp

steveknapp

Posted
Posted

Those are from the day when programmers actually knew how to optimize a program for memory consumption. Cause there weren't none.

 

You folks ignorant about what makes them there new motorcycles tick?

 

Blah blah blah, just don't program like we used to. All the memory in the world. Wussy modern programmers.

 

Go work in the embedded world if you miss it that much.

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steveknapp

steveknapp

Posted
Posted

Was that back in the day when you had to carry wire and washers in your pocket in case you had to make more memory?

 

Making a comeback in FRAM MRAM.

 

smile.gif

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Joe Frickin' Friday

Joe Frickin' Friday

Posted
Posted
Those are from the day when programmers actually knew how to optimize a program for memory consumption. Cause there weren't none.

 

You folks ignorant about what makes them there new motorcycles tick?

 

Blah blah blah, just don't program like we used to. All the memory in the world. Wussy modern programmers.

 

Go work in the embedded world if you miss it that much.

 

Is space that tight inside an ECU? If you can get iPod nano's with gigs of storage, I would have thought they could cram as much as they need into an ECU.

 

Two related items:

 

-when I was in grad school, we used a program called EES, or Engineering Equation Solver. A fantastic program that run under Windows and could solve systems of polynomial equations, it also included thermodynamic equations of state and property data for a whole bunch of working fluids and materials. All of this was crammed onto a single 3.5" floppy disk. The creator, a prof at UW-Madison, was able to do this by lopping off all of the C command libraries that weren't used in the program, but that the compiler wanted to include by default anyway. This likely explains why software like MS Windows and MS Office are so frickin huge these days...

 

...which brings me to the second item, an old joke about "if Operating Systems Were Like Cars:" (note the entry for Windows)

 

  • [*]MS-DOS: You get in the car and try to remember where you put your keys.

[*]Windows: You get in the car and drive to the store very slowly, because attached to the back of the car is a freight train.

[*]Macintosh System 7: You get in the car to go to the store, and the car drives you to church.

[*]UNIX: You get in the car and type GREP STORE. After reaching speeds of 200 miles per hour en route, you arrive at the barber shop.

[*]Windows NT: You get in the car and write a letter that says, "go to the store." Then you get out of the car and mail the letter to your dashboard.

[*]Taligent/Pink: You walk to the store with Ricardo Montalban, who tells you how wonderful it will be when he can fly you to the store in his Learjet.

[*]OS/2: After fueling up with 6000 gallons of gas, you get in the car and drive to the store with a motorcycle escort and a marching band in procession. Halfway there, the car blows up, killing everybody in town.

[*]S/36 SSP [mainframe, obv.]: You get in the car and drive to the store. Halfway there you run out of gas. While walking the rest of the way, you are run over by kids on mopeds.

[*]OS/400: An attendant locks you into the car and then drives you to the store, where you get to watch everybody else buy filet mignons.

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steveknapp

steveknapp

Posted
Posted

Is space that tight inside an ECU? If you can get iPod nano's with gigs of storage, I would have thought they could cram as much as they need into an ECU.

 

1 - It's all about cost. If you can get 2GB for X, smaller tends to be cheaper still.

 

2 - the high density memories are (were? last I looked..) NAND Flash, which needs to be read almost like a disk, simplified I know. Hard to execute from. The big DRAM you've got in your desktop isn't happy at temp extremes.

 

This is the biggest device I know of intended for production. It's pretty new, and expensive, with ethernet to boot. Probably more an industrial control than an automotive ECU.

 

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site...rH3DgbNGrmC0325

 

There are automotive ECUs with 6k of RAM and 128k of flash.

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steve.foote

steve.foote

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Be vewwy, vewwy quiet! Jamie has not seen this thread yet. lmao.gif

 

 

 

Troll hunting. wink.gif

 

Elmer_Fudd_A_Wild_Hare.jpg

 

1011731-Jamie.jpg pic

 

grin.gif

1011731-Jamie.jpg.bd258392ae0b67692fbc57802939e584.jpg

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