Stolen designs

[Robert Baer]

That's the problem when you "win" a case - you get a nice court
order, then you still have the task of extracting the money (and,
apparently, whatever else you've been "awarded") from the thief.

Thanks,
Rich

Most especially when all of the valuable assets have been transferred
to an off-shore numbered account within weeks after the order...

 

[Robert Baer]

Lavoie, I think. Somebody else, Hickock maybe, made Tek clone plugins,
too.

John

Yes to all you said; remember them well.

 

[Robert Baer]

The 432 and the HP thing (3000 series) were sort of the pinnacle of
CISC microcoding, insanely macro instructions that did stuff like
polynomial expansion, threaded-list maintenance, frame management, all
that stuff. They turned out, generally, to be pig-slow.

Contrast that to Itanic, a modern VLIW risc architecture that's
pig-slow.

John

Replace themwith a 4004...

 

[Roy L. Fuchs]

Did you ever look at the PC boards in any of the early home C-band
Sat TV receivers? Several companies were calling each other thieves, but
they all copied the design from a Radio Electronics magazine article.

Are you referring to the inband gated synch descrambler in the Feb
1982 issue?

 

[Roy L. Fuchs]

Finally dawned on me that San Diego is humid.

N O T !!!!

PERHAPS, when the marine layer is rolling in as in in the morning,
and a little during "June Gloom".

But for the most part... NOT AT ALL!

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Are you referring to the inband gated synch descrambler in the Feb
1982 issue?

No, they had a cheap C-band sat receiver article. the unit used a
modified UHF TV tuner module and a block down converter to select the
channel. The audio demodulator was tunable, ands drifted. It was
published about the same time. I don't know if I still have the
magazine on hand.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Tim Williams]

N O T !!!!

Honestly Roy...he's coming in from *Arizona*. Can there ever really be less
humidity? ;-)

Tim

 

[Phil Hobbs]

Nope. I use PowerBasic. It lets you do anything you want...

inline assembly

modern stuff like CASE and WHILE

dim an array AT an address

FOR loops that do useful things at 30 MHz

nice graphics

compiles a 4000-line program in, say, 0.1 seconds

John

It isn't Basic that I miss--it's the built-in instrument control smarts.
If you wanted to read a counter, for instance, you said "trigger"
and then "input".

Nice.

Cheers,

Phil "wallowing in GPIB" Hobbs

 

[Richard Henry]

Honestly Roy...he's coming in from *Arizona*. Can there ever really be less
humidity? ;-)

Jim wasn't here during a Santa Ana wind condition. Places I have worked
will shut down electronics assembly lines during those events because the RH
gets too low to be within the ESD-protection guidelines. Even benchtop
humidifiers can't keep the air up to the legal minimum.

 

[[email protected]]

IBM was in full "we invent everything we need" mode back when the 8086
was cooked up.

I remember the PC was a radical departure from how IBM did business.
We were reeling from the exact copy clones (The 3158 "AS/5" clone
copied the microcode, virtually line by line) so when the 4300s came
out microcode was "registered IBM confidential". You had to sign a
"conditions of employment" non-disclosure to even peek at the code.
Suddenly we were selling a PC using off the shelf parts and tyhe
microcode listing was shipped with every machine. It was no wonder PC
clones were flooding the market within weeks.

 

[John Larkin]

Microsoft was a half a dozen guys eating Pizza in Albuquerque, and
IBM was in full "we invent everything we need" mode back when the 8086
was cooked up.

It always seemed to me that both Microsoft and Intel were out of the
mainstream of computing, which is why we wound up locked into the
bizarre, short-sighted kluges we have today. If IBM had picked the 68K
and Digital Research...

John

 

[David]

It always seemed to me that both Microsoft and Intel were out of the
mainstream of computing, which is why we wound up locked into the
bizarre, short-sighted kluges we have today. If IBM had picked the 68K
and Digital Research...

John

The IBM engineers wanted the 68k - it was vastly better suited for the
job. But some suit decided the 68k was too expensive, and the 8088 was
cheaper. It didn't matter that it was old-fashioned and a poor design
even when it was made, since they didn't plan on selling more than a few
thousand machines anyway. The original PC was just a marketing
experiment, to help find out what the market really needed - then they
would re-design it with a sensible choice of processor.

 

[Roy L. Fuchs]

Honestly Roy...he's coming in from *Arizona*. Can there ever really be less
humidity? ;-)

Tim

I see.

Relative humidity... Whodathunkit.

 

[[email protected]]

The IBM engineers wanted the 68k - it was vastly better suited for the
job. But some suit decided the 68k was too expensive, and the 8088 was
cheaper. It didn't matter that it was old-fashioned and a poor design
even when it was made, since they didn't plan on selling more than a few
thousand machines anyway. The original PC was just a marketing
experiment, to help find out what the market really needed - then they
would re-design it with a sensible choice of processor.

The strange thing is IBM had plenty of 68k experience. It was the
engine in a lot of IBM custom built test equipment and the Personal
Terminal (an 80s version of the blackberry) that every field guy
carried was 68k based.

 

[Robert Baer]

It always seemed to me that both Microsoft and Intel were out of the
mainstream of computing, which is why we wound up locked into the
bizarre, short-sighted kluges we have today. If IBM had picked the 68K
and Digital Research...

John

Amen to that!

 

[Robert Baer]

I see.

Relative humidity... Whodathunkit.

My uncle is *not* humid!
Maybe you are thinking of my sister?

 

[Keith]

The strange thing is IBM had plenty of 68k experience. It was the
engine in a lot of IBM custom built test equipment and the Personal
Terminal (an 80s version of the blackberry) that every field guy
carried was 68k based.

Intel was selected for business reasons, not technical ones, nor
price.

 

[Roy L. Fuchs]

My uncle is *not* humid!
Maybe you are thinking of my sister?

Sally Rottencrotch? Nawwww....

 

[Aratzio]

Sally Rottencrotch? Nawwww....

Hiya, Numbya. How's the frothing loon biz these days. We don't see
much of you anymore.

 

[[email protected]]

Intel was selected for business reasons, not technical ones, nor
price.

Yes, the "business reasons" being that Motorola wasn't
delivering--and kept slipping--the debut of the 68008. I was designing
an RTU (Remote Terminal Unit) at exactly that time, and was forced to
the 8088--against my will and preference--for the same reason.

James Arthur