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Germstore posted:At this point they're just an educational legacy. Students use them because that's what the teachers know, and new teachers learn them (or already know them from using them in school) because that's what the students and older teachers already know so it would take a pretty significant reeducation effort to move to something else. students still use those? i thought (hoped) everyone had moved on to stuff like matlab/scilab by now, what with everyone having a notebook in class nowadays
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Feb 15, 2016 18:43
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Police Automaton posted:So how many of the people reading in this thread actually had one of the non-intel x86s in the 90s? Over here I didn't know a single person, for private use. I'm always wondering how far-spread they really were. Our first family desktop was a 486-DX2 80Mhz(with 8MB RAM and an AWE32), we only found out it ran on an AMD CPU after retiring and disassembling it many years later. A friend of my brother also had a Cyrix in his desktop, but I have no idea what specs, only that it wasn't all that stable. I have a feeling not knowing you were running something non-Intel was a bit more common than it seems. My first own personal desktop was a P2-300, but it came with an S3 Virge. Such a terrible video card that even software rendering was faster, and it had trouble with transparency. Ended up replacing it with a TNT1, then a TNT2 when those became available. Since the TNT2 was an Asus card, it also had the 3D Shutterglasses option, and I ended up buying those as well. Too bad they didn't always work properly with every game, the effect was kinda neat.
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Feb 15, 2016 18:43
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Germstore posted:At this point they're just an educational legacy. Students use them because that's what the teachers know, and new teachers learn them (or already know them from using them in school) because that's what the students and older teachers already know so it would take a pretty significant reeducation effort to move to something else. lol you think students today can do math without a calculator, good joke
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Feb 15, 2016 18:45
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Apparently TI employs lobbyists who push their poo poo graphing calculators as pretty much a mandatory accessory for any student being tested on maths. They "sponsor" "education" "organizations" whose sole purpose is to make sure that TI calculators are the only tools permitted at standardized tests. They also pay for endorsements from the organizers of said tests. It's literally a racket.
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Feb 15, 2016 18:48
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My wife's TI-83 still works and for certain things it's faster than using a PC. It's hard to overstate the speed advantage of having a keyboard designed for math. Plus it's a lot easier to work with a piece of paper and a calculator lying flat next to it than working with a paper and a laptop. It would be nice if they were more modern and not as expensive, but the idea that there's no purpose to them at all is bullshit in my opinion.
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Feb 15, 2016 18:54
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Germstore posted:My wife's TI-83 still works and for certain things it's faster than using a PC. It's hard to overstate the speed advantage of having a keyboard designed for math. Plus it's a lot easier to work with a piece of paper and a calculator lying flat next to it than working with a paper and a laptop. It would be nice if they were more modern and not as expensive, but the idea that there's no purpose to them at all is bullshit in my opinion. Sure enough, but there are better and cheaper models / brands than IT. Or at least there were back when it was relevant to me, maybe other companies just gave up.
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Feb 15, 2016 18:57
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Das Butterbrot posted:students still use those? i thought (hoped) everyone had moved on to stuff like matlab/scilab by now, what with everyone having a notebook in class nowadays Having been in the US post-secondary system for over 16 years as both student and adjunct professor (lol), I can confirm what everyone else has been saying: those calculators are just a legacy and used only for tests/exams. For anything else, it is far more convenient to use software. As a student, I was encouraged to use software as far back as 2004. As budget-professor, I always encouraged use of Matlab/Scilab for student assignments. Not only is it more convenient, it actually mirrors what happens in a professional setting.
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Feb 15, 2016 19:13
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Cojawfee posted:How would that even work? Did it just hijack the signals meant for the 386 or something? Pretty much... This is the only thing I could find about how is works... http://www.scmp.com/article/54729/cyrix-upgrade-unveiled quote:The Cyrix CX486SRx2 will also upgrade 16MHz 386 microprocessors designed with a ''float pin''. If you are really interested I found a manual and the software here. http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/files/cx486slc2_driver-manual.rar I guess there is still allot of interest in these things.... They sell on eBay for ~$20 and up to would you believe.. 
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Feb 15, 2016 19:25
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Aix posted:I had an AMD 486 clone in the early nineties, didnt seem any different from the intel 486s at the time. Maybe it just felt that way cause i had lots of RAM (16MB). Wasnt much cheaper either. Got it from Escom before they bought Amiga, what a weird store. I remember them being huge into having all their store brand computers all black and red I had exactly the same tower and screen for my 486 from ESCOM, just in beige! Isn't it funny through what pains they went to keep the Amiga going after Commdore went broke? They went through this huge effort to get the production of Amiga 1200s and Amiga 4000s up and running again and they also succeeded doing so. They almost didn't even have the plans to produce the AGA Chipset with, through sheer luck H&P (which later on did the AGA chipset, because of financial troubles CSG/MOS had) still had the production masks. Then there was the planned Walker and afaik even talks with Phase 5 to design a PowerPC Amiga, but then bam, ESCOM also filed bankruptcy. (not because of the Amiga, mind you. That business was actually kinda lucrative) I have a whole lot of IC Stock from them and also a whole lot of Amiga custom ICs branded "AmigaTech", which stands for Amiga Technologies, that whole subsidiary ESCOM kicked off. Also this was what the Amiga Walker was supposed to look like:  Yeah. It's nothing special on the inside either, basically a A1200 with a faster CPU.. and yes, already back then the reaction mostly was "wtf?". Buttcoin purse posted:That stuff sounds great, kind of like how I used to hear about how powerful OS/2 was, but I stuck to Windows and hooray, Windows won It sounds conceptually interesting to upgrade a computer like that just by putting in a faster CPU card, it just wasn't really as good in practice. I mean, you put the card into the Amiga 2000, the onboard 7 Mhz CPU gets disabled and the card takes over, so far so good. The chipset still is 16-bit and running at 7 Mhz and your memory controller is there so all your memory accesses are, too. A 50 Mhz, 32-bit 060 already has a bit of cache but nothing worth mentioning in the great scheme of things and such a CPU is just as fast as it can fetch instructions from memory so it'll be not a whole lot faster than the original CPU in such a setup. So what do you do? You put some fast 32-bit memory on the accelerator card of course, so the CPU has something to work with. This makes the card more complex and expensive, as you need a lot of housekeeping with the memory, there's nothing ready you can buy for such a niche use case so you need to program your own logic and spin your own in PLDs, at that time for that speed these would be AMD (they didn't only make CPUs) MACHs, expensive but doable. Then with a computer as "advanced" as this, you want a harddrive. You could add a HD-Controller to the Amiga, but it still is a 16-bit computer from 1987 so HD access from the viewpoint of the CPU will be slow over the slow bus. A 1995 Computer will not have lots of RAM and AmigaOS doesn't know what caching is so again, your computer will be just as fast as the HD accesses will be. What do you do? Put a HD-Controller on the accelerator card which can do DMA. And so it just goes on and on and you basically build a second small computer inside the first computer. Architecturally, you still have to work with the 16-bit, 7 Mhz chipset anyways and as faster as the CPU gets, the more obvious it gets how slow the rest of the computer is, the more complicated it also gets to negotiate a window to have the CPU talking to the chipset. It's kinda neat to get it to work and there is a considerable speed boost, but conceptually it's just an over-engineered dead-end. Highly diminishing returns and all. Also, as you can imagine it takes some considerable engineering skill to do this properly and as a result there were lots of accelerators who had hardware bugs or didn't run nearly as fast as they should be able to because they just weren't done that well. Cojawfee posted:How would that even work? Did it just hijack the signals meant for the 386 or something? The lower CPU was basically disabled and yes, I don't think that worked with every 386, I think you needed a C-Step CPU that you could turn off, else you'd have bus contention that'll destroy both chips and more. I think they didn't fit on non-capable chips. The speed mainly comes from the L1 cache they had, a whole whopping 1 kb! AFAIK of all companies Texas Instruments made the fastest of these 386/486 CPU things as after upgrade parts. They were Cyrix' design, just had a much bigger cache. They were still limited by the external bus of the 386 and a "proper" 486 was a lot faster. The cache also was a problem with some mainboards. Smoke posted:I have a feeling not knowing you were running something non-Intel was a bit more common than it seems. I start to think this, too. Buttcoin purse posted:I guess I got them because they were cheaper, and I don't remember any problems with them. I probably used the 6x86 for probably 4-5 years before upgrading. Maybe I blamed Windows 95 for the 6x86's stability problems but probably not, I think it was fine when I wasn't installing bad software on it or getting pings of death. I probably didn't use the 5x86 for long, I was working at a computer store and was upgrading (or at least changing!) hardware all the time. It's a pity that the 5x86 could run at 50 Mhz FSB but barely any mainboard/chipset of that time could do it reliably. It gives quite a boost on memory throughput. You could also set it to 1x Multiplier via software, so no need for a turbo button. It was more of an aftermarket CPU upgrade tho and of course sucked in comparison with a good Pentium.
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Feb 15, 2016 19:25
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Ziptar posted:Pretty much... This is the only thing I could find about how is works... http://www.scmp.com/article/54729/cyrix-upgrade-unveiled 19 bids!?
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Feb 15, 2016 19:26
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Cojawfee posted:Yes. It's total bullshit. You can spend 100 dollars on a TI-84 or whatever, or you can spend another 30 dollars on an nSpire that has a color screen and rechargable batteries. I don't know how they can justify that. They actually make TI-84s with color screens and rechargeable batteries now.  
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Feb 15, 2016 19:30
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Ziptar posted:Pretty much... This is the only thing I could find about how is works... http://www.scmp.com/article/54729/cyrix-upgrade-unveiled There was also a really small number of "WinChip" x86 processors made by some unknown company in the late 90s
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Feb 15, 2016 19:39
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computer parts posted:They actually make TI-84s with color screens and rechargeable batteries now. This one uses an eZ80, which runs at 8x the clock speed and 4x the IPC as the Z80. A 32x increase over 20 years is definitely not great, but at least it's something.
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Feb 15, 2016 19:42
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blugu64 posted:There was also a really small number of "WinChip" x86 processors made by some unknown company in the late 90s Oh yeah, I remember those, saw a few back in the day. It was the IDT C6. It was intened to be Celeron-ish and basically meant for doing business apps but they were priced ~$10 more than you could get a Pentium for so they never really took off. http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/WinchipC6/ 
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Feb 15, 2016 19:47
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Gonzo the Eggman posted:It was plague-infected mutants, actually. The manual also gave hints for the aptitude test. I loved the DRM in the Space Quest games. Rather than just be a code wheel, you had to go through the "manuals", which were more meta than manual, for the answer to the DRM. Space Quest 4 was a "tech magazine" that featured an article on the time travel vehicle from the game. To break into the vehicle, you had to reference an article in the magazine that detailed how to break into a time machine. Space Quest 5 was "The Galactic Inquier" and the stellar coordinates were in the background of the horoscope article. Space Quest 6 was another "tech magazine" and in game you needed to reconfigure the tricorder to be a comms-beacon and I seem to recall they didn't outright tell you how to do it, you had to infer the solution based on the "solution to last month's puzzle". They were neat and fun reads. "The Galactic Inquirer" was particularly good. I probably still have the manuals somewhere. EDIT: I'm just remembering what hot garbage Space Quest 6 was. What a huge disappointment that game was. Overall-Series-Narratively, it didn't fit in with the rest of the series (probably due to the Two-guys split?), in-game narratively it was completely all over the place, the puzzles were bad...the whole thing was just...ugh. SQ1-5 were so solid. I'd love to read a post-mortem on the series as a whole. Snuffman has a new favorite as of 20:25 on Feb 15, 2016 |
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Feb 15, 2016 20:21
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To TI's credit I never saw a single graphing calculator break from taking a tumble down the concrete stairs at my high school, and they got dropped down the stairs a lot.
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Feb 15, 2016 22:00
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steinrokkan posted:Apparently TI employs lobbyists who push their poo poo graphing calculators as pretty much a mandatory accessory for any student being tested on maths. They "sponsor" "education" "organizations" whose sole purpose is to make sure that TI calculators are the only tools permitted at standardized tests. They also pay for endorsements from the organizers of said tests. yup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoGl8-Wc-L0
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Feb 15, 2016 22:01
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There was a kid in my homeroom in high school who called them T-180s. I said "It's TI-83, because it's Texas Instruments." He replied with "I like to call it T-180." Ok, dude.
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Feb 15, 2016 22:31
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He was a cooler kid than you,dork. poo poo sounds like a Terminator.
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Feb 15, 2016 22:49
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The best part of those graphing calculators was being able to play Tetris and Breakout during pointless busywork time and teachers still thought that you were actually working.
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Feb 15, 2016 22:59
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The_Franz posted:The best part of those graphing calculators was being able to play Tetris and Breakout during pointless busywork time and teachers still thought that you were actually working. Sure, if "actually working" looks like slumped down in the chair holding your calculator like a gameboy.
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Feb 15, 2016 23:03
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 So basically, during the P2 era I built this bad boy, stacking as many components in there I could without the whole thing catching fire. Sorry for low resolution, it's a very old photo. From bottom to the top; SCSI controller, SB16, Ethernet card, acoustic winmodem (ugh), TV capture card, and finally, ATI rage128 video card. The processor is a 433 MHz celeron cranked up to 540 MHz. If I remember correctly, this fucker had five disk drives (not all could be fitted into the case at the same time), and two CD-RW drives, one of which was SCSI, two FDDs (3.5 and 5.25), all of this being powered by an aging 200 watt power supply. When I think about it, it's a miracle the whole thing didn't catch fire. I used 5.25 floppies until 2008.  I was testing out intermittent CPU cooling apparently, there is a thermostat on the CPU heatsink and the white cylindrical object is a pill bottle containing a relay and some other circuitry. The idea was to make the CPU cool itself more aggressively under load, but in practice the fan constantly kept cycling on and off (about three times a minute) and it was very annoying so I tossed it out when I had about enough of it. Also, here is another Nixie tube clock project. A testament to a horribly wasted youth.   This board is an expansion card for the clock, containing alarm clock circuitry, day of the week display which I made out of a staggering amount of discrete components (russian transistors and diodes), a complete (yet kinda rudimentary diode-transistor logic) video circuitry driving a 7-segment display, showing the day of the week in cyrillic. Why? Because gently caress you that's why.   "che" on the screen (made in Eastern Germany in 1980.) Che stands for "Chetvrtak", "Thursday" in Croatian language. Yes I'll be dying alone. 
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Feb 16, 2016 00:40
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GAY 4 ORGANS
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phantom_dilz posted:I was at my parent's house over the weekend and I found a bunch of old tech manuals from the 70's and 80's. I don't how thrilled you'll be able database card things, but I took some back home with me: That's good stuff right there. Thanks for posting it.
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Feb 16, 2016 01:13
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Cojawfee posted:There was a kid in my homeroom in high school who called them T-180s. I said "It's TI-83, because it's Texas Instruments." He replied with "I like to call it T-180." Ok, dude. Similarly, I just met someone this weekend who insisted on calling ASCII "ask-two".
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Feb 16, 2016 02:03
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That's okay, I still take every opportunity to pronounce IEEE as AAIIIEEEEEEE
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Feb 16, 2016 02:06
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And is it "Eff-Ay-Kyews" or "FACKS"?
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Feb 16, 2016 02:24
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thathonkey posted:ti-86 was great imo I ended up with a 86 because Target was out of the 83 the day my mom went to get one. It was kinda Worst of Both Worlds because it wasn't as fancy as the 89, and the teachers couldn't help me because they were only trained on the 83. but hey, thaaaaaaaaaat's my life.
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Feb 16, 2016 02:27
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At least you weren't stuck with a TI-82.
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Feb 16, 2016 02:30
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Snuffman posted:I loved the DRM in the Space Quest games. Rather than just be a code wheel, you had to go through the "manuals", which were more meta than manual, for the answer to the DRM. Space Quest 6: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers - in which Roger meets his son and sees his future wife (the ambassador from SQ5). Remember the old-style hint books, with progressively less subtle hints you uncovered with a special highlighter pen? Speaking of which, I think you find an old Space Quest hint book in a bargain bin in one of the places in SQ6.
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Feb 16, 2016 02:44
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:And is it "Eff-Ay-Kyews" or "FACKS"? 
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Feb 16, 2016 02:46
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We mostly had 85s at my school 1998-99. 83s were a lot less common.
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Feb 16, 2016 02:46
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A SWEATY FATBEARD posted:Yes I'll be dying alone. I am amazed that you find the time for this with your seemingly hectic lifestyle, I feel bad about not making more time for projects now.
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Feb 16, 2016 02:57
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Ahh, my favourite swedish peanut butter, Yif.
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Feb 16, 2016 02:59
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Rexim posted:I ended up with a 86 because Target was out of the 83 the day my mom went to get one. My college math courses banned the 89 and 92 because they could solve integrals. Only the 86 or lower were allowed.
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Feb 16, 2016 03:00
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The_Franz posted:My college math courses banned the 89 and 92 because they could solve integrals. Only the 86 or lower were allowed. The 84s can solve (definite) integrals now, which is handy.
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Feb 16, 2016 03:08
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Gonzo the Eggman posted:Holy poo poo! We had Castle Adventure, too (or "Castle")! Yeah who knew any game had a name longer than 8 character long! quote:"The helmet helped." I would not have got this except I was playing it last night  I suspect my attention span as a child was so short that I didn't get that far back in the day.quote:I remember one of the Leisure Suit Larry games asked you a series of trivia questions that was supposed to determine how old you were. The number of questions you go right determined the amount of "pixelated nudity". There was actually a graphic of a woman and, for each correct answer, a piece of clothing would disappear. I remember another LSL game would ask you to look up a woman in Larry's little black book, which was included in the box. Oh yeah the little black book, I had a photocopy of that  I seem to recall some difficulty due to the conversion to black and white, but then I seem to remember it was blonde or brunette hair, halter top or something else, etc., and none of those things would be hard to pick in a photocopy  Smoke posted:I have a feeling not knowing you were running something non-Intel was a bit more common than it seems. Not at the store I worked at, we stuck the "Intel Inside" or "Cyrix Instead" sticker on the front of the case! steinrokkan posted:Apparently TI employs lobbyists That was going to be my joke response, but it figures that it's actually true 
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Feb 16, 2016 03:40
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UIApplication posted:This will never cease to make me laugh  
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Feb 16, 2016 04:16
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Cojawfee posted:At least you weren't stuck with a TI-82. I had a TI-82 which meant I couldn't get games from other people. I didn't have a transfer cable for the computer so I would print out the source codes for games in basic and spend an afternoon typing those into the calculator. Eventually I did get a cable. While everybody was playing a Frogger or Tetris clone I was playing a Mega Man clone with such creative bosses as Milk Man and Mail Man.
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Feb 16, 2016 06:58
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TI-85 was my jam too in high school and college. I might still have it somewhere, though it's been a long drat time since I saw it. When I was in high school in the mid-90s TI had things pretty firmly locked up, though other brands were allowed on the AP test. I remember one kid had one of the HP RPN deals, but I think he was the only one. I think the 92 came out right around the time I finished high school, but it was still ridiculously expensive, and even in college I don't think anyone I knew had one.
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Feb 16, 2016 07:09
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Does anyone remember tical.cx? It had a ton of games and apps you could upload to your ti-82/83. Way back machine has no record of the site 
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