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Why did schools standardize on a programmable calculator if you're not allowed to program it?
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Feb 8, 2024 20:35
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| # ? May 17, 2024 15:28 |
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Lobbying by big calculator
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Feb 8, 2024 20:36
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Mantle posted:I got a TI-83+ from my apartment's donation pile in the lobby for free, but the programming cable is like $50?? Yes lol. And the resale value on both are always great. I used to scan campus bulletin boards for cheap TI calculators. Everyone had one no one wanted to buy one (engineering school). The words "or best offer" were like catnip to me. Everything TI was an easy eBay flip to some incoming freshman. I can't imagine the scene has changed much.
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Feb 8, 2024 20:38
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Dip Viscous posted:Why did schools standardize on a programmable calculator if you're not allowed to program it? Never had that issue here, for tests you had to empty out the memory (a while ago) or set them to the special, locked down test mode (today).
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Feb 8, 2024 20:43
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Dip Viscous posted:Why did schools standardize on a programmable calculator if you're not allowed to program it? Because there wasn't a calculator that only graphed.
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Feb 8, 2024 20:57
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Anyone else do so poorly in high school math that you did not even make it to the classes where you needed a graphing calculator Sometimes I feel like that single thing is what kept me from getting into computer programming professionally on some level like 95% of my friends Particularly infuriating because by the time I took the GRE I just understood by osmosis all the algebra and geometry I had somehow failed to be able to understand 5 years earlier
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Feb 8, 2024 21:39
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I never got farther than geometry, but it wasn't because of the calculators but because math was always my weakest subject. Trig, calculus and linear algebra came in college and kicked my rear end pretty hard.
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Feb 8, 2024 21:47
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Did they catch anyone with a modified hardware/ SOC built fake calculator by now? because I feel that many students would rather kluge together a disguised ebook reader with all the answers than actually rely on learning.
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Feb 8, 2024 21:47
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Dip Viscous posted:Why did schools standardize on a programmable calculator if you're not allowed to program it? I don't think the programming was so much the problem (yeah every nerdy kid wrote a 10 line quadratic formula program but how many wrote a suite of programs big enough to actually give significant help in a test?), the problem was that your "programs" were text files that didn't have to be valid BASIC but could instead just be a cheat sheet. If you want to argue about whether or not it's useful to make students memorize formulae as the major measurement of learning, yeah sure I'm right there with you
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Feb 8, 2024 21:57
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Dr. Quarex posted:Anyone else do so poorly in high school math that you did not even make it to the classes where you needed a graphing calculator Failed out around Trig.
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Feb 8, 2024 21:57
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r u ready to WALK posted:I have fond memories from school of not understanding how to solve algebra equations but instead writing a TI basic program that would brute force the answer. My memory is fuzzy and this will appeal to like 3 other dorks but: I remember a physics exam where we had to come up with an expression to model diffusion of boron atoms within silicon crystals, and then use it to solve when boron would reach a certain concentration at a certain depth of silicon. I got an equation that could be solved to produce the correct, desired, first solution but also to produce my technically correct but fantastically stupid solution (something like fourth order). Basically, instead of picking a point on one of these lines:  and coming up with the time required to reach it, you could just keep the diffusion process going and going and going, until the boron concentration becomes completely uniform and the lines go flat. But that would be silly! Alas, I ran out of time and had to put something down, so I used the only solution I had -- the stupid one that my TI-92 kept spitting out for ??? reasons -- and said that the diffusion would result in the target concentration in the idiotic-but-technically-correct time of about 12.5 years (instead of ~2 hours). In other words, I felt personally attacked by memes like this: https://i.imgur.com/psU6p1w.mp4
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Feb 8, 2024 22:12
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More about PsDoom, found a video of a guy that compiled it in 2022. Video takes you to the timestamp he kills his window manager https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf7rpde49NU&t=185s Edit: going nuts on xeyes and xclocks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSpHc945G38&t=81s EVIL Gibson has a new favorite as of 23:18 on Feb 8, 2024 |
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Feb 8, 2024 23:10
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Hopefully this is a good thread to post find out more about this computer that I inherited. From my understanding, it is a MAC-TUTOR. I have not attempted to turn this thing on since I don't know its condition. I don't even know who to reach out to for more information. The links below are all I have found from googling that chip with the golden sticker that is present on the board. https://www.cpushack.com/2013/06/16/cpu-of-the-day-bell-labs-bellmac-8-aka-the-we212/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BELLMAC-8 
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Feb 9, 2024 15:40
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That is NOT a golden sticker on that chip. That’s the top of the package, it’s part of the chip itself and trying to remove it like it was a sticker will damage the CPU. What you should do from a preservation perspective that’s very easy to do right now is cover the PROM. You see that chip in a green socket labeled “PROGRAMMER” in the picture you posted? On top of it, instead of what you thought was a golden sticker on the other chip, it has a window that allows you to see inside the chip. Basically, it’s a special kind of chip where it can be reprogrammed (hence the socket’s name) for different kinds of data storage. However, it’s common for those kinds of chips to also be erasable by exposure to UV light. Yours might have been erased previously, or it might have never been programmed, you won’t know until you get a bit more experience with everything. For now covering the window by taping a piece of opaque paper to it (cardstock or construction paper works well) will prevent any accidental erasure. You can do it without removing the chip from the board even.
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Feb 9, 2024 16:34
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Arivia posted:That is NOT a golden sticker on that chip. That’s the top of the package, it’s part of the chip itself and trying to remove it like it was a sticker will damage the CPU. It pretty much stays in that case with the lid closed. Thanks for the tips on preserving its current condition.
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Feb 9, 2024 16:46
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Yeah cover that ROM chip post haste. That thing is cool as hell even though I dont really know what it is
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Feb 9, 2024 17:03
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Speaking of ROM chips, what is the easy way to dump things like BIOS chips and things like the above mentioned PROM? Ideally I'm looking for some manner of USB device that can dump the contents of chips out to a modern computer I've recently come to discover that I might have a few ROM chips and the like that just arent dumped in the wild. Chip-wise, things like this: 
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Feb 9, 2024 17:09
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Beve Stuscemi posted:That thing is cool as hell even though I dont really know what it is
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Feb 9, 2024 17:17
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Beve Stuscemi posted:Speaking of ROM chips, what is the easy way to dump things like BIOS chips and things like the above mentioned PROM? Ideally I'm looking for some manner of USB device that can dump the contents of chips out to a modern computer Paging Humphreys
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Feb 9, 2024 17:58
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Beve Stuscemi posted:Speaking of ROM chips, what is the easy way to dump things like BIOS chips and things like the above mentioned PROM? Ideally I'm looking for some manner of USB device that can dump the contents of chips out to a modern computer An xgecu should be able to dump them. You can check the compatibility list before you buy one. http://www.autoelectric.cn/en/download.html I have a T56 and it works pretty well for dumping and programming.
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Feb 9, 2024 21:24
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Still no luck on finding anything about the OHP laptop, but I was able to unearth this other thing from my foggy 90s tech memory: It’s a personal organizer that has no keys, because you talk to it! It worked about as well as you'd expect for a Siri with early voice recognition tech running on 90s embedded hardware. Apparently they made a few different versions over the years, here are some pics I found from an ebay listing:    Looking up the company on the box, it looks like they got bought out by a waste management company of all things. Also while researching it I found this cool page showcasing interesting tech design throughout the decades: https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection snorch has a new favorite as of 02:11 on Feb 10, 2024 |
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Feb 10, 2024 02:00
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Neat - and I love how it is a technological fossil in itself, with "HTML" and some complicated Silverlight experience as two equal choices.
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Feb 10, 2024 02:22
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One piece of still-working obsolete technology we had at my last job was a couple of bulk UV EPROM erasers. We very occasionally still got them to test and program them for obsolete electronics usually used in aviation test equipment. The same customer that sent us those parts helped build us a tape drive emulator for an opamp tester we had from 1981. It worked great and was WAY faster to load programs from than the original tapes.
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Feb 10, 2024 07:46
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When I was in college in the 90s at the University of Minnesota we had a whole lab of SUN systems that had this as an optional filesystem. It was interesting but incredibly slow and unusable. It was easier to just use prompt window to do CLI commands to find what you needed.
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Feb 10, 2024 09:53
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speaking of file managers, why run psdoom when you can run https://dos.itch.io/fsdoom
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Feb 10, 2024 10:13
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKNQCnNxZLg I like how this guy goes into a different era and medium than most retrocomputing channels, digging up how to's and software that I would have assumed long lost by now.
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Feb 11, 2024 22:08
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Ooh, that looks like a great channel to have on during work.
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Feb 12, 2024 01:54
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Flipperwaldt posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKNQCnNxZLg That phone was nearly contemporaneous with a Motorola music phone, the Motorola SLVR L7 https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_slvr_l7-1053.php I bought one of these because it was the 'iTunes phone" and I figured out I could load 50 songs on it and ended up giving up on that and spending my time trying to browse WAP wikipedia instead. What a piece of poo poo.
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Feb 12, 2024 03:30
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Does anyone remember the time Ethernet just suddenly got better with cables? I attended a lot of LAN parties so I had a lot of normal straight through but a few cross over cables for those times I needed to directly connect to a computer. If you were using crossover, you couldn't connect to hubs* or switches. Then one time I was setting up a new network and got it up. Then I looked at a very familiar cable with huge tags to remind myself it was a crossover. It was working and was connecting everything. I remember thinking in my head, "when did that happen?" *Hubs no longer exist no matter what you see on the Internet or shelves. They are now dumb switches without interfaces. If they were hubs , they would broadcast any packet to every Ethernet port. It's how I accidentally got ShowEQ for EverQuest working. My PC wasn't being passed information from the Linux computer after being cracked to show all information in the world, it was just that ShowEQ saw the packets on the hub and opened them directly. No fancy networking or iptable nonsense
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Feb 12, 2024 21:15
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EVIL Gibson posted:Does anyone remember the time Ethernet just suddenly got better with cables? Man I started lan parties with null modem cables and then bnc cables, t pieces, terminators and novel netware. I'd have killed for a hub
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Feb 12, 2024 21:24
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I remember my first LAN parties where we used daisy chained coax Ethernet without any hub, just a bunch of T splitter cables and a terminator at each end. And whenever someone tripped on the cable the whole network would drop out until you found the single flaky connection. Finally upgrading everyone to a dumb hub and twisted pair was a huge luxury! I’m not sure when everything started doing auto MDI-X out of the box but it is especially handy when plugging two computers directly together and one of the NICs flip its send/receive pairs so you don’t need the special cable anymore. [efb  ]
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Feb 12, 2024 21:25
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I thought Auto MDI-X really became ubiquitous when Ethernet ports all evolved to 10/100/1Ghz because it was part of the 1ghz spec, but I am by no means a network expert.
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Feb 13, 2024 05:07
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fondue posted:When I was in college in the 90s at the University of Minnesota we had a whole lab of SUN systems that had this as an optional filesystem.
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Feb 13, 2024 05:23
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JnnyThndrs posted:I thought Auto MDI-X really became ubiquitous when Ethernet ports all evolved to 10/100/1Ghz because it was part of the 1ghz spec, but I am by no means a network expert. I think it's technically optional in 1000BASE-T, but most major manufacturers picked it up. That was about when it happened though.
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Feb 13, 2024 05:50
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Killer robot posted:I think it's technically optional in 1000BASE-T, but most major manufacturers picked it up. That was about when it happened though. MDI-X appeared along with 1000BASE-T, but apparently there's an independent reason gbit links just work. From wikipedia: quote:Gigabit and faster Ethernet links over twisted pair cable use all four cable pairs for simultaneous transmission in both directions. For this reason, there are no dedicated transmit and receive pairs, and consequently, crossover cables are never required for 1000BASE-T communication. The physical medium attachment sublayer (PMA) provides identification of each pair and usually continues to work over crossover cables as well, even if the pairs are unusually swapped, crossed, or if the polarity of a pair is unexpectedly inverted.
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Feb 13, 2024 10:38
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Textbooks probably still explain CSMA/CD like it's still a thing (and imply that it worked well at all). At least mine did as late as 2010. IMO Ethernet kind of sucked before L2 switches and star networks. Token Ring was legitimately better for about a decade, ignoring the cost of the hardware.
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Feb 13, 2024 12:54
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Pretty much yelling into the ether, but as an actual spec.
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Feb 13, 2024 13:18
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Computer viking posted:MDI-X appeared along with 1000BASE-T, but apparently there's an independent reason gbit links just work. From wikipedia: Surely you mean 100BASE-TX? That's when it became ubiquitous. I've at least never encountered a 100BTX adapter or switch that didn't do auto MDI-X (that I know of). (Also MDI-X just describes the station connector wiring for switches etc. The home connector wiring is MDI. Thus the need for crossover cables connecting MDI to MDI or MDI-X to MDI-X, in instances where neither adapter supports auto MDI-X.)
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Feb 13, 2024 13:41
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longview posted:Textbooks probably still explain CSMA/CD like it's still a thing (and imply that it worked well at all). At least mine did as late as 2010. When I started college the entire network was running on hubs, including the dorms, so it was to your benefit to be online when no one else was, because the more people who were on the network, the more collisions happened, and the slower everything went Thankfully the summer after my freshman year they gutted everything and moved to actual switches, so things got a lot better
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Feb 13, 2024 13:46
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I have fond memories of my old computer janitor job when I got a ticket complaining about the network being unusably slow, while troubleshooting I suddenly noticed the network hub collision LED being lit up solid. After unplugging connections one by one I eventually tracked it down to an office where some genius had made their own network cable by cutting and terminating two 5 meter four-wire flat telephone cables into the same rj45 plug. Turns out twisted pair doesn’t work every well without actually twisting the pairs. 
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Feb 13, 2024 14:47
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