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1500 questions
29
votes
6 answers
History behind the text column restriction
In the old days, I remember we were told to never go beyond the 70'th column in the text editor (the actual value was usually something above 70, but less than 80).
Further, at least in the program I was using (the ISPF text editor) against an old…
Burhan Khalid
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29
votes
7 answers
Why did computers use a power supply with a socket?
Most home electrical appliances use a fixed power cord and have a on/off switch near the front. I was in many government electronics labs and that cord and socket was not used i.e HP test equipment.
Why did computer equipment appear to start the…
jwzumwalt
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29
votes
1 answer
How can I take an image of a 50-pin SCSI hard-drive
I have two 50-pin SCSI hard-drives that I need to image. However, after spending quite a while searching across the Internet, I cannot find any adapters to convert the 50-pin connector to something useful.
The make/model of the hard-drives is the…
David B
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29
votes
3 answers
Why were early computers named "Mark"?
I have seen many examples, Harvard Mark 1, Manchester Mark 1, Colossus Mark 1 and 2. It is possible that this is a very obvious thing for native English speakers, but not entirely for me. Was this an old custom? Who started it? Why did it not…
user8433
29
votes
3 answers
What are the differences between a PAL and NTSC C64?
A lot of programs released for the Commodore 64 contained different software for the PAL or NTSC computer. Why did they have different versions of the hardware? Did the software have to be different too?
Thraka
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29
votes
3 answers
Magnetic exposure to floppy disk damages file system and requires complete reformat?
What I noticed is, that formatting a floppy disk takes three times as much time for the same data amount as writing a file to the disk normally.
The accoustically perceivable jumps of the head between the eighty tracks are significantly slower on a…
neverMind9
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29
votes
3 answers
How can I recover the contents from an Amiga HDD using modern Linux?
I have two Amiga 1200's in pieces. One of them has a 52mb HDD in it and on it is my dissertation from 1995 and all my essays. I want to retrieve the dissertation because it's the only surviving copy. I use elementary - xenian - ubuntu linux self…
katy Holl
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29
votes
2 answers
How did an IBM 5150 with 16KB RAM work?
I keep reading that when it was first released, there was a variant of the IBM PC model 5150 that had only 16KB of RAM installed. From a hardware perspective, this would clearly work - the 5150 motherboard had sockets for 4 banks of 4116-type DRAM…
Jules
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29
votes
4 answers
What's the difference between "opcode" and "instruction" in this Zilog ad?
In a Zilog ad from 1976 comparing the Z80 and Intel 8080, the following table is presented:
What is the difference here between "Instructions" and "OP Codes"? In my experience, the two terms are either used interchangeably to refer to a particular…
Psychonaut
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29
votes
1 answer
Why do 3D models on the PlayStation 1 “wobble” so much?
A memorable part of the PlayStation 1 experience was “wobbly” 3D graphics, where (supposedly) straight edges would warp, jitter and pulse as the camera panned across a scene. This was especially apparent in 3D-heavy games like Metal Gear Solid,…
jamesfmackenzie
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29
votes
1 answer
How do Amiga 600 CPU accelerators work?
The Amiga 1200 has a trapdoor expansion for CPU accelerators. The Amiga 500 has a side expansion port and its CPU is socketed.
But Amiga 600's expansion port is only useful for memory expansion and the 68000 is soldered to the motherboard. So…
rcntxtlztn
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29
votes
3 answers
What's the TUBE interface of the BBC micro all about?
I keep reading of the BBC micro's tube interface that was apparently designed as a co-processor interface to the 6502.
I would be interested in what were actual applications of this interface and what hardware could be had supporting it. In case…
tofro
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29
votes
3 answers
Was there a keyboard layout starting with "TBSY"?
Watching an episode of Murder, She Wrote (7x12 "Suspicion of Murder") and, at one point, a character picks up a typewriter and throws it through a window.
However, said keyboard has the strangest layout, and I wonder if anyone can identify it and/or…
jimbobmcgee
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29
votes
10 answers
Was there any technological reason that C was designed to return only a single thing from a function?
I'm asking specifically about C, not about other contemporary languages, but if the reason is "that's how B did it" or something please assume I'm talking about "in the lineage of C". I'm also aware that many if not all languages also adhere to the…
Michael Stachowsky
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29
votes
4 answers
Why was the "Space-cadet keyboard" called that?
Many of us have heard of the so-called "Space-cadet keyboard" from 1978 (famous for including a mind-boggling number of modifier keys including control, meta, hyper, super, shift, top, front, and Greek), but neither Wikipedia nor the Jargon File…
Robert Columbia
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