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Computers and personalities

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  Computers and personalities "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-04 11:13 +0100
    Re: Computers and personalities mm0fmf <none@mailinator.com> - 2015-09-04 17:42 +0100
      Re: Computers and personalities The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2015-09-05 07:33 +0100
        Re: Computers and personalities David Taylor <david-taylor@blueyonder.co.uk.invalid> - 2015-09-05 11:43 +0100
          Re: Computers and personalities Folderol <general@musically.me.uk> - 2015-09-05 12:06 +0100
          Re: Computers and personalities Rob Morley <nospam@ntlworld.com> - 2015-09-05 14:37 +0100
          Re: Computers and personalities "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-05 14:45 +0100
      Re: Computers and personalities "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-05 14:41 +0100
      Re: Computers and personalities "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-05 15:02 +0100
        Re: Computers and personalities Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2015-09-05 15:46 +0000
        Re: Computers and personalities druck <news@druck.org.uk> - 2015-09-13 12:02 +0100

#9520 — Computers and personalities

I see there have been at least a couple of recent recreations of the ZX 
Spectrum. One is a games-only machine (the ZX Spectrum Vega) with a 
cut-down keyboard. The other seems to be a complete reimplementation.

http://metro.co.uk/2015/08/14/new-sinclair-zx-spectrum-vega-is-out-in-two-weeks-5342770/

http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/gadget-review-recreated-zx-spectrum-1-3874605

Why post here? I wondered if, in the future, people would be as 
nostialgic for the Raspberry Pi - in, say, 30 years time. I don't think 
they would. Why? Well, the Pi is a more complete system. It is more of a 
general purpose machine, and more useful as a consequence. It doesn't 
have all the same types of quirks and limtations of the ZX Spectrum. 
Basically, those are what gave the Spectrum its personality.

Not wishing this to be pejorative, just an acceptance of the world as it 
is, but ISTM that the Raspberry Pi has fewer limitations and therefore 
has less of a personality. As with all modern machines they are more 
chameleon-like and less quirky, less limited to certain roles, more 
bland.

As users of the Pi what do you guys think? Am I right about why people 
are recreating versions of a 30-year-old computer? Is the Pi differently 
fated, and why?

Just for interest.

James

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#9521

On 04/09/2015 11:13, James Harris wrote:
> I wondered if, in the future, people would be as nostialgic for the
> Raspberry Pi - in, say, 30 years time.

My first job out of university in 1983 was writing games and games 
development software for Spectrum, Vic20, C64. I didn't think they were 
great machines when they paid my wages and I certainly am not nostalgic 
for them now.

Nor for the Amiga and its godawful OS software. I did think the Atari ST 
was OK. Awful OS but the hardware was cheap and powerful for the time.

What I did enjoy was that people thought about the games and there were 
many excellent games that were fun to play despite the pishy hardware 
they ran on. i.e. the game idea was fun. You still come across games 
which are fun amongst the quest for more graphical realism.

Raspberry Pi, it's a cheap bit of computing hardware. Nothing more.

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#9525

On 04/09/15 17:42, mm0fmf wrote:
> On 04/09/2015 11:13, James Harris wrote:
>> I wondered if, in the future, people would be as nostialgic for the
>> Raspberry Pi - in, say, 30 years time.
>
> My first job out of university in 1983 was writing games and games
> development software for Spectrum, Vic20, C64. I didn't think they were
> great machines when they paid my wages and I certainly am not nostalgic
> for them now.
>
> Nor for the Amiga and its godawful OS software. I did think the Atari ST
> was OK. Awful OS but the hardware was cheap and powerful for the time.
>
> What I did enjoy was that people thought about the games and there were
> many excellent games that were fun to play despite the pishy hardware
> they ran on. i.e. the game idea was fun. You still come across games
> which are fun amongst the quest for more graphical realism.
>
> Raspberry Pi, it's a cheap bit of computing hardware. Nothing more.

+11


-- 
New Socialism consists essentially in being seen to have your heart in 
the right place whilst your head is in the clouds and your hand is in 
someone else's pocket.

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#9526

On 05/09/2015 07:33, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 04/09/15 17:42, mm0fmf wrote:
[]
>> Raspberry Pi, it's a cheap bit of computing hardware. Nothing more.
>
> +11

The huge sales, vast user-community support, and range of accessories 
have now raised it above that, though.

-- 
Cheers,
David
Web: http://www.satsignal.eu

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#9527

On Sat, 5 Sep 2015 11:43:47 +0100
David Taylor <david-taylor@blueyonder.co.uk.invalid> wrote:

> On 05/09/2015 07:33, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> > On 04/09/15 17:42, mm0fmf wrote:
> []
> >> Raspberry Pi, it's a cheap bit of computing hardware. Nothing more.
> >
> > +11
> 
> The huge sales, vast user-community support, and range of accessories 
> have now raised it above that, though.

Indeed. It's community that matter most. Also, everyone remembers their first
(of anything) with some nostalgia.

-- 
W J G

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#9528

On Sat, 5 Sep 2015 11:43:47 +0100
David Taylor <david-taylor@blueyonder.co.uk.invalid> wrote:

> On 05/09/2015 07:33, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> > On 04/09/15 17:42, mm0fmf wrote:
> []
> >> Raspberry Pi, it's a cheap bit of computing hardware. Nothing more.
> >
> > +11
> 
> The huge sales, vast user-community support, and range of accessories 
> have now raised it above that, though.
> 
I think it's popping quite a few Linux cherries too - people who
wouldn't otherwise bother are trying it because it's the default RPi OS.

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#9530

"David Taylor" <david-taylor@blueyonder.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message 
news:msegtl$6dv$2@dont-email.me...
> On 05/09/2015 07:33, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 04/09/15 17:42, mm0fmf wrote:
> []
>>> Raspberry Pi, it's a cheap bit of computing hardware. Nothing more.
>>
>> +11
>
> The huge sales, vast user-community support, and range of accessories 
> have now raised it above that, though.

Agreed. There are lots of small and inexpensive Arm-based computers each 
with their own good and bad points. ISTM that the Raspberry Pi tends to 
be treated and regarded differently.

James

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#9529

"mm0fmf" <none@mailinator.com> wrote in message 
news:URjGx.532034$vz7.54341@fx07.am4...

...

> Raspberry Pi, it's a cheap bit of computing hardware. Nothing more.

Maybe. I don't think the "cheap" bit is relevant, though. If it were a 
costly piece of computing hardware it would still be just as 
personality-less. A faster CPU, bigger RAM, more USB ports etc would not 
change it into something with more character.

That's not to say that I am putting the Pi down. Nearly all computers 
sold today are just bits of hardware. Especially when they run a popular 
operating system such as Windows or a Unix or Android etc many of the 
remaining differences between machines get obscured, and that's a big 
part of what an OS is there to do.

The Pi's low-level IO features perhaps give it more character than most 
machines. You could argue that its lack of an internal clock gives it 
more character. I don't know. IMO that's probably more of a pain than an 
asset!

You could view the Raspberry Pi as a motherboard. If it were to be built 
into a case then it might be more distinct. Say multiple Pis were built 
into a desktop case to make a compute farm. The resulting machine would 
have its own character. Or say a Pi was built into a laptop. The laptop 
would have a particular screen and keyboard and look and feel and hence, 
IMO, its own character.

James

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#9531

"mm0fmf" <none@mailinator.com> wrote in message 
news:URjGx.532034$vz7.54341@fx07.am4...
> On 04/09/2015 11:13, James Harris wrote:

>> I wondered if, in the future, people would be as nostialgic for the
>> Raspberry Pi - in, say, 30 years time.
>
> My first job out of university in 1983 was writing games and games 
> development software for Spectrum, Vic20, C64.

That sounds like a fun first job. Better than writing report-generation 
and accounts software!

I worked for a bank. Perhaps the most fun work I did there was 
programming the cheque sorters. We had so many milliseconds between the 
MICR or OCR characters being read to decide which pocket they should be 
routed to so as well as being distincive machines the programs had to 
work within a specific timing budget, making the task a bit different to 
the usual mainframe work.

> I didn't think they were great machines when they paid my wages and I 
> certainly am not nostalgic for them now.
>
> Nor for the Amiga and its godawful OS software. I did think the Atari 
> ST was OK. Awful OS but the hardware was cheap and powerful for the 
> time.

Machines were awful at the time. All of them I remember had serious 
limitations. For example,

* The Commodore Pet's Basic allowed only single-line functions. Its 
graphics were all blocks that you had to put together (and they didn't 
always juxtapose as they should have).

* The ZX Spectrum's screen had hi-res graphics but the attributes 
covered an 8x8 square so you had to account for that.

* One machine (I think a Nascom 2 but am not sure) refreshed the screen 
at 60 Hz and that could play havoc with a monitor run on 50 Hz mains. I 
remember one screen wobble so bad that it quickly felt like your eyes 
were being fried!

No one, I think, seriously wants to go back to those days.

By the way, the ZX Spectrum's keyboard was almost universally derided so 
it is suprising to hear that it has been recreated, in part, as a 
Bluetooth keyboard!

The machines of that era were bad in different ways. I find it odd that 
people want to recreate some of them but they do.

> What I did enjoy was that people thought about the games and there 
> were many excellent games that were fun to play

Then why not recreate those games today? Has the market moved on?

James

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#9532

On Sat, 05 Sep 2015 15:02:12 +0100, James Harris wrote:

> That sounds like a fun first job. Better than writing report-generation
> and accounts software!
> 
> I worked for a bank. Perhaps the most fun work I did there was
> programming the cheque sorters. We had so many milliseconds between the
> MICR or OCR characters being read to decide which pocket they should be
> routed to so as well as being distincive machines the programs had to
> work within a specific timing budget, making the task a bit different to
> the usual mainframe work.
>
I had a similar $first_job - in my case it was an ICL service bureau with 
a 1903S and the special device was an Optical Mark Reader with similar 
timing limitations on sending a document to the output stacker, though if 
you were late the machine just became slow: if you missed the first 
opportunity to stack a sheet it just went round the drum another rev 
before being stacked.

The variety of work was a bit larger than in a bank (been there, done 
that too) and we used both the PLAN assembler and COBOL.

I saw Altairs and IMSAI micros during a contract in NYC and found out 
about the 6800 and its assembler at evening classes, but didn't get 
anything of my own until I could afford an SS-50 box based round a 6809  
with two floppies and running Flex09 simply because, after several years 
on mainframes I wasn't willing to mess round with anything that didn't 
have at least two floppies for storage and a printer.

I look at the RPi very much as the current equivalent of my old FLEX09 
system, though its much less hardware-hacker friendly thanks to its clock 
speed. I could and did design and build my own SS-50 cards because they 
were populated with big old DIP CMOS logic chips and, because the whole 
thing ran at 2MHz, the hardware could be debugged with a multimeter and a 
logic probe and/or a nice, cheapish 10 MHz oscilloscope. 

These days, you're looking at $800-$1000 at least, used on Ebay for a 
scope that's fast enough to use on an RPi, to say nothing of dealing with 
surface-mount chips rather than DIP chips with 0.1" pin spacing.


-- 
martin@   | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org       |

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#9626

On 05/09/2015 15:02, James Harris wrote:
> Machines were awful at the time. All of them I remember had serious
> limitations. For example,
>
> * The Commodore Pet's Basic allowed only single-line functions. Its
> graphics were all blocks that you had to put together (and they didn't
> always juxtapose as they should have).
>
> * The ZX Spectrum's screen had hi-res graphics but the attributes
> covered an 8x8 square so you had to account for that.
>
> * One machine (I think a Nascom 2 but am not sure) refreshed the screen
> at 60 Hz and that could play havoc with a monitor run on 50 Hz mains. I
> remember one screen wobble so bad that it quickly felt like your eyes
> were being fried!

You obviously didn't use the BBC Micro, fast, great graphics, lots of 
I/O. I used all the way from school and then in industry for years. You 
had to know how to code efficiently, but it could still running rings 
around the new 80286 PC with EGA graphics, they thought could replace it.

 > No one, I think, seriously wants to go back to those days.

I would in a heartbeat.

---druck

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