[Coco] Off Topic, extremely, since I'm ranting now and then Re: Drivewire for Linux

[wdg3rd at comcast.net]

> From: "Steven Hirsch" <snhirsch at gmail.com>
> To: "Bill" <cwgordon at carolina.rr.com>
> Cc: "Color Computer Mailing List" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 11:02:55 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Drivewire for Linux
>
> On Tue, 26 May 2009, Bill wrote:
> 
> > No offense taken, Steve, I understand what you are saying.
> > 
> > I’ve been ‘tinkering’ with Linux for several years now, and have set
> up 
> > several ‘Linux boxes’. Unfortunately, I spent too much time on the 
> > hardware aspect of the computers, and not enough on the software.
> 
> Bill,
> 
> (I'm copying the list, since this may be of help to others)
> 
> First of all, could I ask you to use ASCII text only in your e-mail? 
> You 
> have all the Microsoft markup things turned on and it makes it almost
> 
> impossible to read under Unix.  Also, it's generally considered more 
> courteous to add your replies underneath the prior respondant's.  I'm
> not 
> a fascist in this regard, but will warn you that a number of
> individuals 
> out there regard it as a hanging offense!

I have to back up Steve here, in a couple of areas.  One, top-posting is indeed a hanging offense, and the Mickeysoft markup deserves harsher punishment, like not hanging all the way (you can reach the ground with your toes, not your heels -- so it takes a lot longer to die -- think about it).

Since when do you have to consider the hardware aspect of a Linux system unless you're setting up a multimedia box ten years ago?  Stuff pretty much works, unlike when you're trying to build a Windoze gaming system from scratch (haven't tried it myself, but I've chatted with the kids at Micro-Center's BYOB counter).  (That's Build Your Own Box, and it's great for a Linux geek, but for a Windoze gamer, some extreme competence must be brought along, as whatever the complaints are that "Linux is hard to install" these complaints are from folks who never installed 'doze (since it was always pre-installed when they bought their box).

I've been a Linux geek since 3/1993 (and a Unix geek for a decade previous since the Shack started shipping Xenix (to normal customers, but I had a contact at a local beta site in Los Angeles so I had a couple months heads-up) 1/83, well before they started shipping OS-9, since I did tech support at various RSCCs from 1980 to 1986).  I even had a bit of head's up on OS-9 from my contacts in the Color Computer Community since as far as I know I was the only Tandy employee in the LA metro area who ever supported the beast (since my only chance at extra pay was based on total store sales less returns and almost everybody I worked with was an idiot [excepting most technical and rare management staff] my chances at commission were rare -- in fact, I am not unashamed to admit that during my 5.4 years with the Shack, I am probably responsible for over half a million bucks in lost sales because I was tired of the million bucks in returns I'd tried to prevent -- I was never welcome at any Computerland, since that's where I sent the idiots I wasn't willing to support, there was one a block away from the RSCC in downtown L.A.).  (Jerry promises you this Xenix system will do you everything you need it to -- it won't -- but the MacIntosh the have a block down is perfect for you and all of the software will work right the first time [at no time in my life have I ever claimed not to be an asshole, even as a child Baptist and Republican, let alone for over for for over forty years as an atheist and over twenty as an anarchist -- the real kind, anti government, not just scruffy socialist goth kids breaking windows]).

I won't claim to be a Color Computer or OS-9 expert.  In fact, the day that OS-9 Level One arrived at my RSCC and I took it home to find out if my 32k CC1 had good 64k chips was the day that burglars took my CoCo, its disk drives, my LP8 and a few other valuables (the guy from the LAPD demonstrated how easy it was to open the patio door in our apartment, and I'd already noticed the new issue of 80-Micro on the couch [in the time too thick to fit in the mailbox, so I assume the thieves saw it in the hopper beneath, and decided to go look if the addressee had a computer] though they ignored the Baltic amber my ex had, I guess it wasn't shiny enough).  

But I _am_ the first guy to set up a multi-user OS-9 Level One system in an RSCC in Southern California (possibly in any RSCC anywhere, and I might have been the last as well -- though I know a couple of Level Two systems were set up later, possibly based on my example and the items I wrote for a newsletter addressed to RSCC instructors and service reps).  The documentation was similar to the Xenix material I was still learning and some of the commands implied it might work.  I rigged a DIN null-modem between a 64k box with a floppy drive and a 16k box with a Vidtex ROM.  It worked, a multi-user system that would cost you $1,087.63 including CA (plus L.A. add-on) sales tax, based on at-the-time sale prices and the assumption you already had two TV sets (generally a safe assumption in Los Angeles though not the case in my apt for a while after the burglary).

It was nothing but a proof-of-concept.  It worked.  True, you lost characters if the floppy was operating and you were typing on the "terminal".  I forget if I showed it to Steve Bjork one of the times he came to visit his fiancee (who worked in our repair center sometimes).  I do know the guys from Big-5 Software thought it was moby cool, but they only did Z-80 stuff.

Yeah, I'm a Linux geek.  Not sorry to be one.  And I play with xtrs a lot more than with xmame.  In the backalong I won regular playing Leo Christopherson's "Klendathu" (yes, I usually achieved "sovereign franchise", but I actually knew the source of the term long before (by several decades) that gawdawful movie, since I read the novel _Starship Troopers_ when I was about 10, 1965 or so, so I knew what Leo based the bug hunt on and I"d still like to see a copy of the "classroom edition" since no copy ever showed up at any RSCC I worked at or with).  I have rarely made past two or three levels of a Big 5 game (well, I have never bragged about hand-eye coordination, as I have little).  As a "gamer" my game is rogue and its descendants (yes, I have taken the prize a couple of times, and once I got back to the surface before I died -- I have never "not died" in such games), that don't require a lot of reflexes.  Thinking about it, Klendathu is the _only_ game I win consistently.

I'll never do computer tech support (or system administration, which is worse and even more thankless) full-time again.  When La Esposa doesn't need the medical plan from the job I do as a clerk (yeah, the ad said "computer guy" and I update the web page (poorly designed and not by me, it's a bitch to update, and the catalog [based on MS-Publisher, and I'd rather rebuild it with Scribus, but it's over 300 pages]) I'll open my chili restaurant in the next state east from Dennis.  You wouldn't like to know why the planned name of the place is "Fire!", with little relationship to the alleged spiciness of chili.  But I hope to have a range in the basement.  You'd probably think the 10% discount for anybody with an effective means of self-defense (and I don't mean a certificate from a karate school) was a bit nuts, but check the crime statistics for Vermont and New Hampshire and compare them to New York and southern New England.

Yeah, call me a libertarian "gun nut" but that is not unconnected with my Linux geekiness.  I just turned turned 54 and I haven't had my "mid-life" crisis yet.  I'm looking forward to it.  I've already outlived anybody with my Y-chromosome except my dad (who was on life-support at the San Diego VA hospital for four years starting at 52 due to liver failure).  In two years I break the record.  (Most of my ancestors didn't reach 40 because of that "black lung" thing many coal miners got.  Granddad was the first in the line to break out of that and died of a heart attack at 53.  (Mind you, he was with a lady Dad hooked up with after Mom kicked him out a couple years later).
-- 
Ward Griffiths        wdg3rd at comcast.net