A Vintage PC...

[commodorejohn]

True enough. With DOS, hey, need just a little more base RAM to run that CD-ROM game? Just do this!
Newborn babies come into the world knowing this stuff, right?

Still just one file, my friend. It would begin to compare with Unix/Linux if you had to chase includes through half a dozen scripts in different directories with the aid of only a man page that was last updated in 1997 and a handful of forum threads from 2001...

edit: (UNIX is of course actually C, but C doesn't pair as well with COBOL)

Gorgonops: Programming Language Sommelier.

 

[ianj]

Putting things in one file doesn't necessarily make them simpler (and certainly not more flexible). What are you trying to use that was last updated in 1997, anyway? That's your problem, not Unix's problem.

 

[Gorgonops]

Still just one file, my friend.

Two, actually. And of course the exact details would vary depending on the *exact* details of your computer, IE, what cards you have installed, what video modes you might use (Wanna see something sad? Config EMM386.EXE to use that 32k between the A0000 EGA/VGA framebuffer and the B8000 CGA/Color text mode memory to load something high only to have a game tell your VGA card switch to a VESA mode that by default maps the full 128k between A0000 and BFFFF), what time of day and under what sign of the moon the author of your BIOS or the designer of your motherboard's chipset was born on, etc. Hope you like rebooting to figure all the fine print out!

It would begin to compare with Unix/Linux if you had to chase includes through half a dozen scripts in different directories with the aid of only a man page that was last updated in 1997 and a handful of forum threads from 2001...

Beats the @#%$ out of trying to edit the Windows registry.

The absurdity of trying to compare a modern UNIX work-alike to a somewhat brain-damaged knockoff of CP/M (Straight-up CP/M-80, not even MP/M, CP/M-86, Concurrent CP/M, etc.) hardly changed from 1980 has of course already been pointed out. (Given sufficient reward) your average human could probably memorize the complete workings of plus a hex dump of the KIM-1's onboard machine-language monitor (it fits in two 1K ROMs and contains code destined for a CPU with effectively one general-purpose register, how hard could it be?), by the same logic that makes it a far superior system to MS-DOS.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

The only cards of which I am aware that have DA-15 and RJ45 connectors on board are NuBus Futura Video Cards with the 10baseT Daughtercard's RJ-45 connector on board. Even more confusing would be the ThinNet Connector on that DaughterCard NIC for the Futuras.

Is this on Macs/NuBus or at large?

Both actually. Apparently I neglected to add the DA-15 with "screw the cable down" type connection in that instance. ThickNet/ThinNet and 10bT are commonly found together on NICs of every stripe.

Heaven only knows what Sun and the rest of the UNIX Workstation crowd did in that market. Were expansion slots ever so dear as in the Mac world? Other platforms always seemed to have a slew of the freakin' things available.

The Futura VidCard/NIC DaughterCard combo saved a precious slot in the under-equipped majority of Macs.

Newborn babies come into the world knowing this stuff, right?

Newborn babes and new mommies have instincts about what goes where and what to do with the dang thing, but operating a teat efficiently, from either end, is definitely learned behavior. If'n that ain't intuitive, N_U_T_H_I_N' having ANYTHING to do with computers is intuitive.

 

[bigmessowires]

Newborn babes and new mommies have instincts about what goes where and what to do with the dang thing, but operating a teat efficiently, from either end, is definitely learned behavior. If'n that ain't intuitive, N_U_T_H_I_N' having ANYTHING to do with computers is intuitive.

I'm nominating this for best 68kmla analogy of 2013!

 

[ianj]

Heaven only knows what Sun and the rest of the UNIX Workstation crowd did in that market. Were expansion slots ever so dear as in the Mac world? Other platforms always seemed to have a slew of the freakin' things available

How many expansions slots you get varies widely depending on the model, but ethernet cards were generally not something Unix workstation users had to worry about.

 

[techfury90]

ethernet cards were generally not something Unix workstation users had to worry about.

Nope, because it was already built into the motherboard.

 

[onlyonemac]

Is yours the very small system seen here: http://www.retrocomputing.net/parts/c/compaq/prolinea%203_25zs/PROLINEA3_25ZS.jpg or is it in one of the larger enclosures, seen here?

It is the same is the smaller linked picture.

The machine also had a network card which, oddly enough, had a game port on it as well (although I was unable to make that work with my joystick as the drivers were only for Windows 95, not 3.1).

That is not a gameport, it is AUI.

Oh and stop trying to plug game controllers into the second port on that network card -- it's an AUI or ethernet transceiver port, not a game port. Unfortunately several different things used that same connector at the time, but basically the reason it exists is that there was a time in the bad old days when nobody could decide what the best way to set up a network was.

I hope I haven't broken anything :-/ ...

Don't worry about it, EVERYONE makes one of two mistakes about DA-15 D-Shell connectors on old computers. In their standard "screw the cable down" form they"re usually Game Ports on PCs and Video Ports on Macs. If there's no place to "screw the cable down" then you look for the lug/shroud around the DA/15 where the ThickNet cable clamps onto the DA-15 with Flat Head Machine Screws holding that and the backplane plate onto the card where there would more commonly be Male/Female extensions (round or hex) for "screw the cable down" connections holding only the backplane plate to the card.

I was wondering why the port had the strangest (and non-functional) screw-holes that I had ever seen!

 

[markyb86]

Gameport controllers/joysticks don't supply their own power, so you're fine OOM. That wouldn't have broken anything.

 

[genie_mac]

I still wouldn't connect a joystick to an AUI port, some pins will still be shorted (if you press the fire buttons) or be connected through a varying resistance (depending on the position of the stick that would be the same as shorting out the pins) so probably not a good idea.

OOM do you have some kind of a AUI transceiver you could test the port with?

 

[onlyonemac]

I'm more concerned about the joystick, not the AUI port.

The ethernet port's still working, so that's fine.

P.S. This was posted from a Compaq Prolinea 3/25zs running Windows 3.1 and Internet Explorer 5 . It took me a good 10 minutes to post, though.

Speaking of which, why is it so slow? It's not like I'm trying to dial up through a 2400 bps modem; I'm using a 100 Mbps ethernet connection. Perhaps the ethernet card's a bit slow, eh?

 

[IPalindromeI]

If it's ISA, it's MASSIVELY bottlenecked by that. If it's that old to include AUI, it's probably an 10 card anyways.

Windows 3.1 is slow, let alone IE5 on that. If it's just a 486, that's not helping either.

 

[commodorejohn]

Additionally, while I'm not sure how much Javascript there is on this forum (I'm sure I'll find out, once I get my Performa 631CD online,) modern JS tends to be a huge boat-anchor for older computers when using a browser that supports Javascript but doesn't have a whitelist.

 

[Cory5412]

Also, if it's a Prolinea 3/25z, it would be a 386 at 25MHz, unless the badge had been swapped and it's actually a 486. (as I mentioned, I had a 4/66, but there was also the 4/33. Compaq business computer naming was pretty predictable at the time.)

 

[commodorejohn]

Additionally, while I'm not sure how much Javascript there is on this forum (I'm sure I'll find out, once I get my Performa 631CD online,) modern JS tends to be a huge boat-anchor for older computers when using a browser that supports Javascript but doesn't have a whitelist.

For the record, the answer is "not that much, really." I did have to turn Javascript off, but it was on account of Netscape 3 barfing out JS "syntax errors" at me (presumably on account of modern language extensions? I dunno.) Performance-wise, it was fine and is finer - though redraw is a bit juddery.

Currently posting from OS8

 

[Gorgonops]

Also, if it's a Prolinea 3/25z, it would be a 386 at 25MHz

Actually it's a 386SX at 25mhz.

If the OP really can't understand why this thing would be so slow browsing the web period, let alone browsing a site that uses scripts, well... I guess I can't say any more without sounding really mean. This thing is a "contemporary" of something like an LC475 only in the rough chronological sense. It's at *least* four times slower.

 

[Cory5412]

That's a pretty interesting article. I hadn't thought about homes buying Prolineas, but I suppose I don't see why not. I tended to see pallets of them at recyclers and used computer places in the very early 2000s when my family lived near Seattle, so I had presumed they were bought by the hundred or so by institutions. (At a time when PC management and hardware based remote management of corporate desktops was not yet really a thing, even Presarios may have been fine.)

 

[onlyonemac]

Additionally, while I'm not sure how much Javascript there is on this forum (I'm sure I'll find out, once I get my Performa 631CD online,) modern JS tends to be a huge boat-anchor for older computers when using a browser that supports Javascript but doesn't have a whitelist.

I have found that... that's why I disabled Javascript .
But it was still incredibly slow, even with javascript and images turned off.

I think I'll stick to coding rather |) .

 

[onlyonemac]

Windows 3.1 has recently been giving some trouble. The issue seems to be more or less completely random.

Sometimes what happens is that when I type "win" at the DOS prompt I get the splash screen and then usually one of three things happens:

• The machine reboots (the most common)
  
• I get returned to the DOS prompt, usually followed by a freeze after typing a few characters
  
• The splash screen never goes away and I have to power cycle the machine to reboot (the machine has frozen)

If I run "win /b", it seems to indicate that user.exe is causing the problem; it says "LoadStart = user.exe", but there's no "LoadSuccess = user.exe" (but there's no "LoadFail" either, for that matter).

Sometimes Windows loads fine first time, other times it can take me up to 15 minutes and about 5 tries before it works. The problem seems to be getting progressively worse, although that might just be my imagination.

Please help.

Thanks,

onlyonemac

 

[commodorejohn]

Did you change the hardware configuration? Windows pre-95 is really finicky about hardware; you pretty much have to uninstall anything you're replacing before you remove it and install the new piece.