whm1974 wrote:Just wondering, but is there anyone still using CP/M on i8080/Z80 machines in 2017? Apple II systems with a Z80 card counts as well.
Well, you can still buy Z-80 chips; someone must be using 'em for something!
Personal computing discussed
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whm1974 wrote:Just wondering, but is there anyone still using CP/M on i8080/Z80 machines in 2017? Apple II systems with a Z80 card counts as well.
just brew it! wrote:whm1974 wrote:Just wondering, but is there anyone still using CP/M on i8080/Z80 machines in 2017? Apple II systems with a Z80 card counts as well.
Well, you can still buy Z-80 chips; someone must be using 'em for something!
synthtel2 wrote:Aren't TI-83/84/+ calculators Z-80-based? Academia still manages to move plenty of those.
Arvald wrote:Aranarth wrote:I was in a manufacturing plant and there was a huge IBM tower in the middle of a room with 200+ cables running to it.
I asked if it was a minicomputer cause it looked OLD.
Was told it was not a computer but a PLC! (programmable logic controller)
It had 48kb of "ram" in the form of programmable registers and this in turn controlled conveyor belts etc on the manufacturing floor.
I think the machine was built in the late 1950's.
PLCs are much smaller now but still tend to have low ram compared to a PC.
K-L-Waster wrote:Out of curiosity, is that a newly-developed upgrade, or has it actually taken that long for the certifications and approvals to trickle through?
Aranarth wrote:Registers are not really ram either.
Aranarth wrote:I'm at GE Aviation, anyone who gets a MAC because it is supposedly is "better" shoots themselves in the foot.
There is VERY limited support for MAC.
Aranarth wrote:IOS on the other hand is very nice except they have no clue about not screwing things up. We use mobileiron and 3-4 times a year we get warning not to update to latest version of ios because it breaks mobileiron. Often ios breaks it the SAME WAY ios did the last 3 times and we have to again wait for a new version of ios. This l;eads me to beleive the issue is on Apple's side not mobileiron.
whm1974 wrote:Just wondering, but is there anyone still using CP/M on i8080/Z80 machines in 2017? Apple II systems with a Z80 card counts as well.
bthylafh wrote:spiketheaardvark wrote:I loath those hasp keys. Only place I've seen them is to protect software whose only purpose is to run $100k+ scientific equipment. What good is it to pirate the software that I can't use without the machine? University pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a machine and yearly service contract at 5-10% the cost of the machine and they get all stingy with the software to run the thing.
Probably to deter people who'd balk at paying four to five figures to upgrade to a newer version of the software and would go the yo-ho-ho route instead. Scientific instrument s/w is insanely expensive even without a support contract.
spiketheaardvark wrote:Along that line of thought... HP Chemstation for chromatography. I heard interesting stories about the software for the HP-4500 ICP-MS that was written by a team of Japanese programmers for Hewlett Packard (now Agilent). Its in effect Chemstation for plasma instruments and actually I liked it the best compared to the other plasma vendors I've used (e.g. Thermo Jarrel Ash, Leeman Labs, Perkin Elmer).bthylafh wrote:spiketheaardvark wrote:I loath those hasp keys. Only place I've seen them is to protect software whose only purpose is to run $100k+ scientific equipment. What good is it to pirate the software that I can't use without the machine? University pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a machine and yearly service contract at 5-10% the cost of the machine and they get all stingy with the software to run the thing.
Probably to deter people who'd balk at paying four to five figures to upgrade to a newer version of the software and would go the yo-ho-ho route instead. Scientific instrument s/w is insanely expensive even without a support contract.
I wish they had newer versions. Most of our software is . . . quirky . . . at best.
Glorious wrote:Yeah, and if you really want to get a feel for what programming one of those things is like, check out this "game" http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/
Glorious wrote:
Yeah, and if you really want to get a feel for what programming one of those things is like, check out this "game" http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/
Aranarth wrote:I have programmed PLC's just not in a production environment.
I found relatively simple.
Only had 16 channels though.
Glorious wrote:I had every HMI in the maintenance area open
Ryu Connor wrote:Glorious wrote:Yeah, and if you really want to get a feel for what programming one of those things is like, check out this "game" http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/
I'm actually pondering buying that after watching some videos of it. I feel like a masochist saying this, but that seems fun.
Glorious wrote:Aranarth wrote:Registers are not really ram either.
Yeah, and if you really want to get a feel for what programming one of those things is like, check out this "game" http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/
the wrote:Glorious wrote:Aranarth wrote:Registers are not really ram either.
Yeah, and if you really want to get a feel for what programming one of those things is like, check out this "game" http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/
My tin foil hat is saying that that 'game' is actually some one's real world problem that they packaged into a game for other's to solve for them. This was ultimately the cheaper business solution than hiring real veteran assembler programmers for that platform.
Of course I didn't say this, my tin foil hat did.
mattshwink wrote:Not as old as some of the stuff on this thread, but in the last month two of our development teams escalated two separate issues that they couldn't connect to SMB shares through their custom java code. The problem was their libraries (in both instances) only supported SMB v1. One effort was a new effort (upgrading an old legacy client-server app into a web app) and the other was I think an upgrade to a current app (not completely) new. I had to point out to them that it SMB v1 was an almost 30 year old protocol and V2 and V3 were 11 and 6 years old. I told them we would not be supporting SMB v1 and would not turn it on, even though it is possible.
whm1974 wrote:Hey if it get kids to learn how code in assembly and do it well, so what? I wish something like this was around when I was a kid.
just brew it! wrote:Haven't really kept up with it, but I imagine SMB V1 has a lot of potential security vulnerabilities?
Going off on a tangent, you'd be surprised how much RS-232 serial is still used behind the scenes. A lot of modern devices still have hidden RS-232 functionality on an internal connector (or at least PCB pads) even if they don't have an external connector, for engineering/diagnostic purposes. Many modern motherboards still have an internal COM port header as well (can be brought out to the rear panel with a passive expansion slot bracket), even though the DB-9 serial connector has generally been absent from the ATX port cluster for a decade or so. (Some legacy RS-232 devices still work better with a native COM port than they do with a USB serial dongle; I imagine the internal header is there to cater to these edge cases.)
mattshwink wrote:As for serial I know Our network guys still sometimes connect via serial to the switches because it is sometimes the only way. Just on Friday I was working with a user that had been escalated to me as here machine was getting replaced and moved to Windows 10. The guys had never seen the connection her label printer used (parallel or serial!) which her old tower had. Her new Surface Pro dock did not have those connections. I told her those connections were old and that all we could do was give her a new label printer that supported USB (she was happy with that).
just brew it! wrote:whm1974 wrote:Hey if it get kids to learn how code in assembly and do it well, so what? I wish something like this was around when I was a kid.
I still believe that all software developers should be taught assembly language at some point, even though few will ever need to use it directly IRL. IMO understanding what happens "under the hood" potentially makes you a better developer, even if you're coding in a higher level language.
whm1974 wrote:just brew it! wrote:whm1974 wrote:Hey if it get kids to learn how code in assembly and do it well, so what? I wish something like this was around when I was a kid.
I still believe that all software developers should be taught assembly language at some point, even though few will ever need to use it directly IRL. IMO understanding what happens "under the hood" potentially makes you a better developer, even if you're coding in a higher level language.
How much is assembly language used these days in PC programming? It's my understanding that the majority of coding is done in C/C++. While to my knowledge, with 8-bit machines at least, during the 80's it was assembly and some form of BASIC.
notfred wrote:I'm a C programmer, but I still need to know enough assembly to work out exactly what has gone wrong when I get a crash in from the customers. Modern C compilers with the optimiser on really do some strange things with the code and working out exactly which bit went wrong is not always obvious, looking at the assembly helps.
notfred wrote:Even if you spend all day in C, you stigcc's ll need to be aware of some very low-level processor hardware concepts e.g. on ARM the lack of cache coherency and the weakly ordered memory model in comparison to x86.
chuckula wrote:it's actually kind of hard to find ISO images that are small enough to fit on a CD these days].