Happy Memorial Day weekend - with a hearty thanks to all the freeware Usenet server admins & clients around the world!

On Mon, 25 May 2020 18:01:30 -0400, Big Al wrote:

On 5/25/20 4:48 PM, this is what Carl Kaufmann wrote:
Big Al wrote:
On 5/25/20 1:15 PM, this is what Arlen Holder wrote:
Thank you all, for providing what we all love & enjoy, which allows us to
anonymously communicate, as best we can, on the Internet, via Usenet!

My off-the-cuff history with Usenet... (please add your experiences so
that, as always, all benefit from your every action on the Internet).

I think my communication history started with running a BBS in my house.* I belonged to a Commodore 64 club and was running some packaged
BBS software with 2 Commodore's hard drives and a 14.4k Modem.

It was a lot of fun and provided that conversation between people. Granted most liked to trade files/programs, but there were a fair # of
messages etc.

After a while being a self taught programmer I learned the 8086 machine code, and converted the basic BBS software to my own version of a
BBS in machine code.** Took me a while to get that Punter protocol working.* (written by Steve Punter I think in Canada).

It was only possible to write after I got a Commodore 128 computer and a 8086 compiler for it.* That sure hooked me into writing code and
tinkering in computers.

Later one of the guys in the club who worked for the county school system invited us over to his Internet lab to see this crazy new
Netscape and internet.** "Hey you could talk to people in Australia", and "files could be anywhere in the world, you didn't know where".
It was a far cry from people calling my BBS that had to be within a local phone call to people and files all over the world at my reach. I
just never thought it would go so far as it has today.

Al

I think you're misremembering some details. C64 had a 6502. C128 had that + Z80. Original IBM PC was 8086. Admittedly that was a long time ago.

Well I never said my memory wasn't fading a bit, but you're so right, 6502, a much smaller list of commands and easier to grasp than 808*.

Al

Actually, the C64 used the MOS 6510 rather than the 6502, but differences
between the two were minimal.

In article
Char Jackson wrote:

On Mon, 25 May 2020 18:01:30 -0400, Big Al wrote:

On 5/25/20 4:48 PM, this is what Carl Kaufmann wrote:
Big Al wrote:
On 5/25/20 1:15 PM, this is what Arlen Holder wrote:
Thank you all, for providing what we all love & enjoy, which allows us to
anonymously communicate, as best we can, on the Internet, via Usenet!

My off-the-cuff history with Usenet... (please add your experiences so
that, as always, all benefit from your every action on the Internet).

I think my communication history started with running a BBS in my house. I belonged to a Commodore 64 club and was running some packaged
BBS software with 2 Commodore's hard drives and a 14.4k Modem.

It was a lot of fun and provided that conversation between people. Granted most liked to trade files/programs, but there were a fair # of
messages etc.

After a while being a self taught programmer I learned the 8086 machine code, and converted the basic BBS software to my own version of a
BBS in machine code. Took me a while to get that Punter protocol working. (written by Steve Punter I think in Canada).

It was only possible to write after I got a Commodore 128 computer and a 8086 compiler for it. That sure hooked me into writing code and
tinkering in computers.

Later one of the guys in the club who worked for the county school system invited us over to his Internet lab to see this crazy new
Netscape and internet. "Hey you could talk to people in Australia", and "files could be anywhere in the world, you didn't know where".
It was a far cry from people calling my BBS that had to be within a local phone call to people and files all over the world at my reach. I
just never thought it would go so far as it has today.

Al

I think you're misremembering some details. C64 had a 6502. C128 had that + Z80. Original IBM PC was 8086. Admittedly that was a long time ago.

Well I never said my memory wasn't fading a bit, but you're so right, 6502, a much smaller list of commands and easier to grasp than 808*.

Al

Actually, the C64 used the MOS 6510 rather than the 6502, but differences
between the two were minimal.

On 5/25/2020 1:49 PM, Carl Kaufmann wrote:
Big Al wrote:
On 5/25/20 1:15 PM, this is what Arlen Holder wrote:
Thank you all, for providing what we all love & enjoy, which allows
us to
anonymously communicate, as best we can, on the Internet, via Usenet!

My off-the-cuff history with Usenet... (please add your experiences so
that, as always, all benefit from your every action on the Internet).

I think my communication history started with running a BBS in my
house.Â* I belonged to a Commodore 64 club and was running some
packaged BBS software with 2 Commodore's hard drives and a 14.4k Modem.

It was a lot of fun and provided that conversation between people.
Granted most liked to trade files/programs, but there were a fair #
of messages etc.

After a while being a self taught programmer I learned the 8086
machine code, and converted the basic BBS software to my own version
of a BBS in machine code.Â*Â* Took me a while to get that Punter
protocol working.Â* (written by Steve Punter I think in Canada).

It was only possible to write after I got a Commodore 128 computer
and a 8086 compiler for it.Â* That sure hooked me into writing code
and tinkering in computers.

Later one of the guys in the club who worked for the county school
system invited us over to his Internet lab to see this crazy new
Netscape and internet.Â*Â* "Hey you could talk to people in Australia",
and "files could be anywhere in the world, you didn't know where".
It was a far cry from people calling my BBS that had to be within a
local phone call to people and files all over the world at my reach.
I just never thought it would go so far as it has today.

Al

I think you're misremembering some details. C64 had a 6502. C128 had
that + Z80. Original IBM PC was 8086. Admittedly that was a long time
ago.


No, the original IBM PC had an 8088.

--
Ken

Ken Blake schreef op Di 26 Mei 2020 om 07:47:
On 5/25/2020 1:49 PM, Carl Kaufmann wrote:
Big Al wrote:
On 5/25/20 1:15 PM, this is what Arlen Holder wrote:
Thank you all, for providing what we all love & enjoy, which allows
us to
anonymously communicate, as best we can, on the Internet, via Usenet!

My off-the-cuff history with Usenet... (please add your experiences so
that, as always, all benefit from your every action on the Internet).

I think my communication history started with running a BBS in my
house.Â* I belonged to a Commodore 64 club and was running some
packaged BBS software with 2 Commodore's hard drives and a 14.4k Modem.

It was a lot of fun and provided that conversation between people.
Granted most liked to trade files/programs, but there were a fair #
of messages etc.

After a while being a self taught programmer I learned the 8086
machine code, and converted the basic BBS software to my own version
of a BBS in machine code.Â*Â* Took me a while to get that Punter
protocol working.Â* (written by Steve Punter I think in Canada).

It was only possible to write after I got a Commodore 128 computer
and a 8086 compiler for it.Â* That sure hooked me into writing code
and tinkering in computers.

Later one of the guys in the club who worked for the county school
system invited us over to his Internet lab to see this crazy new
Netscape and internet.Â*Â* "Hey you could talk to people in Australia",
and "files could be anywhere in the world, you didn't know where".
It was a far cry from people calling my BBS that had to be within a
local phone call to people and files all over the world at my reach.
I just never thought it would go so far as it has today.

Al

I think you're misremembering some details. C64 had a 6502. C128 had
that + Z80. Original IBM PC was 8086. Admittedly that was a long time
ago.


No, the original IBM PC had an 8088.


I have him, the IBM PC with a 10 MB Winchester.
Original, except the keyboard.

--
\ / http://nieuwsgroepen.tk
-------------///----------------------------------
/ \ Bye, BugHunter

On 5/26/2020 7:54 AM, BugHunter wrote:
Ken Blake schreef op Di 26 Mei 2020 om 07:47:
On 5/25/2020 1:49 PM, Carl Kaufmann wrote:
Big Al wrote:
On 5/25/20 1:15 PM, this is what Arlen Holder wrote:
Thank you all, for providing what we all love & enjoy, which allows
us to
anonymously communicate, as best we can, on the Internet, via Usenet!

My off-the-cuff history with Usenet... (please add your experiences so
that, as always, all benefit from your every action on the Internet).

I think my communication history started with running a BBS in my
house.Â* I belonged to a Commodore 64 club and was running some
packaged BBS software with 2 Commodore's hard drives and a 14.4k Modem.

It was a lot of fun and provided that conversation between people.
Granted most liked to trade files/programs, but there were a fair #
of messages etc.

After a while being a self taught programmer I learned the 8086
machine code, and converted the basic BBS software to my own version
of a BBS in machine code.Â*Â* Took me a while to get that Punter
protocol working.Â* (written by Steve Punter I think in Canada).

It was only possible to write after I got a Commodore 128 computer
and a 8086 compiler for it.Â* That sure hooked me into writing code
and tinkering in computers.

Later one of the guys in the club who worked for the county school
system invited us over to his Internet lab to see this crazy new
Netscape and internet.Â*Â* "Hey you could talk to people in Australia",
and "files could be anywhere in the world, you didn't know where".
It was a far cry from people calling my BBS that had to be within a
local phone call to people and files all over the world at my reach.
I just never thought it would go so far as it has today.

Al

I think you're misremembering some details. C64 had a 6502. C128 had
that + Z80. Original IBM PC was 8086. Admittedly that was a long time
ago.


No, the original IBM PC had an 8088.


I have him, the IBM PC with a 10 MB Winchester.
Original, except the keyboard.



No, the original IBM PC did not have a 10 MB Winchester. It had one or
two floppy drives.


--
Ken

Ken Blake schreef op Di 26 Mei 2020 om 08:09:
On 5/26/2020 7:54 AM, BugHunter wrote:
Ken Blake schreef op Di 26 Mei 2020 om 07:47:
On 5/25/2020 1:49 PM, Carl Kaufmann wrote:
Big Al wrote:
On 5/25/20 1:15 PM, this is what Arlen Holder wrote:
Thank you all, for providing what we all love & enjoy, which allows
us to
anonymously communicate, as best we can, on the Internet, via Usenet!

My off-the-cuff history with Usenet... (please add your experiences so
that, as always, all benefit from your every action on the Internet).

I think my communication history started with running a BBS in my
house.Â* I belonged to a Commodore 64 club and was running some
packaged BBS software with 2 Commodore's hard drives and a 14.4k Modem.

It was a lot of fun and provided that conversation between people.
Granted most liked to trade files/programs, but there were a fair #
of messages etc.

After a while being a self taught programmer I learned the 8086
machine code, and converted the basic BBS software to my own version
of a BBS in machine code.Â*Â* Took me a while to get that Punter
protocol working.Â* (written by Steve Punter I think in Canada).

It was only possible to write after I got a Commodore 128 computer
and a 8086 compiler for it.Â* That sure hooked me into writing code
and tinkering in computers.

Later one of the guys in the club who worked for the county school
system invited us over to his Internet lab to see this crazy new
Netscape and internet.Â*Â* "Hey you could talk to people in Australia",
and "files could be anywhere in the world, you didn't know where".
It was a far cry from people calling my BBS that had to be within a
local phone call to people and files all over the world at my reach.
I just never thought it would go so far as it has today.

Al

I think you're misremembering some details. C64 had a 6502. C128 had
that + Z80. Original IBM PC was 8086. Admittedly that was a long time
ago.


No, the original IBM PC had an 8088.


I have him, the IBM PC with a 10 MB Winchester.
Original, except the keyboard.



No, the original IBM PC did not have a 10 MB Winchester. It had one or
two floppy drives.


That's correct, the HD is at a later time build in
and I am glad with it.

--
\ / http://nieuwsgroepen.tk
-------------///----------------------------------
/ \ Bye, BugHunter

On Tue, 26 May 2020 11:09:55 -0400, Ken Blake wrote:

No, the original IBM PC did not have a 10 MB Winchester. It had one or
two floppy drives.

The first one I had at work (don't remember now if it was 1980, or 1981), had
an 8088 cpu, 16KB ram, and two 160KB floppy drives. The drives were replaced
with 180KB drives after a couple of months. Next one had an 8086 cpu with
64KB ram, one 360KB floppy and the 10MB HD, and a cga monitor as well as the
monochrome one.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

--
Change to for
email replies.

Stefan Claas wrote:
Before Al Gore 'invented' the Internet
we had such fine (global) services like CompuServe etc.

My first communication online was an Atari ST equipped w/ its TOS on an
eprom, 1 meg of ram, a 3.5" floppy for anything you needed to save, no
hdd, a Motorola 68000 cpu, and a 1200 baud dialup modem (I think), later
my modem got faster.

The service was GEnie, which by daytime was providing mainframe services
to commercial interests, but during 'non-prime time' (6pm-6am) was
available for $6/h to regular citizen subscribers.

The forum for me was the ST Roundtables and sysops were able to get
their service free. The telecom program was called Flash and it could
run macros which enabled one to quickly auto dialup connect login
capture messages into the capture buffer and logoff in a very short
time. Then the messages captured were 'addressed' or commented on in
that same capture buffer and Flash's macros were again activated to auto
dialup logon and post the composed msg/s into the appropriate forum of
the discussion and disconnect.

Those short bursts of usages didn't actually cost very much at 10 cents
a min; it was all text based and 1 meg of ram was plenty to run the
graphical OS on the hi-rez B&W monitor 640 × 400 w/ some subset of that
ram dedicated to the capture buffer.

There were also local dialup BBS, but there wasn't as much going on
there as GEnie. I had some transient contact w/ CompuServe but for the
Atari folks, GEnie was where it was at. 1985 onward some.

Atari also had a graphical word processor and printouts were done w/ dot
matrix.

--
Mike Easter

On 5/25/20 3:48 PM, Carl Kaufmann wrote:

[snip]

I think you're misremembering some details. C64 had a 6502. C128 had
that + Z80. Original IBM PC was 8086. Admittedly that was a long time ago.

The C62 had a 6510. Essentially a 6502 with a few changes, mostly an
on-chip I/O port (6 bits implemented).

C128 had 8510 was the high speed (2MHz) version of the 6510, and a Z80.

Original IBM PC had a 8088 - a 16-bit CPU with 8-bit multiplexed address
bus. IIRC the 4.77MHz clock was chosen because it was easily divided
down to clock the RS232 interfaces.

--
"A friend is someone you'd spend an hour with if you had a day to live,
not an hour to kill."

On 5/25/20 8:34 PM, Char Jackson wrote:

[snip]

Actually, the C64 used the MOS 6510 rather than the 6502, but differences
between the two were minimal.

The only one I remember is the 6510's on-chip I/O port. Data register at
address 0 (only bits 0-5 actually connected), and Data Direction
Register ad address 1. These 2 addresses weren't affected by the memory
management on the C64. 3 of these bits controlled memory paging and the
other 3 went to the cassette interface.

The "high speed" 8510 in the C128 had one more bit (6), which went to
the keyboard.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"If the Bible is telling the truth, then God is either untruthful or
incompetent. If God is truthful, then the Bible is either untruthful or
erroneous." [Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian]

On 5/26/20 9:47 AM, Ken Blake wrote:

[snip]

I think you're misremembering some details. C64 had a 6502. C128 had
that + Z80. Original IBM PC was 8086. Admittedly that was a long time
ago.


No, the original IBM PC had an 8088.

I remember a few clones with 8086 but IBM used 8088.

These are both very similar 16-bit processors, but the 8088 multiplexes
the data lines on 8 physical bits.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"If the Bible is telling the truth, then God is either untruthful or
incompetent. If God is truthful, then the Bible is either untruthful or
erroneous." [Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian]

In article
"David W. Hodgins" wrote:

On Tue, 26 May 2020 11:09:55 -0400, Ken Blake wrote:

No, the original IBM PC did not have a 10 MB Winchester. It had one or
two floppy drives.

The first one I had at work (don't remember now if it was 1980, or 1981), had
an 8088 cpu, 16KB ram, and two 160KB floppy drives. The drives were replaced
with 180KB drives after a couple of months. Next one had an 8086 cpu with
64KB ram, one 360KB floppy and the 10MB HD, and a cga monitor as well as the
monochrome one.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

--
Change to for
email replies.

On 5/26/20 9:54 AM, BugHunter wrote:

[snip]

I have him, the IBM PC with a 10 MB Winchester.
Original, except the keyboard.

I had a clone with a NEC v20 processor (80188 compatible) and a 30MB
(non-IDE) hard disk.
b
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"If the Bible is telling the truth, then God is either untruthful or
incompetent. If God is truthful, then the Bible is either untruthful or
erroneous." [Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian]

In article
Mike Easter wrote:

Stefan Claas wrote:
Before Al Gore 'invented' the Internet
we had such fine (global) services like CompuServe etc.

My first communication online was an Atari ST equipped w/ its TOS on an
eprom, 1 meg of ram, a 3.5" floppy for anything you needed to save, no
hdd, a Motorola 68000 cpu, and a 1200 baud dialup modem (I think), later
my modem got faster.

The service was GEnie, which by daytime was providing mainframe services
to commercial interests, but during 'non-prime time' (6pm-6am) was
available for $6/h to regular citizen subscribers.

The forum for me was the ST Roundtables and sysops were able to get
their service free. The telecom program was called Flash and it could
run macros which enabled one to quickly auto dialup connect login
capture messages into the capture buffer and logoff in a very short
time. Then the messages captured were 'addressed' or commented on in
that same capture buffer and Flash's macros were again activated to auto
dialup logon and post the composed msg/s into the appropriate forum of
the discussion and disconnect.

Those short bursts of usages didn't actually cost very much at 10 cents
a min; it was all text based and 1 meg of ram was plenty to run the
graphical OS on the hi-rez B&W monitor 640 × 400 w/ some subset of that
ram dedicated to the capture buffer.

There were also local dialup BBS, but there wasn't as much going on
there as GEnie. I had some transient contact w/ CompuServe but for the
Atari folks, GEnie was where it was at. 1985 onward some.

Atari also had a graphical word processor and printouts were done w/ dot
matrix.

--
Mike Easter

In article
Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 5/25/20 8:34 PM, Char Jackson wrote:

[snip]

Actually, the C64 used the MOS 6510 rather than the 6502, but differences
between the two were minimal.

The only one I remember is the 6510's on-chip I/O port. Data register at
address 0 (only bits 0-5 actually connected), and Data Direction
Register ad address 1. These 2 addresses weren't affected by the memory
management on the C64. 3 of these bits controlled memory paging and the
other 3 went to the cassette interface.

The "high speed" 8510 in the C128 had one more bit (6), which went to
the keyboard.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"If the Bible is telling the truth, then God is either untruthful or
incompetent. If God is truthful, then the Bible is either untruthful or
erroneous." [Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian]