On Friday 14 February 2020 07:50:01 Richard Owlett wrote: > Youngsters have two foibles: > More is always better. > Glitz for its own sake. > <smile ;> > For perspective: > 1. although only in mid-70's, my parents would be in their 12th > decade. > 2. my father took a M.E. degree rather than E.E. as it gave him > more of what today would be considered a minimal BSEE degree. > 3. my first computers ran on 1 MHz 6502's. 2nd even had 8k ram.
Whereas my first was a cosmac super elf. With 256 bytes of ram. Eventually expanded to 4k of static ram for $400 plus an s-100 backplane. By then I had an interface to Sony 2850 u-matic machines, and a vision of doing a production job with it at the tv station where I was the A.C.E. at the time. For all I know its still being used, that was 1980 and the last time I checked, in '97, it was still used many times a day. In a tv station control room that eons. And in writing that system to make it all fit in 4k of ram, I did something that today would be highly frowned upon, because so much if it was repetitious, I made liberal use of self-modifying code, so the last thing I did was to restore all the locations I had modified to their default values. Solid as a rock, I was at that station for another year, and had added an old burglar alarm battery, a 6 volt pb right across the 5 volt line as a backup, and while I had borrowed forever an audio cart machine and made several tape backups, and we had the usually undependable CA power, I never had to reload it. Do one job, do it right. I needed a clock for frame code, so I wrote one, more accurate that either std frame or drop frame. > On 02/13/2020 09:17 PM, David Wright wrote in another thread: > [ https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2020/02/msg00611.html ] > > > If a device is small, it has to appeal to a mass market. > > *NO*! It's only required that engineering appeal to market. > E.G. In the last year there have been multiple amazing prosthetics for > children and small animals in the news. They were possible due to > advances in 3D printing. Agreed. > > To do that, it has to be packed with features, whether > > or not these are "detrimental" to *your* intended use. > > No! The inclusion of cell modem and WiFi would drive per unit cost of > FCC approval through the roof. Agreed again. Folks have zero clue about the complexity of dealing with the regulatory agencies. > > I was surprised how much of the pinephone's functionality > > could be switched off, once I'd decoded the jargon in > > their specifications (with help). But I don't see how you > > can avoid having to compromise over the inclusion of those > > (redundant to you) functions, particularly in view of the > > extra cost of providing the flexibility to turn them off. > > If not there then *NO* need to turn off. ROFL Chuckle. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable. - Louis D. Brandeis Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
