Old Computers Come and Gone-Before Microsoft Invasion

Old Computers Come and Gone

Before Microsoft Invasion

1. Commodore PET, VIC, 64, 128

Started in 1977 and wound up in 1994

Guy switched to Atari, killing the project

I cut my teeth in 1988 with Commodore 128

 

 

2. Apple

IIe, Next, Mac, iMac

Never heard of them in Ceylon

I tried an Apple Globe discarded from Japan.

With minimum RAM but needed 6 or 7 CDs to boot Red Hat (Yellow hat) version.

Later booted with 2 Debian CDs and discarded before leaving Ceylon.

It was pain to operate it. 

 

 

3. Tandy

TRS-80, 1000

I have seen a few in Unite kingdom but never tried it.

 

 

4. IBM PC (51XX) 

 

My first computer was assembled Intel Commuter and not a branded one.

128MB ? 3-DDR RAM

4MB Video RAM

2 GB Dusk Drive upgraded to 80GB

Two CD/DVD Drives

It is still in Ceylon

 

It won't boot even Ubuntu 6 version

My branded computers were second hand IBM discarded from America or Canada in Alpha Computers in Kandy

 

I had 15 of IBM Intel Network at home.

Discarded 13 of them leaving two for testing Linux distributions.

Did not give any of them even to test.

Power consumption was enormous. 

This was the 32 bit time

 

Discarded all of them after I assembled a new PC with SATA drives.

Moved to 64 bit computers

It is in running condition in Ceylon but gathering dust.

 

The IBM Server was in my office room with 128 RAM and I could never find another IBM RAM to upgrade it and discarded.

The server

The telecom did not have routers but a Modem

I went Singapore and bought a router to connect all the 15 computers at home with 7 levels.

Ethernet wiring was done by me having climbed to the the roof.

I was supervising the Samba Network in the Faculty of Dental Sciences and I trained a guy in wiring and he was sent to the Engineering Faculty.

I measured the lengths and connections needed and got the PC Land guys in Kandy to fix the end point Ethernet plugs.

The wiring was expensive and I did not want them to be bent and destroy (I removed them before coming to Australia) the tiny coppers wires inside. They were put inside pipes used to run electric wires and were not exposed to e3lements.

5. DEC  

PDP and VAX

6. Atari

800, ST

I had an Atari 800 in 1994

 

 

7. Acorn /BBC

Not interested in

 

 

8, Sinclair

ZX80, ZX81, 1000, 1500

 

 

9.TI00 /4ATI

10. AMSTRAD

 

 British Origin was very big and was never interested in.

 

 

11. SGI / Gray

Onyx

12. Healthkit

 

 

13. ALTOS

MITS and ALTAIR 8800

14. SILICON GRAPHICS

15. NUC

I am currently on a Mini Computer

Why Sansoni Commission Forgotten?

JVP only talk about Udulagama Commission but carefully ignored the Sansoni Commission which some politicians burned to hide the facts.

 

Also President Premadasa Commission was published 12 years after his death

 

These commissions did not bring meaningful correction to our polity excet pardoning ones who were involved.

Some others were killed in extrajudicial actions

Batalanda commission comes under these extrajudicial actions.

 

Under British Before Independence
    Colebrooke–Cameron Commission

    Donoughmore Commission

    Soulbury Commission

Under Sirimavo 

Criminal Justice Commission in 1972 to investigate J.V.P

Criminal Justice Commission to investigate Exchange Frauds in 1975.

Commission to Inquire into Bribery in the State Council of Ceylon
  

1. Victor Ivan

2. Jayadeva Uyangoda

3. Gamanayake

4. Rohana Wijeweera and several others were charged

Under JRJ 

Both were repealed in 1977.

Amnesty were granted to almost all. 

Prevention of Terrorism (PTA) Act in 1979

1977 anti-Tamil pogrom

 

Under MR

Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission

Under MS

Presidential Commission of Inquiry on the Easter Attacks

Elementary OS

 17-04-2019

Elementary OS
Concept of Elementary OS is elementary.

It has a small footprint to start with but it can expand to one's needs.

Its look is something like Mac Os with square windows, is eye-catching but nevertheless still foreign to one who comes from Gnome and KDE base with minimal clutter (with work spaces that keep individual process one not currently working out of sight).
 
Having said that its commercial entry and approach, I welcome, since Linux guys also needs bread and butter (or rice and curry) for survival.

Its packages are $1 to $3 dollars are withing everyone’s reach and for $100 dollars one can have 25 to 30 packages of ones liking.

It has large repertoire of FREE packages, I do not need any of the fancy stuff, since I use Debian as my workhorse.

Peppermint by the way, I am losing interest due to its bulkiness and slow speed of booting.

I keep an eye on PinguyOs but it has some teething problem with Grub File.

None of them supports UnetBootIn except AVLinux.
 
So don’t be a distro-hopper but have multiple distributions installed on an external turntable hard drive (preferably not SSD, that has problems with multiple booting).

If you are using SSD better try, MultiSystem CD for booting multiple distributions on a USB pendrive.

Currently UnetBootIn support only one distribution (good old days multiple distributions on a stick) at a time.
 
Debian does not support the MultiSystem, which is  a French System but UnetBootIn does the honours with Debian (I put Debian 9.8.0 on a stick since I hate humming Disk Drive in the background when running).
 
Thanks the guys and girls doing the wonderful stuff for Linux.
 
Please do not let UnetBootIn go into extinction.

Eelementary OS

 Yes, the releases of Elementary OS are named after mythological gods and goddesses. Some examples include:

 Jupiter: The first stable version of Elementary OS, released on March 31, 2011

Luna: The first beta version of Elementary OS, released in November 2012
 

Hera: A major update to Elementary OS that focused on improving performance and user experience
 

Jólnir: A minor update to Elementary OS that built on the foundation of OS 6 Odin 

Odin: The name of one of the releases of Elementary OS
Horus: The codename of the latest version of Elementary OS
Circe: The codename of the upcoming version of Elementary OS

Elementary OS is a Linux distribution that is based on Ubuntu. It uses a custom desktop environment called Pantheon. 

The platform is open source and is built on a foundation of free and open source software

ElementaryOS

17-04-2019

Concept of Elementary OS is elementary.

It has a small footprint to start with but it can expand to one's needs.

Its look is something like MacOS with square windows, is eye-catching but nevertheless still foreign to one who comes from Gnome and KDE base with minimal clutter (with work spaces that keep individual process one that currently not in use, working out of sight).

 

Having said that its commercial entry and approach, I welcome, since Linux guys also needs bread and butter (or rice and curry) for survival. I have a different view with ELive Linux which is a pest in Linux.

Its packages are $1 to $3 dollars are within everyone’s reach and for $100 dollars one can have 25 to 30 packages of one's liking.

It has large repertoire of FREE packages, I do not need any of the fancy stuff, since I use Debian as my workhorse.

Peppermint by the way, I am losing interest due to its bulkiness and slow speed of booting.

I keep an eye on PinguyOs but it has some teething problem with Grub File.

None of them supports UnetBootIn except AVLinux.

 

So don’t be a distro-hopper but have multiple distributions installed on an external turntable hard drive (preferably not SSD, that has problems with multiple booting).

If you are using SSD better try, MultiSystem CD for booting multiple distributions on a USB pen or drive.

Currently UnetBootIn support only one distribution (good old days multiple distributions on a stick) at a time.

 

Debian does not support the MultiSystem, which is a French System but UnetBootIn does the honours with Debian (I put Debian 9.8.0 on a stick since I hate humming Disk Drive in the background when installing).

 

Thanks the guys and girls doing the wonderful stuff for Linux.

 

Please do not let UnetBootIn go into extinction.

 

ArcoLinux

 ArcoLinux

ArcoLinux has both XFCE and Plasma images and both of them are elegant when run on Box Utiltiy.

I manged to get a copy of Elementary OS by accident and it freezed on Box Utility.

It has its own desktop type named after a God named Pantheon

Commodore 64 and 128

Commodore 128 was the first cartridge computer I used well before Atari. I was about to leave England for good and was packing things home. One of the big stores (may be now defunct Australian Woolworth) dumped a Commodore for 1/4 the price. I disregarded both Sinclair and Amstrad and bought it. It had a cassette player running along with it on which I could write small programs. Unfortunately, with in six months due to Voltage Problem in Ceylon the transformer (power supply) packed up and my coding exercise abruptly stopped, since I could not find a replacement. 

I thought I got a Sinclair instead.

It started in 1974 with MOS technology.

Then copyright issues with Motorola and KIM-1 chip was born.

It was called 6502.

Commodore PET was born which looked like Apple II.

1977

Apple II

Commodore PET

TRS-80

DOS operating system.

4K RAM and Static RAM.

Not Dynamic or DRAM.

IK RAM for the operating system and 3K for the User. 

One has to use a cassette drive to store data.

1979

Disk Drive came in.

No Graphic mode.

Black and white characters.

No sounds.

Later designed Keyboard had many graphic characters.

Later model upgraded the RAM to 96K and included speaker.

Larger screen and green characters.

It had lot of simple games.

Commodore VIC 20

Started in 1977.

Released in 1980.

6560 Chip.

Called Video Interphase chip.

Added the Commodore key to the keyboard.

DIN port was added.

Game Joysticks were added.

Could use 8 to 16 colours.

No Graphic yet and graphic need more memory and one has to overcome this problem by using test characters as figures. 

Ingenuity in thinking.

RAM expanding Cards were used.

By the time it was discontinued in 1985 it sold 2 million computers.

Had an excellent manual for coding in Microsoft Basic.

Commodore had a digital cassettes drive while others including Apple II used analog audio cassette drives.

Along the line introduced a printer.

A dot matrix printer.

Linus Torvalds and Elon Musk use ViC 20 as kids.

Commodore 64

8563 Chip

64 comes from massive upgrade of R from 8 to 64.

Moore's Law applies here.

All 2 into its power of Binary System.

John Maddock the Linux Global Director is very unhappy with binary system and he wants better chips.

I have discussed it here under Maddog.

64K to begin with doubling VIC 20.

Split the chip to two

VIC II and SID that is Video and Sound Chips.

It has two game Joysticks.

Higher Resolution

Bit Map Graphic

16 colours 

Raster Interrupts

Smooth Scroll option

8 Hardware Sprites 

Cheap DRAM instead of Static RAM.

Kernel is spelled correctly as Kernal.

Only 38 RAM is abaible for programming.

Rest are allocated for the different chips in the motherboard.

6510 Chip was born by getting rid of unused pins in the 6560 Chip.

Had a sophisticated sound chip that lured every gamer at that time in spite of the poor graphic quality.

Problem with commodore was it's software capability.

16 bit computers dominating the market place.

1. Amiga

2. MS DOS

3. Apple 

Commodore had many products including Musical Key Board.

Finally it would up operations in 1994.

Internet compatible with modem but still lacked. Mouse.

Commodore 128

This is the computer I bought at discount price before I left United Kingdom for good. It's power pack busted due to poor Power Supply of Ceylon.

I have up computing until I discovered Linux in year 2000.

In between I used Windows as requirement for work in the Office ( University) but I hated it.

It had 128 RAM.

Design was completely different and bigger but keyboard had problems.

Lead developer went to join Atari the competitor in Taiwan.

It was a nightmare for the middle management.

I am glad I left UK and Commodore in 1988.

I did not have to suffer the consequences for the Commodore Users World Wide.

Just a coincidence and happy accident.

It was useless for video games and that may have been the reason for give away price. For a give who was itching fir computer it was considered a bonus some computer grace.

8080 chip

Z80 chip

CPU/M was the software that ran on these two chips.

However Commodore sold 4 million devices in spite of poor game capability and poor software functionality.

IceWarm Window Manager

IceWarm Window Manager

IceWarm is one of the coolest Window Mangers of all.

It has a small footprint.

When I get bored with Gnome, I run a IceWarm session just to remind me of the good old days when with 4MB Video Ram and 512MB RAM I ran all the Linux Utilities in a huge IBM computer (my first PC) in early 1980s with 2GB Rotating Hard disk.

FireFox and Language Packs

 FireFox and Language Packs

Firefox is also trpped in this Language Tragedy.

It is bloated simply becuase it has to support all the types od languages.

What one can do is , if one is a gnome user, go to Synaptic packge manager and run Firefox and remove all the unessary languages, and it will run quikly.

What I do instead is downlod

Ephiphany (Gnome)

Falkon from old KDE and more imprtantly Dillo and run smoothlessly.

File Managers in Linux

Just let me say in my Search for Linux for My book "Linux Essentials", I  have tried three ARCH derivatives and one I actually installed. In fact, there are three in my under 4GB USB Sticks, ready to be mounted at any moment. I do not like Virtual instances except for Puppy Linux which one can to mount and try any application within them.

What I hate most is "Elive Linux" which cheats money of its users.

No different to "Elementary OS "which has out out another alpha recently.

For the umpteenth time they got my email to post its image in one hour and failed.

If you have money either buy, PopOS (System 76) or Tuxedo (Tuxedo System) Linux with their Linux hardware.

There is another Site I think it is called "Star Labs "which sells laptops with various Linux desktops installed and a Mini PC.StarFighter

The "StarFighter' is an exquisitely crafted, Linux-exclusive laptop that sets a new standard for privacy and performance. With its groundbreaking technology and sleek design, the StarFighter is the ultimate choice for discerning users who demand the very best.

Coming to File Managers;

File Managers in Linux

There are lot of file Managers is Linux.

Latest I found was 4Pane File Manager.

It is actually is Dual Pane 2Pane File manger. (2x2 = 4).

It is good for redo/undo and archiving files.

It shows the entire tree including hidden files. 

In the good old days I used to look at hidden files and I have forgotten how I did it.

Historically file Managers are 2Paned.

1. Mid Night Commander was one I used, first.

Now they are Desktop Based but can be used in desktops not even intended for.

2. Gnome Files is the good old Nautilus.

3. Thunar is for XFCE4

4. Krusader probably of KDE

5. Dolphin is now the standard for KDE.

6. Nemo is intuitive with web based applications, Cloud Friendly.

It probably comes from Cinnamon or Mint.

7. PCMan but do not confuse with PacMan

It comes from Taiwan with LXDE (light weight desktop)

It looks like it originated from Arch and later ported to Gnome.

It was based on GTK3 and later transformer into QT toolkit.

8. Rox filer is the file manager for AntiX.

AntiX was one of my Linux flame in good old days. 

I haven't used it for a long time after moving to Debian Gnome. 

Mind you now very famous MX Linux is based on it.

My recent encounter came as a result of my recent CRAZE for old Puppy Linux derivatives. 

I have collected about 30 already.

What annoyed me the most was the "Legacy Linux "distribution (please do not use it) developed by a guy who used TeenPup in the past and ported a AntiX distribution on top of Puppy making it huge (3.2GB).

It destroyed my GRUB Loader.

In fact, it eraed it's FAT boot portion with EXT4.

It cannot even maintain a persistent volume.

I should own the blame I tried to install it to one of my spare partition.

It took 3 days for me to recover my NUC.

I did not lose a single data file. 

I am not a one who backup files in the cloud. 

I use another Gnome instance as a backup in the NUC computer system.

If my SATA in NUC goes bust I need to find another SATA, hard to come by, and I left two 1 terabyte SATA in Ceylon with all  my OLD DATA over 25 years and my gut feeling is they probably are gathering dust.