Viewing profile — philpem

Given the push to AI/Copilot from MS I'd be impressed if they still did any testing.

Makes me wonder if the output is starting to get back into the training input and we're seeing the first signs of model collapse.

That fits with my experience. I used Claude Code to put together a pretty complex CRUD app and it worked quite well. I prompted it to write the code for the analysis worker, and it…

Or more cynically they reach their level of competence, go one level further and stay there to keep them from ruining the productivity of the people doing the work...

Confirmation emails are great for this. "I was wondering if you could go over the details of the resolution we discussed on DATE? I'm giving it consideration and just want to make …

Source: I was there. Person who handled this is a friend of mine. They weren't milking it for attention. At EMF - at least early on - they were deliberately downplaying it to avoid…

MGR was a later one - it could run (slowly) with an unmodified machine but really needed a VIDPAL to be used best. VIDPAL was a replacement PAL which enabled user-mode access to th…

Ah, that's neat - it'd be nice to have it for SCO or Interactive Unix on x86. Especially Interactive, as that's the one I have to try and fix (Y2K20 issues).

And probably the only real at-scale deployment of the Western Electric 32000 (Bellmac 32) processor. Sadly that chip wasn't very popular. As LeoPanthera said above, Bell's exchange…

It's really a shame how little of that software has survived. I think I have a complete Foundation Set disk set, some others I wrote from ImageDisk images, and that's about it. UNI…

The VM support was the killer feature. The 3B1 has a hardware (discrete logic!) MMU, a custom designed thing completely unlike the Motorola 68451. It's an odd beast and took a lot …

Nice setup! I have a 7300 and a 3B1 (7300 is single half-height hard drives, 3B1 is two HH or one full-height). One has a Combo Card (RAM and serial) and a Floppy Tape card, I can'…

> thought this was an emulator to run (original) AT&T Unix applications on a PC Technically it is, if you mean System V for MC68k :)

Ah, you had a DOS-73 expansion card?

The machine itself was made by Convergent Technologies. It's similar to the MiniFrame - and possibly also the MightyFrame. AT&T rebranded it, and there were two versions: the 7300 …

OP was talking about the boxes, I was saying why would you throw good boxes away?

To clarify, I'm talking about the boxes. As in why throw good boxes away. Actionpackers are tough little brutes, and much sturdier than cardboard.

I had no idea who this guy was but did a web search to fill myself in and all this turned up ... https://lists.vcfed.org/pipermail/vcf-midatlantic/2019-Decem... Allegedly he'd quit…

Depends how many FTP sites it's mirrored on.

Seems like we could have both.

If they're still useful, why throw them away?

The maximum useful resolution you can really get out of offset-printed magazines is around 200dpi. Scanners have been able to do 400dpi for many years, and have been stuck at the 1…

Whether something is a collectable depends on whether someone (ideally several someones) is willing to take it or pay for it ... apparently in this case, they weren't. Comparing a …

I can't imagine VCF wouldn't have done that - it's standard practice. But they've also not said their side of this (nor would I expect them to when they'd have been setting up for …

Sounds like a great way to get yourself on a watchlist, too. Or banned from other things.