Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

ascii.textfiles.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 153 posts

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#51

Post by ChoHag »

glotchimo wrote: post #46
mindcrime wrote: post #14

This... is fugging amazing. No, seriously. It really is. Those of you who are too young to remember the heyday of Computer Shopper won't get it (probably) but that magazine was ... well, as the article says, practically a "bible" to some of us. There was NOTHING like finding the new issue on the news-stand, buying it, and rushing home to pore over the ads, looking for a sweet new motherboard, some RAM, maybe a Sound…

Whenever asked what period I (a proverbial young person, SWE) would go back to if I had a time machine, I always answer with roughly this period. To be alive during those days to see the development of the shoulders I now stand on would be such a treat, as I’m sure anecdotes like these only scratch the surface of all the stories to be told. That said, if any of you oldheads have links to such things, do share - alway…

[dead]

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#52

Post by lucas_membrane »

_yb2s wrote: post #23
lr4444lr wrote: post #8

Considering the prices adjusted for inflation, and how little computers could do out of the box beyond the business applications they were designed for in that era, it was really quite an expensive hobby to be a hacker!

I can't even wrap my head around some of these prices... One of those pages for "February 1986" has an ad for "diskettes" box of 10 priced between $1195 and $2995. Are these what I think they are, regular floppy disks for almost $300 each? Edit: that must have been a typo, I see prices in the same issue of about $1/disk.

IIRC $300 each was 1 GB zip disks in the middle 1990's.

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#53

Post by pythonb3sss »

noisy_boy wrote: post #15

> debinding When I was in school, there was a binding shop nearby which had a huge machine that looked pretty much like a guillotine, only shallower, that just sliced through thick books like butter. They stuck the book in a vice grip, turned a wheel which brought that beautiful sharp heavy blade down on the hopeless book stuck in the grip below and the paper shavings just blossomed out of the other side as the blade…

> huge machine that looked pretty much like a guillotine

My local binding shop actually still operates one of those.

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#54

Post by fwlr »

textfiles wrote: post #22
noisy_boy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That way you don't shave off 2-page spreads. A very good point

Also, people have already contributed thousands for this project, asking for a cutty-cutty machine is a bit much, especially when I'm really getting good with the heat gun.

If you are okay with cutting the spine off, you don’t need a big hydraulic cutter to do it (even though it is objectively the coolest way). Clamping a straightedge to the book and running a knife along that edge will cut a handful of pages very cleanly, you just run the knife through over and over. A metal ruler and a Stanley knife will do this just fine - heavy pressure on the ruler and light passes with the Stanley knife. (This is what amateur bookbinders do to trim the edges of books they’re binding when they don’t have access to proper guillotines.)

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#55

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

glotchimo wrote: post #46
mindcrime wrote: post #14

This... is fugging amazing. No, seriously. It really is. Those of you who are too young to remember the heyday of Computer Shopper won't get it (probably) but that magazine was ... well, as the article says, practically a "bible" to some of us. There was NOTHING like finding the new issue on the news-stand, buying it, and rushing home to pore over the ads, looking for a sweet new motherboard, some RAM, maybe a Sound…

Whenever asked what period I (a proverbial young person, SWE) would go back to if I had a time machine, I always answer with roughly this period. To be alive during those days to see the development of the shoulders I now stand on would be such a treat, as I’m sure anecdotes like these only scratch the surface of all the stories to be told. That said, if any of you oldheads have links to such things, do share - alway…

I think this book captures a good bit of the spirit

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/984598.Masters_of_Decept...

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#56

Post by lightspot21 »

soupfordummies wrote: post #19
mindcrime wrote: post #14

This... is fugging amazing. No, seriously. It really is. Those of you who are too young to remember the heyday of Computer Shopper won't get it (probably) but that magazine was ... well, as the article says, practically a "bible" to some of us. There was NOTHING like finding the new issue on the news-stand, buying it, and rushing home to pore over the ads, looking for a sweet new motherboard, some RAM, maybe a Sound…

>>” Of course some people would pack a laptop (yes, they existed in the 1990's) in a car, drive out to a convenience store in the middle of nowhere at 2:00 in the morning, and "beige box" off a COCOT (customer owned coin operated telephone) to make those calls. I might have been guilty of doing something like that...” Ohhh man! I was just a few years too late for that but I remember reading and hearing about it. It w…

>Used to roam my neighborhood trying to beige box into junction boxes for the bell of it.

I'd be very surprised if this wasn't accidental given the character of this site, but holy moly is the pun fitting. Congrats.

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#57

Post by reaperman »

textfiles wrote: post #43
reaperman wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any moderately large scale book scanning effort: https://hackaday.com/2012/11/16/google-books-team-open-sourc...

That prototype "only" damages 70% of the pages.

Really? A comment on the page I linked said:

> The presenter mentions that about 40% of books scanned have some kind of problem, either a folded or a torn page, but they’ve done some work on preventing problems.

Even if every page in 40% of books were damaged, that would only be 40% of pages, not all of them. Although your numbers may be incredibly wrong, your steel-manned assumed thesis is valid: with historical artifacts you can only accept a lower % of damaged pages than human-powered scanning would cause.

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#58

Post by pmontra »

mindcrime wrote: post #35
function_seven wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those that don't know, a phone book was often about twice as thick as a Thomas Guide. That should help.

And a Thomas Guide was about as thick as 8 or 9 J.C. Whitney catalogs.

Another set of imperial units unknown to us Europeans? :-) How tick was that, a couple of inches / 5 cm?

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#59

Post by tecleandor »

bane wrote: post #25
CSSer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like this? https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/products/martin-yale-7000e

Probably more like one of these, a hydraulic guillotine cutter. https://youtu.be/RZD0XHp75S4 https://youtu.be/BvLk6-OugIc These will easily take a hand off so most of the machines designed after the mid-80s required the operator to press two buttons as a safety to cut and a pedal to initiate the clamp. The older ones from the 70s just required a push on a pair of foot pedals, or a pedal and a single button -- which w…

Oh, those machines are pretty satisfying to use and watch. In the 00's I did a lot of IT support for print shops (I still hate the RIP server and the Fiery, although I haven't seen one for 20 years) and the guillotines fascinated me.

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#60

Post by dcminter »

UberFly wrote: post #45

There needs to be a nerdy online official saint or knighthood title for people like this.

Sounds like a job for... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_the_Lambda_Calcul...

(Also: completely agree - this stuff is going to be a fabulous resource for future researchers and meanwhile the rest of us reap the benefit by indulging our nostalgia - I'm full of admiration)

Post reply on HN