INFO-VAX Mon, 03 Dec 2007 Volume 2007 : Issue 661 Contents: Re: 20+ year old encrypted source code Re: Itanium / Integrity question Re: Itanium / Integrity question Re: Itanium / Integrity question Re: OT: Micro$oft promo for VISTA Re: Singapore Server Rescue Re: Singapore Server Rescue Re: Singapore Server Rescue ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2007 22:49:42 -0500 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= Subject: Re: 20+ year old encrypted source code Message-ID: <47537cd1$0$90276$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> Richard B. Gilbert wrote: > ISTR that some BASIC interpreters allowed you to encrypt the source! It > seemed like a dumb thing to do and I never tried it. . . . I did in the early DOS days. It was a type of protection of the source code in an interpreted context. Arne ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:45:50 -0500 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: Itanium / Integrity question Message-ID: <27285$4753359e$cef8887a$2804@TEKSAVVY.COM> re: Microsoft putting its "signature" on every drive. Does EFI have an ability to hide hardware from an OS ? (eg: wrote some parameters into EFI so that certain devices are not made available to the OS booting from that EFI programme. This way, one could configure EFI for windows to not see any real drives on the system, this way Windows wouldn't try to touch them with its satanic signature. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2007 21:02:16 -0600 From: David J Dachtera Subject: Re: Itanium / Integrity question Message-ID: <475371B8.1D77ED97@spam.comcast.net> "John E. Malmberg" wrote: > > Richard B. Gilbert wrote: > > Michael Unger wrote: > >> > >> What about the problem of Windows writing a "harmless signature" to each > >> disk it is able to recognize? Is this still true for current versions? > > > > I'd forgotten about that little glitch. If Windows still behaves that > > way and, AFAIK Microsoft had no reason to fix it, then it would not be > > possible to include Windows in such a configuration. > > The writing of the "harmless signature" has always been optional. How does one set the "option" to "Never write 'harmless' signature"? David J Dachtera DJE Systems ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2007 03:39:23 GMT From: "John E. Malmberg" Subject: Re: Itanium / Integrity question Message-ID: David J Dachtera wrote: > "John E. Malmberg" wrote: >> Richard B. Gilbert wrote: >>> Michael Unger wrote: >>>> What about the problem of Windows writing a "harmless signature" to each >>>> disk it is able to recognize? Is this still true for current versions? >>> I'd forgotten about that little glitch. If Windows still behaves that >>> way and, AFAIK Microsoft had no reason to fix it, then it would not be >>> possible to include Windows in such a configuration. >> The writing of the "harmless signature" has always been optional. > > How does one set the "option" to "Never write 'harmless' signature"? You do not respond with a yes to the prompt to write the "harmless signature". -John wb8tyw@qsl.network Personal Opinion Only ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2007 21:08:40 -0600 From: David J Dachtera Subject: Re: OT: Micro$oft promo for VISTA Message-ID: <47537338.C9C40870@spam.comcast.net> Larry Kilgallen wrote: > > In article , VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG writes: > > > If I were to have described the web content at the final destination, I > > don't believe that viewing of the video content there would have had the > > same impact. > > How about "shows you a movie", "requires Javascript" or whatever it > is that causes it to be less than generally viewable ? $ SET BROWSER/DEFAULT="Requires Micro$lop Interhose Exploder" D.J.D. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:11:58 GMT From: Roger Ivie Subject: Re: Singapore Server Rescue Message-ID: On 2007-12-02, Michael Kraemer wrote: > If DEC had squeezed it into a single chip > and mass-marketed it in a timely (and non-proprietary) manner, > they might have got away with it for some time. http://simh.trailing-edge.com/semi/t11.html They did market it, but (apparently) not very effectively. > It may have been impressive for the VAX camp, > but it wasn't when compared to the contemporary RISC camp. > A VS4000-90 runs at what, 80+x MHz ? NVAX was no slouch. On the smallish toy benchmarks I was able to come up with (I'm not a serious benchmark person), the NVAX actually performed about as well as faster Alphas. IMHO, the 4000/90's primary problem was poor I/O; if you read the DTJ issue that talks about the 4000/90, you'll find that instead of providing decent I/O, the responsible group did a study proving they didn't need it. In a decent system, I suspect it would surprise you. There were other things that could have been done with the NVAX to make a more capable system. It was possible to make it communicate with the 21064 support chips to drive a PCI; I know because I did it, replacing the 21064 in a low-end Alpha workstation with a small circuit board containing an NVAX, a 16MHz oscillator (for the VAX on-chip clock), a boot ROM, and a couple of minor bits of glue. Never did get it to do anything beyond running enough FORTH to verify it could touch all of the critical address spaces, though. > Look at the other CISC design with tragic fate, the 68K. > Even a dedicated chip maker like Motorola couldn't evolve > it beyond the 50MHz mark. 68K turned into ColdFire, which is running a bit faster than 50MHz. The first generation ColdFire was essentially a 68K with a list of instructions you shouldn't use because they were going away. -- roger ivie rivie@ridgenet.net ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2007 23:23:49 +0100 From: Michael Kraemer Subject: Re: Singapore Server Rescue Message-ID: Roger Ivie schrieb: > NVAX was no slouch. On the smallish toy benchmarks I was able to come up > with (I'm not a serious benchmark person), the NVAX actually performed about > as well as faster Alphas. Well, I have a VS 4000-90A in my museum, its look and feel certainly isn't bad. For a couple of tasks it will be sufficient, however, it appears to be VAX's last hooray, similar to the 68060 in the 68K line. Whenever I get the same programs to run on the VS as well as on my '060 Amiga I might be able to do a comparison :-) > There were other things that could have been done with the NVAX > to make a more capable system. It was possible to make it communicate > with the 21064 support chips to drive a PCI; I know because I did it, > replacing the 21064 in a low-end Alpha workstation with a small circuit > board containing an NVAX, a 16MHz oscillator (for the VAX on-chip > clock), a boot ROM, and a couple of minor bits of glue. Never did get it > to do anything beyond running enough FORTH to verify it could touch all > of the critical address spaces, though. OK, that would have been a "VAX-ready" alpha :-) > 68K turned into ColdFire, which is running a bit faster than 50MHz. The > first generation ColdFire was essentially a 68K with a list of > instructions you shouldn't use because they were going away. I'm aware of that. Coldfire somehow is to 68K what intel did with their x86. But, unfortunately, a couple of years too late to save the architecture at large. AFAIK CF is not binary compatible with the original 68K, just "assembly code compatible", probably a concession to those gazillions of embedded apps coded in 68K assembly language. The first generation of CF chips also lacks FPU and MMU, which limits its usefulness for general purpose computing. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:54:00 -0500 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: Singapore Server Rescue Message-ID: <6f006$47533787$cef8887a$3480@TEKSAVVY.COM> Richard B. Gilbert wrote: > it. DEC designed/built just about everything from scratch while its > competitors used standard designs and components to the maximum possible > extent. With DEC, no two systems used the same case, power supply, > fans, or anything else until very late in the game. By the late 80s, it would have been possible for DEC to build "commodity" machines that were quality/reliable. And once Palmer got in, building competitive alphas was ruled out because he wanted to build PCs and didn't want Alphas to compete against PCs. > HARDWARE. DEC could not even come up with a standard way to attach a > 3-1/2" disk drive to a case. (This was before StorageWorks!) This may stem from the fact that DEC was made of of totally separate departments who didn't really collaborate. To DEC, "competition" was an inside job: departments competing against each other and not aware of what the outside world was. ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2007.661 ************************