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Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417786 is a reply to message #417735] Wed, 16 November 2022 17:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Leonard Blaisdell

On 2022-11-15, Jason Evans <jsevans@mailfence.com> wrote:

> Let's say you wake up on Christmas Day in 1989 and you can have any
> computer that you want that it available at that time. What do you choose?
> A shiny new 486? The latest Mac? A new Amiga? ...or maybe something more
> exotic?


The latest Mac. I've been nearly all Mac, all the time, since 1985. The
first one I bought was a Powerbook 140 in, I think, 1992. I used a
Mac Plus at work in 1989. I'd opt for a Mac SE on Christmas Day, 1989.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417787 is a reply to message #417773] Wed, 16 November 2022 11:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: songbird

Douglas Miller wrote:
....
> In 1989, I would have chosen a Sequent Symmetry. Nothing too fancy, 2 or 4 '386 procs. Each of their 386's running DYNIX/ptx could run circles around any 386/486 PC. Of course, the power bills would have killed me.

still much better than what a mainframe chewed up. when we
replaced the mainframe the savings in electricity (for running
the computer and also the air conditioning) would eventually
pay for the Sequent.


songbird
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417788 is a reply to message #417735] Wed, 16 November 2022 23:05 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
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Senior Member
On 2022-11-16, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:

> Amazing the Amiga didn't really kick off in the US. From 1985 to may be
> 1988 (which was a "generation" or two back then) it blew everything out
> of the water, especially at that price. Like the IBM PC and its clones. And
> the Macintosh only just got color and couldn't even do preemptive
> multitasking.
>
> Amazing the Amiga didn't really caught on in the US.

Part of that was poor marketing. The president and chairman of the
board, Mehdi Ali and Irving Gould, were pulling down bigger salaries
than their counterparts at IBM, while running the company into the
ground. Stockholder meetings were held in the Bahamas to minimize
the number of pesky shareholders asking embarrassing questions.

The final days were documented in "The Deathbed Video", produced
by the people who made the Amiga go, and got to watch it murdered.
It's hard to watch, but it has its humourous moments - like when
the techs stenciled the names of board members on the speed bumps
in the company parking lot.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417789 is a reply to message #417788] Thu, 17 November 2022 02:01 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Andreas Kohlbach is currently offline  Andreas Kohlbach
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On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 04:05:23 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
> On 2022-11-16, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>
>> Amazing the Amiga didn't really kick off in the US. From 1985 to may be
>> 1988 (which was a "generation" or two back then) it blew everything out
>> of the water, especially at that price. Like the IBM PC and its clones. And
>> the Macintosh only just got color and couldn't even do preemptive
>> multitasking.
>>
>> Amazing the Amiga didn't really caught on in the US.
>
> Part of that was poor marketing. The president and chairman of the
> board, Mehdi Ali and Irving Gould, were pulling down bigger salaries
> than their counterparts at IBM, while running the company into the
> ground. Stockholder meetings were held in the Bahamas to minimize
> the number of pesky shareholders asking embarrassing questions.

I know (Mr. Gould messed up). But why was the Amiga so highly successful
in Europe, but not in the US? Might really just boil down to poor
marketing.

Commodore might just have ran the ads they did in Europe.

> The final days were documented in "The Deathbed Video", produced
> by the people who made the Amiga go, and got to watch it murdered.
> It's hard to watch, but it has its humourous moments - like when
> the techs stenciled the names of board members on the speed bumps
> in the company parking lot.

Yeah, I watched it. That is one of at least two video every Commodore
lover should have watched. The other is Jim Butterfield's Commodore 64
Training Tape from 1983. It runs about two hours
< https://archive.org/details/commodore-64-training-tape-with- jim-butterfield>.
--
Andreas
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417790 is a reply to message #417735] Thu, 17 November 2022 03:18 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: greymaus

On 2022-11-16, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Nov 2022 17:15:38 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:
>>
>> On 2022-11-15, greymaus <greymaus@dmaus.org> wrote:
>>> On 2022-11-15, Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote:
>>>> Nice question. Do you mean the me of the present, or me as i was in
>>>> 1989? On the exotic front, i'd consider the MSX2+
>>>>
>>>> https://www.msx.org/wiki/Panasonic_FS-A1WSX
>>>
>>> That was the one, made by several companies, but with the same OS..Nice
>>> keyboard?.. I have one regret, buying a spectrum instead of a C64.
>>> The Amiga was whole generation ahead of the MSX.
>>
>> I like that the MSX had an open specification.
>>
>> An uncle of a friend used an Amiga for video production in the early
>> 90's. The Amiga was definitely ahead. OTOH, the Amiga and MSX game
>> lists are both about 2,000 games long.
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MSX_games
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amiga_games
>
> Amazing the Amiga didn't really kick off in the US. From 1985 to may be
> 1988 (which was a "generation" or two back then) it blew everything out
> of the water, especially at that price. Like the IBM PC and its clones. And
> the Macintosh only just got color and couldn't even do preemptive
> multitasking.

the amiga was doomed because it was fun.

The IBMPC had the name IBM on it.

>
> Amazing the Amiga didn't really caught on in the US.


--
greymausg@mail.com

Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, I smell the stench of an Influencer.
Where is our money gone, Dude?
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417792 is a reply to message #417785] Thu, 17 November 2022 03:28 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
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On 16 Nov 2022 22:20:10 GMT
greymaus <greymaus@dmaus.org> wrote:

> There was a public event about the internet at about that time, 1994, so
> I brought my son up. He showed no interest. Blackrock Collage, Dublin,
> and the talk was by a man called Andy Mowett, who arrived onstage
> wearing an Army coat and frayed jeans.

How on earth did I miss that ? In 1994 I was living in Blackrock
setting up Internet Eireann as the first low cost dial up IP service in the
country. Our advertising had to explain what the internet was.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417793 is a reply to message #417735] Thu, 17 November 2022 03:19 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
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On Wed, 16 Nov 2022 18:32:52 -0500
Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:

> Printers back that were usually dot matrix and when printing text they

This was the era of the NLQ 24 pin dot matrix displacing the Qume
and Diablo daisy wheel printers for all but the most fussy or well heeled.

> used an installed font for each letter. Today it's more like postscript
> or PDF and all printers probably print graphics even if it's "text".

These days decent printers talk PostScript, PCL and perhaps PDF,
cheap printers take proprietary format images from a driver.

Laserjets and Laserwriters were around since the mid 1980s but they
were expensive especially since PostScript licenses were expensive and the
hardware for a RIP was probably more powerful than the computer generating
the printout. One big win with PostScript was that it was also used on
Linotron so a PostScript printer could be used to produce accurate proofs
of material being sent for printing.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417798 is a reply to message #417773] Thu, 17 November 2022 03:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
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On Wed, 16 Nov 2022 06:39:11 -0800 (PST)
Douglas Miller <durgadas311@gmail.com> wrote:

> In 1989, I would have chosen a Sequent Symmetry. Nothing too fancy, 2 or
> 4 '386 procs. Each of their 386's running DYNIX/ptx could run circles
> around any 386/486 PC. Of course, the power bills would have killed me.

Now that brings back a memory. We benchmarked a big Sequent at BT
around then, it had thirty two 486s each with a full 16MB of RAM, the
competition was the best Sun and HP had to offer (details forgotten,
except we had to downgrade the compiler on the HP because of a C++
compatibility issue - a deprecated keyword had become illegal in the
latest version and we had to support systems where it was mandatory) at the
time and a quarter of an Amdahl mainframe running UTS. There was no clear
winner but there was a clear loser - the Amdahl never completed the build
let alone the tests.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417800 is a reply to message #417792] Thu, 17 November 2022 06:27 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: greymaus

On 2022-11-17, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
> On 16 Nov 2022 22:20:10 GMT
> greymaus <greymaus@dmaus.org> wrote:
>
>> There was a public event about the internet at about that time, 1994, so
>> I brought my son up. He showed no interest. Blackrock Collage, Dublin,
>> and the talk was by a man called Andy Mowett, who arrived onstage
>> wearing an Army coat and frayed jeans.
>
> How on earth did I miss that ? In 1994 I was living in Blackrock
> setting up Internet Eireann as the first low cost dial up IP service in the
> country. Our advertising had to explain what the internet was.
>


We live in far different spheres :)

--
greymausg@mail.com

Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, I smell the stench of an Influencer.
Where is our money gone, Dude?
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417802 is a reply to message #417735] Thu, 17 November 2022 07:26 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Theo Markettos is currently offline  Theo Markettos
Messages: 17
Registered: April 2013
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Junior Member
Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Nov 2022 10:38:50 -0600, D.J. wrote:
>>
>> I received a new Amiga A1000, monitor, and the box the computer came
>> in. The box had some software and a couple of books.
>>
>> Unfortunately the printer, I live in the US, printed the British pound
>> symbol instead of the $ sign. Weird printer... cellophane with wax as
>> the print medium. The printer melted the wax into the standard paper,
>> tracter feed 8.5x11.
>
> What printer?

I was wondering if it might a Tektronix Phaser, before they were bought by
Xerox:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Phaser

ISTR there were some smaller desktop Phaser models.

> Reading some old manuals I came across the Epson RX80 (or FX?). It
> allowed to use different font sets already in the early 1980s. You just
> needed to know *how*.

That was commonly a DIP switch somewhere in the depths of the machine or
maybe on the back - allowed you to swap out certain characters for others
(currency symbol was common, also other Latin1 characters), as well as set
the default font if no control codes were sent.

> Would be lame though if the retailer sold printers in the US set up for
> the UK market.

That does surprise me. Although 'grey imports' were common at that time -
you got the machine cheap due to currency arbitrage because it was intended
for some other country, maybe the distributor had to cut off the mains plug
and replace it with the local one (if any plug was supplied at all), the
manuals might have been in the wrong language, etc. The downside of a grey
import was you didn't get local warranty support from the manufacturer, you
had to send it back to whatever market it came from.

Theo
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417803 is a reply to message #417789] Thu, 17 November 2022 13:37 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
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Senior Member
On 2022-11-17, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 04:05:23 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> On 2022-11-16, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Amazing the Amiga didn't really kick off in the US. From 1985 to may be
>>> 1988 (which was a "generation" or two back then) it blew everything out
>>> of the water, especially at that price. Like the IBM PC and its clones. And
>>> the Macintosh only just got color and couldn't even do preemptive
>>> multitasking.
>>>
>>> Amazing the Amiga didn't really caught on in the US.
>>
>> Part of that was poor marketing. The president and chairman of the
>> board, Mehdi Ali and Irving Gould, were pulling down bigger salaries
>> than their counterparts at IBM, while running the company into the
>> ground. Stockholder meetings were held in the Bahamas to minimize
>> the number of pesky shareholders asking embarrassing questions.
>
> I know (Mr. Gould messed up). But why was the Amiga so highly successful
> in Europe, but not in the US? Might really just boil down to poor
> marketing.

It was indeed poor marketing. The joke at the time was that if
Commodore made sushi, they would market it as "cold dead fish".

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417809 is a reply to message #417803] Thu, 17 November 2022 17:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel
Messages: 3156
Registered: January 2012
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Senior Member
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
> It was indeed poor marketing. The joke at the time was that if
> Commodore made sushi, they would market it as "cold dead fish".

previously posted

Total share: 30 years of personal computer market share figures
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/total-share.ars
and has graph of personal computer sales 1975-1980
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/total-share.ars/3
and graph from 1980 to 1984 ... with the only serious competitor to PC
in number of sales was commodore 64
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/total-share.ars/4
and then from 1984 to 1987 the ibm pc (and clones) starting to
completely swamp
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/total-share.ars/5

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417810 is a reply to message #417735] Thu, 17 November 2022 19:00 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
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Senior Member
Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Nov 2022 20:09:15 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>>
>> I think it was not only the currency symbols, but also some other
>> letters used in Spain.
>
> Which one's you meañ? ;-)

¿¡

--
Pete
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417813 is a reply to message #417790] Fri, 18 November 2022 03:53 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
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Senior Member
On 17 Nov 2022 08:18:39 GMT
greymaus <greymaus@dmaus.org> wrote:

> the amiga was doomed because it was fun.
>
> The IBMPC had the name IBM on it.

Quite so, but alone that would not have killed the Amiga because it
was clunky, slow and expensive - which was fine for IBM's market.

However IBM published every detail of the PC (and AT) and the
market for a cheap IBM workalike was so obvious that it exploded almost
instantly and became brutally competitive. Then the chipsets appeared
making PC and AT clones really easy (and cheap) to make. The 80386
delivered the final nail in the coffin for everything else but by then
there wasn't much left to kill apart from the Apple who took some important
niches and hung on. After the 80386 the PC design started to take over the
data centre starting with minis - which by then were mostly unix boxes. The
BSDs and Linux accelerated that process dramatically (wot no license fee).

Notice that IBM no longer play in the market they created, they've
retreated to their comfort zone of high support mainframes.

This monocultural trend has shown no cracks until recently with the
emergence of ARM from the mobile and low power space into the desktop,
laptop and server world (there are some really impressive 48 core ARM
chips in use - don't ask about price). Even here there is convergence with
PCI-e, SATA, NVMe etc turning up in ARM chips now.

BTW ARM RISC ? Have you seen the size of the ARMv8 instruction set
documentation ? If that's reduced these days please don't show me complex.
High level languages used to be more complex than assemblers, I reckon it's
a toss up between C++ with STL and ARMv8 for complexity - Algol68 got lost
in the dust a long time ago.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417814 is a reply to message #417735] Fri, 18 November 2022 04:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Harry Vaderchi is currently offline  Harry Vaderchi
Messages: 719
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 21:25:02 -0500
Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:

> On 17 Nov 2022 12:26:54 +0000 (GMT), Theo wrote:
>>
>> Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Reading some old manuals I came across the Epson RX80 (or FX?). It
>>> allowed to use different font sets already in the early 1980s. You just
>>> needed to know *how*.
>>
>> That was commonly a DIP switch somewhere in the depths of the machine or
>> maybe on the back - allowed you to swap out certain characters for others
>> (currency symbol was common, also other Latin1 characters), as well as set
>> the default font if no control codes were sent.
>
> I think with the Epson I mentioned you could use ESC-sequences to do some
> magic, like swapping the character set. You could do this in BASIC. Like
>
> PRINT CHR(27) ...

Espon Escape codes; takes me back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESC/P
(but most of the links there are dead; I had hoped to link to a list of
Esc codes)

Dot matrix:
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/17/science/peripherals-getti ng-the-most-out-of-a-dot-matrix-printer.html
(TL;DNR: 1985 Basic printer cost $299, IBM $549)

Almost as much 'fun' as Dialup modem "AT" commands.


--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417815 is a reply to message #417813] Fri, 18 November 2022 05:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Thomas Koenig

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> schrieb:
> On 17 Nov 2022 08:18:39 GMT
> greymaus <greymaus@dmaus.org> wrote:
>
>> the amiga was doomed because it was fun.
>>
>> The IBMPC had the name IBM on it.
>
> Quite so, but alone that would not have killed the Amiga because it
> was clunky, slow and expensive - which was fine for IBM's market.
>
> However IBM published every detail of the PC (and AT) and the
> market for a cheap IBM workalike was so obvious that it exploded almost
> instantly and became brutally competitive. Then the chipsets appeared
> making PC and AT clones really easy (and cheap) to make. The 80386
> delivered the final nail in the coffin for everything else but by then
> there wasn't much left to kill apart from the Apple who took some important
> niches and hung on. After the 80386 the PC design started to take over the
> data centre starting with minis - which by then were mostly unix boxes. The
> BSDs and Linux accelerated that process dramatically (wot no license fee).
>
> Notice that IBM no longer play in the market they created, they've
> retreated to their comfort zone of high support mainframes.

POWER (now styled Power, I believe) isn't a mainframe (not a descendant
of /360), but it is certainly used in datacenters, and is the basis
for the what used to be System i.

[...]

> BTW ARM RISC ? Have you seen the size of the ARMv8 instruction set
> documentation ?

It is on the border of insanity (12000 pages these days?), and
I'm not clear which side.

Nobody ever accused POWER of being small, and the ISA is _far_ smaller.

> If that's reduced these days please don't show me complex.

I understood that RISC meant reduced complexity for each instruction.
At least ARM is still load/store (or is it?)

> High level languages used to be more complex than assemblers, I reckon it's
> a toss up between C++ with STL and ARMv8 for complexity - Algol68 got lost
> in the dust a long time ago.

C++ is also borderline insane. Their module concept is... breathtaking
(why does a macro which is defined before using the module have to
have an effect inside the module? Hello world?)

Listening to a talk about that was one of the weirdest experiences
related to computers that I ever had, especially since the speaker
suggested having the compiler make http queries to an oracle during
compilation to find the placement of modules, to solve the "which
file contains which module" question.

When asked "how does the oracle know", the answer was "not my
department".
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417816 is a reply to message #417813] Fri, 18 November 2022 06:58 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Carlos E.R.

On 2022-11-18 09:53, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On 17 Nov 2022 08:18:39 GMT
> greymaus <greymaus@dmaus.org> wrote:
>
>> the amiga was doomed because it was fun.
>>
>> The IBMPC had the name IBM on it.
>
> Quite so, but alone that would not have killed the Amiga because it
> was clunky, slow and expensive - which was fine for IBM's market.
>
> However IBM published every detail of the PC (and AT) and the
> market for a cheap IBM workalike was so obvious that it exploded almost
> instantly and became brutally competitive. Then the chipsets appeared
> making PC and AT clones really easy (and cheap) to make. The 80386
> delivered the final nail in the coffin for everything else but by then
> there wasn't much left to kill apart from the Apple who took some important
> niches and hung on.

And there was an explosion of software, too.

I bought a PC clone mid 80's because the chaps at the students club at
uni told me that they could provide me with the software I needed, and
everybody, including teachers were using PCs. I would be alone if I got
a Mac, or any other thing. Compatibility was the word.


--
Cheers, Carlos.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417817 is a reply to message #417735] Fri, 18 November 2022 07:03 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Carlos E.R.

On 2022-11-18 03:25, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 17:00:07 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>>
>> Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>> On Wed, 16 Nov 2022 20:09:15 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I think it was not only the currency symbols, but also some other
>>>> letters used in Spain.
>>>
>>> Which one's you meañ? ;-)
>>
>> ¿¡
>
> Ah, I forgot those. That sentences with "!" and questions start with.

Yep. And accented vowels. And ª, used on numbers, like 1º or 1ª. Meaning
"first", female or male. It is the letter 'a' 'o' with an underscore,
upperscript. Similar, but not the same as '°' used on '°C', meaning
"degrees".

It is not a problem if the printer supports unicode, but it seems this
is not universal, or not done on cheap printers.


--
Cheers, Carlos.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417818 is a reply to message #417735] Fri, 18 November 2022 07:06 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Carlos E.R.

On 2022-11-18 03:21, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 08:19:40 +0000, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>> On Wed, 16 Nov 2022 18:32:52 -0500
>> Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Printers back that were usually dot matrix and when printing text they
>>
>> This was the era of the NLQ 24 pin dot matrix displacing the Qume
>> and Diablo daisy wheel printers for all but the most fussy or well heeled.
>
> With a daisy wheel printer you have the same problems of dot matrix
> printers, that some characters are not available without some effort.
>
>>> used an installed font for each letter. Today it's more like postscript
>>> or PDF and all printers probably print graphics even if it's "text".
>>
>> These days decent printers talk PostScript, PCL and perhaps PDF,
>> cheap printers take proprietary format images from a driver.
>>
>> Laserjets and Laserwriters were around since the mid 1980s but they
>> were expensive especially since PostScript licenses were expensive and the
>> hardware for a RIP was probably more powerful than the computer generating
>> the printout. One big win with PostScript was that it was also used on
>> Linotron so a PostScript printer could be used to produce accurate proofs
>> of material being sent for printing.
>
> My saying: Today you don't need to concern yourself with foreign characters.

That's what I thought, but recently I hit that problem in the ticket of
a shop, that had some Spanish letters wrong. I think the printer was
Chinese made. Meaning a Chinese name, too.


--
Cheers, Carlos.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417819 is a reply to message #417817] Fri, 18 November 2022 09:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
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Senior Member
On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 13:03:58 +0100
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

> It is not a problem if the printer supports unicode, but it seems this
> is not universal, or not done on cheap printers.

Even with unicode support I doubt there's a printer around with
*all* the glyphs.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417820 is a reply to message #417816] Fri, 18 November 2022 11:26 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: greymaus

On 2022-11-18, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
> On 2022-11-18 09:53, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>> On 17 Nov 2022 08:18:39 GMT
>> greymaus <greymaus@dmaus.org> wrote:
>>
>>> the amiga was doomed because it was fun.
>>>
>>> The IBMPC had the name IBM on it.
>>
>> Quite so, but alone that would not have killed the Amiga because it
>> was clunky, slow and expensive - which was fine for IBM's market.
>>
>> However IBM published every detail of the PC (and AT) and the
>> market for a cheap IBM workalike was so obvious that it exploded almost
>> instantly and became brutally competitive. Then the chipsets appeared
>> making PC and AT clones really easy (and cheap) to make. The 80386
>> delivered the final nail in the coffin for everything else but by then
>> there wasn't much left to kill apart from the Apple who took some important
>> niches and hung on.
>
> And there was an explosion of software, too.
>
> I bought a PC clone mid 80's because the chaps at the students club at
> uni told me that they could provide me with the software I needed, and
> everybody, including teachers were using PCs. I would be alone if I got
> a Mac, or any other thing. Compatibility was the word.
>
>

From memory, both A500 (amiga) and the early Mac's needed extra memory
to do anything serious. Compared to present computers, their memory
installed memory was tiny. A lot of the present need is bloat, IMHO.


--
greymausg@mail.com

Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, I smell the stench of an Influencer.
Where is our money gone, Dude?
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417822 is a reply to message #417819] Fri, 18 November 2022 12:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Carlos E.R.

On 2022-11-18 15:43, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 13:03:58 +0100
> "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>
>> It is not a problem if the printer supports unicode, but it seems this
>> is not universal, or not done on cheap printers.
>
> Even with unicode support I doubt there's a printer around with
> *all* the glyphs.

That too.

--
Cheers, Carlos.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417823 is a reply to message #417820] Fri, 18 November 2022 12:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Carlos E.R.

On 2022-11-18 17:26, greymaus wrote:
> On 2022-11-18, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2022-11-18 09:53, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>> On 17 Nov 2022 08:18:39 GMT
>>> greymaus <greymaus@dmaus.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> the amiga was doomed because it was fun.
>>>>
>>>> The IBMPC had the name IBM on it.
>>>
>>> Quite so, but alone that would not have killed the Amiga because it
>>> was clunky, slow and expensive - which was fine for IBM's market.
>>>
>>> However IBM published every detail of the PC (and AT) and the
>>> market for a cheap IBM workalike was so obvious that it exploded almost
>>> instantly and became brutally competitive. Then the chipsets appeared
>>> making PC and AT clones really easy (and cheap) to make. The 80386
>>> delivered the final nail in the coffin for everything else but by then
>>> there wasn't much left to kill apart from the Apple who took some important
>>> niches and hung on.
>>
>> And there was an explosion of software, too.
>>
>> I bought a PC clone mid 80's because the chaps at the students club at
>> uni told me that they could provide me with the software I needed, and
>> everybody, including teachers were using PCs. I would be alone if I got
>> a Mac, or any other thing. Compatibility was the word.
>>
>>
>
> From memory, both A500 (amiga) and the early Mac's needed extra memory
> to do anything serious. Compared to present computers, their memory
> installed memory was tiny. A lot of the present need is bloat, IMHO.

Well, that PC had 512 KB. It was in the name: Amstrad PC 1512DD.

--
Cheers, Carlos.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417824 is a reply to message #417813] Fri, 18 November 2022 13:01 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 2022-11-18, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

> However IBM published every detail of the PC (and AT) and the
> market for a cheap IBM workalike was so obvious that it exploded almost
> instantly and became brutally competitive.

IBM realized their error and tried to reverse it with MicroChannel,
but it was too late; as with Pandora, the box had been opened and
couldn't be closed again.

> Notice that IBM no longer play in the market they created,
> they've retreated to their comfort zone of high support mainframes.

They don't like to play in areas they can't control, and they
realized they had lost control of the PC.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417825 is a reply to message #417824] Fri, 18 November 2022 13:47 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Harry Vaderchi is currently offline  Harry Vaderchi
Messages: 719
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 18:01:51 GMT
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:

> On 2022-11-18, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
>
>> However IBM published every detail of the PC (and AT) and the
>> market for a cheap IBM workalike was so obvious that it exploded almost
>> instantly and became brutally competitive.
>
> IBM realized their error and tried to reverse it with MicroChannel,
> but it was too late; as with Pandora, the box had been opened and
> couldn't be closed again.
>
>> Notice that IBM no longer play in the market they created,
>> they've retreated to their comfort zone of high support mainframes.
>
> They don't like to play in areas they can't control, and they
> realized they had lost control of the PC.
>
They also tried with Token Ring to get into the PC networking market;
another fail. (more proprietry h/w and worse of all, slower).

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417827 is a reply to message #417813] Fri, 18 November 2022 15:40 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel
Messages: 3156
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
> However IBM published every detail of the PC (and AT) and the
> market for a cheap IBM workalike was so obvious that it exploded almost
> instantly and became brutally competitive. Then the chipsets appeared
> making PC and AT clones really easy (and cheap) to make. The 80386
> delivered the final nail in the coffin for everything else but by then
> there wasn't much left to kill apart from the Apple who took some important
> niches and hung on. After the 80386 the PC design started to take over the
> data centre starting with minis - which by then were mostly unix boxes. The
> BSDs and Linux accelerated that process dramatically (wot no license fee).

a couple years ago there was analysis of IBM revenue ... mainframe
hardware had dropped to couple percent of revenue ... but the mainframe
group was 25 percent of revenue (and 40% of profit, effectively all
software and services).

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417828 is a reply to message #417823] Fri, 18 November 2022 15:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: greymaus

On 2022-11-18, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
> On 2022-11-18 17:26, greymaus wrote:
>> On 2022-11-18, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>>> On 2022-11-18 09:53, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> On 17 Nov 2022 08:18:39 GMT
>>>> greymaus <greymaus@dmaus.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > the amiga was doomed because it was fun.
>>>> >
>>>> > The IBMPC had the name IBM on it.
>>>>
>>>> Quite so, but alone that would not have killed the Amiga because it
>>>> was clunky, slow and expensive - which was fine for IBM's market.
>>>>
>>>> However IBM published every detail of the PC (and AT) and the
>>>> market for a cheap IBM workalike was so obvious that it exploded almost
>>>> instantly and became brutally competitive. Then the chipsets appeared
>>>> making PC and AT clones really easy (and cheap) to make. The 80386
>>>> delivered the final nail in the coffin for everything else but by then
>>>> there wasn't much left to kill apart from the Apple who took some important
>>>> niches and hung on.
>>>
>>> And there was an explosion of software, too.
>>>
>>> I bought a PC clone mid 80's because the chaps at the students club at
>>> uni told me that they could provide me with the software I needed, and
>>> everybody, including teachers were using PCs. I would be alone if I got
>>> a Mac, or any other thing. Compatibility was the word.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> From memory, both A500 (amiga) and the early Mac's needed extra memory
>> to do anything serious. Compared to present computers, their memory
>> installed memory was tiny. A lot of the present need is bloat, IMHO.
>
> Well, that PC had 512 KB. It was in the name: Amstrad PC 1512DD.
>

I remember an Amstrad, ran Locoscript, an incredible usefull machine. I
saw them in small garages or workshops, covered in dirt, but any one could
use them. CP/M?

--
greymausg@mail.com

Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, I smell the stench of an Influencer.
Where is our money gone, Dude?
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417829 is a reply to message #417828] Fri, 18 November 2022 16:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Carlos E.R.

On 2022-11-18 21:52, greymaus wrote:
> On 2022-11-18, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2022-11-18 17:26, greymaus wrote:
>>> On 2022-11-18, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>>>> On 2022-11-18 09:53, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> > On 17 Nov 2022 08:18:39 GMT
>>>> > greymaus <greymaus@dmaus.org> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >> the amiga was doomed because it was fun.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> The IBMPC had the name IBM on it.
>>>> >
>>>> > Quite so, but alone that would not have killed the Amiga because it
>>>> > was clunky, slow and expensive - which was fine for IBM's market.
>>>> >
>>>> > However IBM published every detail of the PC (and AT) and the
>>>> > market for a cheap IBM workalike was so obvious that it exploded almost
>>>> > instantly and became brutally competitive. Then the chipsets appeared
>>>> > making PC and AT clones really easy (and cheap) to make. The 80386
>>>> > delivered the final nail in the coffin for everything else but by then
>>>> > there wasn't much left to kill apart from the Apple who took some important
>>>> > niches and hung on.
>>>>
>>>> And there was an explosion of software, too.
>>>>
>>>> I bought a PC clone mid 80's because the chaps at the students club at
>>>> uni told me that they could provide me with the software I needed, and
>>>> everybody, including teachers were using PCs. I would be alone if I got
>>>> a Mac, or any other thing. Compatibility was the word.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> From memory, both A500 (amiga) and the early Mac's needed extra memory
>>> to do anything serious. Compared to present computers, their memory
>>> installed memory was tiny. A lot of the present need is bloat, IMHO.
>>
>> Well, that PC had 512 KB. It was in the name: Amstrad PC 1512DD.
>>
>
> I remember an Amstrad, ran Locoscript, an incredible usefull machine. I
> saw them in small garages or workshops, covered in dirt, but any one could
> use them. CP/M?

No, this one had an 8086 (not 8088) and run DOS 3.1 or .2

--
Cheers, Carlos.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417830 is a reply to message #417814] Fri, 18 November 2022 16:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Theo Markettos is currently offline  Theo Markettos
Messages: 17
Registered: April 2013
Karma: 0
Junior Member
Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
> Espon Escape codes; takes me back.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESC/P
> (but most of the links there are dead; I had hoped to link to a list of
> Esc codes)

'Epson FX-80 compatible' was usually advertised.

http://www.lprng.com/RESOURCES/EPSON/epson.htm
suggests it was ESC R and then byte 0 to 12 to set the international charset.

https://files.support.epson.com/pdf/general/escp2ref.pdf
for a 'modern' (1997) list. ESC/P2 was fancier and used on some inkjets,
while ESC/P was for 24 pin dot matrix. That says there's a 9-pin ESC/P,
although the FX-80 isn't listed - possibly it was an earlier subset.

I think the DIP switches typically selected the default charset, and with
the control code you could change it from software.

Theo
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417831 is a reply to message #417830] Fri, 18 November 2022 16:58 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Carlos E.R.

On 2022-11-18 22:52, Theo wrote:
> Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>> Espon Escape codes; takes me back.
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESC/P
>> (but most of the links there are dead; I had hoped to link to a list of
>> Esc codes)
>
> 'Epson FX-80 compatible' was usually advertised.
>
> http://www.lprng.com/RESOURCES/EPSON/epson.htm
> suggests it was ESC R and then byte 0 to 12 to set the international charset.
>
> https://files.support.epson.com/pdf/general/escp2ref.pdf
> for a 'modern' (1997) list. ESC/P2 was fancier and used on some inkjets,
> while ESC/P was for 24 pin dot matrix. That says there's a 9-pin ESC/P,
> although the FX-80 isn't listed - possibly it was an earlier subset.
>
> I think the DIP switches typically selected the default charset, and with
> the control code you could change it from software.

There are pin printers sold and used today, so I suppose they still use
that language. Also thermal printers.

--
Cheers, Carlos.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417832 is a reply to message #417831] Fri, 18 November 2022 20:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
> On 2022-11-18 22:52, Theo wrote:
>> Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>>> Espon Escape codes; takes me back.
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESC/P
>>> (but most of the links there are dead; I had hoped to link to a list of
>>> Esc codes)
>>
>> 'Epson FX-80 compatible' was usually advertised.
>>
>> http://www.lprng.com/RESOURCES/EPSON/epson.htm
>> suggests it was ESC R and then byte 0 to 12 to set the international charset.
>>
>> https://files.support.epson.com/pdf/general/escp2ref.pdf
>> for a 'modern' (1997) list. ESC/P2 was fancier and used on some inkjets,
>> while ESC/P was for 24 pin dot matrix. That says there's a 9-pin ESC/P,
>> although the FX-80 isn't listed - possibly it was an earlier subset.
>>
>> I think the DIP switches typically selected the default charset, and with
>> the control code you could change it from software.
>
> There are pin printers sold and used today, so I suppose they still use
> that language.

I occasionally see them in applications that want carbon-paper copies.
Auto-repair shops seem to be big users.

> Also thermal printers.
>



--
Pete
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417833 is a reply to message #417761] Sat, 19 November 2022 05:56 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charles Richmond is currently offline  Charles Richmond
Messages: 2754
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 11/15/2022 3:43 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
> On 2022-11-15 20:41, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>> On Tue, 15 Nov 2022 20:15:05 +0100
>> "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2022-11-15 19:28, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 15 Nov 2022 17:39:26 GMT
>>
>>>>     We got the 19 inch NCDs - despite the procurement officer
>>>> declaring that we would have them over his dead body - we called our
>>>> fixer and they were delivered to our office the next day *and* he sent
>>>> a memo complaining about the lack of the promised dead body.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I had to google NCD.
>>
>>     I expect they didn't last long past that era.
>
> I saw something similar in 1998, in colour. We also used Windows
> computers with software to work as X terminal, I don't remember the
> name. It's no the tip of my tongue, but doesn't roll.
>
> Memory is the second thing to get lost with age.
>

The three signs of old age are 1) loss of memory... and I cannot recall
the other two... ;-) :-(

--

Charles Richmond


--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
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Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417834 is a reply to message #417817] Sat, 19 November 2022 06:06 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charles Richmond is currently offline  Charles Richmond
Messages: 2754
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 11/18/2022 6:03 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
> On 2022-11-18 03:25, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
>> On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 17:00:07 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>>>
>>> Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 16 Nov 2022 20:09:15 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > I think it was not only the currency symbols, but also some other
>>>> > letters used in Spain.
>>>>
>>>> Which one's you meañ? ;-)
>>>
>>> ¿¡
>>
>> Ah, I forgot those. That sentences with "!" and questions start with.
>
> Yep. And accented vowels. And ª, used on numbers, like 1º or 1ª. Meaning
> "first", female or male. It is the letter 'a' 'o' with an underscore,
> upperscript. Similar, but not the same as '°' used on '°C', meaning
> "degrees".
>
> It is not a problem if the printer supports unicode, but it seems this
> is not universal, or not done on cheap printers.
>
>

Do *not* forget the cedilla (c with a squiggle tail under it) used in
French, Portuguese, etc.

--

Charles Richmond


--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
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Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417838 is a reply to message #417832] Sat, 19 November 2022 06:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Carlos E.R.

On 2022-11-19 02:09, Peter Flass wrote:
> Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2022-11-18 22:52, Theo wrote:
>>> Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>>>> Espon Escape codes; takes me back.
>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESC/P
>>>> (but most of the links there are dead; I had hoped to link to a list of
>>>> Esc codes)
>>>
>>> 'Epson FX-80 compatible' was usually advertised.
>>>
>>> http://www.lprng.com/RESOURCES/EPSON/epson.htm
>>> suggests it was ESC R and then byte 0 to 12 to set the international charset.
>>>
>>> https://files.support.epson.com/pdf/general/escp2ref.pdf
>>> for a 'modern' (1997) list. ESC/P2 was fancier and used on some inkjets,
>>> while ESC/P was for 24 pin dot matrix. That says there's a 9-pin ESC/P,
>>> although the FX-80 isn't listed - possibly it was an earlier subset.
>>>
>>> I think the DIP switches typically selected the default charset, and with
>>> the control code you could change it from software.
>>
>> There are pin printers sold and used today, so I suppose they still use
>> that language.
>
> I occasionally see them in applications that want carbon-paper copies.
> Auto-repair shops seem to be big users.

Some banks, institutions... there are procedures that require carbon copies.


I wonder what cable they use to connect now. The old centronics cable,
or USB? I see cables that convert from both.

>
>> Also thermal printers.
>>
>
>
>

--
Cheers, Carlos.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417840 is a reply to message #417822] Sat, 19 November 2022 06:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 18:50:19 +0100
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

> On 2022-11-18 15:43, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>> On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 13:03:58 +0100
>> "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> It is not a problem if the printer supports unicode, but it seems this
>>> is not universal, or not done on cheap printers.
>>
>> Even with unicode support I doubt there's a printer around with
>> *all* the glyphs.
>
> That too.

So I got curious - I have a test file lurking called UTF-8-demo.txt
so I just threw it to the printer (a Kyocera PostScript laser) with
lpr-cups. Overall not bad but not great - a few missing glyphs in the
maths, the combining characters didn't (bad) and a clean miss on Thai,
Amharic, Runes and Braille.

In vim in a urxvt window it's just missing Amharic and Runes which I
could fix if ICBA to figure out what fonts to install for them.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417841 is a reply to message #417840] Sat, 19 November 2022 07:18 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Carlos E.R.

On 2022-11-19 12:36, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 18:50:19 +0100
> "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 2022-11-18 15:43, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>> On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 13:03:58 +0100
>>> "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> It is not a problem if the printer supports unicode, but it seems this
>>>> is not universal, or not done on cheap printers.
>>>
>>> Even with unicode support I doubt there's a printer around with
>>> *all* the glyphs.
>>
>> That too.
>
> So I got curious - I have a test file lurking called UTF-8-demo.txt
> so I just threw it to the printer (a Kyocera PostScript laser) with
> lpr-cups. Overall not bad but not great - a few missing glyphs in the
> maths, the combining characters didn't (bad) and a clean miss on Thai,
> Amharic, Runes and Braille.

But that's cheating, you are converting text to postscript in the
computer, I understand.

You have to send the text as is to the printer.

>
> In vim in a urxvt window it's just missing Amharic and Runes which I
> could fix if ICBA to figure out what fonts to install for them.





--
Cheers, Carlos.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417842 is a reply to message #417841] Sat, 19 November 2022 08:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Sat, 19 Nov 2022 13:18:02 +0100
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

> On 2022-11-19 12:36, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>> On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 18:50:19 +0100

>> So I got curious - I have a test file lurking called
>> UTF-8-demo.txt so I just threw it to the printer (a Kyocera PostScript
>> laser) with lpr-cups. Overall not bad but not great - a few missing
>> glyphs in the maths, the combining characters didn't (bad) and a clean
>> miss on Thai, Amharic, Runes and Braille.
>
> But that's cheating, you are converting text to postscript in the
> computer, I understand.

This is true.

> You have to send the text as is to the printer.

It doesn't do that, I tried putting the text file onto a USB stick
and plugging it into the printer but the only thing it offered to print was
a PDF left there by the maker of the stick.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417843 is a reply to message #417842] Sat, 19 November 2022 09:02 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Carlos E.R.

On 2022-11-19 14:25, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Nov 2022 13:18:02 +0100
> "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 2022-11-19 12:36, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>> On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 18:50:19 +0100
>
>>> So I got curious - I have a test file lurking called
>>> UTF-8-demo.txt so I just threw it to the printer (a Kyocera PostScript
>>> laser) with lpr-cups. Overall not bad but not great - a few missing
>>> glyphs in the maths, the combining characters didn't (bad) and a clean
>>> miss on Thai, Amharic, Runes and Braille.
>>
>> But that's cheating, you are converting text to postscript in the
>> computer, I understand.
>
> This is true.
>
>> You have to send the text as is to the printer.
>
> It doesn't do that, I tried putting the text file onto a USB stick
> and plugging it into the printer but the only thing it offered to print was
> a PDF left there by the maker of the stick.

Right, not all postscript printers can print raw text directly. I think
it was the original hp laserjet that could, because it was going to be
used from MsDOS.

Maybe I can try mine.

cer@Telcontar:~> cat hello
Hello world
cer@Telcontar:~> lpr -o raw hello
cer@Telcontar:~>

It printed correctly :-)

Where did you get that UTF-8-demo.txt file?
My printer is old (HP CP1515n), I very much doubt it will cope.

--
Cheers, Carlos.
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417844 is a reply to message #417843] Sat, 19 November 2022 09:40 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Sat, 19 Nov 2022 15:02:15 +0100
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

> Where did you get that UTF-8-demo.txt file?

It originated with Markus Kuhn at Cambridge (dated 2002). I'm not
sure now where I found it (some unicode info site possibly belonging to
the consortium), but you can find it here if you want:

http://www.sohara.org/Misc/UTF-8-demo.txt

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: Christmas 1989 [message #417846 is a reply to message #417843] Sat, 19 November 2022 12:30 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
> On 2022-11-19 14:25, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>> On Sat, 19 Nov 2022 13:18:02 +0100
>> "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2022-11-19 12:36, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 18:50:19 +0100
>>
>>>> So I got curious - I have a test file lurking called
>>>> UTF-8-demo.txt so I just threw it to the printer (a Kyocera PostScript
>>>> laser) with lpr-cups. Overall not bad but not great - a few missing
>>>> glyphs in the maths, the combining characters didn't (bad) and a clean
>>>> miss on Thai, Amharic, Runes and Braille.
>>>
>>> But that's cheating, you are converting text to postscript in the
>>> computer, I understand.
>>
>> This is true.
>>
>>> You have to send the text as is to the printer.
>>
>> It doesn't do that, I tried putting the text file onto a USB stick
>> and plugging it into the printer but the only thing it offered to print was
>> a PDF left there by the maker of the stick.
>
> Right, not all postscript printers can print raw text directly. I think
> it was the original hp laserjet that could, because it was going to be
> used from MsDOS.
>
> Maybe I can try mine.
>
> cer@Telcontar:~> cat hello
> Hello world
> cer@Telcontar:~> lpr -o raw hello
> cer@Telcontar:~>
>
> It printed correctly :-)
>
> Where did you get that UTF-8-demo.txt file?
> My printer is old (HP CP1515n), I very much doubt it will cope.
>

I’ve never heard of a printer that couldn’t print a plain text file.

--
Pete
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