Chemical chat: talking bu2lsh1t

Well it was asked for. And thank Crunchie I've got that friday feeling. Unfortunately the week doesn't stop here unless for you it does then it will but for me it stops on Sunday, though the next week starts on Monday so I don't have a clue what's going on there.

Anyway Noxcuz, don't think I'm in your neighbouhood. If you see somebody looking lost then redirect them back to mine will you, it'll probably be me. Found a post yet?

Can't find a flag but will a large towel cunningly camoflaged as a flag do? It may make it easier for you to spot me as I potter past your proximity.

On the subject of bings again... I was recording a CD yesterday and was also recording my own music. When the CD finished recording it did a deffinate 'ta-daaa', that I don't like. Used to have a 386PC that had the perfect starting time from windows to the mouse pointer being available... you could get the whole of:

'See a faded sign at the side of the road saying fifteen miles to the .... love shack!'

That was good, in a slightly annoying way.

First edited by the man halfway up the hill at 09:31 AM

sorry to hear that your week ends on sunday. sometimes i share your troubles....

to your bing: i listened to it. it´s a ding! I am 100% sure.

Well this friday ended earlier than I thought... Managed to sneak out at 2 pm just so I could get home and guard one of those yellow things I was rambling about in another world, another time...
Hasn't happened much yet though, so I took the liberty of getting online (bs - running 24/7 really...) and catch up on what's been going on here. And it seems like this would be a good place to look for lost people, judging by the threads...

I think that towels should be treated with respect. You never know what they have been up to. I once made my own towel. Our teacher forced us. Wonder where that is now? Or where she is...
But if you are really convinced that the towel accepts the fact that it is acting like a flag, then I guess it's OK. And it's always handy to bring your own towel...

I remember those 386 days. And not to talk about when the 486 arrived... Still got one of those around actually...

Recently I found some win3.11 disks that I had shacked away. Seriously considered finding a fairly decent PC (>1GHz) to install it on just for the fun of it. Suppose it would be somewhat faster than the one you mentioned, binky...

And I am sad to say that I would have to agree with M.Hirsch - I think the bing is fake... I hope this doesn't dissapoint you too much binky... Is there some connection between your name and the sound, btw?

Gotta get back to my post...

Tschüss & slainthé mhath

//NoXcuz

Passed down generation to generation, guarded forcibly with a flag and a musket. Though the musket has since had it's firing pin removed on account of regulations, and the flag has decided it wants to be atowel. Or, alternatively it's a name that not many others use and I can register it just about everywhere without worry of it being already used. It's also the first word of an REM song on 'New adventures in HI-FI.' In no way connected to binky software (there is one!).

In search of a more resounding bing. Found a 'erk' which was ammusing for a short while, but it's not a bing...

Convincing a towel that it's a flag is troublesome, they're not ready to drop everything and accept a new way of life.

On the subject of 3.11, I've done that... I had a knackered PC, and the only way to get something onto it was via DOS > 3.11 and eventually I could get the hardware working so I could install the 98 CD from ZIP. Downgrading is the next big thing, that and underclocking. Safely brining a 1ghz machine down to about 500mhz for stability. It'll be all the rage soon.

Hi at last Binky!!
I'm Back!!

I've justupgraded my main machine to a 1gig, so I think I might try dos and win3.11 on that too. Could be a laugh.

Do you think I can find graphics drivers for my geforce 2 mx? or my soundblaster live! Dunno if anyone still supports win 3.11!

Anyway, how are things m8?

Hey, hey, welcome back...

Good question, you could probably get away with a standard SVGA graphics driver and a Soundblaster Pro driver. Then you'd be in downgrading utopia.

Possibly reducing the instruction set may be the next step. With a razor blade you could cut off part of the CPU to make it more like a 80286 or a 68000 processor. May invalidate the warranty though, and will likely not work. Shame you can't plug a Z80A into Slot A.

That's defeating the point a little. I think the original idea was to have a great PC and run it so that the actual effort needed was tiny.

How's the machine then?

Mine at home is still tempramental. Very strange. Considering getting a second machine to do a bit of distribution of applications.

Things with me, slow and not much going on. Can't get the PHP to work on an ISP I signed up with. Could get my own design business up and running soon though.

win9x does not run stable on more than 768Megs. tell us your experience, maybe i switch back (3.11 was soooooo stable and i never had any GPFs on DOS)

hmmm... maybe downgrading will be the next trend, huh?

Yes, and underclocking too. That's the real secret, lowering the voltage going to the CPU so that it's more stable though runs slower.

An example:

imagine driving a porsche at 60mph, and you need to slam on the breaks. A porsche is designed to go at about 177mph so the breaks are designed to stop quickly from that speed. 60mph is nothing to it, so the porsche stops in half the stopping distance in the highway code. Alternatively, a ford fiesta is designed to go 90mph tops, it's breaks are designed to stop it from 90mph so at 60 it's almost testing the breaking power of the car. It needs the full breaking distance, hence it slams into the back of the porsche. An AthalonXP 1.7ghz underclocked to run at 600mhz is the porsche, the duron 600mhz is the fiesta. Which would you rather be running, the one going flat out, or the one on a sunday drive in the country?

So, how low can we go?

How about a 1ghz processor running at 8Mhz? That should be fairly stable

Following your processor/car analogy - what's a Z80A then? One roller skate.....




Win9x doesn't run stable on anything! What are you talking about???

Following the car priciple, a Z80A is a rollerskate without one of those rubber stoppers under the toe. The one's that make you look like you're doing the timewarp, but at least stops you. Unfortunately I don't think you'd get a Z80A to run at 600mhz even if you supplied it direct from Sellafield with no transformers in the way.

I think MS software is sometimes a bit like the old Intercity 125 that GNER runs up to Aberdeen, it has the nuts and bolts to hold it together at a fast speed - and it looks pretty on the outside - but essentially it can't cope and when it doesn't then there's huge waits for fixes and various excuses to be proferred.

Ahhh, the beauties of 8mhz... something to aspire to. I'm hoping to reduce my sound card capabilities to 2 sounds (beep and that crunchy 'oops I've colided with something' sound) and output graphics in just blue and black. Currently I'm looking for a keyboard with grey rubber buttons and am thinking about ditching my mouse. XP is only a few letters from ZX, have we stumbled on something here?
Last edited by the Lord Almighty at a quarter past two

I think we're onto something.....
Microsoft are going to have to pass the windows source code to other companies, so it's not beyond the realms of possibility that we could see.....

Sinclair Windows XPZX

Think about it! It'd be great.
Installation from a standard audio tape player, complete system installation in only 80 attempts over 3 weeks.
Activation would take a while, you'd have to save a code onto a tape, send it off, wait for Sinclair to go bust, get bought out a few times, and then send your tape back with someone else's activation code.

Hmm, thinking about the car analogy again.
Sinclair also made the C5. Maybe Microsoft could make a car.
the X-Car? Good name anyway

Cool, the X-Car... or possibly MS Car-2002 that comes out in 2004, but the bumpers need updating as soon as you buy it cos the plastic is too thin. Then occasionally it crashes for no apparent reason. The rear storage compartment lid flies off now and again, so you have to reboot it (sorry, couldn't resist that one). It only runs MS-4* gas and the garage wont fix it if it's already been fixed twice, or a new model has been released.

I can see the future of motoring there...

Last edited by Bob Cratchet on 03-15-2002 at ten to two

Don't forget that if the air conditioning or radio goes out the whole car stops running until the problem is fixed. But if the garage doesn't fix it it's only because the hood is welded shut so noone can get in there to make any modifications.

Forget aftermarket parts because the design for every part of the car is kept secret at Microsoft headquarters (even the parts that they claim are "open to the public"). There'd be a constant oil leak that would eventually get to the point where it had messed up the engine so bad that you have to yank it out, clean it up, and put it back in (this process is reccommended once a year).