[Info-vax] OT: book from George Dyson.

[John Wallace]

On Apr 11, 9:16 am, Paul Sture <p... at sture.ch> wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:21:38 -0700, Rich Jordan wrote:
> > On Apr 10, 12:10 pm, brendan welch <w1... at uml.edu> wrote:
>
> >> It is not exactly the same thing, but I used the screen of an early 6
> >> Mhz IBM PC, as the memory to generate a pretty large list of prime
> >> numbers.  For programming convenience, I just let it run overnight,
> >> using some easy-to-learn DOS-type instructions.
>
> >>http://www.setileague.org/articles/primes/index.html if you are
> >> masochistic.
>
> > Good thing you had the turbocharged 6MHz model, not the base original
> > 4.77 MHz or it would have taken weeks...
>
> LOL! Anyone remember the Turbo Button on early 1990s PCs?
>
> You switched Turbo off when a DOS program couldn't cope with the speed of
> the CPU. :-)
>
> --
> Paul Sture

I don't have to remember the Turbo button, there's a system with one a
few feet away from me at work. Not everything can be virtualised under
a HYPErvisor, and when support for products needs to be provided for
more than a couple of decades, sometimes old hardware (and software)
hangs around for quite a while. [But please don't ask what happens if
it breaks]