[OT] Karl Rove's confusion about capacity of NSA's Utah data center.

[jim bell]

Subject: Re: [OT] Karl Rove's confusion about capacity of NSA's Utah data center.
  


On 05/26/2015 02:57 AM, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
>> Whoa! 16k! That's -twice- what my CoCo (Tandy color computer for all
>> yous whippasnappas) 
>Trashy80s had more than 8K didn't they? My Coco3 came with 128 (I
>upgraded to 512 but never got around to the hard drive kit nor did I
>ever get the thing run 9600 baud using OS9 l2 with hacked kernel and
>RS232pak.)
TRS-80 (Model 1) came with either 4 kilobytes or 16 kilobytes of DRAM, and ran a Z-80 at 1.77 MHz.   Eventually, they included an optional expansion bay that could bring the capacity up to (I think) 48 kilobytes.
Old trivia story:  My father (Samuel Bell) bought such a TRS-80 Model 1 in (I think) in 1977.  Probably eventually filled it with 48 K.  Around 1983, he wrote a program to generate a machining tape to machine an aluminum blade (about 18 inch long) that was itself a very small model of what would eventually become a far larger (probably around 20 feet long) blade for a fan for a cooling tower.  He did this for his company: The company he worked for was Marley. http://spxcooling.com/ The blade worked great; I still have one, 32 years after it was made, and 3 years after he died.  
>From the "no good deed goes unpunished" department:  Little known to my father, or his boss, or his boss' boss, the highest-ups at Marley had been advocating the purchase of a $100K computer for this specific task.  That computer was claimed, by those people, as being the minimum necessary to generate the machining tape that would be required.  Naturally, when it was discovered that my father had done the task with a $1,000 1977 computer, feathers were ruffled and great embarassment ensued.  Consequently, my father, his boss, and his boss' boss got fired, for inflicting embarrassment on those who wanted to spend $100,000 on this oh-so-important task.  He should have sued them, but my father was not a litigious person.        Jim Bell




  
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