The Other Side of Midnight - Richard C. Hoagland - Live Chat Thread

[(Sandman) Logan-5]

Beagle Bone?

Beagle Bone Pi
(check out the High Performance Computing thread.     )

[PrairieGhost]

Hoagie with a new computer.... how many braaaps next week?

[starrmtn001]

Beagle Bone Pi
(check out the High Performance Computing thread.     )

Thank you.  I just wanted to make sure I heard "beagle bone" correctly.

Beagle Bone pie?  Hmmm.  Don't think I'd like it. :

[Dyna-X]

That actually wouldn't be very hard to design. CO2 canisters that are commonly used in pellet guns could be used for  thrusters along with a gyro-compass, like is available on Android, for orientation, and an altimeter. A quick one second burst would probably be able to extend the operational time by quite a bit and the canisters wouldn't add much weight at all. 

You get it  Automated Attitude Control & Stabilization. Compressed Nitrogen is the favorite for non-volaitile thrusters. (Attitude and Translational)

[Nobody]

How about you just provide the sales figures for the Altair compared to the Apple II.

The Altair did not need to sell in Apple II numbers in order to be considered "commercially viable."

"Commercially viable" means that it makes the company money, full stop.  I'm afraid you are conflating "hugely popular" with "commercially viable."  Cray, for example, built commercially successful supercomputers, despite the fact that they built very few of them.

[starrmtn001]

Hoagie with a new computer.... how many braaaps next week?

Good question.  Sounds like a drinking game in the works.

[starrmtn001]

Goodnight me Fellow Braaapsters.  Have a wonderful week ahead.

[PrairieGhost]

Knapp time.

[zeebo]

Not the mayhem of last nite, but still fun show tonite - of course it's my kind of topic.

[Dyna-X]

Goodnight me Fellow Braaapsters.  Have a wonderful week ahead.

Night Starr

[Dr. MD MD]

The Altair did not need to sell in Apple II numbers in order to be considered "commercially viable."

"Commercially viable" means that it makes the company money, full stop.  I'm afraid you are conflating "hugely popular" with "commercially viable."  Cray, for example, built commercially successful supercomputers, despite the fact that they built very few of them.

They made a bit of money for a couple years selling their box with no IO only to hobbyists who had the know how to complete it and then went out of business a few years later. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that's no one's definition of commercial viability. Full stop!  : 

Oh yeah and Clive Sinclair sucks! 

[(Sandman) Logan-5]

Thank you.  I just wanted to make sure I heard "beagle bone" correctly.

Beagle Bone pie?  Hmmm.  Don't think I'd like it. :

LOL   
(Beagle Bone and Pi are actually two different micro-boards, but I thought the joke was funny. )


Good company and interesting topic.  Take Care everyone.   

[(Sandman) Logan-5]

One last post before I split.         http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/computers/

[Dr. MD MD]

One last post before I split.         http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/computers/

The world's first portable? 

[Nobody]

They made a bit of money for a couple years selling their box with no IO only to hobbyists who had the know how to complete it and then went out of business a few years later.

MITS did not go out of business.  Rather, they were acquired by Pertec Computer and Ed Roberts (owner of MITS) walked away with $2 million.  Not bad for 1976 and certainly good enough to meet the definition of commercially viable.

I think the Altair would have been a hugely frustrating computer to own with no input/output, not to mention Microsoft would never have gotten off the ground (Altair BASIC was their first product). 

[Dr. MD MD]

MITS did not go out of business.  Rather, they were acquired by Pertec Computer and Ed Roberts (owner of MITS) walked away with $2 million.  Not bad for 1976 and certainly good enough to meet the definition of commercially viable.

I think the Altair would have been a hugely frustrating computer to own with no input/output, not to mention Microsoft would never have gotten off the ground (Altair BASIC was their first product). 

They're an interesting footnote to the whole story, at best. It would be interesting to see how one would go about interacting with it. I'll give you that. 

[PaulAtreides]

lol what was he locked up in the LA County Jail for?

Impersonating a scientist.

[Dyna-X]

what's the oldest satellite still in operation and orbit and how can it last so long?

AMSAT-OSCAR 7 (Launched November 11, 1974)
If you mean the satellite itself - they built most shit to be way more reliable then. My refrigerator was built that year and only recently died. If you mean the satellite's orbit - its above enough of the "microatmosphere" that exists at lower orbits so it doesn't get much resistance. Its about 900 miles up and could be up for hundreds of years - so even its orbit is decaying or falling on the order of several centimeters a day, but that will eventually speed up.

[albrecht]

You get it  Automated Attitude Control & Stabilization. Compressed Nitrogen is the favorite for non-volaitile thrusters. (Attitude and Translational)

I believe those fancy "wine saver" machines use compressed Nitrogen cartridges that looks very much like you used in airgun. Not sure if that is because N2 can compress more or if CO2 would interfere with taste of the wine? (I was wondering when I saw someone using one: I wonder what would happen  if I used one of the cartridges in my old pellet gun I would get more performance or length of use?)

[Juan]

CO2 has oxygen which causes the wine to oxidize.  The whole reason for injecting a gas is to eliminate the oxygen.

[wr250]

CO2 has oxygen which causes the wine to oxidize.  The whole reason for injecting a gas is to eliminate the oxygen.

co2 also forms carbonic acid in water,altering the flavor.

[Dyna-X]

What is unique about these moduar cubesats is that there are all kinds of companies making tested off the shelf systems for them.
http://www.cubesat-propulsion.com/jpl-marco-micro-propulsion-system/

http://www.cubesat-propulsion.com/standard-micro-propulsion-system/

The bad news is he might need to make the leap to 6U size. This is where we get into tradeoffs and balancing out everything for optimal mission design.

[albrecht]

CO2 has oxygen which causes the wine to oxidize.  The whole reason for injecting a gas is to eliminate the oxygen.

My concern is not about wine, though interesting. But would they work in my old pellet guns? Would N2 bring more power or number of shots? What about in an old seltzer bottle- more slapstick face spraying action with N2 canisters than CO2? Thinking more, now, a one-shot flame-thrower contraption? Or would that result in explosion? Hmmm.

[ShayP]

My concern is not about wine, though interesting. But would they work in my old pellet guns? Would N2 bring more power or number of shots? What about in an old seltzer bottle- more slapstick face spraying action with N2 canisters than CO2? Thinking more, now, a one-shot flame-thrower contraption? Or would that result in explosion? Hmmm.

I think CO2 is more dense than Nitrogen.  I don't think Nitrogen would do better as a propellant.  Then again I'm just racking my brain from 1988 to remember some relevant answer to your questions.   

[Dyna-X]

I think CO2 is more dense than Nitrogen.  I don't think Nitrogen would do better as a propellant.  Then again I'm just racking my brain from 1988 to remember some relevant answer to your questions.   

Nitrogen has a higher specific impulse and is inert (doesn't oxidize or contaminate certain kinds of sensors) This is why its more common to space applications.

[ShayP]

Nitrogen has a higher specific impulse and is inert (doesn't oxidize or contaminate certain kinds of sensors) This is why its more common to space applications.

Ahhhh...so it would work in the applications albrecht mentioned?

[Zenman]

Exposed lava tube with collapsed roof, or ancient alien space ship portal?

from r/space

https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/6ftvgo/strange_deep_hole_found_on_mars_south_pole/

[=Schlyder=]

Nitrogen has a higher specific impulse and is inert (doesn't oxidize or contaminate certain kinds of sensors) This is why its more common to space applications.

or Argon could be used.. welders use it, as it is inert, and non oxidizing.

[Nobody]

It would be interesting to see how one would go about interacting with it. I'll give you that. 

Very interesting, to say the least, seeing as how the first peripheral for the Altair wasn't a mouse, a keyboard, or a printer, but a radio. 

It seems a chap by the name of Steve Dompier (proud owner of serial number four) was programming his Altair (which was done in octal by flipping tiny switches on the front panel) and happened to have a radio playing nearby.  When he flipped the "run" switch to execute the program, his radio started emitting tones; these tones were generated by radio frequency interference from the computer caused by the timing loops in the program.  Fascinated, he figured out what tones approximated notes on the musical scale and, after eight hours, had written a program that produced music (or as Dompier put it, "music; of a sort").

To help put this event into perspective, Dompier was doing all this in 1975, a time when there were no pocket-sized computers, no ready-made desktop computers, and relatively few computers of any kind.  If you were a scientist or engineer working from home, you might be lucky enough to have a dumb terminal on your desk allowing you to access a mainframe your employer owned.  Assuming you were one of fortunate few, your employer was not likely to allow you to write programs for fun.  For the most part, if you wanted access to a computer, you had to work for the government or the kind of corporation that was large enough to have the money to buy one.  Needless to say, with computers being so rare (and so expensive), you did what they wanted you to do with it, not what you wanted to do with it.

What I'm getting at is this: 40 years ago, the idea of owning your own computer, to do with as you wished, was a tremendously exciting and compelling one.  What made the Altair so important was that, for the first time ever, anyone who had $400 could send away for a complete kit that would allow them to build their own.  Indeed, enough people were excited by the thought of owning their very own computer to bring MITS' bank account from a negative balance to $250,000 in less than a month.  In 1975, a quarter of a million dollars was serious money and that was income generated by the mere idea of the Altair, shipments of which would not actually begin for some time.

So Steve Dompier not only had a computer of his own, he now had a computer he could program to play music.  For anyone looking on at the time, it must have been like watching Blériot climb into the cockpit to cross the English Channel in 1909.  Needless to say, when he showed up at his local computer club to give a demonstration, the room was very, very quiet.

Through the miracle that is the Internet, you, the reader, are now going to get a chance to sit in that same room and hear what the members of that computer club heard 42 years ago:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EPmWvqZ0Rw

Daisy was, of course, the first piece of computer-generated speech synthesis and it had been played in a demonstration at Bell Labs a decade and a half earlier.  This occasion in 1975 was different: this was someone playing music on their own computer, not a computer someone else owned that could only be accessed in a laboratory.  For the people sitting in that room, their world was changed forever.

And the Altair story did not stop there.  Soon there were third-party companies offering peripherals for the Altair, peripherals that allowed it do things such as:

Take pictures (just like that smartphone in your pocket does today):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Cromemco_Cyclops_Camera_%281976%29_2.jpg

and process video:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a3/Dazzler_-_Cromemco_Color_Graphics_Interface_%281977%29.jpg/800px-Dazzler_-_Cromemco_Color_Graphics_Interface_%281977%29.jpg

Most important of all, the Altair showed the world that there was money to be made, not only in building computers, but also in building devices to plug in to those computers those allow them to do the things that private individuals (not governments, not corporations) wanted them to do.

It goes without saying that Apple Computer made considerable contributions to the personal computer industry and I did not write any of this to make light of those contributions   Rather, I wrote this in aid of pointing out that Apple Computer was riding a wave that was started by the Altair, that's all.

They're an interesting footnote to the whole story, at best.

It's true that, despite my best efforts so far, "footnote" might still seem appropriate to anyone in 2017 who wants to sum up the Altair's contribution to personal computing in a single word.

However, when I mention that Steve Dompier's demonstration took place at the third meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club, that the first meeting of the HCC was convened to demonstrate a working prototype of the Altair, and that Steve Wozniak is on record as saying he found that first meeting of the HCC so moving it inspired him to build the Apple I*, perhaps it is possible that a different word entirely might suggest itself to anyone looking to describe the Altair and the impact it had on the world of 1975 that helped to make the world of 2017 possible.

(Maybe; I hope so.) 



*iWoz p. 150: "After my first meeting, I started designing the computer that would later be known as the Apple I. It was that inspiring."

[Nobody]

Take DD's EM drive, put it in a cubesat, and send it into orbit.  Ok, sounds cool, but, um... why?

One of the hazards of listening to Hoagland is that, just when you think he's finally going to start making sense for a change...he goes completely off the rails.

Between Hoagland's utterly absurd suggestion of putting an Accutron in orbit (what the?  ) and the guest "like"-ing and "you know"-ing his way through the entire 3-hour interview, I was about a half-step away from kidnapping nuns or something. 

I did have fun conjecturing how much any fundraising effort with Hoagland's name on it could hope to raise at this point in time (five dollars?  ten?).  To hear Hoagland's pie-in-the-sky talk about how much money he could "easily" raise, he seems to think that people can't wait to throw money at him.  :

(I expect anyone still wondering whether Hoagland is delusional or not stopped wondering after that broadcast.)