Electronics Plus keyboard haul

Redmaus · 16 Mar 2015, 01:15

Why would apple make the button like that? Was there a piece that was supposed to be there before?

Daniel Beardsmore · 16 Mar 2015, 01:45

Motorised eject under software control — that hole is just for emergencies. The disc hadn't quite actuated the insertion detection microswitch, so System Software wasn't seeing it; the disc hadn't mounted and therefore couldn't be ejected. I don't recall why I couldn't use cmd+shift+1 (FKEY 1: force eject from diskette drive 1) or why I couldn't just poke it hard to make it register correctly; I just know that I tried a paperclip and it buckled :P

Redmaus · 16 Mar 2015, 02:46

Daniel Beardsmore wrote: ↑Motorised eject under software control — that hole is just for emergencies. The disc hadn't quite actuated the insertion detection microswitch, so System Software wasn't seeing it; the disc hadn't mounted and therefore couldn't be ejected. I don't recall why I couldn't use cmd+shift+1 (FKEY 1: force eject from diskette drive 1) or why I couldn't just poke it hard to make it register correctly; I just know that I tried a paperclip and it buckled

Wow, I didn't know that there was a switch that makes a paper clip buckle.

Findecanor · 16 Mar 2015, 05:07

Daniel Beardsmore wrote: ↑Motorised eject under software control — that hole is just for emergencies.

Emergencies ... ha! I remember the "Mac pin" was indispensable for the Macs at the local hackerspace/computer borrowing central. There were special-purpose pins at Mac retailers.

XMIT · 16 Mar 2015, 12:02

Yep. Fifteen years ago I'd keep at least two different paper clips of different gauges in my wallet. As you note some floppy drive - namely the Apple auto-inject with a partially inserted disk - was a real bear to actuate. Though, a paper clip strong enough for that would be too fat to press the Reset pin on a Palm Pilot at the time. Thus multiple paperclips! Zip drives and Apple CD-ROM drives also used the clip.

andrewjoy · 16 Mar 2015, 12:55

One thing i do not miss from the move away from optical media is the need to have a paperclip to eject a disk when the draw gets stuck!

Zip drives where a terrible idea nothing but problems with them

Muirium · 16 Mar 2015, 13:01

I regret nothing!

Seriously, the first time I used Wi-Fi (2003 on my PowerBook, yeah I was late) and moved a few MEGABYTES in only a handful of SECONDS without the need to plug or slot anything into my computer…

The future became the present. At last!

mr_a500 · 16 Mar 2015, 13:35

I was thrilled the first time I saw a USB flash drive in 2005. Finally there was a replacement for the damn floppy, decades after it should have died. It was pathetic trying to split files over multiple floppies in the 21st century. (writable CD-ROM was a pain in the ass too)

When I first saw an Apple computer without a floppy eject or CD-ROM eject, I thought, "What the hell?" It might have been OK if the disk always came out, but I had many occasions where it crashed and I couldn't get the damn thing out. Give me a damn button and stop all this paperclip nonsense!

Redmaus · 16 Mar 2015, 13:41

mr_a500 wrote: ↑I was thrilled the first time I saw a USB flash drive in 2005. Finally there was a replacement for the damn floppy, decades after it should have died. It was pathetic trying to split files over multiple floppies in the 21st century. (writable CD-ROM was a pain in the ass too)

When I first saw an Apple computer without a floppy eject or CD-ROM eject, I thought, "What the hell?" It might have been OK if the disk always came out, but I had many occasions where it crashed and I couldn't get the damn thing out. Give me a damn button and stop all this paperclip nonsense!

Being born in 1999, i never had to deal with any of this floppy disk nonsense

mr_a500 · 16 Mar 2015, 13:48

Born in 1999?? Yes, I'm in the future now. I remember when 1999 was the far future... back in the 70's when I was watching Space 1999.

andrewjoy · 16 Mar 2015, 13:51

Child of the 80s myself , i am still impressed how far things have come.

I do miss the more simple times of Arcon's and Amiga's , everyone could understand the whole system and how it worked.

Muirium · 16 Mar 2015, 14:06

I hardly remember 1999. I was quite drunk at the time…

Floppy disks were one of the clearly most broken things of that era. Moore's Law shows up essentially everywhere in computing, yet somehow floppies were stuck at the same size (and with all the same critical flaws) for year after year after year. Those were dark days, all right. Backwards compatibility? Why keep moving forwards!

Writeable CDs were a novelty, but sucked in general use. I tried packet writing on CD-RW back then, but it reeked. Flash drives were indeed the awesome we all required, but they came along late enough that I was already used to doing everything over networks by then.

Floppies are a great example of the danger inside familiarity. Everyone settled on them for so long. But they were almost useless! Bizarre.

seebart · 16 Mar 2015, 14:10

Being born in 1971 I was generally drunk whilst using all kinds of floppy disks!

mr_a500 · 16 Mar 2015, 14:13

Muirium wrote: ↑I hardly remember 1999. I was quite drunk at the time…

Findecanor · 16 Mar 2015, 14:15

"We're gonna party like it's 1999" ...

andrewjoy wrote: ↑I do miss the more simple times of Arcon's and Amiga's , everyone could understand the whole system and how it worked.

If other system vendors wanted to, they could have made it like AmigaOS.
Instead of making things complex under the hood and having a dumbed-down user interface on top, the system was easy to understand because it was well-designed from the start.

The best thing with the AmigaOS, I think was the volume handling. You could use the disk label or the partition address. "Please insert disk ... into any drive". Virtual volumes such as RAM: disk, ENV: etc.

XMIT · 16 Mar 2015, 14:16

Yay! Let's all date ourselves through nostalgia!

I started high school in 1999. A friend at the time swore off all removable media after he lost a term paper to a bad disk. Maybe one day you too will experience the joys of installing System 7.5 for Mac off of 30 or so diskettes. On a Windows system the floppy wasn't just unbearably slow, it also caused everything else to come to a standstill thanks to synchronous IO. Linux didn't have this issue which blew my mind.

For a brief time we thought Compact Flash cards would replace the diskette. It's logical successor was the USB flash stick. We were not far off.

Muirium · 16 Mar 2015, 14:26

Ah, Robin Williams. I've never heard another American so able to reproduce the drunken wonder that is our natural tongue! Most comedians are just doing impressions of each other and we've no idea they're doing us!

By the way: I lost data to cassette tapes, children.

andrewjoy · 16 Mar 2015, 14:28

Muirium wrote: ↑
Floppies are a great example of the danger inside familiarity. Everyone settled on them for so long. But they were almost useless! Bizarre.

there where advances . the 2 meg floppy the flopticle but its about market saturation , if so many people use something its hard to switch. Skype is another example of a terrible service that you have to keep using as everyone else uses it. Ekiga is better than Skype in almost every regard , better call quality, smaller footprint on the client , encryption. Yet so many people use Skype you have to too.

And don't even get me started on the pathetic speed at witch ISPs are adopting IPv6, NAT is terrible and needs to go away, but we are still using an outdated protocol that has been overdue for an update for 20 years

Muirium · 16 Mar 2015, 14:37

Skype is another example of a crappy but widespread "standard" that's under attack by Apple. I use FaceTime more than Skype, because most people I talk with are on Apple gear now too. (And I use neither of them for IM, which I loathe! Voice, only voice.) Like surely every Skype competitor out there, it drops calls less often and generally behaves better.

Floppies took a major hit when Apple ditched the drives the minute Steve was back in control again. The iMac, iBook, then the Power Macs and PowerBooks all dropped it in a row. And the good bit: they didn't replace it with some other disk. It just went! Cue outroar, strong sales, and rapid acceptance.

I wonder how different things would be now if Jobs and Apple hadn't got back together. He couldn't pull off industry-wide moves like that at NeXT. And Apple wouldn't dare without him.

andrewjoy · 16 Mar 2015, 14:49

Face time is not something that is replacing Skype unfortunately. Can i get it on my Android phone or my windows / linux pc ? Its widespread yes but only for apple users.

Muirium · 16 Mar 2015, 14:52

Correct!

Ironically, when Jobs announced it (it's been a few years) he did say they were submitting it to standards bodies so everyone could implement it; including the end to end encryption. But nothing happened since. Word is Apple's lawyers nixed the idea because of our good friends: patents.

andrewjoy · 16 Mar 2015, 14:57

Ahh patients, stifling innovation in the computing world since....., well since they started issuing them for stupid shit.

UK/US Government would not like the end to end encryption , how would they spy on innocent people then ?

Muirium · 16 Mar 2015, 14:59

Have you heard about the pure evil the CIA has been up to, trying to get vulnerabilities into Apple's software? It's intense!

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015 ... es-secrets

Microsoft never gave them such bother. Everything they made back in the day would open wide with an Allen key.

Redmaus · 16 Mar 2015, 15:01

Truly amazing apple innovation.

Have you seen stuff like this? : http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB571 ... r?fnode=51

I mean 100$ for an adapter that costs less than 10$ to make? That barely works? Come on apple, this is bad even for you.

Muirium · 16 Mar 2015, 15:02

That's been out for years, and is likely near end of life. DVI is old school!

This is the craziness they were up to with Lightning. There's a whole computer inside that gets its software loaded aboard on connection and boots up to pass through video! Crazy, and not cheap.

https://www.panic.com/blog/the-lightnin ... -surprise/

USB-C meanwhile will be getting made by everyone.

Redmaus · 16 Mar 2015, 15:05

Muirium wrote: ↑That's been out for years, and is likely near end of life. DVI is old school!

There are still other adapters that they are selling, that is just the most expensive apple made one on their site. They are also making expensive USB C adapters.

andrewjoy · 16 Mar 2015, 15:06

This is part of why i like open stuff as much as possible, sure if anyone can submit code something could be put in there . But if the code is there for everyone to see then people will see it and call them on there bullshit. MS are terrible for it will let anyone in. Its good that apple don't do this, but we do only have there word for it.

Remember back when there where restrictions on exporting encryption from the US, so there had to be a less secure none US version of apps like IE or Netscape. That was retarded.

It just makes me think that governments have no idea how technology works and they never realise that there are no borders on the internet and that if you try to restrict something someone who understands how this stuff works can get around it in seconds.

Problem : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_c ... ed_Kingdom

Solution: https://www.torproject.org

Muirium · 16 Mar 2015, 15:09

Here's a scary thought. What if your compiler binary is compromised? (Or indeed all of them out there are.) Ken Thompson (one of the fathers of Unix to you kids) wrote about that back in 1984:

http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html

There is no such thing as absolute trust and perfectly knowable code. Happy nightmares!

Edit: oh no, teh feds took him down! And the Wayback Machine doesn't have that one archived. Bugger.

andrewjoy · 16 Mar 2015, 15:11

link aint working for me, dunno why

EDIT

and yes i know who ken is, ihate to think where we would be if ken and dennis had not come on with UNIX and C

Redmaus · 16 Mar 2015, 15:15

Anybody here hear of citizen four? I have seen most of it. Pretty scary how the government spys on us.