squaredancer wrote:
> On 30.06.2008 03:20, CET - what odd quirk of fate caused Ken Whiton to
> generate the following:? :
>> *-* On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, at 22:11:30 +0200,
>> *-* In Article 2pudnWpryojvcfrVnZ2dnUVZ_h_inZ2d@mozilla.org,
>> *-* squaredancer wrote
>> *-* About Re: Firefox 3 still hogs memory
>>
>>
>>> On 29.06.2008 05:38, CET - what odd quirk of fate caused Ken Whiton to
>>> generate the following:? :
>>>
>>>> *-* Daniel wrote
>>>>
>>
>> [ ... ]
>>
>>
>>>>> Back in the days of 640kbytes of RAM, I could see why you might
>>>>> allocate heaps of HD as a swapfile, but when you've got 100's of
>>>>> MB or even GBytes of RAM, why should you then need to allocate any
>>>>> of your HD??
>>>>>
>>
>>
>>>> Two reasons: multitasking and software bloat. Back in the
>>>> days of 640 KB neither the CPUs nor the OSs were capable of much
>>>> (if any) multitasking, so there was little or no need for swapping.
>>>> Furthermore, back in the days before HDs were available in PCs
>>>> programs had to be able to fit on a 360 KB (or even a 180 KB)
>>>> floppy, so programmers had to write tight, efficient code. Compare
>>>> that with the size and complexity of (most of) today's programs,
>>>> which, by virtue of that size and complexity require much more RAM
>>>> to operate in.
>>>>
>>
>>
>>> Ho, Ken - you also remember the 8" days of single and double-sided
>>> floppies?
>>>
>>
>> No.
>>
>>
>>> those were the days when a floppy really *WAS* a floppy
>>> (and don't get your sticky fingers on the read-slot)
>>>
>>
>> Actually, I don't even have any experience with the 180 KB
>> floppies. The first PCs we had where I worked had 360 KB 5 1/4"
>> floppies, and my first home PC had dual 720 KB 3 1/2" floppies (and no
>> HD).
>>
>> Ken Whiton
>>
>> FIDO: 1:132/152
>> InterNet: kenwhiton@surfglobal.net.INVAL (remove the obvious to reply)
>>
>
> the company I worked for got their first "PC" from Tektronix - a 4052
> main (with a massive 32KB RAM), 4662 grapic plotter and two 4097 8"
> floppy drives. The "printer" was an eletrical typewriter with an amazing
> 32 characters/min... wow!
> That was back in 1979-1980 or so, and the system was replaced by
> IBM-machines (also soon replaced with Comodore PET 128 systems)
>
> reg
>
>
A printer with 32cpM? My niece types at 140 wpm, and that would be
700cpM. Should have hired HER. Grin.