I still have a working Osborn 1 and use almost every day. That's over three decades of service. My CP/M 2.2 disks are toast, so I've replaced the OS with one of my own design for use in my hobby home automation projects. The 300 Baud modem died so I use its RS-232 (serial) port with an IR LED and resistor across DTR to do IO with my home theatre system. The IEEE-488 (parallel) port is used for multiple sensor IOs and a sanitized COM link to my Linux server network which can route IR messages around the rest of the home.

It's more of an "antique" retro conversation piece, but I'm a practical guy and find collectables such as this 1st widespread "portable" PC to be far more interesting when in use; Rather than collecting dust and only being the subject of tech war storries others can witness the power of its simplicity and appreciate the workhorse in action. When I press the button on my remote or smart-phone app visitors (esp. kids) heads are turned by the 5 1/4 inch drive access sounds as the proper code translation table is loaded into the 64KB RAM and colored debugging LEDs on its exposed bread boards blink while status messages flicker to life scrolling up the 54x24 character green monochrome display, then lights dim and a projector screen lowers, and various set-top boxes have their inputs configured. Kids will spend hours "watching TV" just changing the channels and active devices while actually paying attention to the old Osborne One doing its duty. I consider it sort of like an 80's version of steam-punk -- My take on "cyber-punk". Sometimes I'll show the older kids how to manually command systems by making and breaking circuits with a paperclip on the breadboard to do IO. The resulting stream of "how"s and "why"s is fully expected; This setup was socially engineered to lead hapless inquisitors away from the mind-numbing TV and out to tinker with the brain boosting electronics and robotics projects in the garage.

I have some replacement parts from its dead brothers and sisters, but it too will eventually bite the dust eventually and be replaced with other hardware. I really miss parallel ports. Even kids can do IO by hand on the old interface instead of running everything through a more complex serialization protocol; Building a USB interface just to get back bit-mapped parallel IO is just silly. Thus, old beige boxes and custom DOS programs are still my favourite for intro to software / hardware & robotics even more so than single board or embedded systems like Raspberry Pi or Arduino and its clunky expansion ports -- for want of a simple Parallel Interface... I mean, you can use a bit or byte pattern of a parallel interface as an "escape code" to signal a mode switch and with a few transistors you can have as many "expansion cards" to program as you want. When I'm teaching how stuff works, I don't want things like this abstracted away and hidden behind proprietary hardware and software interfaces.

Remember the Three R's: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Reusing old hardware should be attempted before recycling. Experiencing the magic blue smoke escaping from an old main board, ISA / PCI card, etc. is an important part of learning electronics projects. Having to redo their work teaches folks to be more careful even if the parts are otherwise "worthless junk". Making interesting and/or useful things out of a "Trash 80" is seen by youngsters more impressive than using purpose built devices designed to facilitate the project. If they make it past the Cyber-Junkyard Frankenstein stage Only Then do they move up to working on more expensive single board systems and full featured robotics systems, bypassing the Raspberry Pi and Arduino stage altogether (and foisting some of my old junk into other unsuspecting tinkerers' garages).

The Osborne 1 is great for operating your whole home AV gear. Bugfixing custom hardware and Z80 instructions exercises one's memory and maintains neuro-plasticity -- It can even cause kids to favor educational programming instead of that obnoxious crap on TV nowadays.

Well, as I've stated above, the problem is selling them. The kind of people who buy their cars aren't buying the arguments about electrics, it doesn't matter if they're right or wrong. They're the ones with the money.

If Mercedes became convinced tomorrow that they could sell more EVs than dino drinkers, that's the direction they'd head. If they can make balls-out concept EVs, then they can make an actual car.

I just (yesterday) found a module with a bright sticker that says PROTOTYPEN in the E-Box of my A8... egads!

But most of them in fact are in that situation. If you want to make no real sysadmin comments, I may well agree, but it doesn't change much.

Yet the overall murder rate trend did not change appreciably - despite the fact that it should have included those massacres. In fact, it briefly went up after the ban, despite there being a massacre immediately before the ban...

Which, I suppose, just goes to show just how small and insignificant those massacres are in the big picture, if you take the media attention they receive out of the equation and look at raw numbers. Yet people keep referring to them as some major factor that should be a significant driver of public policy. It's about as ridiculous as the security theater that followed 9/11.

I don't find it to be ugly, it just looks like another car to me. If you compare it only to the insipid selection of blandmobiles that we get here in the USA, I suppose it looks a little fruity. However, it is definitely better kitted than a base econobox. You can get all the same features on your shitpile, but it will cost more than 10k.

Actually, a lot of people buy an S Class (or the equivalent Audi, a well-kitted A8L) and then put many, many miles on them. It's not a coincidence that there's a bunch of 80's S-Classes with over 300k on them, and 90's S-Classes and A8s with over 200k. These are being driven by businessmen who will be able to write off much of the significant recurring expense of putting many miles on a german car.

In short, these cars are not made worth a fuck. They use components guaranteed to degrade when components which would hold up just fine are available. Rubber bushings (not sure of the material) and EPDM vac hoses when they could be made of polyurethane and silicone respectively and last the life of the vehicle. And everything is crammed into as small a space as possible, because that's how it is today. I have big fat meaty hands, a lot of these cars require me to take some stuff off so that I can take some other stuff off before I can get at a third thing. Even if you have a lift you're best off removing the engine in many cases because you still can't get access otherwise. But sadly, they don't have an engine harness, so you have to disconnect forty things to pull the motor. Perhaps literally; just the coil packs and injectors account for sixteen connectors on a V8.

S-Class and similar are for people with lots of money, and/or people who are playing games with taxes. Not for the plebes. You can own one only if you are a mechanic. The saying is that there's nothing more expensive than a cheap Mercedes. The same applies to VAG cars. You can't afford to own an old Audi if you don't turn your own wrenches.

For the money that Mercedes will cost you over its lifetime with major mechanical failures, nickel-and-diming you with electrical problems, et cetera, you could buy a Model S for the weekdays, and a used roadster for the weekend.

I suppose you could also buy a land rover or range rover to go next to the Mercedes. I see that a lot. If you get really lucky they won't both shit themselves at once.

All the automakers are working on making EVs, including Mercedes. But they have to sell more cars, and they have to make their customers feel good about the money they've already spent. What do you expect they to say when they produce a bunch of petrosuckers?

In my country, you may or may not actually be able to even get three phase in the city. But you can get it in the country... where EVs don't work for most people yet, due to range issues.

Actually, where I live I could almost use a GEM car for trips to the store. It's hard to justify spending 5k on a discontinued deathtrap and then another 5k+ on battery upgrades, though

The best way is probably battery-swapping. Right now battery tech is moving too quickly for it to make sense to come up with a cross-platform standard for batteries. But when that happens, I suspect that EV battery ownership will largely be a thing of the past, and that the majority of EV owners will join a battery co-op.

You don't need this if you have quick charge/swap. And even if you had it, you would need significant charging and infrastructure improvements to make use of it. "Normal" cars generally have less than 400 miles of range, so if you can solve the charging problem you've solved the whole problem.

I think you will find that batteries are still required.

Subaru built a prototype where they replaced the torque converter between the engine and a tiptronic slushbox with an electric motor. Because the engine is not run by fluid, it's much more responsive and basically eliminates the problems with a slushbox, and it also provides motive starting force and performs regenerative braking for all four wheels. Presumably they'll need to use 2-way limited slip in all differentials for that to work properly. The Germans seem to have largely gone to using Torsen differentials (which are generally two-way) and solving their problems with ABS. Sadly, the ABS modules are made by Bosch...

You're both having a silly argument. Clearly it's a Mercedes. It's not a production Mercedes. That's a more interesting argument in this case anyway.