He was saying that the SS10 could handle 512 MB in 1992, at time when the best PCs were maxed out at 32 MB or so.

The SS10 takes proprietary memory, and I know there was a firmware update that allowed it to use larger (32 MB, I think) sticks at some point. Ultimately, I don't think there was any way to put 512MB into a SS10 in 1992, even if the machine did eventually support it. I think 128 MB was more likely, though even that's very good for a desktop box back then.

As for 128MB simms in 1992, I have my doubts. This chart doesn't really try to list *everything* that was available, but even so -- it doesn't list 128 MB sticks until 1999. (It doesn't mention 64 MB sticks until 1999 as well, so clearly, it's missing some stuff.)

According to this, there were 64 MB SIMMs available in 1995 for a massive price -- $2600 each. (I didn't try to find the ad itself, however.)

I was asking about the Sparcstation 10, not a PC.

Wikipedia says "The SS10 can hold a maximum of 512 MB RAM in eight slots", so that means we need 64MB modules for it, and I'm not sure they were available yet in 1992.

I've got a SS20 in my garage, and it's got 208 MB of memory -- which wasn't too bad at all, "back in the day" anyways.

Of course, by that metric, Suns weren't available at all.

SCSI was somewhat rare in a PC in 1992, yes, but not that uncommon. (Anybody remember the Adaptec AHA-1542B? It came out in 1990.)

800x600 was more common, but 1024x768 was available. I don't recall if it was all interlaced or not, but I do recall how much that interlacing sucked!

Ethernet (or token ring, that was still somewhat common) was quite common in environments where it made sense. Not in a one computer home of course, but in a business, sure. How else were you going to get at the NetWare server?

That's not true. A high end business class PC would run games just fine in 1992, for example. (As long as it had the right graphics, anyways.)

You might need to pick a different boot floppy, however. (Windows 95 certainly did improve things there!)

I'm not sure if this applied to the few SMP PCs available the time or not, however -- I got my first one a few years later, a Pentium Pro. That wasn't specialized -- it would run anything, though I imagine that many things would ignore the second cpu. (I ran Linux on it, which did use the second cpu.)

I understand nostalgia, but ... no.

SCSI was the (somewhat) new hotness in 1992, yes, but other drive busses had been used in the past and were still used in 1992. The large SGI I administered a few years later had ESDI drives, for example. (But it also had SCSI, and the desktop SGIs we had were SCSI only.)

Ethernet was also the current favorite, but other networking protocols were in use at the time. I was working at IBM in 1992 and most of the company used token ring at the time -- that's what I had coming to my desk, where I had a PS/2 running OS/2.

As for "big memory", yes, that was always the norm for big computers, whatever the OS -- big computers had big resources available.

As for multiprocessors, remember, the Sparcstation 10 was Sun's first multi cpu desktop box. Multiprocessing was somewhat common in mainframes and minicomputers by them (whatever the OS), but it was rare on the desktop, even *nix desktops.

As for graphics ... most Unix platforms had no graphics at all then. Sun's desktop offerings did, and they did have decent graphics, but they weren't really better than high end PCs that were available at the time. (SGI went more after the desktop graphics than Sun did, but maybe Sun had some stronger offerings that I'm not aware of.)

As for "integrated environments", I think in 1992 Sun still shipped compilers stock with their OSes, but it was just a few years later that they became a very expensive licensed add-on. gcc was available, of course, but getting it installed was kind of a chore, and it was inferior to the Sun compilers in some ways. Alas, g77 wasn't available until a while later.

And really, the environment wasn't "integrated" like it is now. No IDEs, anyways -- your environment was X windows, and you got to use vi or emacs or whatever. Really, the programming environments on a PC were integrated before they were on Unix systems as far as I know.

A 32 bit cpu can address 4 GB directly, but that doesn't mean it has a 4 GB memory limit.

For example, in 1995 Intel added PAE to their 32 bit Pentium Pro cpus, allowing them to access more than 4 GB of memory.

Hell, my Apple IIe had 128KB of memory, in spite of the 8 bit cpu with the 16 bit address space only being able to access 64KB of memory, through similar tricks.

And yes, 4 GB is enough for most casual users today. 2 GB even works. But give it a few more years and 4 GB will become very restrictive even for somebody who doesn't do much on their computers.

Personally, I'm not going to make any claims that "X KB/MB/GB/PB/EB/etc. will be all you'll ever need in your lifetime" because it seems quite likely that whatever I pick ... it'll turn out to be wrong.

As much as I loved Sun hardware at that time (though I didn't get to touch anything better than a Sparcstation 2 until years later), since you explicitly mention high-end PCs, I'll have to point out that that 1992 hi-end consumer PCs (you did say high end, so I can pick the best of what's available) did have not just networking but ethernet (it was relatively common, and not just found on high end machines), could have 1024x768 with 16 or 24 bit (not color) graphics, perhaps 32 MB of memory (though that is on the high end for 1992. I wonder if you could actually get 512 MB into a SS10 in 1992 -- were chips of sufficient density available yet?), and could run all the exact same hard drives that your Sparcserver 10 did -- just get a SCSI card.

I also remember dual cpu PCs being available in 1992, though of course they were very high end and expensive.

Of course, a typical new but *low end* PC at that time had a 386SX, 1 MB of memory, a 640x480 VGA monitor ...

I'm not sure which country you're referring to, but in the US, the typical multicopter (what you call a "drone") *is* a RC aircraft, and is regulated like one.

In general we do allow R/C aircraft to be flown in the middle of a city, as long as it's not in controlled airspace, though some cities may have laws against it. (Though the FAA claims dominion over such things, so I'm not sure how the cities get around that.)

In general, in the US hobbyist use is largely unregulated, and it's commercial use that's tightly regulated. This is changing, largely due to the explosion of quadcopters being flown by inexperienced pilots in places where they probably shouldn't be and the common (but generally incorrect) perception that they're all equipped with cameras and being used to spy on them. (When the reality is ... many may have cameras, but in general people are just trying to take pictures of landscapes, buildings, etc. and any people that are in the pictures are generally so small as to be unrecognizable unless the craft is very close to them.)

I meant to say it's seen as unfair by the line workers.

Dress codes make a slight amount of sense when the company has a requirement that many employees must wear uniforms. It's not fair to say, "you people who stand in front of customers all day must wear a blue shirt, green tie, and khaki pants" but then say, "you people are in the main office, so you're exempt from dressing like a dork." Some of the line workers resent it. Management can then decide if they want to settle the matter by subjecting everyone to a dress code.

Of course HP doesn't require line workers to wear uniforms, so that's not the case here. This is just another stupid and capricious management decision by a company that's become famous over the last decade for having the most incompetent management of any (formerly) major corporation. HP's executives have been so bad it's easy to imagine an evil Michael Dell offered HP's board of directors one hundred million dollars -each- to sabotage HP into oblivion. (Hey, it makes a lot more sense than any other reason for imposing a dress code on engineers.)

Even recently, far more people are injured by balls than models.

So we ban things that aren't exercise?

(Actually, I've found that I get lots of exercise doing my R/C modelling, especially flying gliders with a hi-start or winch.)

Ahh yes, the "every quadcopter is spying on me" fiction.

The reality is ... not all models have cameras on them at all, and many of them that do are simply for FPV and the image isn't recorded at all.

And those that are taking pictures are almost invariably taking pictures of landscapes, buildings, etc. Wide angle lenses are the norm, and while there may be people in the picture, they tend to be so small as to be unrecognizable.

Occasionally they'll be flown close enough to people that the pictures will allow you to recognize the people in them, but in such cases 1) there's nothing stealthy about that -- quadcopters are not silent, and 2) the people are in public already -- you could just go to where they are and take an even better picture of them yourself if you were so inclined.

This whole "drone hovering outside my window, watching me undress" thing is basically fiction. It's possible, but people seem to greatly, greatly overestimate the capabilities of that quadcopter that's a few hundred yards away and how interesting they themselves are. But they see a quadcopter a few hundred yards away -- and so they call the police saying it was hovering next to their window spying on them.

They even get lost occasionally, but I don't recall a single instance where one was found and "peeping-tom" type pictures were found on any camera that they may have.

As for "general being-a-jerk", doesn't that describe banning hobbies that people do that aren't particularly worse than other hobbies?

Good point. First, IANAAEE (I am not an automotive electrical engineer) so much of this is speculation, but not all of it. I do think small, hardware firewalls ("data diodes") could help prevent a lot of these problems. I also agree with you in that I don't think the direct access is necessary, but I think it might loop around in such a way that the holes end up being present anyway.

Consider: the crash message from the airbag sensors, which is on the high speed engine control bus (ECB) goes to the door locks. The door locks are on the low speed bus (security network), but bridge both networks. A data diode could stop messages from the door locks from flowing back to the high speed ECB. The door locks, ignition key, and immobilizer are all on the security network. The ignition key talks to the immobilizer. Finally, the immobilizer talks to the ECU, which is on the high speed ECB.

The security network is supposed to be isolated from the cabin comfort network (where the infotainment system, navigation system, and cell phone stuff are.) But the crash signal has to travel to the cell modem somehow, so another component has to allow messages from the ECB to the cabin bus. Plus, some of these cars have "remote start via cell phone", so something still has to enable messages from the cell modem to travel to the immobilizer. How do they get to the security network? (Bigger question: do the Chryslers even have a security network, or do all low speed messages share a common bus?)

If everything were perfect, the immobilizer would be the only potential spot for the bridge; and because the immobilizer's entire job is to prevent the engine from starting unless all the security is perfectly aligned, it seems like the natural place where the engineers would focus their security attention to isolate the low speed bus from the ECB. But obviously not everything's perfect.

It seems like they should have a set of dedicated data protection devices that would be similar in concept to a traffic signal's conflict monitor, somehow hard-wired with a rule that allows only whitelisted messages from the modem to go to the immobilizer.

Far, far more people are injured and killed by balls used in sports than R/C models.

Maybe. You seem to be comparing small kites to big models -- what if it's a tiny model vs a big kite?

I imagine that significantly more people have been injured and killed by kites than R/C models.

Ultimately, it would make sense to regulate kites in exactly the same way as R/C aircraft, as the risks are very similar -- do it by size or weight, for example. But kites are considered "normal" and R/C aircraft are not, and so we get laws like this ...

I've seen a spectator get knocked out by a kicked soccer ball at the local park. Not that you'd have room to play this in a festival, but they play it at the local park all the time. And the reason there's signs up that say "NO GOLFING" is because people were golfing ...

There's lots of things that involve some amount of danger being done in our parks, and now New Zealand has picked one to "fix".

Let's flip this argument around a little bit --

Far, far more people have been injured by balls than R/C models -- a kicked soccer ball has more energy than a small R/C aircraft -- and yet we aren't banning people from playing soccer in fields.

We could even apply this argument to cars -- they kill more via collisions than anything else. But of course almost everybody drives, so we can't limit them more -- but only a few people fly R/C aircraft, so we *can* discriminate against them.

And the "film from there" argument is a red herring, as the model aircraft hobby isn't just about "filming", though the aerial photography segment of the hobby has indeed exploded lately.

Want a more adventuresome automotive experience? Go to India. During the three weeks I was there, our driver's car was struck more times by more vehicles and pedestrians than I've seen in my 35 years of driving in the US.

The drivers are worse than you can imagine. "Keep left" is more of a guideline than an actually obeyed rule; "keep center" seems to be the observed behavior. The few traffic police I saw were standing in small gazebo-like boxes in intersections - they were not driving interceptors or squad cars. Peddlers and beggars wander among cars slowed down on the roads, selling umbrellas and toys, and asking for handouts. Fuel tankers have signs lettered across the back: "KEEP BACK 25 FEET", but nobody pays attention. Lane markers are apparently nothing more than wasted white paint decorating the road. On the road in front of you you may encounter a farmer with a pony cart, bicycles, pedestrians, elephants carrying loads, and yes, the occasional unattended cow.

And the honking! Seriously, India, WTF is up with the continual honking? You can drive a full week in many cities in the USA without hearing a single car horn.

We saw all this on every single trip, including a 2AM drive from the airport.

An inattentive driver would cause an accident within a split second; this may be why minor accidents and collisions are so common.

Consider the safety network, which has data from the crash sensors, rollover sensors, seatbelt sensors, and seat occupancy sensors, and mixes all of that data together in a set of rules that instantly trigger the correct airbags and seatbelt pre-tensioners. It also needs to connect to the infotainment system to take over the car's data or phone connection to send a message to emergency services. In turn it may also get data from the navigation system to report location information. It may trigger an unlock of the car doors to assist bystanders in rescuing the occupants, and it may shut off the engine to prevent further injury. It may talk to the signalling systems to turn on the 4-way flashers to help first responders find the car. The car door lock system is part of the security bus, which talks to the engine immobilizer, responsible for talking to the ECU to start and run the car. All of those data feeds that seem like they could be isolated have real operational needs to come together in multiple devices.

The rules in a car are exponentially more complex than ever before, and they're increasingly vital for safety; not just comfort or entertainment. Consider how many lives have been saved because their airbags deployed, and the emergency responders were able to dispatch an ambulance in time to save a crash victim from dying. Now consider how many people have died from crashes directly induced by CANBUS hacking.

The safety systems of today are doing their jobs better than ever, which is the topmost goal of the engineers. Also consider the safety systems need to guarantee reliable operation to work for the first time ever in an actual crash. If they can layer on system security without compromising occupant safety, they will, but not at the expense of crash survivability.

... following Kim Kardashian.