My MacBook "Pro" 2.6GHz 17" yada yada lotsofcrap actually IS more sluggish (with Mac OS crapware) than my Amiga 1200 (unmodified) HD

Um...

I think my Sinclair Spectrum 48K is even less sluggish ;-D

Not alltogether right, but close.

Extended-Density disks were 2880M ( twice the density of HD disks). These were however used only in select few machines (notably IBM and NeXT)

additionally....

PC Formats were
High density 3.5" was 1.44MB, and HD5.25" was 1.2MB
Quad density 5.25" was 720K
Double density 3.5" was 720K and DD5.25" was 360K

5.25" also came in Single-Sided variants at half the capacity.

If you happened to have a SS drive, you could buy a puncher that punched id-holes on the "other side" of the disks so that you could flip them over and use the other side. This was common in the Apple //e and Apple ][, ][+

Atari used the PC format.

Amiga used 880KB DD-disks with a proprietary formatting, and also offered 1760KB with HD-disks.

The Machintosh used 800KB disks

Currently I have about 200 disks for my Amiga, 100 disks for my Archimedes, 20 3" CF-disks for my Amstrad CPC and several disks for DOS, C64 and more. "And they ain't goin' nowhere" (yes, I know, double negation et al. It just sounds cool when you say it with a southern accent ;) )

You are quite right in your nit-picking. My choice of words could have been better, as could yours have been.

I never implied that existing sources were in any way closed. You may however by the BSD license choose to redistribute the software totally rebranded as "yours", and take full credit for it except for that footnote well hidden away, mentioning its true origin. And if you hanve no ethics, there's nothing at all stopping you, legally or otherwise.

On the other hand, to answer what YOU said:

"...confusing the new code with the one WE talk about" (capitalization mine). We ? New code ? YOUR selectivity in this discussion is only fit to create further confusion and spread even more of the U in FUD. There was no specific code being discussed. There was a mention of "Open Source" and its merits vs. "Closed Source". That a specific code was the issue is the fabrication of your mind.

So, for calling me dishonest (which is a new one), I'm not going tell you what I think of you. I'm just going to thank you for your ad-hominem and bid you a good (better?) day.

Thank you :-)

That was the comparison I was thinking of.

Apple makes you mentally obese.

(Yes, I use a Mac. Two of them actually. But I prefer OpenSolaris, Ubuntu, and for some tasks, Windows whatever).

Your third point is invalid.

The BSD license allows you to take whatever *open* source that is bound by the license an make it closed.

What you are referring to is GPL, which by definition goes further than open source per se. Unlike BSD and other similar licenses, in GPL the "openness" is mandatory, and thus a restriction on your freedom. BSD poses no restictions other than the requirement of including the original authors license, and the mention in documentation that it was used.

This is by the way what Microsoft did with the BSD IP stack in Windows.

Vaðlaheiðarvegavinnnuverkamannaskúrshliðarhurðarhengilásalyklakippuhringsvörumerkjaskinnpjatla.

Perfectly valid.

Arduino assisted mind-controlling television

and thought "Oh crap. We're there already?"

A decade ago I abandoned Oracle for PostgreSQL mostly because of their inherently stupid pricing policy and horrible scare-tactics. It seems that Oracle is going to keep crapping all over my thang. Only have I recently decided to give OpenSolaris a fighting chance in our company, patiently waiting for 2010.03, when Oracle takes a dump on all my ideas once again.

Gotta love it. They are getting there. As my "Nemesis".

True, but I considered two points before answering:

a) the sheer number of machines that I have serviced (professionally) and owned in the past 30 years (I won't count my childhood ;-))

b) The fact that shit is exponentially more likely to hit the fan with your brand new computer than one of these old geezers, that is unless you can spot corrosion on the casing.

On the other hand, I did say the same thing in another reply in this thread - that is, use the serial port. Not because it's safer for the hardware in any way (it isn't - you may wire the serial cable incorrectly since it's almost certain that its wiring is non-standard as per RS-232C, there may be a substandard capacitor in the machine that blows when powered up... plenty of risk factors available) but mostly because he's S.O.L. when it comes to reading MFM/RLL hard drives on his modern whatchamacallit.

The latest MFM/RLL interface cards were ISA bus (not used anymore), EISA bus (not used either) and there were a very few PS/2 bus as well. I don't recall a single PCI MFM/RLL card.

(and yes.. the hard drive is most certainly not an IDE drive since the IDE standard was only concieved 3 years after the Altos 586 was marketed)

Enough with the scaremongering. I have several computers older than the Altos that still perform, look and behave like new.

Actually, the floppy drive has a higher probability of working than the hard drive, although it will need some cleaning :)

The floppies can be anything... hard sector, soft sector... You'll have to verify it (xref the floppy mfg number to the manuals).

Given patience, you may even make hard sector floppies from old softsector ones.

The hard drive however is NOT an IDE drive. IDE wasn't designed until 1986, and wasn't widely marketed until a year or two later. The drive is either an MFM or RLL drive. Fifteen years ago you might have found an abundance of controllers that could handle these drives, but you'd still be hard pressed reading the data.

I recommend that you get the Altos up and running, and transfer via the serial port to another machine. You should be able to get 9600 baud, and with any luck (although I'd doubt it) you might be able to push it to 19200.

You must be an anonymous moron making such a claim.

#1) Linux _doesn't_ have all the best and greatest technology built in.
#2) It even does have some really crappy technology in between.
#3) guess what the "-/+ buffers/cache" line in the output of "free" means
#4) guess what the "buffers" and "cached" columns of "free" means
#5) guess what prefetch/preload is.

Sheez... anyone gets access to a keyboard these days :-|

I wish the original poster (and everyone else using these terms) would stop doing so.
There are no such thing as "bugs". There are programming errors and programmer mistakes.
And "bugs" (aka. programming errors) do absolutely not "creep into the code"!
This terminology has made for a bunch of apologetic imbecile programmers that blame their errors on the position of the stars or the foulness of their neighbours farts. They do by no means convey the reality of the situation.
I am a computer scientist, and I stand by every programming mistake I make.