Category: Tech

Apple Cores

Windows XP on a Compaq Presario 5300

For fun, I’m going to power up my one remaining Windows XP system. It was purchased on the day that XP was released, October 25, 2001. The end of support for Windows XP didn’t bother me. It gave me a reason to buy a 64-bit computer.

Support for Windows 10 ends on October 14, and that bothers me. In addition to my Windows 11 laptop computer, I have two desktop and two laptop systems running Windows 10. They aren’t very fast, especially the three running on mechanical hard drives, but they continue to be useful. None of them meet the TPM hardware requirement for Windows 11. Dave Plummer explains.

Microsoft’s historical pattern is to release new features, often of dubious value, that are easily exploited and then have to be patched after being discovered in the field. Do I believe that TPM will provide essential, lasting additional security? Nah, the hackers will find ways around it. The protection is immaterial anyway, as the real threats aren’t from weak security on home PCs, but hacked data centers. Remember the Solarwinds event?

https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/SolarWinds-hack-explained-Everything-you-need-to-know

I don’t plan to abandon my Windows 10 systems when support ends, but at some point I will need to replace my primary desktop system, a Dell tower with an Intel i5 and 8 GB of memory. What will I get?

I have never owned an Apple product. I was kept away by the cost and the lack of hardware options resulting from Apple being a closed system.

My first desktop system was a no-name white box with an AMD 40 MHz processor, 4 MB of memory and a 160 MB hard drive. It came with DOS and Windows 3.1 on floppy disks that I had to install myself, which was my preference. I bought it with the intention of opening the case. An Apple system would have cost twice as much and opening the case would have voided the warranty.

Having first bought a cellphone thirty years ago, when Windows 95 was new and mobile phone service was analog, I delayed getting a smartphone for as long as possible. After so many years of eschewing Apple computers, I wasn’t interested in embracing its phone ecosystem. So I went with Android, but I did that by following Apple’s integrated system lead and buying Google Pixel phones.

I’m very tired of updating and restarting Windows, so in a weird way I’m looking forward to October 14. Although I’m always looking for a good deal, cost is less of a concern than it was. Perhaps I will finally consider going with Apple. Dave explains some of the technology that makes their latest systems so wicked fast.

DL’s LD’s

Sony MDP-650 LaserDisc player

David Lynch’s estate is holding an auction, with the notation that, all sales are final and all lots are sold “as-is.” One of the items up for grabs is his Sony LaserDisc player and a collection of his discs.

https://www.juliensauctions.com/en/items/1426382/david-lynch-sony-laserdisc-player-with-personal-laserdisc-collection

Also available is a very esoteric Cinea DVD player. It’s esoteric because the short-lived Cinea decks were used to secure Academy Award “screener” discs that were distributed for Oscar voting. The hardware came with a complete complement of connections.

https://www.juliensauctions.com/en/items/1426273/david-lynch-panasonic-ag-1730-hi-fi-mts-vcr-and-cinea-sv300-dvd-player

Cinea SV300 DVD player

Retirement Tires

Tread pattern of the CrossClimate2 tire, presented by Michelin’s mascot, Bibendum

This weekend and beyond will see significant traffic delays at the busiest of all the Mass Pike interchanges, due to work on long overdue bridge replacement and repair. I’ll be using the interchange today, before this weekend’s highway chaos, to pick up a bookcase I ordered. It’s intended for the space downstairs where the piano had been.*

https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/05/27/drivers-can-expect-major-delays-from-mass-pike-construction-over-the-weekend/

Last summer, it was raining heavily when I was on a Route 90-to-95 offramp, driving to one of my 28 weekday radiation treatments at the hospital. As I went around a tightly curved overpass, a sporty, late model Audi sped past me. The driver lost control on the wet pavement, he skidded, then spun around 90 degrees before stopping sideways. The car’s front end was sticking into my lane, but I had no difficulty in maneuvering to prevent an accident.

As I swerved around the Audi I saw that it had high performance tires with a very low profile — tires that typically do not do well on wet roads. My tires are the Michelin CrossClimate2, known for their exceptionally good traction in rain and snow. I credit the Michelins more than my driving skill in avoiding an accident. In my mind, that singular incident justified the CrossClimate2’s premium price.

That traction comes with an extra cost, however, and that’s mileage. The CrossClimate2 has relatively high rolling resistance, which I knew when buying them. Compared to the Bridgestone tires that came with my Camry, I’m losing about 10% in gas mileage. An acceptable tradeoff for improved traction, as since retiring I’ve been driving only about 4,000 miles/year.

I don’t know when I’ll be getting my next (and perhaps final) car, but I like that Toyota will be making all future RAV 4 models as gas-electric hybrids. I’m not ready for an all-electric car, and I doubt I ever will be. Primarily because it will be many years before America’s power grids are ready for a nation of mostly all-electric cars.

There is something else about EV’s that concerns me. Their weight adds significantly to the damage they can cause in a collision with other cars and, especially, with pedestrians. Another concern is the environmental tradeoff in how frequently their special tires need replacement, as explained here by CNBC.

* No bookcase yet. Argh. Tomorrow!

Printed Matters

An important person in the history of healthcare information systems, who shall remain nameless, put me on a career path that evolved over the years and carried me along until my retirement. After I had worked with him on some very interesting projects, including my first exposure to the IBM PC, he asked me if I was interested in taking over the evaluation and approval of computer peripherals for our software system. I could see that for him it was busy work, but for me it was an opportunity I couldn’t resist, and I pursued it enthusiastically.

I became immersed in the products and technologies of terminals, printers, modems, statistical time-division multiplexors and data PBX’s, with a very heavy emphasis on data communications and serial interfacing. Network configuration and troubleshooting was added to the mix a couple of years later.

Working with manufacturers and distributors, hardware came in the door with the understanding that, if approved for use by our customers, we’d hold onto it for support purposes. My philosophy was to always take first crack at every customer problem, which was best done by having the gear on hand. That way, we could determine if a problem was ours to fix without finger pointing. If we needed to point a finger elsewhere, we could explain exactly why. If we weren’t certain, we would at least know in which direction the next step of the troubleshooting process needed to go.

At that time, there were dot-matrix printers of various sizes, gigantic band printers (also called line printers) and table-top daisy-wheel printers. The print quality of the first two technologies, almost always on perforated fanfold paper, was serviceable. A daisy-wheel printer with a cut-sheet paper feeder had quality that was almost comparable to an IBM Selectric typewriter, but it was agonizingly slow. Also, all of those printer technologies were VERY L-O-U-D!

After I’d been settled in my new role for better than a year, one of the software bosses said he was interested in high-quality, formatted printing for an office system that was under development. It had to be faster and quieter than the daisy-wheel printers. He was in luck, as Hewlett-Packard had just announced the first generation of its LaserJet.

Hewlett-Packard LaserJet with optional font cartridge

The HP LaserJet was introduced at the low, low price of $3500, equivalent to about $10,000 today. It wouldn’t cost me anything to try one, so I arranged for delivery of an evaluation unit and we got to work. Considering how quickly we acted, it’s safe to say we were very early in announcing support for the HP LaserJet.

Around the same time, I was contacted by a distributor for Siemens. He wondered if I’d be interested in their cutting-edge PT-88, with inkjet printing. It printed in any color you wanted, as long as it was black. From my business travels to hospitals, I knew that nurses weren’t fond of noisy dot-matrix printers, especially in the ICU. The compact and whisper-quiet PT-88 seemed like a good option for them, so I had one delivered. It worked fine without any special software, making it an easy addition to the support list.

Siemens PT-88

Today in my home office I have a 20-year-old Samsung laser printer and an 18-year-old Canon inkjet printer.

There’s another class of printers, called thermal transfer. Those were/are in widespread use for barcode labels, and I had no say in what was supported. Whatever thermal printers a hospital happened to be using, we had to make them work. Which reminds me of another story for later. The Case of the Melted Case.

DG and Me

The computer terminals in Severance were based on the Data General Dasher.

The minicomputer industry was created at Ken Olsen’s company, Digital Equipment Corporation. Digital, also known as DEC (pronounced “deck”), dominated the industry for its entire 40-year existence.

Data General was started by former DEC engineers, most notably Ed de Castro, who was CEO for its first twenty years. He was followed by Ronald Skates for DG’s final ten years.

My father worked at DG for almost ten years. My first exposure to the company was in 1976, when visiting Dad there during my junior year of college.

Five years after that visit to Westborough, I was starting a new job and working on both DEC and DG systems. That was the same year Tracy Kidder’s Pulitzer Prize winning book The Soul of a New Machine appeared. It told the story of how DG developed its 32-bit system, called the MV-series. I bought a copy as soon as it was out in paperback.

The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder, 1981 “Soon A Major Motion Picture“

The Soul of ‘The Soul a New Machine’

DG was a perennially distant second cousin to DEC in every way, right down to its circuit boards. Where DEC’s boards were beautifully fabricated, DG’s often had patch wires with solder splash. With the exception of a couple guys I worked with, DG’s field engineers didn’t have the same level of training and skill as DEC’s FE’s. They certainly weren’t as well equipped.

An unexpected and pleasant assignment I once had was assisting de Castro’s girlfriend Eileen (later his second wife) for a couple of days. Closer to my age than to Ed’s, she was bright, personable and unpretentious. My immediate thought was she must have had a marketing background. I helped her get an early DG laptop computer up and running and we put it through its paces for a presentation she was preparing.

Every so often I have checked to see if de Castro was still alive. During my recovery from cancer treatments I missed spotting his obituary. (I’m saddened to see that Eileen passed away a year ago. She was only three months older than myself, and I was right about her marketing background.)

https://www.chiampafuneralhome.com/obituaries/Edson-Donald-De-Castro?obId=33029648

The nadir of my association with DG came in 1994. The DG sales rep for my employer, a guy named Peter, tried to get me fired. Five years later he had to scramble to stay on board after EMC took over. Here is the long, painful story as was told on LinkedIn, without mentioning DG.

Continue reading DG and Me

Land’s End

January, 1969: Polaroid photo of me with Greg, my best pal at the time, in Norwalk, Connecticut

The latest installment of American Experience explores the hits and misses of Polaroid’s inventor-founder Edwin Land.

Watching the documentary, as the timeline progresses it becomes obvious that Land was stuck in the mindset of photography as a chemical process. So was Kodak for that matter, despite having conducted the first tests of digital photography.

My most significant takeaway from ‘Mr. Polaroid’ was learning about Meroë Morse. While saying that, “of course he loved his wife and two daughters,” the point is made that Land was “married to his work,” which included Morse for almost 25 years.

It’s easy to infer that Land’s feelings for Morse went beyond her being a highly competent and trusted colleague who made significant contributions to the company’s success. In contrast to Land’s deadpan expression in his Polaroid photos, Meroë shines in this attractive test photo.

Meroë Morse

It would be a stretch to say that Polaroid’s decline began with Morse’s untimely death in 1969, but not that much of a stretch. Edwin Land isn’t alone as a Boston CEO who was as responsible for his company’s demise as he was its past success. Other CEO’s of failed technology companies include DEC founder Ken Olsen, DG’s Edson de Castro, and An Wang at his namesake company, Wang Laboratories.

Twelve years after the death of Amar Bose, his namesake company is still in business. So he’s an exception to the Boston rule, with a caveat. Bose sank an estimated billion dollars into a pet project that ultimately went nowhere. After its founder’s death, the company sold off the technology.

https://www.extremetech.com/cars/259042-bose-sells-off-revolutionary-electromagnetic-suspension