The END is near!

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I have decided to take a break in the blog from the C128 and just go to a general blog today. The end of 2009 is less than 14 days away and I wanted to share my thoughts on the fast year in tech in general, like I do every ear at this time. I ussually go into my "predictions" for the next year, but the tech world is so screwed up right now, I predict that 2010 will bring more of the crap 2009 brought us. So I leave to you a few "Top 10" lists.

TOP 10 TECH things that I WISH would just die in 2010.
in no particular order.

10: The I-Phone- Come on people, wake up out of your zombie like state. There are much better phones on the market, and with the 'droid phones, no one is locked into Apple's hold of death on the apps.

9: Twitter- face it, no one cares what you are doing "Right now" and if the do, they are more pathetic than you for buying into the crap, than you are for posting it.

8: Facebook- There are so many things wrong with Facebook- active scripting, CIA involvement, every single application whats to take over your whole computer, privacy issues, etc. The next major virus to hit and possibly kill the Internet, will be launched through facebook. Also, do you actually have that much low self-esteem that you need 5000 friends that you would never talk to in the real world?

7: MySpace- Another hudge risk on security and just a very "Bad" Idea.

6: Lime Wire- 99% of all and I mean ALL viruses I deal with on a day to day basis come down through Lime Wire. People, just use a bit torrents.

5: Browser Tool bars- In a lot of software (Nero, Adobe etc) are trying to sucker people into installing a "asK" or "Yahoo" tool bar. It is not enough that firefox or IE has this built in to it. I just cringe ant the amount of flipping tool bars people have installed and wonder why they can't see the Internet, because they have 20 on the screen. Of course they have "No Idea" where it came from, or why their computer has spyware.

4: Laptop Touchpads- Yes, I said it. With all this "technology" we have to have SOMETHING BETTER than a useless touchpad that interferes with typing if you accidentally hit it. Even if manufactures moved it ABOVE the keyboard or to the actual side of the laptop, ANYwhere that its not going to interfear with typing (I myself have been actually working on this and drawing up designs- not that anyone cares mind you). God, just a simple blu-tooth mouse that slides in the laptop when not in use is a no brainer.

3: Useless applications that want to load at start-up:- Ok people, look down by your clock on your task bar. How many icons do you have? If the answer is more than 5, you need to really examine what needs to start up. WinZip, Acrobat reader, live-update, weather bug,nero -quickstart, Apple I tunes, Quick Time, the list goes on and on. How long must we put up with this BORG like mentality?
Half of my service calls are from people with slow boot times and they have all these useless programs running at start up, because they just don't know. If Microsoft asked me to help design the next Windows, I would insist that the Start-up be a "protected" mode and none of these would be able to infest the start up process.

2: "Live- Update" features: _one of my pet peaves is that "Live-update". Not only does it halt everything going on on your system to remind you that the latest and greatest version of the software is avalible, you must stop EVERYTHING you are doing and re-boot after it updates. Java is one of the worst for this. I have had DVD's transcodeing for 6 hours and crash, because Java wanted me to update. The worst part, 2 weeks later it wanted me to update again. WHO THE HELL cares about it, when I want to update, I will go to Java and update it myself. I don't need to be reminded every frickin 5 minutes, when I am trying to work.

1: "Busy" Websites - This is websites with so much stuff on the front page, you can't find what you are looking for. This may be ads, or what the website can do for you, but, if there is too much shit on the front page, it will turn people off. GO-DADDY.com is famous for this. I use Go-daddy for my domain names, and all that shit even leave my head spinning. Go-daddy makes enough money, why not hire a REAL website designer and have even more Business.



There are much more I would love to add to this list, but I cut it off at 10.

My Commodore 128

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Well, this week has gone from extremely busy to dead, work wise. I have had a bunch of new clients, and some really wacky tech calls. I really hate it when people go out and spend a good amount of coin, getting a nice computer system running XP and then find out it only has 128 megs of ram. They get it home and all the windows updates come down and then they can't even start the machine. To me this is straight out fraud and both the sales person and the company that sold that machine should get a minimum of a million dollar fine, if not jail time. It's just criminal how people get away with selling shit to an uniformed public.

Just after my last blog, I received in my Commodore 128.
For those of you that do not know what the C128 is, it was CBM's last ditch attempt at an 8 bit computer before the Amiga came out. When the project was started, CBM had not acquired the Amiga, so for a brief moment, this was Commodore's most powerful machine.
The story behind the C128 is just as fascinating as any of the Commodore computers. It all realy started at the CES in 1984 when Bil Herd was getting flack over the C264 for no backward compatibility with the C64. So Bill made it his mission to build the next system with 100% backward compatibility with the C64 (no small feat).
Instead of making a C64 with more ram, and minimal upgrades (like the TRS 80 Color Computer 3) , Him and Dave Haynie decide to make it more. They not only wanted a full C64 mode, and an extended 128 mode, the also were looking at CP/M for business. Bill also new that CP/M was on its way out, but the machine was only suppose to be a bridge between the 8 bits and the new 16 Bit computers.

As he was trying to get the CP/M Cartridge to work, he had found out why the original C64 Cartridge did not really work. It was under powered. So he decided to put a Z80 CPU right in the 128 and late one night, he tore open his "doorstop" ( a Sinclar Computer) and by morning he had the SECOND Dual CPU computer ever made. The C128 boots off the Z80.
(update) Jan 27 2010
Bil actually called me and told me it wasn't JUST because of the power. I won't get into the whole story in detail, but it had also to do with the timing and clock signals of the Z-80, coupled with the brand of RAM they were using at the time. All of these issue, and the CP/M cart was a blatant copy of the Apple card, forced Bil to re-evaluate and just fix everything.

Also, Bil set out to "fix" the bugs in the original C64, but as he did, he noticed les and less of the software would work with the "improved" C64, as the programmers often to full advantage of the glitches in the system. He had no choice but to "put the glitches back in" he even had a wire titled as such.
Perhaps the biggest pain was there was a ton of people against him, and he only had a few months to make the computer. At the 1985 CES show, just as he and Dave were coming in to Vegas, they saw a bill board that said "Can be expanded to 512K of ram". He originally made it for 512 k, but his boss told him to take it out. Now, they had to put it back in! Well, he did!


The best thing is that the system sold way more units and for years after it was released (up until 1989), The sad thing is that barely anyone took advantage of the 128 mode that was not backwards compatible with the C64 for mode, and CP/M was really dead by launch.
Bil also designed a C128D (desktop) unit, and shared the same "design" case as the Amiga 1000, with a built in C1570 Floppy drive. Commodore chose not to release the Desktop unit untill years later, and that unit caught on and the public love it. The C128 Desktop unit remains one of the most desirable Commodore computers to this day.
MY UNIT

I have the regular "Flat" or wedge unit.
The box came in not too squished, and the contents were in fair condition.

Since I bought mine, the prices have crashed on Ebay. I probably paid the last high price at $45 for this unit, as better units with Disk drives can be had for around $25-$30 now. My did not come with a Power supply, nor any books or disks. When I bought mine, A nicely boxed unit with Disks and books were going for between $60 and $80, now not even half.

The Auction said this unit also came with a Commodore mouse:
Unfortunately, the mouse is an Amiga mouse, which can not be used with a 128 (you can tell by the plug, for an Amiga mouse has a bigger, longer plug with a metal band around it.

The "bad" thing about the wedge systems, is that they were sold as cheap as possible. The wedge system only came with 16K of video memory, (as apposed to 64K on the desktop) so in order to do any full graphics, you need to get the Video upgrade (about $29, I have one coming).
One cool feature is that Bil designed this with an "open" rom slot, so you can add anything to they sys rem in ROM. I am getting a "double" rom with GEOS and Basic 8 available on a switch.

One last "fun fact" on the system is the keyboard layout. Bil and Dave "borrowed" the layout from the VAX keyboard, which they had used all for development of all CBM computers. Once the C128 was done, they used them with custom software to design other commodore computers and chips.
I have all the Power and disks coming for it.
Next Time:
A look inside.