The Passing of Jef Raskin
February 28, 2005
It is with sadness that I make this post. Jef Raskin, pioneer of user interface design, Apple employee #31, and the man who started the Macintosh project at Apple in 1979, died this past weekend of pancreatic cancer. He was a visionary and all around swell guy, and he will indeed be missed.
Although the Macintosh is currently Apple's flagship product and known worldwide, Raskin's original vision for the machine was very different than what ultimately was released as Macintosh. Raskin Macintosh, which he named after his "favorite eatin' apple," was to be a simple, 6809-based machine with an intelligent, intuitive, text-based display which could serve as "a computer for everyone." When Steve Jobs took the reins of the Macintosh project, it was transformed into a Lisa-like personal computer with more horsepower and a graphical user interface. Raskin's Canon Cat, released in 1987, was more akin to his original Macintosh vision than what Jobs and the Macintosh team ultimately delivered.
Jef Raskin was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December 2004 and died at the age of 61 on Saturday February 26th, 2005 in Pacifica, California. My condolences go out to Jef's family, friends, and the rest of us who lament his passing.
Related Links:
- Folklore.org stories about Raskin and the Macintosh project
- Articles from Jef Raskin about the history of the Macintosh
- DigiBarn's Jef Raskin, A Life of Design
- Raskin family statement (February 27, 2005)
- Jef Raskin's Apple Pascal "Syntax" Poster
- JefRaskin.com
The "Certain Impact" of RAM Failure...
February 25, 2005
About two years ago I setup a nice SGI O2 system to finally have a chance to play with IRIX and the 3D video hardware that SGI is so famous for. I've had fun with the box, but never had any app or demo that really pushed the hardware. Eventually I became aware of Certain Impact, a flight simulation game/demo from Paradigm, known for their work on flight simulators for the US government and also for designing the flight engine in the popular PilotWings and PilotWings 64 games for the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64, respectively. I searched on and off for a year and a half before finally finding Certain Impact, so you can understand how quickly I fired up my O2 to get it installed once the CDs arrived. That's when I was greeted with the chilling message.
There are some things that can be seen on a computer screen that truly send a chill down one's spine. I have screenshots of two such screenfulls of horror. Here and here. Memory error. Thanks to the 256MB of ECC memory in the O2, the error was rather precise in nature. I cracked open the unit and rotated/reseated the DIMMs—twice actually, and sadly the problem remained. It seems that, for the first time in the 23 years I have been using computers, I have experienced a memory failure. For the time being, I should be able to pull two of the eight DIMMs and run with 192MB RAM, hopefully seeing no further memory errors.
A sad moment, indeed. Hopefully this will bring the system back up to speed, allowing me to waste precious hours in front of Certain Impact.
UPDATE: The system has been running fine for days now with the bad DIMM (and its neighbor) pulled, dropping the total memory to 192MB. What's more, Certain Impact plays just great! I will have to post screenshots at some point.
A Bit Out of Hand...
February 20, 2005
I am pretty much always in the middle of setting up or modifying or reconfiguring one of my old school systems. Invariably when I start overlapping such projects, chaos ensues. I really need to straighten up my workspace. I have lately been careful not to fall down and become either electrocuted or strangled by the cable web.
My HP 9000 712/60 "Gecko" Workstation
February 9, 2005
One weekend last summer, my wife and I drove to a remote shopping center in search of a particular lamp shop. When we pulled into the parking lot, we found a massive "flea market" spread across the asphault with hundreds of people peddling table after table of what was basically junk. I noticed some old game consoles among the junk and thought I had best dig about for a bit in case something interesting or rare was lurking there, waiting for me. While I didn't find anything good, I did notice a fellow selling old PCs out the back of a large cargo truck. When I got closer I saw that among the stacks of PCs were a few old, large Sun servers and a slab-shaped machine, of which I could only see the rear. The longer I tried to identify the slab-shaped machine, the more I felt I recognized it. After a few moments I realized it was an HP 9000 712 "Gecko," which I had seen reviewed in an early-90's NeXTWORLD magazine. (I was impressed with myself at having identified a machine I had never seen in real life, and from its rear interface configuration alone. My wife was simply scared.) I asked the gentleman what he wanted for it and soon I was walking off $20 poorer with a machine that I knew would run NeXTSTEP over twice as fast as my current slab.
The machine I brought home that day was an HP 9000 712/60, also known by HP's codename, "Gecko." The Gecko is a workstation based on the PA-RISC processor that normally runs HP/UX, HP's flavor of UNIX. The Gecko is unique in several ways. First, it is one of the few non-NeXT platforms that can run the NeXTSTEP operating systems (another UNIX). In early '94 I had purchased a 486 66 that was specially fabricated to run NeXTSTEP for Intel. (It was even black!) Around the same time that NeXT ported its operating system to the Intel architecture, NeXTSTEP was also made to run on certain HP PA-RISC machines as well as several models of Suns. NeXTSTEP saw real performance gains running on these new RISC workstatons above NeXT's native 68040-based CISC hardware. Beyond performance, however, there is another detail that sets the Gecko apart.
NeXTSTEP had a graphical user interface with a capital 'G'. Its interface was lush and vibrant. It looked best on true color video hardware with a 32-bit framebuffer which used 24-bit color (16.8 million) + 8-bits transparency info, but back then the required video hardware was extremely expensive. NeXTSTEP also supported more affordable 16-bit framebuffers, using 12-bit color (4096 colors) + 4-bit transparency. In this mode, NeXTSTEP still looked amazing, but dithering had to be employed and was noticeable. The Gecko features a technology known as Color Recovery that employs an extremely unusual 8-bit framebuffer to achieve true color video output, with the help of a DSP, akin to what would be expected with a 32-bit framebuffer. The following is a clip from an HP Journal article by Anthony C. Barkans, publushed in 1995, that describes how Color Recovery works:
- The simplest explanation of HP Color Recovery is that it performs the task your eye is asked to do with an ordinary dithered system. In essence, an HP Color Recovery system takes 24-bit true color data generated by an application and dithers it down to eight bits for storage in the frame buffer. Then as the frame buffer data is scanned from the frame buffer to the display, it passes through specialized digital signal processing (DSP) hardware where the work of producing millions of colors is performed. The output of the DSP hardware is sent to the display where millions of colors can be viewed. It is important to recognize that since the data stored in the HP Color Recovery frame buffer is dithered, thousands of applications can work with it. It is also important to recognize that these applications will run at full performance in an interactive windowed environment. In other words, applications do not need to be changed to take advantage of HP Color Recovery.
See some photos of my Gecko setup in my gallery, here.
The following is another excerpt from the HP Journal article by Anthony C. Barkans. The full article goes in minute detail as to how this process works, from start to finish.
- HP Color Recovery is a two-part process. First, true color information generated by the application is dithered and then stored in the frame buffer. The type of application generating the true color information is immaterial. For example, true color data can be generated by a CAD application program or as part of a video sequence. The dithering may be done in a software device driver or in the hardware of a graphics controller. It is very important to note that each pixel is treated independently. This pixel independence is key to the ability to work within an interactive windowed environment. The second part of the HP Color Recovery process is to filter the dithered data. The filter is placed between the output of the frame buffer and the DACs that drive the monitor. Fig. 3 shows the HP Color Recovery process starting from when an application generates true color data to when the image appears on the screen. Note that "application" refers to any program that generates true color data for display.
After the application generates the data, it is sent to the device driver. The function of the driver is to isolate the application from hardware dependencies. The driver is supplied by HP. It causes hardware dithering to be used when possible. However, there are times when the driver must perform the dither in software. It is important to note that compared to other dithered systems, there is no performance penalty suffered by an application using HP Color Recovery dither.
The frame buffer stores the image data. Note that in most current systems the output of the dithered frame buffer is sent to the display, resulting in the common patterned appearance in the image. However, with HP Color Recovery, as the frame buffer data is scanned, it is sent through a specialized digital signal processing (DSP) circuit. The DSP is a sophisticated circuit that removes the patterning from the dithered image stored in the frame buffer. This circuit performs over nine billion operations per second. Despite this enormous amount of processing the circuit is surprisingly small. It is this small size that makes HP Color Recovery inexpensive enough to be considered for inclusion in lowend graphics systems.
Retro Gamer Made Me Famous...
February 5, 2005
It seems Retro Gamer magazine, which I spoke of a while back, has added a few seconds to my allotted 15 minutes of fame. I'll explain how. In issue 10 there is a nice, 10-page article about the Apple IIgs [ pics of my IIgs ] that reveals a wide range of historical facts and trivia. It's a great read complete with many color photos and it's most pleasing to see a machine that figured so prominently in my past put back in the spotlight. One area where the article is a bit misleading, however, is in its description of the IIgs as a 16-bit machine akin to the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST.
While the IIgs has graphics capabilities more or less similar to those machines, and audio hardware more powerful than either, strictly speaking the IIgs is an 8-bit machine. The Amiga/ST employ the Motorola 68000 CPU which is a 16/32-bit CPU, in that it uses 32-bit internal registers but sits on a 16-bit data bus through which it communicates with the outside world. At the heart of the IIgs lies a WDC 65C816 processor which is an 8/16-bit CPU, in that it has 16-bit internal registers, but sits on an 8-bit data bus. The only way one could consider the IIgs to be a 16-bit machine is if the internal CPU architecture alone is being referenced, and from that point of view the Amiga/ST become 32-bit machines.
At any rate, feeling the matter needed to be clarified, I sent an e-mail to the editor that described the above...and promptly forgot the matter. Several weeks later I was paging through issue 11 when I came across a letter to the editor which was pointing out this inaccuracy. I began to read with interest, as I recalled that the same inaccuracy had bugged me when I read the original article. (I still did not recall that I had written in about it.) It wasn't until about half-way through the piece that I was so struck by this reader laying out point after point that I had wanted to make, that I jumped to the end to see who it could be. Shock and surprise—it was me! There was my e-mail, in full, complete with a link to this site.
I guess between this printing, my inclusion in The Cult of Mac, and the NY Times appearance from '99, I am on my way to stardom....
My Commodore 64...and The Stand...
February 3, 2005
I have recently begun putting together a Commodore 64 system in order to have actual 8-bit Commodore hardware with which to compare my C-One. I've rather enjoyed playing with the C64, having never really been an 8-bit Commodore user. Impressive hardware. At any rate, I have always really liked the Commodore 1702 CRT with its separate chroma / luma inputs and sharp screen image, so that is the screen I chose for the system. I went with old school, brown 1541 floppy drives to match the display, but grabbed a C64C (new case design, beige rather than brown) because I could not determine with comfortable certainty that the older, brown C64s on eBay were rev. 3 units and had 8-pin video (with separate chroma/luma). The lot looks rather nice on the desk, but the 1702 was awkwardly situted, sitting rather low on the desk and making access to the rear C64 interfacfes difficult. I got the notion to try and remedy the situation.
I have just completed a project that took entirely too long and generated far too much of a mess in the house. I decided to build a rather simple monitor stand that would hold the screen at the proper height and angle and leave clearance for easy access to the rear interfaces of the C64. The stand is an exact fit for the 1702 and is made out of pine, with acrylic polyurethane (3 coats) used to finish. After plenty of corrective sanding, it's complete and in place and let me turn this into a much nicer looking this and this. Thought I would share for those interested.
It is a much smaller scale job than my last real woodworking bout, which also was an effort in support of vintage hardware.
The Vintage Computer Festival
February 2, 2005
It definitely seems that the number of vintage / retro computing fans out there is increasing. I suppose kids that were lusting after the latest and greatest hardware back in the days of the Apple II, Commodore 64, and Atari 800 now have careers and a bit of disposable income to spend on "dream hardware" they could never convince their parents to buy back in the day. One indication of the active fanbase out there is the yearly gathering known as the Vintage Computer Festival. As they, themselves, describe it:
- "The Vintage Computer Festival is an international event that celebrates the history of computing.
The mission of the Vintage Computer Festival is to promote the preservation of "obsolete" computers by offering people a chance to experience the technologies, people and stories that embody the remarkable tale of the computer revolution.
Through our event and the Vintage Computer Festival Archives—our publicly accessible archive of computer hardware, software, literature and ephemera—we promote interest in researching and documenting the history of the computer. Above all, we promote the fun of playing with old computers."
by Gordon Laing
