CompuServe Thread

#1541

8 messages in this thread
#195795From: EducomMay 5, 1995 9:06 AM
I was pretty convinced another solution exists apart from the jurassic 1541! I just can't imagine such a drive can't be produced for a ridiculous amount of money… Fred. Frederic Botton from Paris, France fbotton@cix.compulink.co.uk
#195906From: Jim ButterfieldMay 6, 1995 10:21 AM
>> I just can't imagine that such a drive can't be produced for a ridiculous amount of money… Let me see. You have two negatives in there, and I'm not sure whether you are saying ridiculously-high or ridiculously-low … Several third-party vendors made 1541 clones until Commodore squashed them. Keep in mind that the 1541 has quite a bit of RAM and logic inside, all of which adds to the manufacturing cost. It's still hard to convince non-Commodore types that you can plug a drive or two into your 64K machine, and still have 64K of memory available in your computer. A 1541-style machine just needs extra stuff inside, which make it non industry standard and increase the price. It was intersting to see that the C65 was claimed to be able to interface with "industry standard" drives, both floppy and HD. –Jim
#196269From: EducomMay 9, 1995 4:11 AM
>Let me see. You have two negatives in there, and I'm not sure whether you >are saying ridiculously-high or ridiculously-low … Sorry about my so-called English |-) I was trying to say ridiculously-low… >C65 was claimed to be able to interface with "industry standard" drives, >both floppy and HD. If a 1541 drive still can't be produced at a reasonable price (thanks for your hardware explanations, Jim), then they _have_ to go for a "standard"… Fred. Frederic Botton from Paris, France fbotton@cix.compulink.co.uk
#196282From: Jim ButterfieldMay 9, 1995 8:58 AM
>> Sorry about my so-called English |-) Not at all. Your English is excellent. It's just that sometimes a question isn't completely clear, and I hate to misunderstand and send an answer to something that hasn't been asked. This happens no matter what the poster's native language happens to be. Heck, I'm sure that my questions (and replies) are sometimes not clear to the reader. To take it one step further, some of the programs I write are not clear to the computer that runs them. But everyone knows that computers are dumber than people, but smarter than programmers. 🙂 –Jim
#196392From: EducomMay 10, 1995 3:53 AM
🙂 But Betty said you were fluent in French! Ok, next time I'll expand in French ;-)) It's funny computers do not understand French… I keep telling my Amiga to "FORMATTE LECTEUR df0: NOM Lancement VITE" without any positive results 😉 Fred. Frederic Botton from Paris, France fbotton@cix.compulink.co.uk
#196409From: Jim ButterfieldMay 10, 1995 10:08 AM
>> I keep telling my Amiga to "FORMATTE LECTEUR df0: NOM Lancement VITE" without any positive results… Perhaps she's offended that you would "tutoyer" her without the proper introductions. Think "FORMATTEZ…" would do it? 🙂 I don't recall ever having trouble with your use of English as such. Sometimes when I see someone using a strange combination of words, I might try to "reverse translate" to try to figure out what is meant. There are celebrated Pennsylvania Dutch expressions, such as "Throw momma from the train a kiss". And I once had a letter from a Dutch correspondent who proudly advised me, "Last week I have become a Honda". (Somebody told him to avoid using the word "get", and so he threw in the handiest similar phrase he could find). Reverse translation doesn't always work, of course. There's the apocryphal story of the technical paper translated by computer into Russian, following which the Russian text was mechanically translated back to English. In the final version, readers could not understand the reference to "water buffalo" in an Engineering paper. When the original text was checked, it turned out to refer to a hydraulic ram. 🙂 –Jim
#196421From: John ChangMay 10, 1995 12:32 PM
Frederic, You said and I quote, "I keep telling my Amiga to "FORMATTE LECTEUR df0: NOM Lancement VITE" without any positive results ;-)" Merde! Regards, John Chang
#196296From: Betty Clay/SYSOPMay 9, 1995 11:19 AM
Fred, I suspect you could write your question in French and Jim would understand it perfectly – and could answer you in French. But I appreciate your making the effort to use English here, so that the *rest* of use can understand both the question and the answer. I'm afraid that my one year of college French (more years ago than I plan to say) just isn't up to it. —Betty