The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

  • My badges

    Mastodon

  • Twitter Updates

  • Pages

  • All categories

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 1,854 other subscribers

Archive for the ‘History’ Category

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

The Throttle homepage. Slow that machine down!

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/01/06

Cool tool if you have industrial machinery that uses DOS and needs a slowdown on modern hardware (because for instance your serial communications program is running way too fast): [WayBack] The Throttle homepage. Slow that machine down!

Via Matthijs ter Woord

Downloads:

  • Q) How does throttle work?
  • A) Throttle enables power management bits in the chipset to control CPU clock. Any chipset that conforms to the ACPI (advanced configuration and power interface) specification has a means to enable and control the throttle.
    The intended purpose of these bits is to provide a means of power savings, typically utilized in notebooks or other battery powered devices.
    When the CPU is in a throttled state, it uses less power. It just so happens that a throttled CPU creates a perfect environment to emulate the performance of an older generation CPU!
  • Q) I have a chipset that supports ACPI. Why isn’t it supported in throttle?
  • A) Probably because I don’t know about it. Because the ACPI specification can be implemented in different ways by different chipset manufacturers, it’s impossible to create one generic program that works with all ACPI compliant hardware. This creates the problem of constantly updating the internal database of known hardware. So far, the biggest problem has been finding the documentation for known ACPI compliant chipsets. Adding support for them is the easy part! You may also be using an older version of throttle. Contact me for the latest.
  • Q) Can I have more speed options than just the 8 (or 16) provided?
  • A) No. Throttle provides you with as many different CPU throttling options as the chipset allows. The ACPI spec only defines 8 different modes, each one 12.5% more throttled than the previous. VIA technologies has taken the spec 1 step further and allowed for throttling on 6.25% increments, thus doubling the amount of options available, which provides for more slowdown and a finer tunability.
    If you want to run oldskool games, get a VIA motherboard!There’s nothing I can do to change the available options, and no further options will be available unless the ACPI spec changes.

–jeroen

Posted in History, MS-DOS, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Im memoriam: Rudy Velthuis

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/01/05

Given that I’m fighting rectal cancer and am extremely low on energy, I am keeping this much shorter than I want to.

Recently, I learned that Rudy Velthuis passed away on 2019-05-13. Born on 1960-10-30, he passed away at only age 58.

After asking permission from his family, I wrote a small im memoriam.

We frequently encountered each other on-line in the Delphi community, especially in the early days when I was way more active on forums, newsgroups and chat channels. He was famous there, with good reason.

Though colloquially known as [WayBack] “dentist with a strong interest in programming”, he was a great Delphi programmer and very well known for thoroughly documenting the many gaps that Embarcadero left in their documentation.

In 2009, Edwin van der Kraan and I had an opportunity to have dinner with Rudy. We met at his house, where we learned he not only ran a fully fledged dentistry practice, but also was married someone who origilally was from the Philippines. A truly happy couple they were.

In retrospect, I wish we had had met in real life more often, but I’m learning the hard way that life is finite giving you only so much time to do things.

I will remember Rudy because of his knowledge, wit and odd – but great – combination of work and interests.

In the mean time, I have asked a few archival organisations (including the WayBack machine) to archive his sites:

Some of his profiles that I archived on 20190103:

I love the “Kraftwerk – Autobahn” picture on his Stack Overflow profile page, so I included that song below the fold.

Related:

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in About, Delphi, Development, History, Personal, Software Development | 4 Comments »

Top 2000 café 2019 – Alle informatie op een rij – NPO Radio 2 – Presentatoren, producers/sidekicks, nieuwslezers en tijden

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/12/23

Een overzicht van alles wat ik via de Top2000 site en Twitter bij elkaar geschraapt heb.

Edit 20190228

  • (Dank René Gerritsen): Stefan Stasse ziek, Annemieke Schollaardt zijn zijn slot, en Emmely de Wilt in het slot van Annemieke, Timur in het slot van Stefan op 26 december.
  • (Dank Matijn Nijhuis): Matijn’s Quiz op 27 en 29 december in de Top 2000 Tent
  • (Dank Moon/Caroline: Caroline Brouwer is toch terug van vakantie)

Edit 20190229; wachttijden: [WayBack] Top 2000 Cafe | Beeld en Geluid 

Tijdschema

Start Eind DJ Sidekick/Producer Sidekick Twitter Twitter Twitter Nieuwslezer Twitter
8:00 9:00 Jan-Willem Roodbeen Jeroen Kijk in de Vegte @JWRoodbeen @jeroenkidv Carmen Verheul @carmenverheul
9:00 10:00
10:00 11:00 Bart Arens @BartRadio2
11:00 12:00
12:00 13:00 Gijs Staverman @GijsStaverman
13:00 14:00 Matijn Nijhuis @matijn
14:00 15:00 Rob Stenders Caroline Brouwer @robstenders @radiocarol
(toch niet op vakantie)
15:00 16:00
16:00 17:00 Ruud de Wild Cielke Sijben

Georgina Gulsen

 Thijs Maalderink

Gijs Hakkert

 @ruuddewild @CielkeSijben
is vervangen door 
@GeorginaGulsen		 @OnwijsThijs
@GijsHakkert
17:00 18:00
18:00 19:00 Wouter van der Goes @woutervdgoes
19:00 20:00
20:00 21:00 Annemieke Schollaardt
(vervangt Stefan Stasse)		 Nathan Tamis @Annemiekeishere @NathanTamis Wouter Walgemoed @wouwal
21:00 22:00
22:00 23:00 Paul Rabbering @paul_rabbering
23:00 24:00
0:00 1:00 Leo Blokhuis @LeoBlokhuis Nachtlezer
1:00 2:00
2:00 3:00 Rick van Velthuysen @rickvanv
3:00 4:00
4:00 5:00 Frank van ’t Hof @frankvanthof
5:00 6:00
6:00 7:00 Emmely de Wilt @EmmelydeWilt
7:00 8:00 Carmen Verheul @carmenverheul

 

Matijn’s quiz in de top 2000 tent:

  • 27 december 09.15 – 10.00 uur (Vrijdag)
  • 29 december 09.15 – 10.00 uur (Zondag)

Bronnen:

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in History, LifeHacker, Personal, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Walts Lede – the disappearing computer.

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/12/23

I love this image so much: [WayBack] Walts_Lede_v04_3.1495666767.gif (2040×1164)

It is how I learned about the word “lede” [WayBack].

It indeed is a perfect fit introducing the article by Nilay Patel “Mossberg: The Disappearing Computer – The Verge” [WayBack] which I only discovered quite a while after Walt Mossberg retired in June 2017: I was a regular listener to and thought he had completely stopped contributing to columns too. I was wrong: he occasionally still does.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in History, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Borland’s legendary development tools…

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/12/12

From [WayBack] Borland’s legendary development tools Do you remember Turbo Languages from Borland? There are Pascal, C, Assembler, Basic, Prolog and many other produc… – Jaroslav Beran – Google+:

Borland’s legendary development tools

Do you remember Turbo Languages from Borland? There are Pascal, C, Assembler, Basic, Prolog and many other products. Here there is link to directory containing original documentation of many these products:

http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/borland/

Did you work with some of them? Which one was your favorite?

[WayBack] Bitsavers Index of /pdf/borland:

[ICO] Name Last modified Size Description
[DIR] Ads/ 2011-09-01 20:47 –
[ ] BRIEF_for_DOS_and_OS2_Version_3.1_Users_Guide_1992.pdf 2009-06-30 22:57 8.9M
[ ] Borland_Brochure_1987.pdf 2009-11-05 02:18 2.1M
[ ] Borland_Turbo_BASIC_Owners_Handbook_1987.pdf 2009-07-30 05:33 15M
[ ] Eureka_The_Solver_Owners_Handbook_1987.pdf 2011-03-20 23:56 8.5M
[ ] Superkey_Owners_Handbook_1986.pdf 2011-02-04 02:01 7.1M
[ ] Turbo_Languages_Brochure_1988.pdf 2011-01-25 04:26 4.0M
[ ] Turbo_Vision_Version_2.0_Programming_Guide_1992.pdf 2010-06-18 19:07 25M
[ ] Windows_API_Guide_Reference_Volume_1_1991.pdf 2009-07-01 03:16 28M
[ ] Windows_API_Guide_Reference_Volume_2_1991.pdf 2009-07-01 03:16 8.7M
[ ] Windows_API_Guide_Reference_Volume_3_1992.pdf 2009-07-01 03:17 24M
[DIR] borland_C++/ 2013-01-17 00:07 –
[DIR] objectvision/ 2011-06-06 23:47 –
[DIR] paradox/ 2011-06-06 23:43 –
[DIR] quatro/ 2014-12-11 03:04 –
[DIR] quatro_pro/ 2011-06-06 23:47 –
[DIR] reflex/ 2011-06-06 23:37 –
[DIR] sidekick/ 2011-06-06 23:38 –
[DIR] sprint/ 2011-06-06 23:42 –
[DIR] turbo_assembler/ 2013-01-17 00:07 –
[DIR] turbo_c/ 2011-06-06 23:37 –
[DIR] turbo_pascal/ 2011-09-01 19:23 –
[DIR] turbo_prolog/ 2011-06-06 23:43 –

Via: [WayBack] Borland’s legendary development tools Do you remember Turbo Languages from Borland? There are Pascal, C, Assembler, Basic, Prolog and many other produc… – Adrian Marius Popa – Google+

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, History, Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Pascal | Leave a Comment »

Delphi ^A syntax: Documented, implied, or undocumented? – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/12/12

The syntax is documented. In the Turbo Pasal 3 documentation, i.e. the Z80 era.

Source my answer to [WayBack] Delphi ^A syntax: Documented, implied, or undocumented? – Stack Overflow (I have added some WayBack Internet Archive links below) as it is from the Turbo Pascal era where the caret was introduced to support control characters:

This is from long ago as an escape character to enable you to have consts for control characters in a more readable way.
const
  CtrlC = ^C;
begin
  Write(Ord(CtrlC));
end.

This defines a Char constant with value #3, then writes 3 in Borland Pascal 7, and I remember seeing it years before that too.

I just checked the Turbo Pascal 5.0 and Borland Pascal 7.0 languages guides, but could not find it, so it seems undocumented.

Edit: I do remember this was a Borland thing, and just [WayBack] checked: it is not part of the ISO Pascal standard (formerly this was ANSI Pascal Standard, thanks Sertac for noticing this).

It [WayBack] is documented in the Free Pascal documentation [WayBack].

SGI uses the backslash as escape character, as per their docs [WayBack].

More Edit: I found it [WayBack] documented in Delphi in a Nutshell and the [WayBack] Delphi Basics site.

Found it: Just found it on page 37 of the Turbo Pascal 3 Reference Manual [WayBack].

(Marco van de Voort found the Free Pascal documentation)

It in fact originates in the 1984 Turbo Pascal 1 edition, as per the [WayBack] Turbo_Pascal_Reference_Manual_Feb84.pdf:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Borland Pascal, Delphi, Development, FreePascal, History, Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Pascal, Z80 | 1 Comment »

Blast from the past: dial-up modem sounds

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/12/02

Because fewer and fewer people have used them in real life: this is how geeks communicated even before the internet era.

Below a series of videos with modem sounds. One as recent?! as 2008 when dial-up was still possible in many places. Now it’s a not just a thing from the past, but an area where mankind learned a lot about signal processing, for which the knowledge is still in use today.

  1. [Wayback/Archive] The Sound of dial-up Internet with dial tones and initial training sequences
  2. [Wayback/Archive] ALL Old Modem Sounds (300 baud to 56K) demonstrating how a Conexant V.92 based soft-modem could create most modem standard used in North America (Bell 103, V.22(bis), V.32(bis), V.34, V.90, and V.92), corresponding to 300 bps, 2400 bps, 14.4K, 33.6K, and 56K.
  3. [Wayback/Archive] Dial Up Modem Handshake Sound – Spectrogram which is a preamble to [Wayback/Archive] absorptions: The sound of the dialup, pictured.
  4. [Wayback/Archive] Sound of the dialup modem explained

Related blog posts:

Edit 20250318 added [Wayback/Archive] Dial Up Modem Sounds: Telebit Trailblazer Packetized Ensemble Protocol (PEP) – YouTube plus Wayback/Archive links where appropriate.

--jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in dial-up modems, History, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Sony STR-DE205 Receiver – storing FM stations into memory

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/09/27

Somehow I misplaced the manuals of my Sony STR-DE205 receiver, including the Operating Instructions.

Sony still makes receivers

I did find [WayBack] Sony STR-DE205 – Manual – AM/FM Stereo Receiver – HiFi Engine which has a Service Manual. It has no operating instructions though.

Luckily, the STR-DE205 is very similar to the Sony STR-DE305, which I found using sony str de205 filetype:pdf operating instructions and having an Operating Instructions copy at [WayBack] pdf.crse.com/manuals/3810995221.pdf.

In fact, all the pictures in that manual look remarkably similar to the STR-DE205, except for one: the remote control:

It has one extra button POWER, which the STR-DE205 lacks, which likely means the STR-DE305 can be powered on remotely (like my trusty Sony MHC-3000 mini set that is slightly older).

Anyway, programming is easy as long as you know you need to press one of the NUMERIC BUTTONS in step 5:

  1. Press TUNER.
    The last received station is tuned in.
  2. Tune in the station you want.
    If you are not familiar with how to tune in a station, see “Receiving Broadcasts” on the previous page.
  3. Press MEMORY.
    “MEMORY” appears for a few seconds.
    Do steps 4 and 5 before “MEMORY” goes out.
  4. Press SHIFT to select a character (A, B or C).
    Each time you press SHIFT, the letter “A”, “B” or “C” appears in the display.
    If “MEMORY” disappears, start again from step 3.
  5. While MEMORY is displayed, press the number you want to use (0 to 9).
  6. Repeat Steps 2 to 5 to preset other stations.

Getting the text out of the PDF was a bit of a pain, as even though it renders, DRM tried to prohibit copying.

Luckily there is a pdftohtml with a -nodrm feature in Poppler (software) – Wikipedia (unlike the Xpdf – Wikipedia it forked from that does not have this switch) which I got based on these links:

Some more images are below after some Sony STR-DE205 videos.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Hardware, History, Power User | 2 Comments »

Kornelia Esser : Traueranzeige

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/09/24

For my memory; I hope to contemplate more about this later. But right now, with 10 medically related appointments in 2 weeks time, my head is too full.

Today I found out that earlier this year, one of my parents really good friends has passed away earlier this year: [WayBack/Archive.is] Kornelia Esser : Traueranzeige : Super Sonntag / Super Mittwoch.

Kornelia Esser

Text:

Der Tod kann auch freundlich kommen zu Menschen, die alt sind,
deren Hände nicht mehr festhalten wollen,
deren Augen müde wurden,
deren Stimme nur noch sagt:
„Es ist genug. nas Leben war schön.”

Kornelia Esser
* 28. August 1930    † 30. Juni 2019

Wenn ihr an mich denkt, seid nicht traurig, erzählt lieber von mir und traut euch ruhig
zu lachen.
Lasst einen Platz zwischen euch, in eurer Mitte, so, wie ich ihn im Leben hatte.

Du bleibst immer in unseren Herzen
Ernst und Sibille Esser
Anita und Achim Halkour
mit Arne und Pia
Uschi und Jürgen Ulrichs
mit Lisa und Lars
Norbert und Beate Esser
mit Lukas und Jana
sowie alle Verwandten

Kondolenzanschrift:
Kornelia Esser c/o Markus Forg Bestattungen, Roermonder Straße 24, 41812 Erkelenz

Die Exequien finden am Montag, dem 8. Juli 2019, um 14.30 Uhr in der Kirche St. Stephanus zu
Golkrath statt. Anschließend erfolgt die Beerdigung von der Kirche aus.
Von Kranz- und Blumenspenden sowie Trauerkleidung bitten wir abzusehen
Sollte jemand aus Versehen keine persönliche Anzeige erhalten haben, so diene diese als solche.

She was leading the household (kitchen, cleaning and medical departments) of the [WayBack] Collegium Josephinum – Konvikt Bad Münstereifel and a special person to us: see my below German Twitter thread.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in About, History, Personal | Leave a Comment »

Turbo Pascal 7 compatible compiler for 8051 microcontrollers…

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/08/21

I had seen this before, but was glad about the reminder to put it in my blog: [WayBack] OMG, there is Turbo Pascal 7 compatible compiler for 8051 microcontrollers! http://turbo51.com – Primož Gabrijelčič – Google+:

[WayBack] turbo51.com: Full-featured free Pascal compiler for 8051 microcontrollers, Borland Turbo Pascal 7 syntax, multi-pass optimizer, generates bin, hex, OMF-51 and asm source.

Program Turbo51;
 
Uses FastCompiler, AdvancedOptimizations, SmartLinker, AseemblerFileGenerator;
 
//  Turbo51 is released as freeware. You can download it and use it for FREE.
//  However, if you like Turbo51 you can donate some small amount via PayPal.
//  Donations are a great way to show your appreciation for my software.
 
begin
  DownloadFrom ('http://turbo51.com/download-free-pascal-compiler-8051');
  InstallAndConfigure;
  Repeat
    CreateProject;
    CompileProject;
    TestProject;
    While ThereIsAProblem do
    begin
      CheckCode;
      CheckDocumentation;
      TryAgain;
      Case ProblemSolved of
        True: Break;
        else  AskForHelp;
      end;
    end;
    If InstalledVersion < '0.1.3.17' then Update;
    If Satisfied then Donate ($20);
  until NoMoreProjects;
end.
a

–jeroen

Posted in Development, History, Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Pascal | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »