MOTM

Remember the Color Computer, or the VIC20 or the Sinclair where you booted
up in 1 second,
never hade a page fault, never had to reset unless you dicked NMI?

I spent 14 HOURS STRAIGHT trying to install 1 "upgrade" of my big pcb
autorouter. I have never
IN 27 YEARS seen a bigger pile of s**t in my life as the horror these C++
loving, JAVA-writing, RAM-sucking,
I-need-300MB-on-your-drive, so called programmers at Cadence have come up
with including:

a) having to run TCP/IP even if you are NOT on a network!

b) *requiring* you to edit the Registry manually

c) Installing the software in a path (and I'm not making this up)

C:\Program Files\Cadence Design Systems\Cadence Design License
Manager\License File\Bin\Programs\Data

and *requiring* you to type this in 6 FRIGGIN TIMES in various setup screens

d) the Installation Guide is (I'm not making this up) 67 PAGES LONG

and after all this, zip. Page crashes. Was on the phone 6 HOURS with tech
support . NADA! My autorouter is dead.

So, sad to say ZERO MOTM will ship tomorrow (or today)   :(    Sorry Sorry
Sorry. Nothing I can do. I HATE computers.
The single worse thing to happen to programming is the introduction of the
64K DRAM. Anyone remember
NightRanger pinball for the Apple? 1,872 BYTES!!! THE WHOLE )(#$*%*#$%
PROGRAM!!

Paul S.
signing off, apoligies to Celeste

Now you know why I write embedded systems firmware for machines that
have maybe 32K of ROM *max* and refuse to write desktop apps.  This is
also why my PCB CAD is Tango v1.08 circa 1989: runs fine under DOS on a
386 laptop and 386 laptops are dirt cheap on ebay.  If a lose one, just go
on to the next.  (I have Accel EDA but rarely use it).  Most of my
microcontroller assemblers are written in x86 assembler and are
command-line only.  I can take my entire devkit with me in one Targus
case, including the ICE-pod and/or device programmer.

  We don't *need* all this crap that has been foisted on us ever since M$
spat out Windoze 3.1.

Crow

p.s., I'll scan the picture story of Bob Pease solving a computer problem
that JH noted from Pease' troubleshooting book.

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On Fri, 12 May 2000, Paul Schreiber wrote:

> a) having to run TCP/IP even if you are NOT on a network!

  Does it require the presence of a network card?  A popular
"unique-machine ID" method is to use a network card's MAC address and hash
something based on it.  Of course one can change a MAC address if they
know what they're doing (and don't try to actually use it on a
network), heh heh heh...

  It is in the same league as a typical Sun's nvram machine serial number.

Crow

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