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Dave Johnson29
01-18-2009, 3:12 PM
After all the help I got adding those scales to the 1911 grip drawing, my laser just burns them as one flat item. :(

I tired a bunch of different settings and speeds. Still the same.

I thought the dot density might have given a 3D effect, but the printer driver just has the laser full on.

Ahhh well, it is a 1992 model laser running under DOS 6.22 and win3.1 some things are just not meant to be. :):)

p.s. Pardon the dust on the glass window, I didn't see it until I got inside.

Doug Griffith
01-18-2009, 4:10 PM
It may be possible to run multiple different files in succession to achieve different burn levels. Just don't move the piece and register each file to the same location.

Cheers,
Doug

Doug Griffith
01-18-2009, 4:16 PM
Ahhh well, it is a 1992 model laser running under DOS 6.22 and win3.1 some things are just not meant to be. :):)

I've got a CNC that runs on DOS and I needed to reload it a while back. I went to a computer store (Frys) to buy it and all I got was blank stares. The salesmen didn't even know what DOS was! I then went to a specialty shop and they just gave it to me. Hmmm. Must be getting old.

Cheers,
Doug

Dave Johnson29
01-18-2009, 4:31 PM
I've got a CNC that runs on DOS and I needed to reload it a while back.


Hi Doug, I know what you mean. I still have Borland Pascal 7 for programming for DOS. What's that make me?? :)

Dave Johnson29
01-18-2009, 4:32 PM
It may be possible to run multiple different files in succession to achieve different burn levels.

Thanks Doug,

I will give that a try when I get some more time to spend on it.

Dan Hintz
01-18-2009, 4:46 PM
I'm keeping my disks of DOS 6.22 in a vacuum-sealed case for safe-keeping ;)

Dave Johnson29
01-18-2009, 5:37 PM
Well I am making some progress.

I exported the grips as a BMP in 16-Bit grayscale.

I converted to B&W with a Stucki conversion as it gave more white areas.

I saved it as a BMP then imported it back into Corel.

I have to mess with the power settings a little but I am on my way.

Thanks to all who helped.

John Noell
01-18-2009, 9:06 PM
I still have Borland Pascal 7 for programming for DOS. What's that make me?? :)Almost a Delphi Oracle. :)

(Non-coders might not know that Delphi is what Borland's Pascal became.)

John W. Love
01-18-2009, 10:55 PM
ok, this is gonna give away my age, but I learned BASIC, PASCAL,COBAL and FORTRAN when I was in college. The only time it could have possibly come into use in recent ages was right before Y2K when everyone was running around like Chicken Little thinking the world was gonna end. Unfortunately for me, by the time it was needed again I had forgotten all those computer languages. And by the way, DOS was the greatest thing since sliced bread when it came out. Now it is just simply a term to make the techie kids's eyes glaze over when you mention it.

My first personal computer was a Timex Sinclair that you hooked to your tv for a monitor and a cassette recorder for your hard drive. Later on I really broke out and got a commodore 128 that I was able to upgrade the memory on it to 1 megabyte. yep, you heard me right! I was THE DUDE back in the day lol. Now days I have trouble figuring out how to program the microwave to not burn popcorn.

Bill Cunningham
01-18-2009, 11:24 PM
Hi Doug, I know what you mean. I still have Borland Pascal 7 for programming for DOS. What's that make me?? :)

I have a copy of Borland 'C' for dos someplace, but it's probably on 5 1/4" disks, and those drives are getting rarer..:D
It's still up on the shelf with the original K&R explaining the language..:o

Dan Hintz
01-19-2009, 7:48 AM
John,

Don't feel too bad... I had a Sinclair myself, along with the thermal printer, 16kB expansion pack, and cassette tape interface for loading programs. Eventually I picked up a Spectrum, which was nothing more than a color version of the Sinclair. I took basic in middle school summer class, but by that time in my "career" I was practically teaching the teacher. Took Pascal in high school, never used it again. Took Fortran in college, used it once to transform a mainframe program written by my boss to this "new" language C (it was starting to become popular by then due to companies like Borland), never used it again. Now I just write in either C/C++ or assembly, nothing in between.

Dave Johnson29
01-19-2009, 8:49 AM
Don't feel too bad... I had a Sinclair myself, along with the thermal printer,


Ha! You young whipper snappers. I built my first computer when the Z80 was not even a twinkle in Zilog's eyes. :) I programmed it with 8 push buttons on the front panel.

My first real over the counter computer was a Tandy model I with 4K of memory, all uppercase output and a cassette tape recorder.

I later bought the expansion interface for the Tandy which gave me a whopping 16K and 5-1/4" single sided 160K floppy drive. The printer was an old 300-baud teletype that I converted.

That floppy soon led to a Micro-something (Microtek I think) hard drive with an unbelievable 5Meg and it was a steal at $3,000 and it came in a box about 18" square and 8" high. By that time I was programming in BASIC and selling programs to Betamax video rental stores. Now I have in my pocket a retractable USB plugged 8G Flash drive that I paid 19-bucks for. Progress! Love it.

Hands up who understands all the wording in this posting. LOL :D

Pete Simmons
01-19-2009, 9:01 AM
Built my own Z-80 based computer back in the early 70's. I remember the Z-80 chip was $350 when I started. I waited as I built and finally bought one for $50. I bet they are around $1 now.

Massive 16K of memory. Used a cassette deck for a tape drive. I had BASIC running on it. My kids played Lunar Lander. All graphics were based on moving text around. Built a custom interface to an IBM Selectric typewriter. Go ahead and ask me about tilt and rotate of the ball at one time I knew to much about that.

Interface was all in machine language. I was always (and still am) amazed at the number of instructions you could perform between things like a small movement of the print ball.

Power supply could also be used for a welder if needed!

Dan Hintz
01-19-2009, 9:46 AM
Now now, DJ, I didn't say my first computer was the Sinclair, just that I owned one at one time :p My "first" one was like yours... 8 switches to set the bits, a momentary toggle to load the byte and increment the address lines, etc. Can't remember the processor offhand... maybe a 6052, maybe a Z80, don't remember what was popular at the time. Took me an hour or more to load a single program of a few kB, and God forbid I should lose power, hit the toggle too soon, make a mistake in the bit switches, etc. :eek: Now I get cranky having to wait two minutes for a few GigaByte OS to load automatically when I flip the power switch.

Things sure have come a long way...

Dave Johnson29
01-19-2009, 10:34 AM
Power supply could also be used for a welder if needed!


:D:D:D You win Pete, I had forgotten about those honking great things. Keep a small house warm on a Winters day.

Dan: Sorry for my hasty reply. :)

Compared to those Bit selection switches, when I was using punch cards, I used to think how lucky I was that I could just get another card and re-punch. The fore-runner to cut and paste.


Actually I think my first computer used an 8080 or maybe an 8008


Ahhhh, back to reality and returning hijacked thread to normal service. Sorry Mods, an old man got carried away down memory lane. (pun intended)

Tim Bateson
01-19-2009, 11:35 AM
First computer had 8k memory also with a cassette recorder to hold data. My 2nd computer was the Tandy1000HD Serial # 100. It wasn't even available to the stores yet. I remember the sales lady asking me what was I going to do with all of that disk space - 10M. :p:p I upgraded the memory to 128K - cost me $125.:eek:
I use to teach for City College of Chicago using the Trash 80s. We didn't even have mice to issue verbal commands.:eek:

BTW the 8008 were great processors at that time.

How many remember 300 baud modems that the phone receiver sat in? High tech back then. :p:p:p

Doug Griffith
01-19-2009, 1:17 PM
Must be getting old.

Boy, I mention getting old... I feel so young now!!!

I played with basic in 84 and am now primarily program in Perl. Even it is old school now.

Barry Basiliere
01-19-2009, 11:51 PM
OK, so that y'all can feel young....

I started on a Heath/Zenith (home built) that had 2, 8" floppy drives. Drive one for the disk with the program and drive 2 for the disk with the data.

To make matters worse, I was in my late 20's at that point.

I was writing programs in M-Basic in 1980 and graduated to the IBM AS/400 business computers. The last one I worked on (in 2000) ran a company with 750 locations, 12,500 users with a single computer and a single common data base.

That progression allowed me to retire at 45 and purchase my laser. I am the envy of the neighborhood as I have the coolest toys on the block....;)

Dave Johnson29
01-20-2009, 9:12 AM
To make matters worse, I was in my late 20's at that point.


Ha, you kids! :):)

I would have to figure out how I old I was but around 1978 I sold my first BASIC program to an Astrologer who had commissioned me to automate his readings.

Hadta laugh. He had bought the computer thinking it would automatically do anything he asked. He was a bit surprised when he found out he had to program it or get someone else to.

<GASP> I was 35!

Oh those halcyon days.

Bill Cunningham
01-20-2009, 8:52 PM
Ahhh A trip down memory lane.. When you had a computer at home, just because you were not getting your full daily quota of aggravation at work..:D
I started with
Altar (yup the 8 switches and button)
H8 (heath) bought 24k of memory from godbout in CAl. for a measley $900.00 and had to build it myself..
Tandy Mod. 4
Tandy 1000TX
'Then' computers be came standardized and mine are just ordinary now!!

This was published in the 20 year anniversary issue of Canadian Data Systems, and they paid me ..ha..
http://www.geocities.com/athens/atlantis/2427/compstuff/index.html

Dave Johnson29
01-21-2009, 8:03 AM
This was published in the 20 year anniversary issue of Canadian Data Systems, and they paid me


:D A good read Bill, I had to laugh at the friends and pride in the flashing lights. All too familiar. "Hey Dave, what's so special about the flashing lights?"

With some embarrassment I have to admit I stayed with the TRS-80 computers (I, II and IV) to almost the end of 1982. I kept insisting the IBM-PC was a flash in the pan and would not last. :eek::eek: The MS-DOS systems were slightly different for every computer manufacturer as they added their hot ideas for an OS.

Kicking and screaming I changed over to programming IBMs and PC-DOS in early 1983. I recall writing some video rental database software and had to include no less than 30 different printer drivers and 12 different graphics drivers. What a boon Windows was when it finally removed the programmer from that loop.

George Brown
01-21-2009, 10:12 AM
Now I feel old, the first machine I worked on had only paper tape for storage. I remember miles of paper tape to load your program. And ocassionally it would rip, and had to be taped back together!

When you could actually write programs that ran in 32K of memory, and that included the operating system. And that was core memory, little coils of wire.

Life was simplier then! :D

John W. Love
01-22-2009, 10:12 PM
How many remember 300 baud modems that the phone receiver sat in? High tech back then. :p:p:p

I remember reading once that if the modem ever went over 10k baud the copper in the phone lines would risk starting a fire in your walls.
sadly, I was still young, naive and mentally pliable and I believed them at the time. lol :o

Bill Cunningham
01-22-2009, 11:08 PM
Now I feel old, the first machine I worked on had only paper tape for storage. I remember miles of paper tape to load your program. And ocassionally it would rip, and had to be taped back together!

When you could actually write programs that ran in 32K of memory, and that included the operating system. And that was core memory, little coils of wire.

Life was simplier then! :D

I remember cases of paper rolls, and 5 level tape rolls for my old mod 15 & 28 rtty machine and had a paper punch/reader the would read at one speed, punch at another and save the excess between speeds in a internal bin.. Once computers took over on the rtty amateur networks, I lost interest.. That Klienschmitt was a incredible genius for his time, and there was just something special about those amazingly complicated mechanical computers.. As for memory, I lost count of the number of programs I wrote to run in 4-24k of memory, 32k would have been my fondest dream and enough memory to do just about anything :rolleyes: Remember when Bill Gates said 'no one' would ever need more that 640k?
Thats why dos was never written to handle more than that..

Glenn Corser
01-23-2009, 1:00 AM
Ok. Took my first programming course in 1966. IBM 1620, no disk drive. It was FORTRAN 4 and you had a compiler deck, put your source at the end of that and ran it. You got a punched object deck and put your data file at the end of that and ran it. There were sense switches that you could set/query to get operator input. A couple of years later they got a 10 Mb hard drive, it was the size of a coffee table and really went around fast. I got drafted after that and didn't do any software until 1973 - still had card decks but now there were hard drives and it was a Cray. Went back to IBMs on my first job, went from cards to online editors named Oscar and Superwylbur. Second job, back to cards with a Univac and its 36 bit word. Then Univac's online editor and 300 baud lines. Then 40 pound Compaq luggables with 10 Mb hard drives, DOS, and weird little languages. The pitiful part is I'm still at it, Matlab, C++, .Net, and, yup, still the occasional FORTRAN.

Dan Hintz
01-23-2009, 8:57 AM
As for memory, I lost count of the number of programs I wrote to run in 4-24k of memory, 32k would have been my fondest dream and enough memory to do just about anything :rolleyes:
I still write program to fit in less than 8kB of memory... most fit in under 2kB. Nothing beats assembly, baby :D

Dave Johnson29
01-23-2009, 12:35 PM
Nothing beats assembly, baby


Masochist! ;)

Dave Johnson29
01-23-2009, 12:48 PM
Glenn,

I think you win the cigar. My first Fortan was Fortran 7 or it may have been 77, too hard and too far back to remember. It was for an IBM 360 and I think also PDP-11.

I liked C and derivatives and also C# but see little point in dealing with readability 6 months later so I stick with the Pascal-like Delphi. In the early days as you know C would eat Pascal for breakfast and still finish first, but these days we are talking fractions of a second so I opt for easy. No pointers to take care of, memory leaks etc.

Bill: I still find myself trying to cram 20 statements onto one line. I am forever saying to myself, "one line per statement for readability there is plenty of memory." :):)

I re-use variables instead of creating one for each data. :o Even in the free BMP Header software I put here yesterday, I used DPI (Float) for manipulating all of the output data. Still could not quite bring myself to create unique variables for the data since they would only be used the once. Old habits die hard. Good thing I am the only one reading the source. :)

Dan: I used to like assembler but these days PCs go so fast and memory is so cheap I now program in Delphi. Call me lazy.

Dan Hintz
01-23-2009, 12:58 PM
Dan: I used to like assembler but these days PCs go so fast and memory is so cheap I now program in Delphi. Call me lazy.
My work is split between PC GUIs and microcontrollers... when it comes to the microcontrollers, size and speed are still king. For example, the LED-based full-color vehicle maplight replacement I sell runs in less than 2kB of memory on an 8-pin micro, which includes storing user-selected colors in EEPROM and smooth color cycling show patterns.

Dave Johnson29
01-23-2009, 1:13 PM
My work is split between PC GUIs and microcontrollers... when it comes to the microcontrollers, size and speed are still king.


Yup, know what you mean. I have done some PIC stuff in the recent past. For all but one of them I used SDCC and the other was assembler but I have to be dragged to it kicking and screaming. :):)

Bill Cunningham
01-24-2009, 8:14 PM
Originally Posted by Dave Johnson29 http://www.sawmillcreek.org/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?p=1029108#post1029108)
Dan: I used to like assembler but these days PCs go so fast and memory is so cheap I now program in Delphi. Call me lazy.


I have not written a line of code in anything(other than html in the early website days) for almost 20 years.. I would love to get back into it. It was always an amazing brain workout. The problem is, I get far too absorbed and the time just vanishes. It was different when the college was paying my wages, but when your self employed, you have to make sure every minute that can, pays. The biggest problem? I had was, like many others, affected by a common programmer malady. At 4 o'clock in the morning, your wife taps you on the shoulder and breaks your train of thought by saying; "Are you coming to bed"? The first thing that you think is "What?? It's Dark?.. :D

The only thing could I possibly say now in computer one-up-man-ship, is:
When I was a child, I used to walk through blizzards to programming school, up hill both ways, in my Father pajamas :D

Doug Griffith
01-24-2009, 8:47 PM
affected by a common programmer malady. At 4 o'clock in the morning, your wife taps you on the shoulder and breaks your train of thought by saying; "Are you coming to bed"? The first thing that you think is "What?? It's Dark?..

I do a lot of grunting and snorting when I program. I get so caught up in it everything around me sounds like adults in the old Charlie Brown cartoons - whaaa, whaaa, whaaa. A grunt is a total no-brainer and it covers most situations. My girlfriend gets so PO'd at me.

Bill Cunningham
01-24-2009, 9:24 PM
My Daughters are all in their 30's now, but when they were kids, they 'knew' that when daddy had his face stuck in front of a computer monitor, they were to 'never' bother him, unless the house was on fire , and only then by the fire department when they arrived.. 17,000 lines of code running through your head was hard to get started again..:D

Frank Corker
01-24-2009, 9:41 PM
My Daughters are all in their 30's now....

what were you doing things like that for at the age of 12?

Bill Cunningham
01-24-2009, 9:49 PM
what were you doing things like that for at the age of 12?

Well, these are the ones I 'know' about Frank..:D I'm 62 and counting.. Well, I'm counting what I can remember:confused:

Glenn Corser
01-24-2009, 11:48 PM
I had a good laugh over the readability comments. In my first "real" job I did some COBOL for a year and a half. One of the other programmers didn't like wasting paper so her programs looked like a book page when you got them. We actually wrote a utility that would format the %$@# things so you could read them. Remember, this was still in the card era. You would actually write your programs out by hand and there were rooms full of people who would key punch them and verify them for you - nothing like getting 2000 cards back to start testing. I have been having flashbacks to that because I'm currently working on something that is getting programmed (by someone else, I'm doing development/algorithm stuff) in an FPGA. So that means, minimize your divides and think before you take that square root. I actually had to come up with a way to take square roots without dividing - talk about going backwards. Anyway, without knowing it I've apparently gotten old.

Dave Johnson29
01-25-2009, 10:00 AM
At 4 o'clock in the morning, your wife taps you on the shoulder and breaks your train of thought by saying; "Are you coming to bed"? The first thing that you think is "What?? It's Dark?


Yup, know what you mean. Back when I was about 40 (25 years past) my wife left the house to go to work as usual around 7:00am. I had been up programming probably 2 hours by then, She gave me a quick peck on the cheek, I nodded at her departure and got back to pounding the keyboard.

About two minutes later she was back and I asked, "did you forget something?" she replied, "it is 7:00pm, time to make dinner!" :eek::eek:

The curse that still lives today is waking up in the middle of the night to pee and thinking of an algorithm or program flow that I am working on. It is pointless going back to bed at that point as I will just lay awake moving the numbers around. I get up and boot the machine and Delphi. It's a curse I say, a curse. :D:D

I am writing some software for a local company. This quote/bidding software integrates with Quickbooks. Well actually "integrates" is not really the right word. With QB and it's curious methods, it is more like beating it continually with a sledge hammer. I will prevail! :) That is my current nemesis for those wee small hour interruptions to my sleep. I do a quick calculation, yup, 5-hours, that's enough sleep, turn on the machine.

I think it is hard (impossible?) for non-programmers to understand the focus and total concentration that is required to write good software. I may not have 17,000 lines of code in my head but there are often 200+ variables and functions that I know exactly what they all do and can be recalled in an instant.

A curse I say, a curse. :)




...but I would not have it any other way.

Bill Cunningham
01-25-2009, 9:06 PM
The curse that still lives today is waking up in the middle of the night to pee and thinking of an algorithm or program flow that I am working on. It is pointless going back to bed at that point as I will just lay awake moving the numbers around. I get up and boot the machine and Delphi. It's a curse I say, a curse. :D:D

Thats 'exactly' why I'm afraid to start programming anything again.. About 5 years ago, I bought a Java programming manual, (it's not far off the old 'C') But never allowed myself to get into it.. I was just too afraid that it would bring back the old addiction, and my business would suffer as a result.. Maybe if I ever retire, I will start again just to keep my brain active in my old age.. Programing for the non initiated, is a self inflicted puzzle that keeps your mind sharp, your brain active, and your reality in a completely different universe..
Remember the old bus and subway ad's: "if u cn rd ths u tu cn b a cmptr prgrmr" :D

Glenn Corser
01-25-2009, 10:10 PM
Dave, your post was like talking to myself. The worst I ever had the "up at nights" was when we were doing a project for the Ocean Drilling Program, I think it is now the International Ocean Drilling Program. Of course, we had seriously underbid it and so the only way to do it was to work constantly. After a while I just started waking up at 3 a.m. to review the previous day and get ready for the next one. That went on for years - it was worse at sea, we would go out for up to 60 days at a time and you were supposed to work only 12 hours/day but there was not much else to do so the only time you weren't working was when you were unconscious - sleep doesn't describe the state you would get in. I was working out on rowing machinces, bikes, treadmills, anything to get my mind off it for a little while and help me sleep. The plus was working with the scientists on the cruises, I learned a lot and still see some of them on the Discovery channel. So much for this thread.

Doug Griffith
01-25-2009, 10:33 PM
Programing for the non initiated, is a self inflicted puzzle that keeps your mind sharp, your brain active, and your reality in a completely different universe...

"Brain active" doesn't even describe it. It even creeps into your dreams. I often crash after days of programming only to find the "answer" bright and early in the morning after seeing code on the back of my eyelids all night.

...and I agree that it keeps your mind sharp.

Dan Hintz
01-26-2009, 6:36 AM
When I first moved away from home, it sent me into a wave of manic-depression. I would get maybe 4-6 hours of sleep over an entire week, followed by a week of being a threads' breadth away from comatose. I programmed during my manic phases, and WOW did I crank out some code. It was like I had an IV of Jolt Cola! Then as I felt myself crashing I had to quickly tuck it away until my next manic bout, lest I end up with code that made zero sense the next time around. Even today, that code is still perfectly readable, so I wasn't just slamming the keyboard.

Boy, how I miss those days... the fast coding, not the manic-depression!

Dave Johnson29
01-26-2009, 7:47 AM
Guys, this thread is taking on a life of its own. :D

Bill, Glenn, Doug and Dan I thought I was the only one afflicted with this. :cool:

Bill, I know what you mean about the Java. Same same here. I tried to convince myself not to look at it but I did venture into HTML to write my own and a few friend's websites. So far I have managed to skirt around the Java for Dummies book.

Doug, I had to laugh out loud at your comments. Isn't the sub conscious an amazing thing. I know that state half asleep and half awake.

Dan, what can I say you crazy person. You need help!!! :D Been there done that. Lived in an old travel trailer on a friends farm once. I lost all track of days and night. Lived on coffee, bread and cold cuts. Looking back on it I was like the guy in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," when he was in that room during the last part. I just happened to have a computer with me.

I too miss that fervor and tight and cool code that came out. Although I am not sure I miss it enough to try again. I have slowed down a lot, well for me a lot anyway. My current girlfriend calls me OCD, but I prefer to call it OCE as I see it as Obsessive Compulsive Enhancement. :eek::eek:

Do you suppose we are starting to scare the others on this group??? LOL

Dan Hintz
01-26-2009, 8:49 AM
In some ways, I'm regretting purchasing the laser... not because I don't like it or don't know what to do with it, but because it is affecting my main side business. Pre-laser, what little free time I had was spent creating new products for my LED lighting business (assembly programming)... now I eat/sleep/breathe laser.

All I can say is, thank some supreme being for patient women... my SO just smiles, nods, and starts playing Solitaire on the computer.

George Brown
01-26-2009, 12:24 PM
[/quote]The only thing could I possibly say now in computer one-up-man-ship, is:
When I was a child, I used to walk through blizzards to programming school, up hill both ways, in my Father pajamas :D[/quote]

You forgot to say "in bare feet"

You're right, when I was programming, time had no measure or meaning. Would work until the birds started chirping, then sleep for a few hours, and start all over. It is an addiction, but it was wonderful, still miss it.

Glenn Corser
01-26-2009, 11:02 PM
The good news is that I've been messing some with a MaxNC milling machine we bought. I wrote a small program that would take inputs and generate the G code to do some simple shapes. I was getting ready to add some graphics, learn DXF format, etc, etc when I found SheetCam on the net for a very low price. I'm sure I saved two years of my life.

Dave Johnson29
01-27-2009, 9:36 AM
learn DXF format, etc, etc when I found SheetCam on the net for a very low price. I'm sure I saved two years of my life.


I know what you mean Glenn. When I am programming and I use a 3rd party toolbox I can't help but wonder how they coded parts of it. I have to slap my face and say to myself, "don't think about it, just use it." Otherwise I would be coding something to emulate it instead of getting on with the main flow. :o

A curse I say, a curse. :)