

Computer de-evolution: Awesome tech features modern computers have lost - jfruh
http://www.itworld.com/software/168413/computer-de-evolution-features-lost-evolutionary-war

======
tptacek
'jfruh is a human fulfilling the role of a bot, submitting stories from "IT
World" to HN. That's not a huge big deal, but note that "IT World" has had
other people in the same role pushing stories here, like 'abennett. As a
result, a decent fraction of every day, there is an "IT World" story on the
front page of HN (they tend to happen to hit nerves), even though "IT World"
is in general _not_ a high-quality source of tech journalism.

I flag these stories but I'm prepared to accept that I'm being irrational by
doing so.

~~~
rlmw
good spot. Lets hope more people flag this.

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Spyro7
Am I the only one that misses the infamous turbo button from the old 386
computers?

The amusing irony was that it was mostly used to slow the computer down so you
could run those programs that were written with a lower clock speed in mind.

One of these days, I am going to shove a modern computer into one of those
retro 386 cases and wire up the turbo button just for fun...

Edit: And for anyone that would like a clicky keyboard, they are not extinct:
<http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/>

I am using one of the Unicomp Customizers right now and it really is a
pleasant experience. My clicky keyboard is worth every penny that it cost me.

~~~
thwarted
You should make the Turbo button "magic" (if you can figure out how to, that
is).

<http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html>

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hvs
The development environment on the Lisp Machines is an example of something
that we've "lost", but the examples in this article either still exist,
weren't that useful, or have been replaced with something better.

And Emacs or Vim can do anything and more than the editors mentioned in this
article.

~~~
ynniv
I recently discovered "c-x n n" to "narrow" (undo with "c-x n w" "widen") a
buffer in emacs. This hides everything but the current region from view and
modification. A tricky command to remember, but as with most obscure commands,
if you value it you quickly remember it.

~~~
eru
You can re-bind it to something easier to remember for you.

------
vaporstun
Single page: <http://www.itworld.com/print/168413>

~~~
arohner
I came here to post that one of the things I miss from the old internet is
single-page articles, without having to search for the print button.

------
dpx3001
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Hacking_Keyboard>

+

Vim

------
Natsu
Personally, I've long missed an old keyboard where the spacebar was split into
the space key and a backspace key. I haven't seen that feature on any keyboard
since, though I imagine it must be available somehow. Instead, I have a
keyboard not unlike the one mentioned in the article. No extra row of function
keys, but it's a heavy one with mechanical switches.

~~~
metageek
That was Compaq, wasn't it? I remember hearing about it, way back when, but I
never heard anybody praise it before. Was it perhaps your first keyboard, or
almost your first? I tend to type with both thumbs on the space bar, so it
sounds dangerous to me.

OTOH, I don't think I ever press the space bar with the left thumb, so maybe
I'm missing a trick.

~~~
Natsu
You are correct. And I learned to type with my right thumb exclusively, so it
was very, very useful to me.

It wasn't quite my first keyboard, though. My first was the one that came with
our Apple ][ GS (and I had previously used the Apple computers at school),
though I did start to learn proper typing around that time.

Even though I haven't used it for years, I still use my right thumb
exclusively when pressing the spacebar.

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rbanffy
Another interesting thing we had in the 80's were intelligent peripherals. A
Commodore or Atari floppy disk drive is a computer in itself, running its own
software and attached to the computer through a serial communications channel.
In the case of the Atari, at least, you could daisy-chain devices off the
serial bus in a sort of a network.

~~~
eru
Doesn't Firewire also allow this?

~~~
rbanffy
OK. There are still some computers with Firewire ports.

------
rbanffy
Statelessness.

When I wanted to edit a text file on my Apple II, I booted it with Magic
Window (later, Appleworks). When I wanted to play Airhead, I booted it with
the game disk. There was nothing a text editor or a game could do that would
carry over to the next reboot.

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epenn
If you still want to slice up a document (or multiple documents) as many times
as you need, just use vim w/ :split and :vsplit. Works like a charm!

~~~
metageek
Or emacs C-x 2.

