NOTE: This is a mirror page and will not be updated very often. The main webpage is at:
shawweb.myzen.co.uk/stephen/comp.htm

COMPUTER REFERENCE LINKS

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Texas Instruments TI99/4A (1979-1983)
A 1983 book on the Texas Instruments TI99/4A Home Computer in both text and HTML formats by Stephen Shaw: Getting Started with the TI99/4A. A report on a TI99/4A emulator for the PC, PC99
Other TI resources on this site, with links to a publicity photo of the computer, some music in .MID format originally composed for a very early TI module, and a memorial sample of the monthly columns of the late Jim Peterson, a longtime supporter of the TI99/4a computer. also a review of PC99 and some programs for it.

LINUX
Linux content is on a separate Linux page. .

Older Computers:
Emulations of very early computers can be FTP'd from Manchester Computer Conservation Society, including the first stored programmable computer, the SSEM, now rebuilt and working twice a week in Manchester. Another early British computer, Colossus (predating Eniac), was hard wired for one task- dealing with Enigma messages- lovely description of how Enigma worked and was deciphered.

Creative Computing was one of the computing magazines I first read and subscribed to. What a delight- at last glance 35 issues on the web plus the three books "The Best Of...". Read computing history in Creative Computing.

Modern PC: For good old fashioned fast text web browsing in Linux, w3m is excellent.

Search for computer software vulnerabilities by vendor (including open source) from Security Focus

I have some links to streaming audio sites | Our 1998 PC specification

Want a free Windows programming language? Goto MSW Logo - and program for anything from a Pentium with W95 to the latest NT, ME or XP. The Windows 3.1 for a 286 version may still be available on this link.
The Great Logo Adventure(here as a 3.6 megabyte zipped download), supporting MSW Logo. There remain some excellent programs for DOS which cannot be run in Windows XP, or for a smaller number, in Dosbox under Linux or Windows XP. To run in a native DOS operating system you may need to get a copy of FreeDOS or Balder, one flavour of which runs from a floppy with no hard disk install or partitioning.

Web Archive allows you to see web pages as they were from 1996 onwards. This site can be in heavy demand, expect delays or non availability. [site unavailable fairly often, keep trying] If you use the form on their front page to access an old web page you must have javascript enabled (as at 18/4/11 it is a fake form) - or use this form instead:

Faster response from the BETA archive.org version, type in the URL in this box for last cached page OR if none cached, current version if available: . . Show All to list all cached versions, excludes current page:
Note that this is in testing mode and the messages you get back from the archive may not be correct.
My favorite 32 bit Windows media browser is the free Irfanview. Huge list of supported formats of images, animations and sounds; includes the special overview.pcd file format. Irfanview also has some image editing options and scanner (Twain) input. It is quite small, with plug ins in a separate zip file- you can delete any you don't need after unzipping.
Although written for Windows, I was surprised to find many parts of Irfanview (up to version 4.30) work fine in Linux using Wine (up to vn 1.1.9). I recommend NOT using the Associate file type option on a Linux box. There may obviously be problems with files that use external viewers which are less receptive to Wine but I am happily using Photoshop 8BF filters with it and also the OCR plugin. Irfanview makes viewing and editing jpeg image metadata really easy (EXIF, and IPTC). Details of using Irfanview on Linux. (Linux native programs GIMP, fotoxx and gthumb are of course excellent - and exiftool is the Linux metadata reader/writer but console only).

PC Support Links:
New to the web? Help with manually preparing your web page - which can be much more efficient than using any web tool,
can be found at w3schools.com Help with html, css, xml, and lots more. The site works well without inline frames and without javascript except the "try this" portion. Please don't create Flash websites- they are disabled unfriendly (images and javascript seem to rule), remarkably prone to security problems, almost invisible to search engines, have questionable privacy, and most browsers are deprecating Flash for HTML5 (except youtube connected Android). web site coding reference

Mirrorservice.org is a UK based ftp mirror site with files from many sites. This is the older more generous mirror service, now offered by the University of Kent, plenty of goodies.

Check the links and syntax on your web page and more at Addy and Associates site. They require that you do not turn off referrer logging.

Google have made it a little harder for the following link to work, but let us search the internet for Microsoft - please note that we are in fact taking liberties with their parameters. But it is fun. See how many ads you get on the right.

Statistics for visitors to this website Stats for the 594 visitors to this web site show for February 2012 (400 visitors in August 2011):
Numbers are March 2011 / November 2011 / February 2012:
Operating Systems: MS 84%/75%/69% :: Apple 10%/14%/11% :: Linux 6% / 8%/13% :: Android 0% / 1%/ 2%, and one user each Blackberry, Samsung and TV. Users of Opera Turbo (maximum 4% of visitors) show as Linux whatever OS they are using.
Browsers- Numbers assume correct referrer information- many browsers can spoof their identity:
IE 36%/ 38%/ 31% :: Firefox 36%/ 30%/ 31% :: Chrome 20%/ 16%/ 20% :: Safari 8%/ 10%/ 10% :: Opera 0%/ 4%/ 4% and Android Webkit (0%/ 1%/ 2%). Totals do not add to 100% due to roundings.
Only 94 out of 594 of visitors revealed their screen resolution, with 46 using 1280x1024, 43 using 1024 x 768, and still 5 visitors with 800x600.
Most popular single page was a TI page with 173 views, followed by the Moomins with 11% of hits (125 views (Nov 2011:209 views))
Most popular portion of site (with most of the pages) was the TI99/4a (600 views (333 in Nov 2011); followed by Moomin, then our local church history (66 page views), followed by a page on Ludlow Castle Lodge (30 views), on the Poco a Poco club (28 views), Linux (26 views) and a Japanese film, Magic Boy (22 page views).
90% of visitors were happy to have javascript globally enabled. Depressing.

Make a long URL smaller

Webcams in Manchester, England: London Road Manchester TfGM webcam- looking South down the A6 with Piccadilly Railway Station to the left.
Laterooms have a web cam on the Peninsular Building, looking Southward, which shows in the foreground the platform at Victoria Station, with the dark stone Cathedral barely visible slightly to the right and the Beetham Tower just to right of centre. The funny shape in the centre is the sloped roof of the Urbis centre. If you can see hills in the background, you are seeing clear over Cheshire into the Derbyshire Peak District (but it may be a haze from the traffic!). To the left the tall building with two vertical white lines is in Piccadilly Gardens. The tall cream building to its right just past Urbis, is the Arndale tower.
Albert Square Manchester from the Town Hall. Regularly updating.
webcam at Stockport College has a low refresh rate, normally directed at the Edward Street entrance of Stockport Town Hall but could be looking at the Railway Viaduct or elsewhere, (or turned off or not refreshing...) hosted at webcams.travel. If it is pointed at Edward Street, the car showroom on the right sells Lamborghinis.
Peregrine nest in Salford, overlooking Manchester Cathedral (top right). The bridge at right is Victoria Bridge Street and the muddy water is the River Irwell. First egg laid 19th March, expected hatching 18th April. Updates each minute. Switches to mono at nighttime when a spiders web and sometimes a spider can get in the way.

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