 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group X+1 uses for a live XT Tom Coleman |
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Although the XT was the machine that powered up the PC explosion it is, now, sadly out of fashion and regarded as junk. Melb PC's Community Outreach has been placing these old machines with deserving community organisations for some years now. The effect has been to drag these groups out of the Stone Age. Last week they were using a typewriter and retyping every page that required a modification or correction. This week they are word processing. Productivity goes up and piles of data suddenly become information. The difference is staggering.
There are still plenty of organisations out there that can use an old XT or, better still, an old AT.
OK - there is the commercial, now for the interesting bit.
Charity begins at home. What could you do with an old XT Here are a few suggestions.
You could dedicate it to a fax with a fax card. If you are using a 14,400 bps fax/ modem you might want to replace the 8250 chip on your serial card for a 16550. The speed is limited to the speed of the serial port and the XT is fast enough.
If you are using a DOS-based word processing package the XT may not be significantly slower. Some actions may happen promptly instead of in a blink of an eye leaving a perception of being slower. Most of the CATs that VCE students are required to turn in can be adequately created in an XT. The quality of the text is determined by the printer, not the computer. Remember, even an XT will have no difficulty controlling the most modern printer. The problem here is the peer group pressure to have the greatest and the latest you-beaut-doubleback-somersault computer that plays the newest games in all their gory detail. "You can see the blood spurting..." - an XT will not do that.
I saw a computer-controlled security system recently. An XT would easily run it. Apart from monitoring all of the security warning devices and the smoke alarms while you were away, it would turn lights on and off, flush the toilet, run the TV in the evenings and even play recordings of a barking dog in response to a knock on the door. It would rattle and scratch the door from the inside at the same time. If it decided that there was a threat then it phoned the security company. A great deal of this was robotic controls and sensors but the computing power required was quite small.
An extension of the above concept implies that an XT makes a good robotics control platform. Much of the smarts in a robot are in the engineering of the robot not the programming. Similarly, programs that monitor events such as telephone usage or counters use very little computing power. Most of the work is done by the primary sensor.
Not many of us are into robotics so much of the above is not meaningful.
However I know of two people who use a Personal Information Manager (PIM) to keep track of events through the day, schedule bookings and orders, jot down notes, keep track of friends and customers and maintain a daily diary-all using an XT. Both of these are for business purposes but there's no reason why you couldn't use it to organise your own life.
Naturally these XTs live next to the phone and are dedicated to running the PIM. This allows the regular computer to be used for other tasks. Interestingly one of these setups includes a 300 baud modem that is used by the automatic dialler to dial out the highlighted telephone number.
300 baud, I ask you, and these days you can't give away a 1200 bps modem. (I suppose you could use one to upgrade your 300 baud dialler.)
You could use a null modem to connect your regular computer to an XT and back up your critical files on the fly. The software could be anything from network-based to a simple file copier like Laplink. Oddly, the simpler serial port transfer programs require more knowledge the simpler they get.
Simple networks, like Murrumbeena, are no problem, even for computing beginners, once they are installed-and that is no real problem. With a network you would also have better use of the floppy drives on both machines.
Until recently it was always true that the easiest way to multitask was to use two computers. The only problem with that was moving data from one program to another. With the power of modern computers it is starting to become more reasonable to run both on one computer. However if there is no need for the programs to communicate and better still if one of them is a simple DOS program you have a perfect excuse to use two computers, one of them an XT.
With something like Norton PC Anywhere you can control both computers from the one keyboard, similar to a network. There are less-capable, but still useful, programs available from the BBS and the Melb PC shareware library. You have many software options available to you to couple two computers together.
An XT can be used as a dedicated virus checking machine. Only a small number of XTs cannot be persuaded to support high density diskettes. There are modifications, such as putting a manual switch in the wire carrying the write data to the hard disk, to help make it virus resistant.
At least one firm makes a computer controlled cash drawer that allows the computer to run as a cash register/point of sale terminal. You can buy their software or write your own. It uses standard RS-232 signals out of the serial port to open the drawer and prevent data entry while the drawer is open. It runs on an XT.
Reprinted from the August 1994 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
