Community Coffee Break

Topics Discussed:

bp9
- Docker vs. Virtual machine
- Can only create linux docker machines on on linux boxes, and windows docker machines on windows.
- Docker cannot write to its own filesystem, but you can mount shared directories to the host machine.
- Virtual machine lets you run any OS on any machine but takes up much more resources
- If you want to build a program that will run on both windows and linux, bp9 has had good success with GTK2 or GTK3.
- Requires that you compile your source code on each OS, and link with the GTK library on that OS.
- You end up with native binary executables on each machine, all built from exactly the same source code.
- Just make sure you don't make any direct calls to the OS.
- found a Wordstar work-alike that runs directly on linux: Wordtsar (note the spelling)
- bp9's cat makes an entrance and visits with us for a bit.
- bp9 won't let her have any coffee -- she zooms enough as it is! :-)
- Shows off his NADSBox and makes Peter giggle :-)
- REXCPM on Model 100 allows for a 3.5Mb floppy disk on board.
- You can write individual files to the NADSBox (an SD-Card disk drive emulator)
- You can also backup the entire 3.5Mb image if your SD-Card is large enough but that takes hours due to RS-232 speed)
- The NADSBox does not act as a separate drive, just another place that you can copy files to and from as needed.
- hard drive trays that I can install hard disks in, slide into a cradle and turn on the machine to boot from that drive.
- Uses the old Centronics plug to interface between the tray and the system.
- power surges do a great job of destroying radio cards in garage door openers.

Doug
- describes VENTOY software that allows you to store many ISOs on a thumb drive, and lets you boot from any ISO.
- presumably it acts like a bootloader like GRUB.
- we all talk about ISOs, what they are, and what you can do with them.

Peter
- notes that WINE does not emulate windows very well.
- wants to know if sound is supported on GTK. We've talked about this in previous coffee breaks.
- You can use an ISO or a CD/DVD to initialize a virtual machine.
- The winch on his antenna post has been pulled, repaired and re-installed.
- Parts for the winch are expensive to ship to him in Ireland.
- Asserts that the antenna that he mentioned last week works much better than bp9's dipole.
- He is determined to fall off another ladder :-O
- Had to repair a radio many years ago where the power plug/socket had been miswired -- mains voltage was on the plug, not the socket, causing him to get zapped.

Solbu
- arrives fashionably late (again) :-)
- Reality is bleeding through so he turns himself into a ghost on the Voyager bridge :-)
- 800 km (500 miles) north of Lapland
- has been hunting mice at his place
- found a new-fangled mouse trap made from plastic that got his mouse 10 minutes after setting the trap.
- set another trap but it hasn't been triggered so he's only found one mouse.
- snow has come and melted, maybe that's why mice come inside?
- his friends' father caught 132 mice and took photos... ewwww...
- he needs a mousing cat LOL
- A friend loaded Win95 from floppies... in 3-4 hours.
- bp9 cannot get OS/2 to load from floppies.
- Another friend switched his power supply from 110V to 220V -- while the machine was running! The results were predictable.
- Yet another friend had three Windows boxes, each backing up to each other... so a single power surge took out all three machines, and destroyed ALL the backups.