cathoderaydude
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Oh about that Abit video
🕑 Added 2024-12-16 19:40:09 +0000 UTCOriginally when I wrote the video about the BP6 it was going to end up being like an hour and 45 minutes long because I was going to segue into a highly in-depth history of Intel from 1993 to 1999, covering the whole phenomenon of the Pentium pro, Pentium 2, Celeron, etc.
Fortunately I had the foresight to recognize that there were some issues and unanswered questions in that back half, and went back in and rerecorded the BP6 segment on it's own; this made it much better, since it actually focused on the machine itself. I think that if you wanted to actually know about the BP6 and it's potential value at the time, the video I ended up making is pretty good.
As I started rewriting the second half, with the intent of shooting it a week later, I found error after error after error, and eventually concluded that I had the entire narrative incorrect. I then did several more weeks of reading and piecing things together and concluded that, while the story is still very interesting and several of the salient points are still valid, it would have been laughably incorrect as originally written.
As I was coming up on the second week of research and rewrites, the opportunity to get the warehouse came up; that threw everything off of course, and then I got sick for like a month and change. When I started feeling better, I decided I wanted to focus on the new space and shoot some videos there to get both me and the audience used to it - This seems to have worked, since the phone video did so much better than I ever imagined it would, and suggests more interest in phones than I thought was out there.
But of course I do want to get back in the main studio and do more of my in-depth stuff, I'm just off-kilter and the Intel story is a really big one that I'm not prepared to attempt until I give it another full rewrite. Seriously, there are a LOT of moving parts and a LOT of inferences that have to be made carefully, because if I'm *not* careful, I'll end up creating myths instead of squashing them.
So probably in the near future you'll see another video or two about various computers, and then hopefully the Intel story will come in January. Thanks for hanging around!
Comments
doink
How exciting! Glad to hear it.
Mitchell Pasztor
Intel in the 90s was a fever dream
Cathode Ray Dude
Exactly what happened when, how much certain things cost, what performance differences truly existed, how the public regarded them, and what Intel was thinking as they did it. Not everything is written down or provable, particularly the internal state at Intel, which is essentially a total blind spot, yet that's the most crucial part of the narrative, so I have to synthesize that based on all the other stuff.
miner2945
What are the trickiest parts of the '90s Intel saga?
adorfer
I do not mind more phone videos!
actuallyasriel
Hey, I waited a year for the PowerFile video/SCSI Tower followup (/lh), a delay for a video on what is an incredibly challenging topic is nothin'. You do your thing.
Cathode Ray Dude
Oh that machine definitely deserves a video but it'd be in it's own category, it's much more a workstation than an embedded system. I've been struggling with a narrative for it for months though, haha
miner2945
I know Little Guys is explicitly an x86 show, but it's compact and industrial enough to fit the vibe.
miner2945
I'd suggest making a video on that SPARC laptop you found.
Chris Stone
Better to have a delayed but correct video than a rushed incorrect video.
Cathode Ray Dude
I have every intention of releasing it publicly, possibly before the end of the year. I rewatched it and decided it's fine as-is
Cathode Ray Dude
I'm not really sure how to proceed on little guys yet.
Sebastian K.
„So probably in the near future you'll see another video or two about various computers“ - does that mean we get some more little guys content over Christmas ?
Stormcrash
I know it will be a great watch when it's ready so no rush in letting the story bake properly
Brian Clark
I admire your editorial integrity. Always remember you have a legion of loyal turbo-nerds at your beck and call to which you can offload some of the more tedious fact-finding.
doink
I still think that Microsoft PBX video is absolutely worth a watch.
Alex Cruise
I wrote up my fave POTS/NANP factoid on Quora ~10.5 years ago: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-phones-beep-when-you-press-numbers-on-them/answer/Alex-Cruise excerpt: One of the reasons for the switch from pulse to tone dialing is that you're costing the phone company money the instant you lift the handset, but they can't start charging you until you finish dialing. And with pulse dialing, it could take a really long time for the dial to spin around 7–10+ times, especially when the number contained a lot of high digits, zero being the highest for this purpose. With tone dialing, we still have to wait for the human to think in between digits, and to hold the digit for longer than necessary, but it’s faster in general, and the speed advantage multiplies the more high digits are in the number. Incidentally, this relationship between dial time and cost is the reason why New York City was assigned area code 212, and Hawaii 808: in a direct dialed long-distance call using pulse dialing, 212 "costs" the phone company 5 time units (2+1+2), whereas 808 “costs” 26 (8+10+8). If you're designing the NANP, you want the areas with the highest inbound calling volume to have the lowest possible costs. Why was New York City 212 and not 211 or 111? Three-digit numbers ending in 1–1 were reserved (e.g. for 911), and beginning dialing with a ‘1’ meant it was a long-distance call. It might have been feasible to have 1xx area codes but it would’ve confused customers and/or the POTS machinery, some of which was decades old.
HalfHarkonnen
An "Intel story" video is an exciting prospect to look forward to. I'll admit to being most partial to the historic, non-device-specific videos.
Ike Armela
I so greatly appreciate how much care and research you put into these things!
sdomi
hell yeah. i really appreciate how much attention to detail you're putting in <3 can't wait for the vid, gl!
Jacob Alexander Tice
Intel's history in this period is maddeningly complex, so I get that the video is harder to write than you expected.
Javier Matusevich
Thank you for the in depth explanation! Keep up the good work!
Chas Becht
Looking forward to it
