Technologists Notes

http://www.charliemccoy.com/biographie.php: “Al Kooper described a typical Charlie McCoy incident which took place during the sessions for Dylan’s “Blonde On Blonde” Album. One song called for a trumpet part which should have been an easy overdub, except that Dylan didn’t care for overdubs. So McCoy, while playing bass with his left hand, played trumpet with his right hand, without missing a beat. Kooper points out that Dylan stopped in the middle of the song, amazed.” (The song was probably not “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”, based on the sound and reports such as MYSTIC NIGHTS: The Making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville. [Update cinco de Mayo 2022: just bought Kooper’s book which says it was “You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine”.¹])
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As we in the U.S. observe a holiday in honor of Rev. King, I recall the night I stood a few feet from him and listened in awe.

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3+ weeks ago my give one get one XO arrived. I’ve been trying to grok it and show it off. This is a summary of observations, ponderings  and usage.

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[update December 2021: files for 86Box install at https://technologists.com/DellUnix2.2.1/
update December 2020: Dell Unix on 86Box “Today let me present Dell Unix more properly, with 1024×768, 256 colors video and proper networking using emulated VGA and NIC.”
update  March 2012: Antoni Sawicki has Dell SVR4 running
under Qemu/Bochs, and subsequently reports that he has
Dell Unix “working correctly”  under VirtualBox. CHS]

“Dell UNIX? I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

A couple of weeks ago I had my new XO with me for breakfast at a nearby bakery café. Other patrons were drawn to seeing an XO for the first time, including a Linux person from Dell. I mentioned Dell UNIX and we talked a little about the people who had worked on Dell UNIX. He expressed surprise that mention of Dell UNIX evokes the above quote so often and pointed out that Emacs source still has #ifdef for Dell UNIX.

Quick Googling doesn’t reveal useful history of Dell UNIX, so here’s my version, a summary of the three major development releases.

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The other day I discovered that Amazon would conveniently sell me an MP3 of the “Three Stripped Gears” 1931 rendition of “Black Bottom Strut” for $0.89. What a find! I’d been inspired by Mike Seeger’s version for nearly forty years but only knew of the T.S.G. version through Seeger’s liner notes. (I attempted my own recording for the soundtrack for Jack Moore‘s Sandscript in 1975.)

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