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[King Zultan]

Probably could fill in the missing parts with elephant DNA to make something that looks very much like a mammoth if/when we have the technology to.

Or use frog DNA so you only have to make one

But what happens when life finds a way?

[wierd]

Pig and elephant DNA just wont splice.

[scriver]

There's no reason why it shouldn't. They both have snouts. They both have tusks. They both have funny looking tails. I don't think there are any other conditions relevant to DNA splicing

[delphonso]

Finally, catdog can live.

[McTraveller]

I could've sworn I asked this question already, but can't find it with the forum search...nor in the first 3 pages of my post history... so:

For the meteorologists out there - can you explain what is means for a forecast to say '99% chance of snow; 3" '?  I can understand 99% chance of snow, but the specific 3" number with it throws me.  Is the 3" the expected value of snow for 99% of the area?  Is it a 99% chance of 3", and 1% of some other amount?

I know there are rules about how precipitation is reported, but it just makes no sense to me.  Especially since this time of year I know it means 100% chance of snow, anywhere from trace-6" (even though the weather advisory says 1-4").

[MrRoboto75]

I think three inches is the expected average of snowfall over the area that will experience snow.

[dragdeler]

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[MrRoboto75]

Density is mass in relation to volume.

[methylatedspirit]

I read this on the Oldskool PC (it's a guide to running 80s/early-90s games on late-90s hardware; just use DOSbox for modern hardware):

Most internal BIOS setup programs can be invoked by hitting a key while the machine is still booting up. The most common keystroke that comes to mind is hitting DEL while the memory is counting upward; this is commonly found on AMI BIOSes. Other keystrokes that come to mind include CTRL-ALT-ENTER (modern Dell Pentium Pros/Pentium IIs), CTRL-ALT-S (old Dell 386s), CTRL-ALT-ESC (old Phoenix 386 BIOSes), and simply ESC. If these don't work, just read your screen--many display a line like "Hit <DEL> to enter setup" or something similar, with the keystroke displayed.

What? When did the BIOS setup key combo switch from variations on Esc, Alt, Ctrl to the "industry-standard" (as standardized as it can be, anyway) function keys, usually F1, F2, or F3? Why?

[wierd]

"F1 to resume" has been a thing since the IBM 5150.

Phoenix Bios did things differently, BECAUSE there had been a massive legal battle over it, since it was a clean-room reverse engineering job of the IBM PC's BIOS firmware implementation, and it needed to do some things different to avoid appearing as a straight up carbon copy.






If memory serves, that is (301) keyboard error, and (601) floppy disk controller error.

[methylatedspirit]

Huh. No actual error messages, just halt and print a number? I suppose they just ran out of ROM to fit the error messages in? I think this happens with the ZX80 and ZX81 as well, but at least those had an excuse: they were made to be as inexpensive as possible. Seems strange that a machine starting at $1565 would share something in common with a machine an order of magnitude cheaper than itself.

[wierd]

quite early in the "AT" product line, IBM only implemented the NVRAM and check routines, and not the setup program itself in ROM.

This was because floppies were significantly cheaper than ROM, and the program could be more easily updated and more feature-rich (ahem) in software loaded from DOS.

Since by then, the AT Clones had started hitting the market, (Compaq portable and portable II, for instance), that meant lots of proprietary bits of software to set the CMOS data.

A common bit of kit back in the day was "Generic AT Setup", which is exactly what it says it is.  It is a full text mode GUI CMOS utility, that you run from the command line, that is aware of IBM RTC/CMOS chips, and can set them.

http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/5170/setup/5170_gsetup.htm

[dragdeler]

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[methylatedspirit]

quite early in the "AT" product line, IBM only implemented the NVRAM and check routines, and not the setup program itself in ROM.

This was because floppies were significantly cheaper than ROM, and the program could be more easily updated and more feature-rich (ahem) in software loaded from DOS.

So I've heard. It still sounds utterly dumb; if the floppy gets corrupted, you're basically boned. According to that article I linked, "Some brand-name "value-added" PCs, like Compaq and AST, required or may still require a special setup disk instead of hitting a key", so some manufacturers may have been pulling this up to '98.

I suppose the modern equivalent (a bootable USB stick to run BIOS setup) would make a bit more sense, but this was pre-Internet. You couldn't just download a fresh copy of the BIOS setup disk off the 'net and write one yourself, not in the late 80s.

But hindsight's 20/20. No-one intended these things to be used even a decade later, so what we'd see as awfully short-sighted now was just an engineering decision made with and by the limitations of the time. Maybe in another 40 years, people would've moved onto ARM or RISC-V for everything, and they'd laugh at us for using x86, and at those legacy systems that still use x86, just like we laugh at the mainframes that still run parts of the US government.

[dragdeler]

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