Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2018 December 5

= December 5 =

Battery eliminator for smartphones?
How could a device substitute the battery of a smartphone? The first phone I'd like to use (without buying a battery for it) has 3 pins. How do you connect the third pin, so the phone 'believes' it's being powered by a battery? Would a resistor connecting the middle pin to ground be enough? Doroletho (talk) 19:34, 4 December 2018 (UTC)


 * It depends on what the middle pin is supposed to do.
 * On some batteries the middle pin is a thermistor to monitor battery temperature. In that case you could probably replace it with the appropriate value of resistor.
 * On some batteries the middle pin is a serial communication pin that allows the phone to talk to the circuitry in the battery. Often this is called "Battery Status Indicator" or "Battery Size Indicator", but I think it can sometimes do more than just indicate the size and charge level. The phone may refuse to work if it can't talk to that chip. (So as to avoid running on a damaged battery.)
 * ApLundell (talk) 23:35, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * My question is, is this really necessary? Have you looked on places like eBay for replacement batteries? They're likely cheaper than anything you'd buy or make to substitute for it, unless you already have a bunch of electronics equipment lying around. And if you want some kind of fixed, plugged-in computing device, like for a kiosk, you might be more satisfied with something like a Raspberry Pi connected to a touchscreen, or a low-end tablet. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 05:58, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
 * A modern Li-Ion-battery is really misnamed - the thing you change is not just a battery, but the battery with a charge management system probably much more powerful than the computer on board the Apollo 13 mission (the official unit of computing power ;-). But if the battery is near dead, you can still operate the phone when connected to the charger - so I don't see too many use cases for a battery eliminator. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:18, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Does this apply to smartphones' Li-Ion batteries as well? I am aware that laptops' batteries are mini-computers, but smartphones might need something simpler.Doroletho (talk) 18:04, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Phone batteries are usually just lipo cells, sometimes with a thermal protection circuit, and sometimes with a resistor that informs the phone of the cell's capacity. The charging circuit is inside the phone.  If you know the phone make and model, look someplace like dx.com for replacement cells.  Don't get the very cheapest ones since they are crap, but the ones above US $5 or so are usually decent.  173.228.123.166 (talk) 08:32, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Yahoo! Powered
How do I uninstall the damn thing? Answers.microsoft.com is singularly unhelpful: I tried removing it using control panel, but nothing happened. There are a bunch of other, more elaborate procedures out there, but I'm not sure which I can trust. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:38, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
 * From some quick searches, it's probably worth trying Malwarebytes first. Nil Einne (talk) 16:27, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Any website to test Wiki Admin
Is there any website where you can test admin stuff like protecting articles — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.161.214.1 (talk) 16:29, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
 * There is https://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page in particular https://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests/Tools and https://testwiki.wiki/. However you may wish to install your own copy of MediaWiki and play around yourself. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:14, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * If you want to install MediaWiki, here's a guide: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Running_MediaWiki_on_Debian_or_Ubuntu. However, it can be rather a time-consuming lengthy process. Doroletho (talk) 00:39, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

1st computer components?
I liked the discussion on "how did the 1st compiler get compiled, and who compiled it?" I think the philosophical answer revolves around "it was something that was not quite a compiler." I wonder if I can extend some discussions on other 1sts in computers, cuz I'm still puzzled on how the 1st programs were made. Some trivia I have here is (and wondering if anyone can expand on)


 * -IBM wrote the 1st BIOS chip, then others get IBM assembler codes, downloaded the bits.
 * -Xerox was the 1st company to have a graphical operating system.

Who wrote the 1st motherboard? 67.175.224.138 (talk) 19:21, 5 December 2018 (UTC).


 * In the IBM PC era, much of such work in large, well-financed companies was done with cross compilers. You run the tools on an existing computer, and target them to the new computer. This is easier if they use the same CPU family, as the cross compiler is then close to, or the same as, the compiler on the existing computer. Operating systems like CP/M (on the 8080 or Z80) were well established by the time of the IBM PC and could be used for this. IBM probably used one of their own larger machines for doing it. The Intel "Blue Cube" (see ISIS for a photo) was used for a lot of such work.
 * The original IBM PC manual was in the typical squat, floppy disk-sized, hard ringbinder and the original ones included a BIOS source listing. You also needed a Pink Shirt Book in order to program one. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:43, 5 December 2018 (UTC)


 * The article Motherboard might tell you what you want to know about them, though I'm not very sure what you're trying to get at. Dmcq (talk) 22:58, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the rather Heath-Robinson machine shown at Colossus computer might indicate to you how computer hardware started off. Dmcq (talk) 23:02, 5 December 2018 (UTC)


 * And if you are interested in the days before there was a BIOS or ROM, to start up some computers, such as PDP 8, you had to use switches on the front panel to load instructions into memory, which would load the first bootstrap program into memory, and then transfer control to it. On IBM 370 mainframes you could set the boot address with dials on the front. If you had no bootable disk, you could use an IPL magnetic tape to load up an operating system to a disk. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:39, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that on the IBM 1400 series or Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:13, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Nitpick: you didn't have to toggle in a boot program, unless for some reason you were without any working I/O peripherals. Typical procedure was to load a boot program from paper or magnetic tape. Sometimes "toggling in" was done for fun, experiment, or to impress onlookers. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 05:55, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * The successful IBM PC clones very notably did not copy the BIOS. IBM would not license the BIOS to anyone else. This was the main impediment to legally producing PC clones. Copying the software without permission is copyright infringement, and got you sued by IBM (as was the case with other computers). Phoenix Technologies reverse-engineered the PC BIOS using clean room design: a team analyzed the BIOS, including the source code provided in IBM's PC manuals, and wrote a specification for a compatible BIOS. A separate team then wrote a BIOS from scratch based on the specification, without looking at any IBM code.
 * Motherboards are younger than electronic computers. Early computers were wired together by hand. Later more standardized methods like wire-wrapping became common. The idea of a "motherboard" originated with early microcomputers. Minicomputers and mainframes took up at least a large cabinet; there was no single circuit board that all the components were on. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 05:55, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I thought Phoenix Technologies or whoever, had to take out all the 0's and 1's from the BIOS chip in order to make their own version of it? 67.175.224.138 (talk) 00:35, 7 December 2018 (UTC).

The above statement ("Nitpick: you didn't have to toggle in a boot program, unless for some reason you were without any working I/O peripherals. Typical procedure was to load a boot program from paper or magnetic tape.") is completely wrong. The first PDP-8, for example, had no software in it when first powered on -- and this includes having no software to read a paper tape or tape drive. The memory was completely blank. It had switches on the front panel that would allow you to put in enough 1s and 0s so that it could read the paper tape. the paper tape would in turn have a program that told the PDP8 how to read a magnetic tape drive. See PDP-8 and How do I boot a pdp8?. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:37, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I should have worded that differently, and thought so after saving the edit, but it was late. I probably shouldn't edit late at night. What I meant was you didn't have to punch in a full OS. As you note, you had to set some instructions to tell the machine to read a program from the tape and run it. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 21:57, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Which is why we call it "booting". You are simply telling the computer to read and execute a program that in turn will load the full OS (or there might be multiple stages, in fact; the first program might read a single block of disk or tape, and this in turn would include the program to read the whole OS from disk or tape).  The initial instruction tells the machine to bring itself up "by its own bootstraps", an reference to the seeming impossibility of the feat.  And so the initial program was called a "bootstrap loader" and the process was "bootstrapping". The short form "boot" derives from that. --76.69.46.228 (talk) 06:19, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Not early computer, but early microcomputer: I still have the bootstrap instructions for the IMSAI 8080 (from my first job out of college, 1978) wired into my fingers. 21 00 01 DB FF E6 7F C2 02 00 DB FE 77 23 C3 02 00. This would simply read a slightly more sophisticated loader from (in our case) the paper tape reader on a TTY; that loader knew about checksums. I sure miss switches and flashy lights -- computers were still slow enough in the late '70s that debugging stuff could involve noticing anomalous light patterns. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106; &#x1D110;&#x1d107; 06:47, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
 * You can buy a "so good that an experienced user can't tell them apart without opening the case" Altair 8080 replica at http://altairclone.com/ -- and the price is the same as it was in 1976!


 * The IMSAI was a basically a clone of the Altair. In theory you could modify the Altair clone to be an IMSAI clone, but you would have to find a source for those paddle switches. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:19, 7 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Altair: http://oldcomputers.net/altair-8800.html
 * IMSAI: http://oldcomputers.net/imsai8080.html
 * --Guy Macon (talk) 08:23, 7 December 2018 (UTC)