Re: [Q] Why Apple2 when we have PC?

[fl332@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John L. Graham)]

Hi Ron!
      heh, heh, I found your comments about Apple II's and curve
fitting interesting as I do quite a bit of that myself. I know
exactly what you're saying, but there is also a patience factor
to be considered. For example...I use my Apple IIs to curve fit
published data on asteroid positions which requires _very_ accurate
results and they do a fine job. Part of my graduate work involved
using FFTs to deconvolute data sets of several thousand points each
(acquired on an Apple II) and again it worked fine. I also created
a solar system model based entirely on Newtonian mechanics to model
the true motion of the Sun (which gets pulled about by the planets)
and it took about 6 hours to model 50 years of solar motion, but the
results were fascinating and agreed with published results. Perhaps the
most computationally demanding program I've ever written is Ground
Track which prepares (among other things) overflight prediction
tables for artificial satellites. The current version of this
software runs on classic Apple IIs and flash it t'ain't, but it
still chugs out the numbers I need in a timely manner to watch
dozens of overflights every evening. (Hmmm, you know they look
the same whether I use TrakSat, OrbiTrack, or Ground Track). The
most interesting example I've read about is Jean Meeus. He's
recognized as one of the world leaders for calculating celestial
events. He's got some great stories of doign horindous calculations
on main frames back in the '60s. One example is close to your's
in that it involved a tremndous amount of data for which the storage
capacity didn't exist. Sooo, he just used the same tape drive over
and over again...some 927 times!

Oh yes, I recently finished a series of tests with a 3-D finite
element model that predicts the radiation distribution inside a
large photochemical reactor with various lamp configurations to
help us decide on a prototype configuration. That was a fun model
running on a GS complete with graphics.

Soooo...your point it well taken that more modern computers are
nice and add considerably to our capabilities, but even older
machines have considerable capability to offer even for computationally
complex problems. heh, heh, to overcome the spped problems I often
run several different models on several different computers :)
We call it brute force multi-tasking. Besides, IIs are so cheap
these days we've got folks giving them to us. We are more than
happy relieving them of their burden *B^)

Sorry to ramble so much....

Have fun!

John