unforum

[hannah]

i guess only time will tell if there's more to it than just naming the computers, we'll find out when we see what the solution submission page looks like for this card.

[openfly]

[vibration13]

Taking the first letter of each ( ASBACNAZC ) and anagramming it... you get the peculiar name " ANNA SCABS". I think there was a girl called that in my school. Maybe she's got the cube?

[Rob_Riv]

if this is solved.. what is the answer?

[dopefiend]

it's not solved.... someone was a bit over-zealous with the renaming of the thread

[Mima]

website?

[POTUS]

I think you're right Mima - there were two versions of the Apple ][, and I remember the keyboards being different in that way. Though which is which - I just instinctively think you're right.

If I am not mistaken the back of the card has "The White Code" - which google tells me is some sort of distributed UNIX-flavored IBM computer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

I couldn't find commands or anything that fit the extra letters though . . . maybe unrelated.

[djrazz]

if it's a code

AAASCSBNN

aaa=www ?


edit: could it possibly go


1: Atari 2600 created 1977 named 2600 1982 1.19mhz
2: Sinclair ZX81 1981 3.5 mhz z80a cpu
3: BBC Micro 1982 2mhz 6502 cpu
4: Altair 8800b 1975-7? 2mhz 8080a cpu
5: Commodore 64 1982 0.985 MHz (PAL) / 1.023 MHz (NTSC)
6: Nes 1985 NTSC 1.79MHz pal 1.66MHz
7: Apple 1977 1 mhz
8: zx Spectrum 1982 3.50 mhz
9: The Next Cube 1988-1990 25MHz

and then read it like kurt


asac sbcn aczn cnzn


i get the word memo ???? if you rot 1245 asac

[openfly]

[Rob_Riv]

[djrazz]

i took the years of first release
converted to letters
77 81 82 75 82 85 77 82 88
m q r k r u m r x


it' nonesense nonesense i tell you im going insain/..e..e.e.......

[Russell]

Sorry guys have just come back to the forum and agree with you about it not being solved..... My bad

Maybe it has something to do with the difference generator, otherwise why mention it?

[djrazz]

well i found this
Method of differences

The principle of a difference engine is Newton's method of differences. It may be illustrated with a small example. Consider the quadratic polynomial

p(x) = 2x2 − 3x + 2

and suppose we want to tabulate the values p(0), p(0.1), p(0.2), p(0.3), p(0.4) etc. The table below is constructed as follows: the first column contains the values of the polynomial, the second column contains the differences of the two left neighbors in the first column, and the third column contains the differences of the two neighbors in the second column:
p(0)=2.0
2.0−1.72=0.28
p(0.1)=1.72 0.28−0.24=0.04
1.72−1.48=0.24
p(0.2)=1.48 0.24−0.20=0.04
1.48−1.28=0.20
p(0.3)=1.28 0.20−0.16=0.04
1.28−1.12=0.16
p(0.4)=1.12

Notice how the values in the third row are constant. This is no coincidence. In fact, if you start with any polynomial of degree n, the column number n + 1 will always be constant. This crucial fact makes the method work, as we will see next.

We constructed this table from the left to the right, but now we can continue it from the right to the left in order to compute more values of our polynomial.

To calculate p(0.5) we use the values from the lowest diagonal. We start with the rightmost column value of 0.04. Then we continue the second column by subtracting 0.04 from 0.16 to get 0.12. Next we continue the first column by taking its previous value, 1.12 and subtracting the 0.12 from the second column. Thus p(0.5) is 1.12-0.12 = 1.0. In order to compute p(0.6), we iterate the same algorithm on the p(0.5) values: take 0.04 from the third column, subtract that from the second column's value 0.12 to get 0.08, then subtract that from the first column's value 1.0 to get 0.92, which is p(0.6).

This process may be continued ad infinitum. The values of the polynomial are produced without ever having to multiply. A difference engine only needs to be able to subtract. From one loop to the next, it needs to store 2 numbers in our case (the last elements in the first and second columns); if we wanted to tabulate polynomials of degree n, we'd need enough storage to hold n numbers.

Babbage's difference engine No. 2, finally built in 1991, could hold 7 numbers of 31 decimal digits each and could thus tabulate 7th degree polynomials to that precision. The best machines from Scheutz were able to store 4 numbers with 15 digits each.


that was at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine

im too dumb to figure that out or how it would relate to what we have

[dopefiend]

the white cube is on the back of the heiroglyphs card, not the geek antiques one

[Delian]

What if the trick is in the difference in the years?