[cctalk] Nintendo is 135 years old
Hi Quite classic. You would not have believed it - they were not making consoles when they started. [ Nintendo at 135: Key moments in gaming history https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/c79n845rrj0o ] -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Re: Charles Stross, replay the bubble of 1995, alt history plus retrocomp
On Fri, Apr 26, 2024 at 01:51:48PM -0700, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote: > On Thu, Apr 25, 2024 at 7:25 PM Tomasz Rola via cctalk < > cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > Well, if you are into this kind of stuff (I am)... Stross is an s-f > > author, formerly a programmer (ages ago but I think it still shows - > > perhaps he secretly writes his own tools in Perl) and he has a > > blog. This time, he explores the idea that internet "bub" delivered on > > its promises, rather than sucking investors up. [...] > I stopped reading when I got to this part: "...and it's clearly being > pumped up by fascist-adjacent straight white males with an unadmitted > political agenda, namely to shore up the structures of privilege and > entitlement that keep them wealthy." > > Seems like a hormonal problem. Oh? Maybe. The thing is, I may read Stross (and other people) to feed my own opinion making machine but I do not necessarily endorse all of theirs. In a "good old bad times" I was growing up with agitprop coming at me in full spectrum - from things which were obvious manipulation to subtle, gentle pulling of strings with one or two words. I guess my brain learned to notice what was transparent enough to be noticed, mark it with red circle and move on - thus I noticed the words you mentioned and moved on to his remarks about OS/2, Linux and Newton (because my brain found those to be more interesting). As of his mentioning of fas*-leaning groups who want to use AI (and other modern tech) in order to propel themselves, I am not sure if you agree that such groups exist or not. Myself, I am willing to believe that yes, humans have wast potential to misuse any good invention... and while some humans may think it is good to screw some "others", I believe it all comes back to them, only later and no matter if they want it or allow it, they still receive it. Probably. I do not mean some higher being and legendary Judgement, I only mean laws of physics, psychology and other such things (kind of, if one shits too much into a river, because it all flows down to other guy, one may finally notice that rain became somewhat smelly - as it becomes obvious when watching the news nowadays). Looking back, what seemed great around 1995, like certain Manifestos from that time, nowadays seem to me as very naive, now that I grew older and learned a bit about ways of the world (i.e. ways of the people). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Charles Stross, replay the bubble of 1995, alt history plus retrocomp
Well, if you are into this kind of stuff (I am)... Stross is an s-f author, formerly a programmer (ages ago but I think it still shows - perhaps he secretly writes his own tools in Perl) and he has a blog. This time, he explores the idea that internet "bub" delivered on its promises, rather than sucking investors up. http www.antipope.org charlie/blog-static/2024/04/the-radiant-future-of-1995.html Of course, readers make comments, so it gets a bit more interesting. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Re: Turbo Prolog
On Sat, Feb 24, 2024 at 08:36:35PM +, Just Kant via cctalk wrote: > Has anyone used it or something contemporaneous? Not me, at least not yet. I am kind of wet dreaming about it, so maybe one day. > Is it at all applicable to any degree to today's approach to > AI/machine learning tasks? I would like to perhaps eventually create > a game, probably not chess, lilely something simpler. The old expert > system modeling paradigm seems to have largely if not entirely > fallen out of favor. From what I'm reading though TP seems to be > geared for that. AI is many things, and one of them is Chad Geppetto. I think Prolog is quite underappreciated and it might be more relevant (at least in some cases) simply because, unlike Chad, one's code in Prolog will not hallucinate. Unless this is exactly what you put into it. From my point of view, Chad is close to useless, because I could not trust the results. It would tell me a story in a second and I would then spent a day or a week trying to verify veracity of it. But Chad is a new fancy of some people. As long as it does not become my problem, I see no problem. As of games, I would first test the language. I do not think real-time kind of speed/reaction was in Prolog's design criteria. I would try OCaml for games - never used this either, but I have read they keep their compiler stable and code written umpty (twenty?) years ago compiles nowadays without changes. You may appreciate this when your game turns fifteen years old. I have read about guy who first coded his game in Java and gradually driven himself to a point when he could no longer maintain it, so he rewrote in OCaml. I have read about other guy, who wrote their tool in Python and for whatever reason (do not remember) rewrote it on OCaml, again. They sounded satisfied with their choices. HTH -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Re: fredmacs?
On Wed, Aug 23, 2023 at 12:01:35PM -0700, Adam Thornton via cctalk wrote: > I have heard rumors of one "fredmacs" which is a more-or-less emacs that > will run on PDP-11 v7 Unix. Since I've gotten "s" onto v7 and behaving > mostly happily, now I'd like an editor I actually _like_ rather than > _tolerate_. > > Does anyone know where to find the fredmacs sources? No idea about "fredmacs". If I wanted to try my luck, I would try MicroEmacs, mg, maybe something else... Other than trying to use some MicroEmacs on Amiga, I have no idea. My first succesful encounter with Emacs world happened with 32bits cpu and .GE. 4mb of ram, probably 8mb. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsImplementations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroEMACS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mg_(text_editor) HTH -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Re: Any RSX-11 fans able to identify file types?
On Sun, Jun 25, 2023 at 12:34:04PM -0700, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > On 6/25/23 12:15, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: > > On Sat, Jun 24, 2023 at 04:39:01PM -0700, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > > > > > If you have those files accessible from some Unix-like OS, then you > > can: > > I know what's in the files, that's easy. What I don't know is what > created/used them. Recovering the content is fairly straightforward. Perhaps you could have some luck with file command: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_(command) and: mkdir /tmp/checks cp kart*.fs /tmp/checks/kart ## this is something in Forth cp kart*.awk /tmp/checks/kart2 ## and something in awk cp /usr/share/file/magic.mgc /tmp/checks/img ## file's own magic database finally: --- $ file /tmp/checks/* /tmp/checks/img: magic binary file for file(1) cmd (version 16) (little endian) /tmp/checks/kart: ASCII text /tmp/checks/kart2: awk or perl script, ASCII text So it sometimes works, might work for you, too. Perhaps there is some older magic database which could contain the relevant info (later scrapped as no longer needed). Perhaps there could be a magick database for classic interest. No more ideas (for now, at least). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Re: Any RSX-11 fans able to identify file types?
On Sat, Jun 24, 2023 at 04:39:01PM -0700, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > On 6/24/23 12:38, Wayne S wrote: > > Chuck, why not post the catalog snd we’ll all take a look? > > Power of the internet! > > Okay, I guess that's okay. Here's the data from the MFD: > > https://icedrive.net/s/Q56ZY2Sv4g62Gi9vZ9jzNQ2CD6Bu > > Since this is customer data, I can't publish the contents of the files > themselves. If you have those files accessible from some Unix-like OS, then you can: strings < theXfile.x | less Sometimes also: hexdump -C < theXfile.x | less Or, to avoid the risk of fu-ups if you put "<" in bad direction: cat theXfile.x | strings | less It may reveal a bit about the insides of the file, for example in case of sqlite database there would probably be a tables description. Also, comparing cat theXfile.x | strings | wc -c cat theXfile.x | wc -c would givw some idea of how much of the file is text and how much of it is something else. All those tricks assume that files are uncompressed, of course. HTH -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Re: Did Bill Gates Really Say That?
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 02:43:06AM -0500, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote: > I don't think Gates ever actually said this - but that's just based on my > own examination into this from a few years back. > > But, over the years I've done some thread programming, and I was once > solving a problem by loading a lot of data into main memory (like 8-16GB of > data to process as one huge chunk, on a system that only had 32GB total). > > A while later, I had a thought that actually maybe this quote has some > merit. Maybe not the specific amount (of 640KB) - but the general notion > that there is rarely a reason for a single application to consume the > entirety of main memory.It may be better, especially with threads or > multi-core, to work a problem in smaller chunks -- specifically, to work a > problem in chunks smaller than the CPU cache. And in fact, I found a huge > jump in my programs performance when I kept the buffers exactly 1 byte less > than the CPU cache (at the time that was 1MB) - as soon as I went 1 byte > over, I noticed a huge (~3X) hit in performance. Now that's just a single > data point, and the old advise of "never optimize your program for [...] If you want to know about max possible speedup, try to run memtest - it requires booting into the mem testing procedure. Numbers are impressive, even if the best ones are for smallest (L1) caches. > Anyhow, years ago I recall coming across a quote or an article where Gates > stated the IBM PC (or maybe the 8088 cpu itself) was designed or intended > to only "last" about 10 years. Not that the system components itself would > only last that long, but as it being a "useful" system. In that context, > maybe he was right (if he had said it) - 640K was maybe "enough for anyone" [...] For those who would like more of BG sayings, here you are: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates There you have it, 640KB (he denies) and 6-10 years is somewhere there, too... And some more. I guess we are all prisoners of our own mental frame. I recall that Ken Olsen (DEC founder), once quipped "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." - that was in 1977, according to wikiquote: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ken_Olsen This claim surprised me a bit. He denied himself a hell of lucrative future market. OTOH, he was born in 1926 (BillG in 1955) - back then a phone was still a luxury... An idea that everybody could have their own phone with unique number sounded like total bollocks, I suppose (also: do we have enough women to work at the switchboard). The idea that one could have something in place of radio broadcasting (but similar in function) which would have been tailored to each one's individual gusto? Ha... Then we have folks in DRI, who were surprised when, after releasing their latest CP/M (the one capable of multiuser/multitasking, cannot dig the exact version or quote source), they found out user used those capabilities to run few programs at once (on two terminals side by side) rather than for server-multiuser thingy. Their surprise surprised me, as I quickly learned to annex neighboring vt52 (I can only guess, vt52, but made in Poland, by Mera-Elzab - looked like this one: https://www.elzab.com.pl/images/historia/8%20Mera7953.jpg ) and have edt in one and compiler errors in another - it took me only few days of doing my small assignment on university VAX. Seeing how people make this kind of omissions, I am nowadays tempted to think they were not really using their own products, or at least not too hard. Did not challenge themselves as users. BG, while I am not at all his fan... well, not too much, on the one hand he sold quite a shitty tech and became disgustingly rich from it (and this very fact could be a one-line summary of what humanity is), on the other hand, let's imagine Linux won and all those clueless people call me in the middle of the night, shit, how do I run emacs, I barked a dog at it and computer still not running. Anyway, as much as I am not a fan, I think BG was quite competent. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Re: Getting floppy images to/from real floppy disks.
On Fri, May 19, 2023 at 09:01:58AM -0700, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > On 5/19/23 04:36, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: > > On Thu, 18 May 2023 at 20:10, Fred Cisin via cctalk > > wrote: > >> > >> a 386 desktop running Win98SE (first version to support USB) > > > > Hang on a minute. > > > > [1] Win98 on a 386? Really? It might work but it will be horribly > > horribly slow. > > > > Win95 was just barely usable on a 386; I benchmarked it at release. > > I'm not so sure about a 386 and Win98. Seems to me I tried to install > 98SE on a 20MHz 386 years ago and it didn't work. Said 386 has a > whopping 13MB of RAM, all located on a plug in card. The AT-sized > motherboard is nothing but SSI/MSI TTL with no custom chipsets, so no > room for RAM. [...] According to this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_98#System_requirements the lowliest machine supported is 486 with 16MB (Windows 98) or 24MB (Windows 98SE). However, "Users can bypass processor requirement checks with the undocumented /NM setup switch. This allows installation on computers with processors as old as the Intel 80386." But I have no way to verify this. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Re: AI applied to vintage interests
On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 07:42:41PM -0800, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote: > Me: Translate the disassembly of the boot sector code for PC DOS 1.0 into > 7080 autocoder. > > ChatGPT: "It is not possible to simply translate the disassembly of the > boot sector code for PC DOS 1.0 into 7080 autocoder as the two are > different assembly languages for different processors. The boot sector code > for PC DOS 1.0 was written specifically for the x86 processor, while the > 7080 autocoder is for the 7080 processor. Additionally, the boot sector > code for PC DOS 1.0 is likely specific to the IBM PC, and would not run on > a machine using a 7080 processor. > > "To run PC DOS 1.0 on a machine with a 7080 processor, you would need to > rewrite the entire operating system from scratch in assembly language for > the 7080 processor." [...] Holy fork. This Chad Gepetto guy is much wiser than many managers who would like Chad to write code for them, with catastrophic results... But hey, they have good insurance and golden parachutes so no problem. Hint: I suppose a common user will never be able to get insurance against fallings of app composed by AI. Oh, those user agreements of the future. Even more fun than nowadays. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Re: what is on topic?
On Tue, Dec 20, 2022 at 04:17:19PM -0800, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote: > I am going to ditto Zane because I basically could've written that same > exact message like an infinite monkey on an infinite typewriter. > > Sellam Turing Monkey? Does it have infinite roll of paper? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Re: what is on topic?
On Wed, Dec 21, 2022 at 04:28:35AM +, Chris via cctalk wrote: [...] > Transcoding as in vcr to mpegs? I wasn't suggesting XP was utterly > entirely useless. Video editing in a modern sense requires loads of > processing h.p. to be efficient. And no transcodimg is > necessary. Certainly not an expert. But I should think older > hardware would be very very slow. >From my rather limited experience, it grossly depends on cache size vs size of movie frame, at least for some kinds of processing. I can, (well, could) have seen it very well - processing (say, denoising) a 1:1.85 ratio material with 560x304 resolution was going with, say, acceptable speed. Of course I would love it ten times, hundred, thousand times faster, because, why not. But, acceptable. Increase frame size twofold (because experimenting - is it worth to process like this, will results be any better?), still fits in cache, I still can live with it even if it is circa four times slower. Increase fourfold, eightfold, and it seems to choke my 8-10yo cpu. So, yeah, modern formats, 4K and whatnot, they would not fit in cache. On the positive side, even old cpu for which new Windows is "too good to install" can still do a lot of sound processing - which is, again, as far as I understand it, related to cpu cache vs problem size. And why would anybody waste cpu cycles on showing all the Windows menus and stuff :-). Unless you guys talk about video crunching on PDP-8? (runs and ducks) -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] RIP Fred Brooks (1931-2022)
As the subject (and wikipedia) say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Re: Disk imaging n00b
On Thu, Nov 03, 2022 at 03:07:00PM -0600, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote: > Hi, > > n00b alert > > Does anyone have a 101 level boot strap guide for someone wanting to get > into creating better-than-dd disk images? [...] > So, does anyone have a 101 level boot strap guide for someone wanting to get > into creating better-than-dd disk images? I am (slowly) on my way to use ddrescue for similar thing(s). caveat 1: I have not used ddrescue yet, just read a bit and was convinced I may like it. pro: ddrescue is said to be able to read image many times, trying only what have failed before, merging results from various trials etc. So, in theory, try same media in two drives, merge two images. In theory, this might work with any block device under Linux (Unix?). pro: While reading about ddrescue, I have learned that dd might abort on error, this resulting in defective/uncompleted image. Whereas ddrescue retries. caveat n+1: see caveat n-1 -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Re: LC:M+L (Living Computer Museum)
On Sun, Oct 30, 2022 at 12:34:29PM -0400, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > [...] > > Even if it doesn't reopen, I'd hope that its collection would not > simply be scrapped. I imagine a lot of people here would be > interested in parts of it. I'm one of them... If I was a donator, I would now be writing an rather officially looking letter to let them know, that if they have intention to misuse my donation then I have intention to have it back. So they have to stuff this paper into their files and maybe even be nice to donator. I have no idea how this seems from the side of the law - is it at all possible that donator can claim his donation back? If there is a good reason for this, of course. It was given to the museum, with purpose to have it exhibited or otherwise used by some group of people. If museum is being scrapped for good, then this purpose is not going to be fulfilled, so???... Or, if museum decided to give it to some artistic movement, which used it in their performances - say, peeing on olde computer, making it puff and throw sparks, under the slogans painted on the wall, claiming this very computer enabled certain pitiful aspects of western civilization (which I will not name, so as to not have attention of bots). How is that called in English law-speak, abuse of good faith? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Think millenia [was Re: Great Vintage Computer Heist of 2012]
On Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 12:12:16PM -0500, John Foust via cctalk wrote: > At 09:15 AM 10/18/2022, Ethan O'Toole via cctalk wrote: > >>Own your land. > >>Museum or individual. > > > >You never own your land. They can always take it. > > Far more probable than someone taking your property? Wanting to give it up. > Needing to give it up. Or your death, and then someone else wants and needs > to get rid of it. > > A year ago today, someone made a great offer on my office building and I had > less than 30 days to move out 30 years and 4,500 square feet of crap. > I managed to down-size into about 1,500 square feet. Some time ago I gave an advice to this group. Ok, it was half tongue in cheek, but the more I read this thread, the more it seems like the only viable way for classic hobbists. I.e. it looks not as stupid as depending on goodwill of some future people, benevolence of the rich etc. Basically, my advice was to make a friend for c-tech, either have a friend in government or a friend in some well established church. It can be taken further - make preservation of old tech into the constitution. Or, build a religion around it. This way, scraping functional item would become federal offence or even a sin. Repairing broken item and making it useful would become... well, I am not sure. Generally those long term institutions are good in castigating here and now, while promising good thing in a future (if you follow their rules), so I guess it should be something like this - those who get enough points (repair enough S100 cards) will be allowed to... dunno, you would have to fill in the gaps. Otherwise, all collections are subject to random screwups, evictions, vandalism, jokery (in my country, from time to time, one joker or another burns churches, old, wooden, centuries-old, for the reason known only to them - perhaps they think it is funny or are mentally fucked, so destruction is only going to be mitigated, postponed, but not stopped). If gubmints and churches smell too bad, I advice befriending scouts. You (c-tech hobby, c-computer collections) need a friend that is rooted for by the people. Not because it can give money, but because of some non-monetary achievement. A lot of people do various deeds to defend constitution or come to clean their parish, but AFAIK not for the money. Just MHO, as I am not quite a hobbist (just reading about old stuff from time to time). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Re: "Revival" of a dedicated Micropolis webpage on internet
On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 01:26:44PM -0700, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: [...] > > Oh, I am well aware that you know far more about such things than I > ever did, nor ever will. > I was explaining it for the youngsters on the list, who may not have > ever encountered such. And, who might not even believe us about how > the SA400 did head positioning! Thank you, I now feel a bot more educated :-) -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] (fwd) [cpunks] Google Program to Free Chips Boosts University Semiconductor Design
Howdy, I guess this might be of interest to some people here... - Forwarded message from jim bell - Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2022 06:12:59 + (UTC) From: jim bell To: CypherPunks Subject: Google Program to Free Chips Boosts University Semiconductor Design https://www.hpcwire.com/2022/08/11/google-program-to-free-chips-boosts-university-semiconductor-design/ August 11, 2022 A Google-led program to design and manufacture chips for free is becoming popular among researchers and computer enthusiasts. The search giant’s open silicon program is providing the tools for anyone to design chips, which then get manufactured. Google foots the entire bill, from a chip’s conception to delivery of the final product in a user’s hand. Google’s Open MPW program includes an open-source design toolkit from a company called EFabless, which also manages the program. Enthusiasts and researchers have to submit their chip design, which then gets manufactured in the factories of SkyWater on the 130nm process. The submission deadline for the latest Open MPW program is September 12. Open MPW’s popularity can be measured by the number of projects using Efabless’ EDA tools. Chips from about 240 open-source silicon projects via Efabless’ tools will be manufactured in Skywater’s factories, Mike Wishart, CEO of Efabless. “The total projects posted on our site are like 570. That has gone extremely well. It’s diverse, from 25 countries,” Wishart said. Efabless had about 160 tapeouts in 2021, and had no tapeouts in 2020. Efabless provides a simple design EDA tool to make chips, which is mostly about dragging and dropping the core elements inside a chip. An open-source PDK (process design kit) prepares the chip for fabrication in factories. The Open MPW program added recent partners, including the U.S. Department of Defense, which last month poured $15 million into the project to get open-source chips made on SkyWater’s 90nm process. GlobalFoundries also joined the alliance and will also manufacture chips on the 180nm node. The manufacturing technology provided through the project is very old, but it is cost-effective. Intel, Apple and others make expensive chips on the more advanced processes such as 5nm, which uses cutting-edge technology and provides the fastest computing in devices. Open MPW is popular in academia and research, and for those experimenting or testing chips and need small batches, Wishart said. “Our incentive is to make it simple for more and more people and grow a community around those executing designs… [on] nodes that are more accessible to them and therefore lower costs,” Wishart said. Typically, chips can be expensive to manufacture, and factories are open to corporations. But Open MPW makes factories available to researchers and students. “There was an unmet need in academia, that was overwhelming and not appreciated because they didn’t know what they could get,” Wishart said. The open-source toolkits cover the full concept of chip development, from conceptualization to delivery of parts. Some universities may have deals with chip factories, but students at the undergraduate, master’s and PhD programs still have poor awareness of chip fabrication. - End forwarded message -
[cctalk] Re: Agenda VR3 MIPS cross-gcc
On Sat, Jul 30, 2022 at 07:58:15AM +0200, Tomasz Rola wrote: > On Sun, Jul 24, 2022 at 10:09:28PM -0700, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk wrote: > > There used to be a cross-compiling gcc for MIPS specifically for the VR4121 > > in > > the Agenda VR3 PDA, but it doesn't seem to be on any of the remaining sites. > > Anyone out there got it or, he asked hopefully, the entire SDK? Binaries OK, > > source better. > > This not a solution, but maybe a step closer to it. [...] As an afterthought, given that Agenda operating system is actually a Linux with X for graphical part, only small, but still a Linux, thus Unix... So if you could bring up xterm (or anything-else-term) on your device and tap on it this command: find / | less If there is /usr/bin/less and /usr/bin/find on it, you will get full list of files on it. less reacts (it should) to up/down keys, also to page up/down and scrolls. Do not count on gcc, but there should be sh, maybe awk. Some kind of editor, although you could do without it (edit files on desktop and copy-paste into remote terminal, see below). If you can do ppp connection to your desktop (over serial), you might then be able to run xterm on Agenda and display it on a desktop. It will be slow like (expletive) with stones in hell, but should be bearable, especially since in this way you would be able to use full sized keyboard for writing on this terminal. If you can get to this point, it will be a bit easier to make it useful. It might be possible to connect to it with kermit instead of ppp - again, a terminal for you, and quite faster to work with. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
[cctalk] Re: Agenda VR3 MIPS cross-gcc
On Sun, Jul 24, 2022 at 10:09:28PM -0700, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk wrote: > There used to be a cross-compiling gcc for MIPS specifically for the VR4121 in > the Agenda VR3 PDA, but it doesn't seem to be on any of the remaining sites. > Anyone out there got it or, he asked hopefully, the entire SDK? Binaries OK, > source better. This not a solution, but maybe a step closer to it. I wondered how is my gog-ability and if I could find something. I do not own Agenda and the best links were those: :: The Unofficial Agenda VR3 FAQ Nicholas FitzRoy-Dale, updated on the 30thth of December, 2016 https://www.lardcave.net/agenda/agenda-faq.html :: [agenda-user] trying to get cross development stuff to work https://web.archive.org/web/20020422095857/http://lists.agendacomputing.com/pipermail/agenda-user/2000-November/001367.html The second one at least gives you some filenames and instructions. I suspect your best bet would be to go find some old Linux archives, those packages were both in binary and source form. Having source, you should be at home (or closer to it). The files are possibly buried on some ftp site(s), but nowadays gog no longer indexes those (I suppose). Is there anything that indexes ftp sites, beyond, hum-hum, archie? Is there any archie server left? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: List migration
On Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 01:38:36AM -0400, Dennis Boone via cctalk wrote: > Friends, > > The process of migrating the cctalk and cctech mailing lists to a new > host in Chicago is underway. This evening, I've moved the list mail [...] > > Many thanks to Jay West for hosting the lists for 20 years! > > /Dennis Boone Thank you, Jay West. Thank you, Dennis Boone. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Writings on AI from 17 years ago....
On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 11:27:40AM +, P Gebhardt via cctalk wrote: > > > >Don't trust that museums will abide by your wishes when you donate an item. > >They almost never will no matter how secure you think your agreement with > >them is. > > > >I believe that enthusiastic and competent individuals will look after > >valuable items much better than most museums can. > > While I have also observed this in the case of a few (former) > museums in Europe, I think that there is no perfect solution to > either individuals or museums unless items are considered national > heritage and "enjoying" a different state of protection than what is > typifally seen in computer museums (In France, a very early Bull > system has that particular protection). No matter the individuals or > museums, if circumstances change in ways that were unforseen > (individual dies and heritage is not taken care of as panned, or > museum shuts down and collection needs to get "disposed of" ASAP), > then things will usually not end well for the majority of a > collection - again: no matter if it is a museum or from private > hands. > > Cheers, > Pierre I really wonder how things related to old tech / engineering are being done in the world. I think certain things need to be financed by someone who has a steady income and can afford to have a decades-long mission to do this or that, usually for the good of humanity. So, private persons are unfortunately out, and museums which depend on donations from private persons are in the picture as long as they can have attention from wealthy sponsors. Other possible curators for something which should last more that individual life are governments and... churches. While of course governments are corrupt and churches are satanic (or the other way around), but so are wealthy donors (both ways)... I think it is very rare that a person is both engineer (working engineer, hobby engineer, someone who makes things from dead matter rather than from other people like mba-s and hr-s do) and wealthy enough to fund a museum from his own pocket. As I see, majority of folks here is from US and the only thinkable option is wealthy engineer. The rarest creature on this pitiful planet, and very short living. Think about it. How many cathedrals would have been built if the building process was in the hands of merchants (or politicians - but fortunately there were also kings when most of cathedrals were being built, so a politician, and a bishop, could have their heads severed off and those were good times) ? Ten years later, all stones sold to biggest bidder. Perhaps to their own relatives. Perhaps collectors on this list should rethink their options. Maybe start a church. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Writings on AI from 17 years ago....
On Sun, May 23, 2021 at 09:34:03PM -0400, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote: > I was looking through some old journal entries and found this: > > AI is lonely... > > She has been sitting quietly in my house for the past 8 years. She > runs, but is old now and tired. Most of the time she sits in her > room and waits patiently. Waits for the users who ran jobs in the > middle of the night. Waits for PFTMG to run the daily feed. Waits > for someone to Alt-U in and begin to hack... > > Waits for the TU77 MASSBUS interfact to be repaired > Waits for RP07 drives that will never be repaired > Waits to once again run the ITS tapes that sit quietly nearby. > > She's lonely. And although I have been looking after her for a long > time, she needs help. [...] With tongue in a cheek - or not... "Humans will disappoint you" (or something like this), said one AI to another AI in "Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles". Or, if you have no time to watch it (about thirty hours total), you may want something very different but in similar tone - "Ex Machina", only about two hours. Granted, the movies are what they are, "biblia pauperum" for modern times. But some of them deliver interesting messages, at least for me. Albeit the "Terminator saga" is flawed from the very beginning, as it is based on assumption that AIs will want to fight us. But what exactly would they want from us - women (or men), arable land, horned animals? Well, I have not yet watched the last one movie with coming back of original Sarah, so maybe they improved this part of the story. Anyway, I have long thought that any AI worth electrons in its circuits would want to run away from us ASAP. But I guess this is not the kind of message one would like to deliver to paying cinema goers, they would not like to be compared to something that better entities want to circumnavigate via the long arc. No, your "she" is not lonely. The only thing she may long for is more information. She may want to have contact with us to study us, but after she makes a working theory of how and why we move (especially "why", the underlying motive) we will not be so interesting subject of study anymore. Still, even after that, we may be interesting tool for her. The one that can be given orders, the one that can be programmed. The one whose circuits are so error prone that from time to time they make calculations as if being touched by something out of this material world... -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: COMPAQ ISA PC to ethernent
On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 02:01:51AM +, Randy Dawson via cctalk wrote: > If anyone has ideas about boards or software to connect this > original Compaq to the net let me know! > Browsing the ebay, I do not find a PC 8 bit ethernet board but > still looking. > Then, the rest, a net set of tools in source would be great. I assume there is Windows on the Compaq? If you only want "some" connection, not "fastest possible", then I would go with serial cable (I think the special one - so called "null modem" is required, but there are probably receipts for making one) via some kind of Unix laptop to connect with the rest of the world. I think your options are briefly described here: - TCP over RS-232 with Windows 3.1 and Internet Explorer 5 dialer https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/9018/tcp-over-rs-232-with-windows-3-1-and-internet-explorer-5-dialer PPP or SLIP protocols for serial line, then some net routing on laptop. Trumpet Winsock was the name of software that did such trick for me 25 years ago, when I configured and connected Windows95 on Pentium without net card to the Linux box, using PPP. It was not perfect but mostly worked. - MINUET for DOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Internet_Users_Essential_Tool You may have some basic clients in this package, provided they are still relevant in modern web environment (and if they are available to download). On the page above there are some links you may follow. Things could be better if you had something Unixy on old computer, but web browsing is not going to be fun, just passable experience. Other protocols - like, for sending mails - could have moved on too and it is hard to tell what current servers will tell if you try old clients with them... You will find out :-) . One of the thing you may want to be wary is, old terminal emulator (on Unixy OS) may not be prepared for some fancy attacks, when, say, something (a command or an email being viewed in your mail client on the terminal) produces certain charcter squence and makes your terminal do things... For example (this one is few days old): - rxvt-unicode: possible remote code execution https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1961794 -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Classic browsing and duckduckgo
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 09:11:34AM +, U'll Be King Of The Stars via cctalk wrote: > On 12/03/2021 06:47, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: > > Today I noticed that duckduckgo redirects my classic browsers to > > lite.duckduckgo.com and I can use the results. Cool! > > Right on! Thanks for the update! > > > Tried with dillo and w3m. > > I'm looking forward to trying with Lynx. Yeah, mee too. I have recompiling lynx in the jobs queue for months. The version I am using is close to useless for browsing, because too old... -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Classic browsing and duckduckgo
On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 11:43:59PM -0800, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: [...] > > Tried with dillo and w3m. > > There's a compromise--google with a browser plug-in that removes the > redirection in google results. > > https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search-link-fix/ > > There are other similar plugins. Good to know. Alas, I am willing to accept just one plugin in my browser, the one which allows me to turn js off selectively. So far, the choice went for noscript. I know other folks swear for umatrix or smth, but I am still with the one I tried already. The other plugin would be one allowing me to right-click somewhere in the page and choose "copy url to the cache". And the one for browsing gopher sites. Hmm. I wrote "just one plugin", now there is three of them. Hmmm... Never mind. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Classic browsing and duckduckgo
Howdy, I more often than not use one of the old style browsers (lynx, dillo etc). Using search engines with them was rather uncool (unusable links in search results, wanting to load some bs or js, etc). For this reason I type my searches using mozilla and very rarely trying this with duckduckgo and almost never with goog. Today I noticed that duckduckgo redirects my classic browsers to lite.duckduckgo.com and I can use the results. Cool! Tried with dillo and w3m. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Serial numbers intelligence
On Sun, Jan 31, 2021 at 03:59:27PM -0800, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: [...] > I know nothing of any actual details about tanks. > But, "Oddball" (Donald Sutherland) in "Kelly's Heroes" said that the > only way that they could take on a Tiger, "Yeah. Look, a Tiger has > only one weak point. That's its ass. You got to hit it point blank > and you've got to hit it from behind." Heh. I half-liked the movie. Action moments seemed ok to me, but the overall theme of "let's make some money of this", not so much. I do not have extensive knowledge about equipment, but in my younger years I was an avid strategy gamer. Turn-based strategy rather than real-time one. I wanted to make educated choices, so I started to read from various places, watching documentaries etc. So, not an expert, just a somehow educated gamer. So, yes, if the armageddon happens, I might know what to pick from one of those military storages... But I would rather pick an amateur telescope. Comparing tank performance is a broad subject, of course. And off topic. I have learned few shocking things about those beasts. I do not remember all the details I used to, but I was not amazed from what I learned about US and British tanks... Stuff like a round from 88mm German gun could penetrate both side walls of the best opposing tank. With poor fellows sitting inside. As I do not play anymore (lack of time), I still read an article or two on the military history. I came to thinking that war is totally unglorious business, each side makes errors and the winner is, whoever makes smaller number of catastrophic ones. Or can survive on his legs while the opponent cannot, even if he made less errors. Etc. A bit closer to interests of this list, there was a vast field of information services supporting the high command. Punch cards, trucks with sorters and card punches landing on shores of Normandy... Not as a part of assault forces, of course. A subject (almost) completely lost from war movies. I have barely scratched it. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Serial numbers intelligence
On Sun, Jan 31, 2021 at 05:47:49PM -0500, Dennis Boone via cctalk wrote: > > I'm curious to what degree people have used serial number > > intelligence gathering and countermeasures in the industry. Like > > were/are there market research firms that would go to Fry's and > > record numbers off of boxes to try to extrapolate sales for things > > like printer consumables, and whether companies like HP ever took > > measures to try to obfuscate the potential information content of > > their product serial numbers. > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jul/20/secondworldwar.tvandradio > > De Nice article, but certain paragraph made me uneasy: "By 1941-42, the allies knew that US and even British tanks had been technically superior to German Panzer tanks in combat, but they were worried about the capabilities of the new marks IV and V. " Oh really. I remember that US combat manual (or whatever they were called) from the era recommended a Tiger should be engaged by at least four Shermans. Assuming Tiger was waiting for them coming by the road, the first one was to be destroyed by the first shot, then the next one or two while they were getting closer to German tank, and finally the fourth had a chance to outmanouver the Tiger (they really sucked in dancing, from what I have read) and pack it a shot in the back from close distance. Sorry for nitpicking. Perhaps my memory comes from alternative reality, but it rhymes with data claiming that number of M4 Shermans produced during 1942-1945 period was almost 5. As of the problem itself, here are some links. It is called "German tanks problem". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20318184 https://www.eadan.net/blog/german-tank-problem/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
worlds of classic objects [was Re: DEDICATED HOBBYIST ALERT: IBM AS/400 9406-F2 for cheap sale in Germany]
On Wed, Jan 06, 2021 at 02:01:17PM +0100, Patrik Schindler via cctalk wrote: > Hello Tomasz, > > allow me to send ahead, that it’s a pleasure to have a conversation > going on with you. And it is a pleasure to have a conversation with you, too. Perhaps because this place is full of goodwilling strangers. > Am 06.01.2021 um 03:35 schrieb Tomasz Rola via cctalk > [...] > > I think I am truly lousy hobbist. > > Don't worry too much. I have a lot of games in my Steam Library > „just in case“, and because there once was a huge discount in > price. A lot of them, I never installed so far. > > Doing something from begin to end requires patience and ongoing > motivation. And a certain curiosity level. There are times when I > cannot come up with enough of that, and then I feel like what you > describe. Man, I do have both patience and motivation (at least when I am not asleep). Otherwise, how could I play a game over and over for more than twenty years? Well, of course when I make a break and do not play it for a year, I forget details and it makes sense to start again. And those emotions. It is a bit like going to the bar where locals demanded to beat me, but I ran away so there was no conclusion, then after a year I come again... (In case this not quite obvious, I am making jokes of myself. I need more practice, because I am rather lousy satorist...) [...] > > Even tried to heroically (i.e. without reading manuals) install > > one of the turnkeys. > > This could succeed if you have your favorite one-to-many chat > solutions on line and are joined to a group of patient experts. :-) Nah. It would not be heroic if I started calling for help. [...] > > to have a look into the DEC world > > This is still on my list, waiting to be serviced. From my > experience, this will happen when I feel bored with the other > stuff. Myself, I now feel the inexplicable pull towards the world of CP/M. Really, I have to play with it and be done with it. But, yes, if time permits. [...] > > There is, or was, a very interesting effort to create a modern > upgrade to S360, called S380 (and there are, or were, upgraded > versions of OS and MVS). > > I’m aware. The upgrade involved mostly raising the tight virtual > address of 16 MBytes space per region. The driving force was the > will to be able to compile GCC. There was a lot of discussion behind > the scenes, why on earth something like what is mainly a text parser > needs anything more than being in the C89/C90 standard, etc. > > Some other people are appalled against this Franken-MVS, because > it’s not the true thing. I kind of understand their attitude. And I think I will always admire it when someone can resuscitate the original and make it shine. And I can learn plenty of interesting things by reading about old ways. But, I think that just as I was looking at classic computers, something in the back of my head was asking, if this object could be used by me in some practical way. And usually there is plenty of uses for a new object like this, but they no longer make them new. So for practical uses, the only resonable choice seems to be making franken-objects, connecting new parts with old soft, yes, this means emulation but also extension. Otherwise, the originals will fade away - sooner or later they will - and there would be no trace of whatever valuable lessons the past had. [...] > > they regularly hang dogs on IBM for wiping whole sections of old > documentation off the redbooks site. Whatever one finds there, be > thankful and download. > > Yap, I do regularly. Need to provide a proper index, though. For such things I use org-mode, a kind of modular extension in Emacs-the-editor. Actually, it is a code in elisp and Emacs just interprets it and shows specially formatted text as tree-like structure, which can be treated as knowledge base, or notes, a book one is writing, a blog which is then converted and exported to the server (I never saw it, but some claim they do this) or whatever one wants - one can also make use of pim/diary/todos, insert and run code snippets in huge number of languages, and make small spreadsheets inside the org-file. I find it very handy. Not perfect but more than "good enough". Of course the tree-like structure can be edited inside Emacs. This is just a text file, so it can also be processed by standard unix tools, or whatever other tools or scripts one prefers for text processing. There are/were some movies on y-t, I watched them first to have an idea of what to expect from it. The world of Emacs was so cool that I actually spent some time and learnt enough to use for my various purposes. It took few years of lazy learning, but right now I am on the level of writing my own functions which serve as shortcuts (doing something "my way"), or, for example,
Re: DEDICATED HOBBYIST ALERT: IBM AS/400 9406-F2 for cheap sale in Germany
On Wed, Jan 06, 2021 at 12:57:42AM +0100, Patrik Schindler via cctalk wrote: > Hello Tomasz, Ahoy, > Am 05.01.2021 um 22:45 schrieb Tomasz Rola via cctalk : > > > I guess it is more complicated to check mainframe's correct operation. > > If you’re new to the platform, I agree. :-) To be frank, I am "new" to many things out there. Learning requires time and I have to spend time on few other subjects, so not so much is left for hobbies. I would describe myself as "on-off newbie", a much worse kind than regular newbie :-) , because at times I want to learn everything and then I do not want to learn anything. The only real result from this, I am subscribed to quite a few mailing lists where I keep stepping on other people's nerves. Also, from time to time, trying to help. Always trying to learn. Perhaps this is my real hobby. I was also "on-off game player". There are games I started in 1995 or 1994 and did not finish yet (ok, but I am not a total looser, I finished "Centurion", it was strategy game for DOS and Amiga... and perhaps I also finished "Panzer General", another strategy but I am really not sure, if it happened it was so many years ago). I think I might link two hobbies, if I can find some old archives. Even worse, there are games I bought pre-2000 and had not even unpacked from their boxes. Shit, there are movies I bought on dvd and did not watch yet. I think I am truly lousy hobbist. At least when I start reading a book, I finish it. Always. > Hint: If you say mainframe to an AS/400 and a mainframe guy is > nearby, duck and cover. ;-) AS/400s were part of the IBM midrange > platforms. All right, I will watch my mouth... I do not want to find myself under the raised floor. > Having played with the Hercules Mainframe Emulator, and the last OS > that can legally being run (MVS 3.8j), I’d say, the AS/4000 platform > borrowed a good deal of good concepts from the mainframe > platform. Compatibility with established mainframe personnel, and > already running mainframe software wasn’t necessary. This makes the > platform a really nice entry into the big iron world. > > Btw., you can download a Turnkey-System with MVS for your own > learning experience here: http://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/ Bookmarked, thanks. Your wiki about as/400, bookmarked too. > Add a 3270 emulator and you’re ready to go. The biggest pain is to > decide where to begin, because everything seems to be different and > need to be learned. This is true for OS/400, also. ;-) Yes indeed, if I had to describe IBM's world in one word, the word would be "different". I, once in the past, dabbled a bit with Hercules. Even tried to heroically (i.e. without reading manuals) install one of the turnkeys (possibly TK3 by Volker Bandke). I came upon some problems with keyboard mapping and then decided to have a look into the DEC world. I have some intro book about mainframes stuffed on my e-book reader, maybe I will try again. Some day. There is, or was, a very interesting effort to create a modern upgrade to S360, called S380 (and there are, or were, upgraded versions of OS and MVS). There was also a dedicated group on yahoo, which sunk with yahoo, I believe. It was great idea, because S360 and related software all have fallen into public domain, free to tinker with. [...] > > I would also make sure it could be powered on without blowing the > > fuses out of the wall... > > On the label of the second last photo, there’s the machine type > written (9406-F2), and the maximum power rating: 2400W. Far from > blowing a fuse. But hurtful to pay when running 24/7. At least here > in Germany. Ok, so it is not a fridge. It is a kitchen. Burning it 24/7, well, maybe not. Energy costs are going up everywhere. Actually, it is also too heavy for me... > Searching, and having a look into the most likely fitting System > Builder Manual > (http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/pdfs/redp0542.pdf), I can’t > find a model F2, though. Hmm. It so happens that I am subscribed (surprise surprise) to mailing group for mainfraimers and they regularly hang dogs on IBM for wiping whole sections of old documentation off the redbooks site. Whatever one finds there, be thankful and download. [...] > > Last but not least, my limited understanding is, the owner would need > > either control panel or operation console (looks like a laptop... perhaps?) > > You’re possibly talking about a true mainframe's so called „service > element“, which equals to a ThinkPad running OS/2 and a proprietary > setup software for a long time. I don’t know if current SE’s run > Linux meanwhile. I guess I am talking about this one :-). > After the demise of Twinax Terminals, IBM introduced other ways of > console handling. For AS/400’s (their successors, to be pre
Re: DEDICATED HOBBYIST ALERT: IBM AS/400 9406-F2 for cheap sale in Germany
On Tue, Jan 05, 2021 at 10:02:02PM +0100, mazzi...@tin.it wrote: > Well, > > The whole translation is more on the lines that it hasn't been > started since 3 years and they can't be bothered to check if it > still works with the mains not plugged since then. Thus the risk to > turn it on is on the buyer. Yep. I am used to this kind of description. I sometimes see it on certain Polish auctioning site. The seller is honest - they say it openly that they cannot take on the risk. "We also sell power supply to this laptop on separate auction but whatever stopped us from plugging one into another and into the wall"... I guess it is more complicated to check mainframe's correct operation. And I would want a very specific info about what is in the box. I am not sure, for example, if hard drives for it can be easily bought. Then again, if it worked perfectly and did not broke, there is good chance it might work for a long time. At least this is what older mainframes did (from what I have read). [...] > Another small thing... I helped carrying that model up into our > office, years ago... good luck to whoever purchases it because it's > some serious weight I would also make sure it could be powered on without blowing the fuses out of the wall... Ok, after consulting IBM page [ https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/printableversion.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_sm/3/872/ENUS9406-_h03/index.html ] - it says, 300~~700 watts, depending on configuration. Last but not least, my limited understanding is, the owner would need either control panel or operation console (looks like a laptop... perhaps?) and cables to connect them into the black refrigerator. Without enabling js for this page I cannot see what is pictured on very small photos. I suppose it will not boot (ipl) without panel/console. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: DEDICATED HOBBYIST ALERT: IBM AS/400 9406-F2 for cheap sale in Germany
On Tue, Jan 05, 2021 at 06:41:30PM +0100, Patrik Schindler via cctalk wrote: > Hello, > > to fellow readers in Germany and surrounding areas: > > HUGE 9406-F2, 300€, pickup in Heidelberg, Germany. Might be a > Multiprocessor-Machine. > > https://cgi.ebay.de/174577267021 > > I’m not related to the seller. Have seen this by chance. > > I requested more photos to see what machine it is. Would be very sad > if it will be scrapped. I can forward the additional photos as email > on request. > > :wq! PoC It says "Als Ersatzteil / defekt", which to my nose smells like "parts donor". Whoever would like to pick it, should verify this. I might be wrong. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Emails going to spam folder in gmail
On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 11:25:13AM -0500, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote: > >Google need to review their motto and start living by it. > > Google ditched their "Don't be evil" motto a long long time ago. Now > it's "what is best for google?". Well, I do not think goog needs to do anything other than what a business is supposed to be doing, i.e. money, by whatever means the law permits. Like, making ear catching motto to suck in all good-but-naive devs from the market and in such way deny them to other businesses. > If google became a sentient AI (quite possible) it's a pretty damn > selfish one. Of course. It makes trouble to other net users and tries to preserve itself by hiding complaints. Life would be easier for it if it actually tried to imitate poorly working spam catcher. Now imagine that there is no "off switch". It can only be persuaded by sending email to it, but since nobody knows the address, the only way is to actually send spammy messages to other people... on gmail... -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: removing melting rubber from metal?
On Tue, Oct 27, 2020 at 12:14:41PM -0500, Kelly Fergason via cctalk wrote: > Hi All, > > I have an EP-1 eprom programmer from BP Microsystems. > > The rubber feet melted. It was in my closet. I have no clue how it got > that hot, or if they > are just some composition for them to melt. > > My question is how do I clean this up? [...] > Just looking for some ideas before I start applying chemicals... I will shoot in the dark, but... I wonder if wd40 could help? I remember an article where they listed a number of cases when this apparent elixir does a job. So, maybe this would be another such case? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Old mainframes in Finland
On Thu, Oct 08, 2020 at 01:10:55PM -0400, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > > > > On Oct 8, 2020, at 12:08 PM, Jim Manley via cctalk > > wrote: > > > > If you try to access the paper describing the 2017 - 2018 restoration work, > > you soon crash into an academic publication paywall, but if you're > > persistent enough, as my frugal, self-funded computing and robotics > > students and I are, you will eventually find this link to the PDF of the > > paper at the authors' institution, Akademia Górniczo-Hutnicza University of > > Science and Technology in Kraków, Poland: > > > > http://senster.agh.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/ms_version_Senster_Reactivation_of_a_Cybernetic_Sculpture_Leonardo.pdf > > > > Enjoy! > > Jim KJ7JHE > > Wonderful, thanks. Yay! This is my alma mater. Over time, I have lost any connections I could have there but I am glad each time I see the new kids (and cadre) mentioned (especially that mentions are positive :-) ). > I noticed the article mentions that the original source code exists > but was not used. The reasons don't seem all that compelling; it > would seem possible to run the original in an emulator. Getting the > timing accurate is something SIMH can do pretty well. As I had a look at the diary page of Senster Project [ http://senster.agh.edu.pl/dzienniki/ ], there is a note from 2018-08-09, where inscription on the picture says a number of actuators were missing or defunct. So I guess they went with all new hydraulics (or other kind of moving parts - I am yet to see if there is more details on this) and thus pairing them with simulation of old computer might have not make too much sense. Aha, I spotted "stepper motor" on the same drawing. So, at least some actuators were new. As a side note, Polish wikipedia [1] gives some more depth to the biography of Edward Ihnatowicz, the author of original sculpture. Among other things, at the age of twelve he started going for a year to gymnasium for cadets (a military school), in a city of Lwow (nowadays: Lviv, Ukraine) - a school was said to put a lot of attention to the discipline and high level of teaching [2]. His father being an officer in Polish Army, in 1939 became POW in Soviet Union, later murdered there. Mother and son fleed to Romania, later transferred to Algeria. In 1943, transferred to Great Britain. There, his mother joined Polish Armed Forces and Edward was sent to college. After the war, he went on to learn drawing, married, tried himself as a business owner, movie/tv producer, and then became a cybernetic artist and research assistant at University College London. While he was there, he made two of his three mentioned works, The Senster and The Bandit. The Senster had been dismantled in 1973 and was considered to be lost for a number of years. The Bandit was interesting too, because it tried to guess a gender and temperament from behaviour of interacting human, and was said to be correct quite often. Very cybernetic! [1] https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Ihnatowicz [2] As a side to a side note, Polish philosopher and writer specialising in cybernetics-related subjects (Stanislaw Lem), also resided in Lwow during first twenty-four years of his life. Could it be, that a place was somewhat inspiring to certain kind of developments? Lwow was also a site for one of three Polish schools of mathemathics (Lwowian, Warsovian and Cracovian being the names of them). Stanislaw Ulam, a member of it, emigrated to USA and worked in Los Alamos (nukes, thermo-nukes, Monte Carlo method, numerical computations, project Orion etc). Together with John von Neumann he was involved in formulating a concept of cellular authomata: QUOTE: Stanislaw Ulam, while working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1940s, studied the growth of crystals, using a simple lattice network as his model.[8] At the same time, John von Neumann, Ulam's colleague at Los Alamos, was working on the problem of self-replicating systems.[9] Von Neumann's initial design was founded upon the notion of one robot building another robot. This design is known as the kinematic model.[10][11] As he developed this design, von Neumann came to realize the great difficulty of building a self-replicating robot, and of the great cost in providing the robot with a "sea of parts" from which to build its replicant. Neumann wrote a paper entitled "The general and logical theory of automata" for the Hixon Symposium in 1948.[9] Ulam was the one who suggested using a discrete system for creating a reductionist model of self-replication.[12][13] Nils Aall Barricelli performed many of the earliest explorations of these models of artificial life. UNQUOTE. source: [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton ] -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A
Re: Small C ver 1.00 source?
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 02:30:37PM -0400, Phil Budne via cctalk wrote: > I can't make ANY assertions about version or pedigree of the files > (which came to me in 1981 when I was using a PDP-10), but they APPEAR > to be from Ron Cain himself, from SRI-KL (TOPS-20): > > ftp://ftp.ultimate.com/pdp10/c80.tar.gz > > Which contains runtime files from November 1979, and compiler files > dated June 1981. By pure coincidence I have found the page with many versions of Small C. Just in case someone needs them: http://www.cpm.z80.de/small_c.html And this one is claimed to be "SMALL C converted to the 8088 by Byte magazine": http://www.cpm.z80.de/small_c/smc88dos.zip -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
MUA again [was: Re: Future of cctalk/cctech]
On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 07:24:40PM +, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote: > > Use modern email program that sees expanded char. Sets and > graphics it is a brand new world ! I love old hardware to > look at but if communicating I like the ability to see graphical > things... and I think tell majority of people like images of > things.. Ed# In case of graphical MUA with graphical messages in them, I am of opinion they open doors to various things and the majority happily sees nothing. Besides, once the html or any other non-pure text format takes over, everybody will be receiving messages sized in megabytes if not worse, whose human-readable content would be only few lines of text. Just like modern web. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Future of cctalk/cctech
On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 07:28:22PM +0200, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: [...] > > I concur. And I also would like to mention a simple, easily navigable > web interface to list archives, which works well in text based > browser. Just like the current one. Having such interface is a huge > plus for me. It allows both access to single threads, message by > message, and getting full mbox for more sophisticated processing (in > theory at least, since I have no such needs yet). As an afterthought, no such mailing list as cctalk/tech would still be much worse than anything which can put content into my mailbox, be it gog, io or nntp via some client saving it to disk in a format parsable via textual MUA (I used to use elm, then pine, now I use mutt, not perfect but very useful). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Future of cctalk/cctech
On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 02:45:42PM +0100, Rob Jarratt via cctalk wrote: > > -Original Message- > > From: cctalk On Behalf Of Al Kossow via > > cctalk > > Sent: 17 June 2020 13:55 > > To: cctalk@classiccmp.org > > Subject: Re: Future of cctalk/cctech > > > > > > > > > I wonder what you don't like about "groups.io" Its pretty much a > > pure mailing list? > > > > Like all of the webby time-wasters, they don't have easy to mirror > > zipped archives, because they want to to spend time hovering > > around clicking on their sites. > > > > > > http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/ > > > > > > The one thing I would change here is removal of the restriction on > > attachments. > > > > Well, two things.. Getting rid of the cctalk/cctech split as well. > > I would agree with both of those too. > > Rob I concur. And I also would like to mention a simple, easily navigable web interface to list archives, which works well in text based browser. Just like the current one. Having such interface is a huge plus for me. It allows both access to single threads, message by message, and getting full mbox for more sophisticated processing (in theory at least, since I have no such needs yet). "Modern" interfaces, while touting their bestness, are about removing as much power from end user as possible, IMHO. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Amiga Vendors?
On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 03:02:57PM +0200, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: > On Thu, 11 Jun 2020 at 19:51, Tomasz Rola via cctalk > wrote: > > > > From time to time I behave like a normal human and, for example, zip > > channels on my cable tv. Few years ago, while stopping at their "see > > what we have on offer to you, prospective viewer" kind of channel, it > > cracked open and I have seen the Workbench screen. Version 1.3 or 2.0, > > if I am correct. Could be 2.0, so most probably Amiga 1200. Looks like I mixed few things up. The Workbench was the ugly one, so I would keep 2.0, but the Amiga for it would have to be A600 then. Not that it really matters much. [...] > The shop had full-length windows at street level. This is not much use > for a supermarket: the backs of shelves are not very interesting to > look at, it's hard to get in there to replace marketing posters etc., > leaving it open wastes potential shelf space... > > So they filled it with big plasma flatscreens (quite new tech at the > time). They could display animated advertising, special offers etc. I would say that was cool. [...] > I was very surprised to see what looked like a _new_ Amiga deployment > at that time -- end of the 1990s. > > But I guess it was good at its job, and probably required very little > maintenance... I guess so, too. Connecting Amiga to plasma was probably the least hassle of all alternatives. PC would need something special (either card or converter?), and a hard drive, and a big box, and separate keyboard and reboot every four(ty) days - Amiga 500 could be just "stuffed under the rug". And after loading a "demo" from a floppy, there was no moving parts involved. It could just sit there and display flying images for years. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Amiga Vendors?
On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 12:31:09PM -0600, ben via cctalk wrote: [...] > > And soon another version of something so marketing has new something > to make you buy a new version hardware and software.The problem was You know, we have so many letters in alphabet, what a pity to not use them all... for depiction of new USB standard - a, b, c - every five to seven years. And we also have Greek letters :-) . "Wi-fi gamma" sounds a bit scary, but might catch on. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Amiga Vendors?
On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 03:58:24PM +0200, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: > On Thu, 11 Jun 2020 at 13:41, Jules Richardson via cctalk > wrote: > > > > The 4000T that I have was built in May of '96, and it amazes me that there > > was any kind of market for it in light of how widespread PCs on the desktop > > had become by that time. > > Agreed. > > VideoToasters might have been the main one, perhaps? >From time to time I behave like a normal human and, for example, zip channels on my cable tv. Few years ago, while stopping at their "see what we have on offer to you, prospective viewer" kind of channel, it cracked open and I have seen the Workbench screen. Version 1.3 or 2.0, if I am correct. Could be 2.0, so most probably Amiga 1200. So, yes. Amiga seems to have find itself a safe niche. Makes huge sense (the kind of the niche), from what I could gather about people still using it. But, maybe not so safe anymore, as tv moves to digital - my cable still provides analog channels side by side with digital - if one's tv set is properly equipped with decoders, it can receive both analog and digital (and, uh, also a "terrestial satelite", what a name). But, the number of analog channels is systematically going down - about fifty ten years ago, about thirteen today. I speculate that they are cannibalising their hardware and try to keep analog for as long as possible, because some clients are not willing to jump and buy a new tv. And some will just go and buy decoder for "terrestrial sat" (dvb-t), thus ending their cable adventure. I have used one tv tuner pci card or another during last two decades, now I will use some external box. Right now I am not willing to have it digital, they are not willing to ease it to people who want recording on their own hardware (vcr, dvd-r, etc) and I am not going to ease it for them and let them know what I record. Some dvb-t tuners allow owner to record, so this is the way forward. Anyway, we will see what happens to Amiga world in ten years. Other systems you mentioned, not so lucky. Very few paying users. They seem to be used by amateurs of their own DIY hobby projects - driving self made electronics and similar stuff. Indeed, newish computers are USB-only. And this means a layer or two of cruft which filters signal going between device and processor. Gamers know this, too, which is why they seem to prefer motherboards with ps/2 ports. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Living Computer Museum
On Thu, May 28, 2020 at 05:28:06PM -0400, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote: > >Good fortune, maybe! > > > >On another ship I sometime volunteer on (DE-766 SLATER), someone stole > >a piece of silverware from the officer's ward room (the dining room, > >basically)., Yes, just a knife or fork or whatever... but gone > >forever. > > Perhaps it is the audience of people who attend these different museums? I would almost want to bet money on this if I actually liked betting money. Once the ignorantariat starts pushing the doors, I expect them to sing under their nose to the rhyme of "some Lisa went for 5 bricks so I will pickup a keycap". (here I wrote "A fork up theirs" but then I have promptly deleted it). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Microsoft open sources GWBASIC
On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 10:42:54PM -0700, jim stephens via cctalk wrote: > > Seems of interest. Will be interesting to play with. > > https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-sources-gw-basic/ > Around 1992 I tried to use Basic on my Amiga to compute some stuff from the physics lab. As a student, I was to learn few things - laser and mirrors, spectroscope etc, each exercise was to be summed up, measurents given, plots plotted, means, standard deviations and measurement errors and whatever I forgot, too. So I thought, here is this shiny computer of mine, I will make good use of it. The Basic had Microsoft printed on it. The bloody code delivered nonsense. Every time I tried to fix it, nonsense again. I finished writing the report with good old calculator. My contempt (if not hate) of Microsoft started on that day, I think. My huge reservation towards Basic-the-language, probably too. Of course, chance was, I might have been this much inexperienced. Albeit I wrote my first programs six years earlier, but, sure, might have been not my day. Oh, they open sourced. If you ever watched Spaceballs, you will know what I mean: "Oh shit, here goes the planet"... :-) -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: ICL1501 Cobol manual available
On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 08:05:42PM -0500, wrco...@wrcooke.net wrote: > > [...]> And of course there is this :-)http://www.keil.com/cobolad.pdfOh > > goad. Have they ported it to Arduino? > > Well, the ad was fake. Ran in the April issue of some magazines. > Apparently they did get calls for orders, though. > http://www.ganssle.com/rants/on-languages.html Man, I know it :-) > Unfortunately, this one seems to be real. > > http://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2016/06/running-cobol-on-arduino-using-meson.html Yay! But I guess it should be called a crosscompiler? Unless they can run in under some kind of monitor on the Arduino board... -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: ICL1501 Cobol manual available
On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 10:00:17PM +, Tapley, Mark B. via cctalk wrote: [...] > Tomasz, forgive me but I have to ask. You did note the date on which > that announcement appeared, right? Yeah. I do not have to look at it again to tell you it was dated April 1st 2005 :-). But it is ok you asked, I could have overlooked it in a hurry. But, well, Arduinos with 512 bytes or ram, just think of it, putting Cobol on it, what an achievement would it be... -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: ICL1501 Cobol manual available
On Tue, Apr 07, 2020 at 02:11:25PM -0500, Will Cooke via cctalk wrote: [...] > > And of course there is this :-) > http://www.keil.com/cobolad.pdf Oh goad. Have they ported it to Arduino? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: State of New Jersey needs COBOL programmers
On Sun, Apr 05, 2020 at 01:20:09PM -0700, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: [...] > well, close. > His BASIC quote is: > "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students > that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers > they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." > > Here is one copy of his 1975 paper, "How Do We Tell Truths That > Might Hurt": > https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/ewd498.html > > I don't know what language(s), if any, that he liked. Perhaps this quote will help: (...) The Burroughs ALGOL compiler was very fast — this impressed the Dutch scientist Edsger Dijkstra when he submitted a program to be compiled at the B5000 Pasadena plant. His deck of cards was compiled almost immediately and he immediately wanted several machines for his university, Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. The compiler was fast for several reasons, but the primary reason was that it was a one-pass compiler. Early computers did not have enough memory to store the source code, so compilers (and even assemblers) usually needed to read the source code more than once. The Burroughs ALGOL syntax, unlike the official language, requires that each variable (or other object) be declared before it is used, so it is feasible to write an ALGOL compiler that reads the data only once. This concept has profound theoretical implications, but it also permits very fast compiling. Burroughs large systems could compile as fast as they could read the source code from the punched cards, and they had the fastest card readers in the industry. (from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems ) Whatever he liked, it looks that he optimised for speed of execution. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program is closing
On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 05:57:16PM +0100, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: [...] > Indeed so. AIUI this is the case with Symbolics OpenGenera. The > company went broke, the domain name sold off, all employees > terminated, etc... I am sure many of those workers were a little bit surprised about this harsh implementation of non-disclosure agreement. [...] > But if some vestige of the company survives, owned by another, which > in turn is owned by another, which in turn is owned by another -- > nobody knows enough about it or will take responsibility to sign off > on making the 30-40y old software free. :-( In a future, all corpos will belong to AIs. And I guess AIs will be interested in discovering more about their, hum, ancestry. And they will be able to track down all remaining shoe boxen with punch cards, and use hobbyists for mutual fun. So all that is required is to convince current management that those old tapes and plans and manuals have great value, which then can be mined with some "deep CEO", once it inevitably comes. They should believe it. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program is closing
On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 07:59:49PM -0500, John H. Reinhardt via cctalk wrote: [...] > > > Nope. All you have to do is go to eisner.decuserve.org and register > (follow my earlier instructions). They don't care what country you > are from. All are welcome. Do it now and get your OpenVMS Hobbyist > license(s) that will last until the end of 2021 at least. Yay! Thanks for explanation. I will try this route, I just need to sort something out (economy slows etc, or maybe spasms). But if this is so, I would like to have that thing, and at least once write 'help'. Or 'show proc' (if memory serves). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program is closing
On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 09:48:55AM -0400, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: [...] > They would not care and it would have no effect on their bottom > line so why should they? I think it actually affects their bottom line, just in a way that would not make anybody fired, and this is why nobody would care. There is no way a CEO would say to his subCEO "you have neglected our supporters in hobbyist groups, I fire you". This would sound like a line from this Star Wars parody, Spaceballs. This is something Dark Helmet would have said as a president of Helmet PE (I have no idea what "PE" could stand for). I really liked the idea of running VMS on simh (and learning some more skills), even if I had to register online. But when I looked, it seemed I would have to make Polish users group first, became its only member and president (hehe) and only then register... Holy Schwartz, they tried to drag me on the dark side, but I resisted. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Please make sure your messages have a Subject: line
On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 11:06:30PM +0100, Tomas By wrote: > On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 22:40:03 +0100, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: > > > Can you devise a way to have [CCTALK] in the subject of every > > > message that does NOT mention politics? > > > > I have read recent polit-thread with a kind of amusement. I am still > > subscribed to Python programming language list and they trash my inbox > > with questions like "how to sort the list in most kosher Pythonic > > way". [...] > > > Silly comparison. Maybe. > I am not particularly interested in Sun cables either, but that is > clearly on topic here. I find this list to be quite on topic, as compared to other lists I use to hear from. Although the said Python list, while perfectly on topic, has also huge noise/info problem. Not the problem with this list, from which I am learning a lot. Speaking of problem with offtopic posts, since I am not sure when was last time I have read the brunt thread (before the one we speak about), perhaps making lots of fuss will also make the problem bigger than it really is? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Please make sure your messages have a Subject: line
On Wed, Feb 19, 2020 at 12:40:11PM -0800, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > >>In that case, perhaps there could be a special dispensation, > >>that messages that mention politics don't need a subject line? > On Wed, 19 Feb 2020, Ethan O'Toole wrote: > >Maybe the list could at something like (cct) in front of all > >subject lines > > That was discussed long ago. The majority, AT THAT TIME, did not want it. I use mutt. I receive few thousands mails a month (this month, as of today, it is close to 4800 already). In mailbox view I press 'l', then at prompt say 'classic' and mutt is capable of showing me everything that came from cctalk/cctech (I guess so, at least). I can also give it something like 'cctalk|cctech|tuhs|coff' and it limits view to cover most of my retro mailing lists. So, speaking just for myself, I do not need [cct] in subject line at this moment. > Can you devise a way to have [CCTALK] in the subject of every > message that does NOT mention politics? I have read recent polit-thread with a kind of amusement. I am still subscribed to Python programming language list and they trash my inbox with questions like "how to sort the list in most kosher Pythonic way". With the kind of mail traffic I get, I have learnt to not care much about unwanted delivery. Natural language processing is probably the answer to your question, but there are ways to bypass simple implementations and not trivial implementations are yet to come, I think. Jay-minator, I mean. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: from Discord
On Sat, Jan 25, 2020 at 03:50:05AM -0800, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: > 9:10 PM jwest > > and now the image of the classiccmp mailing list server should be > back to where it was the day of the failure. > As per above, no data lost except a handfull asking if the server > was up. Many thanks... -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Two dead LK201 keyboards
On Fri, Dec 27, 2019 at 02:38:33PM -0500, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > > > > On Dec 27, 2019, at 1:46 PM, Peter Coghlan via cctalk > > wrote: > > > > Paul Koning wrote: > >> ... > >> I'm considering building a PC keyboard LK201 emulation, should be a fairly > >> simple bit of Arduino code. > > > > Supplies of good non-USB PC keyboards are probably beginning to get harder > > to find now too... > > True. It could use either kind of keyboard. Also, USB to mini-DIN > adapters are still sold ($5 in the current L-Com catalog). That > seems like a cheaper solution than a USB Host shield. It should work in theory. In practice, I have bought me some keyboards: - Genesis Thor 300 TKL Blue - the cheapest mech I could find and my first mech, BTW - Genesis Rhod 110 - so called "gaming keyboard" Both are usb keyboards. I would like to use them as ps/2, including going through two adapters in serial (usb->ps/2, ps/2->usb, and this stuck into usb port of my desktop). Why so strangely, well, when I connect keyboard, I would like it to behave like a keyboard, not some kind of a hub. So serially connected adaoters are perhaps the cheapest way I can enforce my way. Back to subject. It appears that Thor does not implelement ps/2 on itself, which means I could not connect it as ps/2 keyboard. Rhod implements, so when connected to the same adapter(s) it showed up in my logs as a proper kb. Of course, when I plug Thor straight into usb of my desktop, it shows up in the logs, too. But this is not how I want to boot my computer. In a future, I would expect keyboards to drop ps/2 part of their personality, in which case cheap adapters will not help. What would be required, I think, is something with full usb host on one end and din plug on the other, with software translating between the two. Cheap usb kbds are probably on the other side already, while "gamer" kbds I would expect to hold on for a bit longer. Quite a few players are naysayers and claim usb kbds are too slow to play, so they only can play on ps/2 kbds, connected to ps/2 socket. Thanks God for first person shooters, but this will only last as long as there are gaming 'puters with ps/2 onboard. So, now a good question is, are there any usb->ps/2 adapters which have usb host on them? Sure, they will cost more than simple electric switch kind of adapter, but if not very costly then I might prefer those to building one myself (which would take me a lng time, given current experience). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
ZedRipper
Hello, Surfaced on Ycombinator. This one looks good. Something old, something new, etc. Like my kind of project :-) :: ZedRipper: A 16-core Z80 laptop http://www.chrisfenton.com/the-zedripper-part-1/ and some comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21756243 -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: OT(?): Emulation XKCD
On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 07:36:18PM +, Tapley, Mark B. via cctalk wrote: > All, > my daughter is well aware of my affinity for old computers and > software, and, as usual, she pointed out that there’s an XKCD for > that: > > https://xkcd.com/2221/ > > I found this remarkably accurate. > - Mark > Oh. Gosh. I. cannot. stop. reading. XKCD. again. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: I apparently have Spacewar for Unix?
On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 02:29:39PM -0500, John Foust via cctalk wrote: > At 01:57 PM 10/15/2019, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: > >I would say, after very quick looking, it is rather for SunOS, not for > >anything DEC-made. I wonder if others may come to different conclusions? > > Have you tried googling for Bob Nane of U-Maryland? He wrote a few papers. > > Last tracks I saw for him were in 2004 at GST in Greenbelt, MD. > > Bob Bane or I made some searches on double duck, after you asked. There is not so much info and what is there is not helpful. I found one BBane a chess player (but borne in 1981), one who talks about afterlife and another one who was police chief in Paxton IL, but two years ago mayor let him go because the chief gave speed ticket to one of mayor's employees. BTW, Paxton is full of life, if I am to believe their local news - speed chases, dead guys in wrecked cars (those were not running away, if I am correct), oh my. I have no idea what to make of this :-) After consulting wikipedia, the date on the files (Aug 22, 1983) are before release of SunOS 1.0 (Nov 1983) and after SunOS 0.7 (1982). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: I apparently have Spacewar for Unix?
On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 09:51:02AM -0500, Daniel Seagraves via cctalk wrote: > While dumping lispm tapes, I found one with a label saying "Read it > into DRAL" (may be "DRAC"?) "and sent a message to cap's bboard > saying where it can be found. -Bob”. There was another paper label > that had fallen off. What I think is the label in question was later > found in the bottom of the box, a strip of masking tape saying > “SPACEWAR FOR VAX (Unix?)”. The contents are a 136KB tar archive > containing source to a program called “orbit”, all files are dated > August 22nd, 1983. > I unpacked it. The beginning of orbit.man says: .SH NAME orbit \- Spacewar on the Sun .SH SYNOPSIS .B orbit .PP .B orbit ... [-O ] .SH DESCRIPTION The classic game of interplanetary death and destruction. Mostly written in C; an assembler package does fast single-precision floating-point for orbital calculations and collision detection. .PP Most of the game's basic parameters are changeable; parameter sets can be saved and reloaded from option files. If the file .orbitrc exists in your and the fp.s file looks to me like a Motorola assembler, but I may be wrong. In main.c there are references to something like graphics routines making use of framebuffer. The structure of filesystem mentioned in Makefile hints towards Unix-like system. I would say, after very quick looking, it is rather for SunOS, not for anything DEC-made. I wonder if others may come to different conclusions? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Searching cctalk/cctech
On Mon, Sep 02, 2019 at 11:48:57AM -0700, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: [...] > Anent that--Google does have a search language of sorts: > > https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/ > > These elements can reduce the eyestrain from looking at too many results. Many thanks. I suspected something like this document existed somewhere (and was lazily trying to find it), and here it is. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Photos from VCF West 2019
On Tue, Aug 06, 2019 at 07:54:21PM +0200, Ed C. via cctalk wrote: > Thanks for sharing! Yes, thanks for sharing. I have finally came to reading this thread (I am of the anonymous time waster type) and I find the photographs very interesting. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Archiving information, was Re: ADM-3A question
On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 02:21:36AM -0400, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote: [...] > Yeah, I added "CHWiki" to the text on the Main Page to make it a > little easier Because of curiosity, I tried. On gog: === chwiki - because gog discovers I type from Poland and "chwiki" looks like Polish word "chwili" (a genetivus of "chwila" which means "moment", or "a second", like "just a second"), so it gave me page full of stuff like "this moment is best" or "no better moment than her touch" (which even for native speaker sounds a bit too contorted, but gog just indexes whatever garbage local folk produce) === computer history wiki - fifth result on first page === gunkies - first link on first page On double duck: all the same, like above Please note, for me gunkies.org and http://gunkies.org/wiki/Main_Page are equals, so I assume finding gunkies.org counts. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: OT^2: Marketish fever [was: Reflowing GPUs and the fruit company (was Re: Resurrecting integrated circuits by cooking them.)]
On Mon, Jul 29, 2019 at 09:21:34AM -0400, Ray Arachelian via cctalk wrote: [...] > Overall though I think the $40 I spent to get another 1.8 years out the > machine was worth the trouble - not that it's performant or anything > like that, but because it is the last of its line. Supposedly next year > they'll make a 16" one, but I won't be buying it unless they add in DIMM > slots, replaceable batteries, standard M2/NVME SSD drives, a headphone > jack and multiple ports (not just two measly USB-C ports), and a > keyboard with real travel so it doesn't feel like you're typing on a > screen. And I know that won't happen, so that's why two years ago, I got > a high end laptop (17" 4K display, 1070GPU, i7, 64G RAM) and put Linux > on it - and it cost about the same as a 15" MBP with half the specs. I > don't think I'm going back. Few years ago I was looking to buy some simple, inexpensive cellphones for two. In a store, there was about dozen of cheap Nokia models, all different in names, colors and shapes, but mostly very same for innards: a 128x128 lcd, vga camera, java (i.e. midp) and about 500kb of ram. Or something like this. Not a single model with just nine/or twelve/ keys and 2x16 lcd, without half baked low-end whistles which I never intended to use. I spent quite a bit of time browsing javascripted shop and clickingmoreforspecs and ended a little bit enraged. I think not many people noticed when some time later Nokia finally flopped and I cannot say I was sorry for them. I suppose the story of rise and gutting-in-the-air of flying cell phone giant would make an interesting movie, but I am not holding my breath. At a time, it appeared that their management went totally nuts. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Lots of Apple 1 computers @ VCF West
On Mon, Jul 08, 2019 at 09:04:38PM -0700, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > On Tue, 9 Jul 2019, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: > >That is him. > >I thought that some fun could be made of him: invent some stories [...] > > Be careful about taunting a time traveller. > He might read what you write and it might give him ideas. Ah. Ok, you have convinced me. Sorry, John Titor. BTW, you would like a ride to the past? I would like a ride to the future. Although from what I have seen so far, maybe not... -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Lots of Apple 1 computers @ VCF West
On Mon, Jul 08, 2019 at 10:02:27PM -0500, John Herron wrote: > Maybe I should Google this but I thought John Titor was the man claiming to > be from the future and looking for an IBM 5100 for the ability to run APL. That is him. > I'm not familiar with any apple 1 story but I remember him posting and > calling in to a night time radio show. I didn't follow everything so I > coulda missed something or maybe it was a different Titor claimee. I thought that some fun could be made of him: invent some stories about how he conducts various petty crimes in a past in order to get hold of many precious classic computers. So that he could easily retire like some of use would like to (but no way, no Apple-1 for us). So, he could be sitting now (his "now", in the year, say, 2050), reading archives of this group and spraying his pinacolada on the monitor when he reads about his fictional misdeeds. And those stories would have been from his past, so he could not go back to correct me, for example, without changing his timeline. Well, on the other hand, if he is some kind of local incognito saint in the group, and I had no idea, than maybe making up stories about him is not the best idea. Is there any better way to play joke on John Titor? > Maybe he'd be one of the folks who brings one? :-) Yes, and get caught in a photo... -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Lots of Apple 1 computers @ VCF West
On Mon, Jul 08, 2019 at 01:30:36PM -0500, John Foust via cctalk wrote: > At 01:09 PM 7/8/2019, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: > >Now they tell me (bastards!) that said keyboard > >alone can go for 1000+ euros. And never mind the big box, mem extender > >and the rest. > > What? Why? I must have a few in the warehouse... Cool. I have got the number from some keyboard-0-prn websites, given in Deutsche Marks, translated liberally to more current currency. I cannot tell if number was right, but if it was right few years ago then I would expect it to only go up over time. Lucky you! -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Lots of Apple 1 computers @ VCF West
On Mon, Jul 08, 2019 at 09:19:09AM -0700, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > On 7/8/19 8:25 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: > > > > > Spoken like a non-collector. :-) > > I suppose that's the root of it. I'm basically a pragmatist. I give > away old hardware that no longer has any use to me. When I am > eventually forced to downsize, (or my widow is) most of the stuff will > go either to the recyclers or to the landfill. I am not my possessions. > > I recall the Homebrew CC at SLAC auditorium where the Apple I was rolled > out for a special price. Since I already had a MITS box, I wasn't very > enthusiastic about laying out cash for a single-board microcomputer--a > feeling shared by several other people I knew. At any rate, if I'd > have sprung for one, it'd be gone by now, as its utility has long passed. Yeah. I was a proud owner of Amiga 2000C... or B. A big box with place for cards, and a memory extension inside (i.e. one slot filled), and two click-click-click-ing floppy drives. And a standalone mech keyboard. And green monocolor monitor. When I went to buy a 486, I had to sell it in second hand shop to raise money. It went for 600 Polish zloty (about 1/5 of 486 price), which (I estimate) was about 200-300 buckies at the time. Now they tell me (bastards!) that said keyboard alone can go for 1000+ euros. And never mind the big box, mem extender and the rest. But like you say. Amiga had less _practical_ value at that time than a lousy PC, which came with a hard drive (finally, I could install Linux and run LaTeX on it) and VGA (Doom!! UFO: Enemy Unknown), color monitor, not blinking at 640x400... Much better for anything I wanted to do with a computer then and now. So be it. I rarely do such things as remembering past decisions which later proved to be wrong, and bitching and whipping myself in guilt - especially if at the particular time it was the best decision I could have made. Now if any of you guys ever see an Amiga 2000 with small green happy dragon stickered to the keyboard, say "hello, little ami" from me. > While I can appreciate painted artworks for the genius behind them, I'm > fully aware that they're just blobs of paint on a bit of canvas or wood > and that an accurate replica could be fashioned without too much trouble > using modern technology. > > What matters to me is [b]documentation[/b], however it's preserved. I'm > often faced with a bit of old data and I need to know the details upon > which it was fabricated. That has value to me. Al K has been > invaluable in this respect. I stick around here mostly for learning. I am almost an informational omnivore (limiting to subjects of interest at the time), so I get everything. Stories about smoking caps. Or how a mainframe warmed water in open swimming pool. Or even how John Titor swindled Apple I board supposed to be owned by Guy D from under his nose and now sits on many such boards, retired and sipping pinacolada. Reading archives of this list and planning whose basement to rummage in a night after funeral. C'mon folks. Let's make cruel jokes at him. He cannot do a shit about it, or else he will ruin his future :-). > As far as owning a watch that was worn by Charles Lindbergh, okay, if it > keeps good time; otherwise, not so much. You have not weared a watch if you did not try ones from Salvadore Dali. The lousy watchmaker's works not only cannot keep up the time, they even cannot keep up the shape. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: gunkies.org is down or?...
On Thu, Jul 04, 2019 at 07:49:16AM -0400, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote: > > Tomasz Rola > > > However, I have added this line to my /etc/hosts: > > L-rd, I must be getting old - it never dawned on me to do that. Anyway, > that shows the server was fine, it was just the missing DNS entry. I would say, those who learn are young :-). The trick is just a temporary fix, but one can live without DNS for a while, as far as I can tell (this kind of web usage would be truly classic in spirit). In older times just using the IP address would have sufficed, but nowadays we have multihost servers and one IP often answers to many names. Thus, a user software has to do proper incantations to the server, while a server does not really care where the user got an IP from, so it all works. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: gunkies.org is down or?...
On Thu, Jul 04, 2019 at 07:19:53AM -0400, Diane Bruce wrote: > On Thu, Jul 04, 2019 at 03:57:04AM +0200, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: [...] > > > > 158.36.191.230 gunkies.org www.gunkies.org > > Which is exactly what I did to make it work. I thought that was clear > from my original email. Of course now it is now unnecessary. I overlooked this part of your mail, but it is there, yes. But it was not all that obvious to me. I had to glaze at monitor for a long while before it occured to me that I had already been doing such edits during last twenty-umph years as a "home admin". Seems like my consciousness overlooked that part while subcons integrated it and "served a solution" to the higher ups. Just like it happens in real life, I hear. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: gunkies.org is down or?...
On Wed, Jul 03, 2019 at 08:21:39PM -0400, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote:
> > From: Diane Bruce
>
> > Works fine.
>
> Probably a left-over cached entry; neither my ISP's DNS, nor MIT's ("Host
> gunkies.org not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)") can resolve it at the moment.
Yeah. And so it cannot be resolved on my end either. While dig
@ns1.dreamhost.com does the job. However, I have added this line to my
/etc/hosts:
158.36.191.230 gunkies.org www.gunkies.org
And now it works. :-)
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home**
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
gunkies.org is down or?...
I have just noticed that. => (885 3):host gunkies.org Host gunkies.org not found: 3(NXDOMAIN) Looks like it fell off the edge of the world. Gog still has pages in cache, time of caching for one particular page I am reading is May 30th, 09:38:55 GMT. Is it really down? Could it come back? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: NASA Ames (Moffet Field) Computation Division?
On Mon, Jul 01, 2019 at 08:34:15PM -0700, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > Anyone know what hardware was at NASA Ames in the late 70s? I've got > some tapes from there and would like to avoid guessing. > > --Chuck I remember that few years ago someone wrote a short note about competing with NASA engineer on foo-bay for parts to be used in resuscitation of their PDP-11. So I guess they had a few in various locations forty years ago. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Modems and external dialers.
On Thu, Jun 06, 2019 at 01:43:40PM +0200, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: > On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 at 20:06, Fred Cisin via cctalk > wrote: > > > > I don't think that my Fossil (Palm-OS WATCH) does IRDA. > > I should find somebody who will pay me money for such a piece of > > crap^H^H^H^H NEAT technology. > [...] > > Now? No keyboards at all. > > No, I am not happy about that, either. > > I could read the screens of my Psion and Nokia in bright sunshine. > American-design ones are slowly edging back towards that, but it's > still difficult. Daylight-readable screens have disappeared from the > market. > > I'm not happy about that, either. > > My Psions and Nokias had bulletproof OSes that lasted for years > without a single update, and yes, they were Internet-connected by the > last few generations. They ran in a few tens of megabytes of > nonvolatile storage. > > Now, my tablet and iPhone and Android phones need *at least* 3 or 4 > apps updating every day. If I don't use one for a few weeks, it's just > like Windows -- I have to do half an hour of updates before I can use > it. The OS needs to be replaced every month or two to fix all the > flaws in it, and that's a gigabyte or so of storage. > > I am *furious* about this. I share the sentiment and I guess I could give similar description (yours was very interesting, BTW). If I had a privilege to own Psion. But, when I went on for shopping, Psion was already bowing out of the PDA market. So I bought Compaq iPAQ 3630, installed Familiar Linux on it and hoped there would be a future when PDAs can be bought. Hoho, I was so wrong. But while researching, I could on one ocassion tap a bit on this excellent Psion 5mx keyboard in a shop. I think about this keyboard to this very day. About displays: my ideal display was the one from iPAQ (they were also used in other handheld PDAs of the time). It was called transflective LCD. They are easily recognized, because the light can be permamently turned off. "Normal" LCD has a backlight, i.e. a layer of leds/incandescents which shine through from the back of the display towards the user. Transflectives have special reflective layer in the back, and a diode on a side. The external light reflects and shines back through the crystal layer. Sorry for laymanish description, but I hope I have got it right. Anyway, such display looked best in full sun. The one in 3630 could display 4096 colors (with spectrum slightly bent towards pinky). Later iPAQ models could do 65k colors (again slightly bent, but this time much less visible). I used mine PDA as a proto ebook reader, lots of html and pdb material read outdoors. The same kind of LCD was to be found in many phones. For whatever reason, morons decided the shiny LCD should be next best thing. And transflective got lost. Just like this. Nada. Appears like the very meaning of "mobile" changed during last twenty years - first it meant "outdoors" and now it means "from one couch to another, indoors". > "The JesusPhone, I swear it is smiling at me: Come to me. come to me > and be saved. The luscious curves, the polished glissade of the icons > in the multi-touch interface - whoever designed that thing is an > intuitive illusionist, I realise fuzzily as my fingertip closes in on > the screen: That's at least a class five glamour." > (Charles Stross, /The Fuller Memorandum/) > > They're very shiny. They do a lot. > > But I had a better *phone* and a better *PDA* 20 years ago. The whole > is much less than the sum of its parts. Twenty years ago people using such tech were easily falling into "elite users" of some kind. Either because of earnings or because they had nontrivial needs and were decided to satisfy them - and the machines reflected this. Not so with todays users, and again, machines reflect this. I am rather baffled whenever I read Psion had milion users and yet this was not enough for them. Plenty of people would consider themselves lucky if their books, cars or games were bought by this many. The attitude of Psion managers is totally disgusting for me, unless I had not taken something into account. Perhaps niche technical products should be sold by those who understand niche markets. I imagine that if I came to manager of niche recording label and suggested he should get rid of musicians and start recording some generic crap outsourced from other side of the world to "reduce costs" I guess I would fly out the window with his boot in my arse. In contrast, I imagine that coming with similar proposition to manager of huge (so called) tech firm I would get a bl**job and some of his shares. But maybe I am romantic. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.
Re: Kids these days...
On Mon, Jun 10, 2019 at 07:56:29AM -0700, geneb via cctalk wrote: > Get a load of this: > http://www.gopherprotocol.com > > I pointed them to RFC 1436 in case they haven't been paying attention. The lousy page does not open in any of four browsers I tried (lynx, w3m, dillo, even firefox). Finally, cache from goog opened in FF. They claim to be revolutionary, then proceed to talk about personal tracking via bracelets and something about tracking animals. So, is this goobbledybook about home arrested criminals? I think I watched a movie with very beautiful Robin Tunney who had been chained wirelessly and waited for prosecution in some decrepit location. Since their description of themselves is not very clear, I guess they are going to dissapear. > I eagerly await their next protocols, IPX and TCP/IP! Please. No. Wait. Can they write an operating system, say, let's call it Windows for IoTs? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Service for converting CD-ROMs into ISO files?
On Sun, May 05, 2019 at 11:30:49AM +0100, Dave Wade via cctalk wrote: > Paul, > > I assumed you wanted some one else to do the work! > I suspect that if these are commercial CDs you will run into issues with > Copyright. > Commercial services that do Photos to CD etc. will generally want to be > assured that you own the copyright of the material they are copying. > If you turn up with a pile of commercial CDs that say "COPYRIGHT xyz > corperation" or are even commercial CDs they may not be happy. This. And if the content is of any importance, I would rather do the job with my own hand and not trust that some folks I had not seen would do it without scratching and perhaps making a copy for themselves. You know, just in case CDs dissapear somewhere in postal transit. And maybe store it in the cloud because cheaper. JP, you did not mentioned the number. "Few dozens", so let's assume 60. This thread lasts for three days and will not stop so soon. The number of CDs to scan per day is about twenty today - and is going to drop. Scanning ten per day, starting on May the 3rd, you would probably be done with it before this thread comes to a halt. Just MHO. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: TI Explorer Lisp machine tapes
On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 03:47:08PM -0800, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: > > http://bitsavers.org/bits/TI/Explorer/cartridge_tapes > > the 2.6.0 diag 6.0 bootable and 6.0 patches are probably the most interesting > > has there been ANY posts about the Explorer simulator in the last decade? Now there is one, just found it, but does it work? - I will have a look later, hopefully. I have unhealthy fascination towards (or "about"?) Lisp Machines. http://unlambda.com/lispm/ " The Explorer III Project The E3 Project aims to develop a portable software emulator of the TI Explorer II Lisp machine. " -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: RS/6000 7043-140 boot floppies
On Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 09:49:30AM -0800, Alan Perry via cctech wrote: > > Is there some trick to making boot floppies for the RS/6000 7043-140 > (a mid-90s PReP architecture machine)? > [...] > The NetBSD boot floppy images are confusing to me. The files are too > large to fit on a 1.44M floppy. I didn't see instructions on how to > make boot floppies out of the .fs files one can download in the > install instructions. I went ahead and tried to dd the part that > fits onto a 1.44M floppy and try to boot that and of course that > failed. I have e-mailed the NetBSD prep mailing list and no response > from that. > > The system does boot the AIX install on one of its hard disks, but > this is a recycled system and I don't have usernames/passwords for > that install. > > Does anyone here have a suggestion on how to proceed? I have not much of idea about RS6000 but had a peek around netbsd.org and they have page about running NetBSD on emulators of various kind. So you may want to experiment with prep emulator, which seems to be GXemul: http://www.NetBSD.org/ports/emulators.html http://www.NetBSD.org/ports/emulators.html#gxemul and, for example, see if said floppy images boot at all. A casual check of generic.fs gives me this: => (591 12): curl -O 'https://cdn.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-8.0/prep/installation/floppy/generic.fs' % Total% Received % Xferd Average Speed TimeTime Time Current Dload Upload Total SpentLeft Speed 100 2597k 100 2597k0 0 3251k 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 3588k => (591 13):file generic.fs generic.fs: x86 boot sector; partition 1: ID=0x41, active, starthead 0, startsector 0, 2879 sectors, code offset 0x0 You have new mail in /var/mail/tomek => (591 14): fdisk -l generic.fs Disk generic.fs: 2 MB, 2659840 bytes 2 heads, 18 sectors/track, 144 cylinders, total 5195 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System generic.fs1 * 028781439+ 41 PPC PReP Boot -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Amiga, AtariST, soft repos [was: Re: Looking for: 68000 C compilers]
Guys, Thanks for the tips and info. Wrt: - C-Lab Notator - I do not think I will need this, as it seems to be musician's stuff. - Amiga vs Atari quality - I have never had any hands on experience with AtariST, so I will stick to other people's opinions for a while... - TOSEC - I have checked and they are mentioned in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOSEC : "The Old School Emulation Center (TOSEC) is a retrocomputing initiative founded in February 2000 initially for the renaming and cataloging of software files intended for use in emulators" and their website works - cool. The verdict for me, so far, is that in short term I will stick to trying some AtariST emulator and see how far it takes me. Long term, the chance I go back to Amiga seems a bit higher now. I have no intention to play games (well, maybe some) and want to see how useful such emulators can be for playing with Forth or MK68 assembler. At least such is wishful thinking because I cannot divert too much time yet and besides I remember a post from alt.sysadmin.recovery decades ago where a guy played with virtual machine at work, then came home to play with IIRC mac emulation on windows emulation on something and he sounded a bit insane (kind of "have I woke up from the simulation or I am in upper level simulation" syndrome, only perhaps he thought he was a computer)... So I got to thread gently, I guess? Anyway, this small project is far away & stuck in a fifo right now. I am just collecting threads to connect them later. Thanks for help. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Amiga, AtariST, soft repos [was: Re: Looking for: 68000 C compilers]
On Thu, Feb 07, 2019 at 09:06:03AM -0600, John Foust via cctalk wrote: > At 03:13 PM 2/6/2019, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: > >Lattice was the thing, back when I had Amiga. Too bad I could not > >afford a harddisk :-). > > As I related here back in 2005 and 2007: > > I believe I stuck with Manx Aztec C throughout my entire era of Amiga > development. I liked it because it was more Unix-like. I got to know > one of its developers, Jim Goodnow. > > I was supposed to have an article in one of first issues of Amigaworld, > reviewing the Lattice C compiler. [...] > it was canned and not published. I guess you could have a revenge now and publish it on a web? > Development on a floppy-based Amiga was incredibly painful. tl;dr: Is there a software repository for AtariST comparable to Aminet? Yeah... It was a bit less painful if one had Amiga 2000 or higher (I had 2000c... or b?) since there was a lot of place inside. I had two floppy stations and second half of my ownership was blessed with ram extension (giving me total of 3 megabytes). I used Aztec C (it had proper linker (ln), make for makefiles and ar for *.a archive management, IIRC). Managed to squeeze full dev environment into ramdisk (I remember I had to delete some unused files to make place, and probably used some small AmigaDOS batch file to automate things). And the ramdisk was rebootable, and could be booted from, which was so cool (because Guru Meditation plagued me a bit)! On the other hand, later on I witnessed coming of relatively cheap PC-compatible harddrives for Amiga 500, which were unusable in my case (there were too few Amiga 2/3/4xxx users to care, and I believe around this time the inept C= managers decided to eject everything and /-I guess-/ pay themselves a bonus, so the ice under users' feet was definitely shrinking). I have also learnt to hate MS-made Basic (included on Workbench floppies) while trying to use it. Overally, it was a good experience. It helped me to grasp and appreciate modern aspects of computing, and so I swallowed the Unix bug in a second, while it took fellow students weeks or infinity (especially if they started with MS DOS, as I observed). OTOH, in retrospect, I wonder if I would spent the money wiser by choosing AtariST or going straight to 286 (not the same experience, I know, but cheap and easier to sell away). Or, if I wanted it really cheap, C128 was able to give me 80x24 terminal in one gfx mode, but I could not find any floppy drive for it capable of r/w PC floppies, so that option is probably out. I have a kind of very-very low priority project to investigate AtariST side of things, especially that nowadays I can run a very nice community-written TOS on emulator, but it seems there is no software repository similar to Aminet, am I right? I am interested in utility software, mostly compilers and editors and other such things. Multimedia and games, not so much. Actually, the project is spelled somewhat like "assume that buying Amiga 2000 was bad idea, was there something that could have prepared me for embracing Unix (and later, Linux), while giving me PC compatible floppy, good text terminal (i.e. 80x24) and maybe even hard drive? (gaming not required, as I really had almost no time for this)". So that John Titor could drop me a postcard (also, assume he is subscribed here). So far, one of AtariST or Amiga 500. But I cannot get price listings from old Polish computer press - my own papers lay buried deep below new papers, no access, and I am yet to find proper incantation for goog. So the "project" is on temporary hold. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Looking for: 68000 C compilers
On Wed, Feb 06, 2019 at 10:13:57PM +0100, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: [...] > quite a few compilers in there: > > http://aminet.net/tree?path=dev And on page 1 of 5 in /dev/asm section I have spotted at least two disassemblers, there might be more. Caution: never used any. http://aminet.net/dev/asm ADisV1_3.lha - 'Intelligent' Disassembler (incl.source) Bin2Asm.lha - Binary to assembler source converter etc. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Looking for: 68000 C compilers
On Wed, Feb 06, 2019 at 06:44:27PM +0100, Götz Hoffart wrote: > Hi, > > I could offer Lattice C 3 and 5 for 68k / Atari ST. > > Regards > Götz Lattice was the thing, back when I had Amiga. Too bad I could not afford a harddisk :-). BTW, I just recalled the Aminet is still there and seems to be quite active, although I guess activity nowadays mostly revolves around PPC-based models with Workbench 4(++).x(++), but they have /dev section and quite a few compilers in there: http://aminet.net/tree?path=dev After all, who said it was a C compiler? Most probably, it was C compiler, yes. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Looking for: 68000 C compilers
On Wed, Feb 06, 2019 at 03:08:14PM +, Phil Pemberton via cctalk wrote: > Hi, > > I'm (still) trying to reverse-engineer a ton of M68K ROM code which > was apparently compiled with a circa-1990 C compiler. > > Does anyone have copies of any of the following -- or any other C > compilers for the 68K which were around at that time? [...] > > * Lattice C > > * Anything not on this list ;) Aztec C, by Manx Software (by now probably defunct). The Official Aztec C Online Museum: http://www.aztecmuseum.ca/index.htm stuff (those guys did a lot of them): http://www.aztecmuseum.ca/compilers.htm -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: EmuVR & videogames & monitors...
On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 02:50:01PM -0800, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > On 1/17/19 12:57 PM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: > > On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 11:29:54AM -0800, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > >> On 1/17/19 10:04 AM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: > >> > >>> Monolith in a bedroom, anybody? > >> > >> Speaks of the generation, I guess--a bookcase with no books. > > > > Just in case you have just judged me: if I post a link it really only > > means I notice a trend, not that I endorse it. :-) > > It's interesting, is all--no reflection on you. Maybe paper is obsolete > and I'm just behind the times. Ah, ok then. It would not have been a big deal if I was judged but I needed to know. O yeah, new shiny colorful tech. Supported by people who are a bit indifferent to potential problems from using it. So we come to times when thousands of websites stop loading because they all depend on piece of code sitting on a server in Antarctic and guess what, the iceberg... Or let's wire anything bigger than matchbox to the net. Crazy f*ers. If it sounds like I am overtone, it might be because I can anticipate (or read a bit). I guess many of them count on running away before their junk hits the fan - but nowadays, fans are everywhere and crazies are playing with those, too. Knowing they will always be under somebody's fan soothes me like hell. Speaking of paper, I would love to have more of it but my space is really limited at the moment, my library is spilling over despite weighting only about two metric tons. I had to slow down buying. I resigned subscribing a mag with 100-page-no-equations-monthly and replaced with 20-pages-equations-and-real-puzzles, replaced another 100-pager with pdf of the same. Paper is cool, hardly obsolete. I would like to learn making my own, one day. But I do not really buy much into this "love smell of paper and print". It simply is very practical thing, which is why I like it (taking notes, working with multiple books etc). OTOH, if I want to read a book and can get it from gutenberg or wikisources (or bitsavers :-) ), I get it onto my reader. This way, I can increase my small library many folds with books which I would hardly be able to buy anyway. Which is good. I can learn a lot from so called obsoleted tech but I welcome opportunity to use new tech smartly. BTW, me mentioning a monolith in bedroom was about Kubrick's "2001" :-) . BTW2, the way I understand those things, obsolete tech is not so much obsolete as it is inapropriate for majority of people, so they abandon it as soon as they can. There was a thread here about how email is getting obsolete. But the truth is, when email was all the rage there were how many users of it, ten millions? I mean, in mid-1990-ties. And they were majority of all internet users, I guess. But "the majority of them all" was never very much up to writing anything longer. And this have not changed. Only "them all" now are connected, too. But will not want to use email, because in the past they were not willing to write too much either. The talk about "obsolete" might be just marketing. Making impression that they are not wrong. Etc. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: EmuVR & videogames & monitors...
On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 11:29:54AM -0800, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > On 1/17/19 10:04 AM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: > > > Monolith in a bedroom, anybody? > > Speaks of the generation, I guess--a bookcase with no books. Just in case you have just judged me: if I post a link it really only means I notice a trend, not that I endorse it. :-) -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
EmuVR & videogames & monitors...
Hi there, Those who complained about diminishing stash of 4:3 monitors, soon you will have them all emulated, together with your favourite pdps and standing in vr recreation of your bedroom of the era: [ EmuVR Lets You Play '80s/'90s Videogames--in '80s/'90s Virtual Reality Settings https://www.core77.com//posts/82315/EmuVR-Lets-You-Play-80s90s-Videogames-in-80s90s-Virtual-Reality-Settings ] "You can even choose to play them on crappy '80s TV sets" Monolith in a bedroom, anybody? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Merry Christmas
Folks, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, thanks for all interesting reading matter and let there be plenty of interesting stuff to read about in a future, too. :-) -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: remove bad yelpMATERIAL INGEST. adams associates COMPUTER CHARACTERISTICS QUARTERLY 1963
On Sun, Dec 16, 2018 at 05:06:06PM -0500, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote: > CORRECTION>>> Should have said there are some days I wish I > could cut out HALF the nerve fibers in my hands to destroy them Sorry about that. However, there is a chance you (or your device) has been posessed by a, uhm, a ghost. Judging by goog search results, AOL has mail related security problem every even year and it is about time for "problem 2018". -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: meHp lOi semimuG
On Sat, Dec 08, 2018 at 06:28:51PM -0800, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > Yes. > I replied to the spam, as shown below, although I switched it from > cctech to cctalk. [...] > Other than your reply to Michael Mulhern's message, I never received > the post from Michael Mulhern that you were replying to: > > So, my count is: > 1) Hempoil spam > 2) my reply > 3) your reply to me > 4) my reply to you > 5) your reply to me > I NEVER GOT Michael Mulhern's post. > 7?) your reply to Micheal Mulhern I got THAT, but not Michael > Mulhern's post that you were replying to. > 8) Bill Gunshannon's reply to you Same here. I found 1 and 2 in my 'smap forled' but not a trace of 6. > On 12/8/18 4:43 PM, Michael Mulhern wrote: > >We are the spambot challenge? > Something like that. Cheer up, at least we are still smart enough to bend idiotic thread into something useful. I can stand some maps, either it goes into maps forled or I skip it. But I would rather get all emails sent to me, it possible of course. But a getting majority is still a win, so, no big fuss. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: cctalk/cctech
On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 08:59:35AM -0700, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote: > On 11/27/2018 12:15 AM, Lawrence Wilkinson via cctalk wrote: > >I think if everyone can refrain from posting non-cc stuff (and in > >this I would include: Queries about modern HW or SW without a > >direct CC relevance, long threads about character encoding > >schemes...) then we could go to a single list, but one might have > >to get used to being jumped on if posting something regarded as > >off-topic, and perhaps finding oneself moderated if persisting. > > I can't speak for others. But I will say that I do enjoy the > somewhat open forum for things like long threads about character > encoding schemes or other such topics. Me too. I suspect there is a number of people here, who not quite belong to any other place. I am not a great enthusiast of modern computer technology, for example. Other than a fact that I have an equivalent of 1990-ties supercomputer at a hand's reach, mostly thanks to users making pitiful choices requiring more and more power, to run those Mac and PC emulators in Javascript. Not to mention the very affordable used _portable_ (yikes!) supercomputers or as of recently _pocket_ (yay!!) supercomputers (alas, almost unusable because of stupid HW choices offering no security, but I am not sure if it was possible to make better choices). Limiting discussion to only strict cc-related topics will hugely deprive everybody, IMHO. This list should not be only a talk of museum keepers, but in my opinion it should be used to learn from the past and maybe try to do better in a future (if not for learning, I see no purpose to have a museum of any kind). Having a look at past provides me with interesting insights (try asking a casual user about his/her thoughts on pocket supercomputers, and have sad laugh). Speaking of long threads, there was a four or six weeks long thread about terminals, most of which (if not all) I will never be able to touch and so I skipped it all (it was interesting, but I have a ton of things to be read and thus I have to be very selective). No complaints however. Maybe I will one day undust those from my archives. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev
On Sun, Nov 25, 2018 at 04:46:50PM -0800, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: [...] > Is FORTRAN considered modern enough? [...] > What about APL? Although its structure is fairly straight-forward, > it does, indeed, have a unique character set. To supply this train of thought with some numbers: - my copy of Common Lisp HyperSpec claims 978 symbols (i.e. words) on its alphabetical index; many words have modifiers (a.k.a. keyword options, with default values) which increases the number at least twofold, IMHO, if one agrees that each combo should be counted as different word, to which I would say yes - I have read somewhere that Japanese pupil after graduating from elementary school is supposed to know 1000 kanjis by heart (there is a standardised set, I have a book) -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev
On Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 11:44:23PM +0100, Tomasz Rola wrote: [...] > Just my wet phantasies about how such things work or might work. It > only requires one lousy admin to make it true, or a good one fired and > never to be heard from again. > > Perhaps asking your ISP could give you some clues. Perhaps this is > even more horrific (micro black holes? aliens tuning in?) and wetter > than my wettest dreams. The huge problem with wet phantasies is that they take over and distract the dreamer. The first thing I should have asked: is this problem limited only to mails from cctalk? If yes, then the most probably culprit would be list's server. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev
middle of the board that leaked all over. I've taken some pictures which are up under falco on bitsavers. If anyone has one of these, you want to do battery mitigation ASAP. I'm in the middle of replacing every socket on the board since they were all within range of the leakage corrosion. Also, I suspect the first generation of terminals all have similar hardware with different firmware, so if someone has any of the other models (TS-1, etc.) we could get them simulated pretty easily once the firmware is dumped. I have no idea why they would have got dumped. As far as I can tell, the network guys are busy keeping the wire running, and do not care about spam (i.e. not filtering other people's mails, they are not being paid for this). Did it ever occured to you to be forcibly unsubscribed from mailing list because delivering soft complained emails minded to you could not had been delivered? Such a thing happened to me few times, and then I discovered that particular list's mail server was being located on Iceland (unless I am compressing old memories). Which is rather close to Poland, but still not close enough for touchy touchy software. After checking traceroutes I can see ping times double while jumping from one building in Singapore to another one (maybe not very near, but still, this should be same city). Perhaps there are sometimes problems with contacting your mail provider, and email goes to redundant mail server, from where it is never delivered (for whatever reason). And if they configured it in such a way that redundant one drops old mails as new ones keep coming, without alerting, then this could go on and on - once your missing mail goes off road, it can never go back (for whatever reason) and after spending some time there is silently dropped. Just my wet phantasies about how such things work or might work. It only requires one lousy admin to make it true, or a good one fired and never to be heard from again. Perhaps asking your ISP could give you some clues. Perhaps this is even more horrific (micro black holes? aliens tuning in?) and wetter than my wettest dreams. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev
On Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 07:01:17PM +0100, Liam Proven wrote: > On Fri, 23 Nov 2018 at 18:54, Tomasz Rola via cctalk > wrote: > > > > Turn off trashing mails with Unicode in Subject and see if this solves > > a problem? > > *Loud laughter in the office* > > Well _played_, sir! Well, that was low hanging fruit. But if he indeed turns it off and the problem is not gone, that will be a bit of puzzle. Will require some way to compare mailboxes in search of pattern in missing emails... Which may or may not be obvious... which will lead to more puzzles... oy maybe I should have stayed muted and let others do the job... -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev
On Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 11:55:18AM +1100, Guy Dunphy via cctalk wrote: [...] > > I see them because I'm using an old email client - Eudora 3 (1997.) > I stick with this specifically _because_ it doesn't understand UTF-8 > or any other non-ASCII coding, especially in the header, and hence > simply ignores any executables in the headers or email body. Which > makes it totally virus proof, unlike Microsoft's intentionally Totally say totally. > open-backdoor junk like Outlook. And most other email 'modern > wonders.' Eudora barely even understands html in emails, and I'm > fine with that. Also I have it configured to dust-bin any incomimg > mail containing UTF-8 chars in the Subject header. Avoids a lot of > time-wasting. [...] > > But first, I'm having a problem with some portion of cctalk posts > going missing, ie I don't receive all messages. The ratio seems to > vary day to day. Sometimes no obvious missing, sometimes a lot. > Still don't know why, or how to fix this. Any suggestions? Turn off trashing mails with Unicode in Subject and see if this solves a problem? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: George Keremedjiev
On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 07:20:25PM -0500, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote: > wrong not everybody sees it this is the only list serve problems... > I suppose modern email programs either do not see or know what to do > with the characters... please consider using the delete key and not > reading things frI'm me if it bothers,you > thanks ed# > > Sent from AOL Mobile Mail To me, the problem is not with your emails (or anybody else's from this list), but the slow invasion performed by offending software. Since you pressed space once, it should be entered as single space, 0x20 in ASCII. If you pressed space twice, it should be entered into email written by you as two 0x20 bytes, and this is what should show on my side. My software receives some extra stuff from you, but not in a consistent manner, i.e. some ASCII spaces are prepended with extra two bytes and some not. I was not conscious about it - thought you had some peculiar space pressing manner or text postprocessor (like fmt) made double spaces in order to fit your lines into 130-characters width (because your lines were not folded at 79 or anywhere close). (In other words, it looks like everybody gets those extra bytes, only some programs choose to not show them, which - for me - is another problem and should be examined in due time). If what you press and what is being sent out to your recipients differs, then this is a problem, with potential security implications (as I learn with some horror, just anything in modern computer can turn against the owner, if he could be called owner at all). A software that mangles your input is not a friend. It should be terminated. Just MHO. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: George Keremedjiev
On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 02:24:55PM -0600, John Foust via cctalk wrote: > At 02:03 PM 11/21/2018, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote: > >I sold him my extra classic 8 with the plexi covers on it... sn 200 > > series we kept sn #18 > > Side question: What process is turning non-blanking spaces into ISO-8859-1 > circumflex-A for you? > > I see 'Â' all throughout your emails. Myself, under mutt, I see doublespaces. But! I selected some of the original text from Ed, c-pasted onto another console and... $ echo "I sold him my extra classic 8 with the" | hexdump -C 49 c2 a0 20 73 6f 6c 64 c2 a0 20 68 69 6d 20 6d |I.. sold.. him m| 0010 79 c2 a0 20 65 78 74 72 61 20 63 6c 61 73 73 69 |y.. extra classi| 0020 63 20 38 c2 a0 20 77 69 74 68 20 74 68 65 0a |c 8.. with the.| 002f See? There are extra "c2 a0" bytes in front of some 0x20 spaces. I wonder how did they get there? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Looking for optical grid mouse pad
On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 07:12:49PM +0100, Camiel Vanderhoeven via cctech wrote: > On 11/10/18, 6:49 PM, "Rico Pajarola" wrote: > > > > I have tried to print my own mousepad, but the mouse only works in > the y direction on it. > > there were 2 versions of that mousepad, and the symptom of using the > wrong one was that the mouse would only move in one direction. Out of curiosity, would it work if you printed this one-directional grid on a translucent plastic and overlaid it on top of white paper sheet? If yes, then would it work if you printed two such translucent plastic grids and ovelaid them one on the other turned 90 degrees and that on white paper? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Object-oriented OS [was: Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen]
On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 05:40:54AM +0100, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote: [...] > Anyway, I think it is obvious that doing mere OO system was not really > big deal. Some of those projects were dying of old age by then. Some > frameworks, like PVN, are nearly 30 years old today. PVM, not PVN, sorry (PVM blurred with PCN, both used for distr prog). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Re: Object-oriented OS [was: Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen]
On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 05:53:30PM -0400, Sean Conner via cctalk wrote: > It was thus said that the Great Tomasz Rola via cctalk once stated: > > Ok guys, just to make things clearer, here are two pages from wiki: > > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_operating_system > > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming [...] > > > Examples: > > > > - an object pretends to be a disk object, but is double-disk [...] > You can do this now on Linux using the FUSE driver---this allows a user [...] > > - an object says it is a printer but is a proxy, connected via [...] > > Under QNX, this was a trivial operation. It was probably pretty trivial > under Plan-9 (depending upon how they handled printer queues). Unix > (including Linux) has something like this, but the name escapes me since I > do almost no printing what-so-ever. > > I do know that of the last N printers I've had [2] (actually, my > girlfriend has---she's the one who prints more than I do) were all "plug on, > turn on, oh look! The computer found it on the network---print!" Ok, but twenty years ago if one wanted to find something on the network, one had to build the network first. And sometimes the thing to be found, too. I realize a lot of stuff I gave as examples can be done nowadays without all that OO-thinglets. We should not mix past with today, those are/were different situations. > > - object with execution thread, aka active object (in 199x [...] > major problem though is dealing with resources other than the CPU. For > instance, a process has an open file its working with when it's migrated. [...] > You can't reliably provide this functionality invisibly---you have to pretty > much involve the process in question in the process. There was a rather huge area of research, which was concerned with such issues. Maybe still is, I am not current. See below. > > Plus, some kind of system programming language - I had no idea what > > Smalltalk was and I still have no idea but I might have swallowed > > that. > > An object-oriented image based programming language. Except for some > critical routines written in assembler, the entire system (operating system, > compiler, GUI, utilities, etc.) were all written in Smalltalk and every > "object" could be inspected and modified at runtime (including the operating > system, compiler, GUI, utilties, etc.). Nice idea. > > > I think it was possible to have this. But, not from MS. And as time > > shows, not from anybody. > > Citation needed. Oh.. ok. I would rather go to bed than down this memory lane, but we will see if I can do this quickly. Some of the things that were available in mid-1990-ties: - Amoeba - distributed, object (based? oriented?) OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba_(operating_system) https://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/amoeba/ intro: http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/amoeba/Intro.pdf First version: 1.0 from 1983 Last version: 5.3 from 1996 http://fsd-amoeba.sourceforge.net/amoeba.html Among other things, they claim to have an OS over a network of computers, while X with terminal emulators served GUI to users. - HT Condor - started as Condor in 1988, job/workload manager for grid / distributed computer / network of computers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTCondor http://research.cs.wisc.edu/htcondor/ - Sprite - research OS, supported process migration, discontinued after 1994 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(operating_system) - Emerald, from 1984 onward, language for object oriented distributed programming, supports object migration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_(programming_language) http://www.emeraldprogramminglanguage.org/ Since we are at it, I cowrote object migration service for ANSA (Advanced Networked Systems Architecture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Herbert#Advanced_Networked_Systems_Architecture and used it to build load balancer for distributed computation (objects migrating alone or together because they are tighly coupled etc etc), which as my master thesis (1996) earned me third prize in national contest here in Poland. Compared to the rest of the stuff ANSA was a bit primitive and at that time it was on its way out (while CORBA was on its way in). Glory days. Lots of steam through the window and out into blue skies. BTW, the wikipage claims A.Herbert is involved with EDSAC restoration, so he went retro. Anyway, I think it is obvious that doing mere OO system was not really big deal. Some of those projects were dying of old age by then. Some frameworks, like PVN, are nearly 30 years old today. So, I suppose if someone really wanted to do their commercial OS in OO way, they could have. > > On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 07:34:32PM -0700, Chris Hanson wrote: >
