Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
"Austin L. Denyer" wrote: Strike one for bloatware, I agree. I once set up a 50-user stock control system running on a low-end 486 with 16Mb RAM with Novel NetWare 3.12... I know about that too. And indeed. Netware 3.12 would run on that, but not on much less. Never underestimate Novel NetWare. I used to have several 10-user NetWare 3.12 setups running on IBM PS/2-80 servers. These were 386dx20 with 8Mb RAM! These ran fine with quite hefty database applications - I only had to up the RAM to 16Mb when I added TCP/IP support. Hehehe. Yes, these old boxes really had no protection at all to hackers and crackers. But in those days, before 1980, there was not much fear of things like that happening. (Resident hackers in training excepted of course ;) It wasn't uncommon for the students to know more than the teachers... I think I know what you mean. I have used a Prime machine too. It was not that slow, it was actually the first Unix machine I got my hands on. That is what started my fascination with Unix. Well, ours was of mid-70s vintage... It was in it's own air-conditioned room, protected with the most evil halon fire-extinguisher system I'd ever seen. (If the ceiling tiles started to fly, you had about 5 seconds to get out of the room before you suffocated...) Yup. Been there, done that. Because some failure triggered the halon system to go off. Man, did I have a rotten time for some days!! Nasty stuff, ain't it... But, the mother of them all was the CICS mainframe. This was the size of my apartment, with valves (ObTeenager - glass vacuum tubes that functioned as transistors!) and was WATER-COOLED Believe it or not, we only retired it six years ago! This ran a basic MRP system, written in a horrible mixture of COBOL and FORTRAN. Hahaha!! At the main office of my work they have something like that still in action!! Next to an IBM S/370. (Did you know there is a linux port for the S/370 out??? Yay!) WooHoo! I wasn't aware of that... The CICS machine is programmed mainly in Fortran 66 (they lost the tape with Fortran 77) and assembler. We're working very hard to cross-compile the code from the CICS to the big IBM as much as possible, but it still takes a helluva lot of handwork. Most code is so old and crumpled that we decided it's better to redo the assembler programs in clean Cobol, and patch up the Fortran 66 code to Fortran 77 as we go. Should make quite an improvement. I remember being insanely jealous of the guys who could toggle in the bootstrap code without touching the manual... I could only do the first 64 switch sequences ;-) Still better than I could manage... Regards, Ozz. Would you mind posting the specs you used netware with on alt.games.final-fantasy.rpg? I argued with someone there who didn't beleave me when I said my schools fileserver only had one processor. I would enjoy proveing to them that something less that a cray would be able to run a school network. -- == Goldenpi- programer, unreal level creator, linux user and all round geek. If you are reading this, I sent this mail from linux.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
Hi! A friend has sent me a file ending on .asx. I don't know how to open it, does anybody know which program I need? Thanks in advance, -- , (o o) +--oOOO--(_)---+ | | |H E L L M U T | | | | www.fegefeuer-webzine.de | | | +-0OOO-+ | _ | _ | | | | | | | | | ooO Ooo
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
Strike one for bloatware, I agree. I once set up a 50-user stock control system running on a low-end 486 with 16Mb RAM with Novel NetWare 3.12... I know about that too. And indeed. Netware 3.12 would run on that, but not on much less. Never underestimate Novel NetWare. I used to have several 10-user NetWare 3.12 setups running on IBM PS/2-80 servers. These were 386dx20 with 8Mb RAM! These ran fine with quite hefty database applications - I only had to up the RAM to 16Mb when I added TCP/IP support. Would you mind posting the specs you used netware with on alt.games.final-fantasy.rpg? I argued with someone there who didn't beleave me when I said my schools fileserver only had one processor. I would enjoy proveing to them that something less that a cray would be able to run a school network. Feel free to forward this if you wish. The original setup that I was responsible for was as follows: 12 servers running NetWare 3.12 10 user on IBM PS/2-80 (386dx20) with 8Mb RAM 1 server running NetWare 3.12 50 user on IBM PS/2-77 (486dx33) with 16Mb RAM These were dotted around the UK up to 200 miles from Head Office. We then added TCP/IP to link them into a WAN via a SUN SPARC at Head Office. The NLM used for the TCP/IP stuff was Novix, which required doubling the RAM in all the servers as they acted as bridges to the IP network (the NetWare network was IPX/SPX). The servers were all running a fairly intensive Stock Control system (Locator), some sites had remote Radio Data Terminals (RDT) on the trucks. All sites also ran Sophos Anti-virus NLMs with real-time scanning, as well as NLMs for APC UPS (with full logging and auto-shutoff), FTP, RCONSOLE, remote printers (including JetDirect), Tobit FaxWare for faxing (send and receive) etc. In fact, the 50-user site was virtually paperless. Performance was not blistering, but was still surprisingly good. The company itself was a cold storage and transport outfit, and one of the largest in the UK. I have a screenshot of the Server monitor screen that I can send you if you want... Feel free to e-mail me if you want any more details... Regards, Ozz.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
thanks. This shoud be good :-) That deformed smile was an attempt at an evil grin. - Original Message - From: "Austin L. Denyer" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2000 4:47 PM Subject: Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.] Strike one for bloatware, I agree. I once set up a 50-user stock control system running on a low-end 486 with 16Mb RAM with Novel NetWare 3.12... I know about that too. And indeed. Netware 3.12 would run on that, but not on much less. Never underestimate Novel NetWare. I used to have several 10-user NetWare 3.12 setups running on IBM PS/2-80 servers. These were 386dx20 with 8Mb RAM! These ran fine with quite hefty database applications - I only had to up the RAM to 16Mb when I added TCP/IP support. Would you mind posting the specs you used netware with on alt.games.final-fantasy.rpg? I argued with someone there who didn't beleave me when I said my schools fileserver only had one processor. I would enjoy proveing to them that something less that a cray would be able to run a school network. Feel free to forward this if you wish. The original setup that I was responsible for was as follows: 12 servers running NetWare 3.12 10 user on IBM PS/2-80 (386dx20) with 8Mb RAM 1 server running NetWare 3.12 50 user on IBM PS/2-77 (486dx33) with 16Mb RAM These were dotted around the UK up to 200 miles from Head Office. We then added TCP/IP to link them into a WAN via a SUN SPARC at Head Office. The NLM used for the TCP/IP stuff was Novix, which required doubling the RAM in all the servers as they acted as bridges to the IP network (the NetWare network was IPX/SPX). The servers were all running a fairly intensive Stock Control system (Locator), some sites had remote Radio Data Terminals (RDT) on the trucks. All sites also ran Sophos Anti-virus NLMs with real-time scanning, as well as NLMs for APC UPS (with full logging and auto-shutoff), FTP, RCONSOLE, remote printers (including JetDirect), Tobit FaxWare for faxing (send and receive) etc. In fact, the 50-user site was virtually paperless. Performance was not blistering, but was still surprisingly good. The company itself was a cold storage and transport outfit, and one of the largest in the UK. I have a screenshot of the Server monitor screen that I can send you if you want... Feel free to e-mail me if you want any more details... Regards, Ozz.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
It was Oct 3, 2000, 10:42, when Austin L. Denyer keyboarded: Strike one for bloatware, I agree. I once set up a 50-user stock control system running on a low-end 486 with 16Mb RAM with Novel NetWare 3.12... I know about that too. And indeed. Netware 3.12 would run on that, but not on much less. We had a similar machine to yours at the college I was at. It was almost embarrassingly easy to hack. I remember one kid who was most unpopular (for good reason), who happened to be blighted with a bad case of acne. Someone modified his project so that, on running, it printed a plethora of comments suggesting a visual similarity between his countenance and the topping of a 'House Special' pizza #;-D Hehehe. Yes, these old boxes really had no protection at all to hackers and crackers. But in those days, before 1980, there was not much fear of things like that happening. (Resident hackers in training excepted of course ;) At one of the places I used to work we used to have an old PRIME dinosaur. This was the size of a small family car, and had the performance of a mid-range 386 (blisteringly fast in it's time!). All word-processing and spreadsheet work for 300 users used to be done on it, as well as CAD! However, as the software grew, it got to the stage that a page-down on a spreadsheet took (perhaps conveniently!) approximately the same length of time as a trip to the coffee machine... I think I know what you mean. I have used a Prime machine too. It was not that slow, it was actually the first Unix machine I got my hands on. That is what started my fascination with Unix. It was in it's own air-conditioned room, protected with the most evil halon fire-extinguisher system I'd ever seen. (If the ceiling tiles started to fly, you had about 5 seconds to get out of the room before you suffocated...) Yup. Been there, done that. Because some failure triggered the halon system to go off. Man, did I have a rotten time for some days!! But, the mother of them all was the CICS mainframe. This was the size of my apartment, with valves (ObTeenager - glass vacuum tubes that functioned as transistors!) and was WATER-COOLED Believe it or not, we only retired it six years ago! This ran a basic MRP system, written in a horrible mixture of COBOL and FORTRAN. Hahaha!! At the main office of my work they have something like that still in action!! Next to an IBM S/370. (Did you know there is a linux port for the S/370 out??? Yay!) The CICS machine is programmed mainly in Fortran 66 (they lost the tape with Fortran 77) and assembler. We're working very hard to cross-compile the code from the CICS to the big IBM as much as possible, but it still takes a helluva lot of handwork. Most code is so old and crumpled that we decided it's better to redo the assembler programs in clean Cobol, and patch up the Fortran 66 code to Fortran 77 as we go. On the IBM we had been messing so much that not much of the executable code had any bearing to its source code. Usually we'd patch the hex code directly in memory and dump that back to disk. Using an 8 bit switch array on the machine itself. Such fun!! ;) I remember being insanely jealous of the guys who could toggle in the bootstrap code without touching the manual... I could only do the first 64 switch sequences ;-) Paul -- Q: Why did witches stop flying on brooms? A: Splinters... http://nlpagan.net - ICQ 147208 - Registered Linux User 174403 -=PINE 4.21 on Linux Mandrake 7.1=-
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
Strike one for bloatware, I agree. I once set up a 50-user stock control system running on a low-end 486 with 16Mb RAM with Novel NetWare 3.12... I know about that too. And indeed. Netware 3.12 would run on that, but not on much less. Never underestimate Novel NetWare. I used to have several 10-user NetWare 3.12 setups running on IBM PS/2-80 servers. These were 386dx20 with 8Mb RAM! These ran fine with quite hefty database applications - I only had to up the RAM to 16Mb when I added TCP/IP support. Hehehe. Yes, these old boxes really had no protection at all to hackers and crackers. But in those days, before 1980, there was not much fear of things like that happening. (Resident hackers in training excepted of course ;) It wasn't uncommon for the students to know more than the teachers... I think I know what you mean. I have used a Prime machine too. It was not that slow, it was actually the first Unix machine I got my hands on. That is what started my fascination with Unix. Well, ours was of mid-70s vintage... It was in it's own air-conditioned room, protected with the most evil halon fire-extinguisher system I'd ever seen. (If the ceiling tiles started to fly, you had about 5 seconds to get out of the room before you suffocated...) Yup. Been there, done that. Because some failure triggered the halon system to go off. Man, did I have a rotten time for some days!! Nasty stuff, ain't it... But, the mother of them all was the CICS mainframe. This was the size of my apartment, with valves (ObTeenager - glass vacuum tubes that functioned as transistors!) and was WATER-COOLED Believe it or not, we only retired it six years ago! This ran a basic MRP system, written in a horrible mixture of COBOL and FORTRAN. Hahaha!! At the main office of my work they have something like that still in action!! Next to an IBM S/370. (Did you know there is a linux port for the S/370 out??? Yay!) WooHoo! I wasn't aware of that... The CICS machine is programmed mainly in Fortran 66 (they lost the tape with Fortran 77) and assembler. We're working very hard to cross-compile the code from the CICS to the big IBM as much as possible, but it still takes a helluva lot of handwork. Most code is so old and crumpled that we decided it's better to redo the assembler programs in clean Cobol, and patch up the Fortran 66 code to Fortran 77 as we go. Should make quite an improvement. I remember being insanely jealous of the guys who could toggle in the bootstrap code without touching the manual... I could only do the first 64 switch sequences ;-) Still better than I could manage... Regards, Ozz.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
I know you weren't. I was speaking "tongue-in-cheek." When I first started learning Assembler I hated it cause there is SO much to remember and it was driving me crazy. However, as I learned the language and began to see just how powerful it really was I just fell in love with it. Mark Vic wrote: ahh, dude, I'm not bashing assembler code, I thought it was fun, and it gave me the chance to learn the internal workings of the basic CPU. On Tue, 03 Oct 2000, Mark Weaver wrote: I don't care what anyone says...Assembler is just plain awesome! Mark Vic wrote: I remember assembler code for the old Z80, well I don't remember all the codes but I remember a few of the nemonnics, like DJNZ and NOP. I could make a lot of neat little programs with it, like a burglar alarm and telephone answering voice mail system control box, as well as have it control a central office box as in "inter-office" not public.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
i agree. i have programed (very little) in assembly it is a great way to learn what really happens in the CPU. i also found it very challenging - especially on an 8088 (only 6 registers to work with if i remember correctly). Adrian Smith 'de telepone dude Telecom Dept. x 7042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Vic [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12:48:34 PM 10/3/00 ahh, dude, I'm not bashing assembler code, I thought it was fun, and it gave me the chance to learn the internal workings of the basic CPU.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
Holy hanna Ozz! come on man! talk more assembler to me! maybe I'm sick, but I really like that language. -- Mark ~~~ ...someone once asked Annie Sullivan what she saw in a man she was considering as perspective suiter who had a terrible case of acne. Annie was reported to have replied, "His face is an easy read!" On Sun, 1 Oct 2000 3:25pm ,Austin L. Denyer spake passionately in a message: Ha! I know tricks like that one too! I had a machine like that, and wrote a simple but functioning accounting system in it :) One of my colleagues once tried to write a program to calculate the performance characteristics of large-bore oil hoses, and ran out of memory on a 16k machine. I then wrote the thing myself in ... wait for it ... 450 BYTES! Needless to say, it was completely devoid of any eye candy, but it worked (well, I wrote it in an evening...) Out of interest, what machines were you using? How long ago? Hahahaha!! Memories are coming back indeed... And even where you needed more speed than the machine could actually deliver, you'd have to fool the processor, or invent strange code to steal a cycle here or there... Oh yes. Some of the memory saving tricks were neat too. I used to use existing constants to save precious register space (pi/pi for 1, pi-pi for 0, etc.). Another advantage to programming at that level was this: You knew the value of each op. code. You knew the location in which you stored it in memory. Therefore, you could use these codes for constants too. For example, if the instruction LDA (LoaD Accumulator) was 0fh (15 decimal) and you had stored that instruction in memory location 02ff, then you could call the value 15 by pointing to 02ff. Self-modifying code was fun too, especially when someone else tried to parse it #;-D I agree. People that learn to program these days, on visual such and so, can't understand that you can write a complete program in less than 500Kbytes. I can't wait to get back into it with Linux. One of these days Regards, Ozz.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
I remember assembler code for the old Z80, well I don't remember all the codes but I remember a few of the nemonnics, like DJNZ and NOP. I could make a lot of neat little programs with it, like a burglar alarm and telephone answering voice mail system control box, as well as have it control a central office box as in "inter-office" not public. On Tue, 03 Oct 2000, Mark Weaver wrote: Holy hanna Ozz! come on man! talk more assembler to me! maybe I'm sick, but I really like that language. -- Mark ~~~ ...someone once asked Annie Sullivan what she saw in a man she was cconsidering as perspective suiter who had a terrible case of acne. Annie was reported to have replied, "His face is an easy read!" On Sun, 1 Oct 2000 3:25pm ,Austin L. Denyer spake passionately in a message: Ha! I know tricks like that one too! I had a machine like that, and wrote a simple but functioning accounting system in it :) One of my colleagues once tried to write a program to calculate the performance characteristics of large-bore oil hoses, and ran out of memory on a 16k machine. I then wrote the thing myself in ... wait for it ... 450 BYTES! Needless to say, it was completely devoid of any eye candy, but it worked (well, I wrote it in an evening...) Out of interest, what machines were you using? How long ago? Hahahaha!! Memories are coming back indeed... And even where you needed more speed than the machine could actually deliver, you'd have to fool the processor, or invent strange code to steal a cycle here or there... Oh yes. Some of the memory saving tricks were neat too. I used to use existing constants to save precious register space (pi/pi for 1, pi-pi for 0, etc.). Another advantage to programming at that level was this: You knew the value of each op. code. You knew the location in which you stored it in memory. Therefore, you could use these codes for constants too. For example, if the instruction LDA (LoaD Accumulator) was 0fh (15 decimal) and you had stored that instruction in memory location 02ff, then you could call the value 15 by pointing to 02ff. Self-modifying code was fun too, especially when someone else tried to parse it #;-D I agree. People that learn to program these days, on visual such and so, can't understand that you can write a complete program in less than 500Kbytes. I can't wait to get back into it with Linux. One of these days Regards, Ozz.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
I don't care what anyone says...Assembler is just plain awesome! Mark Vic wrote: I remember assembler code for the old Z80, well I don't remember all the codes but I remember a few of the nemonnics, like DJNZ and NOP. I could make a lot of neat little programs with it, like a burglar alarm and telephone answering voice mail system control box, as well as have it control a central office box as in "inter-office" not public. On Tue, 03 Oct 2000, Mark Weaver wrote: Holy hanna Ozz! come on man! talk more assembler to me! maybe I'm sick, but I really like that language. -- Mark ~~~ ...someone once asked Annie Sullivan what she saw in a man she was cconsidering as perspective suiter who had a terrible case of acne. Annie was reported to have replied, "His face is an easy read!" On Sun, 1 Oct 2000 3:25pm ,Austin L. Denyer spake passionately in a message: Ha! I know tricks like that one too! I had a machine like that, and wrote a simple but functioning accounting system in it :) One of my colleagues once tried to write a program to calculate the performance characteristics of large-bore oil hoses, and ran out of memory on a 16k machine. I then wrote the thing myself in ... wait for it ... 450 BYTES! Needless to say, it was completely devoid of any eye candy, but it worked (well, I wrote it in an evening...) Out of interest, what machines were you using? How long ago? Hahahaha!! Memories are coming back indeed... And even where you needed more speed than the machine could actually deliver, you'd have to fool the processor, or invent strange code to steal a cycle here or there... Oh yes. Some of the memory saving tricks were neat too. I used to use existing constants to save precious register space (pi/pi for 1, pi-pi for 0, etc.). Another advantage to programming at that level was this: You knew the value of each op. code. You knew the location in which you stored it in memory. Therefore, you could use these codes for constants too. For example, if the instruction LDA (LoaD Accumulator) was 0fh (15 decimal) and you had stored that instruction in memory location 02ff, then you could call the value 15 by pointing to 02ff. Self-modifying code was fun too, especially when someone else tried to parse it #;-D I agree. People that learn to program these days, on visual such and so, can't understand that you can write a complete program in less than 500Kbytes. I can't wait to get back into it with Linux. One of these days Regards, Ozz.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
The only use I found for self modifying code was speed. example in basic: do a=key if a=27 then beep:end If a=64 then beep:beep:end if a=65 then beep:beep:beep:end loop change to: 11 change_next_line_to "goto "+key+1 goto 11 28 beep:end 65 beep:end 66 beep:end If you can understand my improvised basic-like language, you can see the improvement. I can see what you're getting at. I'll knock up a better (more detailed) version of what I was talking about when I get a bit more time, although I'll post it privately rather than dump it on this list. Regards, Ozz.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
I was doing work on an IBM System/3 in those days, as well as on an old Burrought B-7700. The Burroughs could only be fed through punched cards (always racing to get the optical reader which was 40 times faster than the mechanical one! ;-) for the average user, there were no keyboard terminals attached. Except for the console, which had it's own printer for system output. On that machine, programs could not be bigger than 64K (equal to the IBM S/3). It had 1 meg of RAM, which was an indecent amount already. It was for a technical highschool, had 200 users on it. (Try that on the average machine these days, with 128Megs hahaha!) System crashes would be saved on a special 64Meg removable diskpack, which we would then debug by hand. Strike one for bloatware, I agree. I once set up a 50-user stock control system running on a low-end 486 with 16Mb RAM with Novel NetWare 3.12... We had a similar machine to yours at the college I was at. It was almost embarrassingly easy to hack. I remember one kid who was most unpopular (for good reason), who happened to be blighted with a bad case of acne. Someone modified his project so that, on running, it printed a plethora of comments suggesting a visual similarity between his countenance and the topping of a 'House Special' pizza #;-D At one of the places I used to work we used to have an old PRIME dinosaur. This was the size of a small family car, and had the performance of a mid-range 386 (blisteringly fast in it's time!). All word-processing and spreadsheet work for 300 users used to be done on it, as well as CAD! However, as the software grew, it got to the stage that a page-down on a spreadsheet took (perhaps conveniently!) approximately the same length of time as a trip to the coffee machine... It was in it's own air-conditioned room, protected with the most evil halon fire-extinguisher system I'd ever seen. (If the ceiling tiles started to fly, you had about 5 seconds to get out of the room before you suffocated...) The company purchased it in the 70s for $600,000, and sold it in 1995 for $600, to the only company we could find who didn't want US to pay THEM to take it off our hands. We had to take the wall down to get it out... But, the mother of them all was the CICS mainframe. This was the size of my apartment, with valves (ObTeenager - glass vacuum tubes that functioned as transistors!) and was WATER-COOLED Believe it or not, we only retired it six years ago! This ran a basic MRP system, written in a horrible mixture of COBOL and FORTRAN. The CICS machine was replaced with a single RS6000. The PRIME mini was replaced by a trio of Pentium PCs running Novell NetWare. All the dumb terminals were replaced with diskless workstations (which sucked!). At least we now had color screens, instead of the green (or even worse, amber) screens. On the IBM we had been messing so much that not much of the executable code had any bearing to its source code. Usually we'd patch the hex code directly in memory and dump that back to disk. Using an 8 bit switch array on the machine itself. Such fun!! ;) I remember being insanely jealous of the guys who could toggle in the bootstrap code without touching the manual... Regards, Ozz.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
Awwwh...come on Ozz...don't be like that. Share! Mark "Austin L. Denyer" wrote: The only use I found for self modifying code was speed. example in basic: do a=key if a=27 then beep:end If a=64 then beep:beep:end if a=65 then beep:beep:beep:end loop change to: 11 change_next_line_to "goto "+key+1 goto 11 28 beep:end 65 beep:end 66 beep:end If you can understand my improvised basic-like language, you can see the improvement. I can see what you're getting at. I'll knock up a better (more detailed) version of what I was talking about when I get a bit more time, although I'll post it privately rather than dump it on this list. Regards, Ozz.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
Unfortunately for you, most companies today, and even Linux developers, would not like such practices among their programmers. For the same reason that a good programmer comments their code. Are you always going to be there to fix problems? I don't think so. 9 out of 10 developers would pick the programmer who wrote well-structured and readable (albeit slower) code, over the programmer who wrote hard to follow, yet faster, code. dwyatt - Original Message - From: "Austin L. Denyer" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "List Linux-Mandrake" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, October 02, 2000 8:51 AM Subject: Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.] Self modifying code. The only use I found for this on a z80 was speed. It DAD nagging me yto go to bed Self modifying code is SERIOUSLY useful for memory reasons too. Allow me to give you a brief example. I once had to re-write a system that performed around 40 different calculations depending on the type of data received. Conventional programming (which was the way the original was written) would have had a subroutine for each case, with tests to check which one to jump to. Self modifying code allowed me to write one block of code, with NO jumps or tests - the code changed itself based on the input data. The net result was a program that ran MANY times faster, and took up nearly 95% less memory. The users LOVED it! My successor HATED it... #;-D Regards, Ozz.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
It was Oct 2, 2000, 09:51, when Austin L. Denyer keyboarded: I once had to re-write a system that performed around 40 different calculations depending on the type of data received. Conventional programming (which was the way the original was written) would have had a subroutine for each case, with tests to check which one to jump to. Self modifying code allowed me to write one block of code, with NO jumps or tests - the code changed itself based on the input data. That was (and for me sometimes still is!) the way to go! I pulled things like that on a Wang/VS system and an IBM micro S/36 that had 128K of memory. It had to furnish services to 40 people. It was programmed in RPG (blagh), but I put assembler into action, stuffed registers and memory addresses all over the place and had a top performance. I also liked the NRT's. Non Requester Terminals, kind of like daemons. I could stick often-used routines in there, like client lookups, and call those from any source. Depending on the caller, the NRT would change itself and deliver what was asked. My successor HATED it... LOL!!! Sounds s familiar! Paul -- The Tao that is seen Is not the true Tao, Until you bring fresh toner. http://nlpagan.net - ICQ 147208 - Registered Linux User 174403 -=PINE 4.21 on Linux Mandrake 7.1=-
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
Unfortunately for you, most companies today, and even Linux developers, would not like such practices among their programmers. For the same reason that a good programmer comments their code. Are you always going to be there to fix problems? I don't think so. 9 out of 10 developers would pick the programmer who wrote well-structured and readable (albeit slower) code, over the programmer who wrote hard to follow, yet faster, code. The problem was that the Company was pushing hard for the programs, and did not allow me time to document them - they kept promising me that I could write the docs later. They were well aware of the fact - I memo'd then several times about my concerns. If they then felt the need to lay me off before the docs were written, whose fault was that? As it happened, my successor was a very close friend of mine - we used to go out for drinks together every Friday night. The Company was aware of that fact, and actually told him to "get Ozz drunk one evening and pump him for info.". He was that sickened that he refused to ask me anything on principle, even though he knew me well enough to know that I would have helped him had he asked. The Company's morals were such that they called me back into the office during my VACATION to tell me I was laid off! Can you say pissed? I knew you could... As for the state of the code, I was writing in a language that many people would not have used (the Company wanted me to write it that way due to legacy systems), and I was getting the software to do things that even the original authors of the language said were impossible. There are still very few people proficient in it (to that degree), and the Company is now paying contractors more than TEN TIMES what they were paying me at the time, to write additional software! One final point - the user's machines were diskless workstations running Windoze 3.11, and did not have the memory for large applications. This was the only way to get such a mammoth system to run on the available hardware without frequent crashes due to insufficient resources. Regards, Ozz.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
It was Oct 1, 2000, 15:25, when Austin L. Denyer keyboarded: Ha! I know tricks like that one too! I had a machine like that, and wrote a simple but functioning accounting system in it :) One of my colleagues once tried to write a program to calculate the performance characteristics of large-bore oil hoses, and ran out of memory on a 16k machine. I then wrote the thing myself in ... wait for it ... 450 BYTES! Needless to say, it was completely devoid of any eye candy, but it worked (well, I wrote it in an evening...) Out of interest, what machines were you using? How long ago? Hi Ozz, I was doing work on an IBM System/3 in those days, as well as on an old Burrought B-7700. The Burroughs could only be fed through punched cards (always racing to get the optical reader which was 40 times faster than the mechanical one! ;-) for the average user, there were no keyboard terminals attached. Except for the console, which had it's own printer for system output. On that machine, programs could not be bigger than 64K (equal to the IBM S/3). It had 1 meg of RAM, which was an indecent amount already. It was for a technical highschool, had 200 users on it. (Try that on the average machine these days, with 128Megs hahaha!) System crashes would be saved on a special 64Meg removable diskpack, which we would then debug by hand. On the IBM we had been messing so much that not much of the executable code had any bearing to its source code. Usually we'd patch the hex code directly in memory and dump that back to disk. Using an 8 bit switch array on the machine itself. Such fun!! ;) Yeah, that's real programming. 450 bytes of code, assembler preferably, that does what it has to do. FAST! Paul -- The Tao that is seen Is not the true Tao, Until you bring fresh toner. http://nlpagan.net - ICQ 147208 - Registered Linux User 174403 -=PINE 4.21 on Linux Mandrake 7.1=-
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
Ok, now I can finish. I know I should have not sent that but it was late and I didn't think it at the time :^). I must get more sleep. The only use I found for self modifying code was speed. example in basic: do a=key if a=27 then beep:end If a=64 then beep:beep:end if a=65 then beep:beep:beep:end loop change to: 11 change_next_line_to "goto "+key+1 goto 11 28 beep:end 65 beep:end 66 beep:end If you can understand my improvised basic-like language, you can see the improvement. - Original Message - From: "Goldenpi" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2000 10:29 PM Subject: Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.] Self modifying code. The only use I found for this on a z80 was speed. It DAD nagging me yto go to bed - Original Message - From: "Austin L. Denyer" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "List Linux-Mandrake" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2000 8:25 PM Subject: Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.] Ha! I know tricks like that one too! I had a machine like that, and wrote a simple but functioning accounting system in it :) One of my colleagues once tried to write a program to calculate the performance characteristics of large-bore oil hoses, and ran out of memory on a 16k machine. I then wrote the thing myself in ... wait for it ... 450 BYTES! Needless to say, it was completely devoid of any eye candy, but it worked (well, I wrote it in an evening...) Out of interest, what machines were you using? How long ago? Hahahaha!! Memories are coming back indeed... And even where you needed more speed than the machine could actually deliver, you'd have to fool the processor, or invent strange code to steal a cycle here or there... Oh yes. Some of the memory saving tricks were neat too. I used to use existing constants to save precious register space (pi/pi for 1, pi-pi for 0, etc.). Another advantage to programming at that level was this: You knew the value of each op. code. You knew the location in which you stored it in memory. Therefore, you could use these codes for constants too. For example, if the instruction LDA (LoaD Accumulator) was 0fh (15 decimal) and you had stored that instruction in memory location 02ff, then you could call the value 15 by pointing to 02ff. Self-modifying code was fun too, especially when someone else tried to parse it #;-D I agree. People that learn to program these days, on visual such and so, can't understand that you can write a complete program in less than 500Kbytes. I can't wait to get back into it with Linux. One of these days Regards, Ozz.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
It was Sep 30, 2000, 16:48, when Austin L. Denyer keyboarded: I remember having many hours of fun with the Z80 as well (actually an 8080A). I had a version of the old arcade game 'Space Invaders' that ran in under one kilobyte of RAM! Eat yer heart out, Mr. Gates... Ha! I know tricks like that one too! I had a machine like that, and wrote a simple but functioning accounting system in it :) Oh, the delights of having to load every calculation into the accumulator for every operation. The fun of having to initialize the data direction of a port before you could use it. The pain of placing redundant instructions inside nested loops to achieve time delays, calculated manually by the instruction time for each operation. Hahahaha!! Memories are coming back indeed... And even where you needed more speed than the machine could actually deliver, you'd have to fool the processor, or invent strange code to steal a cycle here or there... The programmers of today don't know they're born... One of the beauties of Linux is that it allows you to get back to tight code, and real optimizations, rather than the slow bloatware of other systems. I agree. People that learn to program these days, on visual such and so, can't understand that you can write a complete program in less than 500Kbytes. Paul -- Yesterday it worked. Today nothing is working. Windows is like that. http://nlpagan.net - ICQ 147208 - Registered Linux User 174403 -=PINE 4.21 on Linux Mandrake 7.1=-
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
Paul wrote: It was Sep 30, 2000, 16:48, when Austin L. Denyer keyboarded: I remember having many hours of fun with the Z80 as well (actually an 8080A). I had a version of the old arcade game 'Space Invaders' that ran in under one kilobyte of RAM! Eat yer heart out, Mr. Gates... Ha! I know tricks like that one too! I had a machine like that, and wrote a simple but functioning accounting system in it :) Oh, the delights of having to load every calculation into the accumulator for every operation. The fun of having to initialize the data direction of a port before you could use it. The pain of placing redundant instructions inside nested loops to achieve time delays, calculated manually by the instruction time for each operation. Hahahaha!! Memories are coming back indeed... And even where you needed more speed than the machine could actually deliver, you'd have to fool the processor, or invent strange code to steal a cycle here or there... The programmers of today don't know they're born... One of the beauties of Linux is that it allows you to get back to tight code, and real optimizations, rather than the slow bloatware of other systems. I agree. People that learn to program these days, on visual such and so, can't understand that you can write a complete program in less than 500Kbytes. For an example of tight (and I mean TRICKY TIGHT! ) aquire and reverse engineer the original Microsoft BASIC. What had been around 48K on the PDP-11 was packed into a 4k ROM. A trully brilliant bit of optimising of existing code segments. Can't for the life of me remember who the work was attributed too - but I rather think he'd be a rather rich dude these days. TIC Cheers Paul -- Yesterday it worked. Today nothing is working. Windows is like that. http://nlpagan.net - ICQ 147208 - Registered Linux User 174403 -=PINE 4.21 on Linux Mandrake 7.1=- -- ICQ# 89345394 Mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] "The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected" (The UNIX Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June 1972.)
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
Ha! I know tricks like that one too! I had a machine like that, and wrote a simple but functioning accounting system in it :) One of my colleagues once tried to write a program to calculate the performance characteristics of large-bore oil hoses, and ran out of memory on a 16k machine. I then wrote the thing myself in ... wait for it ... 450 BYTES! Needless to say, it was completely devoid of any eye candy, but it worked (well, I wrote it in an evening...) Out of interest, what machines were you using? How long ago? Hahahaha!! Memories are coming back indeed... And even where you needed more speed than the machine could actually deliver, you'd have to fool the processor, or invent strange code to steal a cycle here or there... Oh yes. Some of the memory saving tricks were neat too. I used to use existing constants to save precious register space (pi/pi for 1, pi-pi for 0, etc.). Another advantage to programming at that level was this: You knew the value of each op. code. You knew the location in which you stored it in memory. Therefore, you could use these codes for constants too. For example, if the instruction LDA (LoaD Accumulator) was 0fh (15 decimal) and you had stored that instruction in memory location 02ff, then you could call the value 15 by pointing to 02ff. Self-modifying code was fun too, especially when someone else tried to parse it #;-D I agree. People that learn to program these days, on visual such and so, can't understand that you can write a complete program in less than 500Kbytes. I can't wait to get back into it with Linux. One of these days Regards, Ozz.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
For an example of tight (and I mean TRICKY TIGHT! ) aquire and reverse engineer the original Microsoft BASIC. What had been around 48K on the PDP-11 was packed into a 4k ROM. A trully brilliant bit of optimising of existing code segments. Neat! My record was re-writing a set of applications such that the finished article had six times the original functionality, took up a tenth of the original memory requirements, and ran twenty times faster... Can't for the life of me remember who the work was attributed too - but I rather think he'd be a rather rich dude these days. Either that or he got ripped off so bad that he quit in disgust. Pity the poor dude who wrote the original spreadsheet. He sold the exclusive rights for it to Lotus Development Corp. for peanuts... Regards, Ozz.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
The problem today is that most programmers write for a wide set of hardware. That is what has a lot of developers excited about MS's XBox gaming console. It uses PC parts and is standarized. They can write for the metal (err..silicon) instead of having to use hardware abstraction layers. That is why the XBox and other consoles make do with much less resourcesbecause every machine is exactly the same. dwyatt - Original Message - From: "Austin L. Denyer" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "List Linux-Mandrake" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2000 2:25 PM Subject: Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.] Ha! I know tricks like that one too! I had a machine like that, and wrote a simple but functioning accounting system in it :) One of my colleagues once tried to write a program to calculate the performance characteristics of large-bore oil hoses, and ran out of memory on a 16k machine. I then wrote the thing myself in ... wait for it ... 450 BYTES! Needless to say, it was completely devoid of any eye candy, but it worked (well, I wrote it in an evening...) Out of interest, what machines were you using? How long ago? Hahahaha!! Memories are coming back indeed... And even where you needed more speed than the machine could actually deliver, you'd have to fool the processor, or invent strange code to steal a cycle here or there... Oh yes. Some of the memory saving tricks were neat too. I used to use existing constants to save precious register space (pi/pi for 1, pi-pi for 0, etc.). Another advantage to programming at that level was this: You knew the value of each op. code. You knew the location in which you stored it in memory. Therefore, you could use these codes for constants too. For example, if the instruction LDA (LoaD Accumulator) was 0fh (15 decimal) and you had stored that instruction in memory location 02ff, then you could call the value 15 by pointing to 02ff. Self-modifying code was fun too, especially when someone else tried to parse it #;-D I agree. People that learn to program these days, on visual such and so, can't understand that you can write a complete program in less than 500Kbytes. I can't wait to get back into it with Linux. One of these days Regards, Ozz.
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
John Rye wrote: Paul wrote: It was Sep 30, 2000, 16:48, when Austin L. Denyer keyboarded: I remember having many hours of fun with the Z80 as well (actually an 8080A). I had a version of the old arcade game 'Space Invaders' that ran in under one kilobyte of RAM! Eat yer heart out, Mr. Gates... Ha! I know tricks like that one too! I had a machine like that, and wrote a simple but functioning accounting system in it :) Oh, the delights of having to load every calculation into the accumulator for every operation. The fun of having to initialize the data direction of a port before you could use it. The pain of placing redundant instructions inside nested loops to achieve time delays, calculated manually by the instruction time for each operation. Hahahaha!! Memories are coming back indeed... And even where you needed more speed than the machine could actually deliver, you'd have to fool the processor, or invent strange code to steal a cycle here or there... The programmers of today don't know they're born... One of the beauties of Linux is that it allows you to get back to tight code, and real optimizations, rather than the slow bloatware of other systems. I agree. People that learn to program these days, on visual such and so, can't understand that you can write a complete program in less than 500Kbytes. For an example of tight (and I mean TRICKY TIGHT! ) aquire and reverse engineer the original Microsoft BASIC. What had been around 48K on the PDP-11 was packed into a 4k ROM. A trully brilliant bit of optimising of existing code segments. Can't for the life of me remember who the work was attributed too - but I rather think he'd be a rather rich dude these days. Remembered the authors' name... Gates, William !!! -- ICQ# 89345394 Mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] "The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected" (The UNIX Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June 1972.)
Re: OT [newbie] Antique systems [was: Off-topic posts.]
Them were the days #;-D The machine I referred to was a strange old beast with a 6502 processor. It kept crashing because the heat melted the glue that held the stickers over the windows of the EPROMs (the UV killed the EPROMs) - we had to keep blowing them and re-programming the EPROMs. I thought all my birthdays had come at once when I finally got a QWERTY keyboard and a Hercules monochrome monitor so that I could program in assembly... I remember having many hours of fun with the Z80 as well (actually an 8080A). I had a version of the old arcade game 'Space Invaders' that ran in under one kilobyte of RAM! Eat yer heart out, Mr. Gates... One of my favorite tricks was the old 'zero-page' register - it almost halved the addressing space required, and greatly speeded up operation. Oh, the delights of having to load every calculation into the accumulator for every operation. The fun of having to initialize the data direction of a port before you could use it. The pain of placing redundant instructions inside nested loops to achieve time delays, calculated manually by the instruction time for each operation. The programmers of today don't know they're born... One of the beauties of Linux is that it allows you to get back to tight code, and real optimizations, rather than the slow bloatware of other systems. Regards, Ozz. I remember programming in computer repair class, we used the old Z80 cpu with just an alphanumeric keyboard with a ribbon cable to the MB and the old blue alphanumeric vacuum fluorescent display using hex code, cpu instrucitons, accumulator register, BC register, and all those other little wierdo registers. then we moved on to using CPM. then dos--eww. On Sat, 30 Sep 2000, Austin L. Denyer wrote: It also helps for programming. Those of us who can remember programming in raw hex using a 25-key keypad with a 7-segment LED display on a machine with only a few kilobytes of RAM know the importance of tight code. A lot of today's programmers wouldn't believe the applications we could write in a few kilobytes. Also, the tight code ran so much faster than today's bloatware... Oh well. Regards, Ozz.
