On Wed, 2026-07-08 at 10:29 -0400, Frank Bures wrote: > However, bear in mind that this happened in early 70's in Eastern European > socialist country. CNC systems then were nothing more than interpreters, > reading G-language (something like a relatively primitive assembler) from a > punch tape (or keyboard in case of manual step-by-step operation). There > was no memory to speak of, no logs, nothing that we take for granted today. > What's more, we were under embargo (very effective, not like the current > sanctions against Russia) so almost no western parts were available. We > actually became sort of a legend when we created an Intel 8008 emulator > from discreet components on two Euro-sized cards, that actually ran the > system. The only info we had was a stolen Intel programming and > application manual. When the 8008 actually became available through some > Middle-Eastern country, they could simply scrap the two cards and wire the > 8008 in. I was somewhere else by then.
Now *that* reminds me of a tale I was told when studying electronics in college in the 1980s. Gutted pinball machines had been found near a Soviet embassy. The machines had the same chips in them that were forbidden by the embargoes. They'd discovered that, raided the machines, and found a way to ship them. Then some wag at the back of our class stands up and says "how the Russians launch their missiles" and mimes pulling back the spring loaded ball-shooter that fires the ball bearing into the table. -- uname -rsvp Linux 3.10.0-1160.119.1.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Jun 4 14:43:51 UTC 2024 x86_64 (yes, this is the output from uname for this PC when I posted) Boilerplate: All unexpected mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted. I will only get to see the messages that are posted to the mailing list. -- _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected] Do not reply to spam, report it: https://forge.fedoraproject.org/infra/tickets/issues/new
