On 10/28/24 22:53, Anon Loli wrote: > On Mon, Oct 28, 2024 at 05:35:47PM +0100, Christian Schulte wrote: >> On 10/24/24 03:01, Mike Larkin wrote: >>> >>> Every one of us who has worked in this area, at this level, has read those >>> 800+ page documents. Sometimes they are many thousands of pages (eg the >>> latest >>> Intel SDM or latest ACPI spec). >>> >>> Tell us what you are doing and what you want to know and maybe we can point >>> you to the right docs, but there is no short-cutting reading the reference >>> manuals. >>> >> >> I would really like to understand why this architecture stood the test >> of time. Just because it boots in 8 bit CPU mode from the 70ties not >> even capable of beating a 6502? Just because developers were not >> continuously forced to throw away all knowledge and could build upon it? >> Seems to be the reason. Intel tried to throw away legacy burdens and got >> set straight by AMD. I am currently approaching page 4000 of >> documentation. Shaking heads. Unbelievable. What I am lacking so far is >> a current PCI bus specification. This seems to not be available to non >> members who I am certainly not. Coming from a hardware background, >> documents like this >> >> <https://www.intel.sg/content/dam/doc/datasheet/io-controller-hub-10-family-datasheet.pdf> >> >> clearly were a waste of time, at least when your goal is not to produce >> mainboards. Well. Normally you would program devices directly. It even >> contains write-once-by-firmware registers. It will take some time for me >> to understand the reasoning behind this. Not questioning there are no >> reasons for doing it that way. I am just trying to make me stop hating >> that architecture. I am still failing at this task but I would like to >> overcome this. At least it has linear address space. Oh. What a wonder. >> Every 68k had this decades ago. Oh sorry. Your comments are very helpful >> to me so far so thank you. Because the machine independent parts in the >> kernel really are abstractions of formerly machine dependent parts, >> understanding the worst case of those - namely x86 and amd64 - will help >> me understand those. I am still in the process of reading x86/amd64 >> documentation even if it make me shake my head every so often. >> >> Regards, >> -- >> Christian > > I just wrote a whole big-ass e-mail about how hardware has been shit for > decades now. > I do not feel like rewriting all of it right now.... it was a genius e-mail. > > I fucking hate when my e-mail client goes bananas because it's terminal based. > Fuck escape sequences and stupid retarded Unix. > When do escape sequences actually work as intended? When? > > Anyways suckless.org rocks, and should be implied to hardware. > > Open Source is Insufficient to Solve Trust Problems in Hardware > https://youtube.com/watch?v=Hzb37RyagCQ > > How do you know the hardware in front of you actually conforms to the hardware > design you might or might not have? > You can't, it's not like software, at least you can't with existing hardware, > watch the video. > > Mud towers build on mud foundation are still mud and will collapse under mud. > > This was more-less the important stuff > Fuck I hate re-writing emails fuck me! >
Fuck. Ass. Genius. You maybe want to watch the Youtube Channels of Ben Eater [1] or James Sharman [2] for a starting point talking about hardware and how to build a CPU from scratch using bread boards. Fuck. Ass. Genius. Then start reading about what microelectronics is about or even get a degree in microelectronics. Fuck. Ass. Genius. [1] <https://www.youtube.com/@BenEater/playlists> [2] <https://www.youtube.com/@weirdboyjim/playlists> -- Christian
