Re: [VideoMagia] Reparando um Vectrex

2017-03-24 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Geoffrey Oltmans wrote: > I can imagine that they employed a similar vector generator on the Vectrex. The 6809 processor had to go through the display list itself. But the analog design was very clever. To draw a vector you would use the single DAC to set the start x voltage, then use the same DAC

Re: RTX-2000 processor PC/AT add-in card (any takers?)

2017-04-10 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote on Mon, 10 Apr 2017 20:59:40 + > On 4/10/2017 4:42 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > > Were there any microprocessor chips that attempted to mimic the > > Burroughs B5000 series and natively execute Algol of any flavor? > > No, but Western Digital implemented

The iAPX 432 and block languages (was Re: RTX-2000 processor PC/AT add-in card (any takers?))

2017-04-10 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Sean Conner via cctalk wrote on Mon, 10 Apr 2017 17:39:57 -0400 > What about C made it difficult for the 432 to run? > > -spc (Curious here, as some aspects of the 432 made their way to the 286 > and we all know what happened to that architecture ... ) C expects memory addresses to lo

Re: RTX-2000 processor PC/AT add-in card (any takers?)

2017-04-10 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote on Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2017 15:21:08 -0700 > Thanks for the list--I was aware of the various Java engines and the WD > P-code engine, but had never run into the SCAMP. I just found an academic Pascal microprocessor from 1980 called EM-1 and described all the way to the c

C (was: The iAPX 432 and block languages)

2017-04-11 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Sean Conner wrote two great posts on Mon, 10 Apr 2017 21:43:29 -0400 These are all very good points. I agree I was exagerating by saying the iAPX432 and 8086 couldn't run C. After all, the language was born on the PDP-11 and that was limited to either 64KB or 128KB. So any C programs for that mach

Re: RTX-2000 processor PC/AT add-in card (any takers?)

2017-04-11 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote on Tue, 11 Apr 2017 09:37:27 -0700 > On 04/10/2017 02:23 PM, Eric Smith wrote: > > > When the 432 project (originally 8800) started, there weren't many > > people predicting that C (and its derivatives) would take over the world. > > That's the danger of a too-aggress

Re: RTX-2000 processor PC/AT add-in card (any takers?)

2017-04-11 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote on Tue, 11 Apr 2017 10:18:00 -0400 (EDT) > > From: Sean Conner > > > I really think it's for *this* reason (the handler() example) that C > > doesn't allow nested functions. > > I wouldn't be sure of that; I would tend to think that nested functions were

dataflow (was: RTX-2000 processor PC/AT add-in card (any takers?))

2017-04-11 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote on Tue, 11 Apr 2017 18:05:01 -0700 > On 04/11/2017 04:53 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk wrote: > > > I consider the heart of any modern high performance CPU to be a > > dataflow architecture (described as an "out of order execution > >

APL and descendants - was Re: If C is so evil why is it so successful?

2017-04-13 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Toby Thain via cctalk wrote on Thu, 13 Apr 2017 19:34:08 -0400 > On 2017-04-13 6:54 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > > So, whence APL today? > > Still lives on -- Dyalog, J, K, etc. Recently discovered the #jsoftware > channel on Freenode for APL fans. I consider Matlab and Julia to be spirit

Re: Kryoflux or Catweasle

2017-05-24 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Al Kossow wrote on: Wed, 24 May 2017 14:28:19 -0700 > On 5/24/17 12:58 PM, ben via cctalk wrote: > > > With typo in VHDL you have hard problem finding that single gate > > error. > > The world has been debugging 100,000+ gate systems with simulations for > a few decades now. > > Once you've buil

RE: Why women were the first computer programmers

2017-08-24 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Jay West wrote (among other things): > On a technical list with adults, I believe that when someone posts something > on-topic which has portions you do not personally like that perhaps the adult > thing is to take the points that are in-common and expand on them, leaving > the points behind that y

Re: One of the deeper dives into RISC vs CISC I've seen

2019-06-12 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Alan, > I especially appreciated he not only offered an opinion - his specific > ideas on where the boarder between RISC and CISC was - but then provided > an analysis of a bunch of processors based on those criteria and an > analysis of the outliers that challenged his criteria. It's a well

Re: Question about Apple ///

2019-07-05 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Adam Thornton wrote on Fri, 5 Jul 2019 11:38:56 -0700 > I have an Apple /// that I've had for many years; it's never worked. > > When you power it up, you get a checkerboard screen, where half the squares > are solid white, and the other half have a little mosaic pattern in them. > > Looks like t

Re: MULTIPROCESSING FOR THE IMPOVERISHED Part 1: a 6809 Uniprocessor

2019-08-06 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Ben wrote on Tue, 6 Aug 2019 13:47:59 -0600 > It was too bad the 6809 did not have a pin to indicate Instruction or > Data memory bank in use. That would of given a real unix system in the > 8 bit world, as by then (late 70s) 64kb was proving just to small for > any real use. I added a circuit to

Re: 50 yrs. ago today

2019-10-29 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
We celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Internet less than 2 years ago: > https://computerhistory.org/blog/born-in-a-van-happy-40th-birthday-to-the-internet/ The ARPAnet was a WAN (wide area network) and not an Internet, but it was one of the three networks involved in that first test on Novemb

history is hard (was: Microsoft open sources GWBASIC)

2020-05-23 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctalk
Fred Cisin advised on: Sat, 23 May 2020 20:29:28 -0700 (PDT) > But, read carefully the corrections that others made! Some things are easy to check, like the fact that the Z80 came out in 1976 when Woz was already finishing the Apple II so he couldn't have considered using it for the Apple I. Note

Re: history is hard (was: Microsoft open sources GWBASIC)

2020-05-24 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctalk
Fred, > To me, the culture clash aspect makes it one of the greatest stories of > the time. > Was Gary not taking the meeting seriously enough to be there on time, and > as a consequence, ending up being $80B behind Bill Gates, the stupidest > mistake anybody has ever made? > Or the bravest thi

Re: history is hard (was: Microsoft open sources GWBASIC)

2020-05-24 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctalk
Fred, > Quite true that Gary did not have the ruthless personality to compete. > If the roles had been reversed, Gary would NOT have become a bill Gates. > Yes, the final outcome was inevitable, although the one incident set the > path. It is fairly commonly believed that MS-DOS would not have

Re: Living Computer Museum

2020-05-27 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctalk
Alan Perry wrote on Wed, 27 May 2020 20:02:06 -0700 > That wasn't an option for most folks. They told me that they didn't accept > items on loan. > > alan > > > On May 27, 2020, at 19:33, Chris Hanson wrote: > > > > This is why people should avoid donating equipment directly to institutions >

Re: Microsoft open sources GWBASIC

2020-05-28 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctalk
Jim Brain wrote on Thu, 28 May 2020 15:54:10 -0500 > On 5/28/2020 12:38 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: > > ? TRS-80 Colour, AKA CoCo -- 6809 > Started life as a farming-related Videotex terminal.  Pics will show the > amazing similarity.  Was a joint venture between Motorola and Tandy, and >

ZX81 killers (was: Microsoft open sources GWBASIC)

2020-05-28 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctalk
Jim Brain wrote on Thu, 28 May 2020 18:15:19 -0500 > On 5/28/2020 1:24 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: > > > >> . Evidently, there exists a lower bound of functionality > >> of computing capability in the US, and the little wedge just didn't make > >> it. > > No no. It wasn't that. It was _money

Re: Microsoft open sources GWBASIC

2020-05-29 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctalk
Liam Proven wrote on Fri, 29 May 2020 14:20:53 +0200 > And I have had earnest youngsters on Twitter and elsewhere very > seriously tell me that _no_ language could even theoretically be > immune to the problems of C, because _all_ languages are implemented > in C at the lowest level. The modern va

Re: On: raising the semantic level of a program

2020-06-28 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctalk
ben wrote on Sat, 27 Jun 2020 19:15:25 -0600 > It would be nice if one could define a new language for problem > solving and run it through compiler-compiler processor for interesting > problems. That is what Alan Kay's group did a few year ago in their "STEPS" project. They wanted to implement a

Re: chaos and the LGP-30

2020-07-26 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctalk
Jay Jaeger wrote on Sun, 26 Jul 2020 19:24:24 -0500 > So, either he mis-entered something, or possibly the result of a > different state of a random number generator somewhere? He dumped the full state of the simulation to paper with six digits after the decimal point even though the internal calc

Re: Speed now & then

2018-04-11 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Chuck Guzis wrote on Wed, 11 Apr 2018 11:09:23 -0700 > I thought that Moore's "law" dealt only with the number of transistors > on a die. Did Gordon also say something about performance? That is correct. The observation that transistors would be faster and use less power as they became smaller i

Re: Int 13h buffer 64k boundaries

2018-04-19 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Chuck Guzis pointed out that the PC was built from 8 bit peripheral chips, which was where the 64KB problem came from. When I saw the design, I thought it was really cute how they were able to use one of the timer channels and one of the DMA channels to implement a DRAM refresh circuit almost "for

Smalltalk (was: Desktop Metaphor)

2018-10-23 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Josh Dersch wrote on Tue, 23 Oct 2018 07:25:41 -0700 > I've never seen evidence for any Smalltalk having a desktop metaphor (as in > the discussion at hand -- icons and folders representing files and/or data, > not merely windows, etc.). It's certainly possible that the platform was > used for exp

Re: modern stuff

2018-10-25 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk
Jim Manley wrote about a professor's experience in the iAPX432 team. Didn't at least part of the team continue the project as the BiiN / 960MX? -- Jecel

Re: R.I.P. Clive Sinclair

2021-09-21 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctalk
Fred Cisin wrote on Sat, 18 Sep 2021 13:45:04 -0700 (PDT) > On Sat, 18 Sep 2021, dwight via cctalk wrote: > > Of course, Busicom was the first programed microprocessor driven > > calculator, it wasn't the first calculator using calculator ICs. That is > > what Busicom was trying to compete with,

Re: An American perspective on the late great Sir Clive Sinclair, from Fast Company

2021-09-27 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctalk
While the American public were very ignorant of Sinclair's achievements, the US home computer makers were very worried about them. In 1983 both Commodore and Texas Instruments were working on their "ZX81 killers". https://www.99er.net/992.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_16 -- Jecel

Re: An American perspective on the late great Sir Clive Sinclair, from Fast Company

2021-09-28 Thread Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctalk
Yeechang Lee wrote on Tue, 28 Sep 2021 10:36:15 -0700 > The US industry thought that the $99 price point needed to be reached, in > part because of the Timex/Sinclair 1000's example; besides the 99/2 and > Commodore 16, the TRS-80 MC-10 is another example of the ultra low-cost > "Sinclair fighter".