8 ms·

My teen years: The transputer operating system

257 points by nanochess 2y ago

bee_rider 2y ago
Amazing! > CD path, creates a directory. Oh, that will mess with Linux users’ muscle memory, haha.
kragen 2y ago
This is so wonderful. I hope I can get your Transputer emulator running to try it. I wish I'd spent my teen years doing something so awesome. One minor grammar thing: "didn't worked" should be "didn't work", because "do" in English as an auxiliary verb always takes the root form of the verb, just as "will", "may", and "can" do. Similarly "don't exists" should be "doesn't exist".
- nanochess 2y ago
  Thanks for the suggestions! I've updated the article.
  - kragen 2y ago
    I'm delighted to have been of some service.
    - cjohnson318 2y ago
      I'm a native English speaker and the article reads very naturally. I've been learning Spanish over the last two plus years, and I'm jealous of how regular and consistent Spanish is compared to English.
      - kragen 2y ago
        The orthography, maybe? And there are no phrasal verbs, which is nice. But you have gender, you have plenty of irregular verbs, you have a significantly more complex inflection system even for regular verbs (including the subjunctive mood and the conditional tense in the indicative), and its allophonic phonotactics are tricky (though English has a fair bit of mess here too). Zapotec sounds like it would be a lot more difficult, but I think really all natural languages are equally difficult, because if it takes children more than about five years to master them, they get simplified, and if it takes children less than about five years to master them, they accrete irregularities, idioms, and metaphorical sense extensions to compress the representation of low-entropy concepts.
        cjohnson318 2y ago
        I don't know as much about language as you do, but hear me out. You can pretty much sound everything out. The irregular verbs aren't that bad; they're limited to THE highest frequency verbs that you'd expect, e.g., be, go, have, see, say, do, give, etc., and they're all irregular in fairly unsurprising ways, except for caber and andar. After about 20 irregular preterite verbs, there's three irregular imperfect verbs, and five irregular subjunctive verbs. Future and conditional tenses follow a similar pattern, and have about 20 irregulars between them. Compared to French and English, which borrows Germanic AND Latin patterns, that's NOT BAD.
        kragen 2y ago
        "You can pretty much sound everything out" is simply what I was saying about the orthography. It's partly a result of Spanish's phonological conservatism but mostly a result of the orthographic reforms by the RAE in 01726, 01754, 01815, and 01832. But that isn't even a part of the spoken language at all; it's just a property of the writing system. English written in IPA or Shavian (or my own doomed eccentric proposal, http://canonical.org/~kragen/alphanumerenglish http://canonical.org/~kragen/alphanumerenglish) would be equally easy to sound out, but it would still be English. If you were talking out loud to someone who had hypothetically learned English after such a spelling reform, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. As for irregular verbs, there are quite a lot more than 20; https://howismyspanish.com/all-irregular-spanish-verbs/ https://howismyspanish.com/all-irregular-spanish-verbs/ lists over 270 irregular verbs in Spanish, but it also says that's "over ⅓ of all Spanish verbs", so it may not be the most reliable source. There's a lot more than five irregular subjunctive verbs, and they aren't all very common verbs; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_irregular_verbs#Present_subjunctive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_irregular_verbs#Presen... mentions "moler", for example. Other uncommon irregular verbs mentioned in page include "maullar", "erguir", and "embestir". https://web.archive.org/web/20200807095413/https://socratic.org/questions/how-many-spanish-verbs-are-there-and-what-are-they https://web.archive.org/web/20200807095413/https://socratic.... says that the Manual de la Conjugación del Verbo lists 12'290 different Spanish verbs with 63 different models of irregular conjugations; the number of verbs following one of those models must be in the thousands. By comparison, English has under 200 irregular verbs, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_irregular_verbs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_irregular_verbs.
      - lproven 2y ago
        Beware of misleading first impressions... :-) https://tinyview.com/itchy-feet/2022/06/02/upgrade-required https://tinyview.com/itchy-feet/2022/06/02/upgrade-required
        cjohnson318 2y ago
        I dunno, it's not that bad. If you focus on learning the subjunctive through a set of rules, then it becomes very intimidating. If you focus on the fact that you use it to discuss wishes, desires, and opinions, then it's a lot simpler. The command form "uses" subjunctive patterns, because you're expressing a very strong desire that someone f-ing does something right now. If you say, "hey do you want me to go to the store later?" then "go to the store later" is in the subjunctive because I'm clarifying what another person wishes to be done. Describing that in a textbook is hard, but seeing it in the wild isn't that bad because you hear the command form all the time.
dang 2y ago
Submitted title was "Released my full transputer OS, K&R C compiler and utilities (1996)". We've changed that to the title on the page. (Actually we sometimes make exceptions when the author is the submitter, and I'd be happy to do that here, but the original title is pretty damn cool and will probably attract more readers!)
- nanochess 2y ago
  Wow! Thank you!
  - ForOldHack 2y ago
    Thank you. A ton of work was done, in typing and debugging as well as creating. While some of us were cutting out teeth on nix clones... You made an OS. This is amazing* worthy of praise from Michael Swaine.
    - kragen 2y ago
      Michael Swaine dreams of being able to do what Oscar Toledo G. can.
    - nanochess 2y ago
      Thanks! I love the "Fire in the Valley" book of Michael Swaine. I've read it so many times and always find it very inspiring.
- nofool 2y ago
  That's hilarious
tomcam 2y ago
All that and he has the name Oscar Toledo. I am pretty sure he’s going to be the subject of a Wes Anderson movie within five years.
- kragen 2y ago
  Why, did Wes Anderson make a movie about his father? If not, somebody definitely should.
karparov 2y ago
CD-ROMs and only 128k of RAM? Sorry, that doesn't pass the smell test. Once CD-ROMs were available, 2-digit megabytes of RAM were standard (and affordable) for home PCs.
- kgwgk 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer
  - nextts 2y ago
    Bold. In a different timeline they could have been the nvidia.
    - kgwgk 2y ago
      “Parallel implementation of backpropagation neural networks on a heterogeneous array of transputers” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18255845/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18255845/
      - nextts 2y ago
        I like how it isn't laced with superlatives too. Unlike today's papers that sound like a (well educated) used car salesman.
    - alexisread 2y ago
      Absolutely: https://www.transputer.net/tn/46/tn46.html https://www.transputer.net/tn/46/tn46.html Too bad the UK gov were so shortsighted, or that Atari, instead of making the ATW (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation) should have simply used a T212 in the ST blitter socket as a coprocessor. That way people could have slowly gotten familiar with the arch :| People are building new hardware to run transputers though: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/369254-pre-annoucement-atw8002-graphics-transputer-card-for-mega-st-and-vme/page/2/#comments https://forums.atariage.com/topic/369254-pre-annoucement-atw... so maybe this amazing code can be resurrected on real hardware! Edit: Found it. This is the paper on 3d parallel transforms: https://repository.arizona.edu/bitstream/handle/10150/611934/ITC_1992_92-0526.pdf https://repository.arizona.edu/bitstream/handle/10150/611934... Later transputers also had DSP instructions built-in.
bjoli 2y ago
I realized just this month I miss the days of being able to crash my computer completely with a typo. Such a weird feeling. I was debugging some pcie passthrough issues this week and the feeling that the computer could go dark whenever I started the VM was fantastic. It took sooooo much time, and I loved it. Of course, I hated it at the same time. But I got the same feeling as when I was writing ring0 code at 14. This text makes me relive it!
- aa-jv 2y ago
  Get yourself a retro computer and you can appreciate all that joy with renewed vigour! :) I regularly return to my old 80's 8-bit machine (Oric Atmos, FOREVER!) just so that I can remind myself how great we've got it in this day and age of near-infinite memory, the network-is-the-computer, and endless pixels for days. Nothing sharpens the mind stronger than a misplaced RTS or a failure to budget for room on the stack ..
- ralphc 2y ago
  One of my favorite pastimes on my TRS-80 and TRS-80 color computer was to type in a simple basic program that would poke random values into random memory addresses and see how long it would take to crash or do something else. Sometimes the value would wind up in the basic program itself and it would stop. Mostly it just locked up and I had to hit the power button and try again.
  - Nevermark 2y ago
    Ha! I did that with the first machine I worked with. A TRS-80 Model III. Not only was finding interesting memory locations fun, it generated interesting ideas for program features. I found the address for the line length constant 64, used by the screen scrolling loop. I think the screen was 16 lines x 64 characters. By setting the scroll width to less than 64 I could protect the right side of the screen from scrolling. So my first games had an area on the right for a non-scrolling title, author attribution, and game state info. It seemed to be a unique feature - I didn't come across any other programs that did that. Some of my first programs were text adventures. Looking back, I should have put a short room description and usable object list on the right, updating in response to actions. That would have been a significant improvement over having to type "look" over and over, as was typical for those games. Crazy times: 64x16x1 byte = a 1,024 bytes screen. Total memory was only 16k -> Today that is just a 64x64 rgba (4 x 8-bit channel) icon. But we always found a way to create our programs. I had a 4k RAM TRS-80 handheld and was able to create a tiny version of Zork on that, with a few starting and iconic rooms.
trhway 2y ago
>It was 1992 when the 32-bit transputer board add-on was built by my father. It were great times. Like aviation in 192x-193x.
raymond_goo 2y ago
Play his engine here in 3D: http://chess.hulha.net/ http://chess.hulha.net/
- junon 2y ago
  Wow I suck at chess.
eggy 2y ago
I started programming in 1977/78 in CBM/PET Basic on a Commodore PET 2001 with cassette tape drive and 32k upgrade. I loved those days. My parents didn't understand what the deal was with the costly computer I saved up for at age 13, and why I thought it was so important. It also required many late hours on my part on school nights. I moved on to assembler and C and many other languages over the years. I had a renaissance for the low-level and small thanks to you. Oscar, I worked through your, "Programming Boot Sector Games" with much joy. Your books and writing have brought back some of that nostalgia and fun for me, so thank you for that, and keep it going! It's also resharpened some dead areas and gaps I have sustained from the multiple abstraction layers of today's modern software world.
- nanochess 2y ago
  Thanks for sharing! Mine was a pretty similar experience in the eighties, because you could learn so much just by reading books and doing experiments. Recently, I got three Commodore 64 (the descendants of the PET) and I just want to type some BASIC games and start learning. I'm very humbled by the experience of writing "Programming Boot Sector Games", because like you, many people have told me about having a nice experience reading and learning with it, and I'm glad the effort was worth it.
  - eggy 2y ago
    I also bought a Vic-20 and later an Amiga 1000. Typing in programs from computer magazines. That's another thing I did working through your book rather than downloading the code. You suggest it in the introduction, and I second that! The only way to embed it into your muscles and brain. I am currently teaching my youngest chess (I'm no great player), and reviewing your code has also been enlightening. Keep it up!
hackburg 2y ago
[dead]
LoganDark 2y ago
Lots of hints of Dutch grammar in here: > if you are using macOS you'll be able to edit easily the files I find it charming though, to be honest :)
- lproven 2y ago
  The author is a native Spanish speaker, so that would be unexpected. I think it maybe points to shared features of European languages that English doesn't follow.
  - LoganDark 2y ago
    > The author is a native Spanish speaker, so that would be unexpected. Huh, apologies. I have a Dutch friend who has similar quirks in their English, and the article mentions Dutch by name (in "A Dutch operating system"), so I assumed the author was Dutch or that that quirk came from Dutch influence. For what it's worth, Dutch is not the only language that does this, I'm pretty sure German does as well, and a bunch more. So you may be correct.
leptons 2y ago
This is amazing. Nice job, I'm going to have to check this out sometime. Back around 1985 I was 15 years old and very interested in transputer processors, so much that I called up SGS Thompson, as I wanted to get the datasheets for the chip. The guy at the company was so surprised to be getting a call from a 15 year old. He didn't send me the technical info I was seeking but he did send me some brochures. That's as close as I got to a transputer :( I daydreamed about transputers and how they could be the future of computing, while I was hacking way on assembly language on my Commodore 64. I'd draw all kinds of network topologies between transputer chips in my high school english class. I had dreams of a system where adding more computing power meant just adding some more transputer chips. In my ideas, connecting a printer would also add more computing power, because the printer would also have a transputer chip in it to control print functions, but when it wasn't printing the rest of "the system" could use the CPU. Of course none of that came to pass, but it was great to daydream about the possibilities.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- nanochess 2y ago
  These brochures were amazing. Just like video games, the cover promised a lot!
zamadatix 2y ago
If the author is still reading: did you enjoy programming for "oddball" systems for the time (like the transputer) more than x86 or would you say the fun comes more from enforcing strict limitations (like fitting in a boot sector) more than system uniqueness?
- nanochess 2y ago
  I didn't know it was "oddball". I had brochures, official Inmos datasheets, and reference books about it, along magazines articles citing it as the "faster processor in the world". I believed it was pretty popular until Internet put me down in Earth, and I discovered the transputer was pretty much dead since 1994. I was already proficient in Z80 and 16-bit x86, so learning another instruction set was pretty welcome. The fun came from developing things for the first time and discovering how to actually do things, a 32-bit operating system, a K&R C compiler, and the assorted utilities. Enforcing limitations was inspired by the IOCCC, and later by my boot sector programs. The type of things you do after work, just to test yourself and have some fun.

257 points by nanochess 2y ago

Amazing! > CD path, creates a directory. Oh, that will mess with Linux users’ muscle memory, haha.

This is so wonderful. I hope I can get your Transputer emulator running to try it. I wish I'd spent my teen years doing something so awesome. One minor grammar thing: "didn't worked" should be "didn't work", because "do" in English as an auxiliary verb always takes the root form of the verb, just as "will", "may", and "can" do. Similarly "don't exists" should be "doesn't exist".

nanochess 2y ago
Thanks for the suggestions! I've updated the article.
- kragen 2y ago
  I'm delighted to have been of some service.
  - cjohnson318 2y ago
    I'm a native English speaker and the article reads very naturally. I've been learning Spanish over the last two plus years, and I'm jealous of how regular and consistent Spanish is compared to English.
    - kragen 2y ago
      The orthography, maybe? And there are no phrasal verbs, which is nice. But you have gender, you have plenty of irregular verbs, you have a significantly more complex inflection system even for regular verbs (including the subjunctive mood and the conditional tense in the indicative), and its allophonic phonotactics are tricky (though English has a fair bit of mess here too). Zapotec sounds like it would be a lot more difficult, but I think really all natural languages are equally difficult, because if it takes children more than about five years to master them, they get simplified, and if it takes children less than about five years to master them, they accrete irregularities, idioms, and metaphorical sense extensions to compress the representation of low-entropy concepts.
      - cjohnson318 2y ago
        I don't know as much about language as you do, but hear me out. You can pretty much sound everything out. The irregular verbs aren't that bad; they're limited to THE highest frequency verbs that you'd expect, e.g., be, go, have, see, say, do, give, etc., and they're all irregular in fairly unsurprising ways, except for caber and andar. After about 20 irregular preterite verbs, there's three irregular imperfect verbs, and five irregular subjunctive verbs. Future and conditional tenses follow a similar pattern, and have about 20 irregulars between them. Compared to French and English, which borrows Germanic AND Latin patterns, that's NOT BAD.
        kragen 2y ago
        "You can pretty much sound everything out" is simply what I was saying about the orthography. It's partly a result of Spanish's phonological conservatism but mostly a result of the orthographic reforms by the RAE in 01726, 01754, 01815, and 01832. But that isn't even a part of the spoken language at all; it's just a property of the writing system. English written in IPA or Shavian (or my own doomed eccentric proposal, http://canonical.org/~kragen/alphanumerenglish http://canonical.org/~kragen/alphanumerenglish) would be equally easy to sound out, but it would still be English. If you were talking out loud to someone who had hypothetically learned English after such a spelling reform, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. As for irregular verbs, there are quite a lot more than 20; https://howismyspanish.com/all-irregular-spanish-verbs/ https://howismyspanish.com/all-irregular-spanish-verbs/ lists over 270 irregular verbs in Spanish, but it also says that's "over ⅓ of all Spanish verbs", so it may not be the most reliable source. There's a lot more than five irregular subjunctive verbs, and they aren't all very common verbs; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_irregular_verbs#Present_subjunctive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_irregular_verbs#Presen... mentions "moler", for example. Other uncommon irregular verbs mentioned in page include "maullar", "erguir", and "embestir". https://web.archive.org/web/20200807095413/https://socratic.org/questions/how-many-spanish-verbs-are-there-and-what-are-they https://web.archive.org/web/20200807095413/https://socratic.... says that the Manual de la Conjugación del Verbo lists 12'290 different Spanish verbs with 63 different models of irregular conjugations; the number of verbs following one of those models must be in the thousands. By comparison, English has under 200 irregular verbs, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_irregular_verbs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_irregular_verbs.
    - lproven 2y ago
      Beware of misleading first impressions... :-) https://tinyview.com/itchy-feet/2022/06/02/upgrade-required https://tinyview.com/itchy-feet/2022/06/02/upgrade-required
      - cjohnson318 2y ago
        I dunno, it's not that bad. If you focus on learning the subjunctive through a set of rules, then it becomes very intimidating. If you focus on the fact that you use it to discuss wishes, desires, and opinions, then it's a lot simpler. The command form "uses" subjunctive patterns, because you're expressing a very strong desire that someone f-ing does something right now. If you say, "hey do you want me to go to the store later?" then "go to the store later" is in the subjunctive because I'm clarifying what another person wishes to be done. Describing that in a textbook is hard, but seeing it in the wild isn't that bad because you hear the command form all the time.

dang 2y ago

Submitted title was "Released my full transputer OS, K&R C compiler and utilities (1996)". We've changed that to the title on the page. (Actually we sometimes make exceptions when the author is the submitter, and I'd be happy to do that here, but the original title is pretty damn cool and will probably attract more readers!)

nanochess 2y ago
Wow! Thank you!
- ForOldHack 2y ago
  Thank you. A ton of work was done, in typing and debugging as well as creating. While some of us were cutting out teeth on nix clones... You made an OS. This is amazing* worthy of praise from Michael Swaine.
  - kragen 2y ago
    Michael Swaine dreams of being able to do what Oscar Toledo G. can.
  - nanochess 2y ago
    Thanks! I love the "Fire in the Valley" book of Michael Swaine. I've read it so many times and always find it very inspiring.
nofool 2y ago
That's hilarious

tomcam 2y ago

All that and he has the name Oscar Toledo. I am pretty sure he’s going to be the subject of a Wes Anderson movie within five years.

kragen 2y ago
Why, did Wes Anderson make a movie about his father? If not, somebody definitely should.

karparov 2y ago

CD-ROMs and only 128k of RAM? Sorry, that doesn't pass the smell test. Once CD-ROMs were available, 2-digit megabytes of RAM were standard (and affordable) for home PCs.

kgwgk 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer
- nextts 2y ago
  Bold. In a different timeline they could have been the nvidia.
  - kgwgk 2y ago
    “Parallel implementation of backpropagation neural networks on a heterogeneous array of transputers” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18255845/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18255845/
    - nextts 2y ago
      I like how it isn't laced with superlatives too. Unlike today's papers that sound like a (well educated) used car salesman.
  - alexisread 2y ago
    Absolutely: https://www.transputer.net/tn/46/tn46.html https://www.transputer.net/tn/46/tn46.html Too bad the UK gov were so shortsighted, or that Atari, instead of making the ATW (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation) should have simply used a T212 in the ST blitter socket as a coprocessor. That way people could have slowly gotten familiar with the arch :| People are building new hardware to run transputers though: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/369254-pre-annoucement-atw8002-graphics-transputer-card-for-mega-st-and-vme/page/2/#comments https://forums.atariage.com/topic/369254-pre-annoucement-atw... so maybe this amazing code can be resurrected on real hardware! Edit: Found it. This is the paper on 3d parallel transforms: https://repository.arizona.edu/bitstream/handle/10150/611934/ITC_1992_92-0526.pdf https://repository.arizona.edu/bitstream/handle/10150/611934... Later transputers also had DSP instructions built-in.

bjoli 2y ago

I realized just this month I miss the days of being able to crash my computer completely with a typo. Such a weird feeling. I was debugging some pcie passthrough issues this week and the feeling that the computer could go dark whenever I started the VM was fantastic. It took sooooo much time, and I loved it. Of course, I hated it at the same time. But I got the same feeling as when I was writing ring0 code at 14. This text makes me relive it!

aa-jv 2y ago
Get yourself a retro computer and you can appreciate all that joy with renewed vigour! :) I regularly return to my old 80's 8-bit machine (Oric Atmos, FOREVER!) just so that I can remind myself how great we've got it in this day and age of near-infinite memory, the network-is-the-computer, and endless pixels for days. Nothing sharpens the mind stronger than a misplaced RTS or a failure to budget for room on the stack ..
ralphc 2y ago
One of my favorite pastimes on my TRS-80 and TRS-80 color computer was to type in a simple basic program that would poke random values into random memory addresses and see how long it would take to crash or do something else. Sometimes the value would wind up in the basic program itself and it would stop. Mostly it just locked up and I had to hit the power button and try again.
- Nevermark 2y ago
  Ha! I did that with the first machine I worked with. A TRS-80 Model III. Not only was finding interesting memory locations fun, it generated interesting ideas for program features. I found the address for the line length constant 64, used by the screen scrolling loop. I think the screen was 16 lines x 64 characters. By setting the scroll width to less than 64 I could protect the right side of the screen from scrolling. So my first games had an area on the right for a non-scrolling title, author attribution, and game state info. It seemed to be a unique feature - I didn't come across any other programs that did that. Some of my first programs were text adventures. Looking back, I should have put a short room description and usable object list on the right, updating in response to actions. That would have been a significant improvement over having to type "look" over and over, as was typical for those games. Crazy times: 64x16x1 byte = a 1,024 bytes screen. Total memory was only 16k -> Today that is just a 64x64 rgba (4 x 8-bit channel) icon. But we always found a way to create our programs. I had a 4k RAM TRS-80 handheld and was able to create a tiny version of Zork on that, with a few starting and iconic rooms.

trhway 2y ago

>It was 1992 when the 32-bit transputer board add-on was built by my father. It were great times. Like aviation in 192x-193x.

raymond_goo 2y ago

Play his engine here in 3D: http://chess.hulha.net/ http://chess.hulha.net/

junon 2y ago
Wow I suck at chess.

eggy 2y ago

I started programming in 1977/78 in CBM/PET Basic on a Commodore PET 2001 with cassette tape drive and 32k upgrade. I loved those days. My parents didn't understand what the deal was with the costly computer I saved up for at age 13, and why I thought it was so important. It also required many late hours on my part on school nights. I moved on to assembler and C and many other languages over the years. I had a renaissance for the low-level and small thanks to you. Oscar, I worked through your, "Programming Boot Sector Games" with much joy. Your books and writing have brought back some of that nostalgia and fun for me, so thank you for that, and keep it going! It's also resharpened some dead areas and gaps I have sustained from the multiple abstraction layers of today's modern software world.

nanochess 2y ago
Thanks for sharing! Mine was a pretty similar experience in the eighties, because you could learn so much just by reading books and doing experiments. Recently, I got three Commodore 64 (the descendants of the PET) and I just want to type some BASIC games and start learning. I'm very humbled by the experience of writing "Programming Boot Sector Games", because like you, many people have told me about having a nice experience reading and learning with it, and I'm glad the effort was worth it.
- eggy 2y ago
  I also bought a Vic-20 and later an Amiga 1000. Typing in programs from computer magazines. That's another thing I did working through your book rather than downloading the code. You suggest it in the introduction, and I second that! The only way to embed it into your muscles and brain. I am currently teaching my youngest chess (I'm no great player), and reviewing your code has also been enlightening. Keep it up!

hackburg 2y ago

[dead]

LoganDark 2y ago

Lots of hints of Dutch grammar in here: > if you are using macOS you'll be able to edit easily the files I find it charming though, to be honest :)

lproven 2y ago
The author is a native Spanish speaker, so that would be unexpected. I think it maybe points to shared features of European languages that English doesn't follow.
- LoganDark 2y ago
  > The author is a native Spanish speaker, so that would be unexpected. Huh, apologies. I have a Dutch friend who has similar quirks in their English, and the article mentions Dutch by name (in "A Dutch operating system"), so I assumed the author was Dutch or that that quirk came from Dutch influence. For what it's worth, Dutch is not the only language that does this, I'm pretty sure German does as well, and a bunch more. So you may be correct.

leptons 2y ago

This is amazing. Nice job, I'm going to have to check this out sometime. Back around 1985 I was 15 years old and very interested in transputer processors, so much that I called up SGS Thompson, as I wanted to get the datasheets for the chip. The guy at the company was so surprised to be getting a call from a 15 year old. He didn't send me the technical info I was seeking but he did send me some brochures. That's as close as I got to a transputer :( I daydreamed about transputers and how they could be the future of computing, while I was hacking way on assembly language on my Commodore 64. I'd draw all kinds of network topologies between transputer chips in my high school english class. I had dreams of a system where adding more computing power meant just adding some more transputer chips. In my ideas, connecting a printer would also add more computing power, because the printer would also have a transputer chip in it to control print functions, but when it wasn't printing the rest of "the system" could use the CPU. Of course none of that came to pass, but it was great to daydream about the possibilities.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nanochess 2y ago
These brochures were amazing. Just like video games, the cover promised a lot!

zamadatix 2y ago

If the author is still reading: did you enjoy programming for "oddball" systems for the time (like the transputer) more than x86 or would you say the fun comes more from enforcing strict limitations (like fitting in a boot sector) more than system uniqueness?

nanochess 2y ago
I didn't know it was "oddball". I had brochures, official Inmos datasheets, and reference books about it, along magazines articles citing it as the "faster processor in the world". I believed it was pretty popular until Internet put me down in Earth, and I discovered the transputer was pretty much dead since 1994. I was already proficient in Z80 and 16-bit x86, so learning another instruction set was pretty welcome. The fun came from developing things for the first time and discovering how to actually do things, a 32-bit operating system, a K&R C compiler, and the assorted utilities. Enforcing limitations was inspired by the IOCCC, and later by my boot sector programs. The type of things you do after work, just to test yourself and have some fun.