jrdres

6 ms·

1.
by jrdres 3d ago
It may have designed as a stack to better decoding math expressions. Or they may have used stacks because Intel liked stacks at the time. It's known that the 8087 was designed to attach to either the 8087 or Intel's 32-bit chip th
2.
by jrdres 10d ago
The code makes me smile, because it's nasty . This isn't like C4, a tiny but complete C compiler which does error checking on its subset. Instead, this is worse than Sector C, which takes every shortcut and just plain assumes e
3.
by jrdres 10d ago
Yes, but compiling or modifying Snek from source is very challenging. I wish it was one single C file for an example base like Posix, instead of many files for many platforms plus a custom parser in Python (Lola).
4.
by jrdres 17d ago
Is it down? Every attempt to click the link in both Firefox and Chrome is forbidden by both browsers: "SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length."
5.
by jrdres 3mo ago
Chinese apparently was originally always written vertically top-to-bottom. (And then columns would be right-to-left.) Modern Chinese just rotates everything except the characters themselves 90 degrees to the Latin order. I also read that a
6.
by jrdres 3mo ago
Believe it or not, there once was an 8-bit computer with native Arabic. It was a version of the Z-80 MSX series by Al Alamiah called Sakhr. It seems it could switch between English, Arabic, or mixed. (In fact, this was mentioned in the OP.)
7.
by jrdres 4mo ago
A forgotten point is that modern pixel fonts all assume pixels have a 1:1 ratio: height the same as width, so an 8x8 character box is perfectly square. That's NOT true for many of the old computer displays. Most had finer resolution in
8.
by jrdres 4mo ago
Interesting. In the 70's & 80's, 8-bit microcomputers had a the same problem as old teletypes: you couldn't type in some ASCII characters even when the computer could display them. (And many couldn't.) At least some
9.
Anyone on the Internet Can Ring Your Doorbell(abgeo.dev)
124 points by jrdres 4mo ago|90 comments
10.
by jrdres 5mo ago
Huh. Works on Android phone. Doesn't work on desktop, Adblock or no Adblock.
11.
by jrdres 5mo ago
I'm confused. Should I be seeing something on this site? From the comments, there are apparently supposed to be amazing photos. But I see text, I see black backgrounds, but no photos--none at all. Neither on Firefox, nor on Chrome. Jus
12.
by jrdres 6mo ago
The CBS field-sequential color system did have one application after the 1950's: it was the system used for color transmissions from the Apollo moon landings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_TV_camera#Westingh
13.
by jrdres 9mo ago
It runs, but it would be very slow on actual hardware. I tried on a cycle-accurate emulator of a TRS-80 Model I with Omikron CP/M mapper. Most Z-80 machines of the time were 4MHz, but the TRS-80 was only 1.77 MHz. 1. Type "GUESS&q
14.
Around the General MIDI world in 12 pianos(hikari.noyu.me)
3 points by jrdres 9mo ago|0 comments
15.
by jrdres 1y ago
Thanks for the 8088 version on Github. Any chance you still have the 8080 CP/M version?
16.
by jrdres 1y ago
Wildberger has always been this way. Way back in 2007, Marc Chu-Carroll's "Good Math Bad Math" highlighted Wildberger: "This isn’t the typical wankish crackpottery, but rather a deep and interesting bit of crackpottery.&
17.
by jrdres 1y ago
Now seems to be the trend to bring TCP to retro machines from first principles. 8088 PC's already have M Brutman's "mTCP" driver. And DogCow (D. Finnigan) has been working on and off on the "Sabina" networking
18.
by jrdres 1y ago
Oh, this is DDA, not Bresenham, for lines. An interesting point about Bresenham's algorithm is made by David Schmenk (dschmenk) on his "Bresen-Span" page: "Take note that the algorithm can be viewed as the long division
19.
by jrdres 2y ago
The nice thing about 70s-80s computer magazines (and even some books) on archive.org is the relative lack of copyright concern: they're just out there without sign-on and checkout protection. Especially the ones for the 8-bit machines.
20.
by jrdres 2y ago
Don Lancaster (outside of Apple) did that. In fact, he ignored the Mac and connected a LaserWriter directly to his Apple II, and programmed in straight PostScript. Used that language the rest of his life. All the PDFs on his site were hand-
21.
by jrdres 2y ago
I don't know enough music to tell if this is insightful, or just neat pattern-matching. A few months ago, mathematician John Baez had a series on the mathematics of various temperament and keys. Of course he knows his math, but also mu
22.
by jrdres 2y ago
One of the first CP/M C's was BDS-C. It's claim to fame was that it compiled the source in-memory, so it was at least that part was nice and fast. Certainly compared to Whitesmiths C for CP/M, and not just for the $700 p
23.
by jrdres 2y ago
As other commenters have said, C didn't actually generate fast programs for 8-bit processors, or even 16-bit processors for a long time. C is a poor fit for most of them, so assembly language was the only way to go. A contemporary sour