Slashdot Mirror
The Computer History Simulation Project
ChunKing writes "The Computer History Simulation Project is a loose Internet-based collective of people interested in restoring historically significant computer hardware and software systems by simulation. The goal of the project is to create highly portable system simulators and to publish them as freeware on the Internet, with freely available copies of significant or representative software. I can't wait 'til someone fixes me an OS/390 emulator to remind me of the days when I used to be an Ops Analyst for a major bank..."
Visitors to the website slashdot.org will by now have surely heard of the act of Moderation. This is where a contributor's post can be 'Moderated' either positively or negatively, depending on how the Moderator perceives the value of the post. There is a sliding scale of total moderation points, from -1 to 5, along with snappy summaries of the reason for moderation, such as "Funny", "Insightful", or the ever popular "Troll". An additional benefit offered to Moderators is the ability to ban a poster from contributing, by negatively moderating enough of his postings in a 24 hour period.
In order to retain some level of fairness for the Slashdot population, the Slashdot Editors (adopting the role of 'Benevolent Dictators') have implemented a scheme whereby regular users of Slashdot, chosen essentially at random, are given the ability to act as Moderators.
This underlines an inherent flaw in the system. Psychological studies have shown that in any community, no matter how small, should a random sampling of people be given the slightest grasp of power, they will immediately abuse it. There is a primal, evolutionary desire in Man to place himself higher than his peers by whatever measurement they can muster. Slashdot Moderation provides the ideal means for which a man can prove himself more equal than others.
At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law at such an early point in my thesis, I have no choice but to compare Slashdot Moderation to the systematic genocide of the Jewish community in 1930's Germany.
A bold statement, I admit, and deliberately designed to shock, but I feel the statement is necessary. I shall now offer a more rational explanation, as well as a comparison of the parallels between Slashdot Culture, and the National Socialist regime.
First, some history. National Socialism did not spring up overnight. It grew from a feeling of national bitterness and resentment at the war reparations Germany was forced to make after World War One. Germany was a broken country, populated by desperate starving people. And to the desperate, an extreme ideology begins to seem like a rational choice.
The advent of new technology forces a paradigm shift in the way the beholders of that technology think. The Christianity Meme was made wide spread by the invention of the Gutenberg press. And the rise of National Socialism was made popular because of the invention of Cinema. Here we had a new means to control the flow of information to the populace, that they are willing to unquestioningly listen to due to the 'novelty factor' of moving pictures. It is no coincidence that some of the best Cinematography of the early 20th Century came out of the National Socialist propaganda machine.
Why is this the case? It is yet another fault of man that a new means of distributing memes is perceived, due to the 'newness' of the medium, to have a greater 'validity' than older media. Those harnessing new inventions have the power to win control of the hearts and minds of others.
With the tools in place, who should the National Socialists target? Clearly, as a counterpoint to Man's desire to hold power over others, there is also a desire to resent the success of others. If someone is successful, they reduce the self-worth of their beholders. Although times were harsh in Germany in the prelude to World War II, there were still successful inhabitants of that country. Possessing shrewd business acumen as well as the contacts in other countries needed to maintain support in such a poverty stricken and broken land, who else should deserve the wrath of the populace more than the Jews?
Fast-forward to the latter quarter of the 20th Century. Computing technology is focused in niche markets, and limited to big successful companies like IBM and Microsoft. As the markets were limited, there were also limited opportunities for employment. This gave rise to a rising number of college dropouts, seething with resentment and unable to relate to society beyond the staccato clatter of keyboards and the pallid green glow of an 80x24 text display, and lacking the basic business skills (and a smart suit) needed to secure employment at one of these companies.
At this time, a new invention was beginning to take hold in College campuses throughout the world. The Internet. As with the Gutenberg press and Cinema beforehand, this new technology would grow to spread one of the most virulent memes of the modern age - Open Source Software, created as the antithesis of successful business practise.
So, the parallels between the birth of Anti-Semetic National Socialism and the birth of Open Source Software have been made. Of course, it is easy to claim that A=B without providing further logical evidence in support. So, the next task of my thesis is to provide further parallels, and bring this discourse back to the initial focus on Slashdot Moderation.
Slashdot was conceived, in it's original 'Chips 'n' Dips' incarnation, as a vehemently anti-corporate Open Source website. Roughly 10-15 years down the line from the birth of Open Source, it has become saturated with propaganda, and now forms the centrepiece of the Open Source Development Network. An authority in it's field, Slashdot's success is in no small part due to the ability of the editors to 'pick and choose' valid news articles submitted by users, and present the same old tired "Open Source Good / Closed Source Bad" rhetoric time and time again, dabbling with anti-copyright and the right of the 'common man' to remove an artist's ability to gain compensation for the work. In essence, this is similar to the 'paring down' of artistic worth in 1930's Germany. If no-one is willing to contribute valid and vibrant art to the community, then all art shall become harsh and functional, possessing a certain intimidating aesthetic.
Which leads onto Open Source's shining achievement - Linux. This diatribe is not aimed towards Linux in particular, as it is a well-oiled, well-tuned machine. A technically adept Operating System, it is worthy of admiration by any rational man. The point of this thesis is not to attack the art produced by Open Source coders, which in itself is worthy, but to enlighten all as to the political processes behind the OSS movement.
By the same scale, it is hard to fault Mercedes for the technical excellence of the vehicles which were used by the National Socialist party. But the politics behind the party are what taint the image of Mercedes' vehicles of the era. The Swastika itself is a benign symbol, found this day in such diverse locations as Pokemon cards, but is permanently tainted with the history of the acts made under its auspice. In the same way, companies switching to Open Source solutions will begin to regard the Penguin with the same trepidation as their profits fall.
It should be worth noting at this point that IBM, previously one of the world's greatest companies, has begun reporting servere financial losses, no doubt due to its adoption of Open Source practises. This epoch-making event was NOT reported on Slashdot, even though articles were submitted.
And what of the other great company mentioned above? Microsoft, aka Micro$oft, Mickeysoft, Microshaft, Kro$oft, and many other derogatory and undeserved names. Throughout the previous 25 years, Microsoft has grown from strength to strength, again possessing shrewd business acumen as well as providing products that people want. This makes them the number one target for the OSS movement. Incapable of standing by their own merits, the OSS zealot would rather attack Microsoft as a priority than produce anything of worth for their community.
Slashdot Moderators, crazed with their limited new-found power, exhibit this behavior. It is a sad state of affairs that the majority of article moderations are negative. Where is the positive feedback and sense of social contribution? Nowhere to be found. Moderators are too focused on putting their peers down to make themselves appear superior, rather than doing the hard work and becoming better on their own terms.
As the National Socialists required a scapegoat, Slashdot Moderators require a constant stream of Postings to label '-1, Inferior'. Once a posting is reduced to the score of -1, it becomes invisible to the casual user. Again, this is a parallel to the Ghettoization of Germany upon the election of Hitler.
In essence this would not be so bad, were postings to be evaluated on their own terms. However, alongside the moderation of their postings, each user has a 'Karma' value, namely the sum of their worth to the Slashdot community. As a user's posts are moderated up or down, so their Karma fluctuates. As Karma becomes negative, a user's default posting score is reduced, until they are posting at a default of -1. Again, ghettoizing PEOPLE, not just their opinions.
This ghettoization is reinforced with the often fake belief that a negatively moderated post, and therefore the poster, is a "Troll". (Is it any wonder that such a name has been chosen to describe these people, invoking mental imagery of facial disfigurement and hooked noses?) As the Jews were accused of fraud, dishonesty and being subhuman animals, so too are Trolls accused of FUD, Crapflooding, and obfuscated goatse.cx links. Quite often, these 'undesirables' are capable of providing a valid insightful comment on a topic, but because it is in opposition to the Political dogma of Slashdot they are moderated back into their ghetto. The person becomes moderated, not their opinion.
This is just the thin end of the wedge. Although, as memes are transient, it is difficult to silence an opinion, it is trivial to silence a person. Upon the rise of National Socialism in Germany, the populace were motivated by propaganda into entering the Jewish Ghettos en masse with the sole purpose of causing as much damage as possible to Jewish businesses and residences. This parallels far too accurately with the Slashdot Editor's non-discouragement of the act of IP-banning. As mentioned above, this occurs when an individual user's postings are repeatedly moderated down in a short period. They then become incapable of posting any contributions themselves. In essence, they have been silenced, regardless of the worth of their postings.
Of course, the editors claim that Meta-Moderation is the panacea to solve this clear abuse of moderating privledge. But if a Meta Moderator is presented with a list of moderations that they disagree with, such as this targetted 'silencing' mentioned above, they cannot note them as such without in turn becoming an 'Undesirable' themselves, as too many Disagreements with the Moderation groupthink also result in loss of Karma.
Throughout all of this, the Editors have claimed a false level of detachment from the acts of moderation. In a same way, as the National Socialists gathered their power and began working on their Elite Political wing, The SS, they too remained detached from the civilians working in their name. Why? Because after inspiring the populace to such acts of violence through their propaganda, they could then claim that they were only giving the people what they want.
And then began the next stage of the atrocities. The Gestapo, Germany's secret police, were recruited from the best and the brightest of Germany's elite. As is the case now, the best and the brightest of society were often shunned and ostracized in society. In essence, the Gestapo were a tightly controlled 'Geek Army' of intelligent young men with a burning, seething resentment of normal society. The perfect psychological profile for the cause.
After all, give a normal man (with an active sex life) a gun and he will use it responsibly in self defence. Give a geek a gun and he will behave according to his sociopathic logic and hatred of the world he arrogantly presumes to be distant from. Ask yourself why Slashdot flat-out justified the murder of innocents at Columbine. And then ask yourself why, even for a brief moment, you almost began to sympathize with the killers after Jon Katz' manipulative and pseudo-emotive Hellmouth articles.
How this relates to Slashdot is clear. The majority of Slashdot posters are Sociopathic OSS zealots, unable through lack of social finesse or personal hygiene to mate regularly. Sexually and emotionally frustrated and with grudges to bear, incapable in their blinkered sense of self-righteousness of accepting any dissenting opinion than the OSS cause. Now give these people the opportunity to Moderate these dissenting opinions. Of course they are going to want to silence them, by any means necessary.
Now, the Slashdot Editors have admitted taking this silence of opinion into the next stage, by moderating whole swathes of 'undesirable' posts negatively. And then permanently banning anyone who moderates said posts back up from moderating EVER again! The result of this new policy? The few Moderators with any sense of fairness and decency are removed from the moderation pool, leaving the power ENTIRELY in the hands of the zealots. Clearly, positive moderation is discouraged under this regime, which is a direct parallel with the way the National Socialists moved their own sympathisers into positions of power throughout Europe.
So how does this compare to the genocide performed in Auschwitz and their ilk? I would like at this point to explain that in NO way do I wish to belittle the horrors that were performed in the name of National Socialism. The six million innocents killed were a cry of anguish from which humanity may never recover. And a vast distance in time and scope from a few banned posters on some shitty "My Favourite Links - now with comments" website. But these stories need to be retold before the horror is lost forever.
For the only thing that we learn from history is that we never learn anything from history. Time and time again, the St. Vitus dance is played out, we make the same mistakes, and we perpetually fail to see the warning signs.
So, moderators, the next time you moderate a rational, insightful post down, maybe because you disagree with it or because it's posted by a 'Known Troll', just ask yourself this...
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
And yes, my Atari ST nostalgia was revised by one of the truly great emulators around then, PacifiST. Nowadays the best emu would be Steem - try it! Little Green Desktop has applications to use
it's in my head
There already is a S/390 emulator... now all you need is the OS... or you could be daring and try Linux on it.
Uhhhh, this really is no fun without a simulated punch-card reader so you can mess with the poor dufus who has to feed the cards.
Vital Idea
I like Mr. Supniks emulators a lot. Even though
:)
they lack visually to a real PDP-11 or a VAX
I like to use the simulators instead of the
real hardware. Call me a heretic but I'd rather
save on my electricity bill and I do take my
older systems out on a test drive once in a while.
OTOH, I'd love to get a real HP 2100 instead of an emulator
Oh yeah, you can boot NetBSD on the VAX simulator, dmesg
here..
After looking at some of the system pictures on their page, like that one, you can feel lucky you were not working in the IT field 30 years ago.
"Naughty, naughty, naughty, you filthy old soomka !"
Computer emulation in general is fascinating, not only for running PSX games, but for being able to run important packages that you simply can't reverse engineer on very old hardware.
Other efforts are MESS (built on top of MAME, and oriened towards micros like Apple 2, C64 and *many* more).
It would be great to have a *single* effort, eventually using MESS/MAME (that already have a large set of CPUs and I/O implemented), and merging in all the others.
See old versions of windoze here
Hmm, this must be the most boring thing ever. Hours of coding time spent just to make a emulator program that doesn't do anything usefull, apart from flash a few lights, or output some obscure code in punch tape format.... I can understand why emulators like 'Mame' have been popular, as they enable you to re-live the time you spent feading the ol' arcade games.... But, for Heaven sake, who is going to enjoy using these emu's once there complete?....
It may not be significant, but its definitely historical. ;)
It's just as important to remember the mistakes as the past as it is to remember the successes, lest we be doomed to repeat them.
I hadn't seen a PDP-11 in YEARS!
In some respects a worthwhile projects. In many others, tits on a bull. But still...
Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
"It is known that the ternary arithmetic has essential advantages as compared with the binary one that is used in present-day computers."
Knuth himself predicted the flip-flop being one day replaced by the flip-flap-flop.
I'd like to see this project tackle the simulation of the Setun series of Russian ternary computers.
An interesting thing you could do with a PDP-11 emulator is try out one of the winning entries from the 1984 IOCCC that requires a PDP-11 to run. Look at the entry and you'll see why. :-)
I learned to program on a Pr1me system at Brooklands College, Weybridge and Farnborough College of Technology, Hants. Great bit of kit.
No fun without the OS (copyrighted) and elusive.
For example I was one of the few people who privately negotiated to have the rights to access and modify any line of code in the Prime Operating System (PrimOS).
I hacked a lot and fixed things years before Prime did. Increasing Tape Drive block size limits, buffers, adding zmodem xfers, all sorts of things.
The compilers were superb. Awesome actually. I had all of them and bought many more.
I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying cool tools for the Prime mainframe (technically a minicomputer that was maxed out into a mainframe).
I had spreadsheets that even ran lotus-123.
Prime (PrimOS) was better than UNIX in thousands of ways.
I really miss the Prime.
But I cannot ever give out my binary or source copies, they are copyrighted by Prime and I know (suspect) the tape gens were serialized to me.
Plus its wrong.
If Prime were to release the entire source distribution of just hteir complete OS and tools, the world would be a happier place and lots of nifty things could be done with it.
What good is an emulator when the whole point of the Prime was to be untied to hardware.
Microcode was loaded from a special boot floppy into a very fast ECL circuitboard that used the microcode to simulate the legacy instructions.
But if you simulated a prime what would you simulate... equipment from 1977?, 1980?, 1985?, 1990?, 1994? They are all so similar when you get right to it.
Nahhh.... what you REALLY need is the source or binaries to the OS and tools.
MESS (like mame but for cmputer consoles not coinops) ships bios seperately from MESS because its a copyright violation to sell thos bioses.
They are easy to get on usenet.
But gigantic tape dumps of primos, or dec vax, or univac etc will never be common on irc or usenet.
hell its all worthless.
I admire the people that write the emulators.
I really do.
BUt Copyright restrictions that used to be 14 years in US, then eventually 75, and now (because of Disney Corp) up to 85 years are going to make it IMPOSSIBLE to ever enjoy emulators until 85 years from now.
I will try to hold onto my Prime tapes until 2080 for that moment.
Too bad no one will be alive that cares about the prime.
Fair use my ass. I just want to non-profit play with a prime.
Hercules is an S/370 etc. emulator, it does not emulate OS itself. It's complicate to run recent OS versions on Hercules for legal reasons, the operating system is usually licensed to particular machines.
How very interesting to note once again that Americans tend to think that everything important in computers has been American. For instance, I don't see the Electrologica machines, the X1 and X8, mentioned anywhere, even though they were the first to incorporate interrupts. Oh well. :)
Oh, some more information is at the University of Amsterdam's Computer Museum's Electrologica X1 and X8 site.
That is interesting, but its 17 billion in aid if you want to get technical, not 5 billion in aid per year.
There are lots of things that effectively make it 17 billion.
And If I were you I would eliminate the religious war crap and just stick to facts and atrocities.
You overlooked hundreds of more alarming anti-isreal human rights violation laws.
That post was only half hearted and could be made at least 10 times more shocking if you knew more.
I dont care about either side. Or any god loving fools. But I am horrified that Isreal actually soes a lot more to violate human rights that you listed.
redo your homework, or talk to a legal expert in the region.
Multics was an operating system designed for the real-time simulation of geological processes.
It took us a while for it to sink in before we worked it out.
or perhaps my friendly Pet 2000 or my Commodore 64! Those were the days - when you could actually know *everything* about a computer. Ahh, I loved having a BASIC interpreter as the OS/"shell".
Virtutech's simulator Simic was used by e.g. Suse for porting Linux to AMD's upcoming x86-64 (Hammer project). You can read more in a twelve page article available at Simic's homepage. http://www.simics.net/simics/simics-computer-febru ary-2002-w-cover.pdf
Apparently it simulates a great number of hardware as seen from the benchmarks given in the article:
Table 1. Simics performance of target systems for a variety of operatingsystem boot workloads.
Target Boot workload Instructions Time (sec) MIPS
Alpha-ev5 Tru64 2,112,119,247 354 5.9
Alpha-ev5 Linux 1,201,600,120 164 7.3
Sparc-u2 Solaris 81 1,597,537,438 284 5.6
Sparc-u3 Solaris 81 6,155,835,717 987 6.2
x86-p2 Linux2 1,299,639,608 227 5.7
x86-p2 Windows XP 3,129,351,000 1,518 2.1
x86-64 Linux2 1,299,639,608 285 4.5
Itanium Linux 4,644,372,142 1,470 3.2
PPC-750 VxWorks 1,179,516,468 136 8.7
PPC-750 Linux3 498,836,969 53 9.3
But will i be able to play the TRS-80 games that i found in the attic last week. The monitor on that great system from radio shack broke 2 years ago. I could write basic when i was six on that machine.
/me pats his trusty 386 running potato :)
:)
Its not emulated either, its a natural
if your into that sort of thing. Having cut my teeth on a real Altair/BASIC (haha) I enjoyed getting the Z80 emulator running (on linux), mounting a floppy disk (which I never could afford then) and running old Startrek type games. Then just last Jan. got into getting the ORIGINAL Colassal Cave adventure in genuine FORTRAN running on the PDP10 emulator running TOPS10. Guess who provides a prebuilt TOPS10 bootable system disk? Paul Allen. The hardest part was figuring out how DEC handled tape mounting, and finding a utility to convert files into a tape format to get them 'into' the emulator. Not only that, but once you have the PDP10 running, you can attach the terminal server to a port and have time share terminals accessable over the network, thru firewalls, etc. It was a great insight into how medium size businesses and a great many college campus computer centers were run in the late 60's to mid 70's. You can boot up Unix v5, 6, 7 - I could only get v5 running but there's a nifty chess game in /usr/games/ ;)
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Somehow the bygone days are not the same without the real sensory experiences: -The high pitched beep and generated key-click of a VT-100. -The teflon-like smooth scroll of said VT-100 -The flashing lights on a 300 baud modem. -The spastic cursor advancing at the speed of above modem. -The Pepto-Bismol pink of paper tape. -The rat-tat-tat of a line printer. -ASCII charts tacked on the wall next to a Heather Thomas and/or Locklear poster -The B.O. and discarded pizza crusts of those around you. (I guess they'll never go away). -8 inch Floppies that actually flopped. -And for the tactile minded: The mushy pop of the Timex Sinclair keyboard, as opposed to the mushy... mush of DEC terminals. Oh how I missing folding, spindling and mutilating...
Never pet a burning dog.
A married couple I know met when they were in the card stack line for the university mainframe. How do you suppose the the historical society could emulate that?
Miko O'Sullivan
Some of these old computers are still in use, but it is getting harder and harder to find spare parts when they break down.
One way to ensure longevity is to port the software, but this is not always easy. I am currently involved in a project to port a control system that runs on PDP11s to Microware's OS9. The code was all written in CORAL66, so we have to convert it to C first. For efficiecy reasons when the code was originally written, much of it is hard to understand, and there are global variables and horrible interdependencies between modules everywhere. Then there's all the hardware-dependent stuff to sort out. Altogether, it is a pretty big and ugly undertaking.
An alternative is to emulate a PDP11 on a modern machine. This is a twin stragegy (to porting) that we are also pursuing. So emulation is important, and projects like the Computer History Simulation Project are a good thing.
When the contest came around I played with it for a while, then something took over my time and I never got to check on the results until reminded by this story. For those who don't feel like clicking through all the links, there were some nice mathematical runners up, but the winner was an unusually interesting instant noodle timer.
Already these big companies are ready to sue at the drop of a hat. they want money at any exense, wont there be copyright and patent issues involve, though the historical servers may not be of any practical use now, the DMCA supporters will just try to create problems for the heck of it, correct me if i am wrong
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
While we are on wish emulaters.
I wish I had a CDC Cyber 1700 emulater with the Cyber 1820 extensions just like I use to use in 1978 (remember the Beegees and "Staying Alive"?).
I'd also love a monochrome terminal with red phosphors like I had then. You don't see those now. Some of the CRTs actually drew on the screen and they looked awesome but they were limited and the raster CRTs have taken over everywhere.
We used to waste hours playing Lunar Lander (we wrote it of course, no graphics (I hadn't even heard the word then), just numbers and it was still fun).
We've come a long way since I started 24 years ago.
http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/03/01/17362 43
My first machine was a PDP-11/40. All those twinkling lights. Just loved it! What a pleasure to program in assembler! What a shame I can't find the original OS (DOS/BATCH) for it.
Join us at the PUPS to save this beautiful little machines from extinction!
This applies especially to computing, where I often find myself in an environment from yesteryear only to hear myself say "wow, this really sucked!"
Instead of being accusatory, how about being constructive? If you feel some important machines have been left out, join in and help. Accusations are great for revving up emotions, but if you really want an international perspective then accusations and slurs are hardly the way to go.
Miko O'Sullivan
They might also want to mention the ENIAC-on-a-Chip project.
Miko O'Sullivan
I can see the day when there's a Windows XP emulator. Future hackers will be fascinated at the way the module reaches into their bank accounts and drains out money.
Miko O'Sullivan
1) Hercules emulates both S/370 and S/390 hardware.
2) As far as I know, the only modern operating system you are legally allowed to use on the S/390 version is Linux except potentially as part of your disaster recovery plans.
3) But VM/370, MVS 3.2, etc. are in the public domain. So you can run them using Hercules as a S/370.
4) MVS begat MVS/ESA begat OS/390 begat z/OS. From a user perspective, not all that much has changed! You still get the same cushy layer of JCL in the old versions of MVS. Fans of VM get to use the same virtual punch card reader in VM/370 as z/VM.
IBM will license s/390 software to those running Flexes emulation. IBM no longer sells any Iron less than 70 MIPS, so they've opened up the low end to emulators. It's not free but it's still pretty cool
Hey! He's actually got some stuff I wrote included in snippets.
Sorry. Just had to brag to the one person on here who had any idea what snippets were.
Interesting stuff, but very US orientated. There's a group in the UK doing similar stuff: The British Computer Society's Computer Preversavation Society.
They're mostly looking at rebuilding, restoring and/or simulating systems from very early on in the development of computers as we now know it. Also activities is preserving some of the earliest software, such as the first true stored program to be run.
Maybe these two groups should get together.
I can hardly wait to change a virtual mag tape or sort the virtual printouts...
Their dynamic linking and EPF format has yet to be surpassed by any other OS that I've seen. It makes Windows DLL hell all the worse by comparison.
But the Single thread per user login got old after a while, and Phantoms didn't really make up for it.
A fellow at our college wrote a full screen editor that became quite good, including word processing capabilities.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
A real rush after fiddling with the "ORIGINAL" version was to finally learn (after 20+ years), with the help of simh, how to become a wizard! And what wizards (the advent program administrator) could do! Only the original classic advent vintages preserved this feature.
..." An excerpt:
.
Someone posted more details in usenet alt.sys.pdp10 titled ".run advent, adventure fanatic
ARE YOU A WIZARD?
yes
PROVE IT! SAY THE MAGIC WORD!
dwarf
THAT IS NOT WHAT I THOUGHT IT WAS. DO YOU KNOW WHAT I THOUGHT IT WAS?
no
KJJKE
bdkhg
OH DEAR, YOU REALLY *ARE* A WIZARD! SORRY TO HAVE BOTHERED YOU . .
DO YOU WISH TO SEE THE HOURS?
yes
DO YOU WISH TO CHANGE THE HOURS?
yes
With modern graphics and 3D sound processing, I'll bet it wouldn't be too hard to add at least some of the sensory experience. The sounds would be easiest- imagine a 3D sound setup where the printer sounds like it's over in one corner, and every time you click a key, an old-fashioned loud key click comes from the location of your keyboard..
The smell of the pizza crusts and the actual feel of the keyboard would of course still have to be left to the imagination.
I'd like to see an emulator for that (or similar "classic" Burroughs Large Systems). 48-bit word, tagged words, HLL stack architecture, etc.
Apparently Unisys does actually have an emulator for the B6700's successor "A-series" machines, but it's proprietary (and maybe for internal use only).
-- Alastair
Or in my case the ubiquitious CCC "Grape Cake". Take a day-old pound cake bought at the Star Merket in Central Square, get a bottle of Grape Jelly, slice said pound cake in half and apply as much grape jelly as won't run out. For the ambitious the cake can be sliced into several layers. Share with a room full of hungry geeks at 4am and enjoy the always slightly-tacky keyboard afterwards...
Some things just can't be simulated.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Some guys are working on a portable software emulator of the TI Explorer II Lisp machine.
An LVM anyone?
http://www.unlambda.com/lispm/
Give in to deliciousness!
How 'bout a 12mHz AT emulator? I've never seen a slowdown program that wouldn't give my 1.3gHz machine a seizure, and my life would be complete if I could play Starflight and Sentinel Worlds again...
Seriously, though, this is one cool project. The one thing that will always send me into a nostalgic frenzy is old computer stuff. My dad has a warehouse full of '80s vintage Atari stuff, and if the emulators for the brand weren't so good I would have long since built my ST machine...
Here's an emulator that runs on a Palm.
Toggle switches. Ah, now that's a user interface!
Anyone else remember the 1802?
I made a wallet-sized PDP-11 (see photo) using these tools.
I put the simh PDP-11 emulator and unix_v7_rl.dsk along with the following script onto a CF card formatted as a DOS FAT partition.
You have to type those last two lines manually to the PDP-11's boot prompt.
I'm ready to roll with a PDP-11 in my wallet (or, if you include the $9.95 CF-USB (Linux driver) card, in my Penguin Mints container, which matches the black and yellow 48MB Lexar card I got on sale at Fry's for $19.95).
Total cost for a PDP-11 running Unix: $29.90, mints not included.
BTW, the default V7 "root" password is "root" (I ran John the Ripper and it took 0.00002 seconds).
Like erosion of big peaks into round hills?
Or like that volcano which killed everybody in Pompeii? (Vesuvius? Etna?)
Please tell funnier jokes. Or explain this one 'cause I didn't get it.
+5, funny... Hah! With some many good jokes over here getting zero!
Dude, you're getting a DEC.
/Brian
We have a pair of S/390 here that will run OS/390 as a guest OS under VM/CMS.
As René Magritte alluded in "The Betrayal of Images," emulations blur the boundaries between hardware and software.
- My box is a PDP-11 because all it needs to operate is a co-processor that provides power and I/O (display and keyboard) via the ubiquitous 4-pin USB connector.
- My PDP-11 will boot and keep its state in its file system and run the same on any Mac, Windows PC or Linux PC.
- My PDP-11 is similar to those who claim that their TRS-80 or PIC is a web server -- the near ubiquity of other computers with RS232 on one siade and connectivity to the Internet on the other is what makes those feats possible.
- My PDP-11 just requires a little more of its co-processor, but requiring a co-processor for operation is not new (DEC's PDP-10 systems usually had a PDP-11 front-end providing keyboard and display functions).
Given that simh will run on just about any modern computer with a USB port, in some deep sense my PDP-11 is in fact not dependent on the co-processor for its identity or functionality.And yes, there is a disk pack there, but it's inside the PDP-11. And there's even a RL driver for it, written in 11 code.
I went to there site and didn't see any references to Hercules, which has been able to run IBM S/360, S/370 and S/390 software for several years.
does anyone have a better piece of code for a spastic {colon|cursor|whatever} than this routine which is the best i have been able to hack together on my own?
yes i know it is clunky, and really dependent on my machine, since i didn't post the dynamic cursor, which changes based on system speed, but it's CowboyNeal's fault, or CmdrTaco, or somebody, 'cos they got a lousy lame filter which prevents me from posting my really fun code.
anyways. looking for a better spastic {colon|cursor|whatever}, and this is the place to find such an item (aside from possibly ebay)
void spastic(long m)
{
int i;
for (i=0;im;i++)
{
cout"\\\b|\b/\b-\b";
}
}
did i mention the lame filter sucks?
2^3 * 31 * 647
that's funny, why is it still only a 2?
2^3 * 31 * 647