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Continuing Progress On Babbage Analytical Engine (plan28.org)
These decades, people don't think much of producing a new programming language to suit particular tasks — to "scratch an itch" in the vernacular. As with so many things, Babbage was a pioneer, according to the Plan 28 blog: :
There have already been significant finds. The Notations for Difference Engine 1, dating from 1834, thought to exist, had never come to light. These have now been found and represent a crucial piece in the puzzle of the developmental trajectory of the symbolic language Babbage developed as a design aid, to describe and specify his engine, and used extensively in the development of the Analytical Engine.
RockDoctor adds, "Anyone who has been tasked with taking over a project from someone else (retired, sacked, beheaded, whatever) will recognise this feeling..."
The survey so far has identified mis-titled drawings, single drawings that have two unrelated catalogue entries, and drawings known to exist from earlier scholarly work but not located.
"The hope of the project is to have a working machine in time for Babbages sesquicentenary in 2021."
and get really hungry and do a double take
and then remember that cabbage is a vegetable and healthy so it's a bad idea to eat that
Babbage was working diligently on a project that he knew he'd never see completed; he was setting up a foundation for future generations.
That's how you know he was not only a genius, but also a Great Man.
Is this architecture susceptible? Can I look at the gears during a speculative execution branch and read protected data?
Have gnu, will travel.
As far as I know, this has already been done. Years ago. Read all about it in In the country of the blind by Michael Flynn.
Those like you, who feel so insecure about their own masculinity that they feel threatened by women, certainly should.
I sure hope they build this thing using a 3d game engine or something before they build a single part of it because not doing so could lead to some unfortunate discoveries during construction.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
...i just need a WORM drive?
In early '60's our company purchased Collins Radio C8401 computer (only one of two made). Like Colossus it had 16 bit words using 3 byte or nybble 5 bit addressable per word for Baudot tty stations. 64 kword or 128 kbyte core ram . System was built with transistor cards of two to four transistors per card. CPU logic used three or more bays of these cards all wired together in a massive (thousands of wires strung together) in a 'backplane'. Nobody ever 'touched' or went near that collection of wires. It was not a 'fixed wire cpu' as Colossus but had a programmable micro instruction setup. Its micro 'core' was made by - yes - Ford motor company. The micro core was called a 'biax'. The micro code was loaded in using an 8 level (ASCII) paper tape reader at 9600 baud - take that Colossus!! The 'paper tape' was made of mylar. Ha. There was a rumour that Collins was going to take on Big Blue by loading in the IBM instruction set. Never Happened - darn. System had usual peripherals - tape drives - however disk drives (2) were around 25 megabytes each. Each unit was size of a pickup truck - about a dozen 'platters' four or so feet in diameter - heads dollar coin sized. - massive hydraulics for head positioning - one really big drive motor. Ah the good old days when computers were real!!
Not trying to troll anyone or make fun of what is very clearly someone's passion to get this thing done, but I'm curious: could the building of this somehow make any difference to computing today?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Doron Swade was the main force behind building a Difference Engine in modern times.
His book "The Cogwheel Brain" provides a lot of detail of Babbage himself, the design of the DE (and the complexities involved) and the process of building a physical copy (should he old manufacturing techniques or modern?, should he fix mistakes in the plans?).
Babbage is the epitome of an engineer wanting to solve a problem through the most elegant means possible.
He didn't just design something to be functional.
Eg incrementing 2999999999 to 3000000000 with the obvious way to carry the ones puts enormous forces on small gears that would have to drive every cog in the register.
Instead he found a way to carry all those ones through a separate drive train with very little stress on each gear.
He also revisited solutions to find even better solutions that used either less force or less gears or less time.
He also incorporated error checking that would stop the machine if something didn't match.