5 ms·
>Sega's AI machine uses a run-time Prolog-language interpreter residing in 128-K bytes of read-only memory. I really want to know more about this less than 128
by copx 3y ago
>Sega's AI machine uses a run-time Prolog-language interpreter residing in 128-K bytes of read-only memory.
I really want to know more about this less than 128K Prolog interpreter (it shares the ROM with the OS) running at only 5 MHz.
Which language features does it support?
How does it work?
Writing a useful Prolog interpreter for such limited hardware is quite a feat.
I kinda hope someone will extract the interpreter from the ROM and convert the machine code to readable ASM.
- aidenn0 3y agoWasn't the original prolog implemented on a PDP-11/20 which only had 256kb of physical address space and no virtual memory?
- pjmlp 3y agoPeople nowadays tend to be unware how little Lisp, Scheme, Prolog and Smalltalk had available for them, on the systems they were originally developed on. Which is kind of ironic when dimissing them for certain uses nowadays, on hardware that would be like super research computers for them.
- aidenn0 3y agoThat is the usual error. The one exception was when I encountered someone trying to get a minimal Lisp up and running on a microcontroller with no external memory bus. We did determine that the micro, with 16K of RAM, was less capable than the 704 that the original LISP was developed on (I could never find specific specs, but it almost certainly had at least a 733 drum, which was 8 kilo-words).