jecel

26 ms·

271.
by jecel 5y ago
I worked on a Logo computer in 1983 but never launched it. Even so I tried to keep up with the Logo community over the years. I was very disappointed to see what schools did with Logo through the 1980s. To me it seemed that the worst proble
272.
by jecel 5y ago
You might find this device interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube It does take energy to separate the hot and cold air - the incoming mixed air is at a high pressure while the outgoing separated air is
273.
by jecel 5y ago
If you don't mind publishing your project as open source then there is the option to let Google pay for it: https://efabless.com/open_shuttle_program/2 There are 40 slots, so you might not get selected. But the op
274.
by jecel 5y ago
The old Bernoulli explanation of how planes fly. As Jef Raskin liked to point out, if this were the case then an upside airplane would accelerate to the ground (just like an upside down VTOL aircraft does) but instead it can fly by just adj
275.
by jecel 5y ago
Premature optimization makes it harder to write fast and efficient code. That is because you guessed where the bottlenecks would be before you had enough information (which is why it was "premature"). The optimizations make the co
276.
by jecel 5y ago
The problem is the sloppy use of technical terms. MIPS means "millions of instructions per second" so the "p" is "per" and the "s" is "second". So it is natural for people to use FLOPS in th
277.
by jecel 5y ago
It is one big die, so they have to deal with routing around bad cores. On the positive side the wire density to the neighbors is a lot higher than you could get with chiplets.
278.
by jecel 6y ago
The commercial tools are indeed very expensive but the required data files can be as much of a problem. Normally you have to sign a bunch of NDAs (non disclosure agreements) to get your hands on the design rules and standard cell libraries
279.
by jecel 6y ago
Squeak was started at Apple. But when Steve Jobs came back to Apple and decided to kill research, they had to move elsewhere. They were able to convince Apple to release Squeak as open source (their very first attempt to do so) so they woul
280.
by jecel 6y ago
Here is a Zoom talk by Leo Brodie where he explains how he came to write his books: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--IJEl6HV2k
281.
by jecel 6y ago
Actually, at a 1905 dinner in Washington DC Santos-Dumont got to talk with a man who had been at the Wright's 1903 flight. So there is a chance that his sudden change from the 14 (lighter than air) to the 14-bis (airplane) might have b
282.
by jecel 6y ago
I think early 286 chips didn't go up to 8MHz. The IBM RT PC (the ancestor of the 6000) was only introduced 2 years after the AT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RT_PC
283.
by jecel 6y ago
Thanks for yet another great article! I was wondering about the inductor connected to the collector but you already answered in the footnote.
284.
by jecel 6y ago
He later had books mentioned in other comments: "The Cheap Video Cookbook" and "Son of Cheap Video". In these he added just a few TTLs to a Kim-1 computer and generated video using mostly software. The Sinclair ZX-80 was
285.
by jecel 6y ago
The official name when PDF was launched as "Portable Document Format". I have no idea if that was a "backronym" for some internal project name.
286.
by jecel 6y ago
What you described is known as a "Token Bus". The one developed by General Motors became an IEEE standard (802.4) for a while as an alternative to Ethernet (802.3) and the Token Ring (802.5) but was quickly forgotten. A more popul
287.
by jecel 6y ago
The pioneer was the keyboard for the Xerox Star in 1981 and it had the keys you want: https://www.digibarn.com/friends/curbow/star/keyboard/index....
288.
by jecel 6y ago
https://github.com/lisper/cpus-caddr
289.
by jecel 6y ago
My impression is that having ENIAC running made this event the place to be for anyone interested in computers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_School_Lectures This had a major impact in how computers evolved in the
290.
by jecel 6y ago
See this report about the origin of each basic RISC-V instruction: https://riscv.org/technical/specifications/risc-v-genealogy/ Of course, the various extensions might violate current patents (I would guess t
291.
by jecel 6y ago
The connection with Unix was indeed a huge factor in the popularization of C. About Ada, it is actually a decade newer than C. In 1982 I was part of a group that was keeping track of its development and had learned C from old Bell Journals.
292.
by jecel 6y ago
The RISC-V instruction set was carefully designed not to require the use of any currently valid patents to do an implementation. It is up to each processor designer to not violate any patents in their project.
293.
by jecel 6y ago
Since I design processors for Smalltalk I am certainly in favor of the ideas you present. I think the main thing that kept Plan 9 from becoming popular was that AT&T tried to make money on it at a time when Linux was already a big thing
294.
by jecel 6y ago
Essentially all von Neumann architectures have different sizes for code and data. Von Neumann's own IAS, for example, packed two instructions in each data word. Even many machines that started out with one instruction per data word (AR
295.
by jecel 6y ago
One interesting feature of the Lisp microprocessor is that it doesn't have an ALU. At that time an ALU was a very large part of a processor design and the idea was that Lisp didn't need it and not having one would allow the projec
296.
by jecel 6y ago
That is why this project is so important: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/ Except for Jon Conway, all the other people you mentioned were interviewed.
297.
by jecel 6y ago
Note that the 1987-1990 Newton was a lot closer to the iPad before it was completely redesigned: http://www.byrdsight.com/apple-newton/
298.
by jecel 6y ago
Great article! I tried to help my local university's computer museum set up a similar display but there is no comparison. About "IBM is older than you might expect. It was founded (under the name CTR) in 1911 and produced punched
299.
by jecel 6y ago
She had been recently participating the in crowd funded science fiction series "Space Command".
300.
by jecel 6y ago
There was also the three way ISA battle at Intel: 486 vs 860 vs 960. In the end they decided that legacy software was too valuable and redefined the 860 as a graphics co-processor and the 960 as a intelligent DMA to keep people from buildin

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