kens

18 ms·

301.
by kens 1y ago
I've been able to handle the Pentium with 3 metal layers. The trick is that I can remove metal layers to see what is underneath, either chemically or with sanding. Shrinking feature size is a bigger problem since an optical microscope
302.
by kens 1y ago
Author here. I hope you're not tired of the 386... Let me know if you have any questions.
303.
by kens 1y ago
A bit over 6000 years old: the specific date that Ussher determined for creation is October 23, 4004 BC, an amusing level of precision.
304.
by kens 1y ago
What most people get wrong is that the immaculate conception is the conception of Mary , not Jesus, and is completely different from virgin birth.
305.
by kens 1y ago
Thanks! I lose proofreading enthusiasm by the time I reach the footnotes :-)
306.
by kens 1y ago
Author here for your 386 questions...
307.
The End of Consciousness(osf.io)
2 points by kens 1y ago|1 comments
308.
by kens 1y ago
I also find "citizen scientist" objectionable. It implies that a "citizen scientist" isn't a real scientist, so a modifier needs to be attached. (You don't see that sort of gatekeeping in programming for instan
309.
by kens 1y ago
The comments consistently describe the victory of self-promotion over real greatness. I had a strange thought: what if that applies to da Vinci too, and we don't know who the real greats of the Renaissance are. You might say, "Wha
310.
by kens 1y ago
Some thoughts: VR, fusion, non-refrigerant cooling technologies, personal genomics, silicon-on-sapphire ICs, every drug and treatment that is just around the corner, quantum computing, CO₂ capture, failed Google projects such as Google Glas
311.
by kens 1y ago
Interestingly, the nose of the plane was only preserved because someone hid it. It was supposed to be destroyed too.
312.
by kens 1y ago
Your concerns may be justified. The site says: "This repository is under review for potential modification in compliance with Administration directives."
313.
by kens 1y ago
There's a separated bike/pedestrian path on the Dumbarton Bridge, although that's south of SF. (When I was working at Sun Microsystems nearby, I saw the pedestrian path and randomly decided to jog over the bridge. I discovere
314.
by kens 1y ago
Coincidentally, I'm reading Walker's book "Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence" on the same topic. (Walker is one of the researchers in the article.) Summary: I don't like the book. The boo
315.
by kens 1y ago
The MOS Technology 6540 ROM included some on-chip address decoding. The adapter board has a TTL chip to perform this decoding, and uses a standard 2716 EPROM.
316.
by kens 1y ago
Author here if anyone has questions.
317.
by kens 2y ago
I ran into a similar issue when researching Bill Paxton, a computer scientist who worked on the Mother of All Demos. Google's AI told me that he was also known for his roles in Aliens and Titanic, but that's a different person. I
318.
by kens 2y ago
The article made this reading list seem like a good thing, but I looked at the reading list itself and it has a weird vibe. It is literally a checklist: "Check off the books as you read them." You're also supposed to rate eac
319.
by kens 2y ago
I don't know why my article from a couple of years ago has been resubmitted, but I'm here for any questions...
320.
by kens 2y ago
I'm working on the multiplication circuit in the Pentium; I've done a partial writeup: https://www.righto.com/2025/03/pentium-multiplier-adder-reve... The short answer is that multiplication uses a large
321.
by kens 2y ago
Microcode updates were first implemented in the Pentium Pro. When the original Pentium had the infamous FDIV bug, the only fix was for Intel to replace the processors at a cost of $475 million.
322.
by kens 2y ago
That register could be a Model-Specific Register; I haven't looked at it closely enough to see what it does. The Pentium is very complicated with 3.1 million transistors, so my reverse-engineering of it is essentially bits and pieces h
323.
by kens 2y ago
The Pentium's ROM appears to be slightly scrambled (see footnote 6 in my article). ROMs are often a bit permuted for electrical reasons. For example, instead of columns ordered ABABABAB..., they will be ordered ABBAABBA... and then the
324.
by kens 2y ago
You could put microprobes on the die and read out the ROM contents electrically, but that would be difficult and would need specialized equipment. Reading out the ROM visually is much easier, and there is software that can interpret images
325.
by kens 2y ago
There are some people working on the 386 microcode. Dumping the Pentium microcode ROM from the die photos would be straightforward (but tedious). The hard part is to figure out what all the bits mean.
326.
by kens 2y ago
I don't know the legal details here but I think you can do whatever you want as long as you're not violating any patents (good luck). Also, Intel claims a copyright on the mnemonics for 8080 and 8086 assembly language. Microcode i
327.
by kens 2y ago
Ha ha. Internally, the successor to the Pentium (P5) had the codename P6, but it was called the Pentium Pro externally rather than anything six-related. Instead, Intel decided to go with an incomprehensible system of naming: Pentium Overdri
328.
by kens 2y ago
Author here for your Pentium questions :-)
329.
by kens 2y ago
The "inverted pyramid" first described a visual pyramid, not a conceptual pyramid. I found an 1887 article in Time magazine on journalism, describing the inverted pyramid structure. Specifically, the top of a newspaper article (th
330.
by kens 2y ago
Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle is different. She invented that in 1985. The journalism "inverted pyramid" is much older, going back to the 1800s.

More ›