masswerk

11 ms·

151.
by masswerk 2y ago
Since the early 1990s, I had never a single Apple factory provided RAM fail, but certainly severals from 3rd parties – in the very same machines. And, of course, I've been too greedy to pay the premium… (But, in the end-run, this has p
152.
by masswerk 2y ago
That said, I've a MacPro 3.1 in production (also 17 years now – always up), which is from Apple's era of easily (or even hot) swappable parts. Apart from failing 3rd party RAM, no issues ever. – And I'm probably going to upgr
153.
by masswerk 2y ago
> so do humans very often. While I do see this argument made quite frequently, doesn't any professional effort center in procedures employed particularly to avoid mistakes? Isn't this really the point of professional work (incl
154.
by masswerk 2y ago
BTW: This is from 2012. There's also a corresponding card reader to interpret these cards: https://www.masswerk.at/cardreader/ This was a spin-off of a now long defunct custom Google search interface. Compare (whi
155.
by masswerk 2y ago
There's also a more advanced version that lets you experience the joys of punch-card programming with modern languages (JS, Perl, Python (mostly Python2)): https://www.masswerk.at/card-readpunch/ (Demo-stacks are
156.
by masswerk 2y ago
The problem is in economics and scale. Hollywood productions were pretty expensive, hence, there were few of them – and they could be tracked as known narratives. ("Ah, well, this is Ben Hur. We know this.") Gen-AI content is incr
157.
by masswerk 2y ago
Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company, which became the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), which became International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). These are the same thing, admittedly adding other businesses al
158.
by masswerk 2y ago
But it was common to encode missing two-digits data as something in the high-90s, maybe specifying a reason in the least significant digit. (I was taught to do so at university and did so myself for a project.) So, if the start date is inde
159.
by masswerk 2y ago
Notably, this is from December 1955, already on computers. There's no mention of how data was handled before this. (Also, pre-WWII, people used do talk of "Hollerith cards" in a general way – and the system started in the 193
160.
by masswerk 2y ago
Let's say, someone grew up in an orphanage in the 1940s with an unknown date of birth. This was before any computer systems and the date would have been recorded on punch-card, probably in 2+3 digits, here defaulting to `00` for the ye
161.
by masswerk 2y ago
Isn't it possible that 1875 was chosen, because of compatibility with US legacy data encoding and that then an arbitrary, but notable date in this year was chosen as the reference date (i.e., the Convention du Mètre)? I guess, the USA
162.
by masswerk 2y ago
> All this was stored on paper Rather, as also mentioned in the answers, on Hollerith cards, 5-digit encoded (2 for the year, 3 for the day of year). Punch-card appliances were very much a thing. (WWII logistics were run by punch-cards.)
163.
by masswerk 2y ago
This is not true. E.g., Safari is tied to the OS settings, Firefox has some dependencies regarding the locale of the first install, etc… Moreover, probably most people speak or can read more than a single language. There may be reasons for
164.
by masswerk 2y ago
This is close to home, geographically speaking (65km). ;-)
165.
by masswerk 2y ago
Of course, this is by no means historic evidence, it's more an example of the common notion of his appearance – and, admittedly, a rather extreme one. (And, as already mentioned, Umberto Eco kind of made fun of the semblance.) Regardin
166.
by masswerk 2y ago
> Early accounts depict him as being both very tall and strong having a big head The article, on the other hand, makes a point that the skull is quite small… (which seems to be the principal argument for the rather slim reconstruction)
167.
by masswerk 2y ago
I'm aware of this. But the article gives no reason for this choice. It's rather a "well, couldn't it be" hypothetical, provided as a quote: > “Now, it could be that on the whole we’re a lot larger now than even o
168.
by masswerk 2y ago
Isn't this reconstruction a bit on the slim side? Aquinas was reportedly, let's say, a man of portly presence. I can't find a scholarly source on the matter, at the moment, but here are two quotes I found on the website of a
169.
by masswerk 2y ago
Notably, the Motorola 6800 has decrement and increment for the accumulator, both of them. It also features an indexed address mode that is somewhat reverse to how the 6502 does it: there's only one index register (X), but this is of 16
170.
by masswerk 2y ago
I tend to think of them as slow registers, since they provide crucial functionality, as in pre-indexed and post-indexed indirect address modes. There is simply no indirect addressing on the 6502 without them. But the notion of "local v
171.
by masswerk 2y ago
Well, on the 6510 address $01 is a port register and address $00 the related data direction register. Therefore, C64 folks tend to ignore these addresses. (So there are just 254 usable zeropage addresses on the 6510, while on a stock 6502 a
172.
by masswerk 2y ago
Also, compare the "zeropage indirect" address mode of the WDC 65C02, which does exactly this w/o involving any of the index registers.
173.
by masswerk 2y ago
I think, this is much about another major difference in the history of both designs: while originally for a different architecture, the DP2200 processor / Intel 8008 was meant to be a CPU for a small computer system from the beginning.
174.
by masswerk 2y ago
Another way to put it is that in SBC context the carry provides for the bit required to turn ones' complement into two's complement (all bits flipped + 1). If it's clear, we fall short by one (so we remain in ones' compl
175.
by masswerk 2y ago
I guess, it's a matter of perspective. The Z80 is derived from the 8008 (actually the 8080), which was an on-a-chip implementation of the processor of the Datapoint 2200. Notably, the DP2200 was designed around an early Intel shift-reg
176.
by masswerk 2y ago
There are some basic debugging notes by Martin Piper: https://github.com/martinpiper/DebuggingDetails/blob/main/Ni... For better understanding: The demo starts with a magician character drawn in the cent
177.
by masswerk 2y ago
I can kind of see why this should have been. The 1401, which was really intended as a replacement for IBM's punchcard appliances, was widely known as IBM's small mainframe. On the other hand, there are the 701, things like the 703
178.
by masswerk 2y ago
Great article! Another (mid-late) data point may be the original NeXT brochure[1], which claims the NeXT to be "a mainframe on two chips". It provides a definition along the lines of a throughput oriented architecture and peripher
179.
by masswerk 2y ago
Regarding the BeOS screenshot: mind that this is not regular BeOS, but the OS X-like "Baqua" appearance of the eOS 5.1d0 developer release, which never saw a regular release. (I'm taking no offence, but it may be important to
180.
by masswerk 2y ago
What I like to do: - have HTML files for the individual pages/posts (I like the freedom that custom HTML provides) - have a script file consisting just of a single array of meta data blocks for the individual posts (headline, descripti

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