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• Post #4482336

  Writing a FORTRAN-66 parser in C++. As one does.

• Post #4347214

  @chadmccullough@mastodon.bsd.cafe I used to joke with my friends who were hardware engineers, that they had it easy. They just had to wire together the pins with the same names.

• Post #4259520

  I saw a toot to which I really wanted to reply, as a smartass, "pics or it didn't happen," but in this specific case, in doing so, I would have been a major asshole. I managed to restrain myself and not reply. I try not to give in to my asshole tendencies. I'm not always successful. Sometimes my inner asshole manages to do something before my brain recognizes it for what it is.

• Post #4252880

  Just had a disaster of an online meeting with my client. They were having technical issues with audio at their end, but apparently I did at my end, too. First I could hear them, but they couldn't hear me. Tried adjusting my microphone settings. Rebooted my computer and rejoined. Then they could hear me, but I couldn't hear any of them. Modern business communications is going great.

• Post #4189687

  I just read William Gibson's _Neuromancer_ for the fourth time, or thereabouts. It's still effing amazing!

• Post #4004711

  I just created EDA devices/symbols/footprints for Socket 7, as used by 90+ MHz Pentium, Pentium MMX, some Pentium Overdrive, and some other vendor's processors, based on the spec in Chapter 17 of the 1997 edition of Intel's _Pentium Processor Family Developer's Manual_ (order number unknown). I'm thinking about making a homebrew Pentium (P54C or P55) system, by which I mean, not using a purchased motherboard or an Intel chipset. #retrocomputing

• Post #3977052

  Microsoft 8080/Z80 .REL files are divided into modules, which normally are bracketed with a module-name item and a module-end item. I assumed that nothing other than module-name items and file-end items were allowed outside of modules. But you know what happens when we assume. #Microsoft #CPM 1/

• Post #3970396

  I'm writing C++ code to parse and eventually link, locate, and load CP/M .REL files (a Digital Research file format used by RMAC and LINK-80, then extended by Microsoft). As one does.

• Post #3877404

  The air concentration in the smoke is getting low. :-(

• Post #3848219

  Me brian no werk so gud. Need tranplant. Must find doner.

• Post #3739927

  The Asus Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE motherboard (for a AMD Threadripper Pro processor) has an ASPEED2600 for BMC/IPMI/VGA. I have a discrete graphics card in a PCIe slot. As far as I can tell, the switch on the motherboard that is SUPPOSED to disable the VGA does not ACTUALLY do an FSM-damned thing. Even in the disabled position, all BIOS display, and all early-stage boot messages (e.g. for boot managers, and boot up messages before a graphics console is started) go to the VGA port. 1/

• Post #3712615

  Buying an old Pentium 133 motherboard (AT), CPU, and RAM, and various adapters for using an ATX PS, SATA SSD, etc. And an old ATI PCI VGA card. As one does. Too bad I don't still have my old one from that time. #retrocomputing

• Post #3685036

  What a millennium, huh?

• Post #3663268

  A 256 GiB DDR5 ECC RDIMM sells for around $103/gram. Gold sells for about $132/gram. 1/

• Post #3659330

  I've been staying at home.

• Post #3642175

  My "modern" (read: x86) computers are all getting too old. I had a ~5 year old CPU fan and motherboard fail a couple months ago, and this week a ~7 year old graphics card. I'm counting on none of my RAM failing before the AI bubble bursts. On the other hand, my 48 year old Apple II is still working fine. And when it does break, I can easily do component-level repair. #retrocomputing

• Post #3558488

  My watch doesn't object if I tell it both that I'm in a theater, DND that I'm trying to sleep. I suppose that could be useful if my AC at home fails.

• Post #2166242

  My hovercraft is full of eels.

• Post #1934162

  Searching for something else, I just came across a new in box Noctua 40mm x 10mm 5V fan. I remember that I bought it for some specific purpose, but I don't recall what that unrealized purpose was.

• Post #1934161

  I should sell my various Raspberry Pi 5 and 500+ units now. I'll be rich!

• Post #1850133

  Some people like to tile their 24” screens with a 6x4 matrix of 80x24 xterms and use vi in all of them. The best way to punish them is to let them keep doing it. – QEMU Coding Style https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/devel/style.html#coding-style

• Post #1832350

  For an RV32IMA core design, I'm considering implementing the Sv32 MMU using a software-managed TLB, as was commonly done on MIPS and Alpha, instead of hardware table walk. This would use custom CSRs. Are there any existing RISC-V implementations that use software-managed TLB? The RISC-V Privileged spec leaves open the possibility. #riscv #sv32 #mmu #tlb

• Post #1547081

  The Apex operating system for the Apple II, Sage/Stride, Macintosh, and Amiga, has a Y2104 problem. The Apex date format has a 7-bit year, and its epoch started with 1976. AFAIK, there are no plans to deal with it. #retrocomputing

• Post #1176825

  Vance Says the Pope Should Be More Careful When Talking About Theology “In the same way that it’s important for the vice president of the United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy, I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology,” Mr. Vance said. – New York Times, 2026-04-14 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/us/politics/vance-pope-trump-georgia.html Isn't the Pope lucky, to get free theology lessons from a...

• Post #1035530

  Apparently sometimes when I read, I am still enough, and have a consistent enough heart rate, that my watch thinks I am asleep.

• Post #1035528

  Them: C'mon! Where's your sense of adventure? Me: I had it surgically removed.

• Post #1035527

  Anyone got spare National Semiconductor NS32000 (or NS16000) chips? I'm especially interested in these CPUs: NS32C016 NS32032 NS32C032 NS32332 NS32532 And these support chips: NS32381 FPU NS32382 MMU NS32203 DMA Or (blue sky) a PC532 board #retrocomputing #ns32000

• Post #907542

• Post #830967

  Dear Lazyweb, Has anyone saved a copy of the M68060 software package (M68060SP), and its documentation? This includes exception handlers to provide compatibility for the 68K instructions and addressing modes that were omitted from the MC68060 processor. #Motorola #MC68060 #M68060SP #MC68000

• Post #814146

  @Foritus The future we were promised!