User talk:ForOldHack

Sigs on Talk: pages

We generally try and follow the Wikipedia style of signing posts on Talk: pages (so that people reading them will know straight off, without having to look in the history, who made comments, and when). There's even special Wiki syntax to do this easily; just add ~~~~ to the end of your post, and it will be automagically transformed in this sig, with the user and time. Jnc (talk) 13:21, 11 March 2019 (CET)

Hmm, something else is going on. 'ForOldHack (talk) 01:41, 12 March 2019 (CET)' gives me date and time, and ~~~~ gives me 4 tildies.

Oh, now I understand to escape the wiki process and get tildies, use ~~~~, but to get the sig use ForOldHack (talk) 01:42, 12 March 2019 (CET)

I have not seen such a funny time stamp in 34 years, when we were using uwasa.fi as a mail relay. ( Time is Wasausa, Finland ) ForOldHack (talk) 01:45, 12 March 2019 (CET)

Please don't forget; I can add the sig manually, but it's easier for you. Thanks! Jnc (talk) 14:52, 22 March 2019 (CET)

Note

I would like to print to npib78003.local ForOldHack (talk) 05:45, 27 March 2019 (CET)

Infobox line captions

The captions in info boxes are specified in the template, as are the argument names; trying to change either in the invocation has no effect.

If you want to change the 'Year introduced' caption, I'd be OK with that, but just to 'Introduced' I think might be potentially confusing without something to indicate that it's a temporal meaning - e.g. 'Date introduced', or something. Jnc (talk) 12:04, 7 April 2019 (CEST)

Introduced sounds like marketing speak, I would prefer Release dates, since that would cover both people receiving mag tapes, and downloading comparable source. I got Redhat 5.0 on the day of release, and was able to torrent it, and was able to install it quickly. I went to a user group meeting, and for the cost of $5, got 1) a backup CD, 2) a great Tshirt, 3) a great how-to manual, and 4) some nifty stickers. Needless to say, from that day forward, I saw the lack of value in Microsoft Products. ForOldHack (talk) 11:52, 12 April 2019 (CEST)

OK, 'Date released' would work in Template:Infobox Software, Template:Infobox OS, and Template:Infobox App. I'll go ahead and make that change (although it will only be in the caption, not in the argument name - if I change that, I'd have to change every article that calls those templates).

Not sure that to do about Template:Infobox Machine, etc - would 'Date introduced' work there? Jnc (talk) 16:20, 16 April 2019 (CEST)

Back to the Temporal part, We want a label to indicate its first start of general use, so that a corresponding date tag, could map to what hardware it would run on, i.e. XENIX would have a 1985 release date, and the current hardware was XTs, Turbo XTs, ATs and a few clones,

Verses ATT SYS V, I guess I see through the eyes of my first C teacher, Barry Kercheval, who liked Sun workstations, because of their OS, and their compiler. The MS-DOS C compilers at the time were hacks, Microsoft C was bad, Aztek C was a bit better, Manx C would make code easy to port from Amiga to PC, and we would get constant diffrences between those and XENIX, and the other boxes we would remote into to look at their compilers. ForOldHack (talk) 11:52, 12 April 2019 (CEST)

The way I'd handle OS's where they were released on different dates on different hardware would be to put multiple entries in the 'Date released' box (sort of like the mutiple entries under 'Capacity' here); one line for each type of hardware. Jnc (talk) 16:20, 16 April 2019 (CEST)

For RT-11, A list of boxes that it could run on, and the corresponding CPUs and memory cards that would support it, would be useful. i.e. It would not run on this hardware, but certainly would run on the current hardware of the day. ForOldHack (talk) 11:52, 12 April 2019 (CEST)

External link syntax

We generally like to give the title of our external links, using the syntax '[URL title]', so instead of:

[1]

one sees this:

Digital Equipment Corporation Indicator Panels

Much nicer for our readers! The title is formally given inside <title> tags in the HTML of the page, and displayed by the browser (often in the window title bar, but exactly how will depend on the browser and OS).

PS: You shouldn't stick a sig in additions to content pages (where it intrudes), you only need to do it on Talk: pages. The reasoning (it dates to a very early stage on Wikipedia, before even I started there) seems to be that if one wants to know where something in a content page comes from, one looks at the History of that page; on Talk: pages (especially if one is reading one later - see for example the discussion at Help talk:Introduction to Categories), one can easily see who posted a given item directly, without needing to grub around in the history. Jnc (talk) 15:25, 7 April 2019 (CEST)

Very sorry, I had forgot, and even forgot to look it up. I am so amazed by the tiny bits I have found, I only used some of those machines a few times, they were apprently very popular because they were so fantastic.

Ill follow this convention on. ForOldHack (talk) 04:57, 8 April 2019 (CET)

Sure. BTW, here is the Wikipedia sig policy, which we follow (although we don't follow Wikipedia in most things, in this one we do). Jnc (talk) 15:12, 9 April 2019 (CEST)

When a user sees this: [System 286 release notes] it had me choking with laughter. ForOldHack (talk) 10:59, 12 April 2019 (CET)

Actually, I didn't write that - someone else at MIT did (don't recall who). The only humour thing I did was the first "Alice's" hack - Alice's PDP-10, maybe? Jnc (talk) 14:36, 13 April 2019 (CEST)

new user

I don't see a new user. You are the newest user since 8 March 2019. Dugo (talk) 11:25, 11 April 2019 (CEST)

Right, you created a new page, User talk:ForOldHack/My sandbox‎‎, in the 'User talk' namespace. On this wiki, only admins can create new user accounts. Jnc (talk) 14:12, 11 April 2019 (CEST)

Yes, I understand. Page deleted. It does help a lot that you have more Wikipedia experience then I. Thanks. ForOldHack (talk) 10:35, 12 April 2019 (CEST)

Technically, you 'blanked' the page; it (and its history) are still there. It is actually possible to remove a page totally, but only admins have that ability. Please let me know if you ever want a page (e.g. that one) nuked. Jnc (talk) 14:43, 13 April 2019 (CEST)

Yes, I have grabbed the information off that page, it can go into the great bit bucket (trash/recycler/ /dev/null)

How many euphemisms can we come up with for deleting a file/page? ForOldHack (talk) 19:43, 17 April 2019 (CEST)

OK, I have deleted that page. If I misunderstood you, or you change your mind, please let me know and I can restore it. Jnc (talk) 16:45, 24 April 2019 (CEST)

No, I copied the information here. It was an experiment and it did not come out as planned. ( silent back pages ). Good to know we can bring back pages if we make mistakes.

But the more I read here about DEC/PDP/VAX, The more I agree with your respect for its elegance. I wish I had had more time with the hardware, and could have worked with it the way I have worked with PCs.

Got a Mac Performa 630CD running today, just by cleaning it thoroughly, and giving it time to ... coalesce.

It seems as though this Wiki is coming along with the company of a few devoted fans. Great work.

Visualization

This is an exercise to create a text based visualization tool to categorize memory boards and their resultant available operating systems:

Chips: Motherboard OS

1x16 DRAM    IBM PC V1      DOS 1.0 ( August 1981 ) 
                            DOS 1.1 ( August 1981 )
                            CPM-86
                            UCSD-p 

Hm... Chart:

Dos chart, and early windows, no server.

ForOldHack (talk) 10:35, 12 April 2019 (CEST)

Kirk CD set!

You can find them on his site here for sale. Its a KLUNKY ordering thing, straight out of 1993, but I got my CD/DVD set in Hong Kong no worries! Totally worth it!

neozeed (talk) 14:03, 25 September 2019 (CEST)

Thanks, All I needed was the correct search terms. Found them.

The two talks I went to were the fixing the C port, and getting VM running on the VAX, both were fantastic lectures

on UNIX history. It was nice that Kirk was so accessible, vs meeting Bill Joy at USENIX, and him walking off because he was busy.

Links: ( not on the article, so best of luck finding them.. :)

https://archive.org/details/The_CSRG_Archives_CD-ROM_1_August_1998_Marshall_Kirk_McKusick

https://archive.org/details/The_CSRG_Archives_CD-ROM_2_August_1998_Marshall_Kirk_McKusick

https://archive.org/details/The_CSRG_Archives_CD-ROM_3_August_1998_Marshall_Kirk_McKusick

https://archive.org/details/The_CSRG_Archives_CD-ROM_4_August_1998_Marshall_Kirk_McKusick

Tapes

"So I had a source tape of GNU 0.1." Do you still have that tape? Or any other old tapes? Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 14:10, 29 May 2020 (CEST)

No, I do not have that tape, or any tapes. Lost 10+ years ago. ForOldHack (talk) 09:23, 14 June 2020‎

RS-232

We actually already have an EIA RS-232 serial line interface article, linked to at the top of the article, which defines 'DCE', 'DTE' etc. Also, higher speeds were more common later, but early interfaces only supported lower speeds - e.g. the KL11 only went up to 2400 baud, but even lower speeds were common; e.g. early KD11-B CPUs only supported 110 baud. What character coding was used with 5-bit characters? With only 32 available values, there aren't enough for letters and numbers. Etc, etc, etc. Jnc (talk) 00:06, 23 June 2020 (CEST)

Ah-HA, baud is short for Baudot code, which was a 5 bit character encoding, which was 26 letters, a space and a peroid, and STOP which was carried over to Telegrams, NULL, delete, and one more... FS?!?!?! It was known as Baudot-Murry, and is still used as ITA2 "ITA2 is still used in telecommunications devices for the deaf (TDD), telex, and some amateur radio applications, such as radioteletype ("RTTY"). ITA2 is also used in Enhanced Broadcast Solution (an early 21st century financial protocol specified by Deutsche Börse) to reduce the character encoding footprint"

Why would the KD-11-B CPU support a serial link? For a debugging terminal or a logging printer?

The TTYs that were at Lawrence Hall Of Science, and Willard Jr High school,

VT-52s supported 75,110,150, 300,600, 1200,2400,4800, 9600 bps.

ASR-33s supported 110, 10 cps, but the modems, The LDS I remember had a 75/110 switch.

PDP-11/03

Whist grabbing all the DEC documentation off Archive.org, I came across a MiniMINC manual, apparently a dual 8" Floppy PDP-11/03 variant. [https://archive.org/details/TNM_MiniMINC_desktop_computer_-_Digital_Equipment_20180102_0716/page/n5/mode/2up PDP-11/03 variant. Do we have room at the VERY low end of the PDP line for this?

Real mode

I've never heard the term 'real mode' applied generally to machines, only to x86 machines. A quick Web search seems to confirm this; see e.g. Wikipedia. Jnc (talk) 14:47, 2 July 2020 (CEST)

"Real mode, also called real address mode, is an operating mode of all x86-compatible CPUs. The mode gets its name from the fact that addresses in real mode always correspond to real locations in memory. Real mode is characterized by a 20-bit segmented memory address space (giving exactly 1 MiB of addressable memory) and unlimited direct software access to all addressable memory, I/O addresses and peripheral hardware. Real mode provides no support for memory protection, multitasking, or code privilege levels. "

The word memory, occurs 5 times, and address occurs twice. I/O Does not have addresses, it has numbered ports.

Real mode does not apply to x64 CPUs.

That is what I had thought. Keep in mind, I have over 50 edits on the Wikipedia IBM PC page, mostly to reflect IBMs documentation, after all, they made the machine. The same is true of Intel, I quote the manual, because they made the processor.

There are a number of other errors (e.g. it's not just about addressing, as the intro currently implies), and the new revision is poorly organized. I was going to fix it, but as I started to do that, I realized it would take a lot of time, and I have other things I have to get to this morning, I can't just disrupt my entire day to jump on this. So I' going to have to leave it in its current state for the moment. Jnc (talk) 15:16, 2 July 2020 (CEST)

If "it's not just about addressing." and your citation says "also called real address mode" I fail to see why you cited an article that compelling supports the case.

If you would prefer only finished articles, I can edit offline, and make my own scratch pad, and citations.

I am mostly interested in the GDT of the 286 used by XENIX right now.

No its just just about addressing, and included both register file, and virtual IO, which are now features of the Intel Processor line.

Some guidance would be good. No need to disrupt your day. Thanks ForOldHack (talk) 02:30, 3 July 2020 (CEST)

A place for references, but fraught with errors: https://wiki.osdev.org/Virtual_8086_Mode

Real Mode test ASM

NVIRT8086.BIN  ; The "E" and "F" lines below create the EXE header. E100 'MZ' E102 B1 00 02 00 01 00 20 00 11 00 E10C FF FF 0C 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 E116 00 00 3E 00 00 00 00 01 FB 30 E120 CA 72 F122 13D 00 E13E 01 F13F 2FF 00 A300 MOV AX,0003 MOV DS,AX  ;next line is MOVE EAX, CR0 DB 0F 20 CG DB 66 TEST AX,0001  ;with line above & below, TEST EAX, 00000001H DB 99 99 JZ 325  ;jump to GotReal if protection disabled NOP NOP MOVE DX,0000  ;offset of 'protect w/ no paging' message DB 66 TEST AX,0000  ;with line above & below, TEST EAX, 00000000H DB 00 80 JZ 328  ;jump to WriteIt if no paging NOP NOP MOV DX,033  ;offset of 'protect w/ paging' message JMP 0328  ;jump to WriteIt NOP

     ;next line is label GotReal

MOVE DX, 0065  ;offset of 'real mode' message

     ;next line is label WriteIt

MOV AH,09 INT 21 MOVE AH,4C INT 21

E 330 'CPU IS RUNNING IN PROTECTED MODE...PAGING DISABLED$' E 363 'CPU IS RUNNING IN PROTECTED MODE...PAGING ENDABLED' E 395 'CPU IS RUNNING IN REAL MODE$' RCX 2B1 W Q

You must rename NVIRT8086.BIN to NVIRT8086.EXE and execute from the command line.