Two Stop Bits | me's comments

me 6 days ago | parent | on: I Built AskMedically – Get Research-Backed Answers...
Can you please stop spamming this site? This has absolutely nothing to do with the topics discussed here.
me 40 days ago | parent | on: ITXPlus: A ITX Sized Macintosh Plus Logicboard Rep...
There's also a 1:1 replica of the Mac Plus mainboard by the same creator: https://github.com/max234252/MacPlus-Reloaded
DosFox posted his progress getting the board to work on Mastodon: https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/07/26/an-engineer-has-b...
Some of the parts for that board are a bit hard to find today. Amazingly, the components that are most difficult to find (at least here in Europe) are the angled 30-pin SIMM sockets…
(I also posted this on the related hackaday comment thread)
reply
me 63 days ago | parent | on: Apple Lisa Pascal Compiler sources
Interesting... I found one (negligible) problem: The "Compiler sources and objects exported files in Lisa TEXT format from dc42 disk images made with AppleSauce" file (http://pascal.hansotten.com/uploads/lisa/Lisa%20Pascal%20sou...) seems to be an empty ZIP file (download size is 22 bytes).
Also, some stuff seems to be unimplemented in the compiler, e.g. the GlobalOptimize function, which is called from some locations in pas-MISC.TEXT.txt, does nothing:
```
  PROCEDURE GlobalOptimize(VAR fstmt: pstmt; thisprocpn:pn);

    BEGIN {GlobalOptimize}
    END; {GlobalOptimize}
```
- Rochus 63 days ago
  > seems to be an empty ZIP file
  Same here. But the converted files are ok.
  > some stuff seems to be unimplemented
  As far as I understand, the provided files don't represent the latest compiler version. So maybe a later version had a better optimizer. But it's good to have the sources anyway, so I can use it to clarify language issues for my forthcoming Lisa Pascal compiler/transpiler.
  - me 62 days ago
    There's also some early Mac support in the compiler (there's a "MacFlag" that modifies details of the code generation). It's definitely good to have the sources and also a nice example of a compiler for my students.
- bmonkey325 63 days ago
  Not really surprised. Depending on what phase in the compilation process things called it may have been decided that an optimizer wasn’t worth the effort or too ambitious for the time budget.
me 329 days ago | parent | on: MiSTer, PlayStation 1, Nintendo 64 and the MIPS CP...
Small mistake in the article: "Incidentally both the Playstation 2 and the Sega Dreamcast utilize MIPS CPUs".
The Dreamcast uses a Hitachi SH-4 CPU instead of a MIPS CPU.
me 449 days ago | parent | on: Unix software from pkgsrc for Mac OS X 10.4 (Power...
A flashback to the good old times when OS X tried to be the best Unix workstation available and not just a bad copy of iOS… for me, 10.4 on PPC as well as 10.6 and 10.9 on x86 were the preferred versions. Good to see that pkgsrc still supports 10.4!
me 468 days ago | parent | on: When Atari shipped UNIX: 1992's Atari System V
The TT was severely underpowered as a UNIX machine when it came out (and not that inexpensive) - a Sun 3/60 had comparable features already in 1986 (I had a TT which I sold since I couldn’t get my hands on Atari System V and then got a 3/60 which I still own). By 1992, the second generation of RISC machines by Sun, DEC and others was on the market which significantly outperformed the 68030.
me 469 days ago | parent | on: 3D Printed Full-Size Macintosh - The Brewintosh
A fascinating video about a perfect recreation of an original compact Mac case (using 3D printing) with modern internals running VMac mini - including adapters for original keyboards and mice and an auto eject floppy drive!
me 470 days ago | parent | on: Sinclair ZX Spectrum Prototype
I met John Grant in Cambridge about 10 years ago at some event, he's a really nice guy who can tell very interesting stories about the early microcomputer industry in Cambridge and his later hardware projects.
Another interesting thing – the CPU used in the Spectrum prototype shown in the linked article is a Z80A made by SGS-Ates (a predecessor of SGS-Thompson). I've never seen a Z80 made by them and had to look up the logo, but they started second-sourcing the Z80 in 1979 according to (sorry, page in German) https://www.homecomputermuseum.de/sammlung/detailansicht/com.../
Here's a link to the logo: https://www.elnec.com/en/support/ic-logos/manufacturer-descr...
- bmonkey325 470 days ago
  That is some extremely eagle eyed observations about the chip in the image. Thanks for pointing it out and sharing.
me 491 days ago | parent | on: Apple Lisa Operating System Reference Manual (PDF,...
You can check out the source code of the OS and the 7/7 office applications, written in Pascal (and a bit of 68k assembler, of course) at the CHM: https://computerhistory.org/press-releases/chm-makes-apple-l.../
- Rochus 491 days ago
  And here is a tool to browse and navigate it: https://github.com/rochus-keller/LisaPascal
me 494 days ago | parent | on: A ZX81 Replacement Mechanical Keyboard
There was a clone by Timex, the T/S 1500, which was a ZX81 (with 16 kB RAM!) in a Spectrum-like case with rubber/chicklet keys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair
You can build your own ZX81 replica, there are several projects available and all components are still available since the replicas replace the Sinclair ULA with a bunch of regular 74-series TTL ICs. We used the ZX81plus38 for a soldering course with our students, this works very well:
https://github.com/mahjongg2/ZX81plus38
There's also a Sinclair Spectrum clone, the Harlequin, which is also quite simple to build.
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