test-drb April 1998

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

122 participants
678 discussions

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 23, 14:33, Allison J Parent wrote: > Subject: Re: Re[2]: Replies to various threads > > <> The PDP-11 architecture has only 7 GP registers (since you can't really > <> the PC for just anything) but that's good for the times, and they reall > <> are interchangable, so I'd be willing to argue that it wins on that. > < > <I'm glad somebody agrees with me on that! IMHO the concept of a GP > <register is a RISC sort of thing. And, Allison, if you think RISC > <should be register-rich, I claim the PDP11 was for its date, and > <certainly was compared to micros of the 1970s. > > Compared to maybe 6800 or 6502, the 8080 had 4 16bit registers (bc, de, > hl, sp). The z80 added a second set and IX/IY. But that was only one > aspect. But you can't easily use both sets of registers at the same time (yes, I know we sometimes do, but it's a fiddle) and the Z80 is very much a single-accumulator type of beast. And as for IX and IY ;-) The original design of the 6502, incidentally, was that all of zero-page be treated as registers. They just happen to be external to the chip, which wasn't completely unknown elsewhere in those days. So in that sense it is possibly the most register-rich design of the era -- but the registers are hardly general-purpose, and the 6502 is also a single-accumulator design. > On the instructions RISC systems of the time and even later didn't have > the addressing modes and often had a distinct register load and store > instruction. The best example of that difference was an ADD (R1),@(r2)+. > Now compare that to the DG Nova and it is of a stark difference. If you count all the ways you can index with registers, MIPS processors have quite a few addressing modes. Not all are used very often, though. > Of all the micros in my collection, none are RISC save for the PDP-8 and > 6502 which in my mind come close. The 6502 has a certain elegance of instruction set. Quite a different philosophy to the Z80, in many ways, but I like them both. We used to say that you had to learn how to use the 6502, and when you did, the code was neat, but on a Z80, you just had to decide what you wanted an instruction to do, and then pick the one that did that. Exaggeration, of course. > I have: 1802, SC/MP, 6800, 6809, NEC D78PG11, 8748/9, 8751, 8080/8085, > z80, z180, z280, z8002, z8001, 808x, 8018x, 80286, 80386, 80486 and the > micro version of minis 6100(pdp-8), 6120(PDP-8+EMA) TI9900, PDP11(T-11, > F11, J-11). Showoff :-) No 8008? I always wanted a 4004 (anyone listening out there, that's a hint) and an SC/MP. Anybody remember Fairchild F8's? > Now something with a MIPS chip, ARM, sparc or some such would be a great > addition of a real RISC processor. Well, I've got all of those, and my favourite is the ARM. I've had to write MIPS assembler, and it's not great fun. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

26 years, 3 months

ansi c (almost on topic) was: [getting old punched cards read]

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 24, 12:38, Paul E Coad wrote: > On Fri, 24 Apr 1998, Captain Napalm wrote: > > It was thus said that the Great Pete Turnbull once stated: > > > > > > On Apr 24, 1:35, Captain Napalm wrote: > > > > strcpy() (at least on my compiler) will crash if any of the > > > > parameters are NULL pointers, > > > > > > That's a compiler (or library, actually) bug. You should be able to > > > copy a null string. > > > > Well, I've tried it across four platforms and five compilers > > (Linux/GCC, Solaris/native and GCC, AIX/native and HPUX/native) and > > three of the five core dumped. > > > The ANSI standard is not completely silent on the matter, but does not > define the behavior. > > "Each of the following statements applies unless explicitly stated > otherwise in the detailed descriptions that follow. If an argument > to a function has an invalid value (such as a value outside of the > domain of the function, or a pointer outside the address space of > the program or a null pointer), the behavior is undefined." Well, whether I think that's sensible or not ('cos I think you ought to be able to copy a null string), if ANSI says it's undefined, then it's not a bug. I take it back. And thanks for checking, which I was too lazy to do :-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

26 years, 3 months

[getting old punched cards read]

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 24, 17:10, Bob Withers wrote: > There's a big difference between a NUL string and a NULL pointer. Yes, but that's not what I wrote. A null string is an empty string (no characters). A NUL string would be a string with a single ASCII NUL character in it -- and rather hard to manipulate in C, since NULs mark the ends. Nevertheless, they do exist, though that wasn't what I was talking about. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

26 years, 3 months

Here's an interesting spam

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 24, 11:53, Don Maslin wrote: > On Fri, 24 Apr 1998, Pete Turnbull wrote: > > On Apr 24, 15:38, Hotze wrote: > > > Reply to the spammers, > > > > Not often a good idea, since the consensus seems to be that responses > > merely confirm that the address they used is (still) valid. > > True! However, in some cases e-mail with a copy of the spam or UCE to > the postmaster of the ISP has been productive. In the case of known spam > centers though, it is likely a BIG mistake. Yes, I should perhaps have mentioned mailing to postmaster@... or abuse@... as several responsible ISPs do follow these things up. I've had two very positive responses from sysadmins, one of whom tracked a spammer who was spoofing via his system, and one from a large ISP. In both cases, the culprit lost their account. It's worth looking at all the "Received: from ..." headers in such cases. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

26 years, 3 months

Year 2000 Bounty

by dastar＠wco.com

I'm sure this is not even an original thought, but the Year 2000 presents a special opportunity for collectors like us. Think of all the companies who are right now weighing whether or not those old mainframes that have been chugging away in their data centers for years, perhaps even decades, are worth one more upgrade to support 4-digit years or whether it would make more sense to finally take the painful route of scrapping their old iron and moving on to PCs or AS400s or whatnot. I predict a tremendous flood of old mainframe and mini hardware coming to market like so many cattle which will only peak on December 31, 1999. This is a once in a millennium opportunity! So make sure you've got plenty of space and plenty of petty cash to throw around cuz its gonna be easy pickins. Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't blame me...I voted for Satan. Coming in September...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0 See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details! [Last web page update: 04/23/98]

26 years, 3 months

Replies to various threads

by lisard＠zetnet.co.uk

On 1998-04-24 classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu said to lisard(a)zetnet.co.uk :> I have: 1802, SC/MP, 6800, 6809, NEC D78PG11, 8748/9, 8751, :>8080/8085, z80, z180, z280, z8002, z8001, 808x, 8018x, 80286, :>80386, 80486 and the micro version of minis 6100(pdp-8), :>6120(PDP-8+EMA) TI9900, PDP11(T-11, F11, J-11). :Showoff :-) No 8008? I always wanted a 4004 (anyone listening out :there, that's a hint) and an SC/MP. Anybody remember Fairchild F8's? remember, no. heard of, yes. the Great CPU list is a wonderful thing... :> Now something with a MIPS chip, ARM, sparc or some such would be :>a great addition of a real RISC processor. :Well, I've got all of those, and my favourite is the ARM. I've had :to write MIPS assembler, and it's not great fun. most risc processors are not fun to program in assembler. some risc chips - notably the novix and a few other forth cpus - look like murder to program. however, one of the design criteria of the arm was that it was to be easy to program in assembler - and the instruction set certainly suggests that it should be. (not having one, we can't say "it is", but hopefully that will be remedied before too long.) -- Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her...

26 years, 3 months

[getting old punched cards read]

by bwit＠pobox.com

There's a big difference between a NUL string and a NULL pointer. ---------- From: Pete Turnbull[SMTP:pete@dunnington.u-net.com] Sent: Friday, April 24, 1998 5:22 AM To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers Subject: Re: [getting old punched cards read] On Apr 24, 1:35, Captain Napalm wrote: > Well, I snagged a copy of it, compiled it, found a bug, and fixed it. > strcpy() (at least on my compiler) will crash if any of the parameters > are NULL pointers, That's a compiler (or library, actually) bug. You should be able to copy a null string. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

26 years, 3 months

Here's an interesting spam

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 24, 15:38, Hotze wrote: > This is very off topic, but anyway: Write a letter to the government. Writing to *my* government isn't likely to do much good against most spam, which tends to originate from US sites. All the UK ISPs I know of have an anti-spam policy anyway. > Reply to the spammers, Not often a good idea, since the consensus seems to be that responses merely confirm that the address they used is (still) valid. I hadn't thought about the free email account idea, but I'm not sure I want yet another account. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

26 years, 3 months

What's up with xkleten?

by DSEAGRAV＠toad.xkl.com

I can't seem to get ahold of it anymore, was it decomissioned or something? -------

26 years, 3 months

eBay transactions

by altair8800＠hotmail.com

Does anyone know if Ebay is a publicly traded stock? If so I would like to buy a few hundred shares. It has to be one of the most enormously successful phenomena on the net. Bob ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

26 years, 3 months

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test-drb April 1998