17 Jun
2009
17 Jun
'09
12:17 p.m.
On 17 Jun 2009 at 14:38, Ray Arachelian wrote:
I will say this, a computer is nothing more than a
bunch of parts that
don't do interesting things without software. Whether that software
is a specific set of applications, an operating system, or a ROM with
some sort of interpreter or debugger in it, or some code you yourself
have to type in, there's not much a computer can do without code. All
it will do is sit there and take up space and, if turned on, consume
electricity and produce heat.
Thank you for clearly stating whence my own conflict arises.
Emulation doesn't reproduce the physical experience of the machine
(unless one goes to great lengths to supplement a display on a
screen). And I'm not sure I'd want to repeat the physical
experience.
On the other hand, much vintage software is only interesting from a
historical standpoint. Given modern machines and tools, it's
possible to create far more complex software than was ever possible
on a "classic" mainframe.
While some of the non-traditional architectures would be fun to play
around with, I don't know that I'd ever want to own and maintain such
a system. I admire those who are willing to dedicate their time and
money to keep an old dinosaur ticking.
Most old computer software is fairly pedestrian by modern standards.
Stuff that took years to implement in the 1960s would probably
require weeks to replicate today. Machine speed and memory is cheap
and the graphics available to the average consumer would leave a
1960's graphics engineer agog.
Every once in awhile, I remind myself that in the dark ages, if I
could get three or four assembler runs done in a working day, it was
a very productive day. Now I can do that between sips of coffee.
That's real power--I wish my mind could keep up with the machine!
At the same time, I think that there's plenty of tribal memory left
to be accessed. Many times over the years, I've found myself saying
"What's so great about that? We had that decades ago--and it didn't
work."
The latest episode of this was an EDN article that discussed pairing
FPGAs with Pentium-class CPUs to do computations in decimal for the
financial industry. A decimal computer--who would have guessed?
--Chuck