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  I finally have some appreciation for machine-readable "tape labels," which were used on 9-track tape starting in 1965, and it's compatible successors, up to the present, after reading IBM OS Tape Labels, form GC28-6680-5, April 1973. ANSI specified an equivalent, using ASCII rather than EBCDIC, in the X3.27-1978 standard. 1/

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

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  @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.

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  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.

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  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.

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

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  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

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  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/

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  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.

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

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

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  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/

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  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

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  What a millennium, huh?

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

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  I've been staying at home.

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  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

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  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.

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  @Cookies@mstdn.social Me too.

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  @Daojoan@mastodon.social Also, no one actually knows how to build the right thing, but the race you have described means that they can't even expend any resources on research toward finding the right thing. It's the same common but faulty syllogism routinely employed by politicians: We have to do something. X is something. Therefore we have to do X (where X is known to be the wrong thing, but we try to pretend that it is not)

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  @andybalaam@mastodon.social Actual 2003 IBM ad about Magic Business Beans. Spoiler, even IBM said they don't exist. Though now, almost all upper management is convinced that so-called "AI" is magic business beans. https://youtu.be/_djpz16uRK8

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  @Gingeh@tech.lgbt Measure with micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with axe.

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  @sundogplanets@mastodon.social The sky belongs to _everyone_. Oligarchs want to take it away from us.

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  My hovercraft is full of eels.

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  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.

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

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  @yetiinabox @quixoticgeek Not me, but several of my friends do.

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  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

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  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