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Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502

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Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502

#81

As a senior Java / CPP developer, reading what Wozniak had written, it might have been some incantation in a forgotten language. I really wish I had done more embedded and assembly at school. I can't understand it or appreciate it. Maybe SW and HW shouldn't mix, bar a few visionaries who bridge both worlds?

> Maybe SW and HW shouldn't mix

All of us who work in embedded software would disagree!

Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502

#82

The 8051 platform can present even more challenges for assembly language code developers than the 6502. It has been over 35 years since I wrote any 6502 code, and over 30 years since I wrote any 8051 code, but I remember the biggest issue on 8051 was the lack of RAM. You get a total of 384 bytes of RAM (256 bytes of normal RAM and 128 bytes of "zero page" RAM). When I needed to write floating point math functions for…

Yeah, Intel is an odd bunch. If I had to program an 8-bit machine again, I think the 6809 is still my favorite.

The 6809 was a great 8-bit microprocessor. Any CPU with a SEX instruction is okay in my book.

Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502

#83
He was 2nd author on the paper. No doubt, Woz has a well-deserved reputation for brilliance, but I wonder about the 1st author's contributions too. Anyone familiar with Roy Rankin of Stanford?

https://archive.org/details/dr_dobbs_journal_vol_01/page/n20...

Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502

#84
post #57
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regression tends to the mean. Imagine what Apple might have been if Woz's dad had been in the factory!

Steve Jobs' father was a machinist for a firm that made lasers.

That mac is awesome -Look in here.. with your one remaining good eye...

Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a senior Java / CPP developer This makes me cringe. A "senior" engineer is defined by whatever role a company slots you in. This is compounded by adding programming languages to the mix. > I really wish I had done more embedded and assembly at school. I can't understand it or appreciate it. There is no hardware involved here, per-se. What is there is the 6502 instruction set, plus binary floating point calculati…

On Linux, a full asm program with syscalls isn't too bad. Here's one example: https://jameshfisher.com/2018/03/10/linux-assembly-hello-wor...

You can have fun writing simple programs too:

https://github.com/skx/math-compiler/

Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502

#86
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people were scary good at these things early on. Not everyone was as good as Woz, of course. When you can fit the entire architecture into your head, all the way down to the chips and board layout, you'll find that you're capable of quite a lot on that platform. A human with a skillet that has scaled up as much as computing hardware has scaled up is going to be virtually impossible to find, if not actually im…

One of the things that I liked about the Apple II was that it was possible for one person to completely understand the whole system. I don't know that I'm capable of understanding my computer's keyboard now.

A keyboard is actually a good place to learn some hardware stuff. You can (relatively) easily build a keyboard from scratch and program the chip (excluding USB, which is another can of worms). They are lots of tutorials and documentation online to get you started on it

Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502

#87
For the two people who might not have seen it yet, here's that fabulous joint interview to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, where they recount the story of the (missing) floating point routines in Woz's BASIC for the Apple, and how Microsoft came to rescue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LUGU0xprUo#t=14m20s

The whole interview is fantastic.

Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502

#88

While I think Woz sets a good example, they're human - and I'm sure they've done and/or said things that are less than one might expect and which one probably wouldn't approve of or condone - or perhaps which one might even condemn. I'd caution against canonising people - it sets too high a standard; which no one real can meet.

Perhaps out of place but why are you consistently calling Woz "they"? I'm not a native speaker and it sounds very weird.

Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502

#89
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people were scary good at these things early on. Not everyone was as good as Woz, of course. When you can fit the entire architecture into your head, all the way down to the chips and board layout, you'll find that you're capable of quite a lot on that platform. A human with a skillet that has scaled up as much as computing hardware has scaled up is going to be virtually impossible to find, if not actually im…

One of the things that I liked about the Apple II was that it was possible for one person to completely understand the whole system. I don't know that I'm capable of understanding my computer's keyboard now.

Woz did a gnomdex talk in 2004 describing the power of exactly that; having the whole system in your head and being able to optimize because of that connectedness in one mind.

Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502

#90
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people were scary good at these things early on. Not everyone was as good as Woz, of course. When you can fit the entire architecture into your head, all the way down to the chips and board layout, you'll find that you're capable of quite a lot on that platform. A human with a skillet that has scaled up as much as computing hardware has scaled up is going to be virtually impossible to find, if not actually im…

One of the things that I liked about the Apple II was that it was possible for one person to completely understand the whole system. I don't know that I'm capable of understanding my computer's keyboard now.

Each button has a unique code. It's packetized as usb or Bluetooth & sent to your pc. That's it.
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