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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

#151

Post by ddingus »

protomyth wrote: post #64
ananonymoususer wrote: post #58

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.

Totally. That one is beautiful, fast, fun, etc...

I keep a Color Computer 3 because it has that excellent chip in it.

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

#152

Post by Accacin »

bsaul wrote: post #118
foldr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks as though you're just looking for an excuse to go on a pre-packaged rant about gender and sex. I find it scary that an innocuous use of singular "they" (which has been in use as long as English as existed) would provoke such a thing.

I'm not native english, so it could be possible that i overestimate the change to the english language using "they" as a default pronoun implies. I'm extremely sensitive to ideology wanting to change a language to better reflect its theory. It's the first step to totalitarism, and it's almost always done with perfectly good intentions (until we start to see the damaging side effects).

Can't speak for everyone in the UK, but at least in the area I live we use 'they/they're' a lot, and I don't believe it's a recent thing. We use he/she more, but using they isn't a rare thing.

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

#153

Post by specialist »

justinjlynn wrote: post #93
vasco wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As I'm not aware of what pronouns they personally prefer, I fall back to using the singular, gender-neutral, "they/them/their". It's a fairly new usage in colloquial English but I find it to be common enough so as to not impair understanding.

As a sci-fi buff, I expected the new gender neutral pronouns to be something like zey, zem, zir, or whatever. Reusing "they" is unfortunate. And bad grammar.

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

#154

Post by zellyn »

foldr wrote: post #101
bsaul wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

completely off topic, but is this where we’re at now ? Calling someone « they » and thus create confusion, just in case he doesn’t belong to the 99.9% of the population who is just fine with his DNA, and eventhough he never expressed any kind of opinion leading you to think he isn’t fine with his gender ?

Singular 'they' is pretty well established usage by now, regardless of gender considerations. Even people who complain about it still use it: https://stroppyeditor.wordpress.com/2015/04/21/everything-yo...

That is a great treatment. Thanks for the link.

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

#155

Post by fzort »

commandlinefan wrote: post #4

I learned to program on a 6502 when I was younger - it's a little depressing that computers went and got so fast that there's no real justification for doing this sort of thing any more in almost any domain (except, I guess, if you manage to land a position developing embedded I2C drivers).

You still need to know a bit of assembly to take advantage of SIMD (even when using compiler intrinsics). See for instance https://github.com/lemire/simdjson

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

#156

Post by BurningFrog »

vidarh wrote: post #91
BurningFrog wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from being a saint, I think Woz singlehandedly jumpstarted the computer industry by 1-2 years with his genius early designs. It would be 2017 now if it wasn't for him!

I think that is a bit of an exaggeration in as much as there were plenty of other designs under way, with at least Commodore and Tandy hitting the market at the same time as Apple reached any kind of volume, and a multitude of small volume designs around. If Apple hadn't been there, people would have just bought one of the others. E.g Commodore's Chuck Peddle was part of actually designing the 6502 with Bill Mensch,…

You could be right.

I base my estimates on several very admiring write-ups on Woz's genius early designs.

But of course those kinds of stories travel better than "his designs were half decent and did the job good enough to capture an empty market", and winners always write history, etc.

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

#157

Post by jackhack »

How curious that there's a reference to Jef Raskin on the facing page (p.205). Raskin, of course, was a visionary at Apple who would go on to advocate for a version of Macintosh quite different from what Steve Jobs envisioned (but which later appeared as the Cannon Cat). (a standalone system, but also an Apple ][ expansion card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat )

And yes, Wozniak is one of the great engineers of our time. I cut my teeth on an Apple ][, and it was both amazing and mysterious to me then, as a child. Now, with 40 years of professional programming experience, the mystery is largely gone but my appreciation for the elegance of his design is only amplified.

On the off-chance he'll see this:

Mr. Wozniak, thank you for creating something that has give me a career and a lifetime of joy.

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

#158

Post by base698 »

schmookeeg wrote: post #14
redis_mlc wrote: post #10

Woz was scary good at both hw and sw (author of Apple BASIC.) If you have time, go through his various Apple documents online. I believe he was never the same after his small plane crashed. (Back then, wealthy people used small planes like ATVs, and had about the same safety record.) I worked with another hw engineer of similar ability back in the 80s. Mind-blowing watching him just pick up a pen and draw out a compl…

A 50-hour pilot in a Bonanza A36TC is insane, I had no idea Woz landed off-airport. I do checkouts in Bonanzas, and the more typical A36TC/TN pilot has 500 hours' experience or more. (Some of us still use small planes like ATVs -- but if the description of Woz' experience in the incident is accurate, this is like taking a Lamborghini out with a fresh driving permit) [1] https://www.cultofmac.com/465778/today-in-apple…

It's somewhat common for plane sellers, like Cirrus, to allow purchase of the plane then do their primary training in it and in the process getting all necessary endorsements.

One of my flight instructors had a friend/business associate that bought a Kodiak @ Oshkosh after only having flown 182s. The insurance requirements were insane of course. Also, know a guy with 70 hours who bought a Lancair with a 330hp engine. In flying it seems more readily to be a case of if you can afford it, you can do it.

I was in a Mooney @ 120 hours. I just did a lot of extra training--EMT, Tailwheel endorsement, Instrument & commercial rating in it when I had the hours.

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

#159

Post by fao_ »

redis_mlc wrote: post #48
fao_ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Woz was scary good at both hw and sw You damn-near gave me a heart attack then! :D I thought he had died for a moment, Phew!

He had a head injury as mentioned above. Hence the past tense regarding his exceptional engineering ability.

The plane crash is older than I've been alive, as I understand it he made a reasonable recovery?

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

#160

Post by flomo »

scarface74 wrote: post #121
flomo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to sperg, but "Integer BASIC" was almost certainly a retronym, a term which didn't exist prior to AppleSoft. Originally it was probably called Apple BASIC, just like ever other [manufacturer] BASIC (at least colloquially).

From the best I can tell, it was always referred to as Integer Basic and never “Apple Basic”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_BASIC I do know that it was referred to that as far back as 1980. I’ve never seen a reference to it as “Apple Basic” and I had an Apple //e in 1986.

AppleSoft (MS) BASIC came out very early in Apple II lifecycle, and prior to that there would have been no reason to call the original BASIC anything other than BASIC. Afterwards, of course, all the documentation and commands were updated.

Woz originally called it "Game BASIC", some history at this page: http://woz.org/letters/apple-basic/

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