Woz ur the man.
Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502
171–180 of 182 posts
Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder why rich people have such a high urge to fly small airplanes. It seems to expose you to a lot of risk, which you could easily avoid (I’ve lived a considerable number of years without facing a single situation where I was likely to fly an airplane).
For some people risk isn't something to be avoided at all costs. It's a challenge to overcome. It's the same principal when you watch an amazing ski jump, musician, or gymnastics routine--taming the chaos. This is a fundamental drive in many people that calls on something innate.
I don’t buy such a grandiose thing is the reason rich people can’t stop buying planes. You can buy a guitar for $100 on Craigslist and then play it in your backyard with a low risk of blowing up.
Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
For some people risk isn't something to be avoided at all costs. It's a challenge to overcome. It's the same principal when you watch an amazing ski jump, musician, or gymnastics routine--taming the chaos. This is a fundamental drive in many people that calls on something innate.
I don’t buy such a grandiose thing is the reason rich people can’t stop buying planes. You can buy a guitar for $100 on Craigslist and then play it in your backyard with a low risk of blowing up.
Most people don't decide what they're interested in. Certain things grip your imagination.
I tried to get into guitar, but after I found skydiving I sold my guitar for my initial training and have been jumping ever since (20 years). That led me to wanting to drive airplanes when I could afford it.
Flying touches my imagination some how and was always interested in it. Being able to leave my local airport and bust out of the clouds hundreds of miles away safely despite the weather and lack of vision is rewarding.
Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
To be clear, I don't have a problem with people seeing his designs as amazing. I just think there were multiple amazing people racing to bring out home computers at the same time, and so while each of them did amazing things with what they had available, we'd have done OK with any one if them.
Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502
#175> They took the limitations of their computers as a challenge, sat down, and made these tiny machines do impressive things. Poets knew from long ago that using pentameter and constraints fosters creativity. Here we see the same principle applied in computing.
On the other hand, the first time I did 6502 assembly language programming, I was shocked.
It was so hard to do anything.
For instance, it did not have an add instruction.
You had to clear carry, then add with carry.
That said, I can see how having a microprocessor was amazingly awesome to a hardware designer like woz who could think fluidly at the transistor level.
Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regression tends to the mean. Imagine what Apple might have been if Woz's dad had been in the factory!
Jobs would have found a similarly capable engineer. Apple wouldn't be much different. Imagine where Woz's life might have taken him had his dad worked elsewhere...
The Apple I was a hobby project developed before Woz met Jobs, if I remember right.
Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a big killer, moreso than most pilots realize. The reason it's so deadly is that it turns up in a bunch of crashes where it's not identified. That VFR pilot who was scud-running and ended up in some culmulo granite? He probably did it and got away with it several times before the crash happened. I don't fly anymore, but when I did? I used to get all the aviation safety magazines and read them cover-to-cover.…
John Denver ran out of gas while flying over a mountain pass. Exactly at the top - dropped and hit the tip of the peak while fumbling for the fuel switch.
No. He crashed into Monterey Bay. He likely ran one tank dry then sent the plane into a dive while he tried to move the fuel selector that was located over and behind his shoulder.
https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/ReportGeneratorFile.ashx?E...
Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502
#178He also wrote a nifty article back in '81 about calculating e to 118,000 decimal places.
https://downloads.reactivemicro.com/Users/Grant_Stockley/App...
Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you describe to me the architecture and components of a typical keyboard USB interface chip, both internal to the chip and external?
Sure. Behold the power of hypertext: http://www.sprintek.com/en/products/keyboard_ic/SK5100.aspx
The whole point of this thread is discussing how engineers used to keep the entire design of the system in their heads, even the CPU. Being able to point to a repository of tech specs really isn't the same thing.
Re: Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
You completely failed to understand what I was saying, which is that currently, when you say "they", some portion tends to jump to the conclusion that you're trying to make a point about the person you're talking about. But some people use "they" just as a default when they're not sure. Using it as a default all of the time then serves to remove the consideration of whether or not it is done to try to send some sort…
I don’t think you’ll speak a very nice language if you start to take into consideration what every single word implied meaning could be either when it’s used or when it’s not used, and you start to use the most neutral generic term all the time for anything related to any topic that may potentially offend 0.001% of the population. Remember one of the goal of a language is also to convey meaning, and if possible in th…
Nobody is asking you to take into consideration what every single words implied meaning could be.
The only question here is whether using "they" instead of "he" in this case implies something about Woz rather than is just a way for the speaker to be gender neutral in how they are writing about it.
It is already increasingly common to use singular "they" when we don't know the gender - I did it above, when writing about the person who originally used "they" about Woz. The only question then is whether there's any issue with doing so when their gender is relatively well known.
Since singular "they" is already common in English, the only reason why there might be an issue with it in the case of Woz would be because someone concerns themselves with the signalling effect.
We also never use language in the most precise way possible. That is a total strawman. Pretty much everything we write is full of ambiguity, sometimes because easier, but often also very much intentional, e.g. to signal that certain details (such as the gender of the person you're talking about) is irrelevant to what you're saying. And sometimes because it is political, such as to signal that gender does not matter can be.