Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LT6502: A 6502-based homebrew laptop

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 226 posts

Re: LT6502: A 6502-based homebrew laptop

#21

Post by jhbadger »

kaashif wrote: post #13
vardump wrote: post #2

I sometimes wonder what the alternate reality where semiconductor advances ended in the eighties would look like. We might have had to manage with just a few MB of RAM and efficient ARM cores running at maybe 30 MHz or so. Would we still get web browsers? How about the rest of the digital transformation? One thing I do know for sure. LLMs would have been impossible.

I don't think there's really a credible alternate reality where Moore's law just stops like that when it was in full swing. The ones that "could have happened" IMO are the transistor never being invented, or even mechanical computers becoming much more popular much earlier (there's a book about this alternate reality, The Difference Engine). I don't think transistors being invented was that certain to happen, we coul…

As someone has brought up, Transputers (an early parallel architecture) was a thing in the 1980s because people thought CPU speed was reaching a plateau. They were kind of right (which is why modern CPUs are multicore) but were a decade or so too early so transputers failed in the market.

Re: LT6502: A 6502-based homebrew laptop

#22

Post by nine_k »

ekaryotic wrote: post #4

neat. not something i´d hanker for. i saw a 16 core z80 laptop years ago and i often think about it because it can multitask. https://hackaday.com/2019/12/10/laptop-like-its-1979-with-a-...

I implemented "multitasking" (well, two-tasking) between a BASIC program and native code on a Z80, using a "supervisor" driven by hardware interrupts. There's just so much you can pack in a 4MHz CPU with a 4-bit ALU (yes, not 8-bit). It worked for soft-realtime tasks, but would be a rather weak desktop.

Re: LT6502: A 6502-based homebrew laptop

#23

Post by peterfirefly »

bluGill wrote: post #18
vardump wrote: post #2

I sometimes wonder what the alternate reality where semiconductor advances ended in the eighties would look like. We might have had to manage with just a few MB of RAM and efficient ARM cores running at maybe 30 MHz or so. Would we still get web browsers? How about the rest of the digital transformation? One thing I do know for sure. LLMs would have been impossible.

I remember using the web on 25mhz computers. It ran about as fast as it does today with a couple ghz. Our internet was a lot slower than as well.

It crashed a lot more, the fonts (and screens) were uglier, and Javascript was a lot slower. The good thing was that there was very little Javascript.

Re: LT6502: A 6502-based homebrew laptop

#24

Post by peterfirefly »

intrasight wrote: post #11
vardump wrote: post #2

I sometimes wonder what the alternate reality where semiconductor advances ended in the eighties would look like. We might have had to manage with just a few MB of RAM and efficient ARM cores running at maybe 30 MHz or so. Would we still get web browsers? How about the rest of the digital transformation? One thing I do know for sure. LLMs would have been impossible.

Well, we wouldn't have ads and tracking.

If such an alternate reality has internet of any speed above "turtle in a mobility scooter" then there for sure would be ads and tracking.

Re: LT6502: A 6502-based homebrew laptop

#25

Post by ted_dunning »

I love the super clunky retro esthetic!

Takes me back to a time when a laptop would encourage the cat to share a couch because of the amount of heat it emitted.

Amazingly quick as well. Pointless projects are so much better and more fun when they don't take forever!

Re: LT6502: A 6502-based homebrew laptop

#27

Post by drzaiusx11 »

PetahNZ wrote: post #17
vardump wrote: post #2

I sometimes wonder what the alternate reality where semiconductor advances ended in the eighties would look like. We might have had to manage with just a few MB of RAM and efficient ARM cores running at maybe 30 MHz or so. Would we still get web browsers? How about the rest of the digital transformation? One thing I do know for sure. LLMs would have been impossible.

We did have web browsers, I had Internet Explorer on Windows 3.1, 33mhz 8mb RAM.

Probably was "Windows 3.11, For Workgroups" as iirc Windows 3.1 didn't ship with a TCP/IP stack

Re: LT6502: A 6502-based homebrew laptop

#28

Post by phwbikm »

PetahNZ wrote: post #17
vardump wrote: post #2

I sometimes wonder what the alternate reality where semiconductor advances ended in the eighties would look like. We might have had to manage with just a few MB of RAM and efficient ARM cores running at maybe 30 MHz or so. Would we still get web browsers? How about the rest of the digital transformation? One thing I do know for sure. LLMs would have been impossible.

We did have web browsers, I had Internet Explorer on Windows 3.1, 33mhz 8mb RAM.

I still remember the Mosaic from NCSA. Internet in a box.

Re: LT6502: A 6502-based homebrew laptop

#30

Post by phwbikm »

myself248 wrote: post #7
vardump wrote: post #2

I sometimes wonder what the alternate reality where semiconductor advances ended in the eighties would look like. We might have had to manage with just a few MB of RAM and efficient ARM cores running at maybe 30 MHz or so. Would we still get web browsers? How about the rest of the digital transformation? One thing I do know for sure. LLMs would have been impossible.

And imagine if telecom had topped out around ISDN somewhere, with perhaps OC-3 (155Mbps) for the bleeding-fastest network core links. We'd probably get MP3 but not video to any great or compelling degree. Mostly-text web, perhaps more gopher-like. Client-side stuff would have to be very compact, I wonder if NAPLPS would've taken off. Screen reader software would probably love that timeline.

I have a Hayes 9600kbps modem for web surfing.
Post reply on HN