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Building GCC 1.27 (first GCC with x86 support) (2019)

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Re: Building GCC 1.27 (first GCC with x86 support) (2019)

#41

Post by skissane »

frutiger wrote: post #30
gumby wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My high school was a “free school” in the same sense of the term. Founded 1640 by royal charter.

According to this seemingly exhaustive list ( https://privycouncil.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2... ), no royal charters were granted in 1640.

The page linking to the list – https://privycouncil.independent.gov.uk/royal-charters/list-... – says:

> Please note that the attached list may not be exhaustive – please contact us if you believe any information is missing.

Re: Building GCC 1.27 (first GCC with x86 support) (2019)

#42

Post by gumby »

skissane wrote: post #40
gumby wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. While looking around to see if I could find my school's charter online I discovered that Harvard never had a royal charter, though at various times they sought one. On the other hand College of William and Mary got one (from the eponymous co-rulers) in 1693. As my parallel comment noted, there are some notable omissions in that list, quite unsurprising given its thousand year scope.

Wikipedia’s article on Thomas Dudley, governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, says he issued one of Harvard’s charters, and provided land and funds for the founding of Roxbury Latin. Since as Governor he was technically the monarch’s representative, I could see why both Harvard and Roxbury might have elided the technical distinction between “chartered by the King’s official representative” (vice regal) and “chartered b…

I assume the GG, being a viceroy, can sign these things on the king's behalf? But what do I know?

I did find it ironic that I moved from aus to a republic, only to attend a school with supposedly a royal charter.

> Another guess: ...but the Privy Council might not technically consider that letter to be a “royal charter”, because it didn’t use the right magic code words to count as one

If you're going to cast a magic spell you've gotta get it right.

Re: Building GCC 1.27 (first GCC with x86 support) (2019)

#43

Post by gumby »

fl7305 wrote: post #37
rahen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not very fast, but it was a bit of a standard in the BSD world as most development there happened on 750s at Berkeley. https://gunkies.org/wiki/4.1_BSD

Yup. My point was that I can understand if someone rejects a 750 in 1987 because it is fairly slow. I think home computers like the Amiga and Atari ST had at least that much raw CPU power? But VAXen in general in 1987 weren't yet hopelessly slow, right? I can understand if people didn't like VAXes for personal reasons. I had a pick of both a fast VAX and fast Sun workstations in 1987, the Suns were clear winners for…

It was delivered back when the 750 was new, but we had lispms and PDP-10s and didn't care about stuff like vaxes.

I think it was already obsolete when RMS started using it, and had probably never been used over the years by anyone. Nowadays that kinds of thing is unremarkable, but back then at most places it would have been shocking.

Re: Building GCC 1.27 (first GCC with x86 support) (2019)

#45

Post by rahen »

fl7305 wrote: post #37
rahen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not very fast, but it was a bit of a standard in the BSD world as most development there happened on 750s at Berkeley. https://gunkies.org/wiki/4.1_BSD

Yup. My point was that I can understand if someone rejects a 750 in 1987 because it is fairly slow. I think home computers like the Amiga and Atari ST had at least that much raw CPU power? But VAXen in general in 1987 weren't yet hopelessly slow, right? I can understand if people didn't like VAXes for personal reasons. I had a pick of both a fast VAX and fast Sun workstations in 1987, the Suns were clear winners for…

Yes, it was about the speed of an original Macintosh or a turbo PC/XT, and slower than an 11/70.

https://www.tech-insider.org/unix/research/1986/0219.html

Re: Building GCC 1.27 (first GCC with x86 support) (2019)

#46

Post by rahen »

anthk wrote: post #44

Instead of x86, it would be interesting to have an FPGA based PDP10 clone with 32MB of RAM, ITS patches with DNS support and, maybe, a gopher and an IRC client could be built on it. 36 bit CPU's are very interesting.

That exists, that's the TOAD2 from XKL. It apparently even runs TOPS-20.

You can try one online at SDF, besides their SC-40 systems, which I think are also FPGA based.

https://mastodon.sdf.org/@SDF/109824572356590874

Or you may want to get a PiDP-10, they will have an FPGA version soon to replace the RPI.

https://retrocomputingforum.com/t/the-pidp-10-is-finally-don...

Re: Building GCC 1.27 (first GCC with x86 support) (2019)

#47

Post by fl7305 »

rahen wrote: post #45
fl7305 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. My point was that I can understand if someone rejects a 750 in 1987 because it is fairly slow. I think home computers like the Amiga and Atari ST had at least that much raw CPU power? But VAXen in general in 1987 weren't yet hopelessly slow, right? I can understand if people didn't like VAXes for personal reasons. I had a pick of both a fast VAX and fast Sun workstations in 1987, the Suns were clear winners for…

Yes, it was about the speed of an original Macintosh or a turbo PC/XT, and slower than an 11/70. https://www.tech-insider.org/unix/research/1986/0219.html

Thanks, looks like the VAX 11/750 was pretty much the same Dhrystone speed as an 8 MHz 68000 (Atari ST, Amiga).

I/O and disk bandwidth is another matter of course.

Re: Building GCC 1.27 (first GCC with x86 support) (2019)

#48

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

ajross wrote: post #36
bluedino wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

x86 was originally used to refer to any intel cpu of x86 name, even in the late 80's

By which definition, this is absolutely not an "x86" compiler, since it doesn't generate code for any of those other chips. Thus my nitpick.

Modern GCC (AFAIK) can't target the 8086 or 80186 or 80286; does that disqualify it from being described as an x86 compiler?

Re: Building GCC 1.27 (first GCC with x86 support) (2019)

#49

Post by skissane »

gumby wrote: post #42
skissane wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia’s article on Thomas Dudley, governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, says he issued one of Harvard’s charters, and provided land and funds for the founding of Roxbury Latin. Since as Governor he was technically the monarch’s representative, I could see why both Harvard and Roxbury might have elided the technical distinction between “chartered by the King’s official representative” (vice regal) and “chartered b…

I assume the GG, being a viceroy, can sign these things on the king's behalf? But what do I know? I did find it ironic that I moved from aus to a republic, only to attend a school with supposedly a royal charter. > Another guess: ...but the Privy Council might not technically consider that letter to be a “royal charter”, because it didn’t use the right magic code words to count as one If you're going to cast a magic…

> I assume the GG, being a viceroy, can sign these things on the king's behalf?

Apparently not. According to a 1946 edict of Buckingham Palace (whose text does not appear to be publicly available, although there are public documents referencing it), the procedure is (a) request is approved by Prime Minister (for national orgs) or state Premier (for state-based orgs)–in their sole individual discretion, (b) PM/Premier advises GG/Governor to submit request to Buckingham Palace, (c) the King/Queen signs it and returns it. Although theoretically either the GG/Governor or the monarch could veto the request, it is almost inconceivable they ever would. I think, theoretically, Buckingham Palace could delegate the power to sign them to GG/Governor, but they likely worry that not having the monarch sign it personally would deprive it of its magical properties. Also, in 1983, the federal government adopted a policy that the PM would no longer consider applications for the title "Royal" from national orgs, so now only state-based ones can get it. Any future PM could decide to change that, but in over 40 years nobody has. Even Tony Abbott, who was such a devout monarchist that he had to (briefly) resurrect knighthoods, couldn't be bothered.

> If you're going to cast a magic spell you've gotta get it right.

As I mentioned in a sibling comment, there is a notice on the Privy Council's website saying their list is not exhaustive, and please contact them to report any omissions. So, a few hours ago, I contacted them to query whether the College of William and Mary's omission is intentional or a mistake. I'll see what they say. It helps they have a copy of their charter on their website: https://scrc-kb.libraries.wm.edu/royal-charter

Re: Building GCC 1.27 (first GCC with x86 support) (2019)

#50

Post by skissane »

gpvos wrote: post #25
skissane wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Vrije Universiteit was founded as a Reformed protestant christian university, to be free from state control Abraham Kuyper was a dissenter from the state church (Dutch Reformed), whom he believed had gone astray – after founding VU, he left the state church and founded his own conservative breakaway denomination (the Doleantie ) – so although he did want VU to have a Reformed Protestant ethos, he also wanted it…

Thanks for the added nuance which I missed. As far as I knew, there has always been a strong association, even though not formal, between Kuyper's denomination (the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN)) and the university. Also ironical that within the GKN, one aspect of his theology was imposed by the synod, leading to a schism - again people fleeing from church control. (And one schism further led to the church…

> (And one schism further led to the church I grew up in.)

If you don't mind me asking, which church is that? Church schisms is just one of those topics that may seem very dry to most people, but I personally find fascinating

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