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

Megaprocessor – A micro-processor built large (2016)

megaprocessor.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 96 posts

Re: Megaprocessor – A micro-processor built large (2016)

#71

Post by bitwize »

zanethomas wrote: post #70
bitwize wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am unaware of many Hackernews who had even heard of Basic Four, let alone worked there! Did you know Chuck Milden?

If I did I don't remember him. :) How are you familiar with Basic Four?

Chuck was president of ICS, which was acquired by Basic Four in like the mid-70s. I only met him long after, but he told me stories. Including one about how he wheeled an Apple II into the Basic Four boardroom and demonstrated it, saying in effect "this is the future, and if you're not on board with the microcomputer revolution you'll be left behind". They decided to pass, and continue figuring out ways to sell $50,000 hard disks to existing customers. And that's why most of Hackernews hasn't heard of Basic Four :)

I do know that MAI ended up selling microcomputer based products eventually, but by that time they were well into day-late-dollar-short territory and would continue to lose ground along with all the other minicomputer vendors like PRIME that hardly anyone these days has heard of.

Re: Megaprocessor – A micro-processor built large (2016)

#72

Post by zanethomas »

bitwize wrote: post #71
zanethomas wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I did I don't remember him. :) How are you familiar with Basic Four?

Chuck was president of ICS, which was acquired by Basic Four in like the mid-70s. I only met him long after, but he told me stories. Including one about how he wheeled an Apple II into the Basic Four boardroom and demonstrated it, saying in effect "this is the future, and if you're not on board with the microcomputer revolution you'll be left behind". They decided to pass, and continue figuring out ways to sell $50,0…

Basic Four was about 300 employees when I landed there and having spent most of my time in manufacturing I didn't rub elbows with upper management. Although they did rub elbows with me once when they thought I was stealing their operating system. But that's a whole nother story. :)

Re: Megaprocessor – A micro-processor built large (2016)

#73

Post by [deleted] »

deltaonefour wrote: post #50
temeritatis wrote: post #7

I often wondered i could build some sort of general computing machine if we were pushed back to the dark ages or something. I guess you have to define exactly at what level of technological achievements we were pushed back to. But with the knowledge we have today, and without ICs (or advanced manufacturing facilities) and only "simple electronics" (whatever that would be) if this would be possible. Fun stuff to think…

The first computing machines used relays which are electromechanical mechanical switches. Current would flow into an electric magnetic and it would magnetize a switch and close a loop thereby switching something "on." By placing these switches together into different configurations you could form equivalent logic gates. Sometimes insects or moths would get stuck in the relays which would screw up the system. This is…

[deleted]

Re: Megaprocessor – A micro-processor built large (2016)

#75

Post by criddell »

osamagirl69 wrote: post #49

The mega processor is one of my all-time favorite computers, along with the Magic-1 https://homebrewcpu.com/ The megaprocessor is just absolutely wonderful in how it bridges from 'here is a transistor, it lights an LED' to 'here is a computer, it plays tetris'. I always struggled to unwind the layers of abstraction in a modern computer from atoms in the CPU to running python, but being able to just look at a bunch of…

Charles Petzold's book Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software explains a computer from the ground up.

I don't know if the ideas still apply to modern computers, but it's pretty cool understanding how things like addresses are decoded and instructions are constructed and executed at the gate level in a very basic microprocessor.

Re: Megaprocessor – A micro-processor built large (2016)

#76

Post by hypertele-Xii »

deltaonefour wrote: post #50
temeritatis wrote: post #7

I often wondered i could build some sort of general computing machine if we were pushed back to the dark ages or something. I guess you have to define exactly at what level of technological achievements we were pushed back to. But with the knowledge we have today, and without ICs (or advanced manufacturing facilities) and only "simple electronics" (whatever that would be) if this would be possible. Fun stuff to think…

The first computing machines used relays which are electromechanical mechanical switches. Current would flow into an electric magnetic and it would magnetize a switch and close a loop thereby switching something "on." By placing these switches together into different configurations you could form equivalent logic gates. Sometimes insects or moths would get stuck in the relays which would screw up the system. This is…

> The YouTube video literally is a hand cranked portable calculator.

It can even do square roots?! That's amazing. And it fits the palm of your hand!

Now we're down to specks of sand calculating so fast they melt without cooling. Seriously wtf.

Re: Megaprocessor – A micro-processor built large (2016)

#77

Post by hypertele-Xii »

ezconnect wrote: post #59
dhosek wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The catch is that there are tolerance issues. Doron Swade's account of building the two existing Difference Engine #2 models ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0670910201/donhosek ) is a good example of where the challenges lie. It was just barely possible to do with 19th century technology. Physical mechanisms deviate from theory by quite a bit.

Antikythera mechanism was built before the Dark Ages, he just wanted to go back to the Dark Ages so he can do precision work by that time, he can probably build a battleship fire control system at that time. edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwf5mAlI7Ug

Now he just needs to build a battleship to go with it!

Re: Megaprocessor – A micro-processor built large (2016)

#78

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

mdp2021 wrote: post #74
jdkee wrote: post #60

MOnSter 6502 for the curious. https://monster6502.com/

Beautiful. Inspired by this great submission, I was instead at http://visual6502.org/JSSim/index.html - 6502 simulator in HTML5 with visual changes on the virtual circuitry.

There is now https://github.com/floooh/v6502r as in remixed.

Purposedly better, faster, and has Z80, too.

Re: Megaprocessor – A micro-processor built large (2016)

#79

Post by kjs3 »

dhosek wrote: post #38
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First gen transistor computers often used standard functional units - gates, flip flops, and such - packaged into small modules with edge connectors and wired together with wire wrap on a backplane. Like this DEC PDP-8. http://www.oldcomputers.arcula.co.uk/files/images/pdp8104.jp... It's fairly easy to design a computer like this. Later TTL/CMOS designs replaced the packaged modules with much smaller 74xx/40xx ICs. Y…

We could use vacuum tubes instead of transistors. (I googled this to make sure I wasn't misremembering what I read 40 years ago in an already outdated book at the library and I was suddenly filled with a sense memory of the smell of the interiors of old electric appliances loaded with tubes and dust.)

Yes...there were a couple of generations of what we would recognize as vaguely 'modern' computers (say...roughly ENIAC to the IBM 704/709) built completely out of stuff that looked like this:

http://www.righto.com/2018/01/examining-1954-ibm-mainframes-...

Re: Megaprocessor – A micro-processor built large (2016)

#80

Post by kjs3 »

95014_refugee wrote: post #57
temeritatis wrote: post #7

I often wondered i could build some sort of general computing machine if we were pushed back to the dark ages or something. I guess you have to define exactly at what level of technological achievements we were pushed back to. But with the knowledge we have today, and without ICs (or advanced manufacturing facilities) and only "simple electronics" (whatever that would be) if this would be possible. Fun stuff to think…

Then the next question is; what would you do with it? You need a source of problems to solve, and until you've bootstrapped the rest of society at least to the point where something like high-resolution trigonometric tables, desktop publishing, high-speed accounting, (for example) are needed, the effort isn't going to keep you fed...

Calculate ballistics, like some of the original computers were created for? Never too early post-apocolypse to start the thinking about the next war.
Post reply on HN