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Halt and Catch Fire

unstack.io

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Re: Halt and Catch Fire

#91

Post by MrDarcy »

treyd wrote: post #89
bblb wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a slave to my computer. Stop using bad services that are designed to manipulate your behaviour. There's still the good old Internet out there with genuinely interesting content. IPv8 and it's (eventually mandatory) device-attestation-auth-at-protocol-level will end all of this pseudoanonymous free thinking information exchange. It was good while it lasted.

That IPv8 proposal that was circulating a few weeks ago was not a serious proposal (written entirely by a single person with no substantial involvement in IETF before then) and has no roadmap to any kind of adoption.

A reasonable proposal from a single person outside the IETF seems most likely to succeed.

It’s not like the IETF have any obvious success managing or deploying solutions to IP problems known for over 30 years.

Re: Halt and Catch Fire

#92

Post by dhosek »

Reading the post, I was immediately reminded of the Big Red Button that was a prominent feature on 80s/90 PCs because of their tendency to end up in a state where a hard reset was the only way out of the lockup. And of course there were the rare cases where even that didn’t work and the only solution was to power-cycle the machine. It’s been years, maybe decades since I’ve encountered that situation and when I have it was a hardware failure, not a software failure as was the case back then.

Re: Halt and Catch Fire

#94

Post by philipallstar »

b3lvedere wrote: post #75
caned wrote: post #60

This show captures much of what I miss about computing in the 80s and 90s. You could get your hands on hardware, be able to largely understand what all the hardware and software was doing. You mostly used computers as tools, which only accepted commands and didn't try to affect your decisions or workflow (yes, there was Clippy). The leaps forward in computing power, memory and storage were more impactful to the every…

One thing i found very interesting over the years is that when people seem to abuse systems ( key activation, share netflix accounts, vpn, torrents) it’s considered a serious crime, but when companies openly abuse systems ( unsubscribe maze, addiction, fraud ) it’s frowned upon. That should be the other way around. Until then systems will always try to rule over people and people will adapt for better or for worse.

In my experience it's incredibly unusual for the sharing of netflix accounts to be considered a serious crime. Does this happen on a regular basis?

Re: Halt and Catch Fire

#95

Post by ralferoo »

greenbit wrote: post #26

The Commodore PET 4032 video system was generated by a 6545 (6845 equivalent) cathode ray tube controller, which generated the video buffer addresses and the HS and VS sync pulses. This was memory mapped and if one was not careful with POKE commands, you could effectively stop the CRT raster scan, leaving the beam parked at the center of the screen. This could burn the phosphors off that spot in a matter of minutes.…

The more likely risk with a 6845 is creating a way out of spec vertical sync that can cause the monitor's frame flyback transformer to fail. Although how you describe the PET monitor's beam being "parked" suggests it's actually the same effect.

Re: Halt and Catch Fire

#96

Post by WalterBright »

rigonkulous wrote: post #85
WalterBright wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1978 I built a single board computer with a 6800 uP and a 6845 to drive the display. Made a keyboard for it, and it worked. Unfortunately, in my many moves it has disappeared, though I still have the schematics for it. Somehow I missed the boat on being a billionaire!

Oh, I have so many of my own experiences to tell in this regard, but .. I'm a little curious .. if you still have the schematics, why not build it again and pick up where you left off? (Disclaimer: I speak as one who has kept almost every computer I've ever hacked on since 1978...)

I could, but the list of projects I want to do is very looooonnnnggggg and reconstructing that machine would be nice to show off, but of no utility.

I also no longer have the software I wrote for it, nor the keyboard or monitor. It's all gone.

My other regret is I gave away my H11 computer. Sigh.

Re: Halt and Catch Fire

#97

Post by smiley1437 »

b3lvedere wrote: post #75
caned wrote: post #60

This show captures much of what I miss about computing in the 80s and 90s. You could get your hands on hardware, be able to largely understand what all the hardware and software was doing. You mostly used computers as tools, which only accepted commands and didn't try to affect your decisions or workflow (yes, there was Clippy). The leaps forward in computing power, memory and storage were more impactful to the every…

One thing i found very interesting over the years is that when people seem to abuse systems ( key activation, share netflix accounts, vpn, torrents) it’s considered a serious crime, but when companies openly abuse systems ( unsubscribe maze, addiction, fraud ) it’s frowned upon. That should be the other way around. Until then systems will always try to rule over people and people will adapt for better or for worse.

"to learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." - Voltaire

Re: Halt and Catch Fire

#98

Post by greenbit »

ralferoo wrote: post #95
greenbit wrote: post #26

The Commodore PET 4032 video system was generated by a 6545 (6845 equivalent) cathode ray tube controller, which generated the video buffer addresses and the HS and VS sync pulses. This was memory mapped and if one was not careful with POKE commands, you could effectively stop the CRT raster scan, leaving the beam parked at the center of the screen. This could burn the phosphors off that spot in a matter of minutes.…

The more likely risk with a 6845 is creating a way out of spec vertical sync that can cause the monitor's frame flyback transformer to fail. Although how you describe the PET monitor's beam being "parked" suggests it's actually the same effect.

I recall seeing it just stop dead center, quite bright. Immediately just turned the machine off, but that did seem to account for why a couple of the other machines in the room had small round-ish phosphors burns right in that spot

Re: Halt and Catch Fire

#99

Post by ____tom____ »

The oldest reference I know of to "Halt and Catch Fire" is shown here : https://www.facebook.com/larry.langerholc/photos/d41d8cd9/74...

1960s era. Humorous instructions for the IBM 360/69.

If the image link doesn't work, I've OCRed it:

IBM SYSTEM/360 MODEL 69 FEATURES AND DEVICES

Early Card Lace

1401 Incompatibility

407 Emulation

Chinese Character Set

Branch on Burned-Out Indicator

Branch on Blinking Indicator

Branch and Hang

Branch on Chip Box Full

Branch on Power Off

Branch on Sleepy Operator

Inquire and Ignore

Reverse Parity and Branch

Branch on Bug

Read While Write While Ripping Tape

Add Improper

Divide and Overflow

Subtract and Reset to Zero

Add and Reset to Zero

Scramble Program Status Word

Pack Alpha and Drop Zones

Pack Program Status Word

Punch Invalid

Rewind Card Reader

Backspace Card Reader

Read Print and Blush

Forms Skip and Run Away

Stacker Select Disk

Write Wrong-Length-Record

Write Noise Record

Seek Record and Scar Disk

Eject Disk

Rewind Disk

Backspace Disk

Punch Disk

Punch Operator

Execute Invalid Op Code

Read Card and Scramble Data

Select Stacker and Jam

Read Invalid

Rewind and Break Tape

Write Record and Run Away

Make Tape Invalid

Reverse Drum Immediate

Transfer and Lose Return

Print and Smear

Read Chads

Sharpen Light Pencil

Transfer and Drop Bits

Erase Card Punch

Read Inter-record Gap

Read Noise Record

Erase Read Only Storage

Destroy Storage Protect Key

Update and Erase Record

Move and Drop Bits

Circulate Memory

Move and Lose Record

Move and Wrap Core

Move Continuous

Execute No-Op and Hang

Develope Ineffective Address

Halt and Catch Fire

Scatter Print

Re-initialize Meter

Update Transaction

Reduce Thruput

Print and Break Chain

Lose Message and Branch

Burst Selector Channel

Invert Record and Branch

Illogical "or"

Illogical "and"

Bite Baudy Bit and Branch

Triple-Pack Decimal

Slip Disk

Stacker Upset

Uncouple CPU's and Branch

Scramble Channels

Edit:formatting.

Re: Halt and Catch Fire

#100

Post by ____tom____ »

____tom____ wrote: post #99

The oldest reference I know of to "Halt and Catch Fire" is shown here : https://www.facebook.com/larry.langerholc/photos/d41d8cd9/74... 1960s era. Humorous instructions for the IBM 360/69. If the image link doesn't work, I've OCRed it: IBM SYSTEM/360 MODEL 69 FEATURES AND DEVICES Early Card Lace 1401 Incompatibility 407 Emulation Chinese Character Set Branch on Burned-Out Indicator Branch on Blinking Indicator Branch…

Modern OCR is amazing. That image is full of noise and ChatGPT did it without any errors that a I can see.

I compared it to another OCR of the same image, using http://ocr.space, and ChatGPT was correct in all the small number of differences, even preserving misspellings in the source.

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