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leeteron Should Windows Transition to Linux?

I saw that module, looked at the code, and wondered if at that point it wouldn't be easier to just run a thin wrapper around the virtual 8086 code while just using standard virtualization extensions. That way it's just another KVM and not yet more kernel code to maintain. Because honestly QEMU already supports that target. This is of course ignoring the many issues caused by faster CPUs or things the target program is expecting but no longer exist or act differently on modern CPUs.

leeteron Should Windows Transition to Linux?

You can support 16bit in long mode via compatibility mode (the bits are still in the Global descriptor table definition https://wiki.osdev.org/GDT as long as the long mode bit isn't set the, Sz bit can be used to indicate 16bit code), just not real mode without using virtualization extensions. The issue was more the way HANDLEs were managed and getting rid of 16bit limitations. (also getting programmers to stop assuming they could safely do things with the upper parts of handles)

leeteron A look at the die of the 8086 processor (2020)

Looking at the 8008 wiki if the quotes are to be believed they were actually scared of performance. Believing that they would scare off customers buying intel memory (their main business at the time apparently) for their own in house processors. So it seems very deliberate. That said the 8008 was primarily intended for terminals where performance really wasn't a concern. But that didn't stop people from making proper mini-computers from it.

leeteron The Soviet 1801VM2 LSI-11 Processor

Apparently pretty far, I've found various sources for why funding was cut from "The west was going binary so that was the order of the day" to "The space race". What was interesting was the hardware description I could find wasn't vacuum tubes but rather ICs and allegedly some sort of logic based on "Ferrite cores and diode ladders" which was apparently a major thing as it was vastly cheaper than transistors (super expensive at the time) or vacuum tubes (expensive and unreliable). How much of this is true or just what's on the russian computing museum's website I don't know. But the concepts aren't dead:

https://hackaday.com/2014/10/07/hackaday-10th-anniversary-no...

leeteron A bug that doesn’t exist on x86: Exploiting an ARM-only race condition

Well their use is definitely UB as it creates data races. Godbolt to the rescue... https://godbolt.org/z/3rsK6n31z

leeteron Intel Shows Off Multi-Chiplet Sapphire Rapids CPU with HBM

I am completely not surprised by this move, HBM2 solves a major issue for quite a few applications that live and die on high speed memory and assuming sapphire rapids has enough ports to make use of it optimally will make these an absolute beast. I guess I'm only surprised AMD didn't do this first as they have more experience with HBM2 on their GPUs. Then again they might have and never made it a public SKU.

leeteron SpaceCadetPinball – Decompilation of 3D Pinball for Windows

Yes... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EPTfOTC4Jw

Warning contains a youtuber bashing their head firmly against the pain of Itanium to test this.

leeteron SpaceCadetPinball – Decompilation of 3D Pinball for Windows

They did release it for the windows XP 64bit editions for AMD64. So no it was definitely released, it has rendering issues but it is there and works AFAIK. As best I can tell it was removed because it didn't fit vista's aesthetic not that they couldn't get it to work.

Because if MS had that agreement... almost nothing would have been released on AMD64 as very little actually made it to IA-64 or was supported there realistically.

leeteron SpaceCadetPinball – Decompilation of 3D Pinball for Windows

Actually 3d Pinball is available in the AMD64 Window XP 64 bit versions. It was not available (sort of... it's there but not actually installed from media) on IA-64 versions. There was a youtuber that dug into it (probably at the cost of far too much of their own sanity). So there is no "might have" it works (albeit with some rendering issues).

leeteron SpaceCadetPinball – Decompilation of 3D Pinball for Windows

Because Microsoft couldn't make it more confusing... lol

leeteron SpaceCadetPinball – Decompilation of 3D Pinball for Windows

So there are various Youtubes about this... but it was 'Windows XP 64bit-Edition' (yes 'Edition' is part of the name. This specifically refers to IA-64 and not AMD64. There are rendering issues on the AMD64 versions but the IA-64 version doesn't work. Windows XP 64bit (non-edition) that was on AMD64 actually did ship with 3d pinball, albeit with some rendering issues. Best guess is that it was later removed in vista because it didn't fit the shiny new games theme that existed then. Raymond was giving his view of his part of the port to IA-64.

leeteron SpaceCadetPinball – Decompilation of 3D Pinball for Windows

Given that the reason it was removed was IA-64 which isn't a thing anymore... this should be plausible. But also given where MS has gone with games as late I'd be surprised if they do. EA should just release all of Full Tilt! Pinball on steam or GoG if they haven't already.

leeteron Advanced Inertial Reference Sphere (1997)

It looks like there is work in that direction... but like most things it's 10years (TM) away.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-018-0266-5 https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/tiny-laser-gyroscope...

leeteron Advanced Inertial Reference Sphere (1997)

IIRC it's a size and power thing. You can emulate most of what a ring laser gyro does with good accelerometers and that's the better choice for most devices needing long battery life and compact size. Ring laser gyros (while small) are not that small last I checked. A quick google shows you can get them in about the size of a pocket watch. So potentially a good case addon for those that need it without the cost/power usage issues that would hit those that don't.

leeteron Advanced Inertial Reference Sphere (1997)

Also airplanes, satellites etc. The standard now is laser ring gyroscopes as they have no moving parts, are super sensitive, and very light in comparison to older options. Mentour pilot has an episode on how these are used in the 737.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_laser_gyroscope

leeteron Programming in Forth on Commodore 64 [video]

I remember watching this video yesterday and realizing how how expressive FORTH can get. The wikipedia page really doesn't do it justice. Fortunately their second program made use of multiple words and better shows off the language but it would be cool to see someone do a real deep dive into some of the cool DSLs you can effectively write.

leeteron Arm AArch64 Adds Memcpy() Instructions

I think intel and IBM didn't expect the need for compatibility to be an issue. After all when the IBM PC was built generally speaking turning on and having a BASIC env was considered good enough. IBM added DOS so that CP/M customers would feel comfortable and it shows in PC-DOS 1.0. which is insanely bare bones. So it was not unreasonable for both IBM and Intel to assume that things like the PC-JR made sense, because backwards compatibility was the exception at that point not the rule. IBM in particular didn't take the PC market seriously and paid for it by getting their lunch eaten by the clones.

It's the clones we have to thank for the situation we're in today. If Compaq hadn't done a viable clone and survived the lawsuit we'd probably be using something else (Amiga?). But they did and the rest is history, computing on IBM-PC compatible hardware became affordable and despite better alternatives (sometimes near equal cost) the PC won out.

leeteron Rust on the MOS 6502: Beyond Fibonacci

I wonder if the CSG-65CE02 wasn't an attempt to make C easier for the C6x/c128 line. Unfortunately it never saw the light of day except as a serial controller and isn't available today

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSG_65CE02

leeteron Vaccine experts: Covid-19 booster shots aren't needed now

Repeated exposure increases your chances of disease not serious disease. Increased Viral load increases chances of serious disease. Apologies if that didn't come across clearly.

leeteron Vaccine experts: Covid-19 booster shots aren't needed now

No, exposure to the virus is like exposure to combat. You may not die, but the likelihood goes up the more time you spend exposed to it and the more of it you get exposed to. To keep with that metaphor a vaccine is like a war game, it won't kill you but it's not the real thing either. But if you've done it you're better off than if you hadn't.

leeteron Why DOS was (and is) a thing (2020) [video]

I'll do you one better, DOOM without an OS at all (sort of) https://github.com/Cacodemon345/uefidoom

leeteron Why DOS was (and is) a thing (2020) [video]

Pulls up a recent LGR Video... watches griping about various expanded vs. extended vs. whatever memory issues games have

Yeeeep seems canon.

leeteron Why DOS was (and is) a thing (2020) [video]

DOS seems to have been the minimal effort choice of "It's like CP/M enough our users will be familiar with it" without actually considering those users. Now to be fair in 1981 that was "state of the art". The Xerox Alto was something that was way beyond reach for most people and GEOS (8 or 16bit) wasn't going to exist for another 5 years. But it was a marginal improvement over CP/M, which is about as much as one can say about it.

Modern UEFI is probably the best parallel, both in that it only really deals with text and some graphics (bitmaps only) and doesn't have any standardized interface for sound/3d.

leeteron Intel CEO: Clients Want Custom x86-Based SoCs

It's not politics its just that there is a dispute between ARM China and its parent, this is well documented. This complicates IP licensing concerning the ARM ISA in the world's largest market. I personally wouldn't want to develop a product with uncertainty around the IP in a major market.

leeteron Intel CEO: Clients Want Custom x86-Based SoCs

It's complicated and annoying but yes. There is also the question of 'downleveling' a core back to real mode when the others aren't. But if you require UEFI and secure boot then you could bypass that and go to a 64-bit linear reset vector anyway as that's how UEFI sets up the boot env. That would mean you'd only need to initialize that core and it'\s local APIC and associated envs in theory instead of playing mode hopscotch.

On the topic of downleveling... based on the research I've done (think writing a UEFI capable kernel for FreeDOS) it's dubious at best to do that because the real mode core wouldn't know about the local APIC and would mess with the IO APIC when you really really don't want it to. So is it possible? Potentially? Would anyone with any shred of sanity recommend it? No not in my opinion. There is no valid reason to do that.

leeteron Intel CEO: Clients Want Custom x86-Based SoCs

Or OS2 (ATMs) or DOS (an unbelievable number of PoS devices and other 'business ops' uses as well as industrial). Now to be fair... most of that market is already served by a vendor that doesn't make desktop CPUs most notably DM&P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex86

leeteron Intel CEO: Clients Want Custom x86-Based SoCs

So right now when an x86-64 CPU boots it starts in 16bit real mode regardless of everything else. The UEFI then has to set up a x64 protected mode env then the OS picks up from there. If you drop that backwards compat (e.g. 16bit, virtual 8086 mode etc.) you can remove a lot of cruft that is mostly worked around. If nobody is setting Local Descriptor tables then why support it? Or the hardware task switching support that's not even supported in long mode etc.

leeteron Intel CEO: Clients Want Custom x86-Based SoCs

Eh I could still see a ton of application specific customers that would stick with x86. HFT for example: if they can get a chip with a few super fast cores and HBM2 on substrate. Perhaps mix the NIC in and turn the entire thing into an SOC.

leeteron Intel CEO: Clients Want Custom x86-Based SoCs

RISC-V sooner than later, the uncertainty around ARM the company due to the buyout and the whole thing with ARM China is just yuck. But honestly nothing the M1 does x86/RISC-V can't do. At this point ISA is just an ABI it's more about keeping execution pipes filled, as long as a frontend can do that it can absolutely clean up on the metrics.

Another thing although speculative: Windows 11's move to require UEFI/x64/SecureBoot could be prep for AMD and Intel to completely drop a ton of legacy support (16bit etc.) in the chips. I'd give it about 20% chance of happening, but I definitely wouldn't rule it out given you can emulate a 386 easier than you virtualize one.

leeteron Who owns Mike Disfarmer’s photographs?

IANAL, but the publication of the work is when the copyright timer starts under the '76 act IIRC. However, and this is a big however, because the (re)publisher is not the artist and the pre '76 act did not have automatic default copyright; there is a VERY good argument that it's either public domain or falls under Arkansas local copyright law (which I don't know anything about). I'd say the heirs have a tenuous federal claim at best (again, not a lawyer). But they may have better luck in state court due to common law rulings. Either way it's likely to turn into an expensive hot mess.