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Wed, 14 Jun 2006
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I would never have believed it... These guys have written some software for the 8088 CPU, and a CGA card that shows an original PC could display full motion video - including sound. Here is the link - www.oldskool.org/pc/8088_Corruption Clearly this was done without a windoze front end.. So it begs the question, where would we be today if the operating system of choice wasn't so heavy.
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A blast from the past... I remember in about 1987/88 spending *hours* typing in the source code for a version of Fig Forth (Z80) so that it could be adapted to a STD Bus based card I helped develop for the Electronics Unit at the Research School of Electronics at the Australian National University.
As a card, it was kind of neat - 32K of eeprom space, and variable ram (remember 28 pin JDEC pinout parts). The source code for the project is here; http://www.drj-electronics.com/projects/software/figforth/index.html I have included the CP/M test version that I used to play with. It runs under any of the curent Z80 emulators (Joan Riff, etc). To compile it, you will need a cross assembler called A80Z. It had a unique syntax. Gosh, that has rattled some brain cells. |
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I re-read this old favourite the other day (The Mythical Man Month - Brooks - ISBN 0-201-83595-9)
While it is basically a software project management book, it can be applied in most other disciplines. The simple rule that doubling the staff does not mean that the project will be delivered in half the time is so true. Much of its contents is also touched on in a different and quite funny manner in - Down the Programmed Rabit-Hole [Anthony haden-Guest] The surprising revalation I saw was that books written in the mid to late 60's about systems engineering STILL APPLY - even now. Oh, how our discipline needs to grow up. Another interesting question, is how does this apply to civil engineering, and why do they get it right most of the time? This is an area that operates in a similar manner to software engineering, except that the bugs are deadlier. Is it simply that the typical civil engineers management knows that they can't build a bridge, and therefore they don't try? I suspect that this may be the case. It was refreshing to see my old friends at a previous employer fall into all of the well documented traps - They were just too busy to get out of them. |
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It's been quite a while since I entered anything. To me, this is quite like keeping a diary - I tend to get busy and have a heap of partially completed diaries around the place. All of them were started with the best intention, but faded as other priorities crept in. In the last little while, I have changed employers. My old Employer (Securix) is not very well off at the moment. The side effect of this is that while at my last place, I was comfortable completing a blog occasionally (as long as it didnt take too long), I am not that comfortable at my new place. - Something about mucking around on the internet. Anyway, off to work I go. PS, I joined IEEE recently. The application process was very simple, and it gives me access to tons of usefull material. So, mikal - Join IEEE, and give the Australian mob a miss. |
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I have a new XP machine, which is a Toshiba A4. While installing Debian in a VMWare machine, I discovered that if you use the vmware-tools, everything operated corectly. - Sweeeet. 1. Create a new partition 2. Install a base Debian system 3. Apt-get the kernel + headers you actually want 4. Create a symlink from /usr/src/linux to your real headers. (This will probbaly shoot me in the foot when I load up the kernel sources for a kernel re-compile) 5. Fix the lilo issues. *** REMEMBER TO RUN LILO BEFORE YOU REBOOT, 6. reboot 7. reboot with a rescue disk and run lilo... 8. Apt-get dist-upgrade 9. In VMWare, click on VM -> Install VMWare Tools... 10. mount /mnt/cdrom 11. Extract /mnt/cdrom/vmware-linux-tools.tar.gz somewhere. 12. execute ./vmware-install.pl in the directory you extracted the tar archive to. 13. Follow the bouncing ball. 14. Update the mouse in /etc/X11/XF86Config to be /dev/psaux, not /dev/mouse. 15. Ensure that you have pcnet32 loaded to elloy network access under vmware. then X should start up. |
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I was having a chat with some help desk guys from my hosting company. I run 3 domains, and was impressed that all I needed to do to add a domain was to add a directory structure under my www directory, and arrange to have a domain registered. I was actually expecting to have to go and have the help desk guys edit the apache configuration for me. (Thats how I would have done it at home). Here is their response: ------------------------------------------------ We use the apache module "mod_vhost_alias". If a browser requests a domain that points to 63.111.27.87 and that domain has a directory in ~/www, it becomes the DocumentRoot. Your VirtualHost section looks like this: ServerName drj-electronics.com ErrorLog /home2/username/www/logs/error ServerSignature off VirtualDocumentRoot /home2/username/www/%0 VirtualScriptAlias /home2/username/www/%0/cgi-bin User username Group users DocumentRoot /home2/username/www ------------------------------------------------ Boy, hasn'y apache grown up while I wasn't watching. |
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Projects - Some of my projects
DRJ-Consulting - A site focused on saving energy. Dougs Word Clocks - I make my own clock that tells the time using words. we Just Dont Talk About That - A site for sharing funny family stories. Megan's weblog Email me at doug@stillhq.com |
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