log☇︎
340 entries in 0.549s
asciilifeform: i ask because i have a 9GB disk image from that bolix 'macivory' ( recorded using the 'alpha' from earlier thrd ) but am reluctant to simply put on dulap, soaking up bw for errybody
a111: Logged on 2019-01-02 15:31 asciilifeform: mats: i haven't built anyffing useful from ice40 with own hands yet. but, interestingly, when bought a 'scsi2sd' device for replacing disk in bolix box, found that author in fact used ice40 for the job
asciilifeform trimmed iron stash down to 2 'alphas', 1 runs barbaric 'tru64' (for that bolix emulator), 1 nao set up for 'ffa on arch that aint x64 or arm' tests laters
asciilifeform: mats: i haven't built anyffing useful from ice40 with own hands yet. but, interestingly, when bought a 'scsi2sd' device for replacing disk in bolix box, found that author in fact used ice40 for the job ☟︎
asciilifeform: ( which reminds me, i still have a bolix post queued on conveyor )
asciilifeform: bolix is a sort of rommel's afrika front to this.
mircea_popescu: imo putting an end to "software development" much greater achievement for human race than "decrypting bolix"
a111: Logged on 2018-12-25 23:02 asciilifeform: i'ma share a pair of example inputs: http://www.nosuchlabs.com/pub/bolix/pic/ivory_bottom_a_super.jpg http://www.nosuchlabs.com/pub/bolix/pic/ivory_bottom_b_super.jpg (warning: 300MB! each!) .
asciilifeform: ( and , for completeness, a second, http://www.nosuchlabs.com/pub/bolix/pic/ivory_top_a_super.jpg , http://www.nosuchlabs.com/pub/bolix/pic/ivory_top_b_super.jpg , whynot . again ~300MB ea.! )
asciilifeform: i'ma share a pair of example inputs: http://www.nosuchlabs.com/pub/bolix/pic/ivory_bottom_a_super.jpg http://www.nosuchlabs.com/pub/bolix/pic/ivory_bottom_b_super.jpg (warning: 300MB! each!) . ☟︎
asciilifeform: http://www.loper-os.org/pub/bolix/bolix_chinesium_macro_test_2.jpg << ditto.
asciilifeform: http://www.loper-os.org/pub/bolix/bolix_chinesium_macro_test.jpg << 2nd peek from bolix torture room; chinesium macrolens testfire
asciilifeform: in other oddities and 'where on the net is this discussed? nowhere?', http://www.loper-os.org/pub/bolix/bolix_lamp_peek.jpg << old-fashioned 2layer pcbs are interestingly transparent to visible light. (obv. whole thing, aint, but give surprising amt of info otherwise not accessible )
mircea_popescu: pretty much the only way left to go, to these ~irrelevant~ old men with their imaginarily valuable bolix stack : they're cordially invited to withdraw into eternal slumber, like fucking moses. in three to five thousand years some virgin in rural bumfuck somewhere can quote to us "what the truth REALLY WAS 'according to the democratic party'".
asciilifeform: intel did 'even better', by rolling the field back to ~before time of babbage~, who, recall, managed to eat ~20% of brit empire budget simply on promise of baking ~log table~ without eggogs ( and , arguably in a kind of 19th c. bolix affair, succeeded but overran cost to death )
mircea_popescu: this is no proof. but it does inform what is, for all of us, a reasonable suspicion. you think you have reason to suspect bolix is more notable than atari. ☟︎
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i dun demand that the deaf understand, somehow, music. observe that mircea_popescu dun care for bolix, and i equally duncare for bondage&discipline, yet we still find what to constructively say to one another on occasion.
mircea_popescu: today, "i'm talking to this guy, who is not smart enough to make a key upon reading the logs, but is smart enough to have interesting things ". traditionally-bolix, "these six morons that weren't apt to survive nevertheless made important tech". generally throughout, "i dunno how to resolve the tension between stupid and horny", from http://btcbase.org/log/2018-12-18#1881534 to http://btcbase.org/log/2014-07-26#770352 and 9k ☝︎☝︎
phf: ignoring for a moment the general conclusion in multiple threads that bolix archeology is essentially a pointless hobby
a111: Logged on 2017-03-23 04:32 asciilifeform: mircea_popescu is free to be as 'unpersuaded' as he wants. fact: his machine -- can overrun an array; bolix -- could not; his box -- crashes, cannot be examined or uncrashed (yes) -- bolix -- could; and various other aspects, well covered in teh logz.
a111: Logged on 2017-11-14 19:56 asciilifeform: apeloyee: but on the other hand any attempt to build a sane arch, without fully grasping the bolix stack, from ic to the compiler, is lunacy.
a111: Logged on 2017-11-14 20:10 asciilifeform: apeloyee: the other thing to consider, is that the preserved bolix material has ~unspeakably~ rich ( and quite high snr ) collection of artifacts, perhaps 1000 asciilifeform-years of work. take the ns vlsi compiler alone. i have the binaries, but not the src. and ~someone~ will have to make a sane (i.e. fully lispified and zero-externals) vlsitron.
mircea_popescu: and moreover, from the other side, "fiat bolix, pereat mundus, ruat caelum" ? "i am ~so dedicated~ to reconstructing this 80s atari, i am willing to spend however long living with and among fucktarded orc populations, at the risk of my brain rotting like boas'" ? did you actually think this through and that's how it came out ?
a111: Logged on 2018-12-19 21:00 asciilifeform: and especially , deliberately unfriendly to whoever profits from the seekrederpery. in fact, i will know when my reversing has succeeded when a bolix collector somewhere at last eats his pistol because his $100k stash of irons is now worth == 8bit nintendo.
phf: actually i'm not sure i said it in the logs, so my bad. i want a fully operational bolix fpga, or in the future other type of replica, complete with genera sources and other such bells and whistles
phf: yes, my whole goal is to have a bunch of useless bolix junk, that i can mallory on top till i die.
phf: asciilifeform: there was already _one_ conversation, i made my _conclusions_. your adventage is that you can basically just rant in the open, make insulting fucking statements in "general direction" of those bolix whisperers. where's i lose by having this in public record. i told you as much _at the very beginning_. but you clearly shit on my efforts, i mean you have been saying as much in public for a year, so you don't lose anything
phf: look i told you about the stuff basically as soon as i came back _from a photoshoot_, gigs of photos, need to be sorted through. i communicated as much. the whisperer stuff started way before i had a chance to do anything about it. i mean what the fuck. it's like "i'm the greatest bolix liberator, and everyone else working towards it is an obscurantist and a cunt, unless they blog their shit right now". how am i not supposed to take
a111: Logged on 2018-12-19 20:04 asciilifeform: nao, if phf thinks that asciilifeform cracking the case ~at all~ will 'unmask' phf's informant, this is a problem. chiefly for phf's informant, because i ~will~ rape bolix, whether anyone helps or not
asciilifeform: i dun expect to make any substantial movements on bolix front till march, at earliest .
asciilifeform: and especially , deliberately unfriendly to whoever profits from the seekrederpery. in fact, i will know when my reversing has succeeded when a bolix collector somewhere at last eats his pistol because his $100k stash of irons is now worth == 8bit nintendo. ☟︎
asciilifeform suspects that if this weren't the case, i'd be posting from a 32GB bolix already
phf: there's no "docs", it's not some kind of mother lode of all things bolix. fwiw i went into as excited and with the same expectations you're imagining right now. there was a set of printed papers that primarily existed in pre-ivory days. they are mostly related to e.g. mechanical layout of the boards (the bulk of stuff was e.g. machining parameters of motherboards and cases, something i didn't even touch)
phf: asciilifeform: i actually remember that one, but you'll have to trust me that my assumption on reading this was that you had debugging scaffolding in order to observe its operation, because reading layers of bolix<-alpha<-x86 code is not particularly enlightening. you've since acquired the source and clearly opted for electron microscope route.
asciilifeform: phf: thus far i cannot comment on your methods, given that they do not apparently include publishing anyffing bolix-related openly.
phf: asciilifeform: there's this general position that what you're doing, you're doing to get yoursefl a running bolix clone, where's i'm just fucking around, which is bullshit. i'm doing the same thing, towards the same goals. it's not presently clear who's more successful. you basically want me to unilaterally fuck up my entire operation, because ~last week~ you bought a macivory.
asciilifeform: nao, if phf thinks that asciilifeform cracking the case ~at all~ will 'unmask' phf's informant, this is a problem. chiefly for phf's informant, because i ~will~ rape bolix, whether anyone helps or not ☟︎
mircea_popescu: phf i expect the accumulated value of the whole pile of "secrets" is about 0. and i further expect the entire value of the whole bolix stack neatly approximates the value of my stock of pogos. ☟︎
asciilifeform: re 'carnality of non-emulated', dark seekrit re http://www.loper-os.org/?p=51 -- asciilifeform , turned out, did not actually like the classic bolix kbd/mouse. in particular it was made before arrow keys invented...
mircea_popescu: i suspect "we can fix your pals" would be mega business. if, of course, bolix prices weren't utter bs, and if, of course, anyone wanted them ~for an actual purpose~. neither of which...
asciilifeform: in other archaeologies, https://archive.is/vOHNY#selection-305.153-305.267 suggests that stock bolix PALs are readable.
asciilifeform: while on subj of bolix : no reply so far to http://btcbase.org/log/2018-12-18#1881357 , it loox like they will have to be reversed the hard,long,painful way ☝︎
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: puzzlers like those, make e.g. bolix look trivial ( consider, bolix physically exists and is sitting in asciilifeform's tortureroom , whereas beria et al's docs were afaik carefully burned ) ☟︎
a111: Logged on 2018-12-18 23:03 asciilifeform: usg used a fleet of bolix boxen for gulf war I logistics, and fuck knows what else, so in some dusty beetleman's desk it is 'coloured' as 'strategic', and so it gets passed from mallery to mallery.
asciilifeform: usg used a fleet of bolix boxen for gulf war I logistics, and fuck knows what else, so in some dusty beetleman's desk it is 'coloured' as 'strategic', and so it gets passed from mallery to mallery. ☟︎☟︎
asciilifeform: my current model is that 'hitler' put him in charge of the bottled remains of bolix for the elementary http://btcbase.org/log/2015-06-10#1158785 reason. ☝︎
asciilifeform: and before anyone asks, no i have nfi what bolix (or the ravages of time...) did to that solder mask to make the tracks look like dash
asciilifeform: phf: http://www.loper-os.org/pub/bolix/bolix_peek_back.jpg , goes with the earlier
asciilifeform: phf: i fear that it'll take an entire weekend to go through the pics ( plux i wanna redo whole thing with a tripod and macro lens, and the latter i gotta find ) , but to whet appetite, have a http://www.loper-os.org/pub/bolix/bolix_peek.jpg
asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2018-12-18#1881525 << dun think that asciilifeform's loaded; he had small bit of dough specifically set aside for 'if bolix appears!' ☝︎
asciilifeform: ( apparently it isn't merely plug an' fughet, gotta config it to pretend to be crapple disk, and then will need coupla bolix partitions also.. )
a111: Logged on 2018-12-16 04:44 asciilifeform: ( phunphakt to tie this into prev thread -- seems as if the bolix 3d engine, 1 of the 1st to be sold as such, still exists as commercial product, owned by some jp firm. naturally cppized and renamed. )
asciilifeform: ( phunphakt to tie this into prev thread -- seems as if the bolix 3d engine, 1 of the 1st to be sold as such, still exists as commercial product, owned by some jp firm. naturally cppized and renamed. ) ☟︎
asciilifeform: the 1st, lol, port of 'zork' to bolix...
phf: i bought a barely used eizo cg243w from a russian guy. it was one of his last possessions (no work and didn't want to become a "corporate whore"), and he talked about how quality of everything went down and keeps going down and that you really only can trust 2009 hardware at the latest. i wonder if there are more people like that hoarding their prized bolix, but without yet hitting the necessity to sell one.
asciilifeform: iirc in early 2000s, 'american express' unplugged its bolix cluster ( handled fraud detection thingie ) , and surplussed coupla hundred machines. wonder where they went.
asciilifeform: thing also came complete with a bolix-encharactered 1980s crapple kbd.
asciilifeform: ( this makes for ~3~ original bolix cd sets in asciilifeform's torture room. anybody in l1 want one ? )
asciilifeform: in other noose, phf , mircea_popescu , et al, the bolix is here. dks packs a++ , princely, all parts on manifest , and kilometre of bubbles. will post photos as soon as i wrap up my albatross of this week, ch14
mircea_popescu: yeah, totally what you want is 8 months sunbathing for your bolix.
asciilifeform: ( fwiw i still dunno if the bolix people set the lock bit in those things or not; possibly they didn't even )
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: believe or not, bolix aint even the least-gettable old/interesting comp
mircea_popescu: yes, but n+1 step there is... "well, bolix v2020 comes with 1tb ram. which it uses."
mircea_popescu: can has 64GB ram on the cheap now. considering what period pricing was like, 2020 reconstructed bolix'd better have 1TB ram.
asciilifeform: re bolix, iirc of the 36bit, 28 were available for addressing, so theoretically can 256MB.
mircea_popescu: yes, but the 1st step in the http://btcbase.org/log/2018-12-11#1879649 line will be... "just like bolix but with 1024x the ram" ☝︎
asciilifeform: let weitekism run in soft that bolix helpfully wrote, at fpga speed
asciilifeform: in other lulz, asciilifeform finally bought that bolix
mircea_popescu: given a set of ("the place formerly known as sudan", "a monopoly on aviation", "the empire state building") and ("has written proper sgml", "heroically reversed bolix stack","found way to write without getting out of bed"), which is the correct matching ?
asciilifeform: in practice the friction of 'closed' is finite. bolix is as closed as it gets and i'ma still rape it.
asciilifeform: speaking of optics, asciilifeform replaced the sad webcam thing bolted to the torture room iron pole with a modern-day 25megapixel thing. should make for some decent shots once i get that bolix...
mircea_popescu: no, it's not. "today i tried to boot my bolix, had to re-write apple bus"
asciilifeform: pretty sure there's custom bolix ic other than ivory in xl
a111: Logged on 2018-12-01 19:21 asciilifeform: btw a very good chunk of the present-day cad monopoly biz is powered by tech written by bolix escapees. i tracked some of'em down ( and no they dun answer my mail... ) , they built the current cad houses.
asciilifeform: btw a very good chunk of the present-day cad monopoly biz is powered by tech written by bolix escapees. i tracked some of'em down ( and no they dun answer my mail... ) , they built the current cad houses. ☟︎
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: cad is 1 of the open problems for which a bolix clone would be +9000 mechanical lever.
asciilifeform: all buried beneath the sands, even moar so than bolix.
asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2018-11-30#1876532 >> behold, '8,054,179,498 Words Consed' << what else do ya know of in 1980s that chugged through 288 GB (!) ?! ( bolix had 36bit word ) ☝︎
asciilifeform: it's only good for bolix.
mircea_popescu: i bet you what you want you'll find hand massage in bolix.
asciilifeform: ideally you find the repeating patterns of transistorage and go straight to functional units ( granted this is only practical for bolix, 486, and newer, where there actually ~exist~ these units, as opposed to hand-optimized arbitrary transistorage )
a111: Logged on 2018-11-29 19:24 asciilifeform: on other front, phf : on occasion of the most recent bolix thread , i went and looked again at the http://btcbase.org/log/2018-01-17#1771955 artifact ; it is interesting that they provided 128 iron types, incl. bignum, but not a 'bignum of fixed N words'. i guess in '80s ~nobody was thinking of crypto at all. ( and i was prolly unduly pessimistic to the orig finder of $item, it is prolly 95% of what's needed for cycle-accurate clone.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: he does : http://www.loper-os.org/pub/bolix_ivory.jpg object dun look removable, but rather like it was inserted from other end
asciilifeform: ( somewhere on my hdd, there's a photo of shrobe walking across a stage holding up a 3620 , the kind in http://www.loper-os.org/?p=51 , in his hands, 'looksy, first 'portable' bolix' )
asciilifeform: iirc he went into medicine after bolix folded
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: indeed, tho quite ironically bolix itself was quite analogous to a su research town
asciilifeform: perma-mirrored at http://www.loper-os.org/pub/amberglint_bolix_1.jpg http://www.loper-os.org/pub/amberglint_bolix_2.jpg , ty ☟︎
asciilifeform: http://www.loper-os.org/pub/bolix-1987-baker.pdf ( warning: pdfturd/scan ) has the only known die shot
asciilifeform: http://www.loper-os.org/pub/bolix_ivory_pinside.jpg ☟︎
asciilifeform: >> http://www.loper-os.org/pub/bolix_ivory.jpg << subj
asciilifeform: on other front, phf : on occasion of the most recent bolix thread , i went and looked again at the http://btcbase.org/log/2018-01-17#1771955 artifact ; it is interesting that they provided 128 iron types, incl. bignum, but not a 'bignum of fixed N words'. i guess in '80s ~nobody was thinking of crypto at all. ( and i was prolly unduly pessimistic to the orig finder of $item, it is prolly 95% of what's needed for cycle-accurate clone. ☝︎☟︎
asciilifeform: in other lulz : https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1lb-14-7oz-vintage-symbolics-vsli-242998915 << photo of what appears to be a pile of bolix ivories, sold for (!) gold recycler recently. epic.
a111: Logged on 2018-11-28 18:14 asciilifeform: phf: imho the ultimate bolix caper would be to rack a coupla working clones at pizarro & rent'em out. but admittedly this is , presently, nearly as far as the moon
asciilifeform: ( for n00bz -- racking an actual bolix is afaik a nonstarter -- the remaining units lack not only the requisite 24/7 reliability / component life , but also any means to cleanly wash the whore between customers, the way i do with e.g rk )
asciilifeform: phf: imho the ultimate bolix caper would be to rack a coupla working clones at pizarro & rent'em out. but admittedly this is , presently, nearly as far as the moon ☟︎
asciilifeform: ( there could, for instance, be instructions in the physical device that bolix never had a chance to use in os, but exist in some last-days userland proggy like ns etc )
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: i dun see much diff b/w the bolix gnomes and the 40 y.o. chix who 'waiting for right man' to pop cherry, as pictured also in mircea_popescu's essays
asciilifeform: the way i understand it, bolix macsyma was largely a free ride on the public dollar one
asciilifeform: just how much moar was in the bolix ?
asciilifeform: i expect academitards-with-seekric-sauce are 98% 'if i published, errybody will know that it never worked', 1% 'if i published, errybody will know that it consists of ripped off old open sores' ( personally met one of these ! ) , and 1% 'it worx and we're gonna patent!111 and getrichquick' , bolix-whisperer style ( i have no direct evidence that these exist, but some indirect clues )