asciilifeform: (see logz!)

asciilifeform: e.g., magnetic logic

asciilifeform: there was a whole world of approaches that people spent their lives on, before cheap semiconductor, and entirely forgotten now

asciilifeform: e.g., an optical delay line arranged in some clever way.

asciilifeform: it is even worth considering that one could, in principle, compute on something ~other than a semiconductor~

asciilifeform: (last i recall mircea_popescu gave somewhere close to 1/10th of a damn, he is to be commended for this) ☟︎

asciilifeform: the most discouraging part is the utter lack of anybody giving half a tinker's damn.

asciilifeform: that was it.

asciilifeform: made a sorta working cu diode.

asciilifeform: but i did not - to date - get far.

asciilifeform: (modified b&w photo process, or at least something not more complicated than doing colour photo at home)

asciilifeform: with the aim of, ideally, finding a way to make integrated circuit in similar ways to how hobbyist can make pcb

asciilifeform: for a while i got into the question of cupric oxide and other exotic semiconductor

asciilifeform: (this is mainly academic exercise, 74xxx do not grow on trees any more than 'opteron' does.)

asciilifeform: or - at a stretch - pgp.

asciilifeform: but ok for, e.g., calculating dynamics of the tamper in hbomb.

asciilifeform: but not for, e.g., bitcoin.

asciilifeform: can build cpu for certain purposes out of 74xxx.

asciilifeform: it depends on what means 'cpu'

asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2015-08-02#1222246 << related. ☝︎

asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2015-08-02#1222211 ☝︎

asciilifeform: recall the pdp emulator thread ?

asciilifeform: would have ended up with a result, too, if 'life had not gotten in the way'

asciilifeform: it is all brute labour

asciilifeform: the protocol was documented, i sat down, started doing it

asciilifeform: at any rate, all of these problems are solvable IF SOMEONE CARED TO

asciilifeform: used, as i understand, in critical infrastructure which runs on 1980s minis.

asciilifeform: i have nfi how well it worx.

asciilifeform: some outfit in texas makes an emulator gadget, it costs 4 figures.

asciilifeform: other than a tall (shrinking, as i understand, today - to nothing) pile of drives.

asciilifeform: the man who did it for a living, had no solution.

asciilifeform: so i could get rid of the brick and replace with $1 sd card.

asciilifeform: wanted to not merely read the disk, but emulate

asciilifeform: st-506 incidentally.

asciilifeform: gave up from lack of time.

asciilifeform: i actually spent the first ~6 mo. after i bought the lisp machine, trying to rig up, with fpga, a mechanism to read the fucking disk ☟︎

asciilifeform: real, e.g., 'zero' airplane, exists, in flying condition even somewhere, but do you think it will be wasted on a ~film~ ?!

asciilifeform: then you probably know that NONE of the tanks or planes appearing in ones made in past 40 or so yrs are genuine period.

asciilifeform: like to watch ww2 films ?

asciilifeform: this is what machine extinction is like

asciilifeform: the shell - before anyone asks - has the requisite cabling, ALSO unfindable.

asciilifeform: (though schmidt did sell me an ~empty shell~ of a tape drive, in case i can ever locate the drive raw !)

asciilifeform: contents can only be loaded onto it from tape, and i have neither the tape, nor the tape drive !

asciilifeform: even if i find identical disk elsewhere

asciilifeform: because, among other reasons, if the disk dies, there is literally NO WAY to restore it

asciilifeform: i haven't switched the thing on in some years

asciilifeform: it was quite like that airfield, yes.

asciilifeform: and had a machine made

asciilifeform: i went to the house, where this was done

asciilifeform: aha.

asciilifeform: which had been cannibalized, largely, to feed their dozen or so working ones

asciilifeform: consisting of a tall pile of MiGs

asciilifeform: where we talked about the junkyard in the airport in timisoara

asciilifeform: does anyone recall the jet fighter thread ?

asciilifeform: it is quite the same with 10,000 opteron cpu.

asciilifeform: but when we do it in usa with 10,000 loaves it is called 'survival' somehow.

asciilifeform: when romans sealed up a vestal virgin who had a fuck, they gave her a loaf of bread and a glass of milk

asciilifeform: and then ... .

asciilifeform: where you seal yourself into a cave with 10,000 cans of 'spam' and 100,000 rounds of kalash

asciilifeform: this is a computerized version of the traditional american 'survivalist' lunacy

asciilifeform: if they want classic msdos gamez

asciilifeform: phf: that 'future' is here already for iPnohe users, who have to run the js pc emulator in the browser to play gamez

asciilifeform: (re: 1 - e.g., reversed xilinx 4000 series, is ~useless~, as you cannot buy it in any kind of qty)

asciilifeform: this is a ~basic, necessary step~ to sanity of whatever any other kind.

asciilifeform: 2) toolchain is not a closed x86 turd, and in fact can run on an arch implemented on SELFSAME CHIP itself.

asciilifeform: it means that 1) design is published and is likely to remain available, no reverse-engineered americrud plox

asciilifeform: it is worth elaborating re what 'sane' means in this case.

asciilifeform: it is the only thing approaching a general-purpose pill against the garbage.

asciilifeform: this is why the sane fpga will have to be produced.

asciilifeform: (see thread re 'opteron' etc)

asciilifeform: well in practice the only usable hardware ALREADY is out of print.

asciilifeform: (how rms left the lisp world, think.)

asciilifeform: it is especially concerning because the 'end times' situation, where usable computer hardware is expensive and you cannot rely on other folks having same one as you, etc. is actually how we ended up with the unix braindamage to begin with.

asciilifeform: described here on many occasions.

asciilifeform: the most concerning bit is the hardware extinction.

asciilifeform: a race where not only first place but places one through ten thousand went to a single winner.

asciilifeform: it is precisely mircea_popescu's story about zeus throwing the other gods

asciilifeform: it is a collective-failure-of-everybody-but-one-guy - sorta like mpex.

asciilifeform: i know of no even vaguely similar item elsewhere.

asciilifeform: as in, nothing else even remotely approaches it.

asciilifeform: ida is a particularly interesting case because it is a TOTAL monopoly ☟︎☟︎

asciilifeform: phf: presently there is nothing else to do

asciilifeform: trinque: because nothing else is likely to exist in our lifetime ?

asciilifeform: thing is, someone will have to maintain the forked (and, in practice, re-write, most of them are quite nearly unmaintainable) proggies. there is not actually a substitute for, e.g., wireshark.

asciilifeform: presently.

asciilifeform: so there is ~no one to do the burning.

asciilifeform: actually carrying the exercise to a usable-to-other-people, well-documented conclusion is somewhere Nth on the list of things i would do if i had mircea_popescuesque levels of free time

asciilifeform: as in, what needs to be fixed, and what - burned with hot irons until not even wet spot remains.

asciilifeform: at any rate my gentoo-depoetteringizer does not magically fix the ecosystem, shat to all hell, no. but what it ~does~ do is to hard-nuke the autopullin crapolade and reveal who is your enemy and who is merely passive victim.

asciilifeform: if your stomach is strong, and little else to do (who?) can go, try.

asciilifeform: whosoever can be arsed, can try to strip it away.

asciilifeform: at the heart of something like power management there is normally a 500-lines-of-c util that mostly worx, but surrounded for some reason by hairball of rubbish scriptolade

asciilifeform: and yeah, you will know the idiocies by their mile-long trails of 'pango', 'bonobo', and other strange deps

asciilifeform: (outside of the mega-film)

asciilifeform: just as, walking on the street, you meet men, and flies, but never a man-fly hybrid of questionable species

asciilifeform: this should surprise no one

asciilifeform: (chromium, wireshark)

asciilifeform: worked for ~everything minus a few proggies

asciilifeform: hey that worked

asciilifeform: and a buncha other turd also