asciilifeform: and the iron -- is also of interest, in so far as it made the soft -- possible.

asciilifeform: and ergo the software, to the extent it embodied these concepts -- which was quite large -- is interesting;

asciilifeform: the old iron, doppler , is not -- contrary to the delusions of 'collectors' -- interesting per se. the ~software~ was not even interesting per se -- it was a tall pile of stinking mit hacks. the CONCEPTS, however, as described in http://www.loper-os.org/?p=284 , WERE interesting. ☟︎

asciilifeform: the result, however, is that the ~singularly~ most interesting comp from 1980s -- is ~entirely lost .

asciilifeform: it wasn't an outrageous / illogical / atrocious thing to do. smbx was a fabless chip maker which competed directly with, among others, TI ('explorer' lispm)

asciilifeform: symbolics -- also quite deliberately -- never even printed an honest instruction set reference, for any of the machines.

asciilifeform: the published documentation is of 0 use in cloning the machine.

asciilifeform: i have 100% of the published documentation here.

asciilifeform: the sources/schematics/etc. are the issue.

asciilifeform: the equipment is not the issue, it is all available, for a price

asciilifeform: the 'collectors', in my experience, have been the farthest possible thing from a help -- quite a hindrance, in fact. ☟︎

asciilifeform: ( and -- possibly -- some of the insider working notes. )

asciilifeform: we could, however, get the ~artifact~ back. in theory.

asciilifeform: others -- long past the end of their intellectual working lives.

asciilifeform: i know for a fact that some of them -- are dead.

asciilifeform: the unfortunate bit is that we'll never get the ~people~ who built that thing, back.

asciilifeform: making their investments -- worth ~$ 0.

asciilifeform: however that is precisely what i'm interested in.

asciilifeform: it is almost as if they did not want their 3-10k $ investments to turn into the equivalent of old nintendo. ☟︎

asciilifeform: or even to take and post a high-resolution photo of the thing.

asciilifeform: for some odd reason, not a single one of the folks who bought these relics, has seen it fit to do this work.

asciilifeform: ( it would be possible to build a behavioural test stand for it, if the pinout and timing characteristics were known. theoretically anyone with a 'macivory' and some spare time, could come up with these. )

asciilifeform: re 'non-crown' jewels of bolixdom, one example of useful thing that does not publicly exist anywhere -- the mere pinout of the 'ivory'.

asciilifeform: most of it is described, in painful detail, in the logs.

asciilifeform: entirely unrelated things.

asciilifeform: the 'i know people...' is what prompted the req.

asciilifeform: 3) the uncensored (compl. with low-levels) src for last (8.3 afaik) genera.

asciilifeform: 1) the NS source for the last 'ivory'. ☟︎

asciilifeform: well, starting with the crown jewels , and down : ☟︎

asciilifeform: perhaps doppler will break the radio silence and post some docs

asciilifeform: we had a lively thread not long ago, where asciilifeform complains re primary activity of the top bolixologists seems to consist of sitting quietly, dog-in-the-manger-style, on piles of unpublished goodies

asciilifeform: incidentally the real titan of 'bolixology' here is phf , rather than asciilifeform .

asciilifeform: ( asciilifeform in particular is not esp. interested in 'lisp machine restoration' in the sense of 'old car restoration' hobbyists, but in reverse-engineering )

asciilifeform: ( maybe 90% of the material is in some sense 'computer related' lol )

asciilifeform: which, i suspect, is why they got lizarded away. 'they' don't want cheap radhard cpu, rom.

asciilifeform: ( and quite impervious to radiation )

asciilifeform: to briefly revisit upstack, http://btcbase.org/log/2017-03-23#1631333 these suffer charge leakage ( like ordinary flash rom ) ; actual otp -- theoretically good for centuries. ☝︎

asciilifeform: tru. which is why dead empire, in 'egyptological' museum, and not on the map

asciilifeform: had (surprisingly to some folx) the first 'elbrus', quite competitive with cray1

asciilifeform: hey somebody gotta fall on the grenade, mircea_popescu .

asciilifeform: it's what the americans -- did.

asciilifeform: say why i ought to be interested in anything other than the height of the plank.

asciilifeform: in abstract it sounds entirely tru -- 'gotta get the money out of the hands of the beetle man.' but the actual history is somewhat puzzling -- 'beetle man' su had , e.g., steklov mathematical institute. '90s ru -- cocaine yachts, golden toilets.

asciilifeform: orcs just pour golden toilet, and prop up western 'bank' chumpatron.

asciilifeform: this was tested in late su/90s ru. afaik summed to 0.

asciilifeform: tru. all of the nonsense of versailles did not destroy euro culture; the 20th c -- did.

asciilifeform: ( and hitler was not even the champ, in his circle. consider the idiot chicken farmer's 'ahnenerbe' for instance. )

asciilifeform: in terms of alchemy impact.

asciilifeform: point was that 1 idiot with actual money is ~= 10,000,001 with penny.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: tru