log☇︎
195 entries in 0.786s
a111: Logged on 2019-05-14 19:08 asciilifeform: i have 5 samples of 'ivory' (incl. the 1 installed in working machine) , still not enuff to throw around without thinking
asciilifeform: 'ivory' + os, on other hand, was extremely polished product (unequaled dev environ, multi-year uptime, etc) , so my interest is specifically there.
a111: Logged on 2017-11-14 20:45 phf: it's funny that 36xx series is basically an improved cadr. ivory on the other hand? literally scheme86: they poached both the main guy who worked on the cpu ~and the entire toolset~. ivory was still designed on CADR (rather than smbx), because that's where scheme team designed theirs
asciilifeform: 'cadr' is quite well documented, but not particularly informative re 'ivory', which built after more than decade of refinement/simplification
amberglint: asciilifeform: have you seen this lecture by Tom Knight? from about the same time, but not strictly about the Ivory: https://www.csail.mit.edu/node/5861
asciilifeform: amberglint: it did not result in very useful picture ( the 'production' model of ivory has thick metallic lid which my tube does not penetrate. ) xray was bought to photograph the 'macivory' pcb tracks. but since this, i was given a pinout (not published yet, cuz again short on time)
a111: Logged on 2019-04-23 14:16 asciilifeform: little flex pcb thing, inserts under the 'ivory' and brings the signals out to analyzer.
asciilifeform: i have 5 samples of 'ivory' (incl. the 1 installed in working machine) , still not enuff to throw around without thinking ☟︎
amberglint: asciilifeform: I've stumbled upon a video recording of the lecture on the Ivory given by a bolix engineer in 1987, apparently uploaded by a bolix 'graphics division' alumnus just two weeks ago, thought I should share it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e39LnDVBl4c
asciilifeform: little flex pcb thing, inserts under the 'ivory' and brings the signals out to analyzer. ☟︎
a111: Logged on 2019-04-01 14:08 asciilifeform: in other noose, asciilifeform nao has what appears to be full pinout, timing, bus sequence, register, init magic, interrupts, etc. spec for bolix 'ivory' (won't, presently, say from where, unless source wants to be cited, plox to write in. )
asciilifeform: 1st time i booted up that 'ivory' bolix, it actually listed a coupla 'and here ecc triggered, corrected x to y' when revving up
mp_en_viaje: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bolix+ivory << top hit, of course... the one, the only, the true etcetera. last year's vintage, too.
mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-04-05#1907037 << did you see the ivory xray sets ? people here will trust what they can verify, quite literally. the trust model is built atop the wot, which is quite fundamental to how stuff works here. ☝︎
a111: 20 results for "bolix ivory", http://btcbase.org/log-search?q=bolix%20ivory
asciilifeform: !#s bolix ivory
asciilifeform: in other noose, asciilifeform nao has what appears to be full pinout, timing, bus sequence, register, init magic, interrupts, etc. spec for bolix 'ivory' (won't, presently, say from where, unless source wants to be cited, plox to write in. ) ☟︎
asciilifeform: in unrelated 'for laters' noose, asciilifeform got hold of 2 moar 'ivory' cpus (brings total # of samples in asciilifeform's house o'horrors to 5 )
a111: Logged on 2018-11-30 18:04 asciilifeform: http://www.loper-os.org/pub/bolix_ivory_pinside.jpg
mircea_popescu: is the hope that http://www.loper-os.org/pub/misc/xray/ivory/iron_ivory_die_large.jpg item is not merely noise ?
feedbot: http://www.loper-os.org/?p=3073 << Loper OS -- X-Ray Microscopy of Symbolics Ivory CPUs.
a111: Logged on 2018-11-28 16:26 phf: asciilifeform: before you agree to a decap, give me some more time to get you the docs, maybe they'll be enough to get things going. i'd hate to lose an ivory to get some pretty but useless pictures, i'd rather it fry on a breadboard in the process of directed discovery
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!) .
a111: Logged on 2018-12-26 00:25 asciilifeform: z80 of course not only costs fiddycents, but ~still made~ , and so has been photographed errywhere, prolly even in zimbabwe. whereas there's maybe 50 'ivory' remaining total.
a111: Logged on 2018-12-25 23:19 amberglint: btw, I was considering asking this microscopist if he wants to help you with the Ivory micrograph, but after the last attempt I'm not sure if it's a good idea
asciilifeform: z80 of course not only costs fiddycents, but ~still made~ , and so has been photographed errywhere, prolly even in zimbabwe. whereas there's maybe 50 'ivory' remaining total. ☟︎
asciilifeform: density of 'ivory' is around 4x that of z80.
asciilifeform: 'ivory' aint much transistorwise by current-day measures, but at ~370,000 is slightly moar than its contemporary i386, and defo bigger than anyffing afaik that amateurs anywhere reversed to date.
a111: Logged on 2018-12-25 23:19 amberglint: btw, I was considering asking this microscopist if he wants to help you with the Ivory micrograph, but after the last attempt I'm not sure if it's a good idea
amberglint: btw, I was considering asking this microscopist if he wants to help you with the Ivory micrograph, but after the last attempt I'm not sure if it's a good idea ☟︎☟︎
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!) . ☟︎
phf: _3600_ _pre-ivory days_
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)
asciilifeform: phf: so what was it, you promised 'i'ma only leak the bits re ivory' ?
asciilifeform: 'sapper errs 1ce', could take another 10y to get a 2nd 'ivory' if i kill this one.
phf: there are 3600 era PAL sources in a form of scans, there might be some overlap between those and ivory. i doubt that's the case, but it's worth investigating
a111: Logged on 2018-12-15 00:35 asciilifeform: incidentally, i had potentially interesting notion: a modern-day digicam ccd, of e.g. 25 'megapixel', is just about dense enuff that one could take a meaningful xray of the ivory die, if one could be found that responds to xray..
asciilifeform: incidentally, i had potentially interesting notion: a modern-day digicam ccd, of e.g. 25 'megapixel', is just about dense enuff that one could take a meaningful xray of the ivory die, if one could be found that responds to xray.. ☟︎
asciilifeform: phf: i am thinking, instead of burning time on emulating 'nubus' and ancient crapple, when working (from mac-side pov) clone exists i'ma drive it directly via onboard ft2232hl or similar ( the mac-side src , i've had for yrs, and it's quite straightforward re what is done to the card; once i know what specifically happens on the card when nubus regs are written, may as well do it from pc directly to/from the ivory cpu via usb-to-5v-f
phf: you know if ivory on macivory actually replaceable, the way it is on xl?
asciilifeform: pretty sure there's custom bolix ic other than ivory in xl
a111: Logged on 2018-10-19 01:04 asciilifeform: amberglint: when i went to his house 10y ago, offered to him to make fpga-ized 'ivory' , 'pro bono', if he'd only cough up with what. answr was approx 'can't , unless my master permits, and he wouldn't'
phf: re ivory i think we had a thread about macivory being much easier to reverse, since it's all isolated, but you will still have to spend time (re?)learning the gnarly details of apple bus, and whatever adhoc protocol is used to communicate with host. going by an xl might not be a worse option
lobbesbot: phf: Sent 1 day, 9 hours, and 1 minute ago: <asciilifeform> loox like dks is selling another! 'ivory' on lulzbay >> https://archive.is/Bkm8E
asciilifeform: 'ivory' board, however ( http://btcbase.org/log/2018-11-28#1875835 ) is moar or less exactly the correct item, it's a minimal set of support logic for the chip, and piggybacks on ancient 1980s crapple ( box that's been reversed nine ways to pluto and 100% emulatable today ) for i/o ☝︎
asciilifeform: pretty painful proposition, to pick up a $5k board simply to read off the GALs and xray the pcb. but unless somebody has one to lend for the purpose, i dun see how that dig will ever move beyond 'i have these here 2 ic's' without access to orig ivory pcb.
a111: Logged on 2018-11-28 16:26 phf: asciilifeform: before you agree to a decap, give me some more time to get you the docs, maybe they'll be enough to get things going. i'd hate to lose an ivory to get some pretty but useless pictures, i'd rather it fry on a breadboard in the process of directed discovery
a111: Logged on 2018-12-03 16:48 asciilifeform: !Q later tell phf loox like dks is selling another! 'ivory' on lulzbay >> https://archive.is/Bkm8E
asciilifeform: !Q later tell phf loox like dks is selling another! 'ivory' on lulzbay >> https://archive.is/Bkm8E ☟︎
asciilifeform: that very 'ns' which amberglint cracked, and on which 'ivory' was baked, was 20k loc !!
a111: Logged on 2018-11-30 18:23 amberglint: I found a couple more bits about the Ivory https://i.imgur.com/m5HvPHA.png https://i.imgur.com/QEzR2po.png
asciilifeform: all that presently exists in the wild is 1) small number of actual 'ivory' machines/cards, where could put cloned ic 2) the software/os stack
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: 'Figure 24 show some statistics about Ivory. The size of the chip was about a centimeter-and-a-half on a side in the earliest version which was done using 2-micron CMOS technology. The first commercial version will be done in a 1.6 micron process and will be about a centimeter on a side, as is the TI chip. This makes it a very large, (but not impossibly large), chip to fabricate. There are about 255,000 actual transistors on the die.
asciilifeform: 'It is of tiie same complexity as an Intel 80386 or a Motorola 68030. Figure 21 is a photomicrograph of the chip (chip people always seem to need to show their chip pictures). The Ivory chip is more or less divided into three horizontal slices; the top is the datapath and stack cache, the middle is the control system, and the bottom is the memory interface. In the middle of the control system is a very large microstore, again compara
amberglint: I found a couple more bits about the Ivory https://i.imgur.com/m5HvPHA.png https://i.imgur.com/QEzR2po.png ☟︎
asciilifeform: http://www.loper-os.org/pub/bolix_ivory_pinside.jpg ☟︎
asciilifeform: >> http://www.loper-os.org/pub/bolix_ivory.jpg << subj
asciilifeform: 'ivory' is somewhat unique case, imho, i dun expect to ever run across another 1980s item that even begins to merit this treatment.
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2018-11-28#1875700 << really, a lot cheaper to make a decapper than to make another ivory. so i rather hope he does lose interest, if he's the sort of http://btcbase.org/log/2018-08-04#1839459 retard. ☝︎☝︎
asciilifeform was never able to find a high-res photo of ivory-3. perhaps phf has ?
asciilifeform: https://archive.is/jvkUK << photo of ivory-2 . appears to contain 1 rom, prolly no moar than a 32kB, going by the pin count.
asciilifeform: phf: tho imho ideally, we'd still get a decap of #2 after #1 is happily in a ersatz-ivory board and booting the full archaeological soft stack
phf: asciilifeform: before you agree to a decap, give me some more time to get you the docs, maybe they'll be enough to get things going. i'd hate to lose an ivory to get some pretty but useless pictures, i'd rather it fry on a breadboard in the process of directed discovery ☟︎☟︎
asciilifeform: ( for n00bz -- decapping, even if done perfectly, is irreversible process, we dun know how many layers even in ivory, and to take pic of n+1st layer gotta dissolve the n-th... )
amberglint: asciilifeform: I found someone who can decap your Ivory: http://www.seanriddle.com/decap.html
phf: ivory is basically part of symbolics's digital age, and i don't know of the existence of e.g. somebody's home folder that you just need to but on the right machine, and you can bring up the "rebuild the ivory from first principles" workspace
phf: ivory, and i said "near everything"
asciilifeform: i thought it was specifically re ivory
phf: oh yeah, i've meditated on this problem (even given that some things, e.g. pal truth tables are available), unfortunately i suspect that ~~everything related to ivory is lost. (possibly the mit guy has a copy, but that's a dead end sealed shut. will have to wait for the estate sale and such)
asciilifeform: literally erry other ic on the 'ivory 3' board is stock ( save possibly for a GAL or 2 )
asciilifeform: i wouldn't consider ever to put floatism in a new design, but for compat with the vintage soft one would need it ( fortunately unlike 'ivory' the weitek is documented to death, i even have a copy of the datashit from ancient ru stash )
asciilifeform: even ivory had a buncha similar ugly, iirc it still used external weitek thing (same as in yours and mine 486) for arithmetics
phf: you overestimate the loot :> i have a lot of 3600 shit, but almost nothing on ivory. i have a handful of relevant documents though, that i can needle out
lobbesbot: phf: Sent 2 days, 2 hours, and 23 minutes ago: <asciilifeform> in bolix lulz : loox like dks relisted that 'ivory' for 3rd time nao... apparently not so many eager-worth-of-$5k archaeologists any moar
asciilifeform: !Q later tell phf in bolix lulz : loox like dks relisted that 'ivory' for 3rd time nao... apparently not so many eager-worth-of-$5k archaeologists any moar
asciilifeform: but yes, i'm not esp surprised that the derps 'working' on 3600. given as 1) 'ivory' needs ~20-50 k $ in either chinese microscopist, or nixon's burglars , take yer pick 2) 3600 is massive forest of idjit hackolade, which these people seem to ~like~, the way scarab luvvs shit
amberglint: the people who have the biggest stash of Ivory hardware are busy writing their own emulator of the older 3600 machines right now, the last time I checked
asciilifeform: amberglint: iirc he found pinouts. not crown jewels, tho could be of use in ~very slowly~ getting sumthing useful from the 2 'ivory' crystals i traded a 3620 for
amberglint: I was about to ask phf about his Ivory-related efforts, but checked the logs again just now and found that asciilifeform already did it two days ago, which I overlooked: http://btcbase.org/log/2018-10-15#1862616 ☝︎
a111: Logged on 2018-10-19 01:04 asciilifeform: amberglint: when i went to his house 10y ago, offered to him to make fpga-ized 'ivory' , 'pro bono', if he'd only cough up with what. answr was approx 'can't , unless my master permits, and he wouldn't'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: nope, tho possibly phf might , he appeared during prev bolix/ivory thread
asciilifeform: amberglint: when i went to his house 10y ago, offered to him to make fpga-ized 'ivory' , 'pro bono', if he'd only cough up with what. answr was approx 'can't , unless my master permits, and he wouldn't' ☟︎☟︎
amberglint: Peter Paine has a huge pile of Symbolics tapes which he jealously guards from other bolixologists, I wonder if it has the source of Ivory
a111: Logged on 2017-03-23 03:10 asciilifeform: 1) the NS source for the last 'ivory'.
a111: Logged on 2018-01-17 22:45 amberglint: btw, one of Ivory and NS designers, Neil Weste, wrote his own schoolbook: http://pages.hmc.edu/harris/cmosvlsi/4e/index.html
asciilifeform: i suppose ns pill will come in handy if anybody ever unearths the ivory src
asciilifeform: what i wanted re ns, is a) the 'ivory' src b) src for ns itself, to pillage the algos
asciilifeform: phf: in other lulz, yet another ivory on lulzbay
asciilifeform: i recall reading once about an american 'sinologist' type who started by collecting the pipes ( they were often quite ornate, ivory, rhino, exotic woods ) and ended up... reconstructing actual opium den, somewhere
amberglint: asciilifeform: I have a pdf somewhere, a quick look didn't notice anything Ivory-specific
amberglint: btw, one of Ivory and NS designers, Neil Weste, wrote his own schoolbook: http://pages.hmc.edu/harris/cmosvlsi/4e/index.html ☟︎
fromloper: Ivory still has mc68k?
asciilifeform: and iirc phf has a working ivory -- worth trying there also
asciilifeform: somebody , maybe same old man, has a bookcase full of typewritten design apocrypha, memoes, etc. from ivory group. he ain't sharing either.
asciilifeform: think, somebody, somewhere, has the source code to ns. and the ns netlist , with comments, to the ivory.
asciilifeform: i do not have, nor ever had, a working 'ivory' of any description.
fromloper: asciilifeform: if I remember, you wanted to hook this intact chip to some emulation of Ivory's life support
asciilifeform: fromloper: i only have two 'ivory' chips, and ideally would like to leave one intact , for active test . iirc phf also has 2 to use.