On Thursday 13 February 2003 14:26, Ian C. Blenke wrote:
> On Thursday 13 February 2003 13:24, Frank Robers _ SOTL wrote:
> > YES! At least there was once upon a time.
> > In fact once up on a time there was no bios.
> > But I believe that a higher level of thought might be appropriate here.
> >
> > As far as BIOS is concerned that was a new term I had to learn when I
> > returned to playing with computers after a 20 year absence. Drove me nuts
> > until I figured out that a modern chip computer is really not one
> > computer but a large number of "simple computers" simply transferring
> > data from one input buss to another.
>
> You may be a bit *too* advanced to get a true "newbie" feel when it comes
> to general computing. Not that his is a bad thing ;)
>
> > Sorry don't mean to be rude but most modern day computer engineers have a
> > very limited of what an old "simple computer" was since these concept
> > have been shrunk so far down on chips whose complexity has expanded to
> > such a level that the very essence of a '50s or 60s era computer has long
> > since been obsoleted.
>
> I started on a C64 writing ML and macro assembler - an 8bit 6502. Sure, it
> wasn't a 4bit 4040 or some such arcane piece of hardware, but it *did*
> bootstrap using the FFFE/FFFF cold-start initialization vector in ROM. I
> walked that Basic ROM and Kernel ROM backward and forward - inside and out.
> My past is in Demo/Intro coding way back then. Understanding the power of
> dedicated I/O processing hardware (CIA/PIA, VIC, SID, etc) and how to use
> those devices properly really forced me to *understand* how the machine
> worked. After writing a half-dozen 1541 fast loaders (and embedded code
> thereon) as well as hand-wiring a 1571 SRQ pin to a PIA for "burst mode" to
> the hardware UART contained therein.. THAT was fun stuff. Back in the day
> ;)
>
> Today, all of that hardware is emulated virtually perfectly via Frodo/VICE
> on a far more complex piece of software (Unix). Away from the day where a
> 64K compressed demo *needed* a "fast loader" to load from a 180k GCR 5 1/4
> floppy drive. Today, that same 64k is barely a disk sector.
>
> > No, I don't expect to start with Unix running on computers which have bit
> > card made from discrete transistors components and core memory or a
> > course in modern day chip design but it would be beneficial to start on a
> > much simpler plain for us non computer experts.
>
> But you understand the raw iron from back in the day. I simply can't point
> you at 80 lines of code and say "there, see, that's how it boots". It's too
> complex. Most users will never understand your basic view of the hardware -
> heck, most programmers today coming through school simply have no clue.
>
> > What I feel is a presentation on basic modern day Linux in a simple
> > framework from which more advanced presentations may bill on.
>
> I agree.
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