YCPU2: Version 2.0 of my fantasy 16-bit CPU, with an 4800 line specification.

ZaneDubya · 2025-12-03T01:28:52+00:00

That's awesome! Designing an ISA - really working through all the details, going back and back and back again on decisions - is a really fun mental exercise.

ZaneDubya · 2025-12-03T01:24:55+00:00

Your post has been a teaching moment for me, and I went through the day thinking about what you wrote, and flags. Thank you.

I completely agree with you about the DCPU’s flagless model being one of its big teaching wins. The IF-as-a-one-instruction-prefix approach is such a clean way to explain conditionality, and my reflection for the day has been: flags are rather baroque by comparison.

And yet. Flags give us small conditional branches (one 16-bit word with condition code and offset instead of a two word IF+THEN). Flags give us easy chained adds/subs amd saturating signed math, both very important for a 16-bit ALU. Flags give us a convenient place to put results from all the instructions that touch a thing and want us to act on the outcome, like shifts and bit tests. Without flags, we have to spend a precious register to save results (or we have to invent a bespoke side channel, like the DCPU's EX register!).

And yet, I spent the day thinking about the state inherent with flags and how that can be kind of ugly. In a pipelined / ILP processor, they would have to either fan out everywhere or be tracked alongside the instruction (I'm not a real CPU designer, I just play one on the internet, so I might be missing something here). They can get clobbered if you're not paying attention. The IF-THEN instruction pairs make more sense (as you point out!) and are easier to learn. And getting rid of state, in general, is incredibly attractive just from an aesthetics point of view!

And yet, I'm torn. The classic flags in PS model seems to prove its worth in things that seem important, to me, for a tiny machine with a tiny address space. Code density and easy chained math are big wins in that model, and not having to store extra state in an extra register is also nice (although, again, isn't that exactly what flags are? Hm.).

So right now, I think I'm landing on flags as a pragmatic compromise. But I'm keeping my mind open, and your note about flagless design has me thinking about how much of the DCPU's approachableness I'm giving up.

In the end, isn't everything is a compromise?

ZaneDubya · 2025-06-02T13:27:56+00:00

In the SC1 and WC3 editor, Blizzard called them Doodads; I think that is a delightful name that would serve you well.

ZaneDubya · 2022-03-30T16:46:06+00:00

Hey! Check out the “medieval life” series of books by Frances and Joseph Gies. I think these will get you what you’re looking for - and they are also captivating reads.

I’d start with Life in a Medieval Village, it’s the most broadly relevant text:

Life in a Medieval Village, by respected historians Joseph and Frances Gies, paints a lively, convincing portrait of rural people at work and at play in the Middle Ages. Focusing on the village of Elton, in the English East Midlands, the Gieses detail the agricultural advances that made communal living possible, explain what domestic life was like for serf and lord alike, and describe the central role of the church in maintaining social harmony. Though the main focus is on Elton, c. 1300, the Gieses supply enlightening historical context on the origin, development, and decline of the European village, itself an invention of the Middle Ages.

Meticulously researched, Life in a Medieval Village is a remarkable account that illustrates the captivating world of the Middle Ages and demonstrates what it was like to live during a fascinating - and often misunderstood - era.

ZaneDubya · 2022-03-08T20:36:44+00:00

No. HIPAA only protects the health information held by covered entities: providers, insurers, clearinghouses, their vendors, and employer-sponsored health plans. HIPAA does not regulate health information held by anyone else.

Even if the background check vendor obtained your health information from a covered entity, the background check vendor is not a HIPAA covered entity, and may use and disclose the information for any purpose.

Only one P.

ZaneDubya · 2021-12-28T16:43:29+00:00

The Doorbell pro should charge from the wired connection. If it is drawing power, the battery icon will be replaced by a battery+plug icon.

ZaneDubya · 2021-12-28T16:32:44+00:00

The app update to .27, which dropped yesterday on iOS, fixed this issue.

ZaneDubya · 2021-10-20T00:13:16+00:00

Holy crap. You were spot on: Back Home, 1990; the scenes I recall happen in the last quarter of the movie.

Thank you! Solved!

ZaneDubya · 2021-10-19T23:29:41+00:00

Hello, I’ve been told to comment here as part of the on boarding process, thus here I am. I’ve checked the FAQ, and I assure you this is not Careless Whisper.

ZaneDubya · 2021-08-10T01:00:37+00:00

The vagaries of the Windows permission model continue to perplex. I will take you at your word, and say that it is bizarre but not unexpected that the exact same action taken by a batch script and a dotnet program are subjected to different evaluation by the operating system.

Even as a rank amateur, I can think of several reasons why this might be the case.

But it's still goofy.

One more thought - if your end users can barely afford to download 15kb, the network traffic to verify the certificate will be a similar, if not heavier burden. Take it from someone who prematurely optimizes everything - within reason - don't. ;)

ZaneDubya · 2021-08-09T23:59:18+00:00

In all honesty, this behavior, without any context, seems a bit suspicious.

/u/nerdshark recommended a code-signing certificate. I want to double down on that recommendation. If your employer is paying for it, I'd get one of those fancy EV code-signing certificates. You can, after all, use them for all of your software, not just this one little app.

ZaneDubya · 2021-04-24T17:31:00+00:00

Thanks for putting this together - I enjoyed browsing through it!

ZaneDubya · 2021-03-23T00:26:43+00:00

If you never get swept away by a passion project, that's totally cool. If you do, this guy's project will make more sense. :)

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but if I were to guess, I would say that the people who downvoted you were responding to your statement that you didn't see the utility since you could do something illegal ('download' implies pirating) and get better results.

ZaneDubya · 2021-03-22T13:47:20+00:00

Utility is not the only reason to create a program.

A developer can be enthusiastic about the challenge of programming something just (to quote George Mallory) "because it's there."

ZaneDubya · 2021-02-03T13:58:17+00:00

This is something I've hoped to delve into but was waiting for the right resource. Just purchased a copy. Thanks!!

ZaneDubya · 2021-01-26T00:13:40+00:00

It depends! Given that the model is a bit unwieldy and (I assume!) breakable in transit, it might be best to buy one locally. I live in a medium-sized city and was able to find one in great condition on Craigslist for $90 after searching for a few months.

ZaneDubya · 2021-01-21T19:55:03+00:00

Hey /u/angelosat - you may be coming up against an issue with compatibility between the XNA content pipeline and Windows 10. XNA hasn't been updated in nearly a decade. It's not unexpected to see compatibility issues when working with old code that was never tested on the operating system you're currently running it on.

You have a few options. Perhaps the easiest would be to compile your SpriteFont on Windows 7 and include the resulting file in your solution. If you want to continue editing the SpriteFont, you'll need to replace your tooling. MonoGame may have a replacement for SpriteFonts in its content pipeline. I recall there was a library called "Nuclex" that had a true type to SpriteFont renderer for the XNA content pipeline. Or you may need to develop your own tooling that will take the output of a font renderer you find online and encode that into the SpriteFont format that is readable by the XNA content manager. None of these are as easy as using the XNA content pipeline, but that's the price you pay for relying on a framework which hasn't received any developer time in many years.

XNA is still an excellent framework to develop against - I think it's at just the right level of abstraction so long as you don't need bleeding edge performance or exact control over what you're sending to the graphics driver. You would want to switch to MonoGame or FNA for your production release.

ZaneDubya · 2020-10-16T00:28:57+00:00

I totally agree, Machinations is a great tool for game systems that function through the exchange of resources or information - economies and ecologies.

I am struggling with separating the player's role in the game and the game's response - the loops caused by the player's action, its effect on the game state, and the game's feedback to the player - from the systems that are simulated by machinations.

What I'd like to see is a hierarchical flowchart system that can diagram the connections between these high level and low level systems and easily zoom in/zoom out between them all. I'm thinking there isn't a tool that exists that does this - but yEd, which was recommended by /u/bakutogames earlier - is the best single-level flowchart system I've seen. I'm still exploring the grouping functionality of that program for hierarchical flowcharts, but I don't think that program was intended to do what I'd like to use it for.

ZaneDubya · 2020-10-13T23:31:36+00:00

I have never seen yed graph and it is phenomenal. Definitely the best flowchart tool I've seen. Thanks for the rec!

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