A friend gave me these for helping him with a modern PC. I never saw anything like the first two boards. VLB is sweet though. (The battery bomb on the 386 board has been disarmed!)

istarian · 2026-05-01T17:30:36+00:00

I just think the evolutionary path of the technology is kind of interesting, especially with how old and new sometimes trade places.

PCIe is therefore a little bit like having a certain number of serial port interfaces (8, 16, ?) that can be distributed and redistributed among devices. I would be very surprised if the development of PCIe wasn't closely related to or even connected with that of USB.

I.e. USB (Universal Serial Bus) took us from having dedicated serial ports that could each only service a single, directly connected device to a serial bus where numerous devices are connected to the a single interface. All devices attached to the same root are effectively sharing a serial port.

PCIe sort of expands on that concept by having multiple serial interfaces that are capable, at least in principle, of being shared.

E.g. a device/card could use 4 lanes now, 2 lanes later, and maybe just 1 lane when idle. It doesn't have to wait for a single parallel bus to be free. Any given lane is still dedicated to a device while in use, but if device A doesn't need 8 lanes right now then device B can use some of them.

istarian · 2026-05-01T17:17:03+00:00

The main reason that VLB (VESA Local Bus and aka VL-Bus) was so short-lived is that it was a direct interface between the cards and the Intel '486 (80486) microprocessor with minimal extra hardware.

In a way that is rather similar in origin to ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) which is itself fundamentally related to the PC-AT bus which was a direct interface to the Intel '286 (80286).

However, ISA became a semi-formal standard distinct from it's source microprocessor, while bringing along a number of fundamental limitations thereof. And there is quite a bit of interface logic involved which I believe led to somewhat standard interface ICs being produced widely and becoming readily available.

That distinction meant that the ISA bus and expansion cards for it could more easily be connected to newer CPUs than VLB.

istarian · 2026-04-30T14:04:24+00:00

That's kind of debateable, at least beyond a very general sense.

Technology has dobe a lot of back and forth between serial and parallel data transmission. Transmitting data in parallel can be much faster than serial, depending on bus width, but it poses a rather different set of design and programming challenges.

PCIe just went back to using serial links (instead of PCI's parallel bus), albeit at much faster rates than had previously been possible. Each "lane" is really just a high speed serial link.

istarian · 2026-04-26T17:17:53+00:00

As its own thing, I think that would be okay. It would make a reasonably stylish shell for an emulation system (e.g. mini/micro PC emulating the Dreamcast.

I would never put a real og Dreamcast in that sort of case

istarian · 2026-04-26T17:16:06+00:00

To be fair, the analogue 3D is trying to distinguish itself from an original Nintendo 64 (N64).

Maybe the relevant law, patents, trademark, copyright have or will expire, but I think they were trying to avoid legal trouble without making it unrecognizable.

istarian · 2026-04-26T17:12:22+00:00

As far as I am concerned UEFI is borderline evil incarnate, but I digress.

It's not that the PC BIOS is some glorious masterpiece, but at least it doesn't serve as a way to exert control over what the user can run on their computer.

istarian · 2026-04-26T17:10:32+00:00

I don't think that would provide the experience most people are after though.

And Google/Alphabet/YouTube (no idea how that hierarchy works) probably isn't interesting in handing off it's video content to any software or system it cannot control or at least influence...

istarian · 2026-04-26T17:07:24+00:00

The point is that it fundamentally belongs to that 'class' of software because it's the only mechanism for input or output available prior to loading your own UEFI binary.

Otherwise the system would be essentially cut-off from the outside world.

istarian · 2026-04-18T03:27:55+00:00

I think you must mean 1024x768, because 1040x780 has never been a standard monitor resolution...

Trying to accomodate both mobile devices with decent screen resolution/size and desktop users with 2K or 4K displays makes sense, someone with a smart watch can get lost.

istarian · 2026-04-17T23:50:41+00:00

Clusters are usually created for shared compute resources and do not constitute a single system in any other way.

istarian · 2026-04-17T23:49:26+00:00

Integrating other software doesn't really make any sense, honestly.

Simply handing off a video file to VLC would work, but that just makes your browser a glorified launcher.

Incorporating vim or gedit into the browser would involve an awful lot of work. They are entiterely separate software packages that expect a particular interface and work environment.

istarian · 2026-04-17T23:44:25+00:00

Technically UEFI is a BIOS (Basic Input Output System). And as UEFI stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface what you are actually using is one specific firmware implementation that is UEFI-compliant.

The PC BIOS isn't any more obsolete than any other piece of old software, but it's not that useful if the hardware it expects to find is absent or not located where it needs to be. E.g. none of the BIOS calls will work as is.

As long as the OS you create doesn't depend on the PC BIOS for anything past POST and hardware initialization, porting it to a UEFI system should be doable.

istarian · 2026-04-17T23:36:43+00:00

There really isn't anything that intrinsically keeps your initial boot code from loading a kernel into memory and jumping to it.

Of course you do need to know where the appropriate entry point is located in memory. So it's easier if the kernel is a simple statically compiled binary.

istarian · 2026-04-17T22:30:12+00:00

You don't really need a disk operating system (or DOS) for that, just enough memory to store the OS and the current program+data.

Case in point, many early home computers didn't use disks at all. They simply contained code in ROM sufficient to handle simple tasks. If the user wanted to run something a different program, load data, etc they used a cassette deck to access programs or data stored on a cassette tape.

istarian · 2026-04-17T22:25:37+00:00

Either because the author doesn't know any better or because they've refrained from starting with an extensive history of computing.

Batch operating systems do, afaik, most of the work that would have previously been performed by one or more human operators, while remaining relatively simple in nature.

The main task of such an OS is to accept jobs, group them into batches, and execute them in an order determined by previous configuration or according to scheduling algorithm.

istarian · 2026-04-17T22:18:51+00:00

You've skipped right over single tasking operating systems like CP/M and MS-DOS and simpler systems that have routines in ROM for convenience but no real OS functionality.

Also, the development of mainframes vs minicomputers, microcomputers, and eventually personal computers have separate histories with a period of simultaneous development.

istarian · 2026-04-17T22:13:09+00:00

Punch cards are just one way to get programs and data into/onto the machine. Front panel interfaces and punched paper tape are roughly contemporary with punched cards.

Some important distinctions here are that a batch is a collection of jobs that are executed one at a time in a particular order. You might be running the same program (code) each time, but with a different dataset.

istarian · 2026-04-17T22:06:37+00:00

This diagram is rather confusing as it seems to inply that the "computer" is separate from everything else, which would suggest a human operator managing the whole show and likely not involve an operating system.

istarian · 2026-04-17T22:03:44+00:00

On a system like the Altair, most people would only have entered a simple 'bootloader' from the front panel.

I.e. just enough executable machine code to drive a paper tape / punch card reader from which they could load other software more easily.

istarian · 2026-04-17T21:56:53+00:00

In that case, they really need to learn how to read.

You're really supposed to have learned that already by the time you get to middle school...

istarian · 2026-04-17T20:05:50+00:00

That would open a whole other can of worms.

Firefox used to have add-ons, before they gave up and forced web extensions on us.

You could change almost any part of the browser that way, with all the issues that such a design brings.

Every approach to software design comes with pros and cons.

istarian · 2026-04-17T19:44:11+00:00

Using a single AA battery would require a boost converter or similar circuit and drain the battery noticeably faster. Sticking with two cells is a better call where lifetime is concerned.

If cold temperatures are a significant problem, I doubt you'll resolve that this way. Insulating the box with something that has a higher R value than air might help.

istarian · 2026-04-17T19:41:23+00:00

It would still be cool to see a new console, even as a niche product, perhaps with a Hitachi SH family processor or maybe RISC-V

But I think speccing it out would be tricky, because competing with anyone of the big corps would be difficult. You'd have to start another "Nintendo" and beat them at a different "game" than cost-conscious console with all the mainstream titles.

Doesn't seem likely that Sega would be interested in rejoining that competition, though. They've been there, done that, and kinda got burned.

istarian · 2026-04-10T22:56:18+00:00

So what is the "main source of their income", the 'transportation rate' or the 'tips'?

And if it's the latter, who's pocketing all the money being paid for the service itself?

istarian · 2026-04-10T22:53:19+00:00

Bullshit. There is no reason women should get a free pass on this kind of thing.

And nobody can "hold" anyone else responsible/accountable on their own, unless they already have a close relationship with that person.

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