[cctalk] Seeking Z180 Assembly Programmer
When I was at the VCF SoCal last weekend I met a gentleman who was looking for someone with Zilog Z180 assembly language experience. He says he needs someone to rewrite code in what sounds like some kind of terminal server product he sells(?) to convert the protocol it uses from Televideo format to ANSI (because Televideo is getting harder to support). This gentleman said he has a modest budget for the project. Let me know if you might be particularly qualified and interested and I'll put you in touch with him and you can go from there. Sellam
[cctalk] Re: Turbo Prolog
He meant to say Prolog, not Pascal. Regardless if you want to alleviate all the fuss and mess of running 16 bit wares on modern h/w, just look for a 32 bit cast off. Many appropriate mobos can be had on epay for a song. Now no one I know wants to spend the next 40 years writing 16 bit apps. But if it can't be (easily) done otherwise, it can be done on raw metal cheaply. Sent with Proton Mail secure email. On Sunday, February 25th, 2024 at 6:41 PM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: > I wrote a large application in Turbo Pascal in 1996 or so, > and it had been cast adrift since then. The computer it ran > on was getting old and I was worried it would die, and then > I discovered FPC (Free Pascal Compiler). It was designed to > port over Turbo Pascal and DEC Pascal programs, and took the > separate compilation directives like uses and $I. I was > able to get that program running on a Linux system in a few > days. > > Jon
[cctalk] Re: Turbo Prolog
On 2/25/24 16:20, Gavin Scott via cctalk wrote: Turbo Pascal is even still available as its originators took it back from Borland and made it into Visual Prolog for Windows which has a free personal edition (the commercial license is only 100 euros too). Also there's GNU Prolog if you just want to futz around with Prolog. I wrote a large application in Turbo Pascal in 1996 or so, and it had been cast adrift since then. The computer it ran on was getting old and I was worried it would die, and then I discovered FPC (Free Pascal Compiler). It was designed to port over Turbo Pascal and DEC Pascal programs, and took the separate compilation directives like uses and $I. I was able to get that program running on a Linux system in a few days. Jon
[cctalk] Re: Turbo Prolog
Of course I mean Turbo Prolog there, sorry. On Sun, Feb 25, 2024 at 4:20 PM Gavin Scott wrote: > > On Sun, Feb 25, 2024 at 3:15 PM Just Kant via cctalk > wrote: > > > So the portions of code belonging to chatgpt which produce the > > hallucinations have been isolated? > > It's a massive deep neural network, so you can't really isolate > anything. But there are parameters that you can use to tune it, like > how quickly it forgets earlier parts of a conversation, etc. and some > people speculate that they tweaked something like that which resulted > in the recent issues. > > > Which languages were used to build it? > > One could say Python, but that mostly sits on top of C++, which then > invokes CUDA (or TPU or similar) code, but at the bottom it's all just > matrix multiplication. > > Polog and other Logic Programming tools aren't applicable to Machine > Learning approaches which is all anyone is interested in for "AI" > these days. If you want to make a rules-based expert system, and you > know what all the rules are, then Prolog might still be a useful tool. > Turbo Pascal is even still available as its originators took it back > from Borland and made it into Visual Prolog for Windows which has a > free personal edition (the commercial license is only 100 euros too). > Also there's GNU Prolog if you just want to futz around with Prolog.
[cctalk] Re: Turbo Prolog
On Sun, Feb 25, 2024 at 3:15 PM Just Kant via cctalk wrote: > So the portions of code belonging to chatgpt which produce the hallucinations > have been isolated? It's a massive deep neural network, so you can't really isolate anything. But there are parameters that you can use to tune it, like how quickly it forgets earlier parts of a conversation, etc. and some people speculate that they tweaked something like that which resulted in the recent issues. > Which languages were used to build it? One could say Python, but that mostly sits on top of C++, which then invokes CUDA (or TPU or similar) code, but at the bottom it's all just matrix multiplication. Polog and other Logic Programming tools aren't applicable to Machine Learning approaches which is all anyone is interested in for "AI" these days. If you want to make a rules-based expert system, and you know what all the rules are, then Prolog might still be a useful tool. Turbo Pascal is even still available as its originators took it back from Borland and made it into Visual Prolog for Windows which has a free personal edition (the commercial license is only 100 euros too). Also there's GNU Prolog if you just want to futz around with Prolog.
[cctalk] Re: Turbo Prolog
So the portions of code belonging to chatgpt which produce the hallucinations have been isolated? Which languages were used to build it?
[cctalk] Re: RD54 Maxtor XT-2190 w/one long meep
It is quite possible to put a touch of watch oil on the shaft of an older drive (without opening it) to quiet the bearings and re-libricate the grease. I'm still running RD54's and RD53's without much of an issue, firing them up every few months seems to keep them happy. Same for RD51's and RD50's. By the time you get to the full height Hitachi ESDI and CDC half height ESDI drives they just seem to work without complaining. No issues there. C (I love RD53's: They were the biggest disk you could run in a Pro/350-380 and I have opened them to free stuck heads. They have an absolute air filter in there which filters the air as it is sucked into the spindle to be blown out over the heads, so to be honest I think you can open and close them without the world coming to an end. Just don't sprinkle salt from a shaker into the drive to see if the heads will FINALLY crash (yes, eventually that will do it). On 2/25/2024 10:09 AM, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote: On Sat, Feb 24, 2024, 9:41 AM Rick Bensene via cctalk wrote: Another trick was for drives whose read/write amplifiers (which were typically situated within the sealed chamber, thus not replaceable except in a clean-room facility) had become flakey, and the drive would start getting lots of I/O errors. I would take the drive and put it inside a large ziplock bag, along with a bag of desiccant(this part is really important to suck up moisture in the air in the bag), and a small battery-powered digital thermometer. I'd put it in the freezer until the drive had reached roughly 42F, and then take it out, and immediately hook it up to an archival system and power it up while it was still cold. This would allow me to get the data off without I/O errors as long as I could get what I needed before the drive warmed up enough that the weakness in the amplifiers again became a problem. I found out about this trick somewhere on USENET many moons ago. It worked for me a number of times. This jogged some brain cells. I vaguely recall placing a container full of ice on top of a drive to keep it cool enough during operation for its bearings to not start screaming before I was able to copy all the data of of it. Sellam
[cctalk] Re: Turbo Prolog
35 years ago I got tasked to write a simple expert system in Turbo Prolog because I was familiar with Turbo Pascal. The goal was an application to assist new members of the help desk. I have vague recollections of having to define rules to evaluate answers to simple questions. What I remember seems far removed from what I know of modern AI implementations. - Rod > On Feb 24, 2024, at 3:36 PM, Just Kant via cctalk > wrote: > > Has anyone used it or something contemporaneous? > Is it at all applicable to any degree to today's approach to AI/machine > learning tasks? I would like to perhaps eventually create a game, probably > not chess, lilely something simpler. The old expert system modeling paradigm > seems to have largely if not entirely fallen out of favor. From what I'm > reading though TP seems to be geared for that.
[cctalk] Re: Turbo Prolog
I bought a copy at a mall in Nashville TN some 30+ years ago. I was working at an airline at the time and was interested in the crew scheduling problem, as well as all things AI related. I never got too far using Prolog on that particular problem. I found the disks and manual like 13 years ago and made a short video and put it on youtube. Turbo Prolog was pretty speedy even on old hardware. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svcxu0xiH34 Win
[cctalk] Another blast from the past...
So, here I was binge watching a scifi series called "Night Sky", which sadly was not renewed, but I digress... In one of the episodes two of the characters go to see a man who apparently is a monitor for something having to do with the devices that teleport people all over not only earth but other planets as well. He has this workbench covered with computers that look like mostly PC's but some could be Suns or other real computers. And many displays with really cool graphics. And sitting in the middle of all of this is --- An IMSAI-8080. :-) Front panel is clearly visible in a number of scenes. Of course, with the program being canceled one has to wonder, did it go back into a prop warehouse somewhere or just the nearest dumpster? :-( bill
[cctalk] Re: RD54 Maxtor XT-2190 w/one long meep
On Sat, Feb 24, 2024, 9:41 AM Rick Bensene via cctalk wrote: > > Another trick was for drives whose read/write amplifiers (which were > typically situated within the sealed chamber, thus not replaceable except > in a clean-room facility) had become flakey, and the drive would start > getting lots of I/O errors. > > I would take the drive and put it inside a large ziplock bag, along with a > bag of desiccant(this part is really important to suck up moisture in the > air in the bag), and a small battery-powered digital thermometer. I'd put > it in the freezer until the drive had reached roughly 42F, and then take it > out, and immediately hook it up to an archival system and power it up while > it was still cold. > > This would allow me to get the data off without I/O errors as long as I > could get what I needed before the drive warmed up enough that the weakness > in the amplifiers again became a problem. I found out about this trick > somewhere on USENET many moons ago. It worked for me a number of times. > This jogged some brain cells. I vaguely recall placing a container full of ice on top of a drive to keep it cool enough during operation for its bearings to not start screaming before I was able to copy all the data of of it. Sellam >
[cctalk] Re: Turbo Prolog
On Sat, Feb 24, 2024 at 08:36:35PM +, Just Kant via cctalk wrote: > Has anyone used it or something contemporaneous? Not me, at least not yet. I am kind of wet dreaming about it, so maybe one day. > Is it at all applicable to any degree to today's approach to > AI/machine learning tasks? I would like to perhaps eventually create > a game, probably not chess, lilely something simpler. The old expert > system modeling paradigm seems to have largely if not entirely > fallen out of favor. From what I'm reading though TP seems to be > geared for that. AI is many things, and one of them is Chad Geppetto. I think Prolog is quite underappreciated and it might be more relevant (at least in some cases) simply because, unlike Chad, one's code in Prolog will not hallucinate. Unless this is exactly what you put into it. From my point of view, Chad is close to useless, because I could not trust the results. It would tell me a story in a second and I would then spent a day or a week trying to verify veracity of it. But Chad is a new fancy of some people. As long as it does not become my problem, I see no problem. As of games, I would first test the language. I do not think real-time kind of speed/reaction was in Prolog's design criteria. I would try OCaml for games - never used this either, but I have read they keep their compiler stable and code written umpty (twenty?) years ago compiles nowadays without changes. You may appreciate this when your game turns fifteen years old. I have read about guy who first coded his game in Java and gradually driven himself to a point when he could no longer maintain it, so he rewrote in OCaml. I have read about other guy, who wrote their tool in Python and for whatever reason (do not remember) rewrote it on OCaml, again. They sounded satisfied with their choices. HTH -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
