BOFH: Drunken Time Lord "It's only 1:30pm!" the PFY grumbles, looking up from his cellphone clock. "I know," I say. "It's that variable viscosity of time again." "The what now?" the PFY asks "The variable viscosity of time. You know, how the viscosity of time is inversely proportional to what you'd like the viscosity to be." "You’ve lost me." " …
But what about this poor unfortunate sod...
New Moderator: a.grogan
You +1'd this publicly. Undo
forums.msexchange.org › [Site & Message Boards] - Cached
3 posts - 3 authors - Last post: 1 Nov 2007
Status: offline, Congratulations to a.grogan who has become the newest addition to the MSExchange.org Moderators crew! ...
That *ACTUALLY* sounds like an interesting exercise.
It is probably possible to write an emulator for a modern 32 bit CPU in 48k, I guess the simpler the better, so it'll be an ARM or MIPS I guess. How much RAM will be left will be an interesting exercise to the coder. The Apple ][ had that sweet sixteen thing. Of course, when you count all that overhead, I suspect you may be measuring instruction throughout in KIPS or even HIPS and not MIPS.
What I do not know enough about is if a linux kernel will be happy with whatever RAM is left.
My guess is no, because it's likely the critical code that will manage the memory won't fit in what's left. Having said that, unixes in the past were small. It may well be possible to rewrite from scratch a kernel to cope with this... Maybe...
If that were possible, then there is the seemingly unsurmountable hurdle of graphics, and the issue of i/O and storage. Don't know much about speccy storage but I suspect a lot of hackerage will be in order to even get a storage device large enough to support a swapfile.
However, booting a linux or scratch written unix type kernel on a Z80 in 48k, even in console mode, be it emulated for 32 bits/MMU or otherwise seems like a worthy exercise to the brave with too much time on their hands.
Anonymous post, because I am almost embarrassed to be even thinking of this.
But never could fathom *WHY* BBC skimped on their research and decided sapphire and steel were elements.... I mean I know they were on a budget and all... FFS, it's not rocket science or anything, anybody who actually went to school and paid attention would know.
Having said that, I can't think quite think of what else I would have called Joanne Lumley!!!
""But still, they're computers and we could reason with them..."
"Yes, I suppose you’re right, it's worth a crack.""
Yes well, I suppose pioneering a waste of time is one way to spend one's time, although it is never ever going to be a SMART option which leads to anything worthwhile.
*Intelligence Meltdown ...... whenever computers contain evidence of what is to be hidden and kept secret rather than supplying clear virgin instructions on what the future needs to provide and how to provide it with IT and media tools and convenient fools.
Just where would we be today with the anonymous legions of useful idiots.
Crikey, a posted reply comment that appears in almost real time, rather than being detained in a server message block queue for a while.
"Just where would we be today with the anonymous legions of useful idiots." should of course read ..... "Just where would we be today WITHOUT the anonymous legions of useful idiots." although you made that correction automatically yourselves in your own heads, right?
I'll put £50 on the BOFH, thanks!
Great read, and I have also experienced time getting all wibblywobbly in the presence of alcohol and romance, and the excruciating wait for the next installment of BOFH.
When is he going to get a redhead Scot as an assistant, or is that where Ms.Bee is going?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
