Subj : Re: Hi all!
To   : tenser
From : poindexter FORTRAN
Date : Thu Sep 04 2025 06:57:17

-=> tenser wrote to Digital Man <=-

 te> Much of this is good; consider PCI interrupt routing.  Instead of
 te> four level-triggered interrupt lines that require magic to discover
 te> how they map to a physical line on a 8259A or IOAPIC, and because
 te> they are separate signals from memory may  outpace DMA, MSI/MSI-X
 te> over the  memory fabric is both much simpler and more rational.  I
 te> consider LBA similarly a strict improvement over CHS, and even
 te> NVMe is much saner than SATA+AHCI.  Memory-mapped IO accesses for
 te> PCIe config space beat the pants off of the legacy port-based ECAM
 te> stuff.

 Things that stuck in my head:

 low-level formatting MFM drives.

 Running SpinRite to change the interleave factor and speed up a drive

 Learning about MFM and RLL drives

 Trying to get a mouse, modem, network card and parallel port working
 with DIP-switched interrupt settings. Finally taping a piece of paper
 on the inside with the interrupt settings when I finally got it
 working.

 Soldering in a faster crystal to increase the clock speed

 Saving up for a 16550 UART so my modem didn't drop bits

 My clicky FOCUS 2001 keyboard - I miss that to this day!


 
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