[HN Gopher] Visible Lisp Computer: embedded real-time display of...
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       Visible Lisp Computer: embedded real-time display of Lisp workspace
       using uLisp
        
       Author : Gollapalli
       Score  : 51 points
       Date   : 2022-03-09 10:01 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.technoblogy.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.technoblogy.com)
        
       | nanomonkey wrote:
       | I've been having a lot of fun building out, and playing with
       | uLisp. I enjoy adding low level functionality in C, and then
       | interacting with it at the uLisp REPL. Very satisfying.
       | 
       | I really wish there were a handheld device like the Precursor, or
       | Solder Party Keyboard Featherwing[0] that was available in a
       | robust form factor, like a graphing calculator, or wedge
       | keyboard. Ideally with a Teensy 4.1, or similarly spec'ed
       | microcontroller. Bonus points for a LoRa module for
       | messaging/mesh networking with other devices.
       | 
       | [0]https://www.adafruit.com/product/4818
        
         | johnsondavies wrote:
         | How about the Lisp Badge?
         | 
         | [0]http://www.technoblogy.com/show?2AEE
        
           | nanomonkey wrote:
           | Hey johnsondavies! Definitely lusting after this, is it
           | available anywhere for purchase? If not, any interest in
           | doing a group buy on pcbs and components?
           | 
           | It would be nice if the display had more real estate, at
           | least 80 characters wide ideally so that it could be used as
           | a vt100 terminal.
        
       | nablaone wrote:
       | It reminds me running the code in video address space on Atari.
        
         | exikyut wrote:
         | Oh oh oh! You mean like _this_?
         | 
         | http://www.oldskool.org/tales
         | 
         | > _Fun with the Atari ST_
         | 
         | > _Fred Butzen writes:_
         | 
         | > _" Here's one of my stories. Not really old school, but it's
         | funny._
         | 
         | > _In the mid-80s, MWC wrote one of the first C compilers for
         | the Atari ST -- the "Jackintosh", so called because Jack
         | Tremiel (formerly of Commodore) designed it with Atari as a
         | rip-off of the Macintosh. It had a GUI built around Digital
         | Research's GEM interface. It had two floppies, a 68000 CPU, and
         | 512 kilobytes of RAM -- which in those days was a lot of
         | memory. To save money, the hardware was totally sleezy. From
         | time to time it would simply stop working, and you'd have to
         | open up the unit and reseat all of the chips in their sockets.
         | If you were in a hurry, you'd just lift up the unit about six
         | inches and drop it. A total piece of junk._
         | 
         | > _Part of the savings was that the machine had no MMU and no
         | parity on the memory. This meant that the machine was totally
         | unreliable; however, it also meant that a kid hacker could do
         | anything to the hardware, and there 's no way the machine would
         | stop him. (Mind you, that anything included smoking the tube,
         | but that's another story.) For example, I wrote a little
         | program that reset the base address of video memory to zero,
         | which was where the operating system lived. (Video used RAM, of
         | course, rather than memory on a separate card.) It was kind of
         | cool, because when you ran a program that allocated memory --
         | say, a sort program, you could see the memory being allocated
         | and deallocated on the screen. The difference between qsort and
         | shellsort was really obvious just by the patterns they drew on
         | the screen._
         | 
         | > _Anyway, as a programming exercise I wrote a version of the
         | game of life for this machine. It ran fine; however, I made one
         | mistake: I forgot to set the clipping rectangle around the
         | screen. So, the first time I built a glider gun, the glider
         | went creeping off the screen, and just kept on going, crashing
         | through memory. Mind you, there 's no MMU, so the machine is
         | still running while the glider is rampaging through memory.
         | Because the 68000 used memory-mapped ports for its hardware,
         | you could see where the glider was going because the disk
         | drives starting running, the lights flashed on the keyboard,
         | the tube blinked, and so on. Finally, the glider hit something
         | really vital and the machine died with "streaky bombs" -- a
         | sign that the operating system was really, really sick._
         | 
         | > _Of course, I had to show this to all the other guys. We
         | laughed ourselves sick watching that happen. "_
         | 
         | I have been wondering what those "streaky bombs" would have
         | looked like for years!
        
         | all2 wrote:
         | Are there any videos/tutorials on this? This sounds like it
         | would be super interesting to see.
        
       | incanus77 wrote:
       | I've been loving this guy's site for some time, particularly the
       | sound & audio projects. And the tiny circuit photography is
       | awesome!
        
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       (page generated 2022-03-09 23:02 UTC)