[HN Gopher] First new VAX in 30 years? (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
First new VAX in 30 years? (2021)
Author : dcminter
Score : 187 points
Date : 2024-01-07 13:27 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mail-index.netbsd.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (mail-index.netbsd.org)
| dcminter wrote:
| The additional two posts he promises are:
|
| https://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-vax/2021/07/03/msg003900....
|
| https://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-vax/2021/07/03/msg003903....
| Semaphor wrote:
| Last time in July 2021, 89 comments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27758962
| hliyan wrote:
| I don't know much about the subject matter, but the minimalist
| website is so refreshing. The content is front and center,
| unvarnished and not occluded by various UI bells and whistles. I
| miss this version of the web. Navigating between pages actually
| seem to work as fast (if not faster) than many "modern" single
| page / progressive web apps.
| renonce wrote:
| Everybody using HN probably already loves a minimalist website.
| taravangian wrote:
| While I do love minimalist websites, I love minimalist
| responsive websites and this isn't responsive at all.
| geraldhh wrote:
| was thinking "responsive to what?" but i assume you mean
| "to my viewport"
| xelia wrote:
| Unfortunately the text is too small for me to comfortably read,
| and the website is incompatible with Safari's Reader Mode.
| johnklos wrote:
| Command +.
|
| Supporting / allowing Reader Mode would be good.
| tgv wrote:
| Install Stylebot. You can set e.g. body { font-size: 125% }
| for that website.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| If you use a trackpad, you can use the scale gesture (pinch-
| to-zoom, but outwards) to increase the magnification of most
| web pages. Very useful for those of us past age 40.
|
| On iOS, you can also use the same gesture directly on the
| screen.
| Izkata wrote:
| > If you use a trackpad, you can use the scale gesture
| (pinch-to-zoom, but outwards) to increase the magnification
| of most web pages.
|
| And if that doesn't work (it doesn't for me), the older
| method should: Hold control and scroll, up to zoom in and
| down to zoom out.
| volemo wrote:
| On iOS you can also tap "aA" button in the URL bar to get
| to the scale settings.
| willbush wrote:
| Firefox reader doesn't work either which is surprising.
| numpad0 wrote:
| set default zoom for browser to 120%, I have mine set to 80%
| because websites keep increasing font sizes
| Solvency wrote:
| And yet unreadable on mobile. Terrible font choice. Very little
| basic formatting and hierarchy.
| rebolek wrote:
| I just read it on mobile and it looked nice and clean.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| The website doesn't have a font choice, other than "sans-
| serif". It follows your preference; if you don't like it,
| choose another default Sans Serif font in your browser's
| settings.
| Solvency wrote:
| iPhone XS. Appears in ugly courier style. Wide paragraphs.
| Tony text. Impossible to read without constant pinching and
| horizontal scrolling.
| graemep wrote:
| Either you have set it to that font and spacing, or Apple
| have. Not the site's fault.
| antiframe wrote:
| I think you should be more specific than "mobile". It looks
| fine on mobile for me. I'm using Firefox.
| adaboese wrote:
| Is that an actual minimalist website or is this website just
| actually 20 years old?
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| It's HTML4.01 with an actual dtd in the doctype, so "the
| latter".
| geraldhh wrote:
| it works very well indeed
| jmbwell wrote:
| Welcome to the default mailman archive template
|
| It's sorta like a "theme" without the styles, or just the HTML
| part of a "framework"
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I like it because there is no nonsense, it is a pretty simple
| page that gets what it needs from browser standards without
| external libraries. The simplicity helps make it small and
| fast.
|
| Even without external libraries there are lots of design
| choices that could change and perhaps improve the look of the
| page.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| Yet you feel compelled to comment. Strange.
| jmclnx wrote:
| NetBSD is one of those projects I wish got more resources
| (donations). They have some cool things going on (ex: rump,
| exotic hw) that no one else has, but lacks the resources to fully
| exploit them :(
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's also the only VAX in history with a built-in joystick!
| dcminter wrote:
| I didn't see a reference to a joystick anywhere and there's
| none shown in the photo...?
|
| Furthermore :) this spring I visited a PDP 11/73 running
| Spacewar with a joystick attached. Presumably that would have
| been attached as a QBus peripheral, and Vaxen could support
| QBus, so I'd actually be pretty surprised if there _hadn 't_
| been a Vax with a built-in joystick. Depending how you define
| "built-in" that is.
|
| Edit: Come to think of it I'd be very surprised if there
| weren't any flight simulators running off Vaxen and that would
| definitely involve a very much built-in joystick (along with
| the rest of the flight deck). I know a lot of those used PDP-11
| so it would be the same lineage.
| GrumpySloth wrote:
| There is one joystick in the photo. It's even labeled
| "JOYSTICK". :)
| jansan wrote:
| Oh, THAT joystick.
| dcminter wrote:
| Ha! I stand corrected. That's definitely built in!
| jart wrote:
| Only the NetBSD community could have come up with a project this
| cool!
| atorodius wrote:
| Not about a vaccine, FYI.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Also not about DEC hardware. _sigh_
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If it's about a new VAX, in 2021, one should not expecte that
| it was DEC hardware.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I believe HPE still owns the name and trademarks.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Do they still sell parts? Do they still _produce_ parts?
| Do they still sell new systems?
| therealcamino wrote:
| Nobody's sold new VAX systems since the 90s. VMS was
| ported first to the DEC Alpha architecture, then to
| Itanium, so even for VMS, VAX is two architectures ago.
|
| And Itanium itself is at the end of the road now, but I
| think still supported for the moment.
| fredoralive wrote:
| A couple of years ago HPE sold VMS to VMS Software Inc,
| who have ported it to x86-64. So it's three architectures
| ago.
|
| The VAX version apparently wasn't included in the deal
| (to the chagrin of hobbyists, as they can't get a legally
| licensed version of VAX VMS anymore), which perhaps shows
| how relevant it is to modern VMS customers.
| BirAdam wrote:
| No. Actual VAX died shortly after Alpha became a thing,
| and Alpha died when Itanium came along. OpenVMS was
| ported to Itanium around 2010/2011, but HP shifted to
| x86-64 around 2015 as Itanium sales began to quickly
| drop. At this point, there's x86-64, ARM, RISC-V in the
| west, with Itanium's cousin Elbrus in Russia and some
| MIPS stuff in China. IBM still makes and sells POWER, but
| it's a niche of a niche market.
|
| If someone managed to make Alpha or VAX come back, he/she
| might end up sued into oblivion by HPE... and then
| possibly hired by them.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| At this point you gotta wonder if the DEC name would have
| better marketing/branding power than HP.
|
| Have to say, I'd be more stoked to buy a "Digital
| Equipment Corporation" branded server or workstation than
| "HPE ProLiant" or "HP Z900".
|
| Leadership of Carly Fiorina and successors, the murder
| they committed on the Palm brand and product line, not to
| mention their whole world of junky printers,... I think
| have ruined their reputation of that brand forever for
| me.
|
| Anybody work in marketing at HP? C'mon, do it!
| jmbwell wrote:
| This comment made me realize the historical term in the
| headline actually, for once, refers to the term's historical
| namesake, unlike "VHS" and "Datasette" of late
|
| "VAX" referring to VAX. Not to be taken for granted!
| D-Coder wrote:
| That was my first reaction to the headline too.
| dang wrote:
| We'll capitalize it to make that clear.
| irdc wrote:
| I'd be interested in seeing the Verilog code but he sadly seems
| to never have shared it.
| djmips wrote:
| Guess we'll have to do it ourselves. First VAX in 3 years!
| analognoise wrote:
| Can I join in? "hey let's build a microcoded processor" is
| like my own personal Bat signal.
|
| We starting from something like the AM2900 (Mick and Brick's
| book)? Need to get familiar with the VAX instruction set and
| get that stress test program too. We could hook it up to
| Verilator and expose the whole thing to SDL to get graphical
| output so the same code that runs the "simulator" runs the
| actual hardware?
|
| ...I'm down?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Just make sure that POLY makes good use of greater-than-
| register-precision FMAC; that'll show those smug RISC
| weenies!
| rockinghigh wrote:
| For context:
|
| VAX (an acronym for Virtual Address eXtension) is a series of
| computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA)
| and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital
| Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| And nothing sucks like a Vax(TM)
| rhelz wrote:
| I had to chuckle when the OP said "and 151 instructions." The VAX
| was the poster-child of CISC. Thats like, what, 20% of the
| instructions ARM has for SIMD alone?
|
| Recently, I had to learn C++17 through 20. At the same time I was
| learning x86 assembly, and x86 assembly was far, far easier.
| Downright simple and straightforward in comparison.
|
| Aren't high-level languages supposed to make our lives easier?
| Isn't RISC supposed to make CPU's simpler? What happened to our
| world?
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| More powerful tools are often more complex to learn. A car has
| more controls than a push bike, and an aeroplane has more
| still. I'm not saying all the complexity in C++ is justified
| (!!!) but it's not too much of a surprise that it's more
| complex to learn than assembler.
| joshu wrote:
| how many addressing modes are there? in my mind, CISC vs RISC
| is more about the vast array of addressing modes on CISC vs
| load/store on RISC, rather than the actual size of the ISA
|
| probably worth comparing to early MIPS or SPARC instead of
| modern ARM with extensions?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Exactly, it's not about the amount of instructions but of the
| modes those instructions can take. As I understand it, having
| primarily load-and-store / register to register instructions
| and avoiding complicated mode encodings that make various
| processor hw optimizations much easier, and make compiler
| writing a lot easier, too.
|
| Classic CISC chips were "fun" to write assembly for by
| hand... and RISC chips are not. But if you're writing a
| compiler...
| kragen wrote:
| i would say the arm is fun to write assembly for by hand,
| in part because of its deviations from risc principles; i
| wrote a bit about the details last night in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38899295
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yeah it's true ARM isn't terrible the few times I've
| played with it.
|
| In contrast, I Verilog'd up my own homebuilt system with
| a RISC-V core, and didn't particularly reading/writing in
| the RISC-V instruction set.
| kragen wrote:
| agreed. in the end it turned out what mattered about risc was
| that they reduced the instructions, so each one did less, not
| the set
|
| mashey's famous retrospective on the vax and cisc vs. risc is
| at https://yarchive.net/comp/vax.html
| tux1968 wrote:
| For whatever reason, the PDF that is linked in that email,
| is temporarily unavailable, so here's an archived link:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20160312012246/http://www.cs.mi
| p...
| deaddodo wrote:
| > Recently, I had to learn C++17 through 20. At the same time I
| was learning x86 assembly, and x86 assembly was far, far
| easier. Downright simple and straightforward in comparison.
|
| Somewhere along the lines of the development of high-level
| languages, "tedious and semi-unmanageable" got replaced with
| "difficult". Assembler isn't difficult, nor is it meant to be;
| any emulator or embedded developer could tell you this.
| Assembler just has few tools to _ease_ development /code
| structuring and gets very flat and overwhelming in large code-
| bases; _these_ are the problems C /C++, Pascal, Algol, etc were
| designed to solve.
| LeFantome wrote:
| We are probably agreeing but Pascal at least was explicitly
| designed to allow and to teach "structured" programming. In
| some ways, it is designed to limit your options. Their is no
| denying though that it makes code easier to read and also
| makes intent much clearer. This in turn makes not just
| creating but of course maintaining and extending large code
| based much easier.
|
| In terms of complexity, it depends on how you measure. In
| assembler, it does not take long to learn how to compare and
| jump. That gives you the power of while, do/while, for,
| if/then, and of course "goto" ( which your "more advanced"
| language may lack ). I would argue though that it is easier
| to understand the syntax of if / else than the equivalent
| assembler. Again, if not easier to write, it is at least more
| obvious when reading ( for less experienced eyes ).
| crq-yml wrote:
| Modern computing is a line of middlemen, each one in turn
| saying "let me help you with that" in a patronizing tone.
|
| At the end of the line you are handed an iPad and told what you
| are allowed to consume.
| tux3 wrote:
| But then, every so often, people do the whole trip in reverse
| starting from sandboxed Javascript on a locked down phone or
| console and putting together an exploit chain all the way
| down to kernel-mode assembly shellcode
|
| We add layers upon layers of abstraction, but the layers
| below are never really obsolete, it's always very useful to
| understand them!
| LeFantome wrote:
| Not just "modern" computing. Your point has been true since
| the beginning. That said, the line of middlemen is indeed
| longer than ever.
| spennant wrote:
| +1 Insightful
| mr_toad wrote:
| > Aren't high-level languages supposed to make our lives
| easier?
|
| Assembly code is easy to learn and easy to code simple
| programs, but it's a whole toolbox full of foot-guns and it's
| easy to make a buggy unmaintainable mess.
| bitwize wrote:
| RISC architecture has already changed everything. Or did you
| miss when Apple Silicon basically lapped everybody in
| performance per watt, while having raw performance numbers
| comparable to, if not exceeding, x86 hardware?
|
| Sometimes, it really is the case that a great new technology
| doesn't exist until Apple invents it.
| userbinator wrote:
| VAX is certainly the CISCiest of them all --- looking at the
| opcode map makes x86 seem like a RISC in comparison, as there's
| very little structure in it beyond the (copious amounts of)
| addressing modes.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-01-07 23:00 UTC)