I sometimes wonder what the alternate reality where semiconductor advances ended in the eighties would look like.
We might have had to manage with just a few MB of RAM and efficient ARM cores running at maybe 30 MHz or so. Would we still get web browsers? How about the rest of the digital transformation?
One thing I do know for sure. LLMs would have been impossible.
I'm in the early phases of working on a game that explores that.
The backstory is that in the late 2050s when AI has its hands in everything, humans loose trust of it. There are a few high profile incidents - based on AI decisions -, which cause public opinion to change, and an initiative is brought in to ensure important systems run hardware and software that can be trusted and human reviewed.
A 16bit CPU architecture - with no pipelining, speculative execution etc is chosen, as it's powerful enough to run such systems, but also simple enough that a human can fully understand the hardware and software.
The goal is to make a near-future space exploration MMO. My Macbook Pro can simulate 3000 CPU cores simultaneously, and I have a lot of fun ideas for it. The irony is that I'm using LLMs to build it :D
You'd probably get much more multiprocessor stuff much earlier. There's probably 2 or 3 really good interfaces to wire an almost arbitrary number of CPUs together and run some software across all of them (AMP not SMP).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system) is from the 1960s, so, technically, it certainly is possible. Whether it would make sense commercially to support a billion users would depend on whether we would stay stuck on prices of the eighties, too.
Also, there’s mobile usage. I would it be possible to build a mobile network with thousands of users per km² with tech from the eighties?
No, if we had the web it would be more like what gopher was. Or maybe lynx.
Edit: oh I thought you meant if we were stuck in 6502 style stuff. With megabytes of ram we'd be able to do a lot more. When I was studying we ran 20 X terminals with ncsa mosaic on a server with a few CPUs and 128GB RAM or so. Graphic browsing would be fine.
Only when Java and JavaScript came on the scene things got unbearably slow. I guess in that scenario most processing would have stayed server-side.
There is an alternate reality where semiconductor advances ended in the eighties. It's called 1990.
Anyhow, the WWW was invented in 1989/1990 on a 25Mhz 68040 NextCube. Strictly speaking, the 68040 and NextCube weren't released until 1990 (and the NeXT was an expensive machine) but they were in development in 1989 so that's not a stretch. Anyhow, WWW isn't really much more than hypercard (1987) with networking.
I like the 32 bit era because it's the only time we had symmetrical data and address buses. 32 bit data bus on chip. 32 bit addressable RAM, 4 GB. Used to be 8/16 and now it's 64/whatever. Understandable decisions given needs/constraints but sort of messy.
Stunning work! Astounding progress since its under 3 months old from PCB to this result.
Funnily enough I've been musing this past month would I better separate work if I had a limited Amiga A1200 PC for anything other than work! This would nicely fit.
Please do submit to HackaDay I'm sure they'd salivate over this and it's amazing when you have the creator in the comments. Even if just to explain no a 555 wouldn't quite achieve the same result. No not even a 556...
3D printer beds have been getting bigger, but slicers don’t seem to account for curling as large prints cool. The problem is long linear runs on bottom infill and perimeters shrinking. I’ve been cutting my large parts into puzzle like shapes, but printing them fully assembled. This adds curved perimeters throughout the bottom layer, reducing the distance stress can travel before finding a seam to deform.
That said, a retro laptop this thick would look really nice in stained wood.
I stop seeing those issues after starting using Bambulab X1 3d printer, it just works 99 percent of the time. My old ender 3 v2 had those issues due to bed changing its shape during printing(thin metal changing shape in micro level due to temp and mechanical stress with 4 knobs pulling down), not sticking well, not enough fast cooling or cooling effects bed temp profile, way off even with auto level probes. Also open 3d printer with bunch of air flow is a killer for those prints. OP should try Bambulab like enclosed more accurate 3d printer from a local 3d print shop or a hackerspace after locking the design and enclosure iterations.
Good timing. My current weekend project is constructing something similar to the the first third of Ben Eater's 6502 design (last weekend was the clock module plus some eccentricities).
It occurred to me that given the 6502's predictable clock cycle timings it should be possible to create a realtime disassembler using e.g. an Arduino Mega 2560+character lcd display attached to the 6502's address/data/etc pins.
Of course, this would only be useful in single-stepping/very slow clock speeds. Still, I think it could be useful in learning how the 6502 works.
Is there relevant prior work? I'm struggling with my google fu.
I was recently using this project. It outputs over serial which is handy for capturing a longer stream. I’m working on a wire wrapped 6502 machine and was getting a weird issue where I could see via the Sync pin that it was mis-executing a byte of data as an instruction instead. The fix was to add another decoupling capacitor next to the CPU…
I love this! I’ve been working on a 6502 kernel. I have an arch trick to give the 6502 tons of memory so it can do a kind of Genera-like babashka lisp machine.
I love the case material. What is it? It looks like what they make the bulk post boxes out of here (if you ship a lot of material via post, they give you these boxes to put them in to/from the delivery centre), or corflute material (election candidates posters around here).
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 64.2 ms ] threadWe might have had to manage with just a few MB of RAM and efficient ARM cores running at maybe 30 MHz or so. Would we still get web browsers? How about the rest of the digital transformation?
One thing I do know for sure. LLMs would have been impossible.
The backstory is that in the late 2050s when AI has its hands in everything, humans loose trust of it. There are a few high profile incidents - based on AI decisions -, which cause public opinion to change, and an initiative is brought in to ensure important systems run hardware and software that can be trusted and human reviewed.
A 16bit CPU architecture - with no pipelining, speculative execution etc is chosen, as it's powerful enough to run such systems, but also simple enough that a human can fully understand the hardware and software.
The goal is to make a near-future space exploration MMO. My Macbook Pro can simulate 3000 CPU cores simultaneously, and I have a lot of fun ideas for it. The irony is that I'm using LLMs to build it :D
We would have seen much less desktop apps being written using Javascript frameworks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system) is from the 1960s, so, technically, it certainly is possible. Whether it would make sense commercially to support a billion users would depend on whether we would stay stuck on prices of the eighties, too.
Also, there’s mobile usage. I would it be possible to build a mobile network with thousands of users per km² with tech from the eighties?
Edit: oh I thought you meant if we were stuck in 6502 style stuff. With megabytes of ram we'd be able to do a lot more. When I was studying we ran 20 X terminals with ncsa mosaic on a server with a few CPUs and 128GB RAM or so. Graphic browsing would be fine.
Only when Java and JavaScript came on the scene things got unbearably slow. I guess in that scenario most processing would have stayed server-side.
Anyhow, the WWW was invented in 1989/1990 on a 25Mhz 68040 NextCube. Strictly speaking, the 68040 and NextCube weren't released until 1990 (and the NeXT was an expensive machine) but they were in development in 1989 so that's not a stretch. Anyhow, WWW isn't really much more than hypercard (1987) with networking.
There was Lynx text browser that was ported even to MS-DOS. I was using it until about 2010. It was a great browser until websites become unusable.
What I really would love: modern (continously built) modern (less than 10 years old tech) devices ryf-cetified.
Funnily enough I've been musing this past month would I better separate work if I had a limited Amiga A1200 PC for anything other than work! This would nicely fit.
Please do submit to HackaDay I'm sure they'd salivate over this and it's amazing when you have the creator in the comments. Even if just to explain no a 555 wouldn't quite achieve the same result. No not even a 556...
Takes me back to a time when a laptop would encourage the cat to share a couch because of the amount of heat it emitted.
Amazingly quick as well. Pointless projects are so much better and more fun when they don't take forever!
https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-pocket-reform
Any time I see this phrase I know these are my people.
Not 64?
(Edit: I see part of the address space is reserved for ROM, but it still seems a bit wonky.)
That said, a retro laptop this thick would look really nice in stained wood.
What printer are you using?
It occurred to me that given the 6502's predictable clock cycle timings it should be possible to create a realtime disassembler using e.g. an Arduino Mega 2560+character lcd display attached to the 6502's address/data/etc pins.
Of course, this would only be useful in single-stepping/very slow clock speeds. Still, I think it could be useful in learning how the 6502 works.
Is there relevant prior work? I'm struggling with my google fu.
https://github.com/dpm-343/6502-monitor
Please, what is your trick, is it a variation on bank memories?