Please wait...
I spent many, many years on a TRS-80 Model III quite happily. Z80 is a
great platform to learn assembly language. I was already a wiz at
That's true. I learned on Z80 and 6502, and then in 11th grade I took an assembly class for the easy A, and they were teaching it on 8086, complete with its awful segmented addressing. I couldn't imagine what it must have been like for people who weren't computer nerds trying to make it through that.
i started on an 8080, it was the shiny object at the time.
Later in middle school, i designed my own CPU ... ( cobbled together using discrete gates and eProms once i realized that you could save TONS of gates by using logic tables inside a ROM.. ). it didnt do much, but it did function...
Fri Oct 07 2022 09:20:27 AM EDT from IGnatius T FoobarThat's true. I learned on Z80 and 6502, and then in 11th grade I took an assembly class for the easy A, and they were teaching it on 8086, complete with its awful segmented addressing. I couldn't imagine what it must have been like for people who weren't computer nerds trying to make it through that.
When I started using unix some 40 years ago, it only ran on computers with serial consoles. And when you completed a shutdown of the operating system, the last thing you would see on the console was:
*** Normal system shutdown ***
And I'm wondering when was the last time I saw that message. It has to have been decades, now that everything has moved to framebuffer consoles, and when the OS completes shutting down it simply turns the power off.
I've seen something simlar recently. i think on a Linux machine. But i forget why or the details. I normally do power off not shut down. unsure if i just did a typo or what. It was a vm.
I thought i did a restart but it was not alive. went into the console and it was sitting there in a 'down' state instead. "system halted" i think was the message.
Here's the relevant kernel code:
0 void kernel_halt(void)
161 {
162 kernel_shutdown_prepare(SYSTEM_HALT);
163 migrate_to_reboot_cpu();
164 syscore_shutdown();
165 pr_emerg("System halted\n");
166 kmsg_dump(KMSG_DUMP_HALT);
167 machine_halt();
168 }
Anyone care to tell us what FreeBSD does?
I first used FreeBSD on a machine that didn't have ACPI so it didn't have soft-power. At the end of shutdown, the kernel would say "System halted." and that was the cue to kill the power. Fun fact: the FreeBSD kernel still prints this message immediately before attempting the ACPI power-off, so if your ACPI is wonky or the hardware doesn't have soft-power capability, the message is still there.
Now that I think about it, the variant "*** Normal System Shutdown ***" might have been a Xenix thing, because that's what was running on the Altos machines on which I cut my unix teeth some 40 years ago.
Which reminds me...
< > ! * ' ' #
^ " ` $ $ -
! * = @ $ _
% * < > ~ # 4
& [ ] . . /
| { , , SYSTEM HALTED
IRIX Release 6.5 does not output anything at the end of shutdown. This is because IRIX was made by SGI for SGI machines. 100% of the SGI purroducts that are supported by IRIX 6.5 have soft-power capabilities. There are a couple of caveats - during a reboot it says "Rebooting..." and when exiting the OS (to go back to the firmware) it just says "Kernel Exit".
2022-12-27 10:23 from IGnatius T Foobar
For some reason, something old and nostalgic is on my mind this
morning.
When I started using unix some 40 years ago, it only ran on computers
with serial consoles. And when you completed a shutdown of the
operating system, the last thing you would see on the console was:
*** Normal system shutdown ***
And I'm wondering when was the last time I saw that message. It has
to have been decades, now that everything has moved to framebuffer
consoles, and when the OS completes shutting down it simply turns the
power off.
Some BSDs still do something similar. You get "System halted. Press any key for reboot."
from a post somewhere else i watch:
"your cp/m emulator sucks! i cant figure out how to copy files!! where is copy command!!" ( really its not really a "cp/m emulator" and more of an "just enough hardware emulator to make cp/m run", but whatever i can see some lesser being not understanding )
"um, use pip, the normal copy program in cp/m since the beginning, and some research... " Clearly that person was not around in the old days and just ran across something ooooo, look that fancy retro-stuff i should do this and bug the old timers with newbie questions.
( or is this a rant instead? )
PIP B:=A: *.*
Aah, CP/M ... it would have reigned for decades had it not been for Mary Gates meddling inside IBM.
PIP was pretty awesome. Like its namesake on DEC machines, it could do much more than just copy files.
Next he asked "what is a CCP file".
I guess i should not be too hard on him, at least he's trying something new ( to him ) and not acting like a jerk.
2023-01-14 18:51 from Nurb432 <nurb432@uncensored.citadel.org>
Next he asked "what is a CCP file".
Damn Chicoms, they're everywhere!
Ooh, Big Iron! The current focus of my retro-computing mania.
Other opportunities for communing with IBM mainframe and midrange computers:
IBM Z Xplore https://www.ibm.com/z/resources/zxplore (formerly "Master the Mainframe") Tutorial series on use and programming for IBM zSystems.
PUB400.COM https://pub400.com/ Public access IBM i 7.5 server (successor product of AS/400).
IBM 4361 https://wiki.livingcomputers.org/doku.php?id=vm_cms_survival_guide Host computer operated by Living Computers Museum + Labs is available on-line even though LCM+L is currently closed.
Don't get me started on DEC stuff .... ;)