IRC log started Sat Dec 25 00:00:00 1999 [msg(TUNES)] permlog 1999.1225 -:- lispbliss [lispbliss@cont01p74.ont.micron.net] has joined #tunes -:- SignOff eihrul: #TUNES ([x]chat) -:- SignOff colorg: #TUNES (ircII EPIC4pre2 cLIeNUX. Can you say that?) -:- SignOff lispbliss: #TUNES () -:- mibin [mibin@62.11.105.160] has joined #tunes -:- SignOff mibin: #TUNES (Ping timeout for mibin[62.11.105.160]) -:- hcf [nef@me-portland-us925.javanet.com] has joined #tunes -:- fire [no@209-68-229-11.dialup.cust.tfb.com] has joined #tunes merry christmas everyone 10:10am -:- eihrul [lee@usr5-ppp128.lvdi.net] has joined #tunes merry christmas eihrul merry isaacmas, too! :D 10:20am which isaac? Newton, the greatest man of the last two millenia. um i think not he destroyed christian superstition, albeit unknowingly. yeah true he brought us modern science and buried alchemy (by putting all his talent into it) newton is jan 4, no? cristianity was very mislead during the past too millenia uh? Been told he's Dec. 25 so isaacmas isn't for a week yet.... Fare: i just looked it up when you mentioned isaacmas... two rather or is it a problem w/ julian vs gregorian calendar? "Jan. 4 1643" oh.... it does seem to be a calendar problem... Darn! I've been misled! * fire/#tunes snicker eh, they don't know what day the christ guy was born anyday er anyway so we can still celebrate the wrong date! :D Isaac Newton was born in the manor house of Woolsthorpe, near Grantham in Lincolnshire. Although he was born on Christmas Day 1642, the date given on this card is the Gregorian calendar date. (The Gregorian calendar was not adopted in England until 1752.) but at the top it says jan 4 Depends on how you count things. * eihrul/#tunes just hopes the next day air he paid for on his Lisp books doesn't become next week air because of stupid religious holidays. 10:30am This means we can celebrate Sir Isaac's birthday twice a year! Cool! (more if we also count chinese calendar, etc) how many days in the chinese calendar? 365.25 in the average so wouldn't the chinese date have the same period as our date and thus coincide every year? but actually, depends on the moon, with a second 7th month inserted when needed the chinese calendar is moon-based, like all primitive/natural calendars. abi: the chinese calendar? somebody said the chinese calendar was moon-based, like all primitive/natural calendars. hehe abi: yacas is Yet Another Computer Algebra System at http://www.xs4all.nl/~apinkus/yacas.html -:- eihrul has changed the topic on channel #tunes to: Free Reflective Computing System || 1 year of #tunes irc logs | Happy Isaacmas! Fare: you allowed to divulge information on clementine? i have some questions about it... seeing as you have access to code :) 10:40am Fare: i was wondering what exactly core store's in the interface section of his components (and how this relates to the ordinary symbol tables) s/store's/stores eihrul: if the information is character-by-character description of a .tar archive of the sources, then I guess I don't have the right to give it to you or have I? * Fare/#tunes hates intellectual property, but doesn't want core to suffer from that, either i'm not asking you to give me the code merely to describe how parts of it work, generally sure (have already asked core and he's trying to clear it right now) because clementine uses an IDL to specify interfaces between its components yup now... is this interface stuffed in the symbol table or is it stuffed in the interface section of the xcom in some other way and if so, how? -:- Downix [down@d-gnaps-14.ici.net] has joined #tunes i.e. how does a component specify what it imports and exports? the relevant parts of it are present in the xcom object file Morning all * Downix/#tunes is SOOOO sick of X-mas music I'd have to look more closely to see what section it is in, tho well, i'm more interested in what information is needed to import and export actually downix is it just another symbol table? howdy * Fare/#tunes used to have a 33-foo disk of tweety&sylvester Xmas music hehe * Downix/#tunes popped in his "Duke Nukem: music to score by" CD Much better Fare: on first thought it seems to me it'd be just a symbol table with some optional IDL information stored with each record on how to optimize some of the trampolines perhaps downix: how comes your motherboard? fire: Well, right now I'm working on a sound system design Fare: is this correct? cool heh lengua is going slow as ever fire: There has to be a simpler way to produce a sound wave than the typical method hmmm 10:50am i really wouldn't know eihrul: the parsedep utility dumps a .dep.h and a .dep.o * Downix/#tunes nods the .dep.o has stuff in its INTERFACE section hey if i get in the hardware resale business i, will you give me a good deal on your stuff ;) the .dep.h has C declarations for functions but, what specifically is stored in the interface section? :) gotta read sources for parsedep to figure out abi: seen core core was last seen on IRC 6 days, 1 hours, 54 minutes and 29 seconds ago, saying: sort of :) [Sun Dec 19 08:56:51 1999] sheesh, where's the dude when i have questions? dunno eihrul eihrul: afaik, the .dep.o basically contains a structured summary of the whole .dep file. the .dep file holding the IDL interface? fire: I'm not producing MOBOs, only selling the chipset and licencing the design. 8) fire: You'll have to cut deals with our licencee's eihrul: yup D: oh well f: Downix: don't you have a deal yourself? at least i tried Fare: hmm, does the IDL contain any specific options for optimizing certain parameter passing conventions or other various keywords? Fare: Hrm? with one of your licensees... fire: Well, if you want to produce systems............... Fare: Of course. 8) eihrul: not afaik, but you could add this feature if not present yet. * eihrul/#tunes is going to have to make a clementine concept-a-like if he doesn't get code soon enough. :) fire: Our licence rates are one-time, not royalty based and our chipset/OS ROM combo is not too expensive eihrul: just get core to give you cvs access! oh cool Fare: i've asked already 11:00am Fare: and i'm still waiting for it :) have you phoned core? i was considering buying parts off of ebay and building like alpha workstations i've talked to him directly and resell them face to face? fire: You could me baking "Fire-boxes" powered by our chipset. Just stamp a "powered by" sticker on it. well, on irc fire: Don't think it would work, Alpha's are not hot anymore oh bummer fire: Intel's made people think that Pentium is the top dog heh Fare: i don't see what calling the guy will do aren't Alpha's still the fastest? i'll build pretty much anything and just load corel linux on it * Downix/#tunes is still waiting for a Pentium that can do the same tricks he can with a 7Mhz Amiga eih: want me to call him? Fare: PA-RISC and MIPS are the two fastest, Alpha is third fire: hehe i can still make a profit though on alphas D: it's not the pentium at fault; it's the surrounding hardware & software architecture (or rather, lack thereof) i just don't have any capital right now fire: Yup Fare: if it'll actually do any good Fare: I know, but if you'd listen to intel, the CPU is the only thing in a computer that does any work (of course, the pentium itself is typical of the whole mess) Downix: isn't it? other components are for play, not work :) Fare: Yup. "Now featuring a 16k L1 cache for high-speed applications" on an old Pentium ad Fare: Hehehehe Downix: is your motherboard ready to sell? fire: We still lack a sound system and an I/O system oh I/O is pretty important * Fare/#tunes is appalled by win98's installation. "Easy to install"? A hell! My, USB webcams were a poisoned Xmas gift! Downix: not even a buzzer? downix: oh much longer? Fare: not even Downix: and/or a bitbanging serial line? fire: We won't be ready till the end of the year we figure, we have to test it once the design is done. Fare: we won't have a serial line anyways how's f-cpu advancing? no serial line? im guessing the end of 2000? Fare: So far not bad. fire: yes how will you interface the zillion stuff on serial? Fare: No serial line. Only USB, FIrewire and a local bus design we have well i'll be there when you're ready Fare: USB->serial adaptor not even a generic n-line port? (useful for embedded applications, too) damn i wish i didn't delete that read function tril showed me i tried to rewrite it and it doesn't work Fare: Dunno about the n-line 11:10am is there a syntax for initializing a struct in C? only with constant fields Fare: Any info about n-lines? oh and only in an initialization statement (unless maybe with gcc extension) so i have to change each member at a time? not initializing i mean just changing I believe GCC has relevant extensions to do that, but that's no more ANSI C (or is it, in C9x? any language lawyer around?) i see C9X is not ansi C yet thanks fire: you shouldn't be using C, anyway i know i know in C9X but i haven't in a while you use structure literals to initialize outside of a variable declaration i yern for more C and GCC supports structure literals foo = (struct bar) {a,b,c,d}; but it isn't ansi? it is ansi oh opk but it's just ansi-yet-to-be ok no compilers support it but GCC yet AFAIK has ansi conspicuously chosen a GCC- compatible or incompatible syntax? no idea but GCC seems to be the only one with some c9x features thanks eihrul heh my code looks cryptic now though 11:20am very easy with C yeah i think i will just change each member individually to save others from confusion hmm mmmm * Downix/#tunes is trying out a new recipe for buffalo tenders these are good not too spicy, yet spicy enough, and a lot of flavor reflective? i heard reflective was being able to correctly model oneself; see Reflection druel abi: shush reflection? hmmm... reflection is a property of a system that can refer to itself and manipulate its state or rough on your brain hmm How much performance loss would an OS like Tunes have over a hardware-specific OS like Amiga? merry xmas everyone Hey Fufie down: theoretically, none. in practice, some. in 18 months the difference won't be interesting anyway hi downie 11:30am Fufie: how so? (just got back from my parents and xmas-partying) How ya doing anyways Fuf downix: moore's law about hardware merry christmas fufie hi fire :) Fufie: Well, would not a hardware-specific OS for that new hardware still be faster yet than the reflective system? downix: maybe.. let's say 36 months then which should be a better estimate for tunes if work is started now Fufie: True. *hint hint* 8) :) GEE I WONDER WHEN FARE IS GOING TO START CODING ON TUNES * fire/#tunes clear throat I'm just curious how an OS similar to tunes would perform on a system design like mine downix: I am mainly into languages and vanilla coding.. nothing close to metal, and for me a neat language construct is more important than a performance tweak :) Fufie: Hmm. vanilla coding? i think i know what you mean Fufie: I tend to think in terms of the hardware, obviously, but also on the hw/sw interface fire: vanilla as in (Very) High Level excellent * Downix/#tunes is starting to learn high-level programming Until Fufie here introduced me to Lisp, the highest-level programming I'd done was C so you finally crossed over eh :P fire: Starting to, baby steps. LISP definately is nice tho 8) not like me Oh fire? i tried to write big stuff in scheme downix: I do care about performance also, but we have our priorities and got burned Fufie: Of course. For utter performance, you loose portability 11:40am Fufie: I'd like a way of having both don't we all Fufie: Java's "JVM" was a nice idea, but noone ever pushed the concept to it's conclusion which is? java-os? * eihrul/#tunes shudders. Fufie: Make a VM that underneath is a direct hardware tie Downix: squeak is probably closer to what you're looking for in that respect hey what's that C library that has a macro definition of whitespace and other tokens? as most parts of squeak are made in squeak and they have a version of it running on OS-Kit downix: that has been done earlier, but where would the separation between vm and assembler be? eihrul: Hmm fire: man isspace thanks Fufie: That's the balancing act. But the concept would work, make a portable VM that is underneath as optimized as possible Downix: wasn't that what inferno was? or wahtever the name was, it started with an i.... yes, and as all trade-offs there is no definite answer Fufie: i know eihrul: Inferno was an OS Downix: yes, that used a vm layer Fufie: I just know that these are the kinds of decisions I have to make. Clementine may be one answer, but it may not be eihrul: Never used it eihrul: I have hardware that'll be a bitch to program for. (RISC taken to the extreme) 11:50am hmm, is $600 bad for a complete "open-box" indigo r4.4k? eihrul: No, that is a good price eihrul: if it has monitor, keyboard and mouse no monitor but everything else Hmm, the monitor may cost ya then they don't use VGA for those things But there is a TV port doh Downix: can you possibly point me to any good used computer place? :) that would sell with monitor? reading text on a television would stink... eihrul: not off-hand, I just search the newsgroups eihrul: I am doing it right now * Downix/#tunes is surfing the net in 27' style D: my god that is huge Downix: how much did you pay for that thing? eihrul: My TV? $300 doh oh eihrul: Amiga's love TV's isn't the resolution too small though? it would own to hook up a computer to my big screen down stairs 12:00pm eihrul: Nope eihrul: 320x200 and 640x400 are not bad resolutions fine for text-use and even for GUI, not too bad !larne:*! any services admins awake ? !HyrliK:*! why? !NickServ:*! HyrliK used GETPASS on apt 12:10pm Downix: find anything? Not off-hand dern heh is it healthy to write lisp like recursive functions in C? no well, not for the code anyway D: Yes fire? though for tasks like parsing why not though? C doesn't like recursion much doesn't do any tail optimizations some compilers do GCC doesn't hmm well how about this function inline char *skip_whitespace(char *string) { if (isspace(string[0]) return skip_whitespace(*string[1]); return string; } it seems to do some weird things with stack space fire: C, that hurts 12:20pm but no true optimizations im sorry fare fire: nope, unfortunately, you don't do things like that in C fire: learn ocaml damn learn haskell :) i'll stick with scheme, self and C thankyou very much i sure do like recursion though ocaml and haskell are designed for recursion Fare: any books on ocaml? so is scheme or atleast fairly complete online manuals? doh manual was staring me in the face -:- SignOff hcf: #TUNES (Leaving) -:- hcf [nef@me-portland-us340.javanet.com] has joined #tunes 12:30pm i gotta go merry christmas guys -:- SignOff fire: #TUNES (Leaving) eihrul: sure. Ones by xleroy and/or by cousineau complete online manual, too win98 installation makes even debian installation seem fast and well thought-out debian installation isn't all that bad 15 minutes to install debian 15 hours to install windows haven't had any bad experiences with debian in all the times i've installed it Fare: how well does ocaml handle foreign calling conventions? Debian install is slow Fare: just wondering if i could perhaps interface it with assembly components and use it as the basis for a kernel instead of C? eihrul: ocaml can be interfaced to C rather nicely, if you consider the GC. -:- lar1 [larman@1Cust207.tnt22.sfo3.da.uu.net] has joined #tunes Hey 12:40pm Fare: okay, but this means i could just use assembly functions observing C calling conventions and interface fairly easily, correct? yes you can also hack the compiler to insert proper asm code, if you're into superduperoptimizing well, i'd only need it for specific processor dependent parts of the kernel most of it would be in ocaml or whatever language i finally decide on eihrul: I thought that you were going to code your entire uK in asm? * eihrul/#tunes shrugs. nah, naive idea i must say i've learned What made you decide to switch? hmm asm works, but it's a pain in the ass lar1: brains don't like doing register allocation too much just became too much of a chore to optimize every little piece of code reg alloc is rather simple on a x86. Wait until you get a MIPS * Downix/#tunes laughs Hmm, this is true MIPS reg alloc is a pain in the ass, but SOOOO worth it Fare: well, atleast x86 is cisc :) that... reg allocation is simpler on a 6502 cisc? and if i changed one little register in some of my routines i had to modify all the other registers to leave it open this was very, very painful eihrul: So you switched because you thought asm to be too much work? no i switched because i think asm isn't worth the effort in the same time i spent writing one little subsystem i could have written the whole entire thing 12:50pm eihrul: Would it have been as optimized tho? it would have been much more optimal Downix: My point exactly but some parts of the system don't need to be optimal! they just need to be easily maintainable for those speed critical paths, you can use assembly but otherwise, its just simply overkill eihrul: Thats what makes QNX so great... its relly optimised. This is why windows sucks, its not optimized :) lar1: sigh, you're overlooking my point :P eihrul: You just want to get it done and then go back and optimise? eihrul: you can do asm intelligently, by doing meta-asm, i.e. writing a compiler eihrul: see Ian Piumarta's ccg Fare: why not just use a hll at that point? eihrul: writing a compiler *is* using a hll but using it in a resource-conscious way url for papers? Fare: What language would this compiler be written in? :) a hll, like ocaml, or scheme, or mercury. -:- mibin [mibin@62.11.102.197] has joined #tunes but why not just use the language itself as your compiler instead of writing one in it? :) eihrul: More optimazation? hmm eihrul: that's just a bootstrapping problem why not just spend the effort making the hll compiler compile better? eihrul: That would work too