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'ea' RTFM: revision, continue writing

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BodgeMaster 2025-09-26 00:59:16 +02:00
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@ -4,11 +4,12 @@
<!-- perspective: Annie -->
<p>
Annie rings the doorbell and waits. Nobody answers. She checks that
she&apos;s at the right door &ndash; yes, this is grandpa Karl&apos;s
Annie arrives at a house with multiple ground-level entrances.
She rings one of the doorbells and waits. Nobody answers. She checks
that it is the right door &ndash; yes, this is grandpa Karl&apos;s
apartment. She rings again. A window on <span class="comment">in?</span>
one of the adjacent houses opens and she hears Isabelle quietly
calling her.<br />
one of the adjacent houses opens and she hears Isabelle quietly calling
her:<br />
<span class="quote speech">Annie, we&apos;re over here.</span><br />
She walks over.<br />
<span class="quote speech">Which door?</span><br />
@ -21,30 +22,149 @@
This place has been <span class="comment">vacant</span> forever, might
as well use it.</span><br />
Annie slides her shoes off and leans her bag against the wall. Then,
they go to the living room where cables and computer parts are all over
they go into the living room where cables and computer parts are all over
the floor. Lucas sits in front of the rack between two opened boxes.
The rack&apos;s side panels had been removed, revealing the rails holding
the various devices inside and their power cables. Lucas is pushing
a circuit board into a half-assembled device that hangs out the front.
Karl goes over to a stool next to the rack, carefully avoiding stepping
on things, and sits down.
The rack&apos;s side panels had been removed, revealing the devices
mounted inside and the cables connecting them. Lucas is pushing a circuit
board into a half-assembled metal box that hangs out the front. Karl goes
over to a stool next to the rack, carefully avoiding stepping on things,
and sits down.
</p>
<p>
Annie sits down next to Lucas and watches as he carefully inserts one
board after the other. Karl is looking at the manual and tells him
to set some tiny switches on the front of some of them.<br />
Karl says: <span class="quote speech">Annie, can you hand me these four
gray ribbon cables?</span><br />
She looks around, lots of different cables everywhere.<br />
<span class="quote speech">The wide, flat ones to your left.</span><br />
He takes them and plugs them somewhere into the back of the rack.
Annie sits down next to Lucas and watches as he carefully
<span class="comment">synonym for careful?</span> inserts another
board. Karl is reading from a binder of documentation and tells him to
set some tiny switches on its front edge.<br />
While grabbing the next board, Lucas says:
<span class="quote speech">Annie, can you take these and prepare the DIP
switches?</span><br />
He pushes the box over to her. It contains four circuit boards, all
identical.<br />
<span class="quote speech">Uhm, okay.</span>
She takes one of the boards out and looks at it. It&apos;s full of
electronic components on both sides and one of the edges holds a tiny red
box with an even tinier row of switches on it.<br />
<span class="comment">Above is a bad description. Need naive description
of DIP switches from someone who doesn&apos;t know.</span><br />
<span class="quote speech">So what do I set them to?</span><br />
Karl tells her a combination and she tries to push the switches up or
down as needed with her finger nails.<br />
Lucas says <span class="quote speech">Here, use this.</span> and hands
her a pen.<br />
Using it to flip the switches, she sets the combination Karl says, then
hands the board over to Lucas and grabs the next one.
</p>
<p>
Isabelle grabs the terminal from a corner of the room and lifts it onto
the rack. Meanwhile, Annie and Lucas start collecting the cables and
loose parts from the floor. Karl plugs rack and terminal into power and
connects a cable between the terminal and one of the devices in the front
of the rack.
Karl takes the racks&apos;s power cable and plugs it in. Isabelle gets
the terminal from a corner of the room and lifts it onto the rack.
Meanwhile, Annie and Lucas start collecting the cables and loose parts
from the floor. Isabelle plugs the terminal into power and Karl connects
a cable between it and one of the devices in the front of the rack.
They all gather around and Karl powers it on. He follows the same
procedure that Annie and Isabelle performed in the library: Key switch
at the top of the rack to <span class="quote non-speech">RST</span>,
power up the hard drive, hold <span class="quote non-speech">LOAD</span>
and key switch to <span class="quote non-speech">RUN</span>. Then, he
pulls a floppy disk out of the documentation binder and inserts it into
the computer. He enters some commands, the drive clicks a few times, and
the terminal displays a menu.
</p>
<!--
Hardware in this machine:
- 1x HDD (platters: 1 removable, 3 fixed)
- 2x FDD
- 2x backplane (8 slots each)
- CPU (1 board)
- FPU (1 board) (removed, replaced with NC 2000)
- Number Cruncher 2000 (4 boards)
- HDDC (1 board)
- FDDC (1 board)
- MTDC (1 board)
- memory (8 boards)
- 1x PDU
- 1x MTD
16M = 16777216 => 0x00000000 to 0x00FFFFFF
64M = 67108864 => 0x00000000 to 0x03FFFFFF
128M = 134217728 => 0x00000000 to 0x07FFFFFF
-> 32-bit address bus
1 PC SIMM = ~1MiB
16 SIMMS = 1 memory board => 8 boards installed, 128M
//TODO: realistic EPROM sizes?
ROMs:
32k platform code (bootrom)
8k FDDC
8k HDDC
8k MTDC
Registers:
- CPU: 32x 8 bit? - are these mapped into RAM?
- A (32-bit) / Split registers 2x16-bit, 4x8-bit
- B (32-bit) / Split registers 2x16-bit, 4x8-bit
- C (32-bit) / Split registers 2x16-bit, 4x8-bit
- D (32-bit) / Split registers 2x16-bit, 4x8-bit
- Address pointer (32-bit)
- Flags (32-bit)
- Interrupt Return Pointer (32-bit)
- software interrupt capabilities?
- context switching capabilities?
- timers?
- ?
- Number Cruncher 2000:
- Instruction Register (32-bit)
- Flags (32-bit)
- 32x 32-bit / 16x 64-bit general-purpose register
- DMA load pointer (32-bit)
-->
<pre class="terminal">
[ SYSTEM DIAGNOSTICS v3.15 ]
----------------------------
1. Quick Test
2. Run All Tests
3. CPU Test
4. Memory Test
5. FPU Test
6. DMA Test
7. Serial Test
8. FDD Test
9. HDD Test
10. MTD Test
11. Load Module...
Choice: &#9608;
</pre>
<p>
Lucas asks:
<span class="quote speech">Odds of this working first try?</span><br />
Karl says: <span class="quote speech">We will see...</span><br />
He types a number and presses enter.
</p>
<pre class="terminal">
Choice: 2
Initializing...
Loading CPU Test...
Registers: Pass Branching: Pass
ALU: Pass Long Words: Pass
All Instrct:Pass Stress Test:Pass
Result: PASSED
Loading Memory Test...
Memory map:
00000000-
Result: FAIL
Loading FPU Test...
NC2K OpROM init
FP Arithmetic Test
SIMD Test
<!-- TODO: what kinda tests does this thing do? -->
Result: FAIL <!-- because memory error -->
</pre>
<p class="copyright">Copyright &#169; 2023-2025 Jan Danielzick (aka. BodgeMaster) &ndash; All rights reserved.</p><script>let spans = ["<span class=\"paper green\">", "<span>"]; let pre_texts = document.getElementsByTagName("pre"); for (let i = 0; i < pre_texts.length; i++) {if (pre_texts[i].className != "paper") continue; let lines = pre_texts[i].innerHTML.split("\n"); let result = ""; for (let j = 0; j < lines.length; j++) {if (lines[j].length >= 80) result = result + spans[j%2] + lines[j] + "</span>\n"; else result = result + spans[j%2] + lines[j] + " ".repeat(80-lines[j].length) + "</span>\n";} pre_texts[i].innerHTML = result;}</script></body></html>