Nostr notes by Brian Swetland

I'm pretty sure this is at least one common contributing ...

2026-08-26T02:26:32+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…x2s5
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I'm pretty sure this is at least one common contributing factor. Others include, depending on the vendor, "there *is* no real documentation, they just lock some of their hw designers and driver engineers in a room until a driver emerges," and "there's enough third party licensed IP involved that cleaning things to the point they could be shared with another party would be somewhere between prohibitively expensive and impossible."

This poll makes me once again regret giving away my portable ...

2026-06-04T02:52:04+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…h3jl
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This poll makes me once again regret giving away my portable minidisc player (and stereo component minidisc recorder), the pinnacle of futuristic portable music in the 90s.

I loved how those portable players had a boatload of RAM (for the time) so they could buffer enough to survive seek overhead on RW discs and only spin up the motor every now and again on pressed discs.

Well this sure brings back memories. It runs a lot faster in ...

2026-05-12T20:32:33+02:00

Well this sure brings back memories.

It runs a lot faster in DOSBOX than on the 10MHz 512KB Dual-360K-Floppy XT clone I originally ran it on when I was a kid.

https://archive.org/details/borland-turbo-c-v2.0
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_borlandturer2.01988_23162264
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_borlandturuideVer2.01988_19310204

#Borland #TurboC

Some thoughts that cross the mind this afternoon... Is it ...

2026-05-06T02:51:42+02:00

Some thoughts that cross the mind this afternoon...

Is it possible for folks on social media to suggest that an existing tool might be a good fit for something without being utter jackasses about it?

Does anyone being an utter jackass in replies ever actually read the messages they're replying to?

Signs point to "rarely" and "probably not", respectively.

Just built and installed NetHack 5.0.0 and holy cats, there's ...

2026-05-02T22:00:40+02:00

Just built and installed NetHack 5.0.0 and holy cats, there's a tutorial now!

https://nethack.org/v500/release.html

(Fired it up in an ~80x25 xterm for that classic hack feel, though my default xterm font is a bit too modern)

#Gaming #NetHack

Living in a world of C-style integer promotion math, I hadn't ...

2026-05-01T20:38:28+02:00

Living in a world of C-style integer promotion math, I hadn't thought about this much before... when doing 8bit or 16bit math on a 32bit machine, at which points are truncation/sign-extension necessary to preserve the correctness of the narrower operations as if they were done in real registers of that width?

#PLdev

You can't just talk about that sort of thing out in the open, ...

2026-04-30T17:58:04+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…7nkq
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You can't just talk about that sort of thing out in the open, you gotta use the Cone of Silence.

I also continue to be fascinated by the people convinced that ...

2026-04-26T17:26:08+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…0kjs
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I also continue to be fascinated by the people convinced that "prompt engineering" or other "ai" usage is a viable career path when the whole agenda of proponents of this nonsense is to eliminate all expensive/bothersome/unsightly human involvement entirely.

The people who don't want to pay anyone to create books/pictures/movies/code/etc are not interested in paying anyone to tell the computer to do the things those people did either.

I'm realizing just how alike many of the "AI coding" ...

2026-04-18T18:33:39+02:00

I'm realizing just how alike many of the "AI coding" enthusiasts or evangelists are to the people who think "AI art", being able to push a button and receive soulless regurgitated slop (be it writing, imagery, animation, software, whatever) is the future. That "art", "skill", "creativity", any investment of time, learning, practice, etc is some kind of gatekeeping conspiracy.

Believing "having the idea" is the hard part and effort and artistry, craft, or quality has no value.

So fucking sad.

As a lifelong 1TBS adherent, I'll fight you on this one. Open ...

2026-04-10T01:10:55+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…fytj
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As a lifelong 1TBS adherent, I'll fight you on this one.

Open braces go on the end of the line of the function decl, if/for/switch/while statement, etc. Close braces go on lines by themselves, aligned with the indentation of the line the open brace is on.

Exception 1: An else is preceded by a close brace, indented to match the associated if/else and followed by an open brace on the same line.

Exception 2: case labels are indented the same as the enclosing switch statement.

Okay, more C (or just generally curly-braces-style-languages) ...

2026-04-10T00:39:23+02:00

Okay, more C (or just generally curly-braces-style-languages) discourse: I am a strong believer in aggressively using braces everywhere.

Very occasionally I will emit them on single-line if/for/while statements, but even that makes me feel uncomfortable.

I've seen far too many bugs resulting from not being aggressive about block delimiter usage over the years.

Bonus is it tends to mean diffs adding/removing single lines of code are cleaner.

Toy systems language choice: braces are *required*.

I've been programming in C for nearly 40 years and I long ago ...

2026-04-09T13:01:21+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…0kxl
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I've been programming in C for nearly 40 years and I long ago shifted to very defensively parenthesizing instead of memorizing the 17 levels of precedence. I feel like it's both easier to write and read code that minimizes dependence on human cleverness.

A reminder that you can still just sit down and write software. ...

2026-03-07T21:40:51+01:00

A reminder that you can still just sit down and write software. Or stand up and write software if you prefer.

The key point is that *you* can *write software* and you don't have to let other software write software for you.

Nostr event nevent1qqsvrfuda2jjfrwjpvqtlkasdeh6zpxlqwm6hap084tkncf5kd6tejqzyq8q6qgqn8x6aznsj5qwg6k2m2jqpf2ymj6685fv77h7are2h86wyceua96

2026-02-15T23:52:36+01:00

Is that controversial? The USB mini b connector is crazy cursed.

Recently I saw someone remark that they find "AI" useful ...

2026-02-14T00:07:43+01:00

Recently I saw someone remark that they find "AI" useful for generating commit messages.

Just now I was writing a commit message. Out of long habit, I do that while reviewing a diff of the change I'm about to commit. This is very useful for catching errors (ranging from actual incorrect code to accidentally checking in some debug prints or a including a whole file not meant for *this* commit).

And I thought "wow, I'd bet anything my code quality would go down if I outsourced that to 'AI'".

That checks out. (For reference, it is a close-up shot of Doctor ...

2025-11-30T15:26:21+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…la39
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That checks out.

(For reference, it is a close-up shot of Doctor Julius Strangepork, at his station on the bridge of the Swinetrek, Pigs in Space, the Muppet Show).

I'm curious what mine reads as. I've always thought ...

2025-11-30T15:20:15+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…a2jq
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I'm curious what mine reads as. I've always thought it's very obvious, but that probably assumes a familiarity with a certain late-70s US/UK television program...

Wanted: some kind of corporate vehicle (maybe some sort of co-op ...

2025-11-11T02:46:31+01:00

Wanted: some kind of corporate vehicle (maybe some sort of co-op thing?) that enables me to get functional health insurance, maybe share other resources like a bit of office/work space, etc, but without signing up to do any work other than my own personal projects. Surely doable somehow, no?

I mean yeah I might occasionally want to do a bit of consulting or accidentally create some software or hardware I want to sell. Just don't want to be obligated to deal with somebody else's bullshit. ^^

Discussion about "how much is a lot of memory" has me ...

2025-09-30T00:06:56+02:00

Discussion about "how much is a lot of memory" has me once again reflecting on the fact that my current desktop machine for gaming has 50% more on-chip cache (30MB) than my first machine with a hard drive had total disk storage (20MB).

(It was a 12MHz 80286 with 2MB ram and a 720x348x1bpp hercules monographics display)

My main question is "does that software have to talk to a ...

2025-08-26T17:52:04+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…0xp2
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My main question is "does that software have to talk to a cloud service to 'authenticate'" or not.

Okay, what's the latest on Bambu Lab 3d printers and the ...

2025-08-26T17:33:04+02:00

Okay, what's the latest on Bambu Lab 3d printers and the ability to use them without Internet connectivity or their cloud service? Local LAN access, I mean, not swapping sdcards by hand like a caveman.

#BambuLab #3dPrinting #Questions

I suspect that it's primarily driven by malware complaints ...

2025-08-25T22:44:56+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…sc9s
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I suspect that it's primarily driven by malware complaints (and ensuing customer service costs) rather than government demands (though it certainly makes those much easier to fulfill).

It's still horrible overreach and combined with the killing off of AOSP build support for Pixel devices it's a bad sign for the health of the Android platform and ecosystem.

We (early Android team) fought hard for open app installation and replaceable OS images. Sad to see that finally dying.

zfs on linux tip: use serialno based device names not /dev/sd# ...

2025-07-24T00:53:22+02:00

zfs on linux tip: use serialno based device names *not* /dev/sd# labels that are dynamically assigned (like say due to slightly different disk spin-up rates at boot).

If you fail to do that, zfs unmount POOL, zpool export POOL, zpool import -d /dev/disk/by-id/ POOL can get you fixed up.

#zfs #linux #oops

Ahaha, people bemoaning the "enshittification" of ...

2025-07-04T03:51:53+02:00

Ahaha, people bemoaning the "enshittification" of "AI" as these companies all desperately try to charge people for this craptacular snake oil is hilarious to me. Is it really "enshittification" if the product was garbage from the start?

One of the key things I fought for on Android was that AOSP (the ...

2025-06-13T00:46:30+02:00

One of the key things I fought for on Android was that AOSP (the open source release) could be built for and installed on the flagship Android devices. (Nexus, Pixel, etc). Sounds like that's no longer the case as of Android 16. Very sad.

https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/114669765268140206

I'm kind of fascinated by the "oh no, new languages / ...

2025-06-11T08:39:34+02:00

I'm kind of fascinated by the "oh no, new languages / tools / systems are doomed because there's no huge corpus for 'AI' to be trained on" blather recently. Sounds a lot more like "oh no, people who are utterly dependent on these 'AI' tools are doomed" to me.

The second task and the ensuing studio segment were delightful. ...

2025-05-30T10:17:39+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…sxq7
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The second task and the ensuing studio segment were delightful. And as a bonus, I learned the adorable British-ism for "crossing guard."

The studio banter is just fantastic this season. "There's ...

2025-05-30T10:07:59+02:00

The studio banter is just fantastic this season.

"There's no twist."

#Taskmaster (S19E05)

So roughly once a week nowadays, Firefox on Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS ...

2025-05-28T19:25:52+02:00

So roughly once a week nowadays, Firefox on Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS just stops responding to all keyboard input. I haven't found anything I can do at this point besides killing it and restarting it. I haven't observed any obvious commonality to the failures.

Any suggestions on how to fix (or just debug) this? Would jumping through the hoops to migrate from snap to the deb packages that Mozilla releases possibly fix this or make it easier to debug?

#Firefox #Ubuntu #Help

Can we do the same for Perl at the same time?

2025-02-16T17:52:50+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…sw5n
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Can we do the same for Perl at the same time?

Am I imagining things or didn't there used to be a way to ...

2025-01-24T22:14:04+01:00

Am I imagining things or didn't there used to be a way to attach spoiler-protected images to posts without putting the entire post behind a CW?

#Mastodon #Questions

Here's a question... is there a solid/proven little 2D ...

2025-01-18T08:24:59+01:00

Here's a question... is there a solid/proven little 2D toolkit/engine out there in the style of #love2d (or maybe just a bit fancier) that uses #javascript instead of #lua ?

I love the Lua's VM design, simple embedding API, compact 0-deps codebase, and reasonable performance, but writing Lua just does not bring me joy.

Javascript has its own warts, but the general feel of a "braces" language with 0-indexing, etc, is something I just find more comfortable to work with.

#gamedev #questions

Not only that, I still am weirded out by people who feel ...

2025-01-13T07:07:13+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…culf
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Not only that, I still am weirded out by people who feel comfortable just always using the latest compiler version with absolute faith that there can't possibly be any risk in upgrading.

I mean, yeah you probably should upgrade periodically, but changing compilers right before a release? For any reason besides a critical compiler bugfix? Wild!

Between the web being absolutely flooded with ...

2024-12-31T19:52:17+01:00

Between the web being absolutely flooded with "AI"-generated slop and search engines self-inflicting even more "AI" slop on their results, I wonder if hand-curated indices/portals/etc might become popular again at some point.

Just rewatched Lower Decks season one, episode one. It does feel ...

2024-12-24T19:11:17+01:00

Just rewatched Lower Decks season one, episode one. It does feel a little try-hard in the humor, and Mariner is more out of control than T'Lyn even, but it just makes me smile to see the introduction to these delightful nerds again, even in their earliest forms. Going to enjoy rewatching the series.

#LowerDecks #StarTrek #TV

I have not been this completely absorbed by a classic roguelike ...

2024-12-19T14:47:20+01:00

I have not been this completely absorbed by a classic roguelike since I was deep into NetHack in high school.

#CavesOfQud #Gaming

Happy Caves of Qud 1.0 Launch Day: ...

2024-12-05T23:38:32+01:00

Happy Caves of Qud 1.0 Launch Day:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/333640/Caves_of_Qud/

Enjoy a modern roguelike in the style of the classic tiled, turn based games, with nicer UI/UX, in a far-future science-fantasy setting more in the spirit of Dune or Book of the New Sun than the typical D&D fare.

#Gaming #CavesOfQud

Oh interesting, apparently it is possible to import back-dated ...

2024-11-18T06:35:46+01:00

Oh interesting, apparently it is possible to import back-dated posts into Bluesky. Some folks are migrating their Twitter history over. (Not something I want or need there, but the capability is useful).

Would love to see post import support in Mastodon to allow for full-account migration, including one's content.

https://bsky.app/profile/scott.hanselman.com/post/3laxjqfz7sc2a

Does GOSUB count or are you talking about some fancy stuff ...

2024-11-04T02:25:48+01:00

In reply to nevent1q…2t7s
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Does GOSUB count or are you talking about some fancy stuff involving arguments and return values?

Interesting. This seems to imply that Blobs end up getting ...

2024-10-16T04:47:20+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…wa23
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Interesting. This seems to imply that Blobs end up getting streamed out of the IDB (via FileReader API), which definitely seems like a big win for larger data.

If I'm going to store #JavaScript objects in #IndexedDB, is ...

2024-10-16T03:46:12+02:00

If I'm going to store #JavaScript objects in #IndexedDB, is there any significant size or performance difference between storing them as Objects (letting IndexedDB serialize them), strings (post-JSON.stringify), ArrayBuffers (post-TextEncoder.encode), or Blobs (wrapping the ArrayBuffer)?

My assumption is the space difference is minimal or none, and that there may be some performance gain for not doing the JSON -> UTF8 -> bytearray conversion in discrete steps in Javascript.

#WebDev #Questions

This evening I watched One Cut of the Dead at the recommendation ...

2024-10-15T06:12:03+02:00

This evening I watched One Cut of the Dead at the recommendation of a friend and it was amaaaazing. A Japanese indie zombie film from 2017. $25,000 budget. Entirely too much fun.

I strongly recommend going in cold. There's blood and violence and mayhem, but it's low-budget-indie-film-style, not hyper-realistic gore, if that's a concern.

Here's a trailer, if you must, but be warned it absolutely spoils some of the fun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wBImbHqhFk

#Movies #Horror #Comedy #Zombies #October

Doubled the coal power plant, bringing total power on the grid to ...

2024-09-15T05:19:29+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…a6lj
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Doubled the coal power plant, bringing total power on the grid to 1050MW and experimenting with some different plumbing that's a bit of a mess, still.

#Satisfactory #Gaming

Satisfactory 1.0 is out and it is still fantastic (and now with a ...

2024-09-13T02:17:08+02:00

Satisfactory 1.0 is out and it is still fantastic (and now with a bunch of new QoL improvements, etc).

Started a new game in 1.0 and now have coal power online (525MW) and just rebuilt and expanded the copper and iron production lines on the new second floor of the main factory.

#Gaming #Satisfactory

If there are sufficient resources (IO and fabric), taking ...

2024-08-13T20:43:56+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…ngsx
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If there are sufficient resources (IO and fabric), taking advantage of the wider address bus of the C265 to provide a more direct interface to VRAM, etc would seem like a big win.

They do, but in 10 years of owning a 1661A, I never disconnected ...

2024-08-11T08:55:37+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…x46w
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They do, but in 10 years of owning a 1661A, I never disconnected the cables from the back of the device. Just folded them up over or under it when not in use. (Mine had the pouch on top to hold all the goodies).

This is one reason I tend to use male 0.1" headers on the ...

2024-08-11T04:13:48+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…p9yy
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This is one reason I tend to use male 0.1" headers on the main board side of projects.

Also you can just use the trick of plugging in a male header with long leads and then plugging your LA, scope, etc into those.

If you've got the signals you need on 0.1" headers you ...

2024-08-11T04:03:27+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…q82j
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If you've got the signals you need on 0.1" headers you can skip the grabbers and just plug in directly.

I loved my 1661A. Ended up giving it away a few years back when it needed some refurb TLC and my need for very wide (>16 bit) captures had pretty much vanished.

Oh this is a very nice feature of the RP2350's (Q)SPI memory ...

2024-08-09T04:12:44+02:00

Oh this is a very nice feature of the RP2350's (Q)SPI memory interface:

"The QMI can map addresses with its built-in address translation hardware: each chip select is partitioned into 4 × 4 MB windows, whose physical base address and aperture size are configured in units of 4 kB (one flash sector). This enables the runtime addresses of flash programs to be independent of where they are stored."

Massively simplifies a lot of things, including A/B firmware images.

#Pico2 #RP2350

Lots of fun new goodies in the RP2350. New QMI memory controller ...

2024-08-08T22:16:51+02:00

Lots of fun new goodies in the RP2350.

New QMI memory controller supports two SPI/QSPI memory devices, and RAM as well as ROM/flash.

OTP area allows for USB VID/PID/string customization from bootloader onward, and user-provided second stage bootloader if desired.

Various PIO improvements and a 3rd PIO unit.

All USB errata from RP2040 fixed.

A new high-speed serial output block (HSTX) that can drive 8 outputs at 150MHz (optionally DDR). Interesting!

#Pico2 #RP2350

The RP235xB variants are QFN-80s with 48 GPIOs and 8 analog ...

2024-08-08T21:51:36+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…wtpv
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The RP235xB variants are QFN-80s with 48 GPIOs and 8 analog inputs, which is pretty decent.

This looks like a bunch of fun. Twice the memory. Choice of ...

2024-08-08T17:27:41+02:00

This looks like a bunch of fun. Twice the memory. Choice of Cortex M33 or RISC-V RV32I cores at boot time. Real atomic ops. Stacked SPI flash option. Hopefully the USB peripheral is a bit less wonky.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/rp2350/

#Pico2 #RP2350

Customized ASICs for CPU/PPU/glue is not too out there for an ...

2024-08-05T22:48:40+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…k7ee
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Customized ASICs for CPU/PPU/glue is not too out there for an early-90's console design in my mind. The ability to (if you really got fancy) support a couple different "app" cpus (6502/65816/Z80/etc) would be fun too and I feel like keeping the programming model and ISA "realistic" is plenty. Having everything be DIPs or whatnot or run at 5V is certainly not essential at least to my way of thinking, but obviously opinions vary.

Really, if you're going to drop an ECP5 in, I'd ditch the ...

2024-08-05T22:43:56+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…a8ev
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Really, if you're going to drop an ECP5 in, I'd ditch the 65C265 entirely -- you can easily fit a pipelined and cached RV32I or a 68000 in there -- a 65C816 should not be a problem. You could probably fit *two* -- run the OS on one and apps/games/etc on the other. Abandon the clunky peripherals on the C265 for nicer ones, do a VERA++ video engine, and build your dream early 90s console/computer. Prototype it out on a ULX3S or similar.

I expect it's all workable but you're going to need a new ...

2024-08-05T22:24:09+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…sff0
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I expect it's all workable but you're going to need a new design to accommodate the latencies involved with external memory compared with doing all the compositing out of on-board BRAM/SRAM blocks. Definitely doable (and the ECP5, even a small one, has a lot more resources and is much faster), but likely requiring a significant rebuild of the VERA core design.

Outboard memory would be the way to go. Not sure if you'd be ...

2024-08-05T22:18:37+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…8eu5
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Outboard memory would be the way to go. Not sure if you'd be able to guarantee the same exact timing/limits as the original VERA design. You'd certainly be able to have a lot more video/tile/sprite RAM to play with thought. It'd be a big change to the VERA design.

How much block ram is available? I think the only possibly issue ...

2024-08-05T22:12:35+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…kvdy
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How much block ram is available? I think the only possibly issue might be that the VERA design uses 128KBytes of on-board memory in the ICE40UP5K for sprite/tile/etc ram, and I forget if the ECP5's are as generous with BRAM.

That falls pretty squarely in "I'd worry that even if not ...

2024-08-05T04:29:24+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…jag6
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That falls pretty squarely in "I'd worry that even if not malicious, this could introduce who knows what subtle bugs into the boot/install process" for me. I haaaate debugging crap during installation, so ye olde iso dd'd to a usb stick it will remain for me!

Being suspicious of things that people are inexplicably ...

2024-08-05T04:16:21+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…7975
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Being suspicious of things that people are inexplicably aggressive about feels reasonable to me. I've heard of ventoy (or something similar) and it sounds possibly useful (though I'm pretty content with just dd'ing images to devices as needed), but people being weird about it makes me think maybe I'm fine as is.

Yeah, it always seemed a bit dodgy to me, but fixing it to have ...

2024-08-05T01:53:53+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…jjx4
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Yeah, it always seemed a bit dodgy to me, but fixing it to have an actual synchronous external bus interface feels like it'd be tricky (for me at least) without building up a full simulation environment, which is a fair bit of work. Someone with more extensive digital design experience and/or less rusty could probably get it sorted more expediently, I suspect.

My read on it is that VERA was designed to handle a 1MHz 6502 bus ...

2024-08-05T01:38:08+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…2yv3
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My read on it is that VERA was designed to handle a 1MHz 6502 bus interface by mostly leveraging the fact that it runs at 25MHz internally rather than doing more extensive CDC handling. I suspect as the external bus clock gets faster, things just generally get iffier.

I don't see contiguous RAM being necessary -- and it's ...

2024-08-02T05:57:37+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…yw2v
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I don't see contiguous RAM being necessary -- and it's pretty rare on actual 80s/90s machines, either because of ROM, peripherals, etc getting in the way on 64K address space machines or there naturally being gaps in larger address space machines.