6502 nut; awk fan; avid reader if not for so much time online; once a chip designer; fan of one-line programs & ingenuity generally. Amateur interest in prime numbers and pi
#retrocomputing #computerhistory

Pronouns: he/him
Forum: https://retrocomputingforum.com/

Last Notes

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Or you could post to a retrocomputing forum!
<Just an idea>
@npub1emv…7mrd @npub13sj…x6nv

2026-08-31 11:24:58 UTC

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Pleased to note that I'm already familiar with "The first fifty million prime numbers" and second your enthusiasm for it!
@npub1nf4…nqe4
Had to check my notes, and I see I've put it in a small collection of related works:
some readings on prime gaps
The first 50 million prime numbers
Zagler, 1975, 13 pages
https://people.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/zagier/files/doi/10.1007/BF03039306/fulltext.pdf
Some computational results regarding the prime numbers below 2,000,000,000
Bohman, BIT, 1973, 3 pages
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01933496
The First Occurrence of Large Gaps Between Successive Primes
Brent 1973, 5 pages
https://maths-people.anu.edu.au/~brent/pd/rpb019.pdf
On Maximal Gaps between Successive Primes
Shanks, 1964, 7 pages
https://doi.org/10.2307/2002951
On First Appearance of Prime Differences
Lander, Mathematics of Computation, 1967, 7 pages
https://doi.org/10.2307/2003253
First occurrence prime gaps
2021, 29 pages
https://oeis.org/A000101/a000101.pdf
Some or all of the gaps occurring below 1e5 were almost certainly known prior to the indicated discovery, and the attribution of some of the other gaps below 1e8 is in doubt; for example, Appel and Rosser published significant (but incomplete) results for the gaps below 1e8 in 1961, the same year that Gruenberger and Armerding published definitive results to 104395289 from data generated by Baker and Gruenberger in 1959.

2026-08-13 10:57:10 UTC

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From the paper, delightfully:
> The chief purpose of this article is to show that the infrared divergences in the quantum theory of gravitation can be treated in the same manner as in quantum electrodynamics. ... My reasons for now attacking this question are: (i) Because I can... (2) Because something might go wrong, and that would be interesting. Unfortunately, nothing does go wrong.
@npub1nf4…nqe4

2025-12-01 17:47:38 UTC

How good is your #retrocomputing Basic's arithmetic? Is it better than a Cray? #BBCBasic version 4 aces the following test. PET #basic, not so much.
110 I=64
120 E=1
130 F=0
140 C=0
150 E=E/2
160 IF 15*E=((1+15*E)-1) GOTO 150
170 E=E+E
180 PRINT ;1-LOG(E)/LOG(2)" bit float accuracy detected"
190 FOR J=1 TO I-1
200 FOR Y=1+J/I-I*E TO 1+J/I+I*E STEP E
210 C=C+2
220 IF Y/SQR(Y*Y)>1 F=F+1
230 Z=Y+Y
240 IF Z/SQR(Z*Z)>1 F=F+1
250 NEXT
260 NEXT
270 PRINT ;"Done!"
280 PRINT ;F" fails ("INT(.5+F/C*100)"%) in "C" trials"
The test is derived from William Kahan's 1990 paper blasting the arithmetic on Crays - 1, 2, XMP and YMP. Five years later, Cray did adopt IEEE floating point - optionally.
https://cray-history.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/CrayUG-IEEE.pdf
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/115/645/548/808/205/737/original/733160b373cd517f.png

2025-04-26 17:28:33 UTC

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I left sdf.org because it was too slow and sometimes down. I went to mathstodon.xyz because it seemed appropriate but I admit I didn't really look very carefully. Hopefully it's well-run and backed-up.
https://mathstodon.xyz/about
The actual topicality of an instance isn't too important to me: I don't look at local timelines. It's more signalling my interests. I don't post often enough to be annoyingly off-topic - hopefully.
@npub1sy0…8vde [@charles_perkins](https://mastodon.sdf.org/@charles_perkins )