http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/CCS/ssem/ssemhome.htm
We're coming up to the 50th anniversary of the first program run on the
world's very first stored program computer, the Manchester Mark I. I've
visited this page a bit, and its quite fascinating. They are running a
competitiion for the best program written on this machine by the end of the
month - emulators available. With just 6 instruction types, and just 32
words of memory (each instruction takes 16 bits of the 32 bits), no add, no
bit shift, and rudimentary branching, you will be sorely pressed for space.
But that's just what classic computing is all about. The winner gets to run
their program on the reconstructed MkI that will be debuting in a few
months. I toyed around with a packer that would let the unused bits of
memory hold additional instructions, but found it damn difficult to do in 32
bytes and still end up with more than I started with!!!! The biggest killer
for me was no add, no and or xor, and no bit shift!
I recommend a visit.
Cheers
A
Received on Wed Mar 18 1998 - 15:15:51 GMT