About VCF 2.0 and system design

From: D. Peschel <dpeschel_at_u.washington.edu>
Date: Fri Oct 30 21:24:31 1998

I keep meaning to post a "reaction to the VCF" message. Since I have to do a
lot of compilers homework at the moment, now is the perfect time. :)

I enjoyed the VCF and will come next time. (I may bring my Kaypro to show to
people, or perhaps just software -- there were other Kaypro demos there.
I will probably bring my HP-97 if I still have it. I will definitely bring
my electromechanical Marchant desk calculator if it's working then.)

I do have to say that it was a little disappointing, because I didn't see some
of the machines I wanted to see (or if I did see them, e.g., at the Computer
Museum, they weren't running). Those would be old machines that are cool by
modern standards, instead of being cool by old standards -- Amiga, Perq, Acorn,
Symbolics, Be, NeXT, maybe AT&T 3B, Blit, Sony with NeWS, PDP-10, PDP-11 with
GT40, PDP-12, LINC, PDP-1.

The speeches were fantastic and I should have gone to more of them.

The flea market was useful but not as cool as I had hoped. Also some people
were selling worthless stuff or were obviously non-hobbyists who were drafted
to sell things. (I don't object to non-hobbyists with knowledge and interest
nearly as much as I object to non-hobbyists who have no clues or scruples.)

It concerns me greatly that I didn't meet many people my own age (24) and that
many people there were in fact much older than I am.

Now, as for the "system design" part of the title... I have this ongoing ideal
(crusade, project, romantic vision) of designing a fantastic new computer, or
at least a *sensible* new computer. We now have computing power to spare for
frills as well as function; many design ideas have been tried before and their
consequences are known to some degree; disasters have been proved to be dis-
asters (often more than once!).

It surprises me that I haven't seen much interest in this. BTW, the VCF is
quite relevant to this topic because the concept of "look at all these
computers at once and compare them" is extremely useful.

I can think of two problems, though:

        - We had a thread about designing your own CPU. We've also had
          discussions about the lack of schematics and technical info.
          So it seems that hardware is less accessible to the individual
          amateur, and it's very difficult for the amateur to break through
          to the next generation.

          I don't know if it's true, but it seems that way.

        - Also, information is disappearing. There's relatively copious
          documentation about old hardware, but not much about old software
          (or old software itself). Didn't someone try to put together an
          archive of software info? I haven't heard much about it.

          Although hardware is important and my ideal computer is going to
          have super-kick-butt hardware, the hardware designers seem to be
          working things out on their own -- it's the software market that
          needs a poke or two.

Let me know what you think.

-- Derek
Received on Fri Oct 30 1998 - 21:24:31 GMT