<gordonDrogon>
possibly very late to the recent conversation, but the first Unix I used was v6 on a PDP11/40 - however I'm trying to remember if it had 128KB or 256KB of core - we just said "128K" but I don't recall if it was words or bytes. it supported 5 or 6 users doing simple stuff OK though.
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<TwoNotes>
http://gunkies.org/wiki/PDP-11/40 says that max memory was 128 K *words*. The /40 and /45 did have an MMU so would have been popular for Unix though the /45 had a better MMU.
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<gordonDrogon>
TwoNotes, Ah ok. so 128K words, 256K bytes. I do recall that they upgraded it from core to semicondictor memory and I thought they also doubled the size at that time too, but I may have mis-heard. I'd left that department by then and they were running v7 on it.
<gordonDrogon>
the chap in-charge of it cancelled the DEC maintnenance on it for one quarter to pay for the upgrade - it didn't fail during that time and on-going maintenance on semiconductor ram was a fraction that on the core ...
<gordonDrogon>
intersting old times (c1980)
<TwoNotes>
The physical address space was 18 bits in the /4x series, so it could not go a lot higher.
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<gordonDrogon>
really wish I'd spnt more time with it, but I did like what I did. I have a PiDP/11 sitting in it's box waiting to be built. One day...
<cousteau>
PiDP/11 sounds like a thing from hell
<cousteau>
is it a PDP11 emulator based on raspberry pi?
<cousteau>
(is PDP-11 a thing? I only know PDP-8 and 10)
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<gordonDrogon>
yes - it's a lights/switches system designed to be driven off a Pi.
<gordonDrogon>
wonder if there's a RISC-V boar with a Pi compatible-ish GPIO connector ...
<xentrac>
the 11 was a lot more popular than the 8 or 10, cousteau
<cousteau>
oh
<cousteau>
didn't that have a weird architecture? Like 36-bit words, variable bits per byte...
<xentrac>
i could say 'because it had bytes' or 'because it had unix' but i don't think that's really why
<xentrac>
no, that's the 10
<xentrac>
i think the 8 was too small and thus less useful, and the 10 was too big and thus unaffordable at the time, while the 11 was at the sweet spot
<xentrac>
the goldilocks architecture
<gordonDrogon>
I'ev also heard people say the 8 was the "arudino" of the day... the 11 came after it as a general purpose 16-bit 'mini' ...
<xentrac>
yeah
<gordonDrogon>
I have a real pdp8/a fwiw - it came out of a CNC milling machine!
<xentrac>
i think that's right
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<TwoNotes>
By modern terms, the PDP-8 was "RISC"
<TwoNotes>
The PDP-9 was basically a PDP-8 with 18bit words
<TwoNotes>
The Apollo Guidance Computer was close to a PDP-8, with 16-bit words
<xentrac>
gordonDrogon: I finally figured out that you meant "it used to be part of a CNC milling machine" rather than "my PDP-8/A was manufactured by a CNC milling machine", which interpretation was puzzling me a lot
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<jrtc27>
KREYREN: are you here to troll or to be a productive member of the community?
<jrtc27>
your reputation precedes you, and your original nick is unwelcome here
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<cousteau>
jrtc27: they joined a few other channels btw
<cousteau>
my thoughts were similar to yours except for the reputation part which I'm not aware of
<farcas>
i could also possibly go with powerpc because i have an apple g5 in storage
<xentrac>
(wrt mips vs. risc-v, note that MIPSter used to be a MIPS simulator until they switched it to RISC-V)
<seds>
farcas: if i recall correctly, it is now, but not sure tbh
<xentrac>
(or rather RISC-U)
<xentrac>
farcas: sounds pretty great
<seds>
farcas: hmm, give riscv a try, really, specially for os, riscv is pretty neat/simple
<farcas>
seds, yes that's what i was thinking
<farcas>
by having the user binaries in riscv i would have future proof portability
<seds>
also its pretty novel if you look at it, so you can do some cool stuff with it, and due to its open license, there is a bunch of stuff for riscv on github
<farcas>
at the expense of running everything slower, that not an issue for me
<xentrac>
well, hopefully :)
<farcas>
i don't care about performance, it's more of an experimental OS
<farcas>
it tries to be practical but easy to program rather than performance-driven
<seds>
yeah, get ths OS up and running first, then figure out the performance stuff
<farcas>
i'm thinking of a lan-wide system image
<seds>
otherwise you will never more foward
<seds>
s/more/move/
<farcas>
seds, i already did a kernel in c, just memory management and basic task switching it's for x86
<xentrac>
farcas: sounds like a great project!
<farcas>
but it feels like a dead end
<farcas>
because it's just another unix-wannabe
<farcas>
i want to try something more experimental this time
<seds>
well, use what you have, port it to riscv, then innovate
<farcas>
like a lan-wide multiprocessing single system image using virtualised isas
<farcas>
with portable pointers
<xentrac>
farcas: there is definitely a huge space of unexplored OS architectures
<seds>
didn't riscv recently launched a hypervisor extension?
<seds>
xentrac: specially on riscv
<farcas>
seds, i don't know but i don't care much about hypervisors
<xentrac>
farcas: are you thinking of making it a SASOS?
<farcas>
xentrac, sort of a lan wide system sasos like a sort of sasos beowulf cluster
<gordonDrogon>
farcas, intersting idea - I'm currently working with a bytecode system that I hope to move to RV soon ...
<farcas>
and an os like MSDOS with plain binary system sharing
<seds>
xentrac: isn't zephyr an SASOS?
<farcas>
so for example instead of having inodes i plan to have just a pointer to a sDirectory struct
<xentrac>
seds: not familiar with it
<farcas>
gordonDrogon, cool
<farcas>
is there any recommended riscv development board that i could use for experimentation ?
<xentrac>
farcas: it'll be interesting to see how it works out
<farcas>
or should i stick with arm boards
<seds>
farcas: hifive is pretty cool
<seds>
and cheap!
<xentrac>
I think the HiFive boards are the default recommendation but I haven't tried them myself
<gordonDrogon>
the board is the issue I have to a degree - they're eithe small with only a few KB of RAM, or Linux-capable with GB ... I just want 512KB for now ...
<seds>
there was a beaglebone afaik coming into the market
<gordonDrogon>
I found the ESP-C3 board which looks promising.
<seds>
but not sure what is the current state of beaglev dev
<seds>
but that's for sure >=100 bucks, comparing to the hifive
<farcas>
how much is hifive?
<seds>
but you seem to confused regarding the arch you want to use, so i wouldn't spend any money on a board unless i am sure i will use it
<seds>
about 40 bucks i believe?
<farcas>
seds i don't care about the actual board
<jrtc27>
the fastest riscv implementation you can use is qemu running on your desktop or laptop
<farcas>
because i'm going to run emulated code anyways
<farcas>
i just need a fancy board to feel like i'm a "real" osdever :)
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<seds>
i prefer to write os in a qemu environment, and later in the end of the week try the board out. i feel that uploading, testing wastes too much time
<seds>
but hey, that's me
<farcas>
that's ok with me too
<farcas>
i'm still unsure about riscv memory model
<farcas>
what caching policy does it use?
<farcas>
i need something capable of running over lan
<gordonDrogon>
farcas, heh... my VM currently runs on a 16Mhz 65816 16-bit cpu with an 8-bit memory bus, so just about any risc-v will do for me ;-)
<xentrac>
jrtc27: do you mean the fastest implementation to get started with, or the highest-performance implementation?
<xentrac>
farcas: that's not defined in the ISA
<seds>
xentrac: is that implementation defined?
<farcas>
gordonDrogon, heh, my first try at operating system development was like in the 90s on a sinclair spectrum z80 compatible with 48k ram and 16k rom
<xentrac>
hopefully
<xentrac>
farcas: nice, how far did you get?
<farcas>
xentrac, mouse pointer :)
<seds>
hah
<farcas>
controlled using the keyboard because i did not have a joystick
<seds>
farcas: just realises you can simulate a mouse with a keyboard, ofc
<seds>
never thought about that
<jrtc27>
xentrac: both are true
<jrtc27>
I think even vs the unmatched
<farcas>
does anyone know about mill cpu anymore?
<jrtc27>
I imagine it continues to be vapourware that certain people tout as the solution to everything
<farcas>
probably
<farcas>
also it sounds like a complex vliw thing -like
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<xentrac>
seds: xfree86 used to have a mouse emulation mode using the keypad
<farcas>
Bridging the Gap in the RISC-V Memory Models
<sorear>
the "mouse emulation mode" still exists
<sorear>
it used to be compatible between X11 and windows 95, but alt-shift-numlock doesn't seem to do anything on my current system. I do have it in DE accessibility menu
<xentrac>
ah good, I think it didn't activate the last time I tried to use it
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<solrize>
heh, seeed increased price of longan nano board from $5 to $7
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<hendursaga>
electronics scarcity?
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<solrize>
nah it was too good a value before
<solrize>
i notice that those little stm8 boards went from about $0.50 to several dollars depending