Needs the lights and switches.
(Moved over here, off the Coronavirus main track.)
My first computer is a 3MHz 8085. Burn the code into EPROMs, and it could do it.
Besides lacking even a watchdog timer, another problem is that Raspbian isnât a good choice for that kind of real-time. For example, the classic dumb way to read the value of a game paddle is to discharge a capacitor through the paddleâs resistor and do a busy-wait counting loop. Try that with Raspbian and the values are all over the place, even on a multi-core Pi. Thereâs just too much other stuff going on in the background. (I offloaded the task to a MCP3008 ADC chip, but still.)
Sometimes gobs of processor power are no substitute for a simple real-time control program and good interrupts.
eta: BTW, Pathfinderâs Dataradio had a 6800, possibly a 6809, running compiled Forth.
You donât need to run Raspbian on a Pi. There is even at least one bare metal Forth. Iâve been tempted to try to move some of my old Forth projects onto my Pi (which has been unused for some time now), but Iâm afraid the SSDD 5.25" disks on which they reside will have degraded by now.
FAQ
Q: How does this work?
A: Regular regexes (i.e. no backreferences and similar advanced features) can be turned into a so called DFA (deterministic finite automaton). This is basically a bunch of arrows going between states, where an arrow is labeled with a letter so that a letter in a state causes the current state to go along the arrow to another state, with a subset of states being accepting. Yes, Iâm bad at explaining, youâre better off reading the wikipedia article on DFAs if you donât know what it is.
Because Iâm lazy, I used BurntSushi/regex-automata to get an DFA from a regex.
While Fat32 normally has a tree-like structure, each directory just references blocks anywhere on the file system, so the same block can be referenced from multiple directories. The directories also have no explicit field for parent directories, so one can leave .. out. This allows for graph structures inside a file system, which a DFA basically is.
Q: Should I use this in production anywhere?
A: No, but I canât stop you.
Q: Does this actually work?
A: Iâve tried it on Windows 10 and Linux so far. It seems to work flawlessly on Windows as far as Iâve tested.
On Linux, the fat32 code claims an directory is invalid if there are two dentries with the same directory name and the same parent in a loop (or something like that), so some paths are forbidden.
Might be fun to try on some embedded devices.
Q: NOOOOOOOOOOO!!! YOU CANâT TURN A DFA INTO A FAT32 FILE SYSTEM!!! YOU CANâT JUST HAVE A DIRECTORY WITH MULTIPLE PARENTS!!! YOU ARE BREAKING THE ASSUMPTION OF LACK OF LOOPERINOS NOOOOOOOOO
A: Haha OS-driven regex engine go brrrrr
Did you ever want to match a regex, but all you had was a fat32 driver? Ever wanted to serialize your regex DFAs into one of the most widely supported formats used by over 3 billion devices?
Worry no more, with
regex2fatthis has become easier than ever before!
rofl.
Cloudflare goes retro with COBOL delivery service. Older coders: Whoâs laughing now? Turns out weâre still vital
Source code for seminal adventure game Zork circa-1977 exhumed from MIT tapes, plonked on GitHub
Source code for seminal adventure game Zork, dating back to 1977 and recovered from MIT tapes, was published this week on GitHub.
While classic adventure games (aka interactive fiction) are well represented in the Internet Archive â thereâs plenty of playable Zork versions here â this latest trove is source code retrieved from the US universityâs Department of Distinctive Collections (DDC)'s Tapes of Tech Square (ToTS) collection.
If you access the repo and its README youâre told the source was written âin the MDL programming language written on a PDP-10 timeshare computer running the ITS operating system.â
rocking! thanks for sharing.
if youâre interested in this kind of stuff i also recommend reading knuthâs c-web port of adventure. Literate Programming - CWEB
itâs highly readable, and would actually be pretty handy in writing a one-off text adventure if youâre into that sort of thing. 
Interesting, thanks!
Need some weekend reading? How about the source code for UK, Australiaâs coronavirus contact-tracing apps
The NHSX, a technology group within the UK governmentâs National Health Service, has released the source code for its Android and iOS COVID-19 coronavirus contact-tracing apps in an effort to allay privacy concerns and improve the code.
Developers who have examined the blueprints have not been entirely mollified, and have called out several potential problems.
For example, the apps, which are supposed to be pro-privacy, use Google Analytics and the Firebase Analytics framework, configured in a way to allow personalized web advertisements. Also, they generate a private key thatâs not private because it gets created on a remote server rather than on the userâs device. And they link to insecure HTTP resources.
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A few minutes ago I walked through the living room just as Space Force did the scene with the monkey and âNo, that tool!â. (Trust me, when you see the scene setup, youâll realize that was not a spoiler in the least.)
After another thirty seconds of them passing commands to the monkey, to the point that everybody on both sides of the camera is ready to burst each othersâ arteries, I told my partner âYep, thatâs just what writing code feels like.â
Things I initially didnât get about COBOL:
- How it works
- Why anyone would want to use it
- How to code in it
After about a week into my COBOL course in college in 1999, something clicked. Itâs programming for non-programmers. Itâs like going sane in a crazy world. Itâs actually really easy compared to even something like VB6.
Granted, I only ever took one COBOL course, but it was easier than BASIC once you have that epiphany. Iâm not sure why it is hard to train up new COBOL programmersâŚ
Am I missing something? I donât think I am. I am not a great programmer, or even a good programmer. I am an OK programmer. I prefer the Microsoft stack (.Net, Powershell), except for VC++ which needs to DIAF.
Damn, youâve got me kinda COBOL-curious now⌠is there anything you can recommend with zero or fewer devops required?
80-characters-per-line limits should be terminal, says Linux kernel chief Linus Torvalds
Microsoft is sending your development code to the cloud, again.
Block at first sight only uses the cloud protection backend for executable files and non-portable executable files that are downloaded from the Internet, or that originate from the Internet zone. A hash value of the .exe file is checked via the cloud backend to determine if this is a previously undetected file.
Theyâre wrong about only checking downloaded or Internet Zone files. (Ask me how I know!)
If the cloud backend is unable to make a determination, Windows Defender Antivirus locks the file and uploads a copy to the cloud. The cloud performs additional analysis to reach a determination before it either allows the file to run or blocks it in all future encounters, depending on whether it determines the file to be malicious or safe.
Obviously my own software isnât going to be recognized, so itâll send the whole thing to the cloud. And send it again when I recompile. Itâll be big too, if Iâm including all the debug info in the executable.
I have switched off this âfeatureâ so many timesâŚ
eta: They turned on Remote Desktop again too. Fuuuuuuuck!
Apparently Apple is doing the same.
https://sigpipe.macromates.com/2020/macos-catalina-slow-by-design/
I hate modern computing sometimes.
whatâs especially great is if youâre using custom built software to say⌠run a cash register on windows ( unfortunately this is more common than youâd think )⌠windows defender will helpfully do things like quarantine your drivers, rendering your cash register inoperable in the middle of a busy, mask wearing, stress filled, pandemic day.
did i mention that theyâre talking about the national guard? theyâre not coming for our software. unfortunately.
( iâm just a cashier. not responsible for the software. somehow i feel this is necessary to point out 
)
