LDA 0x2A

-

I've just been watching a YouTube - yes, I know - about getting about as close as is possible to bare-metal programming as it's possible to get without descending to the depths of what is now ancient history in computing terms: namely the early-mid 1970s. This example was essentially demonstrating that it is possible to produce "useful" programs without the presence of a high-level operating system and programming languages, at BIOS [basic input output system] level, using assembly language to address the hardware directly. Obviously the degree of sophistication at which you can work at this low level of abstraction is pretty primitive by even the standards of twenty or thirty years ago, but useful stuff can nevertheless be achieved, even if the example in question was a version of an 8-bit arcade game of the 1980s.

Having had some personal experience of programming at such a low level myself [blog posts passim], back in 1979/80, a lot of what was demonstrated in this video was weirdly familiar to me, even at such a great distance in time, and I didn't feel too overwhelmed by the technicalities involved, although the speed at which the piece went was a bit frantic, to be fair. If I was sufficiently motivated to slow the whole process down and make copious notes-to-self about the thing, I could probably still make a decent fist of programming something at this [very low] level, even today. But I don't have a need of it, and needfulness has always been an important part of my educational journey. I learn what I need to know; all the rest is recreation...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of Feedback & Wobbles

-
Image
Many years ago I came up with an analogy for poorly damped feedback loops. The feedback loop that prompted this frankly tart analogy was indeed a horror. Anyone who remembers shame-faced their first attempts at clutch control resulting in the good old kangaroo launch across the lights only to stall in the middle of the crossroads will have some idea of the kind of data transfer lag involved in said system. The analogy I made was that of a large blancmange. Untouched, a model of stasis and eminently stable and predictable; but prod the bugger and the resultant chaotic behaviour needs a very complex physical model and some very decent computing horsepower to predict its outputs, if at all. The system in question was a large and complex audio-visual display at what eventually became 'The Electric Mountain' in Llanberis. We were ultimately contracted to maintain the thing having been witness to and peripherally involved in its installation. Certainly not involved in its des...
Read more

A Time of Connection

-
Image
I was just reflecting on the vacuum of continuity that's left behind when someone dies: that sudden sense of disjoint, of fracture, in one's personal history that takes one completely by surprise at the oddest moments. These pinch-points in memory can often yield some surprising revelations of fact about periods in one's past. One such occurred to me tonight, tending my rather lazy meal of pizza in its journey from shrink-wrap to mouth via the oven. Al's recent demise still catches me out from time to time: the space he left bounded by forty plus years of friendship. But the thing that struck me tonight was just how much change was happening on a personal and social level in the very early years of our acquaintance. Between moving here from Birmingham in September 1980 and our buying our first proper house eighteen months later, all manner of things occurred that would chart the course of our lives to the present day. At around the time of our meeting Alan & Irene [...
Read more

Messiah Complex

-
Image
A spectre is haunting... America; and it isn't communism. It isn't radical Islamism. It isn't even capitalism itself. It's Christianity. A particularly pernicious, politicised Christianity. 'In God We Trust', One Nation Under God', etc., etc., are the tropes of a 'nation' that is the result of the colonisation of a foreign continent by a motley bunch of assorted European disaffects several hundred years ago. That much is history, and the native peoples of America are still struggling to cling on to what is, after all, their birthright. Whatever good was squeezed from the sour pith of colony in the middle part of the last century: civil rights, racial emancipation and equal rights for women and LGBTQ+ people of all stripes, is not now simply being eroded, but actually bulldozed over the cliff edge that separates human rights & freedoms, and the return of enslavement by difference. Difference of skin colour, race, gender or sexuality: a pick 'n...
Read more