133 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
133 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
|
am
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Credits Charged: 5
|
|||
|
|
Current Credits: 72584
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Software Goes Hardware
|
|||
|
|
Author: -unknown
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Micro was a real-time operator and
|
|||
|
|
a dedicated multi-user. His broadband
|
|||
|
|
protocol made it easy for him to
|
|||
|
|
interface with numerous input/output
|
|||
|
|
devices, even if it did mean time-
|
|||
|
|
sharing. His links with authors and
|
|||
|
|
editors connected him with many of
|
|||
|
|
Silicon Valley's expert systems and
|
|||
|
|
artificial intelligentsia.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
One evening, just as the Sun was
|
|||
|
|
crashing, he arrived home and parked
|
|||
|
|
his Motorola 68000 in the main drive
|
|||
|
|
(he had missed the S-100 bus that
|
|||
|
|
morning) and noticed an elegant piece
|
|||
|
|
of liveware admiring the daisy wheels
|
|||
|
|
in his garden. "She looks user-friend-
|
|||
|
|
ly. I'll see if she'd like an update
|
|||
|
|
tonight," he thought to himself.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
He browsed over to her casually, ad-
|
|||
|
|
miring the power of her twin 32-bit
|
|||
|
|
floating-point processors. Even her
|
|||
|
|
parms were parsed! He hadn't seen
|
|||
|
|
structured lines like this since his
|
|||
|
|
PROM. "How are you, Honeywell?" he
|
|||
|
|
asked.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"Yes, I am well," she responded,
|
|||
|
|
batting her optical fibers engagingly
|
|||
|
|
and smoothing her console over her
|
|||
|
|
curvilinear functions.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Mini was her name, and she was
|
|||
|
|
delightfully engineered with eyes like
|
|||
|
|
COBOL and a Prime mainframe architec-
|
|||
|
|
ture that set Micro's peripherals net-
|
|||
|
|
working all over. Fears of becoming a
|
|||
|
|
Unix were soon fading like vaporware.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Micro settled for the straight-line
|
|||
|
|
approximation. "I'm standalone tonight
|
|||
|
|
and looking for an assembly," he said.
|
|||
|
|
"How about computing a vector to my
|
|||
|
|
base address. I'll output a byte to
|
|||
|
|
eat, and we could offset later on."
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Mini ran her priority process for
|
|||
|
|
2.6 milliseconds, then transmitted:
|
|||
|
|
"8K, I've been dumped myself recently
|
|||
|
|
and a new page is just what I need to
|
|||
|
|
refresh my disks. I'll park my machine
|
|||
|
|
cycle in your background and meet you
|
|||
|
|
inside." She walked off, leaving Micro
|
|||
|
|
admiring her solenoids. "Wow! What a
|
|||
|
|
global variable! I wonder if she'll
|
|||
|
|
like my firmware?" Micro thought.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
That night they sat down at the
|
|||
|
|
process table for a form feed of fiche
|
|||
|
|
and chips and a bucket of Baudot. Mini
|
|||
|
|
was in a conversational mode and ex-
|
|||
|
|
panded an ambiguous argument while
|
|||
|
|
Micro gave occasional acknowlegements,
|
|||
|
|
although in reality he was analyzing
|
|||
|
|
the shortest and least critical path
|
|||
|
|
to her entry point. He finally settled
|
|||
|
|
on the old "would you like to see my
|
|||
|
|
benchmark" subroutine. But Mini was
|
|||
|
|
one step ahead. She was suddenly up
|
|||
|
|
and stripping off her parity bits to
|
|||
|
|
reveal the full functionality of her
|
|||
|
|
operating system software!
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"Let's get BASIC, you RAM, and go
|
|||
|
|
for some downtime on the spreadsheets"
|
|||
|
|
she panted. Micro was loaded by this
|
|||
|
|
stage, he was afraid his software
|
|||
|
|
wouldn't respond. Fortunately, his
|
|||
|
|
hardware-policing module had a pro-
|
|||
|
|
cessor of its own, but it was soon in
|
|||
|
|
danger of overflowing its output
|
|||
|
|
buffer -- a hangup that Micro had
|
|||
|
|
recently consulted his systems analyst
|
|||
|
|
about. "Core!" was all he could say.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Micro soon recovered, however, and
|
|||
|
|
Mini went down on the DEC and opened
|
|||
|
|
her device files to reveal her Data
|
|||
|
|
Set Ready. His floppy was soon coming
|
|||
|
|
up to speed. He accessed his fully
|
|||
|
|
packed root device and was just about
|
|||
|
|
to start pushing into her stack when
|
|||
|
|
she executed an escape sequence by
|
|||
|
|
popping back to level 1.
|
|||
|
|
"Oh no!" she piped. "You're not
|
|||
|
|
shielded!"
|
|||
|
|
"Reset, baby," he replied, "I've
|
|||
|
|
been debugged!"
|
|||
|
|
"I haven't got my current loop
|
|||
|
|
enabled, and I'm not ready to support
|
|||
|
|
child processes," she protested. "That
|
|||
|
|
would make me mother-bored!"
|
|||
|
|
"Don't run away," he said. "I'll
|
|||
|
|
generate an interrupt."
|
|||
|
|
"No way! That's too error-prone,
|
|||
|
|
and I can't abort because of my design
|
|||
|
|
philosophy."
|
|||
|
|
Micro was locked-in by this stage,
|
|||
|
|
though, and could not be turned off.
|
|||
|
|
She soon stopped his trashing by in-
|
|||
|
|
troducing a voltage spike into his
|
|||
|
|
main supply, whereupon he fell over
|
|||
|
|
with a head crash and went to sleep.
|
|||
|
|
"Computers," she thought, as she
|
|||
|
|
compiled herself at the asynch. "All
|
|||
|
|
they ever think about is hex."
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Text-Files 2:
|