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