Geek

Whatever happened to Anthony Rose?

Back in the eighties, when the Cape Computer Club were homebuilding or just playing around with computers based on the 6502, 6800, 6809, 68000, z-80 and the like, Anthony Rose was one of the Names. Like me, he had an Apple II, unlike me, he made that thing sit up and dance. Using Forth, most of the time.

He also wrote a test suite for the Apple which I still have on disk somewhere — thinking about it, this might be one of the last copies in existence so at some stage I should look at backing it up.

Anyway, I was sorting through my collection of MSDOS floppies, and came across a disk labelled “ARTFORTH.68K”. Yes, I remember getting that from my friend Barney, never did anything with it.

Problem is, the disk has errors. Not that I can complain, it’s a disk I used with my Apple before reformatting it to MSDOS, it’s only certified single-sided, and it’s still mostly readable after being in storage since about 1990.

So this was an opportunity to revisit the dreaded FAT12. I used ANADISK to copy the readable bits of the floppy to hard drive (yes, I still have a DOS box with 5 1/2″ and 3 1/4″ floppies. It even runs Windows 3.1) and the HxD hex editor to analyze things. This web site was extremely useful to help me find my way around FAT12.

The first file on the disk, “ARTFORTH.68K” survived intact. It’s 149 FORTH screens of  64 characters x 32 lines of FORTH code written by Anthony in 1986 for what looks to be some kind of 68008-based platform.

The second file, “FORTH.COM” was not so lucky. Or maybe it was, the directory is corrupted so I don’t know whether I have the whole file or not. It’s definitely 68000 code, disassembly yields constructs like:

201E                     MOVE.L   (A6)+,D0
221E                     MOVE.L   (A6)+,D1
241E                     MOVE.L   (A6)+,D2
2D01                     MOVE.L   D1,-(A6)
2D00                     MOVE.L   D0,-(A6)
2D02                     MOVE.L   D2,-(A6)
4E75                     RTS
201E                     MOVE.L   (A6)+,D0
221E                     MOVE.L   (A6)+,D1
241E                     MOVE.L   (A6)+,D2
2D00                     MOVE.L   D0,-(A6)
2D02                     MOVE.L   D2,-(A6)
2D01                     MOVE.L   D1,-(A6)
4E75                     RTS

Which is clearly an implementation of ROT and -ROT. There’s also a copyright string “ART-Forth 1.0  (c) 1987 A.R.T.” at $2DD9 so we know what we’re dealing with.

Of course, before trying to scrape these files off the floppy, I searched the web, because if someone else has it online my work is done. But no. Anthony Rose the Forth guru seems to have disappeared (he might have surfaced as one of the many Anthony Roses on the ‘net, but none of them own up to a love of Forth). About the only relevant thing I could find is his 1986 paper Design of a fast 68000-based subroutine threaded Forth with inline code & an optimiser which mentions the HP9816 (which used a 68000 and not a 68008 — the mystery continues).

2013-09-09 by Computers Geek 0

I can not believe they are still trying this.

Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 14:09:59 +0200
Subject: IMPORTANT INFO ABOUT YOUR RELATIVE
From: “info” <info@formic.it>

IMPORTANT INFO ABOUT YOUR RELATIVE

My name is Michael Reyfields; I work with the Reyfields Investigations, a Consulting Firm in London, UK. We are conducting a standard process investigation involving a client who shares the same name with you and also the circumstances surrounding investments made by this client at HSBC Bank.
The HSBC Private Banking client died intestate and nominated no next of kin to inherit the title over the investments made with HSBC Bank. The essence of this communication with you is to request that you provide us information on three issues:
1-Are you aware of any relative/relation having the same surname, whose last known contact address was Madrid, Spain?
2-Are you aware of any investment of considerable value made by such a person at the HSBC Bank?
3-Can you establish beyond reasonable doubt your eligibility to assume status of next of kin to the deceased?
It is pertinent that you inform us ASAP whether or not you are familiar with this personality that we may put an end to this communication with you and our inquiries surrounding this personality.
You must appreciate that we are constrained from providing you with more detailed information at this point. PLEASE RESPOND BACK TO MY PRIVATE AND DIRECT EMAIL ADDRESS; michaelreyfieldspvtss1@yahoo.ie
as soon as possible to afford us the opportunity to close this investigation.
Thank you for accommodating our enquiry.
Yours sincerely,
Michael Reyfields
Reyfields Investigations
Dude. Even if your time is completely worthless, the cost of electricity to run this crap through your PC is worth more than this.
2013-05-02 by Geek 0

The things… are also people.

And that was just the fanwalk…

Yes, Gaga’s in town.

The set is amazing. The whole front of the castle opens up, there are passages and stairs everywhere, one set of stairs decends on a motorised track… and they had this up in Johannesburg on Friday, tore it down, transported it to Cape Town, and set it up ready for Monday evening.  OK, they’ve been touring the world so they should have it figured out by now but… wow.

Pink Floyd, anyone?

Here’s the castle opened up.

Some fans were very excited to be on stage.

Yea, she’s crazy. But good crazy.

And kudos to the City for managing the stadium and the fanwalk and the traffic perfectly.

2012-12-04 by Geek 0

I thought he was taller

No, it’s not JayG… it’s Neal Stephenson, an intellectual giant if not a physical one.

He was here, in Cape Town, and the publicity was… nonexistent. I heard of it on talk radio, and only because I nipped out to buy some ally over lunch hour or something. The discussion was lead by some fellow with a consonant for a surname who was trying to make himself appear clever, and who now and then allowed Neal a word edgewise.

But it was worth it, I got to meet the man and get a signed copy of Reamde.

2012-09-25 by Geek 1

Truvelo

This is Ralf Gebert of Truvelo. I worked for him, briefly, back in… 1988 or thereabouts — holiday work when I was studying. That’s before they started building these toys.

The top rifle is a 50 BMG (although  everyone at this show calls it 12,7 x 99 mm) and the bottom two are babies — 308 Winchester and 338 Lapua.

I’d like me some of these but (1) expensive (2) what do I use it for stupid question (2) expensive.

But nice.

The biggest rifle on display, in 20 x 110 mm Hispano. Longer than the Solothurn (20 x 105 mm), shorter than the Lahti (20 x 138 mm) (for UC fans).

This would take some serious explaining to CFR to get a licence. I don’t like saying impossible, but in this case the word is probably appropriate.

2012-09-21 by Geek Guns 0

GPS notes

When we were touring America, I bought a GPS in Las Vegas. A Garmin Nuvi 1300, the cheapest one I could find at the local Fry’s.

Back home I loaded the Southern Africa map onto it, and it’s been working fine since.

Now, I’m planning two trips, firstly up to Pretoria for AAD and then up to Etosha for fun. I’ve identified places of interest using Google Earth, they’re all stored in a .kmz file.

1. Save As .kml (which is just the uncompressed kmz)

2. Download GPSBabel, convert “Google Earth (Keyhole) Markup Language” to “GPX XML”.

3. Download EasyGPS, load the .gpx file, plug the Garmin in via USB, select the waypoints, transfer them to the GPS.

Easy and free.

(AppData\LocalLow\Google\GoogleEarth)

2012-09-12 by Geek 0

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