Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> manually incriment/decriment it, which will be absurdly tedious. But it 
> 
> Welcome to writing a FORTH interpreter on the 6502!

What ever happened to FIRST?

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>> Are you going to re-create the model in Dwarf Fortress? :P
> 
> Did you see the post about making DF turing complete? Apparently you can 
> connect waterfalls or dwarfs or something to do NAND gates and build an 
> entire computer out of it.

And people tell *us* we're stupid for building a Turing-complete ray 
tracer???

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http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Am 13.06.2010 20:00, schrieb Orchid XP v8:

> I have a sinking feeling that if I went to the [extreme] expensive of
> getting an FPGA rig, I'd probably then find that I'm too stupid to make
> it do anything anyway! :-/

Nonsense.

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BTW, I guess it's possible to build an extremely-reduced-instruction-set 
computer with just a single instruction: "Move", reading a data word 
from one memory address and then storing it in another. All you'd have 
to do would be to map math-op logic to a few dedicated memory locations; 
e.g. reading from address 0003 might return the sum of the values stored 
in 0000, 0001, address 0004 might return their difference, address 0005 
might return the logical AND of memory locations 0000 and 0001, etc. 
Even the PC might be stored in one particular address, so writing to 
that would constitute an unconditional jump. A conditional branch could 
be modeled by reading a status bit, expanding it to all bits of a word 
(i.e. 0000 or FFFF), computing the logical AND of that mask and one 
target address, as well as the logical AND of the mask's inverse and the 
other target address, computing the sum or logical OR of both results, 
and ultimately writing that value to the PC. (Alternatively a particular 
bit in a particular memory address could specify whether the next 
command is to be skipped or not.)

The Apollo guidance computer actually used such an approach for various 
mathematical operations.

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clipka wrote:
> BTW, I guess it's possible to build an extremely-reduced-instruction-set 
> computer with just a single instruction: "Move", reading a data word 
> from one memory address and then storing it in another. All you'd have 
> to do would be to map math-op logic to a few dedicated memory locations; 
> e.g. reading from address 0003 might return the sum of the values stored 
> in 0000, 0001, address 0004 might return their difference, address 0005 
> might return the logical AND of memory locations 0000 and 0001, etc. 
> Even the PC might be stored in one particular address, so writing to 
> that would constitute an unconditional jump. A conditional branch could 
> be modeled by reading a status bit, expanding it to all bits of a word 
> (i.e. 0000 or FFFF), computing the logical AND of that mask and one 
> target address, as well as the logical AND of the mask's inverse and the 
> other target address, computing the sum or logical OR of both results, 
> and ultimately writing that value to the PC. (Alternatively a particular 
> bit in a particular memory address could specify whether the next 
> command is to be skipped or not.)
> 
> The Apollo guidance computer actually used such an approach for various 
> mathematical operations.

That's hardcore RISC, man! :-D

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> I have a sinking feeling that if I went to the [extreme] expensive of
>> getting an FPGA rig, I'd probably then find that I'm too stupid to make
>> it do anything anyway! :-/
> 
> Nonsense.

Well, the expensive bit is true enough. I just re-checked the Xilinx 
website and I can't find any starter kits for less than about $200. 
You'd have to buy *a lot* of 7400 chips to approach that price tag.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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> That's hardcore RISC, man! :-D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_instruction_set_computer

You're not kidding.  There isn't any need for an opcode field.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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Stephen wrote:
> On 12/06/2010 9:47 PM, Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>> Not all cats are elitist fuzz-and-claws. Some fuss when they are more
>> than an arms length away from someone. Mine yowls when he has to use his
>> litter in the middle of the night, since it means leaving the room.
>> Howls on the way out and back, just to wake me up and let me know that I
>> am missed. Could do without that, actually.
> 

> criticise politeness. :-)
> 
> Have you tried talking back to him?
> 
> 

Of course. He only responds if I mimic his last type of meow, though. If
a person did that I would think I was getting language lessons.
Anthropomorphizing just leads to new scars, though, as he may not be
elitist but he is still all fuzz-and-claws.

While teaching a cat to fetch, it is very fundamental that they
understand the concept that fetching is "getting the ball while it is
not in your owners hand." When that part isn't taught properly, ouch.

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Are you going to re-create the model in Dwarf Fortress? :P
>>
>> Did you see the post about making DF turing complete? Apparently you
>> can connect waterfalls or dwarfs or something to do NAND gates and
>> build an entire computer out of it.
> 
> And people tell *us* we're stupid for building a Turing-complete ray
> tracer???
> 

I don't know that it was intentional. Allowing water to control
floodgates seems simple enough, the small step of allowing it to control
other paths of water just jumps it from simple simulation into "wtf are
these people doing?" territory.

If I can survive the next siege, my megaproject is a multi-level full
sky cistern. Controlled obsidian rainfall. Very dwarven, I think.

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> I don't know. Maybe it's just because it's Saturday morning and *yet
>>> again* I'm sitting all alone in my bedroom feeling bored and lonely,
>>> with nowhere to go and nobody to talk to. Perhaps I just need to go
>>> listen to some more Neil Sekada or something...
>>>
>>
>> Don't listen to bored and lonely music when you are bored and lonely.
> 
> Apparently I'm listening to a different Neil Sedaka than everybody
> else... The one I have is like liquified sunshine in a bottle.
> 

Quite possibly I am misremembering. I have heard his named attached to
some music years back, but I don't remember the tune. Or I am thinking
of a different artist with a similar name.

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