It seems I am easily distracted. One thing leads to another. Inquiries spur new thoughts. Anomalies suggest investigation. Surprises remind of well-worn adages, e.g., newer isn’t always better, particularly regarding software. But, I keep on keeping on.
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I seem to be adding projects to my todo list faster then I’m finishing them. I can blame two of the recent additions on Anthony Bonkoski‘s writings:
The former made me start (re-)learning x86 assembly language enough to understand the compiler’s 512 bytes. The latter bemoans the lack of mathematics content in current computer science curricula and spurred me to think back to my own formal studies.
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“Things Have Changed” – Bob Dylan (1999)
“Everything, still remains the same”
“(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay” – Otis Redding (1967)
tl;dr embarking on quantifying meaningful indicators of small computer system performance over the last three decades
In graduate school and subsequent professional work, analyzing performance of computer systems was often my primary effort, including much of the software I wrote, and my first three books. Years ago I pontificated about Meaningful Indicators of System Performance, surveying the (mostly) synthetic benchmarks in vogue in 1990. I was also active in the formation of the Business Applications Performance Corporation. (more…)
“The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin’ on like a bird that flew”
(1975) “Tangled Up In Blue” – Bob Dylan
tl;dr with 86Box, obsolete hardware not needed
[update December 2021: files for 86Box install at https://technologists.com/DellUnix2.2.1/]
[update February 2024: [koko] knowing and accepting limitations]
With prodding and help from Antoni Sawicki, and bits of help from others, I’ve been trying to get Dell Unix to be sustainable on modern hardware. I’d succeeded in building our SVR4 from the last sources on turn of the century and older hardware. VMware and VirtualBox options seemed plausible, but so far we haven’t gotten those to have minimally useful networking, only had slow SLIP.
Though it has been around for years, and used by Antoni before, I was unaware of 86Box until late last year when Antoni posted about it, particularly: Dell Unix on 86Box “Today let me present Dell Unix more properly, with 1024×768, 256 colors video and proper networking using emulated VGA and NIC.” That post illustrates Mosaic, FrameMaker et al.
That left the question “What about using Dell SVR4 on 86Box to build SVR4 from the sources?”
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“The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin’ on like a bird that flew”
(1975) “Tangled Up In Blue” – Bob Dylan
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tl;dr Updated 2015 MacBook Pro to Big Sur, regretted, restored Catalina from Time Machine, will probably get M1 MacBook (Air or Pro?) soon
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