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You know very well what kind of equipment and knowledge you would need if you want to do serious work with modern components. Just look how many people here own a car in the same price class as an oscilloscope in the 10 GHz range. 
It would be totally unreasonable, just for a hobby. No problem. I like the old stuff, not despite the limitations but because of them. It's a little like camping, even if I could easily afford to live in a palace.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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You're right the ?vintage? Z80 probably would take more code to do the same job, but the Z80 wouldn't need all that SEX to get the job done...so there!
And I agree about the article, would love to see what you've done!
Monday starts Diarrhea awareness week, runs until Friday!
JaxCoder.com
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The thing I always liked about "working in the small" as it were, was figuring out how much you could do with so few resources. I wrote a piece of PIC software once that output a 5.5 KHz beep for 100ms and turned on an LED for one second every hour. The accuracy of the timing only depends upon the precision of the crystal used with the chip. I was counting clock cycles to get the timing right. The code used 4 bytes of RAM, no stack, and was only a single printed page.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Don't forget to disable interrupts and, if you can, DMA. Otherwise your careful timing can fail very quickly. At least a PIC is a RISC processor. That makes the calculations a little easier.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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I guess his PIC did not have DMA.
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No interrupts needed for this application, and the chip didn't support DMA. I don't remember the exact PIC chip, but it seems like it had 1K of ROM and 256 bytes of RAM. This project was a one-off for a local predatory bird rescue, so we built it out of what was on hand.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Looks like I'm not going the serial port working today. The MAX 232 causes some serious noise on the power lines. At least I programmed a little memory test for the RAM. The processor ran it in under 4 minutes with a 5 MHz clock. On the breadboard. Now I can be sure that my wiring on the breadboard is ok so far.
A PIC will be next after getting the serial port to work. It will act as a bootloader after a reset This way I can replace the EEPROM by another RAM and need no more ROM in the memory map.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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So I was about to buy the 2nd edition of a book for which I have the first edition, but then the author tells me that epsilon rules in a CFG don't require special casing.
But he offers no example on how to generate an LR table using a grammar with epsilon transitions in it.
Meanwhile, I'm over here trying to generate the (S)LR table, and so I create the extended grammar.
so I take this:
S -> A
A -> B b
B -> B a
B ->
And then I mark it up with the itemSet ids, like so:
0/Sstart/-1 -> 0/S/1 1/#EOS/2
0/S/1 -> 0/A/3
0/A/3 -> 0/B/4 4/b/5
0/B/4 -> 0/B/4 4/a/6
0/B/4 ->
But the bold lines, I need a symbol there but i don't have it. Should be like
0/B/4 -> number/#EPSILON/number
but if i add the artificial #EPSILON tag it breaks everything.
And if I leave it out I don't end up generating my reductions for the corresponding state in the LR table.
Again, the book I have says epsilons don't need any special handling.
But here I am. I got the first edition of this book for free. The second one, new costs over $200? (i think thats the publishers ask - not necessarily the cheapest price), used costs $80-$120.
I guess the author doesn't want me to buy it.
Real programmers use butterflies
modified 16-Feb-20 6:06am.
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Most authors nowadays provide a Github repository of all their code. Strange that this author does not.
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This book was published in 1991 
Real programmers use butterflies
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Hi, i would like to re-read an old article about virtual life or world simulation. But I can't find that article. It has been deleted or classified under other tag(s).
When i say old, i am talking about vb6/vs6 era. I barely remember much details about, but i may describe it a bit.
The article topic was a social simulation. vb6 coded. It talked about how to simulate a virtual world with a lot of entities and how it worked under the hood.
The captures showed something similiar to this
smallworlds game[LINK DELETED]
I have searched using tags such vb6,vb,vs6,social simulator,emulator,virtual world,ai and other tags that I cannot remember.
I hope somebody read that article and may give other details, or help me to find it.
Thanks.
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Try a search for "game of life" here and you will fine several articles about Conway's Game of Life and a few about Cellular Automata.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Thanks for the suggestion. I am checking another tags such social computing, messaging, etc.
That simulation was more complex i think. The described "system" handled a lot of entities with messaging and syncronization.
It can be said it was a "cheap" sims game simulation. The article offered a capture showing an isometric world with inhabitants interacting.
I am searching how that it worked under the hood
Thanks again.
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Just sayin 
I'll get my coat.
Real programmers use butterflies
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When you tell people about it, call it a cup.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Obviously we (means CP) appreciate hard work even we do not understand a word of it...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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"mug's game:" if that's what you think, or, how you feel, why play the game ? what do you win, or lose ?
for me, the "great game" on CP is the pursuit of technical excellence, where "excellence" means improving myself through continual learning, not reaching some impossible (given my age, and priorities of other interests) degree of perfection. that CP provides a friendly context where that improvement can be fostered by my peers, and mentors: that's a blessing !
however, i must admit to occasionally wishing I could wake up and be Richard Deeming, or Marc Clifton, or OriginalGriff, or Pete O'Hanlon ... for a while !
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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BillWoodruff wrote: i must admit to occasionally wishing I could wake up and be Richard Deeming, or Marc Clifton, or OriginalGriff, or Pete O'Hanlon ... for a while
I wish somebody would wake up and be me for a while... I could use a break  .
Software Zen: delete this;
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 good idea: i often wish i could off-load certain parts of me onto some other person or ... goat.
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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It was just a bad joke, Bill. Mug's game cuz you win a mug if you win
Real programmers use butterflies
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Your puns are as inscrutable as your articles.
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I thought this one was obvious! 
Real programmers use butterflies
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Greg Utas wrote: Your puns are as inscrutable as your articles.
Witches do cast spells 
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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apologies !
you actually win a mug, as in a physical cup ? wow ! i am like now so motivated to take a mug shot
thanks for alerting me to the rich meanings of that word: [^]
i stand ashamed, exposed as a muggle, not a mage.
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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