On 10/04/2008, Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy@yahoo.com> wrote:
>  I used to work with a device that had
>  256 bytes of RAM and 8K of code space.  When working on that device, I
>  learned how important it was to split common functionality into functions.

Pah! My ZX80 had *one K* of RAM. And three quarters of that was used
for the display!
(and you could still play Space Invaders on it).

Young people today! :-)

Janice Caron wrote:
> On 10/04/2008, Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>> I used to work with a device that had
>> 256 bytes of RAM and 8K of code space.  When working on that device, I
>> learned how important it was to split common functionality into functions.
> 
> 
> Pah! My ZX80 had *one K* of RAM. And three quarters of that was used
> for the display!
> (and you could still play Space Invaders on it).
> 
> Young people today! :-)

I've got you beat: ~127-256 bytes, code and data, end of story.

and that's a modern computer

http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/docs/picaxe_manual1.pdf
pg 38 under program memory for type M chips.

also see pg 40

Where the hell do you people live?
My old computer had 1gigabyte of ram.


>>  I used to work with a device that had
>>  256 bytes of RAM and 8K of code space.  When working on that device, I
>>  learned how important it was to split common functionality into
>> functions.
>
> Pah! My ZX80 had *one K* of RAM. And three quarters of that was used
> for the display!
> (and you could still play Space Invaders on it).
>
> Young people today! :-)

Oh dear, we live in the past.

By the time we go out of scope, you'll be at your top, all of a sudden encircled by a hord of those whose have not yet even come to scope. And you will find yourself telling war stories from the time computers had less than 8TB of RAM.

Saaa wrote:
> Where the hell do you people live?
> My old computer had 1gigabyte of ram.
> 
> 
> 
>>> I used to work with a device that had
>>> 256 bytes of RAM and 8K of code space.  When working on that device, I
>>> learned how important it was to split common functionality into 
>>>functions.
>>
>>Pah! My ZX80 had *one K* of RAM. And three quarters of that was used
>>for the display!
>>(and you could still play Space Invaders on it).
>>
>>Young people today! :-) 
> 
> 
> 

Saaa wrote:
> Where the hell do you people live?
> My old computer had 1gigabyte of ram.

I think it's more a question of "when the hell" these people lived.  :-)

My first computer was an Apple ][+ with a massive 48K!


>>>  I used to work with a device that had
>>>  256 bytes of RAM and 8K of code space.  When working on that device, I
>>>  learned how important it was to split common functionality into functions.
>> Pah! My ZX80 had *one K* of RAM. And three quarters of that was used
>> for the display!
>> (and you could still play Space Invaders on it).
>>
>> Young people today! :-) 


--bb

Saaa wrote:
> Where the hell do you people live?
> My old computer had 1gigabyte of ram.

At last count, I own 28 computers.

All of them have less than 1 gigabyte of ram.
Actually, even the total of all of them is
less than 1.5G.

I'd rather see a pissing contest then erm.. well.. a crapping contest.

On 11/04/2008, Saaa <empty@needmail.com> wrote:
> I'd rather see a pissing contest then erm.. well.. a crapping contest.

I really don't understand the relevance of that statement. It seems a bit rude to me. Is this some internet jargon with which I am unfamiliar? Maybe like trolling or flaming or something? I sense no ill will in this thread.

And there is a positive side to it. Though we were being nostalgic, in passing we were also pointing out how /much/ it's possible to do with only small amounts of memory. Modern compilers, for all their optimisation techniques, could still learn a lot from what the human brain was doing in the early eighties.

== Quote from Janice Caron (caron800@googlemail.com)'s article
> On 11/04/2008, Saaa <empty@needmail.com> wrote:
> > I'd rather see a pissing contest then erm.. well.. a crapping contest.
> I really don't understand the relevance of that statement. It seems a
> bit rude to me. Is this some internet jargon with which I am
> unfamiliar? Maybe like trolling or flaming or something? I sense no
> ill will in this thread.
> And there is a positive side to it. Though we were being nostalgic, in
> passing we were also pointing out how /much/ it's possible to do with
> only small amounts of memory. Modern compilers, for all their
> optimisation techniques, could still learn a lot from what the human
> brain was doing in the early eighties.

And cue the story of Mel: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html


Sean

"Bill Baxter" wrote
> Saaa wrote:
>> Where the hell do you people live?
>> My old computer had 1gigabyte of ram.
>
> I think it's more a question of "when the hell" these people lived.  :-)

I never really got into computer programming until college, and I graduated in '99 :)

So this 8K ROM, 256 bytes of RAM chip is really a modern embedded microprocessor.  It had a built in i2c bus, SPI bus, 2 hardware timers, and 22 GPIOs.  And with 3 of those parts, I had to monitor i2c based sensor devices, run a watchdog, create a dynamically addressed protocol for an external i2c bus, read and write from an external EEPROM, and run a 2x16 LCD front panel with a 4 button interface.  I actually ran out of code space at one point, and had to 'invent' a new way of doing 8-bit pointers in a 16-bit address space in order to reduce the code so it would fit.

It basically was a cheap part my company could use to create a very robust OOB management system, where peer units could detect and diagnose failures of other units.

And I built all the code using a PC running Windows NT 4 with 256 MB of RAM :)

But it was still a challenge, which I highly recommend to anyone who is used to writing code for modern-day computers with seemingly unlimited memory and resources.  It seems the trend today is to use up memory faster than it can be increased... Vista is an abomination.  Compact code is a thing of beauty :)

-Steve