#software-archaeology — Public Fediverse posts

The first round of test generation for #DesmetC is complete, yielding over 30,000 test cases for integer comparison, integer arithmetic, and constant folding. Numerous bugs dating to the late 1980s were found and corrected. This is now out for review as pull request 9.

#retrocomputing #softwarearchaeology

Latest #DesmetC "explorations with machete and torch": the compiler source has numbered constants for each supported C datatype. Normally you'd use enum for this sort of thing, but this codebase used #defines. The constants were numbered in a strange order, and I wanted to re-sort them in the order of the "usual arithmetic conversions", to simplify some logic. This broke code-gen, emitting illegal instructions. Several hours later, I found that CCHAR=1 and CINT=2 were directly used in hex math determining which x86 opcode to emit. When I renumbered those constants, it caused absurd instructions to be generated. After correcting that problem, we are now back to self-hosting o.k.
I'm hoping this will make it possible to retire a bunch of one-off type promotion logic scattered around the compiler, in favor of a few central functions closely mapping to the C89 standard.

#retrocomputing #SoftwareArchaeology

Dear #SoftwareArchaeologists, do you have #𒊕𒉺𒆸 mapped on your keyboard?

#SoftwareArchaeology #DampKeyboard

Ah, another brave soul attempts to shoehorn #xv6 into the almighty #SiFive HiFive Unmatched board. 🤡 Because #porting an archaic educational OS to a niche board is exactly what the world needed right now. 🙄 #GitHub, of course, stands by to witness this monumental achievement in software archaeology. 🥳
https://github.com/eyengin/xv6-riscv-unmatched #HiFiveUnmatched #softwarearchaeology #educationalOS #HackerNews #ngated

Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology

https://vejeta.com/reviving-classic-unix-games-a-20-year-journey-through-software-archaeology/

#HackerNews #RevivingUnixGames #SoftwareArchaeology #ClassicGames #RetroGaming #TechHistory

🚀 From 68k ROM to bootable OS in 72 hours
📄 Working paper: https://zenodo.org/records/17196870
💻 GitHub: github.com/Kelsidavis/System7
What legacy system would you want to see preserved or modernized with this approach?
#ReverseEngineering #AI #LegacySystems #SoftwareArchaeology #TechInnovation #ComputerHistory #OpenScience

I've been working diligently on a #retrocomputing project which just soft-launched. You may shake your head, "Not another retro blog!" but I promise, this one's a little different; in-depth, hands-on examinations of the productivity software of the 8/16-bit era. It's called "Stone Tools"
#computerhistory #officeofthefuture #softwarearchaeology #stonetools

https://mastodon.social/@stonetoolsblog/115142728372353618

We’re live! 🪨🛠️ Stone Tools has soft-launched, with the first proper post coming later this week. If you think retro-computing means more than just games, you’re in the right place. Hands-on, in-depth examinations of the productivity software from the retro "golden age" (1977-1995)
#RetroComputing #ComputerHistory #OfficeOfTheFuture #SoftwareArchaeology #StoneTools

https://stonetools.ghost.io/introducing/

#Gravit Designer vs. #Corel Vector (4#4)

Mit diesem gvdesign Parser (#gvPa) wollen wir ermitteln, wieviel Elemente, Ebenen, Bitmaps, Fonts etc. enthalten sind.

So könnten wir einschätzen was mit SVG geht. Welche anderern Fileformate Schriften, Layer & Effekte am besten unterstützt.

Zum Schluß wollen wir untersuchen, welche Lösungen für die Zukunft geeignet wäre um flüssig mit Bitmaps und Vektor zusammen zu arbeiten.

Lust? Meld dich!

\__
#ReverseEngineer #Marktforschung #SoftwareArchaeology

I'm really interested in code literacy and the aesthetic value of code so it was amazing to ask software archeologist Mark Moxon a few questions about the beauty of the source code to the classic space sim Elite! Thanks @markmoxon !

http://tychomagazine.com/article/mark-moxon-interview.html

#elite #elitedangerous #CodeLiteracy #TychoMagazine #SoftwareArchaeology #software

Oh joy, another riveting deep dive into the riveting world of "retrobootstrapping" #Rust, because apparently we all needed a time-traveling #coding headache 🤯. I'm sure the reasons are *totally* clear—assuming you're a software archaeologist with a penchant for masochism 😂.
https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/317484.html #retrobootstrapping #softwarearchaeology #techhumor #programmingchallenge #HackerNews #ngated

🌟 Behold! The software archaeology dig reveals: 🤓 A fossilized C compiler by the deity #dmr himself. Meanwhile, GitHub's AI overlords boast about their ability to do everything except resurrect dinosaurs. 🦖💻
https://github.com/mortdeus/legacy-cc #softwarearchaeology #Ccompiler #GitHub #AIoverlords #dinosaurresurrection #HackerNews #ngated

Have you ever paused to consider the lineage of a piece of sofware? How long has it been around and where does it derive from?

New blog post: Software lineage: Mach ports vs BSD

https://underlap.org/software-lineage-mach-ports-vs-bsd

#SoftwareArchaeology #SoftwareDesign

Wow, the #GreaseWeazle really is an incredible piece of equipment.

I've successfully made a raw flux dump of an original #VisiCalc for #Atari800 5¼-inch floppy disk and written the image to a fresh disk. My Atari 800 boots successfully into VisiCalc from the fresh disk in my #Atari1050 floppy disk drive.

I am seriously impressed. This is proper #SoftwareArchaeology.

No skill exhibited on my part; the Greaseweazle guide includes an example of how to specify the correct parameters for the gw command line program to successfully image an Atari disk. Raw flux allows us to image the disk, copy protection and all.

I'm inclined to put the image up on Archive.org, along with quality scans of the box and manuals.

I found some old PHP code of mine and I had some strong opinions about this language. I don't remember why I needed to change the encoding, but I'm sure the comment was justified.

#PHP #SoftwareArchaeology

Where do I see the file/format/disc header found in https://ia800200.us.archive.org/26/items/BMUG-TVRToo-Update/TVR%20Too%20Update.iso (https://archive.org/details/BMUG-TVRToo-Update)

It's not ISO9660 but I don't know the right keywords to search for much older CD formats.

#FileFormats #SoftwareHistory #SoftwareArchaeology #ReverseEngineering #RetroComputing

Previously this asked: Does anyone recognise a file header of 42 44 AA 25? But I don't think this is the actual file header.

There’s one thing that consistently showed up in my work as a software engineer over the decades. Spaghetti.

Spaghetti code is easier to write than maintain, and in doing software archaeology (yes, it’s a thing), I’ve encountered numerous reasons for it. Requirements creep is one of the largest reasons.

In fact, the first real software archaeology I did was explained, proudly, as being a product of someone walking in and telling the developer, “Wouldn’t it be nice if…”. Of course, nobody wrote anything down, and by the time I got to it the software was 25 years old and didn’t even have a brochure. People were still walking in and saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice if…”. Meanwhile, the company was required to follow standard software processes because it was required for contracts.

So I learned, from good teachers and a few bad ones, about Software Configuration Management, Software Quality Assurance, and Software Testing. There were reasons we did things a certain way. Our project configuration management contained everything needed to rewrite the software from scratch, including every single tool. I’d actually done a backup of a development pc after writing down the hardware specifications of the system and handed that in because quality assurance had to be able to take the same stuff and rebuild the same software so that it could be tested.

From scratch. And it had to pass the same tests. From scratch.

What I saw in other companies after that was never at that level, and on the surface it seemed ridiculous. However, any software engineer worth their weight in skittles has been screwed over by a platform changing underneath the code. Windows was infamous for it, though I did encounter it in an Apple shop as well. Your code hasn’t changed, but some update suddenly had you in the middle of bug city without even a flip flop. Microsoft has been notorious about that, with their version back in the day called DLL Hell. It’s just their (old) version of dependency hell.

I never had the problem with *nix systems, though when open source became popular and everyone started using that in their code, *nix systems started to get it too. People blamed the open source, but it was really 2 things that caused the problem.

(1) Bad Configuration Management (if it even existed!) and
(2) Taking the open source project for granted.

Open Source projects that are done voluntarily are completely outside the control of a company, but having an open dialog and even sending some money for pizzas and beer can avoid issues. Even with all of that, volunteers are fickle, so having in house expertise on projects becomes as important as how important the projects are to a company’s software. A company doesn’t really know this, though, when they don’t have software configuration management for their projects – so you end up with spaghetti projects, or as I call it, “Spaghetti Configuration Management”.

Toss in the developers that are copying and pasting from Stack Overflow, or now GPT, dash in employee turnover, where expertise is lost, and you get software entropy. Talking about software entropy causes the eyes of pointy haired bosses to roll to the back of their heads, so instead we talk about technical debt, because one thing businesses understand is debt.

Over the years, companies I worked for were at various stages of technical debt. It’s a real thing, and the startups that survived long enough to get to the point of technical debt were the worst because of the culture shift needed: Documenting things, tracking things, and making sure that the knowledge stayed within the company. I can say with good conscience that I left every company better off than when I left it, sometimes because of the company, sometimes despite the company.

So we get to the article, “Hidden Tech Debt: The Importance Of Better Updates For Commercial Software“, which I came across through the author on Mastodon. It tackles the one thing I didn’t write about here: commercial software dependencies and lack of accountability in that, which is a bigger problem than we might think.

https://knowprose.com/2024/04/20/spaghetti-source-spaghetti-dependencies/

#dependencyHell #SCM #softwareArchaeology #softwareEngineering #softwareEntropy #softwareRot #spaghettiCode #SQA #technicalDebt #Technology

@david_megginson

Gladly:

#HamRadio
#Retrocomputing
#Monsterdon
#WomenInSTEM
#SoftwareArchaeology
#BikeTooter
#BelieveInFilm
#BloomScrolling
#Florespondence
#VintageComputers
#LecturaMastodontica
#ActuallyAutistic
#NightPhotography
#Mosstodon
#AstroPhotography
#GNUTerryPratchett

another day in paradise

#SoftwareArchaeology

I'm converting an old WordPress blog to Jekyll, and in the process uncovering HTML and CSS markup from an even older (20+ years) blogging platform that @tekniklr and I wrote in the early days of blogging. Made me nostalgic! #softwarearchaeology

For the record, the earliest copy of the GhostScript (the free software #PostScript interpreter) that I can find is version 2.4, from 1992.

Version 1.0 was released in 1988.

However, I'm most interested in version 2.2, released in 1991, and was the first version to support the parts of the language I'm interested in.

I cannot for the life of me find anything earlier than version 2.4. It's driving me bonkers. Even finding 2.4 was a bit of an adventure.

#retrocomputing #SoftwareArchaeology

While I can sort of understand somebody trying to sell the original MS Cobol 3.0 for DOS as a rarity for a couple of hundred bucks (manuals included, discs presumably working), it gets completely ridiculous when they start asking for two-hundred euro to supply you with Windows 98.

#softwarearchaeology

Lotus 123 for Linux is Like a Digital Treasure Hunt - Ever hear of Lotus 123? It is an old spreadsheet program that dominated the early ... - https://hackaday.com/2022/05/23/lotus-123-for-linux-is-like-a-digital-treasure-hunt/ #softwarearchaeology #retrocomputing #softwarehacks #linuxhacks #lotus123 #linux #unix

Corman Common Lisp is back in town and its REPL seems fully functional under Linux when run via Wine.

I just lost a game of Othello to it.

#Lisp #CommonLisp #SoftwareArchaeology

Not only I've dug up and modernized a really old #Common #Lisp library for accessing the WordNet database, I've also added a #Qt frontend for it in #Qtools!

#CommonLisp #SoftwareArchaeology

I dug up a piece of Common Lisp code that's 23 years old. After a little bit of modernization, it works!

https://github.com/phoe/wordnet

#lisp #commonlisp #softwarearchaeology