Rick's b.log - entry 2025/01/09

Winter sales

A jar is a jar?

Is it for teabags? Jam? What?

Well, this jar comes with a special attachment. Let's look at that.

The jar has a grater.

I like putting grated cheese on to things. I don't much like making grated cheese, it's such a faff. And since this is France, grated cheese is usually emmental rather than cheddar. There is grated "cheddar", but let's just say that it is orange. I'll say no more else you'll be in danger of learning exciting new ways to use the F-word, yes, it's really that bad.

So now, with this airtight jar, I can grate up some cheddar (proper actual cheddar) and keep it in an airtight container in the fridge until it is needed. Nice.

A parcel?

Cat calendar

Here's January.

Argh! Giant cat guard spotted, run! Flee!

And here is February.

Cats and fragile things, what could possibly go wrong.

The last three pages are completely blank. I'm not missing anything, I think they needed a certain number of pages to make the calendar, and this was what was left over. There's no information on the publisher or barcode or anything, which is a bit of a shame as I thought it was amusing and might be inclined to see if they've done anything else with cats in odd places.

The big wet

A lot.

I took this picture from the driveway behind the house, by the new drain. If it looks a bit weird, it is because it is a long exposure and was actually taken by ambient light (the moon behind light clouds).

All that's missing is a rubber ducky.

Here it is looking towards the house. The water came up to the drain, but didn't go any further. And, of course, the drain took everything away from the house.

Water backing up.

I'm not particularly worried. The pond is a sort of overflow, and the height difference between the pond and here is not a lot, maybe 12cm or so. So long as water flows out at the same speed it comes in, things will be okay.

So yesterday it was 12°C and chucking it. Tomorrow? Snow warning. Oh, and over the weekend it is supposed to be three days of -3°C...and be 12°C again by Wednesday.
I give up trying to figure out what the weather is up to.

My FileStore Emulator

That's because it doesn't work. Something the website says, something the installer says, something the ReadMe blurb says. The program is very unfinished, and was made simply to give an idea of what I was working on at the time.

It is, I'm afraid, an abandoned project. At the time, when I was still working with my FileStore beside me and machines that used Econet, I had the bright idea of writing an emulator. The plan was to try to work out what the firmware was doing, and then to look at the feasibility of two things.

The first thing was about the harddisc interface, which was a very rudimentary SCSI (actually SASI) interface using logic gates. This allowed two sorts of specially prepared Rodime harddiscs (a 40MB one or a 60MB one) to be attached. There was some dipsy-doodle in the firmware that rejected other harddiscs.
So... Would it be possible to modify the firmware to allow other (non-weird Rodime) drives to be attached?

Part of the FileStore E01S schematic.

The second thing was that formatting the harddisc, and various other diagnostic tasks, was a massive pain in the arse. Literally, you need to run some software on a computer that is logged into the FileStore in maintenance mode. This software will get the FileStore to do stuff by...
...are you ready?

You'd better be sitting down for this.

It would poke some code directly into the FileStore's RAM and then tell the FileStore to branch into the code. It would then peek a memory location to see what the result was. Which meant formatting a harddisc would require doing this over and over for the low level format, then a bunch more stuff for laying out the logical structure.

Now what you need to know about the FileStore is that the ROM has a huge amount of blank space in it. This is because the ROM is partitioned into three parts. The low part is the file server code (basically Level 3 with some additions), and right up at the top is a mini-MOS (vaguely derived from the BBC MOS). And all the blank space? Well, that's because the first thing the server does, for speed, is to copy the entire ROM into RAM. So the blank space is a load of memory locations used for stuff like the disc buffer, user management, file buffers, and the like. None of this has any relevance in the ROM, it's just there because the entire 64K is copied over to RAM.

Now, it is possible to boot the server into a lower level maintenance mode by starting it up with the door open. So what memory locations in RAM are not used when we're doing this (and, therefore, not yet running the server normally). Could it be feasible to embed diagnostics and maybe a formatter into the ROM which can be made available, perhaps via an additional command, until such time as the server proper is started (the door is closed)?

Those were the sorts of things I was thinking about back then. However, the time in question is when I switched to working nights and, honestly, I had little in the way of energy or concentration. I'm surprised that I got as far as I did, especially given that it was being written in VisualBasic, which is like the dumbest thing to do. ☺

Alas... it's fifteen years later (eek!). I don't program in VB any more. I rarely use Windows, and I don't imagine modern Windows would cope with VB software. I don't use Econet any more. Nostalgia would like me to, but there isn't any Econet podule to plug into a RaspberryPi ... well, the StarDot guys have probably made one, but I'm not aware of it. Speaking of StarDot, they have reconstituted the FileStore firmware. Sources for the application part are around, and I think the MOS part has been based upon a disassembly. As far as I recall from the last time I looked, it's an earlier version than the last available ROM, but a diff on disassembly should highlight what has changed.

That being said, I've moved on. I mess around with other stuff these days. But just know that there are people, such as BeebMaster still working on keeping the old hardware alive - take a wander around BeebMaster's site...and don't forget to appreciate the teapots.

That reminds me - I ought to make some pages for/about my collection of teapots which thanks to mom went from me being sad about a broken pot to many. Though, sorry, usually I just toss a Tetley bag into my mug. I can, and do, do tea, like in a pot, but that's more a special occasion sort of thing. I don't do tea when I'm just having a tea (which is "as often as necessary until 6pm") because I don't see the point of brewing in a pot when it works just as well in a mug. It's a teabag, not loose tea.
But before you crucify me, do remember that I live in France. The tea selection here is typically mediocre at best and they have some bloody weird ideas like black tea steeps at 60°C. This is a country of coffee drinkers, and it shows.
And for the Frenchies, trust me when I say that my Tetley does not even remotely resemble that stuff marked "Tetley" that you can buy in the supermarket. The only similarity is the name. And don't ever suggest "Lipton Yellow Label". I'd rather drink a cold Starbucks than accept that that stuff is tea. Seriously, half an hour I left the bag in my cup when I was out with mom. Half an hour and I could still see the logo printed on the inside bottom of the cup. By contrast, any Brit tea worth drinking will be too dark to see the bottom, never mind any logo, in under thirty seconds.

The douchiest of them all

I could say something about Farage sucking up to Musk, but given that Musk is the world's biggest troll there's a certain epicaricacy in seeing him get burned; I think it's in Musk's pathology to screw people around and I can't help but think that when he gets bored Trump will be on the receiving end, which will be interesting watching the world's richest man being a dick to the world's most powerful man - who will win? Maybe, given all of this, it's time for the UK to give up on this "special relationship" nonsense, it's all disturbingly one-sided and will never EVER be in Britain's favour.

You know, with Elmo meddling in other country's politics and having a way to shape and influence discussion in those countries, and Trump thinking that the US now needs Greenland and/or Panama "for economic security" and may decide to try to take them, it seems to me that the big ol' USofA is in danger of becoming a rogue state...

Note - the US helped Panama become independent from Colombia in 1903-something. Prior to that, Panama was colonised by the Spanish (as was a lot of South America).
As for Greenland, it's been a far flung bit of Denmark's realm since 986 (sort of, it's complicated, look at the history between Denmark and Norway). At any rate, Greenland being Danish/Norwegian/Both predates the founding of the United States by more than six centuries which is a pretty badass boast. It predates Christopher Columbus. It is roughly contemporary with the political unification of England under Æthelstan (possibly the third King of England). And, guess what, the Danes even held bits of Britain back then too (that's where Danelaw comes from).
So, yeah, if any country has a claim on Greenland, it's Denmark. A tiny country that I'd imagine loads of people couldn't even find on a map, but one which definitely shaped northern European history.

I would say I'd get popcorn on the stove to watch the show, but sadly it's a show where a small number of obscenely rich people will profit while the rest of the world suffers. Gee, 2025 looks like being a shitshow and we're not even into double-digit days yet, oh joy!

Calm down, Rick, look, here's some lovely linguine...

Comfort food.

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Zerosquare, 10th January 2025, 05:15

If there is any interest, it looks like an Econet-to-USB adapter could be doable with an Arduino board and just a few extra components. It could double as a clock generator as well.

jgh in Japan, 10th January 2025, 09:49

You have grated cheese that survives long enough to be refrigerated??? ;)    I'd somehow completely forgotten your Filestore stuff, I'll add a link to it, surrounded by dire doom warnings.

jgh in Japan, 10th January 2025, 09:51

Back in 1993 I made a start at writing a RISC OS Desktop environment in VisualBasic. It worked quite well. Unfortunately, a crappy drive et the floppy and I lost most of the code. :(

C Ferris, 10th January 2025, 10:49

Are the Floppies still around - there are ways of reading poorly old Floppies :-)

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