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Reply 80 of 164, by xcomcmdr

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Thanks for the good laugh.

Why even use MFC in 2020... Unless you want to torture yourself.

Edit : although Rust seems to finally give us the benefits of managed memory with the benefits of native compilation.
Very interesting language.

Reply 81 of 164, by DracoNihil

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dr_st wrote on 2020-07-31, 11:47:

If you don't understand the need for managed programming environments, and think everything should be C/C++, then you are hopelessly stuck in the past.

I guess I'll remain hopelessly stuck in the past then, have had nothing but constant trouble with anything C# and .NET related.

A tool I need to use (because I can't find one that does the same exact thing but written in C or C++) refuses to work unless I go and use a Windows XP (or above) machine for it because .NET Framework and the tool having been written in C#.

“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων

Reply 82 of 164, by auron

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shamino wrote on 2020-07-30, 00:01:
Several years after that, "PCI Express" is introduced, and they *still* didn't take the opportunity to reorient the cards. So it […]
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Several years after that, "PCI Express" is introduced, and they *still* didn't take the opportunity to reorient the cards.
So it's been what.. 27 years now? and the cards still haven't flipped back over. I guess it will never happen.

If my case is open, or I have a window.. I want to actually see the cards, not their back ends.
Like I said, petty. But it's been bothering me since my first PCI card that I thought was defective until I figured out it was actually supposed to go in that way.

inverted PC cases have been a thing for a while.

Reply 84 of 164, by Big Pink

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shamino wrote on 2020-07-28, 12:49:

I think it was healthier when anybody could post a website describing their own view, and people would see it and read it. Of course the quality varied, but readers had the opportunity to judge that for themselves instead of letting somebody else judge it for them. No particular website or organization had "the final word", nor should they in my opinion. I have a deep mistrust of centralized authority.

I think the greatest deficiency of the web became apparent when it moved out of the educational sphere where hosting a site was trivial (someone else is paying for the servers and the electricity to leave them on 24/7). For the longest time many ISPs provided free webspace which minimised the issue amongst the general public until the socials captured the desire to speak unto nation. My own ISP scrapped it in 2016 and said go use Squarespace if you want to say something that won't fit in Twitter's character limit. So it shouldn't be any surprise that over time the web has turned into cable television with AOL stapled to the side.

shamino wrote on 2020-07-28, 12:49:

Coming up - independent discussion forums fall into obscurity, replaced with Facebook.

My theory of the evolution of online advertising:
Once there were hunter-gatherers chasing down disparate forums across the web. Then farming was invented.

I thought IBM was born with the world

Reply 85 of 164, by dr_st

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DracoNihil wrote on 2020-07-31, 15:43:

I guess I'll remain hopelessly stuck in the past then, have had nothing but constant trouble with anything C# and .NET related.

A tool I need to use (because I can't find one that does the same exact thing but written in C or C++) refuses to work unless I go and use a Windows XP (or above) machine for it because .NET Framework and the tool having been written in C#.

So, to paraphrase it, you have a tool that you need for work, and it won't work unless you install an operating system that is less than two decades old. Yep, stuck in the past pretty much nails it.

https://cloakedthargoid.wordpress.com/ - Random content on hardware, software, games and toys

Reply 86 of 164, by xcomcmdr

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You could see the IL with ILspy (some even seem to translate it back into C#, like dotPeek), and then rewrite it / port it to .NET Core or try to compile it to native code with CoreRT, or maybe even IL2CPP.

There are a lot of options to get rid of the .NET Framework dependency nowadays.

Edit :

dnewhous wrote on 2020-07-31, 16:07:

All this OO mumbo jumbo has left a lot of just plain C code. I've worked with it.

Excuse me sir, have you tried our Lord and Savior functionnal programming ? 😜

Reply 87 of 164, by dnewhous

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xcomcmdr wrote on 2020-07-31, 17:39:
dnewhous wrote on 2020-07-31, 16:07:

All this OO mumbo jumbo has left a lot of just plain C code. I've worked with it.

Excuse me sir, have you tried our Lord and Savior functionnal programming ? 😜

Oh, like Lisp? No.

Daniel L Newhouse

Reply 88 of 164, by DracoNihil

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dr_st wrote on 2020-07-31, 17:00:

less than two decades old.

I did say "or above", as in XP is the minimum OS the terrain editor will run on. I basically have to shuffle my work between my father's PC and my system, his PC runs Windows 10, mine runs Linux 5.7.11.

“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων

Reply 89 of 164, by xcomcmdr

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Can you share this tool ? Is it open-source ?

.NET core runs under Linux and the 90% of the Framework API was ported to it, so ditching the Windows dependency is a real possibility.

Reply 90 of 164, by imi

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shamino wrote on 2020-07-30, 00:01:
I'm going to get really petty here. Why do all our expansion cards have to be upside down? […]
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I'm going to get really petty here.
Why do all our expansion cards have to be upside down?

With ISA they were upside right - back when most cases were horizontal and it didn't matter.

When PCI was introduced, they flipped the cards over so they could have 1 "shared" slot position, where 2 slots line up with the same case opening. Okay, fine.
By this time, tower cases were taking over.

A few years later AGP is introduced for graphics cards, but they kept them upside down.
This heralded the era of high powered cards that needed to dissipate a lot of heat. Would have worked better if they were facing up. Doing so would also point large coolers into an open area that would be pretty easy to officially reserve for their usage.

Several years after that, "PCI Express" is introduced, and they *still* didn't take the opportunity to reorient the cards.
So it's been what.. 27 years now? and the cards still haven't flipped back over. I guess it will never happen.

If my case is open, or I have a window.. I want to actually see the cards, not their back ends.
Like I said, petty. But it's been bothering me since my first PCI card that I thought was defective until I figured out it was actually supposed to go in that way.

they could have indeed switched back on PCIe and even had shared PCI/PCIe slots... but in the time of 2... or even 3 slot high cards, that would make for some awkward motherboard layouting and make them pretty complicated on small ITX boards... so I guess they just stuck with it.

my fav layout nowadays is top I/O with vertical airflow.

Reply 91 of 164, by DracoNihil

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xcomcmdr wrote on 2020-07-31, 19:10:

Can you share this tool ? Is it open-source ?

.NET core runs under Linux and the 90% of the Framework API was ported to it, so ditching the Windows dependency is a real possibility.

The website for it long since died, you'll have to search for "Nem's Terrain Builder" yourself unfortunately.

It's written in really old .NET Framework and I never gotten it to run properly in Wine, and even my girlfriend couldn't run it despite keeping on the "bleeding edge" of Wine versions.

Maybe things have changed? I haven't tested it on my new PC yet because I'm still in the process of making sure everything is configured and stable enough before I actually start re-installing (mostly recompiling too) all my programs.

“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων

Reply 92 of 164, by xcomcmdr

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Got it.

Seems to use C++/CLI along with .NET 1.1. Damn, that's the oldest possible version indeed.
No LINQ, no generics. Only the "good", old, rusty Micorosft Java C# 1.0.

Another pain point is the MS's managed extensions to C++ which is C++/CLI. It was ported to .NET Core, but it's still Windows-only.

Also the license completely forbids modification and reversing.
Bummer.

Reply 93 of 164, by dnewhous

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Another grip is the loss of Analog Devices onboard audio ICs. They were good, cheap, and didn't do multichannel audio. Well, maybe not everyone's cup of tea.

Now that I think about it, I think MIDI intelligent mode should have waited until the modern era when the sound modules are connected by USB. That way all of the old devices are clearly UART and not plug and play.

Daniel L Newhouse

Reply 94 of 164, by darry

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dnewhous wrote on 2020-07-31, 20:25:

Another grip is the loss of Analog Devices onboard audio ICs. They were good, cheap, and didn't do multichannel audio. Well, maybe not everyone's cup of tea.

Now that I think about it, I think MIDI intelligent mode should have waited until the modern era when the sound modules are connected by USB. That way all of the old devices are clearly UART and not plug and play.

Analog Devices chips such as the AD1988AB certainly were multi-channel capable .
https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-doc … 1988A_1988B.pdf

MPU-401 intelligent mode was a meant to reduce CPU usage on the fairly slow machines of the time, AFAICR . As machines got faster, it stopped being used because it stopped being useful, AFAIK . The fact that "dumb" UART-only MPU-401 devices (like the SB16) started appearing on the market probably played a part as well .

Reply 95 of 164, by Woolie Wool

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dnewhous wrote on 2020-07-28, 16:57:

With cassette tapes, what would probably make them sell is switching to high bias, which is the type of blank tape that sold. But that would be a knock against the poor. I think I may have seen that last few pre-recorded cassettes for sale or something, if the Dolby license has expired, they don't make anything but blank cassettes.

Those aren't made anymore and the original production processes violate modern environmental regulations. Good luck reinventing high-bias cassettes from scratch just for the nostalgia market.

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Reply 96 of 164, by gdjacobs

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dnewhous wrote on 2020-07-31, 17:51:

Oh, like Lisp? No.

LISP isn't a prime example of functional programming as it allows the use of a wide variety of paradigms. I believe Scheme (a LISP subset) is, though.

ML (and family), Haskell, Ruby, F#, and Erlang are all modern languages that require the use of functional programming.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 97 of 164, by DracoNihil

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xcomcmdr wrote on 2020-07-31, 20:12:

Seems to use C++/CLI along with .NET 1.1. Damn, that's the oldest possible version indeed.
No LINQ, no generics. Only the "good", old, rusty Micorosft Java C# 1.0.

Another pain point is the MS's managed extensions to C++ which is C++/CLI. It was ported to .NET Core, but it's still Windows-only.

Yeah, hence why I have to shuffle between two different PC's. I might try to install a Windows XP VM using QEMU someday so I can stop having to do that, though you say .NET 1.1 is the "oldest possible version", does that mean it could be used on Windows 98 instead of XP?

I don't know the whole history of .NET, I figured you need atleast a NT kernel to even use it at all.

“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων

Reply 98 of 164, by xcomcmdr

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Nah, .NET 1.1 and 2.0 had ANSI (that means Windows 98SE and later compatible) runtimes variants available.

It's not distributed by Microsoft anymore, but DOTNETFX20 can still be found.

You could run it on Windows 9X I guess. Maybe inside PCem or DOSBox-X or QEMU ?

Meh, I'm still surprised that Wine doesn't work with it. Maybe Mono ?

Reply 99 of 164, by DracoNihil

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xcomcmdr wrote on 2020-08-01, 08:44:

Nah, .NET 1.1 and 2.0 had ANSI (that means Windows 98SE and later compatible) runtimes variants available.

It's not distributed by Microsoft anymore, but DOTNETFX20 can still be found.

I'll keep this in mind, I rather not make a full Windows XP VM and make a Windows 98 one instead, since that way I can have one VM that does Win 9x and pure MS-DOS and essentially kill two birds with one stone.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2020-08-01, 08:44:

Meh, I'm still surprised that Wine doesn't work with it. Maybe Mono?

Tried wine-mono and it wouldn't have anything to do with it, but I haven't tried it again in years. When I get everything settled on the new PC I'll try it but I'm not optimistic.

“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων