Seth Morabito
loomcom.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2013
Seth Morabito writes about vintage computer emulation and hardware, including the AT&T 3B2, PDP-11, Open Genera, and home fiber internet.
What HN saysHN links it for his AT&T 3B2 and DMD 5620 terminal emulation work, his fiber-to-the-home account, and his Open Genera install guide.
24HN people shared it
10linked it in comments
15stories submitted
587story points
3 years agolast shared
2013people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Running Open Genera 2.0 on Linux4 people · 6 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 2It’s Comcastic, Or: I Accidentally Bought a House Without Cable3 people · 221 points · first shared 2015 · 134 comments on HN
- 3Understanding the Network Interface Card2 people · 62 points · first shared 2019 · 1 comments on HN
- 4Fiber Optic Bliss1 people · 135 points · first shared 2015 · 101 comments on HN
- 5Emulating the AT&T 3B2 Computer1 people · 94 points · first shared 2018 · 44 comments on HN
- 6What Makes a PDP-11/35 Tick?1 people · 32 points · first shared 2019 · 13 comments on HN
- 7Emulating the DMD 5620 Terminal (2018)1 people · 28 points · first shared 2024 · 7 comments on HN
- 8Recovery from Burnout1 people · 4 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 9A 6502 Home-Brew Computer1 people · 2 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 10Retrochallenge Summer 2013 (VT100 to USB keyboard conversion)1 people · 1 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 11Xerox Alto Emulator in the browser1 people · 1 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 12Jacques Vallee on Artificial Intelligence (2022)1 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 130097 the wats of javascript1 people · first shared 2020
- 143b21 people · first shared 2024
- 15Emulator1 people · first shared 2020
What HN people wrote when they linked it
kilburn · 2020-08-14
Most (non-strongly-typed?) languages have weird edge cases of this sort. There's a very funny presentation by Gary Bernhard highlighting some of these for Ruby/Javascript: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat
If you look hard enough, you'll probably find some site that shows surprising behaviors of your favorite language. Examples:
Python: https://github.com/cosmologicon/pywat
Javascript: https://loomcom.com/blog/0097_the_wats_of_javascript.html
Ruby: https://idiosyncratic-ruby.com/29-limitations-of-language.html
Reelin · 2020-03-28
In Washington state, this is only permitted in rural counties. The public utility district is allowed to lay fiber, but not to sell access to it directly to consumers. The law requires them to provide common access to the infrastructure at a rate that reflects their operational costs, but only to ISP companies. Someone wrote about their experience here (https://loomcom.com/blog/0098_fiber_optic_bliss.html).
Meanwhile, public utility districts in more populated counties (King, Snohomish, etc) are forbidden to offer network infrastructure at all. Tacoma has some weird public private partnership that seems somewhat dysfunctional and may predate these laws.
Note that I haven't checked in a few years, so the above could potentially be out of date.
msla · 2020-02-21
The Blit (begat of Jerq, productized as the DMD 5620) was an interesting system: The thing could be a normal text terminal, but the magic came when the host sent it software to run locally. In short, if the IBM block-mode terminals were the equivalent of filling out HTML forms, the Blit was closer to WASM.
https://loomcom.com/blog/0115_emulating_the_dmd5620.html
merlyn · 2020-01-25
The 3b2 didn't have a built-in screen. You'd typically use a serial terminal with them, of which there were a near infinite many to choose from in the era.
One combination that was popular would be to pair up a DMD-5620 bitblit serial terminal with the 3B2.
There's already an emulator for the DMD-5620, written by the same guy that has written an emulator for the WE2000/3b2 setup.
https://loomcom.com/3b2/dmd5620_emulator.html
ohdrat · 2017-09-28
https://loomcom.com/genera/genera-install.html
Was gonna try this but haven't yet.
After it's up, then what?
nickpsecurity · 2016-12-28
That they ended up emulating Genera instead of porting it should tell you something. Maybe. Also, look at the trouble people go through to do that:
http://fare.tunes.org/LispM.html
Then there's this that makes it look easy but also shows the keyboard problem LispM was probably referring to:
http://www.loomcom.com/genera/genera-install.html
What I find on getting them running without LISP hardware is somewhere between tough and "wow, I feel for that person." Maybe things have improved. There just seems to be a huge mismatch between many aspects of LISP machines and modern machines that means it's probably easier to do a clean-slate LISP machine that builds on modern primitives & interfaces better.
ikeboy · 2016-03-18
Reminds me of http://www.loomcom.com/blog/2015/02/22/its-comcastic-or-i-accidentally… (Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9269657)
wmf · 2015-08-08
The author started out with no broadband at all: http://www.loomcom.com/blog/2015/02/22/its-comcastic-or-i-accidentally… If you're going to have to pay to run some kind of Internet to your house, I guess you might as well get fiber. The bandwidth is probably a free bonus.
Aloha · 2024-02-13
https://loomcom.com/3b2/
Emulate it to your hearts content.