LIST.com written by (IIRC) Vernon Berg.
Fell in love with it and have a BAT file on XP box
called L.bat since I use it regularly.
Alt-h is the On/Off toggle that You found.
Sometimes I look at html code to see and learn about how to write html.
I'm not up to speed with minix, but is that a currently active OS? Meaning, is it getting constant patches?
Not really. Minix 3.3.0 is the most recent version, and they have a
snapshot of 3.4.0 but it hasn't been updated in 5 years.
Peeking inside all kinds of files is such a great way to learn how things work! I'm surprised by how many people who are longtime computer users don't realize you can open files up in different applications, and that plain text editors or hex viewers exist.
LIST.com written by (IIRC) Vernon Berg.
Fell in love with it and have a BAT file on XP box
called L.bat since I use it regularly.
The batch file is a nice idea, I think besides 'cd' and 'dir' probably 'list' is typed more than anything else. Big efficiency win by cutting
it from 4 down to 1 keypress. :)
Alt-h is the On/Off toggle that You found.
It's such an obvious hotkey too, I am surprised I didn't find it even without reading the help screen! I am pretty good at being oblivious to things.
Sometimes I look at html code to see and learn about how to write htm
Peeking inside all kinds of files is such a great way to learn how
things work! I'm surprised by how many people who are longtime computer users don't realize you can open files up in different applications, and that plain text editors or hex viewers exist. (ok the last part doesn't surprise me quite as much, but the genuine lack of knowledge that it's POSSIBLE does surprise me sometimes.)
Do you have a favourite text editor? I usually use QEdit, but to be honest I lost the muscle memory for all the hotkeys so it's not really easier for me than any other text editor these days. I got spoiled by
the GUIs over the years.
I remember discovering disk/sector editors, and that I could change strings in executables. MSDOS became JRDOS (my initials are JR). Many
DOS commands in my command.com did not "work" because I had changed the "name" of the command. PC Tools and Norton Utilities were a lot of fun
for me in the mid to late 80s.
Not as much fun for my computer teacher, though...
I remember discovering disk/sector editors, and that I
could change strings in executables. MSDOS became JRDOS
(my initials are JR). Many DOS commands in my
command.com did not "work" because I had changed the
"name" of the command. PC Tools and Norton Utilities
were a lot of fun for me in the mid to late 80s.
Not as much fun for my computer teacher, though...
Not really. Minix 3.3.0 is the most recent version, and they have a
snapshot of 3.4.0 but it hasn't been updated in 5 years.
Minix was created by a professor (Andrew Stuart Tanenbaum) as an educational tool for his classes/students. It was not intended to be an OS used daily by anyone who would want or need "constant patches". ;)
Probably meant more for someone who would get their hands in the code and fix it themself.
I'm not really talking about constant patches, I'm talking about the 3.4.0 branch hasn't been touched in 5 years.
Norton Utilities was such an incredible product. The quality and usefulness of those utilities!! Good enough that they could bank on the name "Norton" selling software for years, no matter how terrible they eventually made it after the sale to Symantec.
Between Norton Utilities and his book The Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC, how would we have survived using PCs in the 1980s without Peter Norton?! Huge impact when it came to "making things work".
I've been working on porting OpenBSD ed(1) to DOS. The DJGPP port was a breeze, but the 16-bit port has been a fun challenge and i am not
finished yet. :-)
Minix was created by a professor (Andrew Stuart Tanenbaum) as an educational tool for his classes/students. It was not intended to be an
OS used daily by anyone who would want or need "constant patches". ;)
Probably meant more for someone who would get their hands in the code
and fix it themself.
Ben Collver wrote to AKAcastor <=-
When i developed code on DOS in the mid 90's, I used Q.EXE now known as the Semware editor, i think.
Qedit was my goto editor throughout the DOS days up until Windows 2000.
W2K had an OS/2 subsystem and could run OS/2 console apps. Qedit for
OS/2 dealt with long file names (if memory serves) and ran better than
the DOS version in Windows.
The Semware editor released a free version a while ago, I'm using it
now. It's a nice progression from Qedit.
After tolerating vi all these years, I'm trying to use it more. I have
a blog on my tilde that I'm writing with vim, trying to recover muscle
memory long gone from writing code under xenix. I'll still find myself
hitting "ctrl-K X" to exit instead of ":wq". :)
Before Logging on again, I turned the XP box on to see
the L.bat file that I
put in a sub-directory actually is: list/w .
At a cmd prompt I typed set and the sub-directory is located in the path= statement.
I looked, but I can't find where or when or how XP put
my location for l.bat in
the path. PC=1. Ed=0. again.
At a cmd prompt I use EDIT.EXE , occasionally.
I use WordPad for most of what I write.
Often I go to a Admin cmd prompt and make.txt files of
all files on the HDD.
AT C:\ I type dir /s/-p >> 'place to put the text file' .
And a second time I add /b ahead of the /s/-p portion of the command.
Ages ago I read an article saying .rtf files can contain problem code, but since I am writing text I don't think any .rtf file I ever shared with others would harm their system.
40 years ago when I bought the Commodore C=64 , 1541 and VIC Modem 300 EV> I also purchased a pack of two 5 1/4" floppy disks for $2.00 USD.
I read in the 1541 manual the Command new was used to format a disk.
I tried over and over typing new the disk name Comma two letters.
Never could make the floppy drive format one of the disks.
The 1541 drive had a Utilities Disk and I saw a PRG (Program) with the EV> title of "Test Disk", so I ran it, was asked to insert a blank disk in EV> the slot and press Return.
When the test finished I learned the blank disk had been formatted.
Much later in reading, I learned the Command on PAGE 1 of the book called 'open' was suppose to be typed first, then some numbers and then I could EV> type 'new' on the command line and my 1541 would format a disk for me.
No one needs to make up stories about Me, telling it as
You saw me do it is bad enuf.
Late one night I accidentally touched the mouse button as I had Windows Explorer open and saw a sub-directory disappear.
It was bed time so I shut the PC off.
The next morning at a cmd prompt I typed dir *. /s
to look for the missing folder.
I found that I had dragged the sub-directory down to the next one shown in Windows Explorer, so I moved it back where it originally had been.
THEN I told on myself in the FIDO Windows echo.
The next day a reply message mentioned all I needed to do after the sub-directory disappeared was to press CTRL z (which I knew was Undo).
DUH
I've been working on porting OpenBSD ed(1) to DOS. The DJGPP port was a breeze, but the 16-bit port has been a fun challenge and i am not finished yet. :-)
When i developed code on DOS in the mid 90's, I used Q.EXE now known as the Semware editor, i think.
These days i tend to use calvin in DOS. It's a lean vi clone that may be too minimal for most folks. XVI is another nice one and i think it has a nice balance between features and minimalism. IIRC, xvi is descended
from stevie. Someone told me elvis 1.8 on simtelnet is decent, and it is real-mode.
I recently tried svared and i think they did a fine job
making that editor.
The only problem was that they scheduled our class in
the same room and time as the CS2 class. So, guess where
the teacher spent her time? She would give us projects
to work on, but we were seniors and not all that
motivated to complete them.
Anyway, for one of her "projects," she handed us Peter
Norton's book and told us to read it. That one I
completed and thoroughly enjoyed.
Probably meant more for someone who would get their hands in the code and fix it themself.
Tell that to Intel. :-D
qedit works on 16 bit dos?0
Never could make the floppy drive format one of the disks.
When the test finished I learned the blank disk had been formatted.
This spirit of experimentation is familiar to me, I can't count how many times over the years I didn't know what I was doing and just TRIED THINGS and stumbled onto a solution for a problem.
Yes, they did make a QEdit for DOS. Back when I got my first PC in
1992, it was running DOS, and I used QEdit.
My first experience was using a Commodore PET in my
school's library to play "educational games". The games
were loaded from a casette (or dataset in Commodore
speak). But I wanted to learn how to create those games...
I know it took several days for me to figure out that
the SAVE command (and record button) was needed *once I
was ready to save*. I was typing SAVE, pressing the
record button, and then type type type... expecting my
program to be written to the tape as I typed it! :D :D :D
My project was to write a game called "Battle Checkers"
inspired by two other games: Scorched Earth and Battle Chess.
These systems were running DOS 3 and had Hercules Graphics.
I was using Borland Turbo Basic, which did not have built-in
support for Hercules. My teacher gave me a book with the PC
memory map and i disassembled programs to figure out how to
drive it. Then i wrote graphics routines in ASM that i
called from BASIC. I also wrote a keyboard-based pixel art
Unfortunately, though i was proud of this, i had backed it up
on floppies, and those floppies were destroyed while in
storage. I no longer have any of that code.
If you type faster you can fit a longer program on the tape!!
I suspect folks at Intel already know they can fix it. They don't need
me to tell them. :D
My project was to write a game called "Battle Checkers"
inspired by two other games: Scorched Earth and Battle Chess.
I loved Battle Chess and Scorched Earth both. I recently came across a retro DOS game archiving project called "eXoDos" and it had both of
those in it. I loaded up Scorched Earth and actually got my kids to play
a game with me. I was a lot of fun.
We played quite a bit of Scorched Earth duing CS3.
These systems were running DOS 3 and had Hercules Graphics.
I was using Borland Turbo Basic, which did not have built-in
support for Hercules. My teacher gave me a book with the PC
memory map and i disassembled programs to figure out how to
drive it. Then i wrote graphics routines in ASM that i
called from BASIC. I also wrote a keyboard-based pixel art
That's seriously impressive and far beyond what I was able to
accomplish, but then I've always been more interested in building the hardware than coding.
Unfortunately, though i was proud of this, i had backed it up
on floppies, and those floppies were destroyed while in
storage. I no longer have any of that code.
That's a shame. Last year I came across my name on a wiki of OS/2 software. I completely forgot that I wrote a little random tagline generator and the program and the file of taglines were still available
on an OS/2 archive site. I was able to download it and put it in my archive.
It's true that anything you put on the Internet is forever.
The joke was that there have been several very high-profile bugs in the ME; not due to Minix per se, but rather due to code that Intel wrote.
Re: Re: Minix
By: tenser to Skylar on Fri Apr 19 2024 12:30 am
The joke was that there have been several very high-profile bugs in t ME; not due to Minix per se, but rather due to code that Intel wrote.
I worked at Intel for a little over 8 years. I was in a team working on security software, and one component of the first project I worked on
with them used the Intel ME. It was interesting to learn about that stuff.. Later, the team worked on some software using Intel's SGX (Software Guard Extensions), which I heard also had some security flaws and was later discontinued.
Re: Re: Minix
By: tenser to Skylar on Fri Apr 19 2024 12:30 am
The joke was that there have been several very high-profile bugs in the ME; not due to Minix per se, but rather due to code that Intel wrote.
I worked at Intel for a little over 8 years. I was in a team working on security software, and one component of the first project I worked on with them used the Intel ME. It was interesting to learn about that stuff.. Later, the team worked on some software using Intel's SGX (Software Guard Extensions), which I heard also had some security flaws and was later discontinued.
The bug I was thinking of was rather pedestrian, and was in the built-in web server. It validated a user-supplied password against one that was stored somewhere (presumably flash or some kind of NVRAM). The code was basically,
if (strncmp(pass, userpass, strlen(userpass)) == 0) {
return SUCCESS;
} else {
return FAILURE;
}
The bug, of course, is constraining to the length of the user supplied password; the effect was that entering _no_ password automatically authenticated the password (empty strings always compare equal). The fix is to read the user password into a pre-zeroed buffer the same size as `pass` and then compare.
The issue with SGX was that it was easy to break out of the enclave. Whoops.
I worked at Broadcom for 16 years and a large part of that time was in charge of the TruManage (Deuce is actually the one that came up with that name) project that competed with Intel AMT/vPro for embedded system management solutions (i.e. ASF, DASH, SMASH, IPMI/DCMI, etc.) for client systems and low-end servers. Intel was our biggest competitor and they were able to use system main memory and hide their die-cost in the rest of the chipset, so we were at a disadvantage on Intel platforms, but had virtually all the AMD platform marketshare for a long time. Intel also played dirty in the standards body (DMTF), using their position of power over their customers to win votes and vote-down enhancements to management standards they had abandoned. The Broadcom system management controller (AKA "BMC") was integrated into our network controllers (BCM57xxx) and was a very fun embedded supervisory system with a lot of power and control over the entire system.
The joke was that there have been several very high-profile
bugs in the ME; not due to Minix per se, but rather due to
code that Intel wrote.
Nightfox wrote to tenser <=-
On a side note, I know sales of movies & TV shows on blu-rays & such
have dropped, and a lot of people aren't playing them on computers
these days, but I always thought it was interesting how it was still possible to play blu-ray discs on a PC with certain restrictions
Quoting Poindexter Fortran to Nightfox <=-
Did some research at the store on my phone and found out it can play movies from a USB stick. The next time I'm going up there, I'm taking
a half-terabyte of movies and TV shows with me...
If you don't have access to the internet, bring the internet with
you.
Tiny wrote to POINDEXTER FORTRAN <=-
Quoting Poindexter Fortran to Nightfox <=-
Did some research at the store on my phone and found out it can play movies from a USB stick. The next time I'm going up there, I'm taking
a half-terabyte of movies and TV shows with me...
Take a smaller device just in case. Our DVD player with the USB port works great but I have to plug a stick in that's less then 40GB or it won't work. We use a 32gb stick and it works great.
Quoting Poindexter Fortran to Tiny <=-
I plugged in a 512gb USB stick and a 1TB HDD and both worked great!
They need to be exfat or FAT32, no NTFS (so no movies over 4gb each)
The bug, of course, is constraining to the length of the user
supplied password; the effect was that entering _no_ password
automatically authenticated the password (empty strings always
compare equal).
That's pretty shocking... a good proportion of people would find that by accident!
The bug, of course, is constraining to the length of the user
supplied password; the effect was that entering _no_ password automatically authenticated the password (empty strings always
compare equal).
That's pretty shocking... a good proportion of people would find that by accident!
| Sysop: | Tetrazocine |
|---|---|
| Location: | Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
| Users: | 7 |
| Nodes: | 8 (0 / 8) |
| Uptime: | 188:30:01 |
| Calls: | 46 |
| Files: | 21,492 |
| Messages: | 63,355 |