NetBSD 0.8

Thanks to Bert Kiers, the source to NetBSD 0.8 has been located!

Currently it resides at http://netbsd.itsx.net/netbsd-0.8-src.tgz

I haven’t tried to build it yet, but I would imagine that it should be possible from either 386 BSD 0.1 with all the patchkits installed, or maybe from within NetBSD 0.9 …

I don’t know if the install diskettes are easily generated… So this may be a source up/down grade depending on how you look at it.

But this is a ‘good thing’ as this would be the last ‘lost’ version of NetBSD. Then I can tackle 386 BSD 0.0 & FreeBSD.

Your submission has been rejected by our reviewers. Please read the notes below regarding your submission:

Reviewer Notes: REJECTED – Issues with plug-in
There appears to be an issue with the plug-in not working with local speex files once an http version is played and shows a messagebox of ‘Speex Error’ – ‘Not a Speex stream’. Restarting Winamp will then play the local file but am sure this shouldn’t be happening. Please fix and then re-submit the fixed version.

Don’t you hate it when you focus so much on the big things you forget the small stuff, like switching between local and remote?

Sigh.

Thankfully the fix was trivial, and only involved one line of code… I spent more time re-building a VM with Visual C++ 4.2 then I did fixing the code & recompiling…

Naturally the download is on the sourceforge page, and I bumped the version to 0.76a … If anyone ever wonders years from now what the deal was… lol

Net Hack wiki moved

I just received notice that the NetHack wiki has now moved and the new site is nethackwiki.com.

It’s great when old software just doesn’t revive for a little while then fade back to obscurity, so update your links, or just browse the site and be blown away by all their information on such a great (and difficult) game.

And of course, I have NetHack for the Windows NT 4.0 MIPS, and various 4.X BSD on sourceforge under the package tapes….

For anyone shopping around for a VPS

check out this incredible site, lowendbox.com. I was thinking of having a cheap backup site for some of my stuff in my own cloud (thanks google!) and we aren’t talking any major investment here… And for the added sake of paranoia they even review and list places in the UK and heck Egypt at a glance…

And of course the tags make it nice to jump around to see nations, hosting types etc etc….

And check the prices, you can actually find some VPS’s for around $2.50 USD a month!!! (on a month to month basis!!).

I’m kind of glad in retrospect to have not really gotten into this business it is way too cut throuat.

SIMH benchmark numbers…

I have to admit, I’m really surprised. In the past Visual C++ had been a clear winner every time I’d checked performance vs Gcc. And the tide seems to have really turned under Windows 7 x64. While not a massive lead, the winner after all these iterations of my simh benchmark was Gcc 4.5.2 for x86_64.

Just in the same fashion here, it seems that on some platforms -O1 is faster then -O2, and you really won’t find out until you run some comparisons.

gcc version 3.4.5 (mingw-vista special r3)

gcc O0
21.33333333333333
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 23
This machine benchmarks at 21739 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 20
This machine benchmarks at 25000 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 21
This machine benchmarks at 23809 dhrystones/second

gcc O1
15.33333333333333
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 16
This machine benchmarks at 31250 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 15
This machine benchmarks at 33333 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 15
This machine benchmarks at 33333 dhrystones/second

gcc 02
12.33333333333333
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 12
This machine benchmarks at 41666 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 13
This machine benchmarks at 38461 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 12
This machine benchmarks at 41666 dhrystones/second

gcc version 4.5.2 20101002 (prerelease) [svn/rev.164902 – mingw-w64/oz] (GCC)

gcc O0
21.33333333333333
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 21
This machine benchmarks at 23809 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 22
This machine benchmarks at 22727 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 21
This machine benchmarks at 23809 dhrystones/second

gcc O1
13.33333333333333
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 13
This machine benchmarks at 38461 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 14
This machine benchmarks at 35714 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 13
This machine benchmarks at 38461 dhrystones/second

gcc O2
12
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 11
This machine benchmarks at 45454 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 13
This machine benchmarks at 38461 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 12
This machine benchmarks at 41666 dhrystones/second

Microsoft (R) C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 16.00.30319.01 for x64

VC /Od /Bi0
21.33333333333333
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 21
This machine benchmarks at 23809 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 21
This machine benchmarks at 23809 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 22
This machine benchmarks at 22727 dhrystones/second

VC /O2 /Ob2 /Oi
13
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 13
This machine benchmarks at 38461 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 13
This machine benchmarks at 38461 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 13
This machine benchmarks at 38461 dhrystones/second

VC /O2
13.66666666666667
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 14
This machine benchmarks at 35714 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 13
This machine benchmarks at 38461 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 14
This machine benchmarks at 35714 dhrystones/second

Vc /Og /Ox
13
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 13
This machine benchmarks at 38461 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 13
This machine benchmarks at 38461 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 13
This machine benchmarks at 38461 dhrystones/second

Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 16.00.30319.01 for 80×86
VC /Og /Ox
13.33333333333333
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 14
This machine benchmarks at 35714 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 13
This machine benchmarks at 38461 dhrystones/second
Dhrystone(1.1) time for 500000 passes = 13
This machine benchmarks at 38461 dhrystones/second

And this is on my laptop, an Intel Core i7 Q 720 running at 1.6Ghz with 4GB of ram & Windows 7 Home Premium.

Windows 95 & DLL’s…

I hope nobody ever needs to know this, but I found out the hard way, that dll’s built with Visual C++ 6.0 wont’ load correctly on Windows 95… But luckily Visual C++ 4.2 is still available on MSDN, and the speex files built with only 40 or so changes.

I think I’m finally done with the whole winamp thing.

Phew!

moving hosting companies…..

I’m moving some of my hosting stuff, so there will probably be some bumps in the move… But in the meantime, I think the ‘big’ thing I have, ‘vpsland/install‘ should now be running up again..

Even while I was writing this, I saw someone download f2c!!!

It’s a scary thing to think of my work being used.. Esp regarding Fortran.

Also I’ll have to post some stuff on the x86_64 gcc for Windows… Too bad it won’t run Qemu, but there is 64bit Gfortran!