Geekery and avoidance behaviors

[altivo]

Today, as you probably know, was my half day at work. Normally at least two other folks are there at the same time I am, even though the library is closed to the public. It's our time to make adjustments to equipment, clean things, rearrange furniture, change lightbulbs, and whatever else might be disruptive during open hours. I mostly use it for computer network stuff, like running backups and doing software patches or upgrades. Not today though. I was the only one there. I processed the interlibrary loan list, pulling books from the shelf and labeling them for delivery, because the delivery van comes to us pretty early in the morning. Then I sat down at my desk to start on some cataloging work. And the phone started ringing. And ringing, and ringing. It seemed like every time I'd hang up, it would ring again. Many were calls for the director, who is usually there on Thursday but wasn't today because she had a meeting elsewhere. I was tempted to quit answering, but that's not a good idea because the call could just as well be the mayor's office or the police department or someone else with something actually important. Or it could be the boss herself. ;p

It was nearly a wasted morning. When the phone would quiet for five minutes, then the back doorbell would go off for a delivery. Mail, UPS, bottled water, you name it and it was delivered this morning. Good thing I didn't have anything really critical to get done.

Came home, fed the dogs, put Tess out in the pasture in spite of a gloomy sky and forecasts of possible rain (it didn't.) Cleaned stalls, filled water buckets, still had some time before evening feeding and bringing Tess in. Should have worked on hemming up those towels, but instead I geeked out solving a small problem I've had with my CP/M notebook computer for several years.

The machine is a NEC Starlet, with no disk drives, and like a Radio Shack Model 100, runs entirely out of RAM and ROM. Consequently, it is really easy on batteries, but getting stuff in and out of the machine requires connecting a serial cable to another computer, or using a modem. Since I mostly use it for writing text, it doesn't matter much. However, back when I bought it I got a memory expansion cartridge for it. I got the largest then available (all of 256K, but memory was really expensive back then) and it's exactly the same capacity as a standard CP/M floppy disk, which is handy. Unfortunately, the machine BIOS doesn't see that whole space automatically. There was a little patch program that had to be run each time you booted up to make the entire cartridge space available for files.

The cartridge retains its contents by using a backup battery, one of those nickel sized flat things. You can see where this is going. I left the machine unused for too long at a stretch, the battery went dead, and the cartridge content was lost. No important writing was lost because I always copy that off as soon as possible. But the little patch program, which resided on the cartridge itself, was also lost. By then the manufacturer was long out of business, and the patch program was not available anywhere that I could find, even on the web. I knew it had to be fairly simple, just a patch to the disk parameter block in CP/M to adjust the size of the virtual drive, but I never got around to experimenting.

Over the weekend I found some misplaced CP/M manuals and realized that now was the time to fix that problem. The amazing thing is, I succeeded. It has been probably 20 years since I wrote any 8 bit assembly language code, but the patch program I wrote does the trick. I now have my full cartridge memory back and can handle much longer documents.

*does a pony geek dance to celebrate*

Comments

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

You are officially a geek icon, good sir pony.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'd rather be a Greek god, actually. Much better looking. ;p

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

Poseidon, I presume?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

A reasonable enough choice. XD

[drgnkiyo.livejournal.com]

http://malicekisho.deviantart.com/
http://maliceazriel.deviantart.com/

<33

[altivo.livejournal.com]

A bit too androgynous for me. I think I'll stick with Poseidon or Apollo. ;p

[jmaynard.livejournal.com]

Yeah, patching the DPB isn't hard, but you gotta know what bits to twiddle.

My last major hacking run of that kind was in the early 90s. I'd just bought a Toshiba laptop, and wanted to stuff a 1 GB hard disk in it. Unfortunately, it was too big for DOS: it overflowed the DOS version of the DPB's cylinder count. It turned out that the Toshiba BIOS automagically figured out how big the disk was at boot time and set up the DPB itself. Over a period of 36 hours, I found out where it was doing that, found out that there was a way to plant a hook in the system to change how it did it, and put the hook in a convenient spot on the hard disk itself so that it'd get called at every boot. That was a lot of fun. Good thing I don't have to do anything like it any more.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I still enjoy programming in assembly language, as long as there's no pressure or deadline.

On the other paw, I've got a problem here at the library this morning that I can't fix myself and still have to take the flack for. There was a power outage. A server that is maintained under contract by an outside vendor has failed to reboot successfully. I do not have the root password and can do nothing until they respond. Meanwhile there is no public internet access, which will mean screaming angry users before the day is over.

[drgnkiyo.livejournal.com]

Nice with the geekery. XD It's really funny, I seem to know more and more people who are working with or in libraries. That might be fun to try my hand at for some kind of side job.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Real full time library jobs with benefits are getting scarce unless you have both a master's degree in library science and often a master's in a second subject.

There's plenty of part time work though, great for students and such.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

*vast, ornate calligraphy letters*

CP/M!

In a notebooks no less.

Not a bad fit, all in all.

I've found that, as I've grown older, I answer the phone less
often.

I reccomend not answering.

*smiles mischeviously*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Not answering the phone is an option I often take at home when it's my personal line. It's not really an option I have ever had at work, though.

Some curmudgeon like H.L.Mencken or similar described the telephone as an impetuous and rude individual who barges into your office whenever he chooses, and if you try to ignore him jumps up and down on your desk shouting at you until you drop everything and pay attention to him.

There's a brief description of the NEC Starlet here. I got mine in 1987 when they were already being remaindered through discount houses. Back then, $400 was more money than it is today, but for a truly portable laptop style computer it was incredibly cheap. Of course it doesn't run MS-DOS or Windows, which is why it was already being dropped at the time, but that didn't bother me and never has. I started in computers before there was such a thing as Microsoft or MS-DOS, and I've never cared for Bill Gates' second rate products. ;p

[saythename.livejournal.com]

In the book version of The Mothman Prophecies,
the author quotes an obscure movie about
the President's psychiatrist:

"Everyone hates the phone company!"

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I've never seen a pony geek dance before O.O *Watches full of awe* Old school 8bit'er

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Wait till you see the fan dance done using 8 inch floppies.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I hope I heard right. *gets the giggles*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

This kind of floppy, you dirty-minded feline.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Oh...I did know but I went for the dirty option because thats the way my mind tends to turn.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Should I be worried? I was thinking the clean type
of floppies.

Not that I would mind seeing a 8 inch "floppy"...
But it probably wouldn't stay floppy very long ;D

*slaps self*

Bad Zebra!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Naughty zebra indeed. ;p

Now I have to confess that I worded the original that way precisely because I knew cabcat would take it in that direction.