Re: Greg's questions

[Greg Alexander <galexand@xxxxxxx>]

>> Example of you complaining:
>>     As I have said.  There is a crowd in c.l.f who are proud of not
>>     knowing anything about it.  They proudly announce that they will
>>     ignore any examples or explanations posted because they don't
>>     want to know about it.
>> (from private email, but I've seen you express this sentiment often enough
>> that I hope it's okay to post it to the list).  Now it's definitely
>> possible that this was not really complaining and that you are perfectly
>> happy with these people not respecting your ideas, perhaps based off of an
>> incorrect assumption that they are universally stupid.  I like such
>> assumptions, they are convenient, but damn are they limiting!
>
>That doesn't sound like complaining.

Are you seriously telling me that you don't think Jeff is complaining when
he tells us on a monthly basis for years straight that nobody wants to
listen to him?
	If I"m really the only one who reads every other line of Jeff's
text in every posting he's made as being of a plaintive nature then I'd
love to know it.  As I said, it's not impossible by any stretch that I"ve
completely misread him.

>> On May 14th I started complaining, and I was well done complaining
>> by June 12th, which is when I ordered my MuP21+manual.  I only two
>> days ago resumed complaining, at least on the list, and only a
>> week before that began complaining to you.  You did not tell me to
>> look at other things, though you suggested that some issues of
>> More on Forth engines would be useful.  It is prohibitively
>> expensive to buy all of More on Forth Engines.  Are you mad at me
>> because I'm too poor to buy what you want me to, or because you
>> think I wouldn't read them even if I could afford them?
>
>Are you mad at Jeff because he's too poor to spoon feed you?  Complainers
>complain to the person responsible for their troubles.  Whiners whine to
>everyone for attention.  Why are you doing this on the MISC list?

Because the P21 is the only widely available MISC processor (depending on
whose definition you use, I guess), so the fact that it's not reasonably
usable and that Jeff is an asshole is very relevant here.  If MISC were
popular, one man wouldn't be able to mess it up.
	I'm not complaining to Ting because he didn't give me this
trouble.  He sold me the chip, but he didn't advertise the chip, he didn't
go on a Jihad on c.l.f and spend two years preaching to the choir here to
try to get me to buy it.  I bought it on Jeff's suggestion.  If Jeff will
laud it I'd expect him to at least vaguely support it.  Right now in
private email Jeff is trying to tell me that 80ns DRAM is not roughly
equivalent to 20ns SRAM (look at the timing diagrams yourself, for on-page
accesses.... CAS -> data valid is 20ns).

>> >(For months Greg complained that there was NO documentation
>>
>> For less than a month.
>
>lol

No, it's this sort of misrepresentation that is actually of vital import.
Every time somebody comes out and starts cursing Jeff because he's an
asshole, he says that for months he put up with us, for months he helped
us, for months he answered dozens of questions, for months His Dozens
answered dozens of questions.  It's NEVER TRUE!  I complained for less
than 29 days.  He said "a year," in private correspondance, I corrected
him, now he says "for months."  Remember that c.l.f guy who Jeff likes to
bring up who thought his P21 was broken because if he blew on it the
screen jittered?  Jeff's pretty insistent that he helped this guy
patiently and accurately in email FOR MONTHS.  I bet Jeff told the guy he
was stupid after the guy sent him one polite email.
	What you don't understand is that I've seen Jeff lying about other
people all this time.  Right now you see Jeff lying about other people and
you think "no big deal."  It's not a big deal a month, two months...but if
I hadn't corrected him, he'd still be saying "a year."  So that's an order
of magnitude off.  Once you see Jeff lying to you, telling him that he's
helped you "for months" and that His Dozens have accurately answered
dozens of questions "for months" it suddenly hits you that every time Jeff
claims that he's been a good person, he's lying.  Jeff's an asshole, man,
let go of it.

>> No, I said that because free copies of Offete documentation are
>> not available, UT looks bad.  If ANYONE published free copies of
>> P21 documentation then UT and Offete would BOTH gain tremendously
>> in public opinion.  I didn't say that UT was RESPONSIBLE, I said
>> that if UT didn't do it and nobody else did it, UT would certainly
>> lose out in the long run.  Hobbyists are just hobbyists, but some
>> of them will someday (perhaps tomorrow or yesterday) go on to make
>> big purchasing decisions.
>
>Good point.  If you do resolve the P21 documentation problem, please send
>some corrected and updated documents to me and I will post them on my site.

Every time I ask a question about the 8-bit bootloader, Jeff tells me that
I'm stupid for thinking that an entire microprocessor might be limited
that way (I guess he thinks I'm talking about the 20-bit bootloader).
Ever time I ask Ting something I get a bad answer because he doesn't care
about English-speaking customers.  Every time I ask anyone for a timing
diagram they laugh.  Who would want a timing diagram?
	The P21 documentation problem is Jeff, and it's Ting, and it's
Chuck.  These people are our problem.

>> Okay, let's play fair.  After so many years you have only NOW
>> bothered to produce the F21d.  What took you so damn long?  OH
>> WAIT MAYBE YOU'RE NOT MADE OF MONEY EITHER.  It's a matter of
>> scale -- right now I have just barely enough money to buy P21
>> stuff one tiny item at a time.  Right now you have just barely
>> enough money to prototype F21, one prototype run at a time, with
>> years between them.  Someday I will probably have just barely
>> enough money to prototype chips too, but right now I have barely
>> enough money to buy them.  You're complaining that nobody reads
>> your stuff, and you're also complaining that you are broke because
>> of supporting F21 development, and you make fun of us for
>> complaining that we do not have the money to buy Ting's horrible
>> documentation?
>
>???  Where did he say that?

Complaints about being broke for sacrificing so much for F21d?  Read the
mailing list archive -- I haven't been able to find a searchable archive.
It would be a while ago, but not too long ago. :)

Telling people they are stupid for not buying Ting's manuals?  Private
correspondance.  What happened was I said that it's not published this or
that about the P21.  He told me that I was being stupid because there are
thousands of pages of documentation about P21 that I haven't read
scattered across 30 different books.  I asked him where I should start, he
told me that His Dozens have already told me about these 30 different
books.  I assume he's talking about More on Forth Engines.

>> >I never assume people are stupid.  I give everyone the same change
>>
>> Yes you do.
>>
>> >to expose their own mental abilities.  I often give people who
>>
>> No you don't.
>
>lol

No, that's the point!!  He's lying!  Until I saw it happen to me, I
BELIEVED THESE LIES!  For years, when I saw one of these little flamewars
start and mushroom out on MISC or c.l.f, I assumed that when Jeff said
something he was telling the truth.  You would never guess it until he's
lying to you and telling you that he has put up 100k of documentation for
you to download and lying to you and telling you that you've been bitching
for "a year" and lying to you and saying that he's answered your
questions...you're just shocked, your jaw drops, "OH MY GOD JEFF IS A
LIAR."  Do you think I'm /happy/ about this?  I've believed in this man
for years!

>> I again point out that in this conversation you have spent
>> literally thousands of lines telling me how bad a P21 user I am,
>> and this message has a very small technical issue to offense
>> ratio.  I included very little offense at the beginning of my
>> questions compared to questions, at least compared to you.
>
>Also nice to point out, that in this conversation you have spent just as
>many lines telling Jeff how bad of a P21 helpdesk rep, documentor, and
>overall person he is.  :0/

Yes, because that's all you can tell Jeff!  Jeff is a very negative
person.  Do you see his posts here?  He is not wasting thousands of lines
here and there saying how great MISC is.  He's simply saying how horrible
complexity is.  Check it, really read it, read it with AN OPEN MIND.  He
wants your mind closed.  That's what makes it a cult and not a close-knit
group.

>> Oh, that sure does explain why there's a searchable mailing list
>> archive.  OH WAIT THERE ISN'T.
>
>Actually there is... http://pisa.rockefeller.edu:8080/MISC/

Searchable was the keyword.  I don't see how to search it.  Maybe I'm
stupid as Jeff says.  Thanks for the link anyways -- I'd been there before
but I forgot to book mark it.

Here's the conundrum.  A "better" timing diagram is available at that URL.
When you've got known bad sources you have to have three to be useful.  If
you have one, you never know what is right or wrong.  If you have two, you
never know what is right or wrong if they disagree.  If you have three,
you have good odds that two of them agree.

So on the one hand I have Ting's timing diagram in the MuP21 programming
manual, which has numbers that look like they were copied from a
simulator's output (i.e., they are not rounded off to the nearest 10),
but don't seem to have been transcribed by someone who knew what was up
because the ADR line doesn't reasonably represent what's going on.
On the other hand I have Jeff's timing diagram.  It is prefixed by
something copied out of a DRAM datasheet.  The numbers for the MuP21
portion are all multiples of 5.  Its ADR line for the DRAM diagram makes
sense, but the ADR line for the MuP21 part of the diagram doesn't make
sense...for example, the ADR line is shown as being undefined or unstable
(or something) DURING a CAS high->low transition (which is what triggers
the column address latch).
So I've got two timing diagrams, neither of which are terribly likely to
be accurate, they disagree, and neither of them has the information I'm
after, which is how long after CAS does the MuP21 expect data valid.

>> >It is a fun party.  You are invited.  If it is more fun for
>>
>> No I'm not, because I don't have enough money to join the "in
>> group" that has a bookshelf full of badly written incorrect and
>> contradicting Ting documents.
>
>I think what Jeff is trying to say is that MISC, P21, F21, etc. is not some
>huge corporate fork up your butt venture - it was developed by a handful of
>people that enjoy developing such stuff.  So if you dive into it expecting
>something from a multibillionaire company, then you might be disappointed.
>But since you already knew that, then maybe it's just the fork that is the
>problem.  ;0)

I'm not expecting something from a huge company.
At a huge company when documenting a simple part I suppose it takes a
small group of maybe 5 engineers at most to come up with some tests and
thoroughly test the part and come up with min/max specifications, and
current drain, and all that.  Then maybe 2 people write the document,
maybe 2 people revise it, and another typesets it.
	I was expecting that corners would be cut during the first stage
-- obviously they were.  The <20ma estimate for current draw, for example,
is sufficient for me.  Most of that stuff could have been determined at
design times and simple "it works" checks were obviously performed.  I
think they did that part about as well as I would have expected.
	How about the next part, where they write up what they figured out
in the first part.  This is a part EASILY scaled down to a single person,
and can be done fairly quickly by a developer so long as it's done while
everything is fresh in the developer's mind.  Complete documentation for
the MuP21 could easily be distilled to 30 or 40 pages (maybe with an
appendix full of source that would have been created anyways during the
development process), so there's no good reason not to just rewrite all of
the documentation when the chip finishes.  Jeff clearly has plenty of time
to spend at the keyboard typing.
	The reviewing and the typesetting were expected to be ignored.  I
expected typos, and minor mistakes.  I've not documented hardware, but
I've documented enough things in a hurry to know what kind of mistakes
happen in a hurried single-person documentation effort.  These were not
the gross ommissions and inaccuracies that occured in the documentation I
received.
	The problem is that all the documentation was written before the
product was even marginally ready.  So the source code in the manual is
source code for a 1992 edition of the chip.  New source code was
developed, but did anyone just cut and paste it into the manual?  No.
Further, 8-bit mode is not reoally described (it is minimally described in
comments in some of the code appendices, but that description is obviously
incorrect because it mentions many prototyping problems)
	If somebody had spent A SINGLE DAY going over the documentation
after the chip was produced, pruning useless things, adding where it has
obvious ommisions, I'm certain the quality of the manual could be improved
a hundred fold.

>> >No one says that you should prefer P21 to a TI chip.  The
>> >people here who do don't need to argue with you about it.  If
>> >you want to find your fun elsewhere then feel free.  We
>> >won't feel offended if you have more fun doing other
>> >things.
>>
>> No, you don't understand at all.  I am upset because I want to
>> find my fun in P21 chips, but you and Ting have erected
>> unnecessary barriers to its use.  Ting did so because he doesn't
>> care about the American market.  You have done so because you are
>> very hostile.
>
>I would agree that there are many barrieris - much more than just what you
>are stating here... but I'm sure it wasn't intentional.  Look at
>www.itvc.com and then look at www.ultratechnology.com  Jeff has content
>pouring out of the seems - historical, technical, recorderd, demonstrative
>(regardless of how outdated or cluttered it is).  Whereas iTV has absolutely
>nothing on their site.  They want to keep the progress to themselves.  They
>have funding.  Jeff does not have funding, and when he tests a chip or has
>news, it's on the front of his site.

On the one hand I agree, there are very few barriers to understanding what
they're trying to do.  But there are very many unnecessary barriers to
understanding what they HAVE DONE.  The first is the documentation.  The
second is that Jeff is much more willing to send TRULY HUGE emails
repeating words like "crybaby" and "prechewed food" rather than
documenting the thing.  These aren't new issues, I would have expected
that someone would have made a FAQ by now.  I know now why nobody has:
anyone who would write a FAQ would be implying that existing MuP21
documentation is not very good and that there are few resources for
getting your questions answered directly.  Anyone in the position of
making a FAQ would have to be EXTREMELY careful to not find themselves
spending all day deleting hate mail from Jeff.  It's not something like A
implies B that's 100% and simple and direct.  It's just a side effect,
an emergent property....anyone who would want to write a FAQ would be
hated by Jeff.  This would severely limit their options for learning.
	Because we are conciously rebelling against mainstream computing
wisdom by using simplicity and because Jeff is widely and understandably
perceived as a cultist, you cannot make a politically neutral FAQ for MISC
without missing the point.

>And it seems that iTV might be better off, because if you can't find out
>anything about their status, then you don't have to worry about answering
>questions.

huh?  I don't think iTV is any better off than Jeff.  Their niche market
is rapidly slipping away.  If Jeff types about 100WPM then he's spent at
least two hours just telling me how horrible a P21 user I am.  If his time
were so precious, he would spend the time writing a FAQ so that people
like me who are obviously too stupid to ask good questions would just read
the FAQ.

<snip>
>He is not calling you an idiot.  He is not calling that other guy an idiot.
>He was pointing out that someone else had mentioned a similar dilemma, for
>which he couldn't figure out what part of the chip he was talking about.  So
>instead of nailing Jeff in the head about being a complainer and not
>answering questions, why don't you stop complaining and answer his
>questions.

You're missing some context that I maybe misapplied here.  In our private
conversation this individual was hotly contested.  He was somebody who
Jeff liked to make fun of a lot, and he kept on lying and telling tall
tales about this guy.  "for months" showed up a lot.  The guy couldn't
defend himself.  I saw how Jeff likes to blow timescales out of proportion
when it helps his case -- one of the greatest realizations for me in this
conversation was this guy -- I had seen the conversation on c.l.f
and at the time I thought he was an idiot -- he probably wasn't an idiot,
he was probably right, and Jeff was lying.  So I'm naturally sensitive to
any implication that I might be this idiot, because this idiot is one of
Jeff's favorite example of outsiders who don't want to learn.

>> >Of the dozens of questions you have asked I have given thoughful
>> >and detailed answers to all of them that I could understand.  I
>>
>> hah.
>
>lol

It would have been insulting your intelligence to point out to you that
his answers were not very detailed, and were not even correct and that he
made no real effort to understand some of my questions (for example I
asked about there being only a single constant, 44, in 8-bit mode and he
said I would have to be pretty stupid to think there is only 44 in 20-bit
mode)

>> >do ask their questions more politely, without the profanity
>> >and insults.
>>
>> fuck off.
>
>Oh my.  At work, I have to deal with customer service calls for an ISP /
>computer showroom.  It can be frustrating at times when the customer has no
>idea what they are doing, but are very insistant that they are right and we
>are wrong.  Sometimes customers leave some very insulting voicemail, ending
>with "and you better call me back".  Yea right - delete.  lol  :0)  But I
>also understand that the customers have grown up in a world with the motto
>"the customer is always" right - meaning they will always get their way.
>They have through the roof expectations about the way a company is suppose
>to work, or how the service is supposed to be.  But at the same time I know
>how some of the customer's feel... by the time I'm done on the phone with
>them I'm ready to give them a spare kidney.  It's funny to see that happy
>customers are very very happy with our service, but miserable customers are
>very very miserable.  Someone that talks to me with obscenity, and blames me
>for everything wrong with their computer will not get 100% out of me.
>Someone that is patient, is willing to listen, and doesn't have it in their
>mind that they know more than everyone else will get 200% from me.  That's
>just life.

The problem is that Jeff doesn't tell the truth.  If he told the truth it
would be one thing.  See if I started being an asshole to him and he said
"go away asshole." that would be one thing.  But instead he says "I've
helped you for months, I've done nothing wrong, I've been perfect, I've
been polite, I've been correct, other people have helped you," etc etc...
	If it weren't for the fact that he is so obviously lying I
wouldn't be so upset.  Even that is nothing compared to what has really
upset me: I believed his lies for so many years!!

>> Jeff, you're a liar and a flake.
>
>Yep.  There goes any chance of a refund.  lol  I bet you are going to copy

It's a Ting chip, and I wouldn't expect refunds from a tiny company
anyways.

>your post and replace all "Jeff's" with "Ting's" since you are aware that
>Jeff isn't *responsible* for any of your documentation problems.  Or maybe
>you should replace it with Chuck since he designed the chip.  He coded OKAD,
>he sat down and thought it out.  Maybe he's responsible for lack of
>documentation.  If you bought an F21, then this discussion would be
>relevant.

I didn't say he's responsible, only that it's his problem.  I have a lot
more patience with Ting and Jeff because they don't lie.  They don't say
that I will like this chip and say that other people who have had problems
were merely too stupid to use it.  Chuck and Ting have both apparently
avoided participating in this list.  Jeff however has told me quite a bit
and it is mostly lies.

>> I wasted $50 on the MuP21.  I strongly advise nobody ever make the
>> same mistke.
>
>How much was the manual?

$25 manual, $25 chip.

>> I fucking love MISC.  I think it's one of the greatest things
>> going on right now.  I'm just really sad to see MISC represented
>> in America by a fucking idiot like Jeff and someone who doesn't
>> even care like Ting.  It's just a real fucking shame to see
>> Chuck's great ideas wasted on the likes of them.
>
>Then why don't you build a site and represent MISC too.  You care.  You are
>not an idiot.  Get some documentation together, send it to me and I'll post
>it on my site, maybe work together on a few things.

The funny thing is that I'm smarter than to fall for that.  I haven't said
I'm great.  I'm not going to try to lead the cult.  I'm not going to tell
people that I've been a perfect party in these conversations.  I'm not
going to tell them that I've helped them when I haven't, or that I wasn't
rude.

	Issues I still haven't resolved about using the P21: it seems
likely that the P21 really depends on the 20ns CAS->data ready time, which
means that I need to either get low-power 20ns SRAMs (which don't seem to
exist, but I've searched only briefly) or I will need to use DRAMs and try
to figure out a more hefty battery solution.
	More important issue: 8-bit boot code is still a great big mystery
to me.  Jeff keeps on telling me new things about how it works that I'm
fairly certain are wrong (such as that it translates an 8-bit value loaded
from memory into the high 12 bits of the address plus the 8 bits).
I've twice now asked Jeff if it supports more than one 8-bit constant
and twice now he's told me that I would have to be stupid to think that
it only supports a single 20-bit constant.
My hardware is sufficiently unique that I'd rather not be placed in the
awkward position of putting faith in source code that was released kind
of "by the way" as being correct -- I'm not a member of the cult so I
hope you won't expect any faith.
	I'm still not very happy with the AAAAA issue -- not one of the 4
explanations I've got handy seems authoritative, but combined I think I
should be able to piece it together.  What I'm most worried about is
memory reordering, but I just realized what I was most worried about won't
be a problem (if I have a 128k SRAM, where should I map it? I'll just
have it occupy the entire 1MB space, repeating 8 times, then I could place
my program code from 0-1FFFF).  I'm somewhat distressed that only one of
the descriptions mentions memory reordering -- this is the sort of thing
that, but by luck, I could be banging my head on in a month from now after
investing a lot more.


Oh I suspect I just figured out the "44" issue!!  On the P21 that the
boot code was for every byte was (sort of?) read twice, and 44 is the
opcode for LIT or n or #.  So when it grabs the operand for opcode 44, it
finds 44, and pushes that onto the stack.

See, I'm not fucking stupid, I'm not illiterate, I'm not blind, I read
what's available.  Nobody's really answered my questions though.  I don't
mind figuring things out on my own, but hardware is hard, there's no
reason to make it harder by not giving out any of the details except in
suspect pre-fab documents.