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Jonathan Pallant

@thejpster.org.uk

840 followers 160 following 900 posts

Rust Trainer and Developer, retrocomputing enthusiast

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Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 17h

Did you enjoy my blog post last year about the MIPS R8000 based POWER Indigo 2 from SGI? Well here's Cameron Kaiser with an even better blog post (with even more photos), all about the R10000 based Indigo 2 IMPACT that replaced it.

oldvcr.blogspot.com/2025/09/refu...

Refurb weekend: Silicon Graphics Indigo² IMPACT 10000

It's one of my periodic downsizing cycles, which means checking the hardware inventory (and, intermittently, discovering things that were no...

oldvcr.blogspot.com

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 19h

Brian: Hey Robin. My manager wants to know if you could plug my tour on your socials.

Robin: Of course I can Brian, leave it to me.

*cue childish giggling*

Brian: Are you taking the piss out of my amazing good looks again Robin?

Robin: As if I would. I said you looked positively regal.

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 4d

No, that’s fair.

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 4d

*cough* Intel Galileo *cough*

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_G...

Intel Galileo - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 4d

I did some early projects a long time ago on Arduino. I liked its focus on simplicity, rather than making people assemble the build system, compiler and HAL from a kit of open source parts with no instructions.

I will miss it.

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 4d

> This PR appears to be extractive, and requires additional justification for
why it is valuable enough to the project for us to review it. Please see
our developer policy on AI-generated contributions:

Love it.

discourse.llvm.org/t/rfc-llvm-a...

[RFC] LLVM AI tool policy: start small, no slop

Hey folks, over the course of 2025 it’s become clear that we need policy tools to help maintainers push back against unwanted AI generated content (aka slop) in our project. We have a 64-comment threa...

discourse.llvm.org

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 5d

I can confirm it needs an HIL keyboard as the HP-IB port is for a disk drive, amongst other things. But the DIP switches were set for serial console, which works great. A lovely machine.

The inside of an HP 9000 Model 340. You can see a PSU, some RAM sticks unlike anything from a PC, and a big graphics card with just three BNC outputs

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 6d

mixed platform workspaces are just such a pain though. I end up just making two workspaces, and suffering the misery it causes to my CI config.

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 6d

Exhibit F - the machine I actually went to collect, which is an HP 9000 Model 340. A Motorola 68000 based UNIX workstation, which pre-dates the PA-RISC line. Very excited to try this, but I will need to find a GPIB keyboard?! Or maybe it does serial console.

Not a bad afternoon's work.

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 6d

Exhibit D - an IBM RS/6000 Model 7012. I haven't opened this one yet but I've wanted an RS/6000 for ages! So excited.

Exhibit E - a DEC MicroVAX 3100. A little biddy desktop VAX box. I have no idea about VAXen - will be interesting.

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 6d

Exhibit C - an HP 9000 Model 715. The larger of the two that run NextSTEP 3.3 for PA-RISC, this one has the 100 MHz CPU. It POSTS, but it couldn't find a keyboard. We had a weird RJ45 to PS/2 keyboard adapter but couldn't make it work.

This HP and the SPARCstation 10 went to my mate Matt.

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 6d

Exhibit B - SPARCstation 10. Has dual 60 MHz SuperSPARC CPUs and also works fine. Booted into NetBSD without issues.

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 6d

Exhibit A - a SPARCstation 20, with dual Ross HyperSPARC CPUs at 150 MHz. This is an absolutely cooking version of the SPARCstation 20 and bar one bad RAM module, and a slightly dicky SCSI drive, seems to work fine. Runs so hot though.

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 6d

I picked up a new computer today. Blame @robert.smallshire.no.

Whilst I was there I picked up six more. Oops.

To be fair, two I immediately gave away, on the grounds of extreme space shortages.

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 7d

They should, but people often just stick with the defaults and the defaults are bad (for some value of bad).

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 8d

Despite living in the village that was home to Pipex, I was a Force 9 user.

Then I moved to screaming net’s unlimited dial up service. I still remember the sniffy letter they sent everyone claiming the service was being “abused”. I’d simply set the modem to auto redial.

Reposted by Jonathan Pallant

Yuri Astrakhan @nyurik.bsky.social · 8d

My #RustConf '25 talk has posted! The story of adapting #rustlang at Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies ...

Slides: docs.google.com/presentation...
Rust jobs @ RVT: docs.google.com/document/d/e...
Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RIx...

Yuri Astrakhan: "Adapting Rust @ Rivian Cars: Coolest Tech to the Next-Gen EVs" | RustConf 2025

YouTube video by Rust Foundation

www.youtube.com

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 8d

I am attempting to make a working Rust toolchain for sparc64-linux-gnu and I’m having a pretty hard time of it because I have to cross-compile it. Every time I change some build settings it starts over.

Reposted by Jonathan Pallant

The Centre for Computing History @computinghistory.org.uk · 8d

The exhibitors are telling us what they're bringing to the RCF - and, wow, what a line up! PDPs and oscilloscopes from the dawn of gaming to brand new projects for the Sega Mega Drive - and into the future with the Spectrum Next! Tickets are selling fast - www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/74558/re...

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 8d

I am recompiling LLVM for the seventh time today.

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 9d

Matt Berry with The Orchid is the best advert I’ve seen in years. Decades even. Just go watch it.

Reposted by Jonathan Pallant

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 10d

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 11d

Fantastic! Up to 1.88 required non-null for volatile reads.

doc.rust-lang.org/1.88.0/src/c...

mod.rs - source

Source of the Rust file `library/core/src/ptr/mod.rs`.

doc.rust-lang.org

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 11d

I accidentally wrote an RTOS, and then wrote about the RTOS I accidentally wrote

thejpster.org.uk/blog/blog-20...

thejpster.org.uk

Jonathan Pallant @thejpster.org.uk · 11d

A colleague was tasked with writing code that did a CRC of all of flash and IIRC they had to resort to assembly because flash starts at zero and rust was getting proper moody about reading that first word.