Running a Minecraft Server and More on a 1960s Univac Computer
135 points by brilee 4 days ago | 22 comments
djmips 2 hours ago
I would like to see this code instead compiled native instead of via the RISC-V interpreter.
replykaladin-jasnah 6 hours ago
Hah, I heard about this at VCF East this year, but didn't get to check out the exhibit. There was another MC server demo running on old Macs IIRC. Shame the event was cut short due to a bomb threat.
replypetterroea 3 hours ago
Stupid question, would a quick&dirty LLVM backend for univac be possible to write, or are there inherent incompatibilities due to its weird architecture?
replycaminanteblanco 6 hours ago
replymghackerlady 5 hours ago
I watched the video when it came out, I've been a fan of his stuff for a while. It'd been a while since he uploaded and I was rewatching some of his videos the night before this was uploaded!
replyvaughnegut 5 hours ago
Favourite article I've read in a while, what a delight. I wonder what kind of performance you could get if someone hand wrote a dedicated, modern C compiler for it.
replyvoidUpdate 5 hours ago
According to the article, it takes 40 univac instructions to run a single risc-v instruction, so potentially up to 40x the current performance. Though you'd probably need more instructions to do things than a single one, so probably less than that, say 10-20x? Especially if you made a custom compiler that made the best use of the hardware you could, since it's weird
replycommandlinefan 3 hours ago
> it takes 40 univac instructions to run a single risc-v instruction
replyWhich is wild, given:
> The computer’s original purpose was to be used by the Navy to read in radar signals and direct artillery
I'd really be fascinated to see how that was done on such a primitive machine, shame that's probably been lost.
mrgaro 51 minutes ago
The radar "reading" was done by first plotting analog radar signals to the antique rotary radar displays. Then there would be human operators with a light pen, marking each radar signature on each radar turn.
replySo the Univac would receive input coordinates for each target and track those in memory each turn.
"a bit" is doing a lot of work there. It was absolute nonsense. They were no closer to running a Minecraft server than I am to running UKGOV.
Connect in the sense of receiving a login packet and saying "yes". That's it. Steps 1, 2, 3, 9, 10 of [0] (they didn't mention encryption or compression, I'm assuming they didn't implement it.)
They didn't mention anything about any of the steps past 10 - again, assuming they didn't implement them.
It's a trivial thing they've implemented - good work, sure, but a Minecraft server? Absolutely not.
[0] https://minecraft.wiki/w/Java_Edition_protocol/FAQ#What's_th...?
Anything for the thumbnail.
You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike. A cacodaemon floats by, hissing.