IBM 5100 on sale at Ebay

[sosuemetoo]

For all you Titor enthusiasts. There is an IBM 5100 on sale at Ebay. Might be a good addition to your "Titor is a hoax celebration".

You'll have to pay a bit for it. I watched it go from $13.00 to $305.00 USD in an hour.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5220432047&fromMakeTrack=true

 

[Hercules]

Here I can suggest a possible METOD of DEBUNKING John Titor for the Anti-Titors.

The research I did shows that the “LEGACY CODE” was hidden in the ROM of that IBM 5100, which Titor came for. He HINTED to have fixed Y2K with that “Legacy Code” in 1998(before coming to 2000) so that the UNIX bug in our WORLDLINE was prevented.

Here is my point. The LEGACY CODE is hidden in the IBM 5100’s ROM. To access it, an ENGINEER has to TWEAK it in 1975. Now with today’s Technology, if someone can find a WAY to check its ROM, whether the LEGACY CODE is left HIDDEN on IT, then IF it is there, TITOR could not be proved as a REAL TT, but if there is no such code, DAMN SURE HE IS A HOAX and you can have the HOAX party now itself.

I am very curious to know if it can be done.

 

[RenUnconscious]

Here is my point. The LEGACY CODE is hidden in the IBM 5100’s ROM. To access it, an ENGINEER has to TWEAK it in 1975. Now with today’s Technology, if someone can find a WAY to check its ROM, whether the LEGACY CODE is left HIDDEN on IT, then IF it is there, TITOR could not be proved as a REAL TT, but if there is no such code, DAMN SURE HE IS A HOAX and you can have the HOAX party now itself.

This is pretty easy to accomplish. There are multiple machines where you drop the ROM chip into them and they'll download the entire hard coded contents. This would probably come out in some type of basic or assembly language, but regardless my understanding was that this was a cross compiler. meaning it can take code from one language, and on the fly convert it to another language. All thats needed is the actual hard coded internal compiler/conversion so that you can emulate this with software.

This is why you would only need 1 IBM 5100, you rip it, emulate it, and voila there's your code.

My prob with the whole thing is, the bug in Unix is related to 32 bit programming/CPU's. We are already in the area of having 64 bit desktop computers and having older programs recompiled. There must have been one specific program/type of program that Titor wanted to recompile from 32bit into 64 bit or higher. This could be anything on the Internet though, hell the root servers probably run Unix, if they died, bye bye Internet.

 

[newbie_0]

Wow I was laughing at $300, but the price is over a grand now. The unit doesn't even boot??

Herc, if you need to fix a program, you fix in on the host platform. You don't go back in time to get an old slow computer. That simple.

 

[RenUnconscious]

newb,

its not about the old slow computer, its specifically about that rom chip, as mentioned by herc. there are internal compilers and conversion utilities to convert between basic computer languages. That is what was so important, as I said they can emulate the hardware but you can't do that without extracting it from those rom chips.

 

[newbie_0]

I disagree, I would say it's SPECIFICALLY about fixing the 2038 bug.

An old rom chip will not help you fix a software problem. You fix software on it's host platform.

 

[Hercules]

newbie_0,

Whenever I talk about this issue, you give the same response.

It’s a slow computer, hell yeah it is ONE OLD SLOW HISTORIC MONUMENT. I am not saying it is gifted with some MAGIC that makes it VERY fast and SOLVE a BUG.

Here is my explanation. Ren, please pay attention to this, I want your response.

1. The LEGACY CODE is the one used by IBM in its early programming days which used to run the DATES in Computers. The date format is MM/DD/YY. Are you CEAR with this part?

2. The next thing is IBM without knowing added the LEGACY CODE into the semiconductor materials when they were mass manufactured in the early 70s. After the production, they REALISE that if their COMPETITORS access it, then it would not be good for their business in the FUTURE. But then, the ROMs were already produced in the early 70s so they wouldn’t invest in producing them AGAIN without the LEGACY CODE in it. That is where Titor said.

However, that information was never published by IBM because it would have probably destroyed a large part of their business infrastructure in the early 70s

3. The next thing is IBM sold them after disabling the access to LEGACY CODE, but it is STILL in the ROM. That is where the “TWEAKING” comes in. To access the LEGACY CODE, Titor’s grandfather has to TWEAK it.

4. Now comes Y2K. What is Y2K? the YY in MM/DD/YY. How to change it was the question in 1998. WHY not it is EASY just to make an emulator. It is because the CODE that WAS used to program was very old and no one knew how to change it if not by COMLEX programming in 1998. This is what happened in Titor’s worldline and they were hit by Y2K where they spent a LOT of money to the PROGRAMMERS and the Y2K38 timeout bug still existed in 2038 even in 64-bit systems.

5. Titor made a side trip to prepare his family. He wrote:

I would like to examine the software you mentioned; perhaps I can further justify my side-trip.

Here is where you should pay ATTENTION. How is he going to JUSTIFY his side trip and then further justify it with that software? The answer,Y2K. From 1975 he made a trip to 1998 where, without revealing he is a TT, he gave the Tweaked IBM 5100 to the correct person so that the code can be ripped and he can take it back safely on a CD and also find out whether that code can fix Y2K. Note that this computer is TWEAKED so that the code can be accessed.

Now read No.1 and No.4 again you’ll understand the rest.

He comes back to 2000 and collects the emulators and also returns with the original code and the IBM 5100.

NOTE that there are things he NEVER openly said. I dug it up from his posts.

Now Ren, is this right? Can you find out whether such a CODE is hidden in the ROM?

 

[newbie_0]

1. The LEGACY CODE is the one used by IBM in its early programming days which used to run the DATES in Computers. The date format is MM/DD/YY. Are you CEAR with this part?

The reference manuals for APL and BASIC on the 5100 are available on the internet. I took a few hours to look them over and there isn't a single date function whatsoever on that machine. The hardware didn't have a clock either.

And the 2038 bug doesn't deal with MM/DD/YY it deals with number of seconds since January 1, 1970. A 32 digit binary number can't represent times beyond Jan 19 03:14:07, 2038.

2. The next thing is IBM without knowing added the LEGACY CODE into the semiconductor materials when they were mass manufactured in the early 70s. After the production, they REALISE that if their COMPETITORS access it, then it would not be good for their business in the FUTURE. But then, the ROMs were already produced in the early 70s so they wouldn’t invest in producing them AGAIN without the LEGACY CODE in it. That is where Titor said.

You can't add anything to hardware without realizing it. Even a spec of dust will ruin your chip. What IBM did, due to time constraints, was use a genuine S/360 cpu to get a fully compatible version of APL.

It wasn't a "secret" but it wasn't something they would brag about. They spent a couple years selling S/360 mainframes for $100,000 and then they make a tiny portable machine was out for a tenth of the price with the same hardware. Not a way to win customers.

3. The next thing is IBM sold them after disabling the access to LEGACY CODE, but it is STILL in the ROM. That is where the “TWEAKING” comes in. To access the LEGACY CODE, Titor’s grandfather has to TWEAK it.

The very definition of ROM means it's untweakable. It's read only, you can't tweak it.

We've just come so far since the 70's man. Even if the 5100 is hooked up to a piece of critical hardware, someone could make an interface rather than travel through time.

If/When I read news stories about every computer programmer and electronics engineer being taken away to a secret camp I'd believe this might be needed. There's just so many people who have the skills to troubleshoot and write software I don't understand why you think it's possible.



I challenge all time travelers, if you need legacy code, pick me up, I'll write your code, DONT CORRUPT MY DAMN WORLD LINE.

 

[Hercules]

You can't add anything to hardware without realizing it. Even a spec of dust will ruin your chip. What IBM did, due to time constraints, was use a genuine S/360 cpu to get a fully compatible version of APL.

I’ll be a fool if I meant that. I meant the IBM added it without considering the fact that their competitors might use it. When they realized it, it is too late so they did something to prevent anyone from accessing it. I am not sure whether it can be done in 1975, but that fits it.

The very definition of ROM means it's untweakable. It's read only, you can't tweak it.

Yeah its Read Only. That’s why I said when something is written into it once, it cannot be DELETED, that is why IBM DISABLED it.

The very definition of “tweaking” in computer field is, to access something and do something which the manufacturer has restricted from doing but it can be done. Yeah I have WinXP tweak that allows me to customize my settings without which I cannot do it in WinXP. Its illegal isn’t it?

I challenge all time travelers, if you need legacy code, pick me up, I'll write your code, DONT CORRUPT MY DAMN WORLD LINE.

Why then, Y2K was viewed so seriously in 1998? As something which could not be solved cuz the code they are dealing with is very OLD?

 

[newbie_0]

I meant the IBM added it without considering the fact that their competitors might use it. When they realized it, it is too late so they did something to prevent anyone from accessing it. I am not sure whether it can be done in 1975, but that fits it.

Any competitor would see exactly what IBM did but with the right marketing, peoples eyes will just glass over when you try to tell them something they don't believe in.

I don't think TweakXP is illegal, it just sets variables to tell windows to do something differently.

Why then, Y2K was viewed so seriously in 1998?

Because it sold newspapers. $$$$$

 

[Hercules]

Thanks for the info.

link where you can read in detail about the issue is in a PDF format.

http://www.senate.gov/~y2k/documents/final.pdf

What I infer from this is, the Y2K WAS viewed seriously.

An emulator.

. Hercules is a software implementation of the System/370, ESA/390 and z/Architecture hardware for Linux and Windoof systems.
Hercules was created by Roger Bowler and is maintained by Jay Maynard. Jan Jaeger designed and implemented many of the advanced features of Hercules, including dynamic reconfiguration, integrated console, interpretive execution and z/Architecture support.
Refer to http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules/ for further reading.
I call Hercules the programmers toy of the Y2K.
This toy offers a completely open source mainframe at home, it enabled me to patch OS/360 Y2K, and it's rapidly becoming good enough to run a wide range of software without problems.

http://open360.copyleft.de/Open360/Hercules.html

Back when Y2k was the buzzword of the day and everyone was doing remediation, I gathered togeth
er a lot of date manipulation routines I had written in prior years. They were originally written in COBOL, BASIC, and even Microsoft MASM. From this hodgepodge collection, I believe that I have put together a set of routines that will do just about anything one could want to do with a date. And when I rewrote them, they ended up in 370 Assembler.

http://www.jaymoseley.com/hercules/miscpgms.htm

What do you think of this emulator?

Unfortunately, OS/360 was not Y2K clean. IBM never provided patches for it. So I decided to learn assembler to fix OS/360, while ignoring people telling me, that a fix is impossible. It was much easier than thought. The affected parts of the source sometimes had comments with 'please patch here', if one is used to read between the lines.

http://open360.copyleft.de/Open360/OS_360_Y2K.html

 

[RenUnconscious]

This is what happened in Titor’s worldline and they were hit by Y2K where they spent a LOT of money to the PROGRAMMERS and the Y2K38 timeout bug still existed in 2038 even in 64-bit systems.

Yes this bug will exist in all 32 bit software running on 64 bit hardware systems. Hence the need for the "tweak" and the emulation software, etc.

Now Ren, is this right? Can you find out whether such a CODE is hidden in the ROM?

Anyone could, a ROM chip is nothing more than a bunch of 1's and 0's hard coded, you can think of this as your computers cmos/bios you would be lost without this predefined hard coded information making the computer accessible in different terms.

Most all mainstream desktop computers today are running x86 RISC/CISC type instruction sets. I will not get into the details, but essentially software is written, compiled, and then works with the particular instruction set. If a company were not sure x86 would always be the favored instruction set they could include a software emulation hard coded into the chip.

A PERFECT example of this is Intel's Itanium processor, the IA-64, which used emulation hard coded into the chip to convert on the fly, instructions, into x86. That is PRECISELY what we are talking about. If you can rip the data from the chip, you can build an emulator to duplicate how the instructions are read, processed, converted into the IBM Legacy instruction set, and thats all it is people. However you can't just do this from scratch, having to reverse engineer a compiler conversion utility without the original documentation from IBM would be virtually impossible, making the hardware absolutely necessary to acquire in order to accomplish your task. ok I prolly blew most peoples minds I'll shaddup for a while.

 

[newbie_0]

http://www.senate.gov/~y2k/documents/final.pdf

What I infer from this is, the Y2K WAS viewed seriously.

Herc, the government takes money seriously. They didn't rush to fix y2k to keep people safe. They did it to keep the money safe. They made people think they were making sure airplanes weren't going to fall from the sky meanhwhile, the banking sector got a big overhaul on our tax dollars.

The above applies to my goverment, yours and the USA. They care more about money than anything.

http://www.law.mcgill.ca/quid/archive/2004/04021002.html

Canada Steamship Lines: A Company that Cares
We begin our sordid story with Canada Steamship Lines (CSL), the company Martin owned until very recently when he transferred ownership to his sons. Under Martin's leadership, CSL began to fly what is known as "flags of convenience" on many of the ships in its fleet. The basic idea is that a Canadian company registers Canadian ships under the flag of another country such as Panama (who loses more ships at sea than any other country), Bahamas (which doesn't require its ships to be double-hulled), or Cyprus (one of their ships broke in half off the coast of Newfoundland, killing 15 sailors). I'm sure you noticed a pattern emerging - flags of convenience countries are considerably less stringent with regard to safety; in fact, 44% of the world's maritime shipping losses involve ships flying these flags. As if low safety standards would not create enough incentive, these countries also offer foreign companies massive tax exemptions and have pitiful labour and environmental standards. To give you an example of how this affects workers at home and abroad, in 1988, Martin re-flagged a ship, laid off his $11.68 / hr. Canadian crew and replaced them with a Filipino crew working at $1.74/ hr. Upon learning this, I couldn't help but think to myself, "Gee, this guy is all heart."

Needless to say, the bloom was already off the Martin rose when I tuned into a CBC documentary that discussed the demise of sensitive marine life. It focused on the practice of dumping excess oil into the ocean to lighten a ship's weight. (You kill a bunch of birds but you save on fuel). Much of the footage was taken from a Department of Fisheries and Oceans aircraft that caught two ships in the act of dumping off the coast of Nova Scotia. One of them was called the Atlas, a ship owned by, you guessed it, Canada Steamship Lines. Of course, it was flying a Bahamian flag and was operated by an affiliate in Britain but I think we've all figured out how this works by now. Now, before some member of the Young Liberals blasts me in next week's Quid (people seem to enjoy misquoting me with reckless abandon), I am fully aware that Martin placed CSL into a not-so-blind trust, supposedly designed to eliminate his executive role in the company. Even if this were true, he is still the beneficiary and therefore profits from this deplorable practice of dumping toxic waste. As Canada's most important legislator, he has an obligation to denounce the practice. As of yet, I have heard no such declaration. I guess Mr. Martin just believes in passing Canadian law, not following it.

http://www.greenpeace.ca/e/feature/1103_paulmartin.php

The CSL ship "The Manitoulin" almost certainly contained toxic materials and, unless these were removed prior to the ship's being sent to a shipbreaking yard in Turkey in 2002, these will have posed a significant threat to workers and the environment.

The left the ship on a beach in Turkey next to a populated area. Turkey didn't want it, they sent it to India. Cheaper than legal recycling and if anyone complains, nobody will believe their leader would do such a thing!!

 

[Hercules]

newbie, what exactly is your point? Why do you want to go OFF-TOPIC?
Any way if you tell this to the opposition party, it’ll help them for the next elections!!!!

Pursuing the Titor story is MORE interesting than reading it.

Now this guy is Roger Bowler.

He was the FIRST one to make an s/360 emulator(Hercules) in OUR WORLDLINE.

From the Rochester Magazine, August 2004:

According to Bob Dubke, the second engineer on IBM's 5100 team in Rochester, that secret function was his contribution to the design of the computer. The function, which IBM suppressed because of worries about how their competition might use it, was an interface between the assembly code surrounding the computer's ROM exterior, and the 360 emulator hidden beneath it. (IBM declined to comment for this story.) The 5100's emulator gave programmers access to the functions of the monstrous, and much less portable machines, that IBM had produced during the 1960s. An imprint of a hook on the outside of the 5100 symbolized the ability of Dubke's interface to drop into what Titor called "legacy code," and scoop out any necessary operating instructions.

I did a research on the s/360 emulator. It is NOT POSSIBLE to make an s/360 emulator to run on any PC BEFORE Roger Bowler did it.

YOU SAY IT IS POSSIBLE TODAY BECAUSE IT IS ALREADY THERE TODAY.

Don’t try to screw me up on this one newbie, let me ask you a QUESTION. If it is possible to make an s/360 emulator, why didn’t Roger Bowler DO IT BEFORE 1998?(April 1998 if you want me to be MORE PRECISE)

The s/360 emulator was hidden in IBM 5100’s ROM. Without it YOU CANNOT SIMPLY make an EMULATOR. Roger Bowler was somehow able to access it (with Titor’s involvement in 1998) and that’s how he MADE it. Another news is that Hercules was finally well perfected in MAY 2000. That is VERY WELL before Titor arrived here and left. So Titor was leaving with the Emulator also.

Posted by John Titor on 02-10-2001 09:49 AM
I would like to examine the software you mentioned; perhaps I can further justify my side-trip.

 

[creedo299]

What if they used the 5100 to emulate the timeline and passed this emulation off as the Titor timeline?

 

[Hercules]

What if they used the 5100 to emulate the timeline and passed this emulation off as the Titor timeline?

I don’t know what you mean but here’s the Deal.

Instead of taking the RAW 5100 directly in to HIS Worldline from 1975, Titor travels to 1998 and rips the code from the ROM and LEAKS it out without REVEALING him as a TT.

Roger Bowler gets the code and makes an emulator. Titor travels forward to 2000 to collect it and also PREPARES his family. A COMBO trip I guess.

Now there is no need for this mission in 2036 in OUR worldline cuz the code which is needed is already there with us.

Now isn’t it better than taking the RAW 5100 to his Worldline and make software engineers to break their heads, you get the job done for free. Cheaper than OUTSOURCING I guess!!

 

[newbie_0]

Well I admit the date you point out he started on the emmulator is interesting.

Sorry about off topic, my point was simply that Titor is not worth researching. Worry more about real issues that affect the community like where to store nuclear waste etc.

 

[Hercules]

Sorry about off topic, my point was simply that Titor is not worth researching.

Good point. Titor is not WORTH researching at all. Well what is the practical USE if I or MEM or you (sometimes) do useful things and validate his identity as a Time Traveler? There are those who say it is a CRIME. Nevertheless, it is more interesting than playing GTA: San Andreas.

Worry more about real issues that affect the community like where to store nuclear waste etc.

I am worried more about what if Titor was real and a disaster strikes in the last week of December. If you remember,

http://www.timetravelinstitute.com/ttiforum/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=time_travel&Number=33889&page=2&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

I can’t forget what happened last year. The havoc that the Tsunami created and all the aftershocks and DRASTIC climatic changes in my place.

With the winter Olympics announced in Feb 2006, it is more clear that there will be no 2008 thing as I believe.

Titor claims the average climate globally is a bit lower in 2036. If he was HOAX why would he make such a statement with the rising temperatures globally? Of course this interpretation is not mine, its from some other thread.

 

[RainmanTime]

Well what is the practical USE if I or MEM or you (sometimes) do useful things and validate his identity as a Time Traveler?

And this is the major bone of contention, for I think you are really fooling yourself:

1) You have certainly not validated any part of his actual words such that he is/was a time traveler.
2) In the vast majority of cases, you took his (extremely vague) words, made some assumptions about them, placed your own interpretations upon them, and then weakly tied them to some current event. As a systems engineer who deals in validation, I can tell you that this is NOT validation. I don't know what it is, but it is not scientific at all. At best, it is extrapolation.
3) Of what practical use do you think your attempts at validation could be helpful?

As far as what you are doing being labeled a "crime", I do not believe we went that far. However, I do notice that you never addressed my analogy of yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater. Would you like to tell me how your alarmist interpretations are somehow different than this analogy?

Wasting your time trying to "validate" the Titor story is one thing, but when you make wild speculations that could alarm other people (who may be gullible enough to think you are really being scientific when you are not) is another deal altogether.

RMT

 

[IgnorantSentient]

what was the major problem with the Y2K bug? erasing bank records and all information do to a system restart... too many years previous. Now, afterwards, why didn't people just make NEW computers???

EDIT: newbie, just track the guy down and ask him. haha. Seriously though, I'm sure it's not that hard.