Box of Papers

Hey guys, I recently stumbled upon a collection (a rather large one) of old papers. They're sorted into three categories in large manila folders: Spirit, Machine and Synthesis (as titled on their collective folders). The Machine one in particular intrigues me, it's the designs for what appears to be a computer, circa ~1980's, but has some weird features. For starters, it doesn't use any processor I can identify, and some of the documents appear to describe what I believe to be the CPU. It's got a lot of modernish features like a significantly reduced instruction set, and deep pipelining. I can't seem to find any reference to any of this online anywhere, it seems to be original work. The Spirit collection appears to be a translation of Buddhist-esque writings, talking about rebirth, nirvana and some conception of the soul. I've yet to venture deeply into these documents, they seem very lofty and esoteric. The Synthesis collection is just strange, I have no way to describe it. It bounces from computer code (resembling LISP, although I can say with confidence it isn't any LISP I've ever seen) to koans and back again. These documents are all visually degraded with age, some of the text is faded, some pages are water damaged, overall just a strange old collection. My initial hypothesis is some buddhist-leaning programmer or system engineer devised all of this material, but to what end I don't know. A lot of it is vague, yet intricate. The designs and code in particular appear to be robust on their face (I have some background in computer science, although a lot of this does admittedly go over my head), while the spirit texts seem coherent and intelligent. I should note I'm only basing my observation that it is intended to be "spiritual" based on what is written on the folders that contain these texts, rather than merely their content; there may be something more to it that I'm simply missing out of having not read them all yet. All in all, the collection is in a rather large file box, it takes up an entire shelf now on my book case. I think I'll begin transcribing the documents for publication, and I might try my hand at working out and writing an emulator for this mysterious machine. There's no disks or any kind of digital copy of anything, so I'll likely take some time for either project to bear fruit. Would other Lains be interested in this sort of content if I were to publish it?

Absolutely! That sounds comfy as hell. Idk exactly what you have in mind when you say "transcribe" but I'd suggest just scanning the pages. Its nice to preserve the little details like margin notes, hand-drawn figures, and handwriting quirks.

>>7128 I agree, it would be cool if OP could scan and post a couple of the pages here.

Please do scan some random samples!

First and foremost it is your duty to digitize these materials ASAP!

>>7132 Oh shi... I hope he's faster than the NSA

The machine designs sound most interesting to me. There were a lot novel machine architecture designs before economy of scale killed pretty much everything except x86 and ARM. And, very little of these designs are available online. Hardware manufacturers keep very tight grips on all that knowledge. I think it'd be better to get rough scans up first so other people can go at them immediately, rather than bottlenecking on transcription. Touching up the raw scans, OCRing the text, correcting it, etc can be done later. ToCs, cover pages, indices, etc should be posted first. Any idea where they came from? Any logos or names?

You shouldn't have posted about it. They're coming for you now. In all seriousness this sounds freaking cool. Scan 'em up for us, lain.

Absolutely OP

>>7128 >>7130 >>7142 I haven't got a scanner, so it'll have to be pictures at first until I can get some money saved. >>7132 Onnit Captain >>7142 Some of the papers aren't in any particular order, and I haven't seen any ToCs. There is a logo though on some of the schematic diagrams and technical documentation, a twisted loop (pic related) and the text "ESWG", on several papers. I've seen many pages signed "M.K.", "J.M.", and "M.M." but no full names. Most of the signed papers are letters. Most of the content is cryptic though, so I'm still not 100% what any of it means. This weekend I'll try to get a sampler together of some of the more interesting papers. PS. >>7138 >>7143 I don't think any of this is that serious, although who knows. If I don't come back, you'll know why.

>>7146 Here's my guess: ESWG stands for English Speaking Working Group [of the ISFG] The ISFG is the International Society for Forensic Genetics. https://www.isfg.org M.K. Could stand for Maarten Kruijver Maybe the picture is of some unraveled sequence of genetics or something. This also kind of ties in with your OP since you said there is a Synthesis folder. This could be referring to gene synthesis.

>>7146 >I haven't got a scanner You mean every thrift store in your town doesn't have several flat bed scanners just sitting around collecting dust? Used scanners are cheap.

>>7151 I checked today, none have any. I'm not in a region known for technology, just industry.

>>7146 Phone photo in good light? Just give us a taaaste op!

>>7169 What the fuarrrk Scanners are kinda low tech nowadays

>>7169 get a scanner app and make that soykaf into a PDF one page at a time

>>7172 I agree, hence my disappointment. >>7173 This will likely be necessary

Ok with much ado I present the first page. This one is in good condition, part of a folder subtitled "CPU - ECP100". The document appears to present a series of ALUs (Arithmetic Logic Units) connected together into a grid with reference to registers. Notes specify that the design is intended to increase parallelism by way of specializing units to one operation. This differs from traditional CPU design in that a generic ALU often does a large collection of operations. Sorry for the delay. I got both a phone call, and an email earlier today that put me off, but I'm undeterred. I'll discuss that later when I'm more confident I understand the meaning behind them and the risk they carry. The next post will be to do with a Spirit document. After, I'll be bringing in a Synthesis document.

Did OP get kill by ''The Organization''?

there's no libraries where you are? they usually have book scanners. Especially university libraries. You could also go to kinko's or some other print shop but that's expensive.

>>7184 >it's a brand-new sheet of paper

>>7504 The type of ink pen marker he is using was not available until mid-90's. Really bugs the eye. LARP attempt 2/10 - very poor.

>>7509 to be fair, the concept is at least 7 or 8/10... it's OP's execution that's the problem.

Sorry for the long absence, I got hit by a car. Recovering now. Still alive. >>7498 I live in a tiny place. Never even heard of Kinko's until you mentioned it. >>7509 I don't know what kind of pen it is. Sorry to disappoint you. >>7504 > well preserved as I mentioned in the text I got a phone call back before I posted the first sheet. I was told to "avoid broadcasting". At the same time an email came in and it read the same thing. Needless to say, I'm uncertain of the severity of the threat. Getting hit by a car seems like dumb luck [sic]. On the plus side, there's going to be a settlement in it for me. Next up is a couple pages from the "spirit" section. These sections are long and drawling to the point of being tedious. I'll likely avoid these mostly in the future. The pages are slightly water damaged, and there's a yellowish hue to them. Overall readability is still good though. Anyways, to the >>7509 >>7511 larp'ers, this isn't your game - sorry. >>7497 I don't know who's trying to spook me, but they're pretty mild for an "organization" complete with scare quotes.

>>7523 Ugh. I hate it when people mix print and cursive together. >I got hit by a car Were you inside a different car when it hit you? Did they actually run right into you?

>>7524 I was on the crosswalk. The car clipped my legs and broke one of them pretty severely. I lucked out he was only doing about 15kph, still a lot of damage though. Driver's lawyer/insurance due to meet my lawyer in a few weeks time.

>>7529 xD

>>7529 you'll never catch me alive!

>>7529 Never.

How to make documents look old: put the papers in a box, then put some crickets inside, they'll poop all over the papers, then it will look old. I am not even kidding, in my country people used this technique to create fake documents and claim lands, when the state started registering who owns the lands , you could just give them a pseudo-old paper "proving" that you own a land X and they would accept it.

>>7538 I understand your concerns, but I'm not forging documents. I'm merely reporting a curious old find.

>>7539 I like the idea, but since this is the Internet, we can never be certain :/ If you could post a lot of papers in a short time we would be sure that you are not forging documents, since it's hard to write good quality content in so little time.

>>7540 I could yes. But what is the fun of that? I'd rather you double-guess it. "Is this just some old troll fuarrrking with me, or is there a spark of truth in there?" I'll consider your request in earnest, but I'm not making any promises. I like the game aspect to this disclosure.

Now I am really intrigued would you mind sending us a few photos so that we can statisfy our curiosity also confirm that this isn't some hoax?

in short, either you're (academically) a philistine (for not systematically publishing), or this is a hoax and you're (in the aesthetics of hoaxing) a philistine (same reasons).

>>7574 OP? Are you constantly lurking this thread or using a bot to do it for you?

Did op died again?

>>7883 Probably

>>7883 This thread was dead from the start