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Ron Williams Powers-of-2 Challenge

Ron Williams has made a "powers of 2" printout on the 1403 printer.

See this Jan 28, 2006 report.

He proposes that "the rest of us" should try to code this up - in machine language -

- and I presume toggle it into the 1401 and make it work !!!

He thinks the result should be as compact as possible to win.

He thinks anyone who would stoop to Autocoder is a whimp!! :-((

Van Snyder has offered two object code (card image) solutions:

- a one card solution, but no zero suppression

- a two card solution, with zero suppression
Ron says he will send trolls after me if I tell folks Van's answers - *really*

I (Ed Thelen) freely admit to being a whimp

Heck - I was a software whimp for 30 years :-))

(A few years fixing hardware in the field (60 hours/week) convinced me an office job was better!!)

Not only that, but I'm lazy too :-((

And willing to let a software tool (assembler, or even compiler) help me :-|

Heck - I ain't against a little automation !!!
Now - how to fire up Ron Mak's ROPE?

Hey Ron - how about a prize - maybe you could make and offer a bird?

One with feathers or a finger or something???

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Around March 2009, Stan Paddock made a much less much less compact program
- which prints out the powers of 2
followed by
a text version of the largest printed number,

"Scientific notation" - 1.234567 x 10^55 is such a convenience.
- but not usually expressed to 132 digit accuracy ;-))

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On July 25,2011, Van Snyder e-mailed to many people
- " HzG " is Sindelfingen, Germany

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I ran a two-card program at HzG two weeks ago:

,008015,022027,023036,,031,043/327/,0470471001 #1
1 1 1 11 1 1 11 1 1
,055056L060332B022 2,200A328Z328,A036332Z332B022200 .2 1 #2
1 1 1 11 1 1 11 1 1 11
....5...10...15...20...25...30...35...40...45...50...55...60...65...70...75...80

It computed and printed the powers of two up to 2^425 (128 digits). I
labeled the "deck" "The Power of Two," both because it prints the powers
of two, and because it fits on two cards. I left it for Rolf Ziegler to
run as a demo for his visitors. CHM might like to punch up one to run
on the CT or DE machine for visitors.

If core is already cleared, you can fit something similar onto one card.
This one prints up to 2^438 (132 digits), but doesn't print the
exponents:

,008015,022023,059077,,030037,044048,060064,068L0773322,200a332Z332B055200 .1
1 1 1 11 1 1 1 1 11 1 1 1 11
....5...10...15...20...25...30...35...40...45...50...55...60...65...70...75...80

Try THAT on 360 or MIPS or x86 or 680x0 or ....

Van

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Updated July 25,2011

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