About
Logical Art builds interactive explanations of difficult machines. Each one is a working model you operate, and each says where it stops being faithful to the real thing.
The machines are on the studio index. How they are checked is in the method. If you have found something wrong, corrections says how to tell us.
Why it exists
A picture of a machine cannot surprise you
Most explanations of how a machine works show it working. You watch, you nod, and you cannot find out whether the explanation is right. A model you can push on can fail in front of you, and a number it prints can be checked against the document it came from.
That is the whole reason for the studio. The method sets out what it costs and what it is held to.
Why the machines are old as well as new
The ideas that hold up a modern system were mostly worked out under a constraint that is easy to see: a punched card, a five-bit code, a modem at 300 baud. Starting there shows why the later layers look the way they do. The studio index puts every machine in one chronology so you can read it that way.
Who builds it
Cisco Caceres, who is responsible for what the pages say
Cisco Caceres writes the models, the explanations and the checks. He toggled his first program into an Altair through its front-panel switches in the late 1970s and ran bulletin board systems at 300 baud in the 1980s. He served in the US Navy aboard USS Missouri in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and from 1995 built the publishing platform behind MSNBC.
He has no electrical engineering degree. Treat the sources on each page as the authority, not the author. More about him is on ciscocaceres.com.
How AI tools are used
AI tools assist with drafting, review and checking. Nothing is published that a tool produced from start to finish, and all of it is under the author's name and responsibility. The full statement is in the method.
Who publishes it
RoamingPigs, Inc., in Las Vegas, Nevada
Logical Art is a studio of RoamingPigs, Inc., which also publishes the RoamingPigs Field Manual, an independent technical publication. The Field Manual is separate: it carries its own editorial policy.
What this is not
It is not a service. There is no account, no sign-up and no advertising, and nothing is for sale here.
It is not a replacement for the source. Each page links the standard, patent or paper it was built from. For the authority on a machine, read that.
Writing to us
One address, for errors and for suggestions
Write to [email protected]. The corrections page says what to include, and what a machine has to be before it is worth suggesting. There is no comment thread and no newsletter.
Sources
This page states facts about people and a company rather than about a machine, so its sources are the pages where those facts are published first.
- The author. ciscocaceres.com, for the Navy service, the MSNBC platform, the bulletin boards and the missing degree, in his own words.
- The first program. The RoamingPigs about page, which gives the Altair and its front-panel switches.
- The publisher. The same page, for RoamingPigs, Inc. and the Field Manual, and the editorial policy it points to.