general-chat

[prime palm]

I want to make a 2aa ni mh 2.4v input 4.8v ( usb basically) charger

[slim shard]

boost converter I assume, do they tend to work at that low a voltage? I expect it to draw over double the output amperage.

(oh, not create USB power from NiMH, but create NiMH charging current from USB...)

[late fulcrum]

It's easier (and better for them) to charge the cells individually.

[prime palm]

How

[late fulcrum]

I like to use simple resistive voltage dividers from a common power supply to charge each cell. You can charge several cells at once that way. The dividers limit the maximum charge current and voltage to an appropriate level.

You can get fancier with charge control integrated circuits that monitor the conditions and provide the ideal charge curve. More complex to build, but the cells will last longer.

[prime palm]

Whats the circuit though

[prime palm]

Circuit ?

[prime palm]

@late fulcrum is there a circuit ?

[prime palm]

Is this one for all batteries ?

https://www.circuits-diy.com/simple-usb-battery-charger-circuit-2/

[late fulcrum]

The voltage seems a bit high, and there's no real current limiting, I don't trust that circuit.

I can't find the circuit I used previously online, just stuff like this for current regulated series charging https://www.codrey.com/electronic-circuits/nimh-battery-charger/

If you want a smart charger, TI's BQ25172 chip might do.

I just tripped over a handy part that might be helpful. It's the TLP240A, a dual MOSFET output optocoupler that can switch AC or DC, up to 60V and 500mA.

[rapid geode]

so the premise is not to do a level shift on the IO, but have each IO drive a mosfet instead? oddly, that is what i did on the output from another board ages ago. othewr than being annoying to add them all (i shrunk wrapped them into the cables, but there was only 4 of them) it worked fine.

hmmm

[late fulcrum]

It's similar to the relay suggestion, just in simple semiconductor form. Any modern microcontroller should be able to drive the optocoupler with a GPIO and current limiting resistor, it's a low current load.

[rapid geode]

yeah

[late fulcrum]

I had considered mentioning optocouplers, but it seemed like the load wasn't well characterized, so transistor and triac output optocouplers would be problematic. But this dual-MOSFET one I hadn't seen before and seems like a really versatile part. I may buy a few to play with.

[rapid geode]

the part you suggest is very expensive. unless i got the wrong one.

[late fulcrum]

Ah, I hadn't priced it yet, just looked over the data sheet. I wouldn't be surprised if it were expensive, as it meets the "reinforced insulation" requirements and it seems like a newish specialty part.

Mouser has 'em for US$1.25 apiece in quantity ten, not that expensive (especially compared to relays)

[rapid geode]

$2 cdn id need at least 20.

i guess not the worst

[late fulcrum]

Poking around, it looks like an AB45S might be suitable if 200mA is enough, and they're quite affordable, but I only see them in reel quantities. For small quantities, maybe a CPC1017? 89 US cents apiece in quantity 10, but they're only good for 100mA.

[rapid geode]

aha

thanks. your idea gave me some terms to search for

[late fulcrum]

That's a good find!

[rapid geode]

what i find is everything exists, i just usually dont know the names to look for haha

they also have one to go the reverse direction too

[late fulcrum]

I've had the same problem, I know the feeling!

[rapid geode]

thats pretty cool. need to bookmark that as it will come in handy for many things on these machines.

[late fulcrum]

That board looks like it uses transistor output optocouplers, which should be fine for DC and low current.

[rapid geode]

these are.. um.. 50ma if i remember

let me check

ah, its 300ma max output (for driving a relay directly). input i guess is determined by the level shifter

since it is the load

OP71A04

thats whats on that board

[late fulcrum]

I don't follow. The control input comes from a microcontroller, it's just two LEDs in series with current limiting resistors. The output seems to be a voltage level instead of a switch closure, which may or may not be what you want. It looks like it would source about 10mA with a 24V supply and can sink 50 or so?

I had thought you wanted to emulate switch closures for 24V equipment, but perhaps you did want a level shifter like this.

[rapid geode]

no, you are right. i was just trying to remember the 24v card specs.

dont wory about it ha

they have sourcing and sinking variations and such. it can be confusing to me 😛

[prime palm]

Basically madbodger what I want to do is a charger for charging the 1.2 2 aa batteries of my cbox series s controller cause I don't want to buy the rechargeable batteries that they sell

Anyway if you find something ping me

[strong flame]

First try!

[tardy badger]

Nice

[sick apex]

I got this screen, it's supposed to be for a raspberry pi something or rather but I'm not using it for that, it's a normal TFT display but the carrier board is made for that

but i cant figure out which pins would be the right ones

its SPI TFT

and i have the driver ic for arduino

does anyone have an idea of which pins would be which

lemme get a better pic

[late fulcrum]

That looks more like an Arduino pinout than a Raspberry Pi one

[blissful roost]

Definitely Arduino.

[native barn]

anyone know where I can get the type of prongs/connectors like the ones used on black and decker batteries? I don’t even know what these are called but they would be ideal for a project I’m working on

[blissful roost]

That horrendously annoying gap...

[late fulcrum]

It's just a set of metal blades. You could probably crimp on some Faston style terminals to some wires an 3D print something to hold them. Another approach is to get one of the cheap no-name chargers and pull the connector out of that (I have done exactly this)

[native barn]

maybe

yeah I know the blades would be easy to DIY I was more concerned with the spring connector end

that second option might work tbh

[blissful roost]

The Arduino bucktooth gap.

..and I'm using the letter 'b' to be polite.
It's an offensive design choice.

[tardy badger]

https://tenor.com/view/dog-teeth-gif-22913022

Lol

[blissful roost]

hehehe

[raw jasper]

So, today I learned that konami made an early arcade machine with the game stored in bubble memory instead of ROMs. Because bubble memory needs to be heated up to be usable, the machines had an elaborate bootup sequence, in which a voice synthesizer chip played a countdown while the bubble memory was being heated up, and, afterwards, a graphical display would show up counting down while the game was being copied from the bubble memory to RAM:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1GFHcJ1SYE

The video description reads:

冬季は暖めるのに時間が掛かります。
Because it is warming up in winter, it takes time.

[glacial wigeon]

ive never heard of bubble memory before!

thats a very weird design, and feels like it could result in data loss during a malfunction

but then again, core memory and dram have the same problems, a read is destructive

[raw jasper]

Apparently, they failed commercially because exposure to magnetic fields would cause data loss

[glad ruin]

This is also true of floppies, and they didn't fail commercially.

[raw jasper]

(Hence the "apparently")

[glacial wigeon]

and vhs and audio tape

[raw jasper]

In any case, konami released ROM conversion kits for these cabinets. Which had the neat side effect of dramatically decreasing load times :P

[glad ruin]

And hard drives

[glacial wigeon]

it sounds like bubble memory is using weird physics, to move the bits on the magnetic material, rather then moving the material itself (hdd/floppy/tape)

and then it moves those bits to the read head

but its kind of like an analog shift register, and data just falls off the edge when you shift too far
so you have to read it, and re-write it on the other edge

[raw jasper]

The Japanese wikipedia has the following anecdote:

電車での輸送時、床に基板を置いていると、データが消失することもある。
When transported by train, data loss could occur if the PCB was placed on the floor

[glacial wigeon]

heh

[raw jasper]

Apparently, somebody is selling a conversion kit that removes the need for using the original bubble memory. Interestingly, they are storing the game in FRAM:
https://illegalfunction.wixsite.com/bubbless/bubbless

(They have an entire procedure for dumping the game from the original bubble memory to the FRAM)

I wonder why they chose FRAM, and not some sort of flash... 🤔

[olive dome]

They want to recreate the destructive read too /s

[raw jasper]

Funnily enough, it might be part of the reason, if the original game code includes routines for rewriting the bubble memory and it isn't something handled at the hardware level

[tardy badger]

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to be for Halloween and I’ve decided that I’m going to be a burden.

(This is a joke I came up with like.. 2 minutes ago)

[rapid geode]

well, you are off to a good start with that joke

😛

[tardy badger]

Lol

[blissful roost]

Ahh, you're going to dress up as my ex-wife!! 🤣

....sorry.
TMI?

[tardy badger]

Going as myself actually lol

[blissful roost]

Pwnt

[tardy badger]

But hey, if you need a customer docker base image, I’m your guy

tears stream down face

[blissful roost]

If you wanna help out with my Kubernetes lab, once I'm moved into a new place.. 😁👍

[tardy badger]

I know nothing of Kubernetes, thankfully

I know of it and that’s about it

[blissful roost]

Haha

[raw jasper]

From my limited experience, imagine docker, but at a grand scale!

[blissful roost]

I just want to learn how it all works.
I'm likely going with Rancher Harvester.

[tardy badger]

No, I’m aware of what kubernetes is capable of, I just have no experience building and managing helm files

[blissful roost]

Me neither

... Which is the point. 😉

[raw jasper]

Same here

But my path isn't currently intersecting with kubernetes

[tardy badger]

If you want to build a bunch of different skywater PDK compatible ICs, you could use kubernetes to launch all the docker containers needed to build all your chips

[blissful roost]

I want to get back to Linux SysAdmin, with a focus on infra.

[raw jasper]

Something only possible with sky130 (or gf180mcu, or ihp), because having that many floating licenses for cadence/synopsys to check out would be quite the pipe dream :3

[tardy badger]

They’re pretty cheap, just like.. $3k

For one individual use

$10-$15k for ones that can be managed with a license server

[raw jasper]

...and you'd need floating for kube use

Soooo ☕

[tardy badger]

Virtuosos enterprise licenses are like.. $100k

Or that’s what I was told back in 2020 when I took VLSI

[blissful roost]

😮

[tardy badger]

And had to use Virtuoso

[blissful roost]

... I don't like paying for things. Lol

[raw jasper]

And of course, you don't only need virtuoso

You also need genus for synthesis

And XCelium for sim

And Other Stuff I'm forgetting

[blissful roost]

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. 😅

[tardy badger]

Back 20 years ago

[raw jasper]

Integrated Circuit design tools

[blissful roost]

Ahhh!

[raw jasper]

Stonks Inflation!

[tardy badger]

Virtuoso supports sim

[raw jasper]

Yeah, but xcelium is multicore

[blissful roost]

That's all I got. Lol

[raw jasper]

Fun fact: The open-source IC layout software is called "magic"

[blissful roost]

👍

[tardy badger]

The website doesn’t list the current price for virtuoso so I’m guessing that it’s still immensely expensive

It has a “contact us” button lol

[raw jasper]

"If you need to know, you can't afford it"

[tardy badger]

Yeah, basically

You know how could absolutely wipe the PCB cad market if they had a free or lower cost version?

Altium

They have a startup license for a reduced cost

But still pretty pricy from what I’ve seen

More than I could ever justify paying

[raw jasper]

Oh well. There's always kicad

[tardy badger]

Indeed

[blissful roost]

I think I'll stick to drawing really crappy PCB designs on paper. 😅

[raw jasper]

I can't even do that!

[late fulcrum]

And ran on a modern OS... And had a nice UI...

[raw jasper]

TIL altium does not support UNIX? o_O

[tardy badger]

Yeah

[crystal ore]

They do have https://www.altium.com/circuitmaker, though I haven't tried it.

[tardy badger]

I’ve heard mixed things about circuitmaker

I’ll give it a go one of these days

[tardy badger]

Pulled the final pumpkins because one of my smöl ones I was growing for my daughter was stolen by a neighborhood kid

[raw jasper]

They don't look ripe yet

Or is that another breed?

(Also, the elongated pumpkins on the left are strange ;>)

[rapid geode]

is that how you refer to squirrels?

[rapid geode]

pumpkins will ripen after you pick them

stick em in a window

[raw jasper]

ripen, or seemingly ripen, then proceed to rot away instead, like avocados do?

:P

[rapid geode]

ha. no. pumpkins takes months to rot

those will ripen in a week or so i bet

[raw jasper]

Didn't know!

[tardy badger]

Legitimate child

No squirrels here

[raw jasper]

I mean, they could literally ask for permission to pick a pumpkin

[tardy badger]

Could have but they straight lied to their own parent about who’s garden bed it came from

[raw jasper]

o.O

[tardy badger]

Yep…

[raw jasper]

Are those cards with the huge letters on them some sort of kindergarten alphabet learning project?

[tardy badger]

Yeah, my daughters class project

[raw jasper]

I remember they had us trace enlarged characters to learn the alphabet. We didn't do any crafts

"remember". It's very faint lol

[tardy badger]

Yeah, school is different these days

[raw jasper]

It probably is

I mean, we did do crafts projects, but they were figures, shapes, etc

This chat is quite the whiplash

kubernetes -> CAD tools (IC and PCB) -> Gardening -> Learning to Read

[tardy badger]

Lol

[tardy badger]

We let ours cure in a box in the basement

The ones from July are ready for pumpkin goodies

[raw jasper]

cure
That sounds as if you're doing some sort of mad science thing to your pumpkins xD

All I've ever done with pumpkins is pumpkin pie

[tardy badger]

Lol

Curing is a process in which you let a crop sit for a period of time, either in the sun for things like onions and garlic and occasionally potatoes, and sitting in dark cool areas like winter squash

[raw jasper]

That sounds like dehydration with extra steps

Probably with a little fermentation

[tardy badger]

You can also cure pumpkin in the sun

[blissful roost]

Essentially, yes

[raw jasper]

I knew about curing garlic in the sun, but had no idea one can do it with pumpkins

[blissful roost]

Dry curing is a thing. 😁

[tardy badger]

Pumpkins turn very very slowly

Which is nice because they’ll last for months before going bad

Same with other winter squash

[raw jasper]

The phrase "pumpkins turn" is making me think of a werewolf or vampire pumpkin lol

[tardy badger]

Lol

[raw jasper]

What does cured pumpkin taste like?

Can you eat it as-is?

[rapid geode]

i dont think you eat raw pumpkin normally

pies, soup, pickled ive seen

[raw jasper]

Hah. I thought the curing process made it palatable raw xD

[rapid geode]

no, its still not sweet and hard as a rock

[tardy badger]

Nah, makes it palatable cooked

My big dumb thumbs messing up typing

[raw jasper]

I was trying to figure out how "oiled pumpkin" would look like

[ebon dew]

Lee went from a tropical storm to a cat 5 hurricane overnight.

[blissful roost]

Ahh, it's fine... We can just redirect it with a Sharpie.

[wanton thistle]

Or nukes

[blissful roost]

Fnaar!

Just make it drink bleach, innit. 😅

[hoary parrot]

Hello folks! I'm relatively new to this stuff but I've a fair bit experience with PLCs, circuitboarding, etc

I'm probably going to have a lot of dumb questions but you seem fun so far!

[edgy apex]

Lee could very well make a direct hit on me next weekend which would be lame

if it does and its bad im gonna have quite a few people over until their power comes back

[urban arrow]

My Big Tough Q of the day: when you get a new TFT, do you leave the cellophane cover on, or peel it off? 😀

EBun: No such thing as dumb Q - I've asked plenty here... Great gang o' folks! If specific to Circuitpython, ask in that help channel.

[tardy badger]

Depends on the situation

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t

[edgy apex]

you could get a screen protector if you are worried about scratches

[blissful roost]

Just got my hands on a ThinkPad X230. 😁👍

It's not exactly perfect condition, expected for the age.. but it's definitely worth £55. 🙂

... More, really. Lol

[late fulcrum]

I may be asked to program some PLCs at work, may need to learn up on that myself.

[hoary parrot]

Fun! They all work pretty similarly, but I personally love working with Automation Direct's Click line. Easy, durable, cheap, and I love how they snap together

[tardy badger]

I have a couple cm4 coming in the mail and I was trying to think of a fun project to use with the CM4, I was thinking maybe a smöl ethernet switch

Something using this https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/KSZ8873MLL/2062419

Maybe I’ll use a 5 port on to have more options

[rapid geode]

integrate it into a mechanical keyboard so the keyboard is a stand alone pc.

😛

[tardy badger]

Lol

[rapid geode]

comodore 64

[wanton thistle]

What Industry? Waste Water? Fresh? Oil and Gas?

[hoary parrot]

Theatre!

[rapid geode]

O_o

oil and gas powered theatre?

i designed a theatre once. it didnt have an oil, but lots of neon

[edgy juniper]

Oh nice, I love Automation Direct

[hoary parrot]

Ha! Mostly electric. And spite.

[rapid geode]

spite powered theatre... that's one that is showing cats?

[hoary parrot]

Oh, I promise you that most people who work in this field are powered by spite and socialism

[blissful roost]

False assertion.

[rapid geode]

pretty sure the opwners of the theatres are powered by capitalism 😛

[hoary parrot]

I've no doubt

[rapid geode]

anyhow. you cant run a business on spite. ive tried.

anyhow. back to "work".

[wanton thistle]

Interesting. Maybe I should start leaving my card at these places. I always thought they used dedicated systems and not plcs

[raw jasper]

Enjoy!

[raw jasper]

Hopefully, you use something more sane than that ladder logic thing...

[rapid geode]

ropes and pulleys

maybe they uise a ladder to get the high ones

runs

[hoary parrot]

Honestly, it depends on the venue and what they want to do. PLCs are used by some to run simple effects, facilitate non-aural communications (cue lights), and provide feedback in dangerous non-visual situations. Some still use them for automation, as they are reliable enough to run safely, but that has slowly been surplanted by a handful of companies making far more user friendly software for that

I like using them for pnumatic and magnetic tricks

[tardy badger]

https://www.adafruit.com/product/4564

In stonks

[rapid geode]

$75!

[patent hemlock]

that's what i would consider MSRP

unfortunately, i have other things to pay for first

[olive dome]

https://frame.work/products/mainboard-11th-gen-intel-core?v=FRANFG000A

For x3 more.....

[rapid geode]

i have some ideas about usign the framework boards.

not time or money to waste on the right now

[patent hemlock]

for just the processor and board - no memory or i/O

[rapid geode]

ah, just looked and i guess thats the "real" price for that version.

[rapid geode]

yes, pretty decent deal. not much more than a mini itx board with cpu. but much more fun

[olive dome]

well framework is putting their boards on sell

[rapid geode]

oh, 269.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[patent hemlock]

it's great if you have one of their laptops

[olive dome]

I will say that the cost of ram and nvme drive isn't that much

[rapid geode]

no, you can use these stand alone

[olive dome]

it is 199 for the i5 version

[rapid geode]

im seeing cdn prices

[olive dome]

Ah I see, makes sense

[rapid geode]

there was one for uh, 399 a while back. might have been this same one.

only allowed to buyy 4 ha

[olive dome]

what the heck are you planning to do

[rapid geode]

nothing.........

i measured them up a while ago. they will fit in the bottom of a 60% mechanical keyboard

[olive dome]

I thought some mod has done similar stuff before?

like putting it under a keyboard

[rapid geode]

im sure its already been done

mine will be prettier

😛

[thick wind]

https://hackaday.com/2022/11/30/mechanical-keyboard-with-a-framework-inside/

[rapid geode]

ah yes. that one i saw

[olive dome]

I don't need another small pc but I want one so much....

[thick wind]

Your competition is no pushover in the aesthetic department…

[olive dome]

especially with the discount....ahhhhh

[rapid geode]

pretty hideous actually.

look at that font

yeehs

😛

[thick wind]

https://tenor.com/view/real-housewives-beverly-hills-erika-jayne-erika-girardi-everyones-entitled-to-their-opinion-gif-5065958

[rapid geode]

its ok that you have no taste. im not judging (totally am judging)

haha

j/k

[thick wind]

It’s funny, I don’t even judge mid keycaps anymore because of how easy it is to just pick a different set

That machined aluminum though

https://tenor.com/view/chefs-kiss-french-chef-perfect-dish-excellent-food-perfection-gif-20341505

[rapid geode]

how about machined abs?

haha

[thick wind]

I’d rather just have it printed tbh

[rapid geode]

O_o

[thick wind]

But I know that mine might be the unpopular opinion there

[rapid geode]

printed abs is aweful

(finish and precision wise)

[thick wind]

I mean, it’s pretty bad if you need sharp edges and corners, but I’d argue the natural fillets from vapor smoothing are actually pretty nice.

[rapid geode]

then you get a quite deformed part. there are gaps and voids. it is still not precise enough to fit correctly on a key switch consistently. not really viable for a quality keycap.

[thick wind]

Oh, I’d probably stick a not-ABS dummy stem in there if I were vapor smoothing a keycap haha

But if I were machining, I’d go for wood instead of ABS because why not…

[rapid geode]

in this case, cause wood wood be destroys in use

id prefer corian

but abs with an integrated stem may be more durable

but i cant really get any colours

[thick wind]

Imagine machining keycaps in delrin…

You could probably mold some pretty good keycaps too with the right molds

Adafruit has silicone molds for I forget what profile

[edgy juniper]

Awesome I want to make something like this

[rapid geode]

um. my keycap stems are all delrin

[edgy juniper]

HackADay is so awesome

[edgy juniper]

Did you produce those?

[rapid geode]

yes

[edgy juniper]

Wow fantastic

I've only ever used delrin for a manual shifters bushings. Theyre so light but hard and smooth.

[rapid geode]

delrin is nice. but almost impossible to glue

[edgy juniper]

Ahhhh lol

Too smooth!

[edgy juniper]

Is this made with a cnc?

[rapid geode]

yes

[edgy juniper]

Nice, what cnc do you have?

[rapid geode]

a shiny one

haha

[edgy juniper]

😂

https://tenor.com/view/oooooh-wonder-shiny-glowing-wide-smiles-gif-15855365

[olive dome]

https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-compute-module-4-wireless-2gb-lite-cm4102000/

[rapid geode]

seem to work (not meant for full height keys)

[split parcel]

hello guys! im new here, and i come with a question, i saw this module,Adafruit SPI Flash SD Card - XTSD 512 MB, it was reccomanded to me by a friend, im questioning if it works with the new arduino nano esp 32s3

this one has 3.3 volt logic. where should i connect the vin?

and, im also questioning if it can be formated just like a normal sd card

thanks in advance

[rapid geode]

my readiing of it is it should behave exactly as if you had a card slot and separate card

[blissful roost]

So... The X230 has a Supervisor password on the BIOS. 🤬

Apparently it can be cleared by shorting two legs on the IC. lol

[rapid geode]

eek

[wet elbow]

Anyone know of anywhere I could find the citcuitpython 3 and 4 posters? They're discontinued on adafruit and I can't seem to find them on ebay

[rapid geode]

whty not ask the supervisor?

😛

[blissful roost]

Easy job, but a tomorrow job. Lol

[blissful roost]

No clue to whom that might be.

I'll assume the seller didn't add it.

[rapid geode]

their dna is probably all over the machine

😛

[blissful roost]

He seemed somewhat... Cough inept in that respect.

Basic end-user.

[glad ruin]

Sounds about right. There really isn't anywhere to securely store a BIOS password, unless you count the TPM.

[versed meteor]

I salvaged a paw3526db-fjy2 chip from an old mouse

how do I use it

[glad ruin]

Well, you can start with the datasheet.
https://www.pixart.com/_getfs.php%3Ftb%3Dproduct%26id%3D23%26fs%3Dck2_fs_tw

Hang on let me find the actual link

[blissful roost]

I'm not sure what TPM it even has.. probably an old 1.0, which would probably be insecure with physical access. 😂

[raw jasper]

So, uh.... I hope it doesn't have lojack enabled 😬

[blissful roost]

Pfft

[raw jasper]

What did you install on it?

[glad ruin]

Every TPM is vulnerable to physical attack. And yeah TPM1.2 is entirely SHA-1 based and garbage. That being said, TPM2.0 supports multiple hashing and cryptographic algorithms (the exact set of supported algorithms is chip-dependent) and still garbage for many of the same reasons.

[rapid geode]

corian with integrated stems... just to see what happens. i expect they might break too easily, but we'll see

[raw jasper]

And then, there's also soft-TPM (I think)

[raw jasper]

Wait... this doesn't look like corian!

[glacial wigeon]

what kind of physical attacks?

do you mean just unplugging the TPM and then communicating with it directly, claiming to be a freshly reset cpu/bios?

[glad ruin]

Those generally implement (a subset of) the TPM2.0 spec. Words cannot express how much I loathe firmware TPMs.

[raw jasper]

I guess, if you have a signal analyzer, nothing can stop you :P

I don't really know though

[glacial wigeon]

a DH key exchange and encrypted comms would easily stop you

[raw jasper]

I mean, it would indeed, but, IDK if TPM implements DH :P

[glad ruin]

I spent a year and half at Intel, on one of the two teams that develops the BootGuard and TXT. I got a system to boot with the firmware TPM once.

[glad ruin]

... and how would you exchange those keys?

[raw jasper]

Isn't DH, like, the backbone of HTTPS?

[glacial wigeon]

thats the whole point of DH

(from memory), both parties generate a public/private pair
they exchange publics
they can then compute a shared secret, that a sniffer cant get

[raw jasper]

It's supposed to allow for key exchange under a non-encrypted connection, I think

[rapid geode]

why not?

[raw jasper]

Well, it doesn't have the faux granite appearance :P

[glacial wigeon]

that shared secret then lets you encrypt the channel, so all further comms are protected

[glad ruin]

Ah, yeah they already do that. But it can't be used for everything. Especially in a pre-boot environment with no memory protection.

[raw jasper]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Corian_samples.jpg

[rapid geode]

back row

hehe

thats midnight black

[raw jasper]

I assumed it'd look like the ones in the middle/bottom

[rapid geode]

ha

[raw jasper]

lol

[rapid geode]

i have mostly greys and whites and black

but now i need some purple, blue, yellow, red, geen

[raw jasper]

"Fun" idea: Cultured marble keycaps 😆

[rapid geode]

some of the bright colours are pure acrylic though im told. need to talk to the rep. pur acrylic doesnt machine very well.

corina is kinda technically cultured marble

acrylic with some pigments and a filler than makes it much harder/stiffer

i guess traditional cultured marble is real marble powder

[raw jasper]

I had no idea corian that didn't look like faux mineral but just like plastic existed

[rapid geode]

vs aluminium tetra something or other

[raw jasper]

Your keycaps are the first place I've seen it in

[rapid geode]

theres lots of corian keybaord cases. no caps that ive ever seen though

the caps are nice. very nice. smooth soft texture. i guess price is the only reason you never see them. peopel would rather buy metal or wood or resin characters if they are spending $20+ per keycap

[glacial wigeon]

what made it so hard to boot with a firmware TPM?

[raw jasper]

I'd never spend $20 (ie, the price of an entire membrane keyboard, or ten, if you go for the Bottom-Bin AliExpress Special) per keycap

[rapid geode]

yeah. its a peculiar market. it is "jewelery" basically

[raw jasper]

ha. You need to look at the fountain pen market 😆

[glad ruin]

Very early in the boot process, incomplete TPM implementation, very slow response times, difficult to configure, and the list goes on and on...

[rapid geode]

im perfectly happy with the $8 HP keyboards i got for the shop

[glacial wigeon]

ah

[rapid geode]

pens are not my style

[raw jasper]

I am trying to imagine the catch-22 situation of trying to run code to emulate a TPM with the hardware platform not fully initialized and the DDR being potentially unavailable

[rapid geode]

a lot of the fancy woods i have are "pen" blanks

[raw jasper]

I may be getting a headache

[raw jasper]

There's a person making fountain pens out of ultem

[rapid geode]

ultem pen. ooookay ha

i want a kiln again to do lead crystal

you think my keycaps cost a lot now... ;x

[raw jasper]

https://www.gravitaspens.com/shop/p/gravitas-entry-fountain-pen-teal-5xc64-tm42y-e5dz5-2cxjl-65gng-5d6pl if you're curious

I don't collect pens, fountain or whatnot.

[rapid geode]

actually there a guy near mean making $300 titanium pens. nothing surprises me

[raw jasper]

The best pen I've had is a ￥３ Japanese fountain pen for kids 😆

[rapid geode]

those are just ball poitns

[glad ruin]

This is exactly what happens. Although the DDR being available would be just as much of a problem since pretty much everything has basically full access to the system.

[raw jasper]

I once found a C compiler that tried to compile to code that did not use the RAM for early bringup purposes somewhere on github

[glad ruin]

It's incredibly touchy.

[rapid geode]

i should trade him for some keycaps

[raw jasper]

This discussion reminded me of that

[raw jasper]

I immensely dislike ballpoints. Too much pressure is required to get good character formation

Rollerballs with liquid ink are better in that regard

[glacial wigeon]

a large number of cpu's support cache-as-ram modes
so you can just turn the cache on, and then you dont need a register only compiler

[rapid geode]

oh. these are probably roller ball then.

[raw jasper]

....like the Cursed Raspberry Pi Amalgamation CPU's L2 cache

[rapid geode]

i never looked into it much

stems milled

[glacial wigeon]

yep, thats one such case

older x86 chips also have it

[rapid geode]

they seem strong

[glacial wigeon]

newer x86 are just as cursed as rpi, lol

[raw jasper]

no, x86 is always the most cursed

There's a reason why the ISA reference manual takes up an entire library

[rapid geode]

ha, nope. instantly broke

sigh

[glad ruin]

At one point I had most of it printed.

[glacial wigeon]

i mean, there is an entire arm cpu, that boots before the x86 cpu

[raw jasper]

huh. You can get refurbished LTO drives for ~EUR20.

[glacial wigeon]

the arm cpu brings up dram, and copies the x86 bios to ram, lol

[raw jasper]

I wonder, what's the catch?

[raw jasper]

Ha

You are like baby

[glad ruin]

Not on Intel. They do something much weirder.

[raw jasper]

There is a risc CPU inside the x86 CPU that decodes the cisc instructions

[glacial wigeon]

ah, found it:
https://doc.coreboot.org/soc/amd/family17h.html

[glad ruin]

Also incorrect.

[glacial wigeon]

i thought it was a ??? that translates cisc opcodes to risc opcodes on the fly, and then its a risc cpu internally

[glad ruin]

There are effectively "building blocks" manipulated by microcode. It's not an actual RISC CPU.

[raw jasper]

Count me as confused by intel marketing lol

[glacial wigeon]

ive seen a whole blog on making a 6502 compatible cpu with raw logic gates and microcode
and ive also looked into the centurion and its cpu5/cpu6

both are microcode based, and make understanding the modern mess far simpler

[glad ruin]

It doesn't just "translate" opcodes. It breaks them down into uops (micro-operations), calculates instruction dependencies, and schedules those uops to use whatever hardware resources are available.

[glacial wigeon]

and i think thats where hyperthreading gets involved

there might be 2 int cores, and 1 float core

[glad ruin]

Nope, that's at a much higher level.

[glacial wigeon]

and if the 2nd thread isnt using the float core, it can run both threads in the same clock cycle

[raw jasper]

Yeah, that's indeed the correct version

[glad ruin]

There were more than that even in the first generation Pentium (where Intel first implemented the superscalar out of order) architecture).

[raw jasper]

Think out-of-order execution will end up going out of fashion eventually, what with all the specter/meltdown etc bypasses?

[glad ruin]

It's highly nondeterministic. There's no way to predict when a particular instruction will be completed.

[glacial wigeon]

something ive noticed with the VPU, it is dual-issue on the scalar side, and single-issue on the vector side
a vector opcode can take up to 128 clocks to complete
certain combinations of scalar opcodes can run in parallel on the same clock

and if a vector opcode is running, you can go off and do 128 clocks worth of scalar opcodes in parallel

and some unknown hw block figures out the dependency checking, and stalls where needed

i assume x86 and some arm cores do similar?

[glad ruin]

No. The performance gains are too high. However, as is usually the case, it can be implemented much more easily and efficiently with a RISC-style instruction set. For instance, the EFLAGS register in x86 requires a lot of logic to implement properly. It introduces literally thousands of inter-instruction dependencies and is not used a vast majority of the time. So, microcode needs to track which bits each instruction can manipulate in EFLAGS and schedule uops accordingly. In some cases, it may be able to use multiple copies of EFLAGS, which means that it also has to track the physical location of each instance and reassemble the final result.

[glad ruin]

Yes, but on x86 it's even more complicated, since the opcodes are variable length and ucode needs to convert them into uops first. There is code running at an even lower level than ucode to schedule operations.

[glacial wigeon]

the VPU does also have variable length opcodes, but its mostly RISC

[glad ruin]

For comparison purposes: RISC-V has no flags register.

[glacial wigeon]

https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv/wiki/VideoCore-IV-Programmers-Manual#instruction-formats

[glad ruin]

Does it have instruction prefixes and several dozen encodings of the same instruction based on the memory mode?

[glacial wigeon]

from this table, i can see that you can figure out the entire length, and the type, from just the first 5 bits

only ld(m) and st(m) can access ram, all other opcodes are register only

[glad ruin]

There's no way to do that with x86. Also instructions are byte-aligned.

[glacial wigeon]

VPU also requires all opcodes to be 16bit aligned

[glad ruin]

That's helpful.

[raw jasper]

Backwards compatibility. Not even once.

[glacial wigeon]

VPU was well designed from the start, x86 evolved over time, adding longer opcodes dynamically

[glacial wigeon]

exactly

x86-64 had a chance to throw all that mess in the garbage, they choose wrong 😛

[raw jasper]

Well, to be fair, it was an extension to the original x86 by AMD

[glad ruin]

Actually it had variable length opcodes from the beginning.

[raw jasper]

It wouldn't have sold at all if it wasn't compatible with the original

[glad ruin]

Yes, and it succeeded where Intel failed spectacularly with Itanium.

[raw jasper]

Because, at the point you break backwards compat, they might as well go for a MIPS server or something

[glacial wigeon]

VPU has a 4bit field for conditional execution
i'm not sure what subset of opcodes allow this

[glacial wigeon]

how was Itanium different?

[late fulcrum]

That's not really due to out-of-order execution as much as branch prediction.

[raw jasper]

you're right!

[glacial wigeon]

on VPU, 16bit vs 32bit opcodes, are kind of like thumb vs arm
16bit opcodes can only access half the registers
16bit opcodes support a smaller immediate
32bit opcodes a medium immediate
48bit opcodes, just let you shove a whole 32bit immediate after a 16bit prefix

the binutils assembler will dynamically pick the right opcode length, based on the registers and immediates used

[glad ruin]

It was a totally different architecture that depended on explicit instruction parallelism. Basically they tried to move a bunch of the complexity over to the compiler, but they could never get it to work well. An "instruction" in Itanium (dubbed IA-64 for marketing reasons) was actually a packed array of instructions that fit in "slots", with each slot executing in a different part of the core.

They also added an x86 compatibility mode, but it was painfully slow.

[glacial wigeon]

ah, that sounds much more like the QPU (shader core) on the v3d/rpi

where there are 2 ALU's, add-only and mult-only, and a 64bit opcode sets up inputs/outputs for both ALU's

[glad ruin]

Itanium was an interesting but ill-conceived design that was too complex to implement practically, even with the largest hardware design team ever assembled.

[glad ruin]

Yeah, it's called a VLIW architecture.

And it originated in GPUs.

[glacial wigeon]

personally, i would have throw the x86 ISA encoding in the garbage, designed a new encoding from scratch, but kept some of the x86 style mess for backwards compat

[raw jasper]

...at which point you end up with x86

But Different!

Nobody would buy this

[glacial wigeon]

and with 64bit support 😛

if designed well, the assembler could still assemble old x86 code to x86-64

but the cpu then has less work to do during decoding, and it would support 64bit

then the transition isnt as painful

[glad ruin]

x86-64 does this already. All instructions run in 32 bit mode by default. A prefix changes the instruction to 64-bit mode, giving it access to additional registers.

[raw jasper]

Hah. I wonder whether the intel iGPUs have inherited anything from ia-64

[glad ruin]

Pretty sure those are their own thing. IA-64 was vastly more complex.

Bits and pieces of IA-64 were implemented under the hood in x86 though.

[raw jasper]

I need to finish my microarchitecture textbook...

[rapid geode]

ia-64 was supposed to be the best invention of the 20th century... and we never got nothin

i remember all the advertising

[glad ruin]

Oh, they did make IA-64 chips, but by the time they released they couldn't outperform the x86 cores of the time.

[rapid geode]

p pro killed off so many 64 bit systems back then.

dec died

ibm never died, but went very niche

[raw jasper]

Being the pillar of the world's banks helps

[rapid geode]

i did a web proposal for a company to replace all their as400s with $1000 pc's. they went with someone else who sold them an $80000 8 core xeon from ibm then never finished the website. the client went bankrupt and the ibm server wound up on my desk hosting a "under construction" splash page.

sigh

[raw jasper]

Did you find a use for it?

[rapid geode]

sat there for like a year and then radioshack asked for it back. no idea what they did with it. (radio shack was the client)

i will say ibm (now lenovo) service is the best though. the thing died on a sunday morning and they sent a guy by noon with a truck full of parts. replaced the mobo and machine was back up

[blissful roost]

😁👍

[rapid geode]

woo

[blissful roost]

Needs so much work, but it's a project machine anyway.

[rapid geode]

whats it for? i forgot what you do with these

[blissful roost]

The keeb is loose, Bluetooth blinks on/off when you flex it.. needs a full strip and clean.. new battery.. screen upgrade, etc, etc.

[glad ruin]

It's unfortunate really, since most of them were better architecture designs.

[raw jasper]

Oof. That's the equivalent of the lemon car you buy to keep in your garage and perpetually work on "fixing it"

[rapid geode]

ha

[blissful roost]

I'll transplant my drives from the X220t.. and the keeb.

[rapid geode]

so, what is the point of it again? you just like the case?

layout?

[blissful roost]

The docking station is fully compatible, so that's a plus.

Just a better machine compared to the X220t.. especially for mods.

[raw jasper]

thinkpads are nice

[rapid geode]

sure. but why not a brand new one?

or near new refurmb

[raw jasper]

because cheeeeeap

[rapid geode]

staples has refurbs cheap

[blissful roost]

Because new laptops are all skinny, soldered RAM, etc.

[glacial wigeon]

0x6070 == mov r0, 0x7
0x60e0 == mov r0, 0xe

@glad ruin from just these 2 samples, i can see that there seems to be at least a 4bit field for the immediates

[rapid geode]

ahh

[raw jasper]

Fairly functional computer for EUR100. Unlike new computers at that price point, it can actually do stuff

[rapid geode]

but isnt the old one real slow

[blissful roost]

..and I want the X230, upgraded. 😁

No. With Mint Cinnamon even the X220t is fast enough for my needs.

[glacial wigeon]

0x61c0 == mov r0, 0x1c
ah, its not byte aligned, and its at least 5 bits

[blissful roost]

X220 -> X230 is a marginal improvement... But the mod options are vastly superior.

[rapid geode]

cheep cheep

ha

windows lic is half that

[blissful roost]

Still $300 + shipping and tax to the UK that I don't have.

[rapid geode]

cdn

but i forgot. uk

[raw jasper]

What kinda mods?

[rapid geode]

sticking a threadripper inside?

[raw jasper]

I'm sure somebody in Shenzhen has figured that out :)

[blissful roost]

Mostly stuffing a 1080p screen in there.. which you can't do on the X220t.

[rapid geode]

im gonna make a wooden laptop

[versed meteor]

404 bruh

[glad ruin]

It's a variable length field.

[glacial wigeon]

i decoded more and found the full pattern for mov:
011 op:4 u:5 d:4 == ${op<<1} r${d}, ${u}

[glad ruin]

Yeah, sorry about that. Just google for it.

[glacial wigeon]

a 3bit constant
a 4bit operation enum
a 5bit immediate
and a 5bit reg#

0000 in the op, is mov

[glad ruin]

This is x86 right?

[glacial wigeon]

VPU

[versed meteor]

found it

[glad ruin]

Ah, nevermind.

[glacial wigeon]

for a reg to reg operation like mov r0, r1
the 5bit immediate gets downgraded to a 4bit reg#
which lets the operation enum upgrade from 4bit to 5bit

so it can access twice as many operations, while remaining in a 16bit opcode, but only if you stick to the lower 16 regs

looking over what ive decoded so far
if i take the first 4bits of an opcode and make a table:

00__ TODO
010_ reg to reg operation
011_ reg and imm operation
1___ 32bit opcode
1110 scalar 48bit opcode
1111 vector 48bit or 80bit opcode

[late fulcrum]

That's some AGC level hackery right there

[rapid geode]

delrin stems. woo. gotta do the engraving now.

[glacial wigeon]

?

[rapid geode]

so linus just said framework found these mobos at the old factory. spares i guess. thats why they are on sale.

[glacial wigeon]

0010 u:4 s:4 d:d      ld r${d}, (r${s} + ${u}*4)
0011 u:4 s:4 d:d      st r${d}, (r${s} + ${u}*4)

and digging more, i can see there is a dedicated pair of opcodes, for reading/writing 32bit values from an immediate offset, relative to a reg

for example, loading 8 bytes from the addr in r0

but it saves 2bits, by requiring the offset to be 32bit aligned

[olive dome]

sure, but a deal is still a deal

[rapid geode]

yes

just found it interesting "why"

[granite void]

Hi new here, and i'm seeing the pain "0010 u:4 s:4 d:d ld r${d}, (r${s} + ${u}*4)", well, i will need to put all my knowledge in action

😉

ahhh hahhaha, i leaved a server because some dumb admin has "pronouns" @stuck moth , this server wil be not an exception idiots! BYE

[static flare]

what

[blissful roost]

Let me finish that sentence for you....

What... a jacka.... 😛

"Let me join this Discord to whine about pronouns then leave!"

[wanton thistle]

🤔 I need 4x MAX31855 (thermocouple interface)...and they are $8 each domestically. Im wondering if I should roll the dice with LCSC as they are $2 each..

[late fulcrum]

When people were building the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), it originally only had a few instructions, but they kept needing to add functionality, so they'd make instructions do double duty by things like catching attempts to write read-only memory to perform specific operations. They kept doing this, and ultimately, every possible bit sequence was a valid instruction to do a specific thing.

[whole plover]

https://www.reddit.com/r/HyruleEngineering/comments/16bvekp/fighter_jet_with_manually_deployable_missile_and/?utm_source=embedv2&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_content=post_title&embed_host_url=https://gamerant.com/zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-fighter-jet-build/

[rapid geode]

what a jackalope? "hey this thing doesnt affect me in any way so i will be mad about it"

[blissful roost]

Cope. 🤪

[static flare]

I'm glad they left of their own volition, however.

[rapid geode]

could you imagine if they found out adafruit was run by.. gasp.. a woman?

their head might explode

anyhow

enough of that nonsense

this is what the weather is claimed to be right now...... it has been raining for hours.

[static flare]

Rain is good

[rapid geode]

not when you need to cut plywood outside to make a floor

[static flare]

That's fair

[blissful roost]

@rapid geode
No fair!!

It's 32c here right now and I'm dying.

[rapid geode]

ha

few days ago is was 34c/42 humidity here. so you get no sympathy

[static flare]

I wish we weren't heading to warmer weather here

[blissful roost]

Tomorrow will be hot again, about 28c max.

Getting cooler and wetter after that.

[ebon dew]

there's a 50% chance of rain every day, just permanently set it to 50% and you'll never be wrong.

[glacial wigeon]

ah, i was wondering how automatic gain control was relevant!

that also reminds me of the c64 memory map
the 2 rom windows, can be remapped to ram with a control reg

but writes always go to ram
and the "gpu" always reads from ram

so you can save some of your limited addr space, by having a write-only framebuffer hidden under the roms

[dusty citrus]

Lucky... September and in the city it's 30C

[rapid geode]

why so cold?

i thought it was nice there

[glacial wigeon]

"2023-09-09 17:30:28 bedroom temp: 25.94c(78.69f), kitchen: 27.31c(81.16f), living room: 26.44c(79.59f), outdoor: 21.88c(71.38f), server: 27.44c(81.39f) VCC: over 4.5 volts portb: 00000000"
even colder in atlantic canada

[dusty citrus]

Before the big storm it was even hotter
Now we're back at getting hotter T_T
I want to live in Antarctica

[raw jasper]

In case you're not trolling: It's C, not F

30C -> 86F

Which is reasonably hot

[rapid geode]

thats pretty cold summer over there. its usually much hotter than that here..

[raw jasper]

Ah, yeah, it tends to cool down after August has passed

[tardy badger]

It’s supposed to be mid 70F leading into the high 60s by the end of September where I am

[raw jasper]

That's fairly cool

[tardy badger]

Elevation where I live is ~1400m above sea level

So cooler ends to September is fairly reasonable

[wanton thistle]

We had a taste of fall here in CT for a week. Legit was in sweat pants lol. Now its almost 90F during the day and disgustingly humid again. Its getting worse every year and summer extends a bit longer. Winter was slightly warm here too. They are saying that due to all the rain, the leafs will be very pretty though

[blissful roost]

We might hit 26c tomorrow, which ain't so bad.

[raw jasper]

I see you got yourself a new "space-age" avatar

[blissful roost]

Not exactly. 😛

[raw jasper]

Do people even say "avatar" anymore? 🤔

[blissful roost]

Yes.

[raw jasper]

Phew

[blissful roost]

Although "PFP" tends to be more common on Discord.

[raw jasper]

Eh, tomato tomato

[blissful roost]

https://tenor.com/view/potatoes-gif-18364984

[raw jasper]

https://tenor.com/view/the-simspons-homer-nuclear-correction-nucular-gif-17370221

[blissful roost]

😅

Also... it's Aluminium!

[raw jasper]

tbh, aluminium makes more sense than aluminum

[blissful roost]

🙂

[raw jasper]

The discord full-size emojis looks like a cartoon moon with a face <_<

[blissful roost]

🤨

[raw jasper]

https://tenor.com/view/majoras-mask-zelda-moon-crash-gif-20298361

I sometimes can't help but think majora's mask got humanity's response to disaster just right. There are so many characters denying that the moon is going to fall from the sky, even as it draws closer with each passing day

[tardy badger]

Curried butternut squash soup and naan

Yummmm

[wanton thistle]

Dont look up. GREAT movie but wow, it..just left me feeling so many things

[raw jasper]

I remember that movie coming out when it came. I decided to skip watching it

I mean, heck, I'm not even sure I'd want to watch it now

[wanton thistle]

I mean

Have you watched Evangelion?

Its kind of that same feeling

[raw jasper]

Nope. Not a fan of anime

[wanton thistle]

😅 Then you might not want to watch it. Sometimes it may not be for your own personal best interests, ya know?

ie, it might be too real

[blissful roost]

Evangelion.... Such disappoint.

[rapid geode]

stuffed with adafruit bits

ha

[sick apex]

opinions on the MilkV Duo

not onions

https://milkv.io/duo

says $9 on the website

then they link a store that sells them for $5

https://arace.tech/collections/milk-v-duo

[late fulcrum]

On the one hand, yay providing schematics. On the other hand, conflating (vector) clock speed with "more powerful" is just falling for Intel's "megahertz myth". On the gripping hand, $9 is pretty attractive.

[sick apex]

it looks pretty cool

it runs linux apparently

which is pretty cool

[late fulcrum]

I had been looking for hints as to what development environments it supported. Linux seems like a good choice.

[sick apex]

one thing i dont like is that it only supports ethernet

and not wifi

but you could add a wifi board to it

[late fulcrum]

I had to remove the WiFi board from my Jetson Nano to install a Coral accelerator, so I'm familiar with the "need to add a board or string Ethernet cables" issue. I also have WiFi transceivers hanging off several Pi Zero boards.

[sick apex]

fair, i mean im working on a kinda pinephone esq type thing atm

that thing would've been so cool if it had wifi

not exactly pinephone, more of a dedicated tool

but like same style ish

i might have a look at that thing and make a board with it see if i can do anything with it

another annoying thing is that the serial output is on pins and not the USB

i also dont know if it has USB OTG

esp32 c3 is what im working with for the tool

but i think im gunna change it to the S3 cause i have one of those now

what could be cool though is using like a regular ESP32 chip with wifi and having that host the wifi on its own with a wired I2C connection through traces to another board

practically doubling the core count and adding extra things to it that could be used

cause then realistically one core of the other thing could be used to run a screen and the other can be used to run wifi and communications

[versed meteor]

How about some chips on the side?

[tardy badger]

What kind of chips? British chips or American chips?

[raw jasper]

bites wafer

[tardy badger]

Lol

[fossil dawn]

So Taiwanese Chips? 😄

[raw jasper]

monch aah TSMC flavor

[rapid geode]

banana chips?

apple wood chip smoked chips?

[raw jasper]

https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc3/Apple_M1_Pro_M1_Max_M1_Family_10182021_7.jpg

[versed meteor]

no I meant like computer chips get it?

yknow?

[tardy badger]

😬

[static flare]

I like my chips with DIP

[rapid geode]

no double dip

[static flare]

What would that even look like?

[worthy magnet]

..SIP? 😛

[rapid geode]

2 sips

[worthy magnet]

DRAM 😛

[static flare]

Wouldn't it be QIP?

[glacial wigeon]

ive seen some DRAM packages that are both BGA and double-dipping!

the 1gig LPDDR2 package for the rpi3, is actually 2 x 512mbyte dies, in a single epoxy package

[worthy magnet]

I wanna try getting more SBC

but my job payout sucks

[rapid geode]

go to sbc, get more money, buy sbc

[worthy magnet]

donation welcome/jk

[rapid geode]

sbc is a bank

😛

[static flare]

I don't think a bank will give you enough money to buy said bank

[rapid geode]

thats not what im told of how banks work

:x

[fossil dawn]

buy sbc, scalp sbc, get more sbc ||plz don't||

[static flare]

do not scalp a bank

[tardy badger]

Pulling up corn stalks and saw this hunter in action

[dusty citrus]

I need to learn to drive because I need it
But I can't drive
I'd wish that the user interface was adjustable but it isn't

[dusty citrus]

That's a big cricket

[tardy badger]

It’s actually a grass hopper

It’s a Common Field Grasshopper from what I can tell

Actually it’s a banded wing grasshopper

[rapid geode]

i found one of them camoflauge leaf insects in my strawberries a while ago

[ebon dew]

grasshoppers can grow way bigger than crickets. that's gonna be a nice big meal for the mantis.

we have mole crickets in the south. they look like little aliens, so does the mantis really.

[ebon dew]

Ahh football is back.

[rapid geode]

i has a foor! well. 2/3 of a floor

gotta let the concrete cure a little bofore the last peice goes down

[tender heron]

Hi, I have a quick question about the DHT11 CircuitPython tutorial. It says, "The left-most pin is power. We recommend powering from 5V (sometimes 3V is not enough) - this is OK even if you are using 3.3V logic". I'm confused how that's OK even when using 3.3v logic. I thought when powering via 5v it'd make the DHT11 operate with 5v logic? Just to confirm, I can power a DHT11 via VBUS (5v) on a Pico W and directly connect the data pin to a GPIO which is 3.3v on the Pico without issue?

Or do I need a logic level shifter?

[late fulcrum]

It uses a protocol where it simply pulls down the data line to send a zero or lets it float to send a one. So if the data line pull-up resistor is to 3.3V, it will be a safe input for a pico.

[tender heron]

Oh I see, thanks

[tranquil swallow]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZm6wOisgPw

[pastel steppe]

hello hello, just wondering if someone can point me in the right direction - I have minimal experience with sodering/circutry but would really like to try out building the pigrrl-2, but I had 2 questions regarding it

1. is there a newer version that I should look into,
2. is it possible to fit the required components into a gameboy shell, the 3d print does look cool but I think I want to try to stuff it into the oldschool casing

[drowsy zephyr]

Guys, i need advice, how do you learn to love working?

[late fulcrum]

In my case, finding a job that involves working on a shifting array of things so I'm always learning and not stagnating

[night crescent]

JOIN IN! Desk of Ladyada - Wrapping up the S3 TFT Experimenter & Triple RCA Connectors 🔌🎥🔍 https://youtu.be/SUs6YteOtOA

[late fulcrum]

Other factors involve minimizing stuff I dislike. I left two companies because they downgraded to MICROS~1 products. I joined the telecommuting crowd early on because commuting annoys me. I got a quality binaural headset, a nice keeb, good monitor, etc. to minimize friction actually doing my job.

[tranquil swallow]

Get a college degree or go to community college

And pick something that pays well

In my part of my country you can sign up for trades "training" for free, it's called a pre-apprenticeship

[drowsy zephyr]

Ive already got my degree

[drowsy zephyr]

Well im at qa

Still a trainee, attending the incubation program

I actually got my first job last december, got laid off after 3 months

Due to incompatibility issues

It was field work so i thought maybe i do not like field work and i was right

But only now i realized that i just dont like working, at all

[rapid geode]

no one likes working. they like money

🙂

[tranquil swallow]

Explore WFH if you haven't done that yet

[late fulcrum]

I don't like money, but I do like having food and toys

[tranquil swallow]

Every SWE I know has a bunch of yuppie hobbies like disc golf, pickleball, and rock climbing. Maybe try those too

[raw jasper]

https://tenor.com/view/simpsons-money-peanuts-explain-how-homer-gif-15536016

[tardy badger]

My hobbies include doom scrolling, making electronics, and tending to my garden to help my food budget 😛

But many SWE in the lab I’m in also do hiking, rock climbing, and similar hobbies so you’re not wrong lol

I wouldn’t call them yuppie hobbies though. I’d call them low mental effort hobbies. Which are good for improving overall mental health and productivity at work.

[raw jasper]

I don't rock climb. I have my pokemon do it for me 😆

[tardy badger]

Lol

[raw jasper]

Pokemon was so nonsensical; You could use a pigeon to fly yourself to a town an ocean away

[late fulcrum]

I still play Pokémon Go, to give myself something to keep my mind occupied while I'm walking.

[raw jasper]

I don't feel like sharing my location with niantic

Are there many players still, or has it completely settled down?

[rapid geode]

mine include designing things that never get made. eating pizzas, and installing shed floors

tada!

todays "work"

[late fulcrum]

There's a local group of active players around here. I've made the decision to share my location with Google/Niantic/Movespring.

[raw jasper]

Yeah, it's a very personal decision to take :)

Interesting to hear it's still being played

[rapid geode]

what is this pokey man?

i remember people playing it while they were supposed to be working and getting in trouble haha

[raw jasper]

Yeah, that's a stupid thing to do

[rapid geode]

also going to unsafe places (not people i know for that one)

[late fulcrum]

It's also useful when I get challenged for taking photographs, I just cheerfully say "Ah, got that Pikachu!"

[raw jasper]

I think they have introduced a filter to avoid placing pkmn on private property

[rapid geode]

ha

i heard something about north korea having millions of uncaught pokemon

ha

for obvious reasons

[raw jasper]

Thankfully nobody has gone to the buffer zone trying to catch pkmn lol

(please don't do that)

[rapid geode]

"this is an act of war" "no i was just trying to get a squirtle!'

(in korean)

:x

[raw jasper]

That'd be a very 2023 headline

[rapid geode]

yes

[raw jasper]

"Korean War Reignited By Person Trying To Catch Rare Squirtle"

[rapid geode]

2023 will be looked back on as the worst year since 2022

[raw jasper]

😬

[rapid geode]

;x

[raw jasper]

Let's not push our luck

[late fulcrum]

That's what GPS spoofing is for

[rapid geode]

anyhow. fusion is being stupid right now. sigh. taking like 20 minutes to press any button.

[raw jasper]

"Person gets banned for export control reasons because they spoofed their location to the most heavily sanctioned place in the world"

[rapid geode]

they mucked up the last version i think.

[raw jasper]

Time for the umpteenth upgrade!

[late fulcrum]

Banned from what? Using GPS? Existing?

[raw jasper]

Now you need a GTXXXXX999999 GPU with 1024GB of VRAM

[raw jasper]

pkmn go haha

[rapid geode]

already got that. no, adesk botched something. even new empty files are behaving badly

[raw jasper]

That'd be a nice writing prompt for an existential horror thing

[rapid geode]

reminds me of my celphone. they cancelled my serrvice for nonpayment before they ever sent me the first bill. they claimed "oh you should have known to pay in advance"

[raw jasper]

Time to reinstall fusion?

[rapid geode]

.... autodesk botched something

[late fulcrum]

Time for KiCAD/OpenSCAD?

[rapid geode]

ha no

i want to actualy accomplish work 😛

[raw jasper]

Yeah, I was wondering whether making it reinstall itself would somehow clean the config and revert it to a clean state. Had it happen with proprietary software over the years :)

[rapid geode]

thats what they botched

fusion reinstals and updates itselver 1-2 times a month

the last update is a fail

[raw jasper]

Oh well. Time to start brewing a coffee to wait for that rotation

Bake a pizza to translate a shape

[rapid geode]

im waiting for it to save. taking hours

its doing nothing though. not writing to disk or network

[raw jasper]

Does it show up the "program is not responding" screen when you click on it?

[rapid geode]

yes, not responding.

[late fulcrum]

It seems to me that if you wanted to actually accomplish work, you'd switch...

[rapid geode]

but not actually dead

[raw jasper]

https://tenor.com/view/monty-python-dead-parrot-john-cleese-michael-palin-not-dead-gif-24087365

[rapid geode]

just in some sort of loop of death

[rapid geode]

nope. going from a program that is a little buggy once in a while to one that wont actually do the job at all is not a viable option

🙂

[raw jasper]

Program has all but crashed, refuses to save work
Nah, it's just a little buggy

:>

[rapid geode]

solidworks would be nice. but i dont like their terms for the personal use version

[raw jasper]

Does it have an audit clause?

[rapid geode]

ha, its just the last 2 days, it will be fixed soon.

thats the problem with forced updats :/

but hey, its free

sw personal from memory is a weird mess.

i need to check again. but the last one i used saved only in its own format and could not be shared or exported to anything else. making it useless

[raw jasper]

Not even gcode?

[rapid geode]

sw does not make g code

it is cad

[raw jasper]

So how do you manufacture it?

[rapid geode]

you buy a cam software for $5000

welcome to engineering!

sigh

[raw jasper]

ha. $5k is cheap

[rapid geode]

ironically that $5000 software was the one that is free in fusion

[raw jasper]

We were talking about the price of EDA tools the other day

It's much more than that lol

[rapid geode]

one of my cleints used catia. solidworks big brother. it is "a la carte". want to export STL? $500. want to so surfacing? $9000. want to do mold flow analasys? $200000

but, it CAN do everything. so if you are ford or bmw, thats what you want.

[raw jasper]

mold flow analysis
?

Does it analyze mold growth?

Like, the green fungus?

[rapid geode]

....

thats mould

lern yer englih

😛

[raw jasper]

Problem is, I (mostly) don't speak the King's English :)

[rapid geode]

neither does the king.

[raw jasper]

My English gravitates mostly towards en_US rather than en_UK

[rapid geode]

have you heard that weirdo?

us english is the same except they cant spell

muhaha

i wish this file would actually save though. it is a big file, im sure theres some bad geo in it. but if i cant save it i cant fix it

[raw jasper]

Time for a blood sacrifice to the cad gods!

[rapid geode]

i prefer to message the devs and say "hey, do your job"

actually, i dont know any fusion devs i dont think.

I was in the office once. looked around. tried to steal some robot arms but they were bolted down.

[tardy badger]

I also ate pizza today

[ebon dew]

totally not photoshopped

[rapid geode]

bad render, but the real office looks exactly like it. all these painted robots everywhere

[raw jasper]

Wait, you've been there?

Also, is this an autodesk example file?

[ebon dew]

ah, that's really nice for a render. the lighting on the guy in the chair gave it away.

[raw jasper]

It was the people looking like cardboard cutouts that did it for me :P

[rapid geode]

that office is in downtown toronto. 2 blocks from where i used to live. i know lots of devs for their vfx software. but noone for fusion.

called mars. its actually really cool

[ebon dew]

well i have a small monitor and have to squint

i'm pretty sure Mars is already copyrighted if not by the candy then at least by the planet?

[rapid geode]

MaRS

[raw jasper]

Trademarked. Also different domains (Mars the candy does not make CAD sw)

And planets can't own trademarks

[rapid geode]

its a canadian govt project

[ebon dew]

pretty sure I can't call a company DisNEy and get away with it.

[rapid geode]

adesk just rents 2 or 3 floors of it

[late fulcrum]

Military Affiliated Radio System?

[rapid geode]

https://www.marsdd.com/

university of toronto is across the street

its a pretty cool idea, i dont know what has really come of it though

[raw jasper]

til autodesk is Canadian

[rapid geode]

adesk is american

but the media and entertainment division is in canada

[ebon dew]

that makes a lot of sense why my fusion 360 takes 5 minutes to export a file.

[rapid geode]

and many of the fusions staff for some reason

cgi is heavily canadian. ATI, matrox, softimage, alias/maya, houdini, etc is all from here.

but then they all get bought by adesk hgaha

[ebon dew]

There are a few near Orlando too. Pixar and Disney wanted to cultivate locally.

[rapid geode]

pixar has always been san francisco.

i think

yeah, started as part of lucasfilm

[raw jasper]

ATI was bought by AMD

[rapid geode]

same thing

[ebon dew]

They outsourced a lot to a new place in FL which didn't last long maybe less than 5 years. Was a huge complex, can't remember the name.

[rapid geode]

different A

[ebon dew]

Dream something or other.

Dreamworks maybe?

[rapid geode]

no, i know who you mean. i forget the name

after disney bought them they are a lot more spread out. they have/had a vancouver studio

i know a bunch of people there

[tardy badger]

DreamWeaver?

Oh movie studios nvm

[rapid geode]

pixar

[ebon dew]

was an animation and mostly cgi studio/company that was going to try to compete with ILM, didn't pan out, neither did ILM for that matter.

[rapid geode]

i know lots of people at ilm. its a stressful place

ha

[ebon dew]

i thought ilm went under?

[rapid geode]

O_O

are you mad?

who do you think it making all the 50000 0star wars showS?

george lucas sold ilm to disney for 4 billion dollars

ha

[ebon dew]

dunno where i heard that. i think adam savage. maybe during one of his reminiscing sessions he made it sound like they went out of business. weird.

[rapid geode]

O_o

i think they dont do a lot of live action props anymore

[ebon dew]

ohh so they're still ILM but just not independent anymore?

[rapid geode]

they are disnew

[ebon dew]

ah

[rapid geode]

along with pixar

ilm is still one of the largest vfx studios in the world

anyhow. fusion is still saving

sigh

[ebon dew]

lol yep that's how it really is

[rapid geode]

i dont know what they broke. but its bad

ha

[ebon dew]

i spend as little time with fusion 360 open as possible. then close it and just keep cura open.

[rapid geode]

ha

i leave fusion open for months. :x

prevents it from updating

hehe

i with you could open 2 at once as well

[ebon dew]

printed 4 brackets today for the matrix panels. should allow me to join up to 10 panels together nice and snug as a big display.

[rapid geode]

i wish they would kill off this terrible cloud thing. they know everyone hates it. the devs hate it too.,

[rapid geode]

ooh nice

[ebon dew]

ah but subscriptions and microtransactions are the future

[rapid geode]

i dont care about the subscription so much. cloud is trash

[ebon dew]

just saw something come across my feed today that BMW had a subscription based model for heated seats... in a car.

[rapid geode]

thats old news

mercedes has a subcription for more engine powrer

[ebon dew]

first i'd heard of it, it's ridiculous (my opinion).

[rapid geode]

it will soon be illegal to tie purchased hardware to expirable software i think. this has to stop. if you want to rent me a car, fine. but if i BUY the car, its mine, and there should be absolutely nothing in it that can ever change terms or expire in fuction.

[ebon dew]

but that makes too much sense, can't have that

[rapid geode]

nah, we will. although i expect a fight

like the leica scanner we have. $125000 box that is useless unless you continuously pay them $7000 a year for software.

[raw jasper]

Yeah, it was actually sunset because too many people hated it

[ebon dew]

well in the wise words of the Beastie Boys, "you gotta fight for your right" to something or other.

[tardy badger]

Hilariously many products that have various capabilities of the same looking enclosure have the same PCBs, many with the same parts populated but there’s like.. a resistor that is read by an ADC on boot to pick the features to load

[glacial wigeon]

the original pi1 had an array of resistors to set the hw revision code

[late fulcrum]

I think the vehicle manufacturers will find this backfires on them, as car hacking suddenly becomes common

[rapid geode]

i dont even mind that. you bought what you bought.

[tardy badger]

Sure, but the fact that a single resistor can make the price vary by tens, even hundreds of dollars is mind boggling

[rapid geode]

like quadro vs geforce. but you cant then charge me $50 subscription to allow quadro functions.

[raw jasper]

laughs in oscilloscope manufacturer

[ebon dew]

See when it a "subscription" becomes more like blackmail or holding something you should own as hostage that's when it should be illegal.

[late fulcrum]

I bought a calculator once and realized there were soft spots by the keypad. I cut through them and saw there were switches underneath for keys that weren't installed. It turns out it was the same board and software as the much more expensive programmable version, just without the keys.

[tardy badger]

But then you have people who figure out the resistors help people hack their products to get better features. Priceless

[glacial wigeon]

but later, they switched to using OTP (fuses) in the SoC

and it never gated actual features

[rapid geode]

this is what i mean. they cant "sell" you a product then force you to keep paying

[ebon dew]

was that an attempt at some kind of DRM?

[rapid geode]

charge me 15k a year and then keep upgrading and replacing the scanner. id be fine with that.

[late fulcrum]

All of my oscilloscopes come with full schematics. As if the manufacturers realized that the sort of people who buy oscillsocopes will want to repair/modify them.

[ebon dew]

right

[glacial wigeon]

one of my old tv remotes had similar, 2-3 extra buttons, where the rubber was cut short, and the overlay with labels lacked holes