Mr. Certainly#0472
#general-chat
solar ridgeBOT
Mr. Certainly#0472
late fulcrum
3? Woah.
tame saddle
safe to assume @grave crest is punctual? ๐
grave crest
I knew it was a low number, but that's nice to see ๐
lilac tangle
?whois @lilac tangle
solar ridgeBOT
MakerMelissa#0092
lilac tangle
High number for me
dusty citrus
?whois nis
solar ridgeBOT
nis#0186
idle iron
good offtopic fun
dusty citrus
Vid for Feather M0 Express was 4/5/17 and I already had an Arduino M0 Pro.
I got notices from gitter, but ignored them since very shortly after signing up, this Discord became known to me.
https://gitter.im/adafruit/circuitpython
I think CircuitPython was still something else in December 2016.
dusty citrus
||JULY 17, 2017 - foundation of #general-chat||
Whoโs dealt with braces?
I am in agony
Agony, I say
finite monolith
Javascript?
hallow rapids
Dental. Much worse.
pure haven
?whois kingernorth
solar ridgeBOT
KingerNorth#7189
wild junco
that moment where you go ow ye iv not updated my was pis in like 6 months guess what iv been doing for the fast few hours and still going ๐ค
hallow rapids
Sounds like you need docker in your life
wild junco
whats docker when its at home ?
hallow rapids
containerised computing. basically, you can manage all your pis remotely, relatively easily
wild junco
cool defiantly worth a look ๐
dusty citrus
Hey, remember that part in Endgame where ||I pulled 60 milliamps from a pin on my Uno and it's fried now, lmao||
dusty citrus
I wonder what would happen if you brush your teeth in excess
Irritation?
Decalcifying?
proven olive
You start damaging your gums, first.
late fulcrum
Proceeding with the dead KIM-1, I have now removed all the chips and cleared the holes. I've ordered new chips for the ones that can reasonably be had, and an adapter board for one of the others: it remains to be seen whether both are required for even basic operation.
dusty citrus
Are RISC cpus easier to work with?
late fulcrum
Depends more on the ISA design than the style. In my opinion, some CISC architectures (like the 6800 and similar 6502) are pretty easy to work with, and some RISC architectures (such as ARM and AVR) are pretty easy to work with.
dusty citrus
Im guessing i can play around with a z80 chip
I always thought that programing for RISC chips were hard
late fulcrum
Depends on the chip. Sparc is quite annoying to program in assembler, but ARM is surprisingly easy (some creative decisions like the flag setting option make it rather fun in my opinion).
dusty citrus
How about the the IBM CPUs?
late fulcrum
Z80 has a somewhat odd instruction set, not a lot of registers, and a weird I/O system, but isn't particularly difficult.
IBM has made a huge variety of CPUs over the years. Their current PowerPC offerings are fairly complex (and the STI Broadband Engine that powers the Playstation 3 is a monster).
dusty citrus
Wow many CPUs but half of the them are not being used in our PCs
late fulcrum
Many years ago, in the early days of computers, IBM realized their early CPU instruction sets had a bunch of drawbacks, and invented their system 360, promising that they'd maintain that ISA going foward, and they did for an astonishing length of time.
Oh, the PC took a step backward from the industry-dominating Z80 based TRS-80 machines to the more primitive 8086 line, which eventually led to the Pentium chips we use today. I'm not fond of that architecture.
late fulcrum
RISC V has a lot going for it, but I'm not sure it's going to be a big player.
dusty citrus
Its just that the x86 is just bloated
late fulcrum
Oh, I agree that X86 is a dead end. I'm not holding out a lot of home for Sparc either, since Oracle doesn't seem intent on pursuing it. I'd love to see PowerPC get used more, it's a nice architecture and very scaleable.
dusty citrus
Is the PowerPC a fast architecture
late fulcrum
Blazingly fast. It's what powers the IBM "Power" series machines (that's what was powering Watson when it was playing Jeopardy).
late fulcrum
Apple used it for a while and built some awesomely fast machines, but (mostly due to ego issues) jumped horses to X86.
dusty citrus
Well i actually hope the the PowerPC architecture gets used
Im tired of my trashy pentium not being able to play youtube vids on the background while playing games
late fulcrum
I programmed some radar processing with PowerPC, went from 14 hours per frame (in Matlab) to 60 frames per second.
dusty citrus
Is it possible to buy a PowerPC computer?
late fulcrum
There are three choices I can think of off the top of my head. Easiest and cheapest is to buy old Apple gear (their G5 machines were the fastest PowerPC units, and are widely available cheaply on the used market). Second is an old Playstation 3, which can be converted into a general purpose computer, but instead of a plain PowerPC, it has the "Broadband" version, which contains 8 PowerPC CPUs (one supervisor and seven execution units). The remaining possibility is the IBM "Power 7" and "Power Z" machines, which are amazingly powerful, but even on the used market command prices in the thousands of dollars.
dusty citrus
Holy molly
Wow
I guess i can try to get a new PowerPC computer and create programs for it
late fulcrum
It's a fun architecture, with lots of ways to get high performance. The later chips could do 3 integer operations and 2 floating point ones in a single clock cycle, and each of those was 128 bits wide, so each of those could be a bunch of smaller ones in parallel (4 32-bit quantities at once, or 16 8-bit ones, for example).
late fulcrum
Yeah, when I refer to the "STI" Broadband Engine CPU, STI is Sony/Toshiba/IBM. They were pushing to use it in all sorts of things, but Sony turned their back on it and went to X86 for the PS4. Weirdly, Microsoft went to PowerPC for some of the XBox versions.
dusty citrus
Maybe xbox wanted some sweet preformence
late fulcrum
I'd love to have PowerPC machines (which is why I'm sadly aware of the prices that even old Power 7 machines bring: I was hoping to buy one and use it myself. I've used industrial computers as home computers on and off for years).
dusty citrus
If i were to start a CPU company i would create PowerPC CPUs and try to port everything for it
late fulcrum
Internally, X86 chips have a RISC CPU and convert the legacy X86 instructions on the fly to execute them. Intel had the colossal hubris to rename them "RiscOps". I think they should have released the RISC core by itself, I think it would have done well, but they got burned the last time they strayed from X86, so they've hitched their wagon to that horse for the long haul.
late fulcrum
Agreed. They tried to push it into the maker space, but it didn't get any traction and they gave up on that effort.
dusty citrus
There are so many possibilities and x86 is the limiting factor
This is the reason why we aren't getting enough preformence
tiny field
does anyone else here use 1password on windows 10 with chrome?
the little password box doesnt always pop up for me and it is very annoying and i havent been able to fix it
late fulcrum
I use 1Password, but different OS and browsers.
tiny field
it doesnt happen every time but when it does it is very frustrating. and then sometimes the menu pops up after i close chrome!
it makes me want to go back to lastpass but i havent yet
late fulcrum
That is annoying, but I have no idea how to fix it.
torpid belfry
@late fulcrum I thought that Apple moved out of PowerPC because when Sony went to them for the PS3, it put a dent in the supply chain for a while and Apple decided they needed to not be relying on a supplier that could bottleneck that badly. I don't know if that's what I would call ego...
echo agate
I always heard that it was the development of PowerPC being too slow
Heck, they kept saying that putting a G5 into a laptop would be a challenge because of the heat/power.
late fulcrum
My understanding of why Apple left the PowerPC was that Jobs wanted to hit the magic 3GHz number.
The PS3 used the Broadband Engine version of the PPC, not the same chip Apple was using. The BBE was a wierdie variant with one main CPU and eight vector cores. All CPU, no MMU: it was optimized for CPU bandwidth and nothing else (it was a bear to program with no MMU everything had to be done manually)
Also, the PS3 used the cast off imperfect dice with only 7 working vector cores.
Yeah, the G5 ate a ton of power and gave it back as heat. Not a great candidate for a laptop.
echo agate
๐
late fulcrum
Looks about right!
echo agate
Now imagine it also has a leaky watercooling setup, haha
jagged siren
Officially, performance per watt: https://everymac.com/mac-answers/macintel-faq/why-did-apple-switch-to-intel.html
late fulcrum
I have one of the water cooled G5 machines - haven't had any leakage issues. It's frontside bus is a beast.
echo agate
Wonder how much of the coolant has evaporated off
jagged siren
Huh. TIL of liquid-cooled G5 towers..
umbral phoenix
When Mac Pro towers die.
echo agate
Or this
fickle slate
How feasible - with all the investment into improving x86, would it be for powerPC to make a comeback on consumer machines?
echo agate
I'd say "basically impossible" less for technical reasons and more for market reasons.
late fulcrum
Interestingly, Google has announced that they'll be offering PowerPC based machines in their compute platform.
Looks like Power is gaining momentum, and now there's an OpenPower foundation https://openpowerfoundation.org/
jagged siren
Power definitely has the oomph when needed (#1 and #2 supercomputers use them). Fraction of the core count and power consumption of the #3 and #4 systems. https://www.top500.org/lists/2018/11/
dusty citrus
I think powerPC eats up your electric bill alit
I mean they are literally beasts!
You need to cool down the chips using really good cooling or water cooling
late fulcrum
Until recently, the X86 line wasn't very power-efficient either, but they've improved. ARM tends to do well in that respect.
dusty citrus
I see...
I hope newer CPU architectures come out
Even im starting to think on creating a CPU architecture
late fulcrum
I hope so too: it seems like there ought to be some new ideas by now, instead of holdovers from the 1900s.
dusty citrus
True
Well all i can do is learn more about the CPU and slowly build my own architecture
As a 14 year old i have bug dreams
dusty citrus
Haha.
Waaaa
Wait
Stupid autocorrect
_.oO( .. and what do you call something that automatically corrects for an errant autocorrect? )
A dumb algorithm
Google Keyboard lets you backspace then space to retain your original entry (to override that autocorrect).
Oof
I haven't know that
late fulcrum
Kafkaesque.
slim prism
dusty citrus
I played my 9 v battery through a speaker .. how does it know when to make the click sound? j/k
echo agate
SmartBattery(tm)
dusty citrus
Hehe yeah. They should make speakers that are deliberately for connecting to a battery, for kids. The 'you can't fry it' speaker.
Put a carbon microphone inline.
Not sure what else you'd need (won't be loud that way).
They might have had something like this in a (fairly old) cub scout book. They used to have projects with 1.5 V 'dry cell' batteries (very tall, binding posts).
errant atlas
Does anyone need a job? https://jobs.adafruit.com/job/printed-circuit-board-pcb-electrical-engineer/ My company has literally been looking for a person to apply, for years and years.
And, like,, years....
late fulcrum
Heh, I could do all that, but I don't have a degree, my clearance has lapsed, and it's over a 2 hour commute each way.
errant atlas
ick, commuting is awful. I used to commute from Fredericksburg to Chantilly for 4 years. 1.5 hours, one way, on a good day. On bad days it would take over 2 hours to get home. Now I work 20 minutes from home! But, not having a degree has never stopped me from getting a job. Well, maybe 1 job, but most employers will overlook it. Especially if they've tried for years to get the position filled.
echo agate
You've got your entire adulthood to work, don't rush into it ๐
dusty citrus
Thing is i just want some money for some tools and some components to create something i want
dusty citrus
Let me write on the Wall of Text, one more time. -Richard and Linda Thompson
Hey they left out the quarter! The picture shows a quarter next to my product! Hey!
j/k
fickle slate
@errant atlas Chantilly as in the one near fairfax?
errant atlas
@fickle slate That's the one! Just a little south of Dulles Airport on Rt 50:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/38ยฐ54'37.5"N+77ยฐ28'22.4"W/@38.910419,-77.4750657,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d38.910419!4d-77.472877
fickle slate
Ahh nice I live in Burke
errant atlas
That's awesome. My daughter graduated from George Mason, just up the road from Burke!
Before I got the job I have now, I was driving up to Springfield, right at the 95/495 interchange
fickle slate
Going to be going to mason next year ๐
late fulcrum
I live in Lovettsville (near Harpers Ferry). I used to commute to New Carrollton, on the far side of DC, 2.5 hours each way. Then I got a job where I was commuting to Springfield, 1.5 hours each way, but I got paid for mileage, which added up to an extra $1200/month, which I used to buy myself a nice car. I don't have that job or commute any more, but I still have the car.
tender nimbus
What do you do now? (If you dont mind to answer)
late fulcrum
After I got laid off from a programming job, I did some freelancing developing hardware and working from home. Later I got another software job, but still working from home.
late fulcrum
These days I'm working on machine learning, supporting IBM's Watson.
tender nimbus
That's cool @madbodger
late fulcrum
That looks like a nice kit. I'm toying with the idea of rolling my own: perhaps using a FRAM chip as both RAM and ROM for a low chip count solution.
There are cheaper kits out there, but that one has a bunch of nice features (like the monitor that can run while your program is running, built-in BASIC, keyboard, display, etc.)
dusty citrus
I will save up money for that one
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum is it possible to program it with switches?
late fulcrum
It has a little keypad and LED display for programming, is that what you meant, or did you mean binary switches, Altair style?
dusty citrus
Yep i would learn programming much easier
Because hex numbers and decimals are confusing
late fulcrum
There are others out there with individual switches and lights for each bit.
dusty citrus
Wait
@late fulcrum you mentioned me about a membership card computer with switches!
late fulcrum
Yup, same site, different page
It's based on an 1802 instead of a Z80: http://www.sunrise-ev.com/membershipcard.htm
late fulcrum
There's one outfit that made a beautiful replica of one of the first personal computers ever (it doesn't even use a CPU chip). I don't think they sell them any more, but it's nice just to look at. http://www.kenbakkit.com/
However, if you really like the look of the Kenbak-1, there's a lookalike available here for a good price (however internally it uses a modern microcontroller to emulate the original non-CPU design): https://www.adwaterandstir.com/product/kenbak-1/
They also offer a similar emulated replica of the old Altair 8800, and another site offers an absolutely beautiful emulated PDP-8, to round out the bitwise switches-and-lights computers available today.
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum looks like a futuristic computer
late fulcrum
Not bad for something introduced in 1971, eh?
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum holy moly there are a lot of computer kits on the website!
late fulcrum
Yeah, some people seem to enjoy making computer kits, and I am glad such people exist!
dusty citrus
Yep i can finally learn something that i wanted to learn!
dusty citrus
@deep basalt im not sure mate
deep basalt
I'm just gonna post one
dusty citrus
Alright
deep basalt
dusty citrus
echo agate
Feeding it with instructions yet? ๐
dusty citrus
i have no clue how to do it @echo agate
echo agate
You would need to monitor the address and control lines from the processor to determine what it's trying to do (read or write memory, fetch instruction)
Then you'd need to program the arduino to respond to it with the data it wants.
Effectively, the arduino would have to simulate the rest of a Z80 computer.
For that, the Zilog Z80 CPU User Manual is probably the go-to reference document to tell you how the CPU works. It's a bit of a book, but I suggest skimming it if you want to make anything happen
(It may also involve a bit of learning how to assembly program a Z80, but it's a really simple CPU!)
Oh, and you'd need to supply it a clock signal, which could just be a GPIO from the arduino that you toggle on and off to make the CPU gears turn.
late fulcrum
If the Z80 has a clock set up, and you pulse the reset line, it should start fetching an from the reset vector address.
late fulcrum
Whoops, I was thinking of a 6800, which has a slightly more complicated reset sequence. The Z80 is a little simpler. When it gets reset, it clears its program counter, so it simply starts fetching code from address 0 and running it.
This page, entitled "How To Quickly Get A Z80 CPU Chip Running" might help: http://lateblt.tripod.com/bit62.txt
late fulcrum
The 6800 treats reset as an interrupt, and it has fixed memory locations it uses for jump addresses for each interrupt.
The 6800 is a pretty efficient CPU, but it's an early one and requires a fair amount of specific signals to operate. I'd suggested a 6502 over a 6800 for a beginner: they work similarly, but the 6502 is easier to work with than a 6800.
dusty citrus
If only we had this many CPUs to use in todays PCs
late fulcrum
The same site that has the 1802 and Z80 "membership cards" offers a 6502 "badge" which shows how simple a 6502 can be to use. http://www.sunrise-ev.com/6502.htm
dusty citrus
Holy moly
Wow
They use every CPU!
Wonder if they would build one with a intel 8 bit CPU
late fulcrum
Yes they do: http://www.sunrise-ev.com/8080.htm
late fulcrum
They're unhappy because the LED display they use for their Z80 and 6502 boards has gone out of stock from their supplier. I went and bought 200 of 'em on eBay and sent 'em an email to see if they're interested.
dusty citrus
What did they say?
late fulcrum
I just got a reply like 5 minutes ago: it turns out they took the unavailability of the displays as encouragement to redesign the badge: the new one will have a fancier alphanumeric display, more storage, and support for sound so it can play chiptunes. I'll have to figure out what to do with the displays I bought!
timber goblet
I cut my teeth on 6502 - but it was a year or two later before I realized why "ascii express" was named that.
shrewd lark
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum i have a idea of what to create
Just create a circuit that infinitely counts numbers
vernal gale
the pyportal has gotten a little rusty https://crates.io/crates/pyportal
dusty citrus
Because i was thinking of using one as a minecraft server
vernal gale
do they have a server binary targeting the powerpc architecture?
or is it java so it runs anywhere?
late fulcrum
I still think your best bet is something like a used Mac G5 if you're looking for a desktop PowerPC system.
dusty citrus
Wait so no desktop outside of apple?
late fulcrum
No affordable desktop outside of Apple.
dusty citrus
Shoot
late fulcrum
Well, there is one other possibility, a Playstation 3 has a BBE chip, which is PowerPC based, but it's not a conventional desktop.
dusty citrus
Oof
So im having a conversation with a friend about powerPC being good and powerful
How can i convince him?
late fulcrum
I gave up on convincing people of things long ago.
dusty citrus
How come?
late fulcrum
People are going to believe what they want to believe, and there's not much percentage in trying to change their minds. I just checked eBay and found an IBM Power7 system for only $1400.
dusty citrus
Oh god
If my mom sees me hauling a huge server from the mail
Im gonna be deadest of meat
So yeah
Gotta stick with hosting servers
late fulcrum
That's a possibility. Google Cloud Platform is going to be offering PowerPC9 soon.
dusty citrus
Wait WHAT
late fulcrum
IBM also has a few other Power9 partners this time around, so they may show up as desktops, but I'm guessing they'll still be expensive.
dusty citrus
I feel like when im older
I should start a conpany and licence the powerPC architecture
Create some CPUs of my own
late fulcrum
This is the upcoming "Zaius" version https://blog.rackspace.com/zaius-barreleye-g2-server-development-update-2
late fulcrum
They never left, really. These days, they're concentrating on Watson, Bluemix and their other cognitive offerings.
dusty citrus
So they would be creating skynet
late fulcrum
In the spirit of full disclosure, a fair chunk of my job is creating Skynet, um, I mean supporting Watson.
vernal gale
I tried Bluemix a couple years ago and it wasn't in great shape imo
dusty citrus
Its not like IBM is partnered up with robotics companies to create T-800s
Right @late fulcrum?
late fulcrum
You're thinking of Boston Dynamics and NSA's project Prism.
late fulcrum
That's why Lady Ada suggests we build robot friends. 
dusty citrus
Nah i would rather have a T-800 as a friend
I like menecing looking robots
Plus i like cool looking robots
late fulcrum
I don't have a problem with menacing cool-looking friends (robot or otherwise).
dusty citrus
I guess, until they destroy us humans
So i guess we need to make friends with them
Anyways how is it like working on watson?
late fulcrum
It's kind of fun, seeing how customers are using the software and figuring out how to make it do what they want.
late fulcrum
IBM's getting better with versions people can try out. There's a Watson Explorer Community Edition that's free, and trial and "lite" versions of a bunch of stuff here https://cloud.ibm.com/catalog
late fulcrum
One thing I've built for a bunch of customers is a chatbot to answer basic questions built on IBM Conversation. It's reasonably easy to set up and teach it how to recognize and respond to stuff.
Ah, looks like they renamed it, now it's called "Watson Assistant" and there's a free version.
dusty citrus
So its like deep learning for noobs
late fulcrum
Yeah, a lot of these services have baked-in generic models so they can do some common things without a lot of configuration and training.
If you're interested in deep learning, you can also play with Google Compute Platform and the Qwiklabs training, I think they offer $300 of services and 25 course credits for free to new users.
This "quest" takes 5 credits and walks you through some machine learning concepts https://www.qwiklabs.com/quests/34
One cool thing is you can click through to the course materials and read all the instructions, watch the videos, and follow the links without spending any money or credits.
dusty citrus
Im not sure if they would take in 14 year old kids om high school
late fulcrum
As far as I know, anyone who has a Google account can use the resources. And creating a Google account is free.
dusty citrus
And yes i have a google account
The thing about me is that
I can learn faster with a teacher
Like one on one
I known its a bit strange
late fulcrum
Yeah, people have different learning styles. I do best with these self-paced ones I can do any time, but other people learn differently.
dusty citrus
steady ocean
late fulcrum
Still trying to get the KIM-1 running, I wondered if the 6530 chips were okay, so for an initial test, I wired one to an Arduino and tried reading off the first 64 bytes of the ROM, and those seem okay.
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum whats that?
late fulcrum
A KIM-1 is an old 6502-based single board computer from the 1970s. I have a dead one and I'm trying to bring it back to life. Most of the chips are common ones that are still obtainable, but the 6530 chips are special, so I lashed up this to do some basic testing on them.
Then I wrote a simple sketch on the Arduino to provide the correct bus signals and cycle through the addresses and read back what the chip returns, so I can compare it with the expected values.
late fulcrum
The one you have wired to an Arduino?
dusty citrus
yep
so
when i move the cables a bit the z80 stops working for some reseon
i looked at the pins
there is weird stuff on the pins
late fulcrum
There will be a whole bunch of stuff going on. How do you tell whether it's working?
dusty citrus
i wired up a led to the M1 pin
it is flashing
as it supposed to be
until i moved one of the cables
it stopped working
late fulcrum
I guess you're clocking it really slowly?
Do you have something connected to all the control inputs (wait, int, nmi, reset, and busrq)?
late fulcrum
I figured that if the clock were fast, the LED would flash too quickly to see.
How do you have the data bus set up? Pulldowns? Tri-state drivers controlled by the RD/WR pins? Something else?
late fulcrum
That could have something to do with it. I'm not really familiar with the low-level bus transactions for the Z80, but my understanding is that if the bus were to float low (all zeros), the Z80 would interpret that as instruction 00, which is "no operation", and only requires one byte and completes quickly, whereupon it fetches another one. If that were the case, I'm guessing M1 would tend to stay low.
dusty citrus
M1 is flashing fast
late fulcrum
Oh, I thought it stopped flashing if you moved one of the cables.
dusty citrus
It would stopped flashing if i moved the cables
Im thinking that something is wrong with the pins
late fulcrum
It may be working correctly, but doing different things due to random values on the data bus.
late fulcrum
Sort of: if the data bus isn't controlled somehow, it'll just pick up random noise and the CPU will act on it (that's how computers work, basically: the information they receive over the data bus controls what they do).
dusty citrus
I'm guessing its some signal from the other cables that are connected
snow mortar
I am in automation / plc and programming and for me it is hard to differ between abbreviations. Anyone else has these problems with e.g. OPC and CPX? For me these are Open Platform Communications and a Festo pneumatic head module ๐
late fulcrum
There are only 17,576 possible TLAs using the English alphabet. There are going to be duplications.
snow mortar
Yeah ๐
echo agate
https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-adafruit-itsybitsy-m4 Is it just me, or does the "Download PDF" link on this page lead to a mostly-empty 169-page PDF?
ancient rivet
Hmm. I'm seeing same. Thanks for pointing that out. I'll pass it on.
@echo agate try now
echo agate
There we go, looks good.
fallow atlas
I kinda want to vent about the Arduino subreddit. They are just incredibly unnecessarily critical. This guy built a pretty impressive sun tracking fiber optic skylight, shared it in the subreddit and all of the top comments are just super critical because he used an acedemic title, and other people have done similar projects. I don't know how to bring new people in when they will be confronted with this criticism. https://www.reddit.com/r/arduino/comments/bl5ia7/_/
echo agate
Bring them here instead of Reddit ๐
Some people use their hobbies as a bludgeon because they need something to make themselves feel superior to others. I keep as much distance as I can from those people.
dusty citrus
Its sad how people are being let down by a sub reddit almost filled with nice people
dusty citrus
Finally i got my z80 arduino working!
Here it is!
Its not much but its a good start!
I could get the arduino to act as RAM
Or buy RAM
And wire it up
I could also add FRAM
For storage of some programs
finite monolith
wow. Are you providing the clock from the arduino?
late fulcrum
Cool thing about FRAM is you can use it as both RAM and ROM.
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum but is FRAM slow?
late fulcrum
FRAM is pretty fast. An MSP430 with FRAM can run at 8MHz with no wait states using FRAM as RAM. The Cypress FM16W08 chip I'm looking at has a 70ns access time and a 130ns cycle time: just as fast as a lot of SRAM and plenty fast for a Z80 running at a few MHz.
late fulcrum
Oh, I hope you do! I'm working on lashing FRAM to a 6502 myself.
dusty citrus
I could also add a video chip!
The microcontroller in the system would be like a chipset correct?
late fulcrum
Video would be cool. There are a few ways to do that.
I'm not sure what you mean by "like a chipset" here.
dusty citrus
I guess it would be a chip that would keep things in order
Or
@late fulcrum is it possible to get the CPU to generate video?
late fulcrum
Yeah, there are a couple of boards that work that way.
dusty citrus
Hmmm
I want to try to get the CPU to create video
But
The problem is that i dont have any RAM chips
I do have DRAM
But i have no clue on how to refresh it
dusty citrus
But how can i get my hands on some FRAM that can fit on the breadboard
late fulcrum
I'm planning on using these to put FRAM on a breadboard https://www.adafruit.com/product/1208
Here's one way to create video with a CPU: http://www.sunrise-ev.com/projects.htm#vip2k
Here's another: http://www.brielcomputers.com/wordpress/?cat=25
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum where do you find these kits?
late fulcrum
I'm not sure what you're asking. Are you asking how I find the sites, or where do the kits come from or what?
dusty citrus
The sites
late fulcrum
The sunrise-ev site is the same one with the "membership card" computers. I found the Briel one while looking for a way to substitute unobtainable chips for my KIM-1. I also keep notes in my travels of interesting sites I find.
Poking around with some likely search terms, I also found "Chibiterm" that produces 800x600 video with an STM processor.
Note that you can even produce video with an Arduino and a couple of resistors (look up the TVout library and Hackvision).
dusty citrus
@dusty citrus but is there some good in reddit?
late fulcrum
There is good information to be had, but you have to wade through a fair amount of sniping and complaining to find it.
dusty citrus
@dusty citrus how come the meme communities are death cults?
I mean r/dankmemes is a good place
dusty citrus
And the thing is that i am tired of Instagram filled with people just smoking and showing off their money
dusty citrus
Trust me it is a 50% toxic
dusty citrus
How can I combine pin headers to make a sort of "connected connector"? I don't know how to describe it
Hmmmmmm
I could just buy them :|
guys is there any 8 bit CPU out there that i can start out with?
echo agate
How do you mean?
There's sooooo many 8-bit CPUs, just depends on what you're trying to do
dusty citrus
something for beginners
dusty citrus
AT-mega328P
dusty citrus
?
late fulcrum
You normally buy the housings already connected and add the contacts. There are box-style connectors you can join together (like Anderson Powerpole), but those are on the larger side.
I have a real fondness for the 6502 for beginners, but PancakePuppy is right, there's a host to choose from.
vernal gale
rc2014 maybe?
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum is the 6502 easy?
vernal gale
you already have the z80
late fulcrum
And yes, the AVR line, including the ATmega328 is a nice line of microcontrollers that include RAM, flash ROM, EEPROM, and an assortment of peripherals, and don't require much at all in the way of support circuitry.
I consider the 6502 easy, compared to some of the other 8-bit CPUs available. I've done breadboard bring-ups of 6800, 6502, Z80, PIC, MSP430, AVR, and ARM.
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum microcontrollers are not interesting for me
late fulcrum
There's also 1802, 8008, 8051, Z80 and a slew of others, but I don't have as much experience with them.
Yeah, if you don't want microcontrollers, discard AVR, PIC, and MSP430 as well as the microcontroller versions of 6800, Z80, and 8051 from your choices.
vernal gale
have a look at a kit like this https://www.tindie.com/products/semachthemonkey/rc2014-pro-homebrew-z80-computer-kit/
pretty beginner friendly
dusty citrus
@vernal gale i could look into it
late fulcrum
The Z80 has a fairly easy startup sequence (it simply starts fetching from 0 and running whatever it finds), but it has a somewhat wonky bus. The 6502 has a simple bus, but its startup procedure has another step.
late fulcrum
I'd say the 6502 is simpler to set up, especially if you like creative approaches to addressing (I do).
dusty citrus
i could build a 8 bit console of my own
vernal gale
there's 6502 rc2014s too https://www.tindie.com/products/ancientcomputing/6502-cpu-board-for-rc2014/?pt=ac_prod_search
graphics cards, all kinds of stuff
late fulcrum
That CPU board shows how little support logic a 6502 needs.
dusty citrus
@vernal gale now thats epic
i guess i do need something that is simple
so i would look into the 6502
vernal gale
I'm a fan of 6502 myself
dusty citrus
im a fan of the z80
late fulcrum
The only chips on that CPU board (besides the CPU) are an oscillator, a 7400 quad NAND gate, a 7414 Schmitt hex inverter and a 74688 magnitude comparator.
vernal gale
the ram and rom are separate boards
late fulcrum
I figured, guessing they're shared among different CPU boards.
vernal gale
yeah it's a pretty cool ecosystem
vernal gale
you can find pcb files for most of the boards online and order them yourself a bit cheaper
that's what I'm doing because I'm cheap
but you get good value out of getting everything in a kit
so ymmv
dusty citrus
i will first just save up for a phone
after all
my LG fortune is really bad at performance
late fulcrum
CPUVille and a few other outfits offer some affordable kits
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum i will look into it
I just need a kit that is easy to set up and learn from
timber goblet
I never heard of RC2014 and it's lovely. good for that guy, productizing that.
with that said, parallel protocols are...dead.
late fulcrum
Some of the really early CPUs were in small, easily breadboardable packages. The Intel 4004 is a 16-pin DIP, and the 8008 is an 18-pin DIP. On the downside, these low pin count packages use a multiplexed bus (8 pins take turns handling the high address byte, the low address byte, and the data), making them harder to work with.
Another approach is to roll your own CPU out of individual chips. Most such projects use a 74181 ALU as the core of it (the early PDP-11 computers worked the same way). Here's a breadboarded 4-bit CPU (there are lots of projects like this) https://www.instructables.com/id/Simplest-4-Bit-TTL-CPU/
late fulcrum
They're great for getting started and learning how things work in detail.
dusty citrus
Thing is, 4 bit seems more easier
I have also seen people recreate the Apollo guidance computers with TTL logic
late fulcrum
Yup, they were just built of NOR gates.
Amusingly, I found a bunch of links about nice 4-bit builds, and one of them is named after Apollo: https://apollo181.wixsite.com/apollo181/cpu-4-bit-architecture
late fulcrum
Most of the builds use the 74181 ALU chip, but I found one that builds the ALU out of individual chips.
dusty citrus
Is the ALU chip still being built?
late fulcrum
I don't think so, but there are plenty of outfits that source older chips (I've been shopping at them a lot to get chips for my own retrocomputing projects).
Jameco has a couple hundred in stock https://www.jameco.com/z/74LS181-Major-Brands-4-Bit-Arithmetic-Logic-Unit-DIP-24_46973.html
dusty citrus
Anyways i will build a Apollo computer of my own!
Maybe use the computer for my own space projects
late fulcrum
Abra has 'em even cheaper https://abra-electronics.com/ics-semiconductors/74ls-series-dip-package/74ls181-74ls181.html
Ken Shirriff (the person who built the 6502 out of discrete components) has a great writeup of the 4-bit ALU inside the Z80 here http://www.righto.com/2013/09/the-z-80-has-4-bit-alu-heres-how-it.html
And even better, he has a detailed description of the 74181 ALU http://www.righto.com/2017/03/inside-vintage-74181-alu-chip-how-it.html
dusty citrus
Wait how come the z80 have a 4 bit ALU?
And how did they manage to push 8 bit data in a 4 bit ALU?
late fulcrum
I'm guessing they do it in chunks, and have some logic to handle things like carry bits.
dusty citrus
I thought that there was a encoding and decoding logic that was hooked up to the bus then the ALU
late fulcrum
The designer of the Z80 explains that it saved space (and therefore cost) on the die, and since there was a multiphase clock already, and they could do 4 bits on one phase and the other 4 bits on another phase, there wasn't a big performance penalty https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Zilog_Z80/102658073.05.01.pdf
late fulcrum
It can, but I'm guessing that takes more clocks. That's generally true as well: the same way you can do 32-bit arithmetic on an 8-bit CPU, by taking it a piece at a time, you can do 32-bit arithmetic on a 4-bit CPU, it'll just take more time.
dusty citrus
So technically a 4 bit CPU COULD do 8 bit calculations
torpid belfry
learning more of the details of these early chips just makes me more and more impressed with how much of engineering is the art of compromise and working with what you have
late fulcrum
Absolutely.
dusty citrus
Darn im learning so much from this community
late fulcrum
This builder went with a classic lights and switches front panel http://www.galacticelectronics.com/Simple4BitCPU.HTML
torpid belfry
flip the switches, hit the button, move on to the next line of machine code
torpid belfry
my comp sci used to tell us stories about programming in those kind of environments
late fulcrum
It is a great way to learn. That's part of why I'm going to so much trouble to resurrect this abused KIM-1.
torpid belfry
I really regret that I didn't dig more into learning ML for the 6502 back in my C64 days
torpid belfry
no time like the present! ๐
dusty citrus
Almost half the people are talking about the newest hardware
It just gets boring quickly
I like looking into the CPU
Seeing it tick
Seeing how it functions
echo agate
You're definitely in the right place ๐
late fulcrum
At one job, we needed to document the bus speed of a fancy new machine. The manufacturer wouldn't tell us much, other than "the bus is so fast, you can't even measure it." We hooked an oscilloscope up to a couple of the control leads and were able to watch it cycle and calculate the bandwidth from there. We never told them we attacked their brand new computer with a soldering iron!
torpid belfry
LOL
dusty citrus
Im slowly being able to grasp the knowledge of how CPUs work
Im just confused about timings and such
late fulcrum
That sort of knowledge takes some time to acquire and is totally worth it
dusty citrus
I will just build my own CPU and learn everything from that
late fulcrum
That's my life in a nutshell.
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum really?
late fulcrum
Yeah, school basically offers a generic overview of stuff, but my interests tend to be fairly specialized and specific.
late fulcrum
Some people are interested in the history of the Bayeux Tapestry, some people want to know how to manipulate the meristematic cells in orchids, and some people (like us) want to know the underlying implementation of computers. School can't cover all of that, it just tries to give an overview and (some) basic life skills.
late fulcrum
Oh, it might. There are some details of the Jacquard loom that are quite relevant.
echo agate
The history of computer science has a lot of interesting bits ๐
late fulcrum
Also how the Phoenicians dealt with place-valued arithmetic has repercussions in CPU design today.
late fulcrum
Also (and yes, I realize this is quite a narrow special case) I found the solution to a bit inversion algorithm while figuring out how a book I was reading on embryology explained something I had seen in another textbook on paleontology.
dusty citrus
?
late fulcrum
Do you really want to me to explain that story?
late fulcrum
Yeah, the evolution of dinosaur vision and how HOX genes influence the development of neural crest cells is pretty abstruse stuff. But it led to a creative algorithm using XOR to reflect bitfields.
dusty citrus
ahhhh i see
late fulcrum
When I was your age, I'd been learning electronics by pulling stuff out of peoples' trash (I didn't have much money) and trying to fix or modify it. Then I got interested in computers (which I also couldn't afford) and had to get creative.
dusty citrus
honestly
thats how i learn
i take stuff apart
and maybe i can repurpose components
late fulcrum
Yup. It's a good way to learn. Speaking of learning, I'm thinking if you haven't already, think about how an adder works. Maybe breadboard a half adder, then a full adder and see how they work. An adder is an important part of a CPU, it is used for adding, subtracting, incrementing, decrementing, and comparison. Once you have a good grasp on how an adder works, maybe think about flags. When an operation is done, flags (zero, negative, overflow, carry, etc.) are set according to the result. Instructions can then test these flags to determine what they'll do.
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum what do flags do?
late fulcrum
If you think of a program that wants to do something if (say) X is less than or equal to 7, in assembler, it would use a "compare" operation with X and 7, which would set some flags. Then it could use a branch instruction that tests the flags. For example a BLE (branch if less than) instruction would branch if the Z (zero) or N (negative) flag were set.
late fulcrum
Exactly. Then the branch instruction, if it chooses to branch, adds the offset to the program counter register (yup, there's that adder again). By changing the program counter, it changes where the execution continues.
Historical note: some of the earliest CPUs had an instruction like LPC for "load program counter" to go to a specific address. This soon was changed to JMP "jump", which is pretty much the effect of putting a new value into the program counter register. ๐
So, with an adder, and two registers (flags and program counter), you already have the beginnings of a useful CPU!
dusty citrus
i was scratching my head for a long time about the control unit
late fulcrum
I'm not sure what you mean by "control unit". The logic to fetch instructions, figure out what they are, and execute them, maybe?
dusty citrus
its more like the central part of the CPU which controls everything
late fulcrum
Sometimes that's called the "sequencer". There's a good writeup of how a basic one works in this page by yet another person who built their own 4-bit CPU: http://www.vttoth.com/CMS/index.php/projects/13-4-bit-processor/131-viktors-amazing-4-bit-processor-microcode-sequencer
late fulcrum
That's a common approach. In fact, you can use a ROM as a sequencer on a breadboard (sometimes this trick is done to output video from a small computer).
Basically you can make an (EP)ROM run simple programs by simply running its data outputs into a latch and back into the address inputs.
dusty citrus
is it fast?
late fulcrum
It can basically be as fast as the ROM can go, so pretty fast.
dusty citrus
i am thinking that logic gates are still used for the sequencer
late fulcrum
If it's just a ROM and a latch, you can't make it react to anything, it just loops around in the pattern you set up. But yes, if you add some gates, you can then make external inputs affect what it does.
In a more complete CPU, you'll generally have a mix of ROM and gates. I'll point you to yet another of Ken Shirriff's articles, this one on how the ARM 1 instruction sequencer works. It has some really good information. http://www.righto.com/2016/02/reverse-engineering-arm1-instruction.html
dusty citrus
but in modern CPUs is the control sequencer made out logic gats
late fulcrum
Generally a mix of ROM and gates. In some CPUs (like modern X86 variants) there's a lot of ROM holding "microcode" which is in turn instructions that an inner CPU runs to implement the instructions from the outside.
Note, the article I linked also describes the 6502 and Z80 sequencers and compares them.
Note that Ken is the same person who built the "MOnSter 6502", a 6502 built out of discrete transistors. It's an amazing project. https://monster6502.com/
dusty citrus
imagine there was a monster z80
late fulcrum
There are about 3 times as many transistors in a Z80, so it would probably be about half a square meter in size. Go ahead and do it!
dusty citrus
andddd im probably not able to do SMD soldering
torpid belfry
OMG I am in love with the MOnSter 6502 and I want to make one
but I do not want to step into the world of surface mount yet
echo agate
It's a wonderful world until about 0603
torpid belfry
I am still having trouble with regular .1mm through-hole
torpid belfry
aargh .1" / 2.54 mm
Part of it is I still need to work on my technique
part of it is in my learning curve on this project I've had to solder/unsolder/resolder the traces on a particular breakout a number of times
to the point it no longer functions
good thing I had a spare
echo agate
I destroyed the very first kit I ever worked on because of how annoying desoldering through-hole components can be
Which was a gigantic shame looking back because it was a ZX81 kit I found at a thrift store, complete and never soldered on.
echo agate
I was imagining an inuit on an ice floe clubbing a PCB
torpid belfry
either Jennifer Garner in Alias or the ahbove
either way, "clubbing a PCB" has now been added to my vernacular
echo agate
That's how I feel when I need to put the biggest tip on my iron to tackle a ground plane
Gonna really club this one
dusty citrus
i remember i was young and i was playing with lithium ion batteries
i accidently created a short circuit and burnt my finger
late fulcrum
I have a separate soldering iron for big jobs like that and yes, it's a bit clublike
dusty citrus
Oh also
I was using and soldering iron
And a blob of molten solder fell on my skin
jagged siren
I've had a blob of molten aluminum bloop up (fair amount of gas pressure underneath it) several inches in front of my face once. No protective gear right then. Quite lucky to have been unharmed.
dusty citrus
Hopefully i won't get cancer
grave crest
Well, I'm no doctor -- but everything I've heard and read about soldering is that the effects are gradual but cumulative over time.
I'll preface it with this: Nothing in life is totally 100% safe without any risk. Everyone has a different tolerance for risk -- and that's perfectly fine. Take whatever precautions you feel appropriate, and you won't hear anyone here argue against safety.
Most common with soldering is ventilation/fume extraction. Don't solder in an area where you'd prepare food or sleep -- and don't eat or drink while working. Lead in leaded solder is a concern of course, but there are byproducts with ROHS "lead free" solder -- like tin, aersoled flux, etc.
Also, wash your hands before doing anything else. Eye protection is paramount, and tie back any loose clothing/hair. It's a good idea to avoid wearing any jewelry.
But it's the amount that you'd come in contact with -- the "exposure limit" is much different between copper/silver/tin versus lead.
One little blob of solder? I'd wash out the wound, sterilize it, and keep it clean as it heals. There's more risk for infection from a skin break than you would be from one instance of solder hitting the skin.
late fulcrum
Whoops, I misspoke: Ken isn't the creator of the MOnSter 6502, the creator is Eric Schlaepfer.
Here's his schematic for the decode ROM https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/decoderom-huge.jpg
dusty citrus
We used to play with 1/4 fluid oz Mercury .. and .. what was I saying?
shrewd hatch
i learned something about orcad today it freaks out when i download a foot print
proven olive
I love that ยฑ1 display
proven olive
You can get them on Mouser, but DigiKey doesn't seem to carry them.
sweet mango
Interesting.
sweet mango
The banding on the transistor seems a little weird.
Oh, that is really cool.
Now there is alphanumeric displays. But these ones are still really cool.
This stuff is so old.
proven olive
I love old stuff, though. It's so neat to see how differently things are done
sweet mango
Indeed.
Also, the 7-segment display unit is actually a card.
Sorry, for all of the pictures Adafruit Discord Server.
This card takes 110V AC.
Old technology is just amazing.
proven olive
How old is this?
proven olive
Well, the first chip I looked up, the big Intersil ICL71C03ACPI, was marked obsolete in 2001
The ICL8052ACPD nearby has a datasheet date of august 1997
sweet mango
Wow.
I don't know what the Intersil chip does. I think the transformer provides 5v and 12v.
proven olive
Both the Intersil chips came up as 4 1/2 digit A/D converter
sweet mango
I kind of want to plug it into 110v. I traced the power lines on the PCB that the display plugs into, and it is tied into 110v input.
proven olive
Which... I'm not entirely sure what they do
I'd... not, personally. Not without a lot more poking around
sweet mango
Large guage wire.
J3 (on the left) is what that connector connects two. After tracing the circuit traces, white and black are connected to two fuses in series with HOT and NEUTRAL.
sweet mango
The IC uses several different voltages, +5V, -15V. The IC that can be used with it, which is used in this case, can accept +15V, -15V, and I think -1.2V. I think that this display is a voltage read out. Actually it probably is based on what the panel says what it, Transformer Incipient Fault Monitor.
stark oriole
@lucid jackal hi
lucid jackal
hey andy
stark oriole
Going to share your projects?
lucid jackal
i share them in a diff server tbh, bc i know all the people in the other but i should
stark oriole
I bought stuff from adafruit when I developed version on of my lighting device.
lucid jackal
lets see the device
stark oriole
Let me see if I have a photo
late fulcrum
Yow. I'll stick with my KIM-1.
amber thorn
Dang, @dusty citrus and I thought my mechanical keyboard was expensive
dusty citrus
@amber thorn it's so expensive that it has a built in computer
amber thorn
Lol. Funny to think that those mechanical keyboards that use the RPi 0W are more powerful than that
grave crest
For those doing video work, there's a new humble bundle featuring Vegas Pro + Soundforge.
I'm not someone who does much video editing. I'm unfamiliar with the current popular tools. Is this bundle worth the $25 asking price, or would I be better served by iMovie/Windows Movie Maker or open-sourced equivalents?
https://www.humblebundle.com/software/vegas-pro-even-more-rebundle
sleek urchin
I'd also suggest checking out https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/ca/products/davinciresolve
the free version is quite impressive
and most of the limitations only really kick in for features you'd want in a professional setting
amber thorn
As someone who also does a bunch of video stuff, I HIGHLY recommend this
grave crest
@amber thorn Which is that?
amber thorn
Davinci Resolve. I've used Vegas before, but Resolve is just soooo much more powerful (and it's free). Also, I'm rather partial toward's blackmagic's products as they're the brand of camera I use.
idle iron
making gameshark/AR codes for pokemon ultra...
got to do value checks before writes, i guess memory is reused alot, like RAM is cleared and used for different stuff... better optimized then older pokemon games
here is example of "Max Money" code:
starting with 6 is the check, then B are offsets then the "38E8" is the actual address being wrote to D2 ends loop
6066F3DC 00000000
B066F3DC 00000000
B000001C 00000000
B0000024 00000000
B0000004 00000000
000038E8 0098967F
D2000000 00000000
older pokemon games would have been just one line of code... Random share... i just modded my 3ds
late fulcrum
I was curious about such things and understand the basic concept, but a little experimenting made it seem as if figuring these things out would be intricate.
idle iron
@late fulcrum if your want to read a bit on GameShark/AR codes here is where i got most the info
https://macrox.gshi.org/The Hacking Text.htm?fbclid=IwAR2oLepiGJYd74EDjUUQdBcj_EzHkT_OciWg9iIkhNgXXJuZuErr0qUzGvQ#gba_asm
and then this is for just 3ds
https://github.com/JourneyOver/CTRPF-AR-CHEAT-CODES/blob/master/ActionReplayCodeTypes.txt
i thought it was excellent read, but im into cheats like that
toxic mason
anyone here uses KICAD?
echo agate
Yep
toxic mason
hi @echo agate
i would need some help
i'm importing DXF with shape made from lines and arc. I would like to use it as filled copper
i guess this could be done to tranform that to polygon? but i dont have any idea how to do it
echo agate
I haven't imported a DXF into Kicad unfortunately ๐ฆ
toxic mason
๐ข
runic elbow
So it's been a while since I've copied stuff onto a CD RW, and every sound the drive makes keeps making paranoid that it's somehow broken, even though it's working just fine
vernal gale
I bought an atomic purple game boy color finally :)
@stuck moth What's your solution for flashing carts?
stuck moth
what do you mean?
vernal gale
You make your own game boy carts, what programmer do you use?
stuck moth
I have my own cart I designed that just runs circuitpython
vernal gale
Ok, no rom?
stuck moth
correct
vernal gale
Alright
dusty citrus
guys do you know any gifts for some makers?
copper hemlock
Gift cards to Adafruit, Harbor Freight Tools (US), Newark or Digi-key (for more advanced makers).
dusty citrus
dusty citrus
this is real stuff
late fulcrum
Shiny! But what is it? Silicon dice?
dusty citrus
I don't know but its from mainframe
But look at the size of that, it's a absolute unit
late fulcrum
I thought it might be a an IBM TCM, which appears to be the case.
copper hemlock
That's no guarantee it's from a mainframe. Ever seen the processor on a SGI Onyx machine?
dusty citrus
@copper hemlock nope
late fulcrum
I had a SGI Indigo Elan for a while, now I have the older SGI Iris 3000.
dusty citrus
Wait did the SGI desktops use MIPs architecture?
late fulcrum
Yeah, I think so. The Iris machines used 68020.
Hand assembling core memory is tricky, but not as difficult as I feared.
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum how do iron core memory work? Does it store data by how it rotates or turns
copper hemlock
It stores a magnetic field. Kinda like a tape, but individual bits.
late fulcrum
Yeah, a magnetic field around the ferrite ring, either clockwise or counterclockwise. The ferrite is a "hard" ferrite, which has the property that the magnetic field from a wire through it has no effect up to a certain level, then abruptly "flips" to the other direction when the field gets strong enough.
Reading a bit consists of creating enough of a field for a "flip" and looking for the signal of it happening. Whether or not you get a "flip" tells you what the state had been. Note that reading a bit erases it, so this type of memory has to be rewritten after reading.
In practice, there's a grid of wires, each carrying half the necessary field, so you can address an individual core by activating the right row wire and the right column wire. The other cores along the wire only get half the field, so they don't flip, but the one core where they cross gets the full field. A third "sense" wire is threaded through all the cores to monitor the "flip" signal.
Here's a lashup I made with a random large ferrite core to try the effect. It's the wrong type of ferrite but still works as a proof of concept.
dusty citrus
any good SBCs with a SATA interface?
late fulcrum
I did finish running all the row and column wires through the cores and threading the sense wire.
proven olive
That's... 4 bytes of memory?
dusty citrus
whats with the dark chips?
late fulcrum
Right: 32 bits. All that to add 32 bits of non-volatile memory to an Arduino.
The dark chips are just bridge rectifiers, they're just used to steer positive and negative pulses to the proper row.
The finished shield looks like this. The rows of transistors do the actual driving, the 8-pin op-amp extracts the sense signal, and the CPLD does the decoding, timing, and latching (yes, I do recognize the silliness of using a CPLD to support 32 bytes of RAM).
late fulcrum
Absolutely. It's wired to an Arduino, which is also an 8-bit machine. The interface is fairly straightforward.
dusty citrus
i would be absolutely retro if we wired this into a old retro machine
that has switches on front for programing
late fulcrum
Speaking of 8-bit CPUs, I just today finished this Altoids-sized 1802 computer. Since it produces video too, I grabbed the first video monitor I could find (a junked karaoke machine I haven't taken apart yet) to view it.
late fulcrum
Yes it can, that's one of the things I want to play with.
It uses a very clever circuit based on a counter and EPROM to generate the video, which it DMAs from the same memory the 1802 is using.
Basically the memory from E8D1 through FC4E appears as 192x192 pixel video.
late fulcrum
Yup. It also supports 1200bps serial data (generated by the video circuitry, amusingly enough, by starting a bit each Nth scan line).
late fulcrum
Agreed. It seems pretty capable and booted right up for me (once I connected the run line to something).
dusty citrus
i was always thinking of creating storage medium for 8 bit computers
it uses a EEPROM
like a cartridge
late fulcrum
Me too: I'm seriously considering trying to build my own Williams tube memory.
dusty citrus
how my type of storage works is that all the files get stored in RAM and the EEPROM goes into program mode which then the data gets programmed each address
late fulcrum
Note: someone came up with a cool hack to add neopixels to a core memory shield so you could see the bit patterns https://hackaday.io/project/163976-interactive-core-memory-shield-using-led-matrix
Oh, so the EEPROM is automatically loaded into RAM?
dusty citrus
well the data in RAM will be copied into the EEPROM
late fulcrum
Ah, that's a little more involved, but still possible. I had a similar idea using FRAM, so the process is continuous and automatic.
dusty citrus
but the problem with the EEPROMS is that there are a limited amount of write cycles
late fulcrum
FRAM avoids that issue too.
dusty citrus
but the problem is that there isnt a breadboard one
late fulcrum
I dealt with that issue by using one of these https://www.adafruit.com/product/1208
dusty citrus
now thats epic
now im thinking of using a serial connection between the CPU and FRAM
late fulcrum
There are cheap ($1.20) 2KB SPI FRAM chips, so that's even easier. I'm using the parallel interface ones because I want to have my CPU use it directly as RAM.
dusty citrus
Well it's sort of going to be a retro 8 bit flash drive for old computers
or should i make it parallel
so that it can be storage and RAM
umbral phoenix
I'm becoming convinced that @late fulcrum is actually several people. They help so many people on multiple channels here, seemingly 24/7, while also working on a pretty amazing array of complex projects. ๐
dusty citrus
is making a word processor (notes app on iOS) practical (or even possible) on a arduino with this thing https://www.adafruit.com/product/1590 ?
is it possible to recreate a gtx 1050 on a FPGA?
late fulcrum
Probably, but you'd need an FPGA that can address external RAM?
I doubt a plain Arduino has the horsepower, but perhaps something bigger like an M4 or Teensy could do it. Not really the right tool for the job, but it seems like it ought to be possible: the original Macintosh ran on a 68000 CPU, and the original PC had an 8088 and they were capable of running word processors.
lilac tangle
@dusty citrus you should be able to create a word processor with that. Fortunately a word processor doesn't need a microcontroller with a lot of horsepower and the RA8875 is what holds the video data for the display.
The only thing to keep in mind is that the drivers don't currently support custom fonts.
And it only handles 4 different sizes for the built-in font.
finite monolith
@dusty citrus I'm sure it is, at 10% speed, with $20k of FPGAs
dusty citrus
@finite monolith now that's a big ouch
finite monolith
I suspect that is part of how nVidia does their development
late fulcrum
Apparently it's possible to spend over $80k on a single FPGA: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/xilinx-inc/XCVU13P-3FLGA2577E/XCVU13P-3FLGA2577E-ND/8258244
ember orbit
@late fulcrum Hahhahaha I've seen a $250K FPGA go up in smoke in one of the labs at work
dusty citrus
how do you get onto the adafruit show and tell?
fair summit
@dusty citrus See recent discussion in #show-and-tell channel
dusty citrus
Water-based or milk-based hot chocolate?
dusty citrus
milk
late fulcrum
Oh boy, I just discovered the CHIP-8 language. http://mattmik.com/files/chip8/mastering/chip8.html
late fulcrum
Happy kilogram day! Thanks for 129 years of service, Le Grand K.
late fulcrum
vestal phoenix
That seems to carry some weight considering the gravity of the situation.
grave crest
That's a good article, pound for pound.
vestal phoenix
They were talking Kibble and bits and decided it was time for a change too.
dusty citrus
queen geode
need to test postin code.. sorry for flooding this channel.
import pulseio
import time
led_Y = pulseio.PWMOut(board.D50)
led_B = pulseio.PWMOut(board.D51)
led_R = pulseio.PWMOut(board.D52)
led_W = pulseio.PWMOut(board.D53)
while True:
start = time.monotonic()
for i in range(0, 65535, 50):
led_Y.duty_cycle = i
led_B.duty_cycle = i
led_R.duty_cycle = i
led_W.duty_cycle = i
end = time.monotonic()
run_time = end - start
print("Up %f seconds" % run_time)
start = time.monotonic()
for i in range(65535, 0, -50):
led_Y.duty_cycle = i
led_B.duty_cycle = i
led_R.duty_cycle = i
led_W.duty_cycle = i
end = time.monotonic()
run_time = end - start
print("Down %f seconds" % run_time)```hmmm that worked
vernal gale
oh I forgot to mention you can also do
```python
```
and then it will highlight
late fulcrum
I can't help wondering how you do the backticks without it quoting.
queen geode
import board
print("hello world")
how did you get sytax highlighting?
vernal gale
write python on the same line, and then tcode between the two lines of backticks
queen geode
python```
print("Hello world")
```python
print("Hello world")
```
vernal gale
@late fulcrum, prefix it with backslash
late fulcrum
while (*++*argv) { /* hacque majeur */
dang I learned a few new things today.. Ineed to pace myself ๐
dusty citrus
Sorry, it sounds similar to "Haque Mate" in spanish
Oh, yeah, offtopic channel, I know spanish
fickle slate
"is it possible to recreate a gtx 1050 on a FPGA?" I am just going to go and say "no"
late fulcrum
Possible? Probably. Realistically implementable? I'm going with "no".
echo agate
http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs150/sp10/Collections/Papers/nehalemFPGA.pdf In an interesting probably related topic, here's a whitepaper about simulating an Intel Nehalem CPU in many FPGAs
45 FPGAs, it seems like
copper hemlock
On that subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfATGKH_39k
dusty citrus
if adafruitcost <= amazoncost:
card.buy(adafruit.com)
modern island
# Your condition doesn't take into account the spirit of the company... it's unfortunate.
print("I am confusion")
late fulcrum
Amazon is evil and I do not do business with them. At all.
dusty citrus
Why?
late fulcrum
They abuse authors, publishers, customers, and their own employees. They support the ICE and abuse of immigrants. They're wrecking small businesses and communities. They sell counterfeit merchandise, even if you paid for genuine. I've always been able to find better deals elsewhere.
dusty citrus
But that amazon prime tho
I also really don't care about their politics so long as I'm getting a good product for a cheap price with a significant amount of convenience
late fulcrum
Wal*Mart offers free 2-day shipping with no membership.
late fulcrum
Disagree strongly, and you said you don't care about politics.
dusty citrus
I don't much
Although their own walmart branded products tend to be hot garbage and their website is oddly organized sometimes
I'm still yet to fully understand how that works, but I also haven't looked into it much
Also free two day shipping makes it sound like there's some catch
torpid belfry
I would be interested in an informed comparison of Wal-mart's third-party sellers/policies vs. Amazon's. I'm willing to bet they have many of the same problems in place.
dusty citrus
^
Probably
I'm still probably gonna continue to consume their goods because they provide a good service
torpid belfry
Just be aware that their good service may be having side effects that will make it harder down the line
dusty citrus
How so?
torpid belfry
As an example, their Kindle Marketplace thingy
Authors write books, publish directly through Amazon, customers buy their books, get money immediately, no nasty publisher. Lower prices for books for consumers, authors don't give away as much of the cut to the publisher, life is good, right?
Turns out that because of the way they implement it, authors don't get a fixed price per sale
There's a pool of money for all of the Kindle marketplace stuff (I forget the name of the exact program they call it)
so if everyone who participates sells more copies
everyone's per copy royalty drops
dusty citrus
import sys
while serviceinuse == True:
if employeewages == "poor":
if service == "poor":
sys.exit(0)
else:
continue
That's my brain
torpid belfry
and they keep training consumers that the most important thing about ebooks is low price
and they keep training authors that the most important thing is number of copies sold
so authors, predictably, churn out more stuff faster in order to flood the program with "their share" of the sales
drives quality and consumer expectations down
which affects the ebook market as a whole, even outside of Amazon
and that's just one example
dusty citrus
I'm slightly confused
torpid belfry
Amazon is really a perfect textbook example of short-term optimization (and always in Amazon's favor) leading to long-term abuse of the system
dusty citrus
Are you saying that each author would hypothetically be paid the same no matter what?
torpid belfry
Say my total pool for the Kindle stuff is $1,000 dollars
and I price everything sold at $2
if you sell 500 copies and I sell 500 copies, we each get $1 per copy
and Amazon keeps $1,000
Now if @late fulcrum adds in a book that sells 1,000 copies
2,000 copies sold, $1,000 for payouts, so everyone only gets $.50 per copy
You and I get only $250 each, Mad gets $500
dusty citrus
Heck that
torpid belfry
And if you're smart enough to NOT do that program
you just publish your ebook through them for guaranteed %
you have NO CONTROL over when they decide to do a sale
dusty citrus
Odd
torpid belfry
yesterday you sold a copy for $2 and got %25 percent, so $.50
today they put it on sale for %.50, you only get $.125
there are a lot of ways that they are helping authors get around bottlenecks in the traditional publishing system (and there are MANY problems in that system, let me tell you)
but there are a lot of ways that they are preying on their authors too
and that's just two examples
dusty citrus
https://bit.ly/2HKEifs I hope this sells well
torpid belfry
add in the full list of stuff Mad mentioned and, yeah, Amazon is pretty shady
dusty citrus
Is there anything you know about that's wrong with google play?
torpid belfry
We have some stuff that we have to use them for, but we always check our options first
Dunno anything about Google Play
dusty citrus
We?
torpid belfry
My wife and I
dusty citrus
Oh ok, I've got you
dusty citrus
made this a while back
fickle acorn
Phew! Just messed up my discord. I had to pull a system reset because a friend of mine though it would be nice to try to install a free copy of windows 10 pro. Which deleted Discord and Authy so I had to make a new account. I also had 2fa paired with Authy so now.... yeah the other Sys32Modus is gone.
@dusty citrus Wow! Nice! What software did you use?
fickle acorn
Cool. I use that too.
late fulcrum
๐ถ
fickle acorn
Neat
dusty citrus
late fulcrum
umbral phoenix
There's at least one hosting company that returns 418 to malicious clients.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools'_Day_Request_for_Comments (418 is from 2014)
idle iron
I bought a cheap 3d printer Anet A8(aka the fire hazard) and 2.2lb of PLA for $156. I'm happy with the purchase, the printer is very easy to upgrade. Did a little research on it on how to change firmware and stuff.
i plan on adding safety features to firmware, like pause print after 8 hours... most reviews of them catching fire was like 11 hours into a print, my guess is heat is transferred through the hotplate wires up to the mainboard... maybe some kind of weak link in the thermal chain would slow that, like place a different conductive material other then just copper wires going from bed to mainboard
late fulcrum
Looks like Seeedstudio is rolling out a RISC-V + ESP32 Arduino for $24
dusty citrus
What college is good to learn computer engineering
late fulcrum
Heh, my knowledge of such things is probably out of date
umbral phoenix
Depends what you mean by computer engineering too. Probably the most important thing is taking the time and having the motivation to study the fundamentals, and get as much hands-on experience as possible.
jagged siren
@dusty citrus colleges in US, UK, elsewhere?
jagged siren
US News & World Report has rankings in various categories each year, like https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering -- how long before you graduate high school?
Public versus private and in state versus out of state can make major differences in cost to attend.
dusty citrus
Well Its my first year in high school
jagged siren
Plenty of time to figure it out. May want to look at summer programs at different universities, might be called Governorโs Schools or similar.
That could give you some exposure to majors, projects, that sort of thing. Programs would be varyingly competitive based on high school grades, application letters from teachers, etc.
The ones in Tennessee are for rising juniors or seniors in high school, and last for the month of June or so.
dusty citrus
I'm in nyc
jagged siren
Same principle applies.
Might also be some summer programs that recruit from out of state, but canโt name any off the top of my head.
Not everything in CmpE coursework will be CPU architectures, but more fundamentals (and also to get some experience with engineering, math, science in general). Itโs a good idea for an Electrical/Computer engineer to know a little bit about heat transfer, to know why heat sinks are made the way they are, for example.
dusty citrus
Wow that's alot
jagged siren
Thatโs engineering.
Undergraduate courses are a bit more specialized than 25-30 years ago, and somewhat fewer.
dusty citrus
Well it doesn't hurt to learn all of those
jagged siren
Agreed. Makes it easier to change your mind about majors, too. Or to get a minor or double major. Computer Science students here have an architecture class, but itโs not hardware design as such. ECE students take regular DC circuits, calculus, a few CSC programming courses, ...
dusty citrus
I mean the thing is that the inside of the computer is interesting to me
jagged siren
Sure. Thatโs in CmpE, primarily. And you could change your mind in 3-5 years.
dusty citrus
I will stick to my interests
I want to work at IBM working on their powerPC architecture
jagged siren
Ok, but by the time you're ready, the best job may be with ARM. Or NVIDIA, Mellanox, Intel, AMD, Apple, etc.
jagged siren
All those folks have some level of their own CPU architectures. Some charge more than others for the end product.
dusty citrus
So much places to work at
late fulcrum
Working for IBM isn't bad, they're a lot friendlier than they used to be. Who knows what the CPU landscape will look like in a few years. Aside from RISC-V, there's not much new under the sun (ARM, Sparc, X86, PPC are all pretty old at this point). It'll be interesting to see what happens next.
There was an interesting branch of ARM archictecture called StrongARM developed at DEC (back in the day, it was amazing, a 200MHz CPU that could run on AA cells). When DEC was disbanded, their (Alpha, VAX, and StrongARM) CPU IP was divvied up and absorbed by Intel and Compaq (who was later absorbed by Hewlett-Packard).
These days, I think Sparc (developed by Sun, now owned by Oracle), VAX, and Alpha are effectively dead. Transputer died on the vine, as did MIPS. So at the moment, it's just ARM, PPC, and X86 (and maybe RISC-V if it ends up getting legs). There are also some legacy 8-bitters still doing duty in the embedded world (8051, 1802, 6502, 6811, AVR, PIC, MSP430, TMS320, Z80, etc.).
jagged siren
Fujitsu might sell more SPARC than Oracle at this point.
late fulcrum
Hmm, good point. Sparc (like AVR originally) was a foundryless design, manufactured by other companies (Fujitsu and Cypress some to mind).
jagged siren
VAX is way dead, IBM mainframe architecture might be different than Power?
late fulcrum
Heh, I did kind of skip over mainframes, which still exist. There are still lots of AS400 machines chugging away, as well as a small cadre of others and some supercomputers.
The mainframe I learned on (Univac 1104) is long dead.
jagged siren
I dimly remember strongarm. Never saw in person.
late fulcrum
I played with the StrongARM evaluation board, it did as advertised and I liked it, but didn't end up building anything out. Compaq built it into their ill-fated iPAQ.
jagged siren
At a Linux show during the late 90s/early 00s, I worked at the Debian booth. We had practically every compatible architecture on display. Only x86 was our personal laptops.
late fulcrum
I remember the BSD crowd deploying on pretty much everything that existed (the joke was running BSD on a digital watch).
jagged siren
SPARC, Alpha, PPC, 68k, MIPS?
Might have had HPPA, can't remember. One vendor saw we had loaner hardware from their competitor in the booth getting ready to get set up, and by the end of the day, they'd driven across town, picked up their loaner hardware, and then we could have both on display.
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum I really want powerPC to be in the consumer market
late fulcrum
At the moment, that's just the PlayStation 3 and xbox 360. However, IBM is partnering with several companies (and Google) to get the new Power9 architecture out there. We shall see.
jagged siren
Application support canโt be ignored. Even Microsoft couldnโt make Windows RT stick on ARM.
dusty citrus
the reason why i like powerPC is because of the juicy preformence
imagine gaming on powerPC
jagged siren
Apparently you are, at least on 360.
dusty citrus
i mean on PC
late fulcrum
If you picked up an old Apple G5 machine with its PowerPC CPU and added a high performance graphics card, it would be a BEAST for gaming, but there are few games made for that configuration. However, if you cared to write your own, you'd have a pretty unbeatable platform.
jagged siren
How much of game performance is constrained by the graphics card rather than the CPU?
late fulcrum
A lot of today's games use the GPU fairly heavily, so CPU performance doesn't have the impact it used to, but it's still a bottleneck in most cases.
I'm wryly amused that in the Atari 800 days, it was dismissed as a "games machine" when gaming is one of the more demanding applications computers run.
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum i thought of this PowerPC CPU with a x86 core so that it can convert instructions
late fulcrum
That's how modern X86 CPUs work: they have microcode that translates the X86 instructions into the code an internal CPU runs.
late fulcrum
Oh, you mean running X86 games on a more-powerful CPU to gain performance?
jagged siren
DEC did binary translation from VAX to Alpha architecture back in the day. http://www-leland.stanford.edu/class/cs343/resources/binary-translation.pdf -- I suppose that's fundamentally what Apple did to support m68k binaries on PPC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_68k_emulator), and PPC binaries on Intel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple's_transition_to_Intel_processors#Existing_PowerPC_applications).
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum i mean converting the instructions of x86 programs to PowerPC
late fulcrum
Oh, rewriting the binaries to run natively on PowerPC? Getting them to run at all might not be too big an effort (substitute libraries Wine style), but getting them to run correctly might be well-nigh impossible.
jagged siren
If the x86 core could convert machine opcodes into their PPC equivalents, the PPC could do that on its own.
dusty citrus
hmmmm
i guess
anyways
i will look into buying a PowerMac G5
@late fulcrum is there a PCI-E slot inside a PowerMac G5
torpid belfry
IIRC the Alpha IP got bought by Intel and slowly got absorbed into their past-Pentium designs
I miss the DEC Alphas, though, they were nice
and real SPARC systems with OpenBoot firmware...
late fulcrum
I don't know if they have a PCI-E slot, but since they're older machines, I'm guessing not. The information should be easy enough to find.
jagged siren
PCIe version: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/specs/powermac_g5_quad_2.5.html โ no idea how rare, or how expensive now.
late fulcrum
Ah, that quad core machine is a monster. Liquid cooled, massive bus bandwidth. That's the one I have.
Each core supports up to 215 simultaneous "in-flight" instructions, times 4 cores. We were running one big simulation on multiple machines. On the big Sun E4500, it took about 2 hours. On the Macintosh, it ran in about 14 minutes. We tried it on an X86/windows box, and it ran for a week then crashed.
dusty citrus
@late fulcrum I imagined a bunch powerMac G5s combined together to be a super computer
late fulcrum
A G5 by itself met the (then) qualifications for a computer of military significance (Apple had fun with that one). Virginia Tech built their "System X" supercomputer out of G5 machines.
dusty citrus
Well I kinda want to do it but cant
late fulcrum
dusty citrus
Wait those are server racks
late fulcrum
Yeah, Apple offered their computer in a rack-mount "XServe" configuration as well as the usual "cheese grater" desktops.
dusty citrus
When I get out of college
I will build a G5 super computer
Be the biggest nerd
But hey it's what I like
late fulcrum
I was reading about the 1802 CPU recently. It's an interesting beast. While most of the CPUs in those days had only a few 8-bit registers, the 1802 had 16 16-bit registers. It was designed to do a lot with a little, and ended up working surprisingly similarly to modern RISC CPUs. It reminds me a lot of the clever ARM architecture.
dusty citrus
Apparently the 6502 did not have general purpose registers
late fulcrum
Yeah, it has an accumulator, a couple of index registers, and stuff like the stack pointer, program counter, and status register. That's about it for the 6502. However, it has the "page zero" instructions that let it use some memory sort of like registers.
One weird quirk with the 1802 is you can tell it which register to use as the program counter, so you could jump by either reloading that register, or switching to another one (very quick way to do a subroutine jump).
dusty citrus
Are all 8 bit CPUs share the same instructions?
late fulcrum
Amusingly, the 1802 followed on from the 1801, which was essentially the same processor, but in two chips, with the logic in one and the registers and address multiplexor in the other (all those registers ate up a lot of silicon).
No, the 8 bit processors were mostly all different. The 6502 vaguely resembled the 6800, and the Z80 vaguely resembled the 8008, but they didn't share the same instructions, and others (F8, 1802, 8051, etc.) had completely different instruction sets. Even the operations they supported were different (again, the 1802 stood out as an unusual architecture).
finite monolith
I think I saw several POWER based monsters on the top100 super computers list last I looked at it
late fulcrum
However, there were some clever low-level languages (like Chip-8) that let you program different processors with the same code.