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The First Microprocessor, the F-14, and Me
- mhh__ 6y agoHeatblur's brilliant simulation of the F-14 for DCS World is currently free for the next week or so, worth having a play if you own a flightstick - the level of detail is unbelievable.
- sitzkrieg 6y agoawesome, thanks for the heads up. havent had dcs installed in a while and missed this
- tpmx 6y agoFree to download and "own" "forever" Epic style, or free to experience until the end of the week?
- mhh__ 6y agoFree to experience until January the 2nd IIRC. It's about $80 dollars or so normally so even it's worth having a go even if you don't take to it. The Tomcat is an absolute beast, though, so be prepared to be reading an instruction manual just to play a game if you want to go all out. Also, to anyone who goes on DCS multiplayer for the first time: IFF IFF IFF.
- dtparr 6y agoNow I'm curious. How does DCS handle IFF? Does it just abstract it to some general concept of IFF, or do you actually have to deal with the various modes and such? How does it handle different incompatible countries/generations of IFF?
- mhh__ 6y agohttps://youtu.be/RVthPAIYZlU https://youtu.be/RVthPAIYZlU Better 2 minutes than a wall of text. In short, increasingly well modelled but ultimately only an abstraction due to some fairly obvious reasons. The JF-17 apparently has the best IFF model in the game but I only started flying it yesterday.
- ngcc_hk 6y agoStudy level airplane. Not sure 1 week is enough ... sadly miss the 50% discount.
- stoolpigeon 6y agoWhen I was in VF-302 sometimes a reward for enlisted guys who did really well was a little simulator time. They all said just maintaining flight was very difficult and the minute adversaries were added, they were dead.
- jki275 6y agoNo kidding on that. The Tomcat is hard to employ effectively, but it's definitely worth trying out even if there's only a few days to do it for free. Beware though, this addiction leads to things like buying entire hotas setups from companies like Virpil and VKB and that's a very pricey proposition.
- sn_master 6y agoWorth noting, most of the F-14 kills and F-14 Aces belong to the Iranian Air Force. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Iranian_aerial_victories_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war#List_of_pilots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Iranian_aerial_victori... The US refused to export the TomCat to any other country and they destroyed all remaining TomCats after retiring them to prevent Iran from accessing spare parts, vs just having them parked in bone yards like other fighter jets.
- mhh__ 6y agoYou can actually see them taxi-ing around on Bing maps at a few Iranian airbases, they've still got a few left. https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=5e448196-42ac-41ba-81b8-b72728b7debf&cp=32.761659~51.88481&lvl=18&style=h&v=2&sV=2&form=S00027 https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=5e448196-42ac-41ba-81b8-b7272... 3 of them visible here, in various states of wing sweep. I read that they want to buy Flankers, but I would assume that western coverage of Iranian military strategy probably isn't particularly accurate.
- LgWoodenBadger 6y agoWell a few were not destroyed since they are currently in museums. The ones I’ve personally seen are in Palm Springs and on the Intrepid in NYC.
- saltyshake 6y agoThanks! I am sure those atleast will be under intense security and they probably gutted the important bits.
- mstade 6y agoThere's one in Titusville, FL, at the Warbird Air Museum[0] just a few miles from Kennedy Space Center. Well worth a visit for the F-14 alone, it's an awesome sight, but they've also got loads of other great aircraft and knowledgeable staff to help provide insight. If you're a flight and space geek like me, you'll spend a day or two at KSC and then a full day at the warbird museum. Whenever I find myself in Florida I try to make my way out there, can't recommend it enough! [0]: https://www.valiantaircommand.com/ https://www.valiantaircommand.com/
- Synaesthesia 6y agoIt's funny when people say things like capitalism created computers and iPhones. No it was the government, primarily the military for decades right up to when they could be marketed, that was the leading researcher in this field. Pity this was kept secret and only ever saw military use. Sounds like a very advanced processor.
- sn_master 6y agoThe cold war was the father and mother of the computing industry and science. Most of innovative super computers were designed and sold for the Nuclear Weapons Labs or the Lockheeds of the time.
- mhh__ 6y agoThe government (usually the military) makes the thing with a basically unlimited space and budget, the private sector let's you buy one. Making an iPhone is not trivial in the slightest, too. Also, the military (for the most part) pays for these inventions, the actual research and manufacture is usually still done in the private sector. That doesn't have to be the case, but if we take the Soviet Union as an example of an alternate system (Basically state-owned design Bureaus) they could just about keep up with the pace of technological development (and match in limited scope) but their populaces didn't see the "trickle down" technology.
- ngcc_hk 6y agoTherefore they evolve. Instead of state we have state based capitalism. Instead of innovation by state, we have private firms which can steal from other countries freely as they are not military. And they can produce well as well. And they can go out to sell you things and selective let you in for helping in the copying. That is Soviet Union 2.0 - china.
- Synaesthesia 6y agoI once read the big problem with Soviet industry was they focused on heavy industry but not light manufacturing like Co sumer products. The Asian tigers explicitly focused on that.
- trasz 6y agoWhy do we call it a microprocessor, when it was six chips?
- DanBC 6y agoIt was six circuits on one chip. https://firstmicroprocessor.com/?doing_wp_cron=1608857321.8621640205383300781250 https://firstmicroprocessor.com/?doing_wp_cron=1608857321.86... https://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/compucorp122e.html https://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/compucorp122e.html
- kens 6y agoNo, it was six different chips.
- nom 6y agoFor the same reason we call the PDP-8 a minicomputer and the C64 a microcomputer. It's smaller than what came before it. Then we realized it will continue to get smaller and after nano it will sound stupid so we stopped
- msla 6y agoThe C64 was a microcomputer because it was built around a microprocessor, which is a single-chip CPU. As in, not like what the F-14 had.
- msla 6y agoThe IEEE apparently agrees: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/chip-hall-of-fame-intel-4004-microprocessor https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/ch... > The Intel 4004 was the world’s first microprocessor—a complete general-purpose CPU on a single chip.
- geocrasher 6y agoBecause it was six chips not six racks
- 6y ago
- kreelman 6y agoThe personal side of this story is quite touching too. Two brothers, Bill and Ray, develop a microprocessor together. One brother Bill, dies. The remaining brother and those who formed the wedding party are the pallbearers at Bill's funeral. Bill's wife remarries, giving birth to the author. an amazing story and so personally written.
- gumby 6y agoNote also that her father is a friend and colleague of the two brothers.
- geocrasher 6y agoIt is interesting that so much of history isn't what we think it is. For example, who broke the sound barrier first? Of course, it was Chuck Yeager in Glamorous Glennis, the rocket powered Bell X-1 named after his wife. Or was it? The book "Aces Wild" [1] says that it was unofficially broken before that in an XP-86 (The experimental F-86, a jet powered fighter) in a dive, and witnesses on the ground heard sonic booms before Yeager's flight that day. But history favors the hero's, and in this case, the science: We know 100% for sure, because of science, that Yeager officially broke the sound barrier first. It is quite possible that the F-86 test pilots who stuck their planes in a dive likely did it first. It is well documented that the F-86 was capable of Mach 1 in a dive. Even so, that's not what the history books say, so that's not what we teach kids in school. I suspect it'll always be the same with the F14 computer vs the Intel 4004. [1] https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/mach-1-whodunit-180958702/ https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/mach-1-whoduni...
- breput 6y agoThere were many cases of pilots breaking the sound barrier in a dive prior to the X-1, even during World War II, and even some of them living to tell the tale. That was never in dispute. The point of the X-1 has always been that it was the first human piloted plane that broke the sound barrier in level, controlled, and repeatable flight.
- na85 6y ago>There were many cases of pilots breaking the sound barrier in a dive prior to the X-1, even during World War II, Aerospace engineer and amateur WWII historian here: I'm not aware of any credible claims from that era. The only WWII-era claims to have broken the sound barrier (by piloted craft) I've seen can be attributed to poor pitot tube design which gives erroneously high indicated airspeed readings when the ram pressure gets high enough. A reconnaissance Spitfire I believe is what got closest, at something like .9 of Mach measured by a fancy pitot system at the RAF test establishment.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
- Ericson2314 6y ago> hella gnarliest I'm sorry, but that incorrect usage really jumped out at me. Great article, though.
- geocrasher 6y agoJust be glad they didn't say it was "on fleek".
- ngcc_hk 6y agoWhen something happened sometimes it happened everywhere around the sane time. It would be odd to have one singularity. But 4004 ... now we know it is not.
- jdswain 6y agoRay Holt also went on to design the Jolt computer, a very early 6502 based computer which lead to the SYM-1 (also designed by Ray Holt), and TIM-1, which was more of a kit with a pre-programmed ROM. I built my own TIM-1 this year and have been doing a bit of research into these early 6502 boards. The Jolt computer is perhaps most famous for being used as the microprocessor section in the first Atari 2600 prototypes.
- hapless 6y agoBullshit. This is a super cool, and very personal, story about a massive advance in VLSI avionics. Compare it to the System 4pi, or the value-based avionics of the Soviets. There were lots of other approaches, and this one was more sophisticated and yet less expensive. It’s a great achievement! However, it is not, in any way, a story about a microprocessor. The only interesting thing about the Intel 4004 is that it fit general purpose computing into a single chip package. Many people and companies did interesting things long before the 4004 with a relatively small number of components, but that number was not one. The simple existence of a chip like the 4004, as a commercial product, altered an entire industry, globally. It gave rise to the Intel 8000 series, the Motorola 6800 series, and hundreds of clones. Ultimately, the revolution kicked off by the microprocessor gave us microcomputers, the rise of CMOS, and, essentially, the end of all other architectures for computing. This story is super cool but some editor fucked up real bad with the headline. This wonderful early application of VLSI and software in avionics is amazing, but it isn’t connected to the story of the “microprocessor,” as a thing. P.S. even if you accept the premise that an ALU on a chip is a cool advance, it didn’t go anywhere! No one could buy the damn chip. Nothing ever came of it outside avionics contractors.
- pinewurst 6y agoDitto - and if we’re talking chipsets, both Four Phase and Viatron had much more general offerings pre-1970.