3 ms·

Interesting point of history— the H8 processor is the MCU that powers the original Lego Mindstorms RCX. In high school I wrote some assembly language for it whe

Interesting point of history— the H8 processor is the MCU that powers the original Lego Mindstorms RCX. In high school I wrote some assembly language for it when making a robot that ran on BrickOS: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrickOS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrickOS

kn100 2y ago
a slightly different (but close enough) Hitachi CPU also powered the Cybiko - a wacky games console few have heard of. I tried writing a disassembler for that particular cpu a while back. Was an interesting platform and oh man the documentation at least to me was gorgeous: github.com/kn100/cybemu/
- dagmx 2y ago
  Link to the cybiko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybiko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybiko That is a really wild design
  - phs318u 2y ago
    Love it! “The concept for the device emerged from social research conducted in six countries, which identified a need for digital communication among youth. … a radio protocol was patented. This protocol allowed up to 3,000 Cybiko devices to form a network without using auxiliary stations.” Fascinating!
    - cpach 2y ago
      Wow. That’s basically a smartphone!? Just way ahead of its time.
      - hfgjbcgjbvg 2y ago
        Apple might as well do this and cut out the carriers.
        xattt 2y ago
        Is this what the Thread radios in all Apple devices are hiding?
        teruakohatu 2y ago
        Sadly Thread is 2.4ghz rather than the much lower and longer range Lora frequencies. It’s designed to be used within the home and between homes.
        asveikau 2y ago
        Sounds a bit like LoRa.
        ruined 2y ago
        it's the same 900MHz band
      - samatman 2y ago
        More interesting than a smartphone in some ways. Smartphones can form mesh networks with WiFi, but neither of the duopoly OSes have this as a built-in feature, it's left to apps, and that fragments the potential. The most powerful radio isn't user-controllable, it's strictly pay-to-play and operating a base station is heavily licensed, no peer-to-peer activity is possible. This is something I'd like to see disrupted, although I'm not holding my breath. I don't like that grid failure or (more likely) government order can knock smartphones off the network so easily as they can.
        Fnoord 2y ago
        Back in the days (very early 2000s), Amsterdam got WLAN network called Wireless Oost. This gave people in Amsterdam Oost wireless internet access throughout the neighborhood, without needing cable internet from A2000 (later merged with Chello, who merged with UPC, who merged with Ziggo, all the time owned by a certain company known as Liberty Global (you might have heard of them)). It also served as a (W)LAN. Back then, the local computer club ASCII (comprised of political activists and such, predecessor of the hackerspaces) had a cargo bike called Bakscii (derived from Dutch world of cargo bike (bakfiets) and ASCII). This provided WLAN access at demonstrations and such. It was a neat project which Internet Archive likely still holds. I was never directly involved with said project, btw, but I knew all of the people who were. Nowadays, I live near Amsterdam and will get 1 gbit symmetric fiber internet soon (most of NL already has access to it). I use a Wireguard tunnel to connect via any network (LTE/NG/WLAN) via my home network which runs Pi-Hole. My point being, security has improved, but there is a constant: wireless internet usage can be triangulated, eavesdropped, and clients can be tracked. It is something we need to live with. Every time I leave my smartphone at home even for something as small as picking up my kids at school or sports I feel good. However I can easily be tracked by all the doorbell cameras in the street. We are done with subversion on the internet. It is over, a done deal. I've given up many years ago, and eventually I also embraced the thought of such. If you want some private time together go to some cave in Turkey or whatever.
      - xattt 2y ago
        It only needed a school population geeky enough to have Cybikos. I wanted one, but no one else in middle school had one!
      - Fnoord 2y ago
        I mean, it was not a smartphone but a PDA and it ran Linux: Sharp Zaurus. I owned a CL1000 (later on I went to Nokia N810, though in hindsight the N800 was just as cool with dual SD). Magnificent devices, and back then I liked they didn't have GPRS or 3G. Such was slow anyway (and expensive connection) so I felt that saved me money. Besides, the WWW was dominated by MSIE. And no GSM meant to me less tracking.
immibis 2y ago
My CASIO graphics calculator from high school also uses a SuperH.
- voidbert 2y ago
  And interestingly for a graphing calculator, it lacks an FPU, and all floating point math has to be done in software.
  - epcoa 2y ago
    Not particularly unique at all. Handheld graphing calculators typically were not intended for use where hardware floating point was necessary. TI calculators historically used the Z80, no FPU. Earlier HP calculators did use a custom BCD based (not IEEE954) floating point ISA, but these are still slower than just about any processor in the past 30 years doing software floating point. They didn’t have any hardware multiply or divide for one, this is not an FPU in the modern sense people envision. And later on the HP used common ARMv5 based processors with emulation. None of these ARM processors had hardware floating point. Same with later TI calculators that were 68k and then ARM based. The HP Prime G2 released in 2018 is about the only mainstream device that happens to have hardware FP, and that’s for a device more touted for CAS features. The FPU is more just something that comes for free with the commodity SoC chosen.
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      > None of these ARM processors had hardware floating point More importantly, IEEE 754 floating point ISA is not great for calculators - they don’t require the speed a personal computer does, and calculators work hard to hide the fact numbers such as 0.45 can’t be represented as IEEE 754 floats.
  - immibis 2y ago
    It uses decimal floating point, so that's no worry.
chaosite 2y ago
In popular culture, the Hitachi H8 microprocessor was referenced in the song Space Dementia by Muse. > Q - "What does "H Eight" mean?" > Matt [Bellamy]: Using a microcomputer (Hitachi H8 / 3048F) which can be built into the industrialmachines, you can learn and understand the inputs /outputs of the microcomputer as a basis of robot control and conduct theexperiments by C-language for steppingmotor control, servomotor control (PWM control) and serial communication. H8 model, a 16-bit microcomputer consists of 32-bit registers, has a flash ROM of 128KB, a RAM of 4KB (SRAM) with external extension of 128KB and 78 I/O terminals with the built-in A/D and D/Aconverters. H8 is a microcomputer usually built into a TV, VTR, mobile-phone and car navigator. Since it has ample I/O terminals, H8 microcomputer is also used as a brain of a small robot. [0] - https://web.archive.org/web/20160406073458/https://www.microcuts.net/uk/news/archives/06032003-interview.php https://web.archive.org/web/20160406073458/https://www.micro...
Tor3 2y ago
There was a SuperH in my parents' Panasonic TV - I found the GPL license and kernel info deep in the menu system.

kn100 2y ago

a slightly different (but close enough) Hitachi CPU also powered the Cybiko - a wacky games console few have heard of. I tried writing a disassembler for that particular cpu a while back. Was an interesting platform and oh man the documentation at least to me was gorgeous: github.com/kn100/cybemu/

dagmx 2y ago
Link to the cybiko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybiko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybiko That is a really wild design
- phs318u 2y ago
  Love it! “The concept for the device emerged from social research conducted in six countries, which identified a need for digital communication among youth. … a radio protocol was patented. This protocol allowed up to 3,000 Cybiko devices to form a network without using auxiliary stations.” Fascinating!
  - cpach 2y ago
    Wow. That’s basically a smartphone!? Just way ahead of its time.
    - hfgjbcgjbvg 2y ago
      Apple might as well do this and cut out the carriers.
      - xattt 2y ago
        Is this what the Thread radios in all Apple devices are hiding?
        teruakohatu 2y ago
        Sadly Thread is 2.4ghz rather than the much lower and longer range Lora frequencies. It’s designed to be used within the home and between homes.
      - asveikau 2y ago
        Sounds a bit like LoRa.
        ruined 2y ago
        it's the same 900MHz band
    - samatman 2y ago
      More interesting than a smartphone in some ways. Smartphones can form mesh networks with WiFi, but neither of the duopoly OSes have this as a built-in feature, it's left to apps, and that fragments the potential. The most powerful radio isn't user-controllable, it's strictly pay-to-play and operating a base station is heavily licensed, no peer-to-peer activity is possible. This is something I'd like to see disrupted, although I'm not holding my breath. I don't like that grid failure or (more likely) government order can knock smartphones off the network so easily as they can.
      - Fnoord 2y ago
        Back in the days (very early 2000s), Amsterdam got WLAN network called Wireless Oost. This gave people in Amsterdam Oost wireless internet access throughout the neighborhood, without needing cable internet from A2000 (later merged with Chello, who merged with UPC, who merged with Ziggo, all the time owned by a certain company known as Liberty Global (you might have heard of them)). It also served as a (W)LAN. Back then, the local computer club ASCII (comprised of political activists and such, predecessor of the hackerspaces) had a cargo bike called Bakscii (derived from Dutch world of cargo bike (bakfiets) and ASCII). This provided WLAN access at demonstrations and such. It was a neat project which Internet Archive likely still holds. I was never directly involved with said project, btw, but I knew all of the people who were. Nowadays, I live near Amsterdam and will get 1 gbit symmetric fiber internet soon (most of NL already has access to it). I use a Wireguard tunnel to connect via any network (LTE/NG/WLAN) via my home network which runs Pi-Hole. My point being, security has improved, but there is a constant: wireless internet usage can be triangulated, eavesdropped, and clients can be tracked. It is something we need to live with. Every time I leave my smartphone at home even for something as small as picking up my kids at school or sports I feel good. However I can easily be tracked by all the doorbell cameras in the street. We are done with subversion on the internet. It is over, a done deal. I've given up many years ago, and eventually I also embraced the thought of such. If you want some private time together go to some cave in Turkey or whatever.
    - xattt 2y ago
      It only needed a school population geeky enough to have Cybikos. I wanted one, but no one else in middle school had one!
    - Fnoord 2y ago
      I mean, it was not a smartphone but a PDA and it ran Linux: Sharp Zaurus. I owned a CL1000 (later on I went to Nokia N810, though in hindsight the N800 was just as cool with dual SD). Magnificent devices, and back then I liked they didn't have GPRS or 3G. Such was slow anyway (and expensive connection) so I felt that saved me money. Besides, the WWW was dominated by MSIE. And no GSM meant to me less tracking.

immibis 2y ago

My CASIO graphics calculator from high school also uses a SuperH.

voidbert 2y ago
And interestingly for a graphing calculator, it lacks an FPU, and all floating point math has to be done in software.
- epcoa 2y ago
  Not particularly unique at all. Handheld graphing calculators typically were not intended for use where hardware floating point was necessary. TI calculators historically used the Z80, no FPU. Earlier HP calculators did use a custom BCD based (not IEEE954) floating point ISA, but these are still slower than just about any processor in the past 30 years doing software floating point. They didn’t have any hardware multiply or divide for one, this is not an FPU in the modern sense people envision. And later on the HP used common ARMv5 based processors with emulation. None of these ARM processors had hardware floating point. Same with later TI calculators that were 68k and then ARM based. The HP Prime G2 released in 2018 is about the only mainstream device that happens to have hardware FP, and that’s for a device more touted for CAS features. The FPU is more just something that comes for free with the commodity SoC chosen.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    > None of these ARM processors had hardware floating point More importantly, IEEE 754 floating point ISA is not great for calculators - they don’t require the speed a personal computer does, and calculators work hard to hide the fact numbers such as 0.45 can’t be represented as IEEE 754 floats.
- immibis 2y ago
  It uses decimal floating point, so that's no worry.

chaosite 2y ago

In popular culture, the Hitachi H8 microprocessor was referenced in the song Space Dementia by Muse. > Q - "What does "H Eight" mean?" > Matt [Bellamy]: Using a microcomputer (Hitachi H8 / 3048F) which can be built into the industrialmachines, you can learn and understand the inputs /outputs of the microcomputer as a basis of robot control and conduct theexperiments by C-language for steppingmotor control, servomotor control (PWM control) and serial communication. H8 model, a 16-bit microcomputer consists of 32-bit registers, has a flash ROM of 128KB, a RAM of 4KB (SRAM) with external extension of 128KB and 78 I/O terminals with the built-in A/D and D/Aconverters. H8 is a microcomputer usually built into a TV, VTR, mobile-phone and car navigator. Since it has ample I/O terminals, H8 microcomputer is also used as a brain of a small robot. [0] - https://web.archive.org/web/20160406073458/https://www.microcuts.net/uk/news/archives/06032003-interview.php https://web.archive.org/web/20160406073458/https://www.micro...

Tor3 2y ago

There was a SuperH in my parents' Panasonic TV - I found the GPL license and kernel info deep in the menu system.