kens

41 ms·

1. 721.▲
   by kens 3y ago

   I updated the article with Brad's info :)
2. 722.▲
   by kens 3y ago

   Thanks for your kind comments! Personally, I'd say that the IBM System/360 (1964) was the first widespread and influential 32-bit architecture. The Motorola 68000 (1979) also deserves a mention for its use in the Macintosh. (And I
3. 723.▲
   by kens 3y ago

   But then the 486 DX has a floating-point unit, while the 486 SX does not. So Intel just went with DX is better than SX.
4. 724.▲
   by kens 3y ago

   Yes, I think the turbo button just changes the clock speed. The 386 was designed to be binary compatible with the 8086, but normally ran faster.
5. 725.▲
   by kens 3y ago

   Looking at the die, I'd say roughly 1/3 of the die is standard cell. I think some of it was standard cell but with hand layout, rather than automatic place and route. About 1/4 is the datapath, which is highly optimized. Mayb
6. 726.▲
   by kens 3y ago

   Well, yes and no. The 386 is chugging through the stream of instructions sequentially, unlike modern processors. There are various clever optimizations, though. First, there is some pipelining, so the microcode for the next instruction can
7. 727.▲
   by kens 3y ago

   Thanks! I've fixed the links, so let me know if you see any other broken ones. The "Automatic Place and Route Used on the 80386" article is from Intel Technology Journal, Spring 1986, p29-34. I don't think you can find
8. 728.▲
   by kens 3y ago

   Author here. I've been looking at the 386 if anyone has questions. This post was inspired by userbinator's discussion on HN a couple of weeks ago about how many transistors there are in the 386.
9. 729.▲
   by kens 3y ago

   Here's an article from 1975 claiming that the Jesus nut came off the main rotor of an OH-6, causing two fatalities: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_MAC_Flyer/jBXi6uK1P...
10. 730.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    Thank you for the detailed response! This is way more than I expected :-)
11. 731.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    The British Museum had an art exhibit showing the prescription medicine taken by a typical person. It was kind of shocking to see a 14-meter long table covered with 14,000 pills, arranged according to the course of someone's life. I&#x
12. 732.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    I don't get the point of this article; is it a response to something else? It seems kind of obvious that there is a lot of strong evidence for many things, but why does that matter? Also, I hate to quibble about details, but someone sa
13. 733.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    I'm not sure how the devices were zeroed. This will probably be an issue when we put it back together. I think some of the gears could be loosened on the shaft so they could be rotated to the correct point. The manual defines the zero
14. 734.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    We're working on the similar star tracker from a B-52. Of course, if anyone wants to send us a SR-71 unit...
15. 735.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    I couldn't find details on the Perceptron's motors, but I expect they were DC motors, rotating the potentiometers higher or lower as needed. The synchro is useful if you have a rotation in one location and one to match the rotatio
16. 736.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    Thanks! We're powering up the unit piece by piece. CuriousMarc got a vintage pitot tube vacuum simulator so we'll use that to simulate the different pressures.
17. 737.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    Thanks, that makes sense. Do you have a link that discusses this?
18. 738.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    The signaling is indirect. The air data computer is connected to another box, the air data converter. The air data converter is designed for a specific type of aircraft. It converts the synchro outputs from the air data computer into the fo
19. 739.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    Author here for all your mechanical computer questions :-)
20. 740.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    Thanks! Yes, it's amazing how much effort is packed into tiny chips, especially when you consider that the 8086 was 45 years ago.
21. 741.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    One of Vonada's 14 engineering maxims is "Digital circuits are made from analog parts." That said, dynamic logic that depends on capacitance is more analog than most digital logic :-) Vonada's engineering maxims: https:
22. 742.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    Author here for all your 8086 questions :-) By the way, HN's title editing makes the title appear a bit strange. Of course flip-flops are implemented in the processor. The article describes how they are implemented.
23. 743.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    What is the correct parsing of the headline? At first I figured it was a regular garden-path sentence [1] but after multiple readings I still can't figure it out. [1] A garden-path sentence is one where you find at the end that the exp
24. 744.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    If autonomous vehicles start driving like humans, it's going to reveal the contradictions of US traffic laws. Traffic only works because humans break traffic laws all the time (e.g. speeding). Autonomous driving will either need to be
25. 745.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    No, if you look at the die, the 386SL is nothing like the 486. The 386SL more-or-less has a 386 inside it, taking up about 1/4 of the chip. See this floorplan diagram: http://www.bitsavers.org/components/intel&#x2F
26. 746.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    The 386SL adds a cache controller, memory controller, AT bus controller, and EMS 4.0 hardware, which is why it has more than three times the transistors. I checked multiple independent sources before posting, and they all said 855,000 trans
27. 747.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    That reminds me of Scalzi's interesting post "The Gamification of Rhetoric". He describes how many people are not interested in issues or discussion, but are just trying to win with a sequence of stock arguments. He refers to
28. 748.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    I looked into this: the 386SL has 855,000 transistors while the other 386 versions have 275,000 transistors. I updated the Wikipedia page, adding a reference to Intel's detailed "Microprocessor Quick Reference Guide", which h
29. 749.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    Thanks!
30. 750.▲
    by kens 3y ago

    The MK4116 chip hasn't changed much since 2020, so hopefully you will still find this article relevant :-)