koz1000

8 ms·

31.
by koz1000 5y ago
I contributed to Josh Tsui's Kickstarter. He did an excellent job on that, all the people in that video are exactly like I remember them. There's another documentary called Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball by Greg Maletec that des
32.
by koz1000 5y ago
Man, the 6809 was an incredibly fun processor to write for. I'll let you know you were in good company. At Williams (pinball/video game company, later became Midway) that exact same hack was used in almost every game that used the
33.
by koz1000 5y ago
There's this intersection point in the MCU/SoC world where you can get by with a Cortex-M3/M4/M7 and need solid multitasking but don't have an MMU. ucLinux is a dead end, and then you have FreeRTOS (sorry, AmazonRT
34.
by koz1000 5y ago
It's not a comparison, but if you're looking for a lightweight RTOS and trying to decide between the two Zephyr looks appealing at first because you think you're getting a lot of facilities that are equivalent to a Linux-clas
35.
by koz1000 5y ago
I wouldn't call it the same concept. Zephyr uses the Devicetree format to create headers and configure the compilation of the kernel, but userspace code has zero visibility into whatever was set up in the devicetree file. Zephyr is c
36.
by koz1000 5y ago
All the warm feels of an old IBM Selectric typewriter without the convenient non-proportionality. I passed on this a long time ago.
37.
by koz1000 5y ago
"Would you like a car that updates its entire control panel, unannounced, with a software upgrade and will hide familiar buttons on you when you need them the most?" https://twitter.com/ArtemR/status/1488
38.
by koz1000 5y ago
Touchscreen engineer here. There is no such thing as an 'off-the-shelf' capacitive touchscreen. There is always custom engineering to match the customer's housing and bezel, tune the analog characteristics to the electrical e
39.
by koz1000 5y ago
What's interesting is that this traffic map is also loaded on Mazda cars, but shown in a different application. Somehow the system searches for a HDRadio signal in the background to update this map from an independent receiver. I'
40.
by koz1000 5y ago
In newer cars with video displays and HD Radio capability, the screen can show a small image next to the song information. It's typically album cover art for the song that is playing, but a lot of stations just put their station logo
41.
by koz1000 5y ago
I use the Brave browser on desktop and Tweetbot on iOS. I get two completely different timelines on these devices.
42.
by koz1000 5y ago
The backup camera isn't critical, but it's been required in the USA since 2018. https://www.fleetowner.com/safety/article/21687582/nhtsa-to-...
43.
by koz1000 5y ago
The UI is developed by a U.S. company and I think is JavaScript based The IVI from that era is an iMX6 hardware platform developed by Johnson Controls and was written in JavaScript running on the Opera browser. JCI sold that business to V
44.
by koz1000 5y ago
I recall PinMAME being a fork of MAME, the UI was identical and they borrowed a lot of cores like the 6809 and various common sound boards that video used, like the Williams Yamaha 2151 and Midway DCS AD2105 DSP. For a while they tried to k
45.
by koz1000 5y ago
I knew Lyman from USENET in the early 90s and then I worked with him at Williams. We started around the same time and got laid off together in '99 when WMS shut us down. Lyman was at my wedding. It's extremely sad. It's a hug
46.
by koz1000 5y ago
Actually, there's a whole list here: https://www.mamedev.org/roms/
47.
by koz1000 5y ago
Jamie Fenton has released the ROMs for Robby Roto as freeware. So that's one.
48.
by koz1000 5y ago
Stern NASCAR https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=5093 Sopranos was around the same time, but there were actually two versions of the code. One was in the old 6809 and the other was a test version of their new ARM-based hard
49.
by koz1000 5y ago
MAME saved my bacon. True story: I was working on code for a pinball machine for Stern back in 2005. I had a memory corruption issue and Stern's crusty old 6809 hardware didn't have anything resembling a real-time debugger that I
50.
by koz1000 5y ago
If you want to upgrade, we can bolt one onto a Spot for you. https://youtu.be/0cu2bT6fdZY
51.
by koz1000 5y ago
There was another awful case recently in Illinois that would be prevented by something like this. I'm glad Pritzker passed it. https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/naperville-sun/ct-nvs... TLDR: A high-sch
52.
by koz1000 5y ago
GLI was always the go-to company back in my time. https://gaminglabs.com/
53.
by koz1000 5y ago
The operator-set percentage and payout was always local to the machine. There's no way to network these things, and even when do you see networked progressive slot machines (e.g. IGT's Megabucks), the RNG and payout is always loca
54.
by koz1000 5y ago
I worked on a redemption device a long time ago, one of those "stop the lights" game for a large manufacturer. There were a few jurisdictions, Iowa and New Jersey come to mind, that were already aware of the nature of these machin
55.
by koz1000 5y ago
WOW! That's incredible. This was exactly what I wanted to write someday. It definitely brings up a lot of memories if you played a lot of Williams' pinball machines as well. The sound ROM in Defender evolved from the pinball soun
56.
by koz1000 5y ago
I've read through some of these listings, it's legit.
57.
by koz1000 5y ago
A number of ex-Williams engineers donated old work materials to the Strong Museum of Play in the last few years. It looks like this includes Sam Dicker's work: http://archives.museumofplay.org/repositories/3/
58.
by koz1000 5y ago
Joust was a different design team, John Newcomer and Bill Pfutzenreuter. But the hardware was the same as Robotron.
59.
by koz1000 6y ago
Here's a similar demo I worked on a long time ago, we wrapped a 2D flex inside a joystick. https://youtu.be/7mXlY7SGLvw
60.
by koz1000 6y ago
Fluke's new ii900 industrial imager is already for sale and is used to locate compressed air leaks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wx9B_0n1co

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