msarnoff

12 ms·

121.
by msarnoff 15y ago
Still my favorite: "A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages" http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m...
122.
by msarnoff 15y ago
Reminded me of "5 ways to reboot a PC, none of them reliable" from a couple months ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2607116 Interesting how fundamentally simple tasks like aborting a process or rebooting the machine have very nont
123.
by msarnoff 15y ago
The ATmegas can run at up to 20 MHz, and since most instructions are single-cycle, they can approach 20 MIPS. Most Arduinos are clocked at 16 MHz. Memory is the bigger issue, the most popular Arduino variant has 2K of RAM and under 32K of p
124.
Analog expert Bob Pease dies in tragic accident(eetimes.com)
10 points by msarnoff 15y ago|3 comments
125.
Randy Pausch's last speech at CMU, May 18, 2008 [video](cs.cmu.edu)
1 points by msarnoff 15y ago|0 comments
126.
by msarnoff 15y ago
If you want to put this info to use, check out Stefan Tramm's JavaScript 8080 and CP/M emulator: http://www.tramm.li/i8080 Aside: The 8085, despite its similar part number, is not actually an x86 chip. It used the 8-bit 8080 architecture:
127.
by msarnoff 15y ago
The color/3D Atari vector games used the Analog Vector Generator, which used op-amps to trace smooth lines of arbitrary length and angle on the screen. It also seems to fall out of calibration as the years go on, which is why you see a lot
128.
by msarnoff 16y ago
I've never been happy with the hand-wavy, almost circular definition of Turing completeness. We all know the "simulating a Turing machine/computing any function" bit, but what does that really mean? From a practical standpoint, what does
129.
by msarnoff 16y ago
The Uzebox AVCore ( http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9024 ) is arguably a more impressive technical achievement: sound and color video generated in software from an overclocked AVR, no FPGA magic, and less than $20 in parts. Linux Akesson's
130.
by msarnoff 16y ago
Now someone needs to write a proxy that replaces all images on a site with placekittens, à la Upside-Down-Ternet ( http://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html ) and Kittenify ( http://www.reload.me.uk/kittenify ).
131.
by msarnoff 16y ago
As the creator of a similar oscilloscope hack (the Terminalscope: http://hackaday.com/2010/02/24/oscilloscope-doubles-as-a-ser... ) I find this very cool. If Craig is reading this, thanks for the shout-out :) I'm not intimately familiar wi
132.
by msarnoff 16y ago
What's interesting is she just glosses over the programming aspect. This got me thinking. The C language presents a pretty big barrier to entry for young tinkerers, who have never heard the word "integer" before. I learned to program when I
133.
by msarnoff 16y ago
It's a real-life version of FLUDD from Super Mario Sunshine!
134.
by msarnoff 16y ago
It's a great demonstration of what can be done with an 8-bit RISC microcontroller. The biggest downside is that AVRs can only execute code from flash ROM. You can't just throw apps on an SD card and run them; the list of apps (which seem to
135.
by msarnoff 16y ago
Maxima is extremely hackable, because it's entirely written in Lisp. I remember making modifications to the tex() function some years ago because it didn't use the particular notation that I liked, and it wasn't hard at all.
136.
by msarnoff 16y ago
Also, if you're a LaTeX fan, Computer Modern Typewriter makes a decent editor font. ( http://canopus.iacp.dvo.ru/~panov/cm-unicode/download.html ). The download link doesn't have a preview image, but you can see one here: ( http://www.ident
137.
by msarnoff 16y ago
What's going on with the symbols (%, #, @, etc.) in those comparisons? It looks like they're getting pulled from Courier New. I recently discovered the M+ fonts ( http://mplus-fonts.sourceforge.jp/mplus-outline-fonts/design... ). "M+ 1m" is
138.
by msarnoff 16y ago
"Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" by Charles Petzold does an excellent job of explaining everything (from logic gates to CPU architecture to graphics) to the layperson. If any nontechnical person (my dad, for exa
139.
by msarnoff 16y ago
In addition to a regular NOP, the Motorola 6809 (and possibly other 6800-series processors) has a BRN instruction: branch never. It's the opposite of BRA (branch always): it takes an 8-bit offset and ignores it, effectively making it a two-
140.
by msarnoff 16y ago
Maxima ( http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ ), one of the packages used by Sage, is a quite capable computer algebra system (written in Lisp) with a very long history. It's descended from Macsyma, which was created at MIT in the 1960s. If you l
141.
by msarnoff 16y ago
For those of you in the Valley, you can find the book that started me on this project at the Santa Clara library. It's the first edition of "Microprocessor System Design Fundamentals" by Kenneth J. Breeding. It's not a great book, but it'
142.
by msarnoff 16y ago
The 6809 actually has two stack pointers, S and U. S is the hardware stack (used for calls/returns) and U is basically another index register with dedicated push/pull instructions. A Forth implementation typically uses two stacks (the ret
143.
by msarnoff 16y ago
Yes it is. Got it on Craigslist, ridiculously cheap, with a full set of pods and manuals. Making a boot floppy, on the other hand, was a bit of a challenge. Thanks to WeirdStuff Warehouse for still selling 720K floppies!
144.
by msarnoff 16y ago
Wow, never thought I'd see this posted here! (I'm the creator of this project.) I thought about building my own CPU from relays and/or discrete logic (I met the creators of the Magic-1 and BMOW a couple years ago at a Maker Faire), but it w
145.
by msarnoff 16y ago
I "discovered" this about 2 years ago. It's really only visible with a magnifying glass or camera with a good macro lens. http://msarnoff.org/millitext I also made a web-based generator: http://msarnoff.org/millitextgen