81–90 of 152 posts
It'll be exciting if the clock cycles keep stalling like they've basically been doing in the last few years and we end up having to learn and do things at this level again to squeeze out what we want happen out of a long-term fixed compute budget.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did something similar for a CompE course in 2014. We made a calculator in an FPGA. Probably one of the coolest lab projects in my memory.
While it has nothing to do with my current work, introductory digital systems was definitely one of my favorite classes. It was amazing to go from logic gates to adders and muxes and whatnot, to state machines, flip-flops, and useful computation. Now I work in software, and although it doesn't really come up, it's very satisfying to understand down to first principles how computers can be built up from the gate level…
The coolest part was our professors never told us we had to use logic (and then cycle through the pieces faster than the eye could see) to get the 5x7 led display to work for non-symmetric letters. They let us figure that out on our own. I was sitting in history class not paying attention when it came to me. I drew out the circuit I wanted and couldn't wait to get to electronics class to try it out.
this sent me down a rabbit hole of circuit based games, thanks for sharing. I found this article about pong that goes into the details and logic behind each of the circuits: http://www.pong-story.com/LAWN_TENNIS.pdf
I found it via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17200163 "... an insanely clever masterpiece of digital design. ... It’s mindbendingly brilliant."
So when I met Al, I mentioned that I found the schematics fascinating, and had some questions. He was happy to walk me through the whole thing! After that, he told me all kinds of great stories about the different versions of pong that they built, including color support, the home version, and PAL support.
Life is weird, I was just using this site yesterday to do some electrical diagrams for a wiring harness I am building for my ancient mobile. My trouble was understanding how to flow something through a series of relays, and implementing "AND" and "OR" logic with a relay series. if(AC && Temp > 160) { run both fans } if(AC || Temp > 160 { run both fans at reduced speed } Now, the AC is already a relay, but you can jus…
> does anyone know of a tool to generate the very nice wiring diagrams you'll see in bently and other automotive manuals? Does Fritzing get close to what you're after? It can create stuff like this: http://troybaverstock.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/arduino...
Ideally you'd be able to mark each wire with an indication of color(s) and diameter so the diagram could be printed in black and white (example[0]). I assume that could be done with labels, but on the scale of a vehicle that could get real tedious real fast.
When I need a pretty diagram I typically use either Dia or Libreoffice Draw. Neither is perfectly suited to vehicle wiring, but they get the job done. (Edit: also no simulation, which both of the tools mentioned upthread seem capable of.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did something similar for a CompE course in 2014. We made a calculator in an FPGA. Probably one of the coolest lab projects in my memory.
While it has nothing to do with my current work, introductory digital systems was definitely one of my favorite classes. It was amazing to go from logic gates to adders and muxes and whatnot, to state machines, flip-flops, and useful computation. Now I work in software, and although it doesn't really come up, it's very satisfying to understand down to first principles how computers can be built up from the gate level…
Excluding "Spacewar", Pong is the first "classic" arcade game that has reached the milestone of being 50 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_arcade_video_game_...
Notably, there was Computer Space, by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney (1971, Nutting Associates/Syzygy Engineering), the first coin-op arcade video game, also made from TTL logic. This one actually pioneered the approach. For a description see https://www.masswerk.at/rc2017/04/02.html Syzygy Engineering (Bushnell and Dabney) soon became Atari, but still entertained links to Nutting Associates with Atari titles appearin…
There used to be a circuit simulator for most discrete logic arcade games of the 70s: DICE. http://adamulation.blogspot.com Unfortunately it hasn't been maintained for a while, which is a shame because I don't think any other program does this. MAME/MESS only simulates machines with CPUs.
One can definitely play Pong on MAME: https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/machine...
MAME also simulated hardware (connect this resistor to that transistor etc). This is all hardware and no CPU.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Notably, there was Computer Space, by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney (1971, Nutting Associates/Syzygy Engineering), the first coin-op arcade video game, also made from TTL logic. This one actually pioneered the approach. For a description see https://www.masswerk.at/rc2017/04/02.html Syzygy Engineering (Bushnell and Dabney) soon became Atari, but still entertained links to Nutting Associates with Atari titles appearin…
That's quite impressive; I wonder why it's not mentioned more often. The gameplay looks like Asteroids with just the saucers (not the rocks).
The game is also seen in the movie Soylent Green (1973) as one of the "furniture" in a rich man's apartment.
