On 9 Mar 2010 at 23:53, Philip Pemberton wrote: AWG 30, if it's the type used for electronics. Telco uses something like AWG 26 or thicker, if memory serves. Wire-wrap wire is usually silver-plated so it solder-wets very well. --Chuck

And darn hard to find in sensible quantities... I rewound a couple of motors useing 38swg wire (5 thou, 0.15mm or thereabouts) a month or two ago. It was a lot easier than I expected, even though I got the connections to the commutator wrong the first time and had to wind that armature again. Actually, this was on-topic. The motors were from an HP9125A plotter, which is used with the HP9100 calculator. The HP9125 is all discrete transsitors (mostly bipolar, but a few JFETs), there are almost 100 transistors on each DAC board. -tony

I;ve done trasnformers too, but fortunately I've never had to do one that had to stand main voltage or similar. I've certainly heard it called 'fish paper' over here. I am not sure if you can still buy it anywhere, if you can, I am looking for a source... Well, it probably is eeasier to ignite than fishpaper, but normal paper is not that easy to set on firs. A soldering iron won't do it, for example. If a transformer is getting hot enough to ignite paper, you have problems. My greater worry would be that the paper may absorb moisture and electrically break down.At one time paper soaked in wax was used, but this would seem to be an even greater fire risk. I'd probably not do it in something that was going to be used by somebody else, or somethign that was going to run unattended. I might do it for something I was goping to use myself. -tony

Chuck Guzis wrote: I thought old newspaper went with fish, or is that just cats. AES still sells that and few other kinds of paper. http://www.tubesandmore.com/ What other uses do you it for other than candles? BTW you can now get beeswax & foil capacitors again, fot the audio freaks. I wonder when the last undersea cable was layed? Ben...

Starting bid is $30k for their Apple 1. Not in this economy. ---------------------------------------------

I love the blue prints stating "Destroy all Previous Copies" Yet, we all know they weren't destroyed, same with Atari blue prints and schematics, I even have one that says "Do not remove, shred upon reading" and ooops, here it is 30 years later, still intact... Great Apple stuff, I wish I was into Apple Collecting, that is quite the treasure trove, hope somebody has a big stash of cash tucked away... Curt steve wrote:

Putting top-shelf items up on Ebay with huge starting bids is a well known (and quite effective) way of showing the world what is up for sale. Even if nothing sells, it is very cheap advertising. -- Will

I see a couple items there that I'd be interested in, but no way am I spending that kind of money on anything like that! Zane At 9:56 PM -0500 3/16/10, Jim Leonard wrote: -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

At 11:18 PM -0400 3/16/10, Dave McGuire wrote: There was a time when I would have considered bidding on at least one of the items. Now I'm trying to do a massive shrink of my own collection, and the money I used to spend on Classic Computers is now targeted for more realistic things. The disturbing thing is, while I'm trying to get rid of most of my collection I'm in the middle of my biggest (and best) Commodore haul ever. It is free, and slowly being delivered from out of state. Oh, well, I said I was keeping a lot of the Commodore stuff. :-) Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

At 1:56 AM -0400 3/17/10, Dave McGuire wrote: Actually I said I was keeping stuff in both categories. I just don't see me adding any more DEC stuff, and most of the DEC stuff I plan to keep is the common stuff. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

November of last year. -- Will

Ben wrote: Hmmm, indeed they do, thanks. "Yellow varnished cambric" as well...

Antique Electronic Supply has your fish paper S-M5609, $5.25 for a 9" roll (250 sq in) www.tubesandmore.com Randy _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail is redefining busy with tools for the New Busy. Get more from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID27925::T:WLMTAGL:ON:…

It's normally 30AWG, I think. I find it's useful for making links on stripboard too, it's thin enough to run round the IC sockets neatly, you can put 2 wires in one hole (or a wire and an IC socket pin in one hole) if you're short of space, and it solders well. Of course I als use it for wire-wrapping, modifying DEC backplanes [1] and the like. []1] I always make the NPG jumper using a distinctive colour of wire (often red), so I can find it easily if I want to remove it. It's a pity Maplin no longer sell it. It was useful just being able to pop into the shop and buy a couple of reels. -tony

Absolutely. Strippd, it's good for soldering along broken tracks (yes, I know the really relaible way is to solder to the nearest component lead on the track, but for a lot of things, scraping off the solder mask and soldering a wire along the track is good enough. A blob of solder over the crack most certainly isn't!). It's waht I use for cut-n-jumpr modifications to PCBs too; [...] That's what I thought too. But when I wanted that 38swg enamelled copper wire to rewind the motors I mentioend, Maplin were the only place that stocked it. RS and Farnell don't (as far as I can see). I popped into a Maplin in London and they had a 250g reel of it on the shelf. I was amazed. Unfortunately that darn EMC directive killed off the Maplin kits (they would have had to be checked for compliance when assembled according to the instructions). Maplin still sell a few Vellemann kits, and another brand that I can't rememebr. I can remember, perhaps 20 years ago, going to the Maplin shop in Bristol and comping home with a couple of bags of ICs, conenctors, cable, etc for whatever I was building at the time. Alas not any more :-( -tony

Tony Duell wrote: At one point, I had a copy of the NASA standards for PCB modifications, which covered green-wire fixes. I think it's online somewhere... Anyway, for SMD parts (SOICs etc.) you're supposed to run a piece of wire along the pin, then solder it to the pin. The icing on the cake is that you're supposed to solder along the entire length of the pin, not just the land pad. I would LOVE to see someone do that with a 0.5mm-pitch QFP. Soldering to the track is not only easier, but more likely to succeed... I found one roll of the stuff (30AWG w/w wire) on my "big shelf o' miscellaneous wire" last night. It's green, made by "OK", on a 500ft reel. Ideal for greenwire fixes in the literal sense :) Also found a roll of RG58/U, and another roll of RG174. More stuff I didn't know I had. Enamelled copper wire is a pig to find in general. You are right though, Maplin are usually one of the only places that stock it. What annoys me is the scrapping of the in-store-order scheme. Basically, if the store was out of stock of something, you could place a back-order, and when it arrived (they sent it direct to the store in the weekly stock replenishment) you could go and pick it up. Worked pretty well for me. At the time the kits were discontinued, Maplin were basically in a bit of a "hobby electronics is dead" blast. They sold the rights to their electronics magazine to Kanda (IIRC), the kits went the way of the dodo, and the component selection got severely trimmed to make way for more "Innovations-catalogue tat" (as one of my friends so eloquently put it). It's a shame about the magazine, though -- they published some pretty neat projects, all of which could be built from parts available from Maplins (with the occasional special-order), and the articles usually did a pretty good job of explaining not just how the thing worked, but also why it was designed in that specific way. EPE have gone down the road of buying in articles from Silicon Chip, and ETI went bust (or were absorbed into EPE depending on how you look at it), which really just leaves Elektor and Circuit Cellar. Both of which seem to be pitching themselves more at the "experienced engineer" market than home hobbyists. Actually, speaking of Circuit Cellar, I seem to recall Elektor buying them out... $DEITY knows what's going to happen to my CC sub, but I did notice that the renewal cost for an online subscription has gone up a fair bit since they took over. Hmm. It should be noted that it's still a quarter of the cost of an Elektor Online sub (and an eighth the cost of a year of Elektor in dead-tree format). I'm actually in the process of replacing a lot of my paper magazines with PDFs -- it's just easier (not to mention quicker) to find things when I need them... Dave Tweed's Circuit Cellar index is immense (and it's a CSV file so easy to pull into MySQL) You can still do more or less the same thing in Leeds, though not with Maplin. The Farnell Trade Counter is based in Armley, and fairly easy to get to by public transport (there's a bus stop on the opposite side of the road). Ring ahead, give them an hour or two to pack everything up, then call in and collect. Though that said, even standard "over the phone" sales orders tend to arrive next-day if you order before about 4PM. I don't think it's actually guaranteed, but there's no delivery fee and IIRC the only restriction is that you have to order ?30 worth of stuff if you're paying by card, or ?5 if you're paying by cash at the trade counter. -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

Tony Duell wrote: I don't know - having seen your place, I can imagine you having some kind of launch vehicle in there somewhere. Possibly under a pile of other things, and you've forgotten that you have it... ;-) It was frustrating when my wife was doing an accounting job for an electrical firm (who built stuff to order for folks such as GEC) - they often had wire that just went in a pile out back because an order had been screwed up or requirements had changed mid-job. I'm not sure if they recycled it somehow - possibly, but they certainly wouldn't let mere mortals anywhere near it. Yeah, I remember that too - I'd often take advantage of that and browse the catalogue in the shop, order a pile of stuff, and have whatever they couldn't do on the spot sent to my house. I remember drooling over that nicam hardware back in the day. That and the Z80 based home weather station. I built a couple of their 150W amplifiers, but I don't think I have them any more (just the rather large transformer that I used for the PSU). I wonder if anyone has a plan to scan them? It'd be nice to see. I don't think I have any of mine any more. There's just something... boring about them, somehow. And I know I shouldn't think like that, because they're not so different to a lot of the 8-bit stuff that I grew up with. cheers Jules

On 16 Mar 2010 at 20:06, Tony Duell wrote: Many, if not most, microcontrollers (but for the very tiny ones) have some sort of on-chip (e.g. JTAG) debugging facility. Given that everything else is on-chip, why would you want to monitor the internal bus signals, even if you could? --CHuck

On 17 Mar 2010 at 19:54, Tony Duell wrote: I don't think we're connecting intellectually. But most JTAG debuggers allow for breakpoints/watches, register examination/alteration, single-step, etc. And there's at least one debug interface that uses a one-wire connection to the RESET pin, so you get to use all of the I/Os. Try debugging your FPGA design without JTAG. So, I'm still mystified. Maybe I just don't understand what you're getting at. --Chuck

On 18 Mar 2010 at 19:33, Tony Duell wrote: Hardly! Maybe on vintage CPUs, but not on anything made in the last 20 years. Caching, prefetch queues, scheduling hardware and integrated peripherals make a logic analyzer of marginal use in debugging program flow. Times have changed and so have methods. For example, simulation is used a lot more than it used to be for designs, as is on-chip debugging support. --Chuck

On Mar 18, 2010, at 5:44 PM, Randy Dawson wrote: I have some bondout chips in my mcs51 emulator, for the Philips P89C66x chips. They give you direct access to the signals that Tony is complaining about being inaccessible. Yes, gdb can. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

I read a story once about a very determined game tester (I think it was for EA Sports) that insisted, while playing one of the Madden NFL games, to try to catch his own field goals. The programmers didn't think it was possible. He caught one, and the game locked up. The bug apparently became legendary in their QA department. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- FORTUNE: Good day for romance, but try a single person this time. ----------

On Fri, 19 Mar 2010, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: Hmm... A forklift and two 19th century pianos. Whee! -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

I am talking about microcontrollers, not desktop computer CPUs... If it's genuinely the case that the exact behavious or the device is that hard to predict, it makes them useless for just about any application that I would want to use them for, which generally depend on changing external signals with precisely known timing. You say that as though it's a Good Thing. Personally, I can't think of any change in the last 20 years that's actually made life better for me. I've had too many bad experiences of simulators to trust them. I've yet to meet a digital logic simulatoor that gets my test circuits right... And it's very hard to simulate a microntroller when you're using it to interface to some other large and complex system which you somehow have to include in the simulator. On-chip debugging support would be great if it was documented. It appears not to be, at least not for PiCs. -tony

Err no. At one time we had these wonderful things called 'data books' I'd flip through them to see what chips were available, their featurs, etc. I bought a lot of said books. Now I am expected to get data from the manufacturer's web site. I can't 'flip throuugh' a web site like I could the data book. Oh, the web sites are great if I want data on a partioclar device, but not as good if you just want to see what's avaialbe. And no, the 'product selector' pages never seem to tell me what I need to know... However, I stnad by what I said. For the sort of applications I have in mind for microcontroller,s knowing exaclty how long they will take to execute each instruction is vital. I guess there are still some for which that is the case... I once used an instrument that claimed to be a 'cathode ray oscillograph'... Err, considering the CRT is about 106 years old now, I have little problem with it. I see no reason to change if what I am using is doing the job I require it to do. And I certainly no reason to change if the modern replacement is inferior (to me) that what it would replace. So I stick to my statemet. I can't think of anything new in the last 20 years that's improved my life. -tony

Dave McGuire wrote: 3 am I want to check a datasheet ... it is 30 seconds including the time I take to turn on the light switch. I need to use windows and the internet it is about 20 minutes later I may have the information. Ben.

Dave McGuire wrote: PS .. I have to turn on the light where the computer is and turn on the computer ... . That still takes a while to boot a real OS.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave McGuire" <mcguire at neurotica.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2010 1:05 AM Subject: Re: Disc analyser news update Leaving a computer running 24/7 may not harm the hardware as much, but it harms the evironment and your electricity bill. We always shut our computers down at work at the end of the day, or when they are finished with. I never leave my laptop on all the time, since I only use it a few hours each day. I certainly disconnect from the internet when I don't need website, Gopher or BBS access. Less chance of a virus infecting my laptop then. My laptop currently takes 10 minutes to boot (including everything loading after logging in). I do need to do a registry cleanout though[1], which is lucky that I have a week off in April. Plenty of time to get all the 'little' jobs done :) Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk [1] A couple of programs I installed a few months back decided that they needed to be active straight away, and didn't give me any choice in the matter :(

----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave McGuire" <mcguire at neurotica.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2010 6:14 PM Subject: Re: Disc analyser news update Ahh, in that case I see why you leave it on :) Hehe :) Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

Ray Arachelian wrote: I recently built myself a server based on this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121399&cm_re=d… It's an Intel Atom D510 (dual core, 64-bit) based system, and it the entire system draws about 20 watts at peak load. Best of all it cost me about $230 total (w/shipping) to build (w/500gb drive and 2gb of RAM and a modestly priced case). I even have it running a "registry laden" operating system and it manages to boot in significantly less than 10 minutes :). I don't know what Solaris 10's hardware support looks like these days on x86 machines, but if you're looking for something low power, something like this might be the way to go. - Josh

On Mar 21, 2010, at 7:09 PM, Philip Pemberton wrote: Nah, you've been told wrong. It runs on pretty much anything nowadays. It used to need very specific hardware, but that hasn't been the case for years. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Mar 22, 2010, at 11:26 AM, Ray Arachelian wrote: Well your mistake there is looking at the HCL. ;) I've run it on several random systems containing random hardware and it nearly always Just Works. Note that I generally avoid "whiz-bang" proprietary stuff like monster gamer graphics cards, sixteen- gazillion-port SATA RAID controllers (I have a SAN here), etc etc that usually need funky binary-only drivers from the manufacturer. For standard hardware everything just seems to work, and is rarely specifically listed in the HCL. HCLs are almost always extremely conservative. Especially for "official" Solaris, they'll only list stuff that has been BEATEN TO DEATH in their testbed networks. As you well know, this isn't Windows...Solaris goes through an unbelievable amount of prerelease testing. Far, far more stuff than is listed in the HCL runs just fine. I run "official" solaris exclusively, but will probably explore OpenSolaris in a virtual machine at some point. With the exception of VMs, though, I'm exclusively UltraSPARC-based here. (well except for a couple of Macs) It's true that OpenSolaris supports much more stuff than "official" Solaris does. No I'm sorry I don't have a recommendation; I don't really do PC stuff that much. I can tell you, though, that the machine I most recently installed Solaris x86 on was an HP DL140 G2. Everything in it worked perfectly. Also, I'm currently running it at several customer installations under VMware ESXi (both 3.5 and 4.0), and under VMware Server. Oh, and...do yourself a favor, hit eBay for hardware and get high- end stuff. I'll take industrial-grade stuff (even used...especially used actually, as it usually comes with useful hardware installed) over cheap consumer garbage any time. (the aforementioned DL140 G2 cost me about $75...that's lowest-end industrial, but built quite well nonetheless) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

----- Original Message ----- From: "Ray Arachelian" <ray at arachelian.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2010 4:05 PM Subject: Re: Disc analyser news update it computers never day. I or Some good points, but: - No LAN here - Never use sleep/standby, as when I'm finished with my laptop I usually end up playing videogames, with the games console being powered from the socket that the laptop plug was occupying. - I let the display go to screen saver, but never use sleep. See previous point. :) loading On the few occasions it goes to sleep mode (usually just as the internal battery becomes critically low), mine also takes 2 seconds to wake up (plus a few extra to log back in). Who says I waste time whilst booting up or shutting down? I'm usually watching TV when I switch it on, and usually going to bed when I shut it down - I trundle downstairs for a drink and by the time I return it has shut down :) Remove the registry?!! :) Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

If there is ever actually posts on the Disc analyzer, please change the subject line, since I've gotten tired of hundreds of off-topic posts and kill-filed this thread.

I got news for you buddy, your original laptop battery was made in china too! so stop slamming them, all your equipment is made there. as for how long they last, anyone who tells you 8 hours is full of it. maybe 2-3 hours on a good day. unless you're watching videos, or playing games, etc... even then maybe 2 hours. but if the power specs don't line up, yeah, bad idea, no matter where you bought it. there are tricks on the net to deep discharge batteries, and sometimes that brings them back, wipes the ni-cad memory. as for sleep, screen savers, or leave them on.... bzzzzzt... turn them off as much as humanly possible. your system will last longer. My primary pc is now about 8 years old and going strong, never had to replace a thing. I regularly clean out the fans, and the case (dust bunnies, ewww). AND if you're a smoker... well... yer system is hosed... sorry. get a hepa filter in the room, it'll help. Dan. _________________________________________________________________ Live connected with Messenger on your phone http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9712958

Tell that to my 2 month old Dell D630 battery lasts about 2 hours if I watch movies on it... then again, Dell isnt exactly known for quality. _________________________________________________________________ Stay in touch. http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9712959

Dave McGuire wrote: And if you are a cat owner ... more warm places for them to curl up on. :) Ben... Don't forget the free gifts; like a mouse head on the keyboard.

----- Original Message ----- From: "John Foust" <jfoust at threedee.com> To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 8:14 PM Subject: Re: Leaving computers on... (was Re: Disc analyser news update) Could be something simple like dirt in the landing zone of the HD head, works fine when running but shut the system down and the head gets stuck. I have had systems that worked with noise coming from circuits with capacitors boiling off that did not work when shut down and turned back on. You also have heat/cooling cycles from turning equipment on and off that snap bad solder joints on parts (especially stuff made around the time they switched to non lead solder).

On Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:33:23 +0000 (GMT) ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: The PSU of the HP9000 C240 / C360 are prone to this. A few friends and I had that problem. Several dead machines that would start only sometimes when pluged in. Verry frustrating. Eventually a friend took a weekend to reverse engineer the PSU and finaly found the faulty resistor. We changed that resistor on all of our machines and they work flawlessly since then. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

On Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:34:40 +0000 (GMT) ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: No, not the ancient M68k machine. HP9000 700-series C240 and C360. They where the second generation 64 bit PA-RISC workstatons. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 07:14:13PM -0500, John Foust wrote: Most electronics these days have a pretty large MTBF - usually, by the time you get anywhere near a significant fraction of the MTBF the equipment is long obsolete anyway. For instance, one of the hard drives in my machines has a MTBF of 1.2 _million_ hours, that's about 136 years. Yes, I expect it to actually fail a bit sooner (it is a MTBF and not a guarantee, after all), but I don't expect the drive to be in service in 5 years due to being replaced by a larger one. As it happens, the manufacturer actually gives 5 years of warranty for that one ... There are several things that kill machines on powerup, among them - electrical surges - thermal changes - for hard drives, especially older ones running for a long time, stiction (having the heads stick to the platters) - running out of power cycles The last one is/was an issue for laptop drives, as they are specified only for a limited number of powercycles. With very aggressive power management shutting them down/powering them up every few minutes, that number isn't as large as one might think. Regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 06:21:41PM -0000, arcarlini at iee.org wrote: Yes, that is precisely how I understand the MTBF - if 2 out of 4 drives die in the first month, well, too bad, that's why it is called _mean_ TBF. The fact that the manufacturer is willing to give said 5 years of warranty implies that only a small (but definitely non-zero) number of those disks _should_ die within the first 5 years. Well, just because statistics says that on average you get hit by lightning every 42 years[0] doesn't mean you can't get hit twice on the same day ;-) Regards, Alex. [0] number randomly choosen -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

Chuck Guzis wrote: I thought it was the shot-gun loaded!

On 24 Mar 2010 at 15:47, Fred Cisin wrote: But hardly conclusive--unless you're a lawyer or casino operator. --Chuck

On 24 Mar 2010 at 17:02, Ben wrote: Craps is played with a pair of dice. Baby needs a new pair of shoes. --Chuck

On 24 Mar 2010 at 16:21, Fred Cisin wrote: It depends if you're betting for money or not. The actual probability is 5:1, but most casinos pay at 4:1, giving them about a 17% "edge". --Chuck

Alexander Schreiber [als at thangorodrim.de] wrote: It sounds like you've still missed a bit. The MTBF of 136 years doesn't mean that your drive might last 136 years on average, nor does it mean that if you buy 136 drives you should expect one failure per year on average. It means that if you replace each and every drive every time they reach the end of their service life (usually five years) *then* you can expect the above things. So your drive will probably fail one in 136 years *iff* you swap it out for a brand new drive 27 times (or so) during those 136 years. I'll grant you that it also means that the odds of your original drive failing in those initial five years must also be fairly small - just nowhere near as small as you might think. Antonio

Normally, yes, the computer can see the SMART status even in a RAID. I've actually seen this a few times when a drive in a RAID started to fail. My original recommendation stands; If you want your stuff to last as long as possible, turn it off and leave it off for as long as possible Dan. _________________________________________________________________ Check your Hotmail from your phone. http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9712957

Yeah definitely. I have my LCD tv on switchbox which I turn off when I leave. some of those things suck more power when they're off then they do on (scary!) Dan. _________________________________________________________________ Live connected with Messenger on your phone http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9712958

John Foust [jfoust at threedee.com]: I think it's mostly accurate although it hides the detail in that "renewal process" link. This link http://www.rpi.edu/~sofkam/fileserverdisks.html points to an original IBM paper "MTBF---A measure of OEM disk drive reliability" which I've read before but cannot find now (the link supplied is dead). My original information comes that either :-) Antonio

----- Original Message ----- From: "Alexander Schreiber" <als at thangorodrim.de> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 2:45 AM Subject: Re: Leaving computers on... (was Re: Disc analyser news update) Limited number of power cycles? Is there any way to know what this figure started off at? And better yet, a way to reset it? :) Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 10:16:10PM -0000, Andrew Burton wrote: The datasheet should have that number. Basically any SATA drive (and most SCSI ones, but with less data) made these days supports SMART, which contains quite a few useful bits of data, among them such things as start/stop count, power on hours, reallocated sector count ... although apparently with some (especially older) drives, not all of that data is reliable. Time travel? Regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

On Mar 23, 2010, at 8:14 PM, John Foust wrote: I haven't really had very many of those. The other has a lot to do with thermal expansion and contraction, and the resultant simple physical fatigue. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 24 Mar 2010 at 3:23, Alexander Schreiber wrote: Does that fall into the "nothing good in the last 20 years" claim? --Chuck

On 24 Mar 2010 at 21:44, Alexander Schreiber wrote: I take it that you haven't been reading Tony's posts for awhile... Best, Chuck

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 3:48 PM, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: An HP Omnibook? That had a really long battery life. Although now that I think of it, that wouldn't be old enough. Back when I worked in a computer store, we sold hundreds of these things. I didn't like them at all because of the display. But business people thought they were great. I especially liked the pop-out mouse. It was an amazingly simple and elegant design. You could even use it in mid-air on an airplane. brian

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 1:36 PM, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: I was thinking of this one: http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=123 I had forgotten that there was a hard drive model. I was thinking of the flash memory version. Apparently there was a no internal storage version as well. I wouldn't mind getting my hands on one of these again. brian

On Wed, 24 Mar 2010, Josh Dersch wrote: Lee Felsenstein designed THAT capability into the original Osborne.

On Mar 25, 2010, at 11:38 AM, ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: I was thinking more of the battery in the original Mac Portable (which I know is not what you're referring to). The portable weighed 16lbs, due in no small part to the lead-acid battery it used. I guess it's technically not a laptop, but it was definitely not in the same class as, say, the Compaq portable. :) - Josh

----- Original Message ----- From: "Liam Proven" <lproven at gmail.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2010 8:58 PM Subject: Re: Leaving computers on... (was Re: Disc analyser news update) On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 7:42 PM, Josh Dersch <derschjo at mail.msu.edu> wrote: Yes, that was my guess, too. Only laptop-/style/ portable I ever even heard of with a lead-acid battery. *Gorgeous* monochrome active-matrix LCD, too. Stunning for its time, still good today. Tandy FD1100FD. Green LCD (CGA), lead acid battery

On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 1:56 AM, Teo Zenios <teoz at neo.rr.com> wrote: Should that be just 1100FD? Google has no hits for FD1100FD but I did find a few pics of an 1100FD. Never encountered that machine back in the day... -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? LiveJournal/Twitter: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508

The HP's I mentioned are very useable as laptops. The Mac Portable, in common with all other Macs, is missing one essentail feature that the Amstrad PPC, HP110, HP Portable+ and my older laptops, Tandy M100, Epson HX20 and Epson PX8 all have (as do some other laptops I don't own). I am sure you can guess what that is ;-) -tony

On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 8:28 PM, Tony Duell<ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: The use of off-the-shelf AA or AAA batteries? -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 5:26 AM, Joost van de Griek <gyorpb at gmail.com> wrote: [Checks on LowEndMac.com] Huh. I did not know that. I didn't think there was any way to squeeze an LA battery into the PB100, and they were not that heavy for the time. Live and learn. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? LiveJournal/Twitter: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508

Err, that also applies to a number of PDP11 models, and numerous other computers :-) IMHO the PPC with its fold-out full-size keyboard is impossible to use on a lap. It's also not practical to run from the internal C-cell battery pack (it takes 10 cells at a time and flattens primary cells in a couple of hours). I use mine almst solely with that Microtest dist drive aligment device I've mentioned in the past. I run it off the mains, from a home-made PSU (I never got the ofifical Amstrad one). -tony

Close enopugh :-). I do have an HP110, but I normally use one of the pair of Portable+ machines that I also own. They all run off a 6V lead-acid battery. The service manual shows a battery pack consiting of 3 Cyclon cells, many of the machines actually contain a Panasonic block battery. The former are easier to obtain and what I generally use for replacements. The Portable+ has a few advantages over the 110. The first is a larger display (full 24 lines) and a connector inside that carries enough of the display lines to connect to an external composite video interface [1]. The second is that it takes 2 optional 'drawers', one at each side. In both my machiens, one coatains more RAM (there's over 800K of RAm in there -- over 100 6264 chips), The other contains ROM sockets and can be used as a read-only disk. If you want a real disk drive you can link up an 9114 floppy drive or (something which is not commonly known) an SS/80 or Amigo drive using an HP82169 interface module. [1] Tjhis consists of an HP ASIC and 16K of SRAM. It's rare, but I managed to find one, and the interface connector panel for the Portable+ All _I_ need in a laptop is a terminal emulator and a text editor. A spreadsheet is useful. My Portable+ has all those in ROMs. A couple of years back I needed to display wome output from an HP9830 on a laege scrren. The set up was an HP11205 RS232 interface in the 9830, linked to the Portable+ running a VT100 emulator, then the video interface I mentioned linked to the composite input on a borrowed video projector. Worked perfectly... -tony

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 08:48:59PM +0000, Tony Duell wrote: And I've got a machine that operates for weeks of moderate daily use on two AA cells. Same with the above mentioned machine. It is also not exactly the most powerful machine around. But if you want modern hardware capabilities, then one of the prices you've got to pay is a power consumption of quite a bit more than a few hundred mW. Regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

----- Original Message ----- That's interesting, as it clearly states "made in *Japan*" on it. I'm not slamming *all* of China, but alot of counterfeit products are made there. hours. Well, PC World states a brand new battery would last for 4 hours: http://pcworld.about.com/news/Feb122002id83366.htm Given that we often use a laptop at work for displaying powerpoint slides (via electronic projector thingy - not the old style selephane one which uses a mirror to do the projecting) and our meetings last about an hour *and* the battery percentage rarely dips below 90% in that timeframe I would suggest that batteries can last a long time. Obviously, CPU intensive work (video and 3D graphics) would bring that down. bought it. Yeah. I check them carefully. that brings them deep discharge? What do you mean by this? > as for sleep, screen savers, or leave them on.... bzzzzzt... > turn them off as much as humanly possible. your system will last longer. > My primary pc is now about 8 years old and going strong, never had to replace a thing. > I regularly clean out the fans, and the case (dust bunnies, ewww). Well, this laptop has been used almost daily for the past 3 years and 1 month. > AND if you're a smoker... well... yer system is hosed... sorry. I'm not a smoker, and having had asthma as a kid it would be foolish for me to do so. > get a hepa filter in the room, it'll help. > Dan. Not much room for anything else in here, and given the small hole in the wall (aerial cable direct to my bedroom - normal one goes straight downstairs) I think it would be a bit pointless. Kinda like having the fire on in winter with the front door wide open! Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

----- Original Message ----- From: "Ray Arachelian" <ray at arachelian.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 3:41 PM Subject: Re: Leaving computers on... (was Re: Disc analyser news update) the laptop replacement as fake/faulty) wouldn't Sorry, my slip up. Feel free to throw tomatoes at me! Here are the specs: Original battery -------------------- Dell Battery Module Type 75UYF Rechargeable Li-Ion Rating 14.8V - 3800 mAh Charging Current 3.5A Made In Japan Replace with type: 1691P, 5081P, 53977, 3149C New battery ---------------- No manufacturer name, logo or country of manufacture Equivalent part numbers: 66WHR, 312-0009, 312-3250, 1691P, 5081P, 53977, 3149C and a few others Li-Ion Rating 14.8V - 4460 mAh I am a little disturbed that theres no manufacturer name or logo, plus it doesn't state rechargeable. Is it safe to assume it is rechargeable? I compared the two batteries. Physically they are almost identical. The connector slot (which can be seen in the picture here: http://www.digi163.com/battery/DELL-laptop-battery/Dell-Latitude-C610-batte… ) is slightly different on the newer one. It's the same design but the gaps between the connectors is visibly smaller, only by maybe a millimetre or so. The voltages are the same so I'll give it a try over the weekend. Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

----- Original Message ----- From: "Ray Arachelian" <ray at arachelian.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Friday, March 26, 2010 12:03 AM Subject: Re: Leaving computers on...and notebook batteries. http://www.digi163.com/battery/DELL-laptop-battery/Dell-Latitude-C610-batte… ) is slightly different on the newer one. It's the same design but the millimetre Ok :) Thanks, I now know what deep discharge is :) Ok. Thanks for the info and tips. Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

No I can't (and this has nothing to do with the machine I run here). Even when I use a modern PC running something standard I find I can't 'flip through' a website like I can flip through a data book. In fact I find trying to read any sort of techncial documentation from a screen to be very annoying.. Even with a modern machine and a fast internet connection it simply takes too ling to 'flip through' a collection of data sheets. Well, I have long been of the opinion that 'green means naive, and that's not changed recently':-), but since you raised it, I wonder... Since I am likely to use a databook for many years (I routinely use a data book that's over 30 years old), I wonder if the environmental damage caused by said book is more than the damage caused by using a computer to download, store, and view the data sheet every time I need it. Seeaching is fine if you know what to search for and what terms are used. It does not replace reading data sheets and thinking 'Hey, that's a nice feature'. There are 2 issues here. Firstly, there are components that I have used for which I can't find the data sheets in any archive on the web. An example would be the SAA5070 (and yes it is used in classic computers). OK, _current_ device data sheets are probably available, but I wonder if anyone is archiving those. The second issue is that yes, I will agree that being able to download data wheets is a Good Thing. But that doesn't mean this has to _replace_ data books. It is a very common falacy that because <a> is better than <b> for some application, it has to be better for all applications [1]. And as for 'wait a few weeks', when I was buing databooks about 10 or 20 years ago, they generally came next day. Quite a few companies also kept archives of their old data sheets and would send a hptocopy next day (free or for a nominal charge). [1] A trivial example is digital photography. You will get no argument wne you need to take a picture and print it quickly, and maybe send it across the world. But this doesn't mean it's superior for all types of photography -- in fact I would claim it most certainly isn't. True, but I think this one is. And I am actually still trying to think of a change in the last 20 years that's been for the better... -tony

On 20 Mar 2010 at 15:53, Dave McGuire wrote: Not particularly germane to the discussion, but I've occasionally stumbled on datasheets that no one else has on this site: http://www.dzsc.com/ic/pdf.html The Chinese seem to be accumulation their own collection. Good for them! --Chuck

Tony Duell wrote: I suppose it may be a question of definition; on my (admittedly modern) PC here I can flip pages in a PDF as fast as I can click the mouse (and they're readable just as fast) even for something as large as the 11/40 engineering drawings. I do agree that I prefer to have physical copies of documents where available, but for two different reasons: 1) somehow, skimming a physical document for something is just easier, and 2) I hate zooming in to see detail. Still, I don't stand a chance at getting physical copies of most of this unless I want to print it myself (I usually don't) so PDFs are very convenient in that regard... (What I want to solve #2 would be a super-high DPI screen... I have a 1920x1200 display, but it's still only 96 dpi. Something 200dpi or higher would be very nice (for things other than PDFs, too...) - Josh

On Mar 20, 2010, at 5:42 PM, Guy Sotomayor wrote: I do the same thing. I have hardcopy prints of a great many DEC systems and boards, but for me, it takes a lot less time to look in ~/ Documentation/DEC/pdp<x>/xxx than to carefully sift through huge stacks of fragile 11x17 printouts. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Mar 21, 2010, at 12:30 PM, Tony Duell wrote: I think we all agree that when actually working on the machines paper is best! :-) Yea it was expensive (the whole machine it's connected to was frighteningly expensive...I've purchased new cars that cost considerably less...but that's another story). Hopefully it'll last a while. It's an LCD so the thing that's most likely to fail are the cold cathode florescent tubes used for the backlight. I suspect that the LED versions of these displays will last forever assuming the panel doesn't get damaged physically. TTFN - Guy

Josh Dersch wrote: There was something to be said for the crispness of a good high-res B&W monitor where the resolution was limited more by the video bandwidth, rather than the physical tri-color-grid of colour monitors. When everything started going colour in the early 90's it occurred to me to hold onto a couple of larger B&W monitors as they went out of style, for working on text and schematics and such, but I never did get any.

Dave McGuire wrote: Honestly, while I can see the argument about color CRTs, I've never had a problem with the crispness of my LCD displays (at least when driven using a digital signal; analog VGA is another story). They're easily as crisp as the monochrome high-res CRT displays I have (PERQ, Sun, and Symbolics). Plus the refresh rate is better on my eyes, and they don't take up half my desk ;). - Josh

I have used PCs with LCD (I assume) montiors where the image was noticeably unsharp. It wasn't the file I was viewing, becuase it could be displayed pin-sharp on another machine. I don;'t know if the problem was the monitor or the video card (insuffiicent bandwidth in the RAMDAC or output stage?) or what (it wasn't my machine, I didn't have a chance to invetigate), but it certainly can happen. -tony

If the LCD was not at its native resolution, the scaler comes into play, which can be noticibly bad on low-quality monitors. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- BOND THEME NOW PLAYING: "Diamonds Are Forever" -----------------------------

I think, actually, we're in agreement here. We both think that a physical paper document is easier to skim, and it's easier to examine closely (without having to select and zoom). I would also argue it's easier to handle a paper document on the bench or stacked on top of the minicomputer you're repairing. I certainly agree that having the information electroncially is better than not having the information at all. Of course it is. As I've said repeatedly, data sheet archive sites and achives of old manuals (bitsavers, Australian HP museum -- add the ones for your favourite machines), are very, very, useful. I have got a lot of useful information But I still wich I could buy modern IC databooks... -tony

----- Original Message ----- From: "Jos Dreesen" <jdr_use at bluewin.ch> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2010 6:03 AM Subject: Re: Disc analyser news update I'd I Just curious, is that a single-core chip or multiple core? Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

Tony Duell wrote: Sorry to barge in, but I don't think is exactly correct. On most ARM systems these days, for example, there are multiple hardware breakpoints inside the jtag debug logic which are not intrusive. They don't perterb the instruction stream at all until they are hit. And, on some ARM SOC's there is an internal trace buffer which is also not intrusive, and is "free" in terms of timing (i.e. it doesn't slow anything down). Both have saved me a few times. -brad -- ----------- Brad Parker Heeltoe Consulting http://www.heeltoe.com 781-483-3101

I have a slightly different way of looking at the situation, but I essentially agree with Tony. About a decade ago, I was attempting to determine why the data from a remote unit in the field was causing problems. Ultimately, the difficulty was due to a buffer overflow. Packets of data were sent to a buffer as they were generated followed by sending the data as soon as the previous packet was confirmed received. When the end of the buffer was reached, the start of the buffer was used as the continuation. Normally, the inflow of packets was much slower than the outflow speed, so no problems would ever occur. However, if an error was detected by the field unit, the error messages to be sent started to pile up. As Murphy's Law would dictate, the code to check that the packet to be overwritten by the inflow had been sent by the outflow was faulty, so the packets waiting to be sent were overwritten and corrupted. Since there was np way to stop the iteration between the remote units and the master station at precisely the same microsecond, let alone dump the contents of the remote's memory (it was just a single board with a CPU, Memory, EPROM and the minimum hardware to sense the field hardware), a logic analyser was used to capture the data packets and their address pointers as they were sent to the buffer and then moved from the buffer and sent to the master. Fortunately, the logic analyser was PC based and saved the snapshot on a hard drive for latter retrieval. The snapshot consisted to what were considered to be the values of the characters in the data packet and their locations in the buffer for a selected sequence of instructions which were able to show that the input pointer for data being stored into the buffer had crawled over the top of the output pointer for data being removed from the buffer. In effect, the logic analyser stops a specific sequence of instructions which started at a specified instruction in the code and froze the stored data for the previous bunch (probably about 100) instructions so that the data flow and buffer pointer values could be checked to be compatible. After MANY, MANY, MANY, ..., ..., attempts over a few days, a snapshot was found which identified the problem described above. In effect, what the logic analyser did was to display the results of stepping through about 100 instructions showing the data values and address pointers that were required as they were used by the program. This is exactly what a debugging session would be when a used to actually stop the program and then manually and visually inspects the values of interest. While the logic analyser is much more restrictive, its great advantage is that it does NOT change the timing of the operation since it captures any data it collects in real time and stores it in its own buffers outside of and apart from the system being tested without in any manner disturbing the system being tested by that observation. The logic analyser can do this because it is able to collect the data in its own buffer as the data is produced by the test system without regard as to when the trigger location or event in the system being tested will take place. When the event does occur, the logic analyser then takes a simple action. It stops accepting any more data and retains the snapshot of the previous bunch of instructions that preceded the event. It is like asking the breakpoint to take place at a certain location, then asking the system to reverse itself and run backwards to look at what HAD JUST HAPPENED during the previous 100 instructions. Obviously impossible to do with a breakpoint on the normal way, but that is how the logic analyser functions. Please correct my memory of how the logic analyser functions if I did not remember correctly - or if that is just one of the modes of operation. To accomplish to feat, the logic analyser probably has to run at least 10 times faster than the system being tested. (Tony, do you have any estimates?) With the fastest CPUs being used today, that is becoming increasingly MUCH more difficult. Tony, is that what you are concerned about as well, how the logic analysers are able to keep up? Jerome Fine

I woudln't necessarily claim it's more restrictive, rather that it's another tool you can use. Sometimes softwere debuggers, softwear breakpoints (that stop the program under test runnign when some codition is met and let you exampine memory, CPU registers, etc) is a more appropriate way, sometimes it's not. Basically a logic analyser is like a multiple-channel storage 'scope for digital signals. Unlike a normal 'scope it doesn';t record the voltages of the signals, it just records whether they are a logic '0' or a logic '1' (the logic threshold can generally be set so the inturment can be used with TTL, CMOS (at various supply voltags, ECL, etc). Yes, a logic analyser shouldn't have any effect on the device under test. What happens is that the analyse stores the state of it's inputs at regualr time interface (perhaps every 50ns, or every 1us, or ...) It stores the last <n> samples in an intenral buffer memory (n> depends on the instrument, it might be 1024 samples for an old analyser like the one I use.When it gets a trigger it will then take a certain further number of smaples and then stop recording. If that 'further number' is 0, then you get 1023 samples of what happened before the trigger event. if it's 1024, then you get the trigger event and what happened after it. If it's 512, then you get a a recording with the rigger event in the middle. Some analysers let you select the exact number of samples to take after the trigger before stopping, others just give you the 3 choices I've mentioned (start, end, middle), but that's notmally enough Exactly. And thgt's why the logic analyser can be more useful than a breakpoint. See above for the basic 'capture modes' -- what the analyser does when it's recording. When you look at the data, most analysers will display it as a timing diagram (which is what you want when debugging hardware problems), often you can also display it as a table of 1's and 0's, possible also in hex or ovtal, or ASCII cahracters, or... Many instruments either include a computer or can be interfces to a computer so you can run a dissaembler o nythe recorded data and actually see what instructions were being executed. It depends on the system. If the analyser allows and external clock signal for recording (many do), and you have a suitable cycle strobe in the system under test you can get away with an anlyser that's only as fast as the machine you're working on. For example, I often use my analyser to trace microcode flow in old minicomputers. I know the microcode program counter can only change on a particular edge or a steady clock signal. I use that signal to clock the analyser -- but on the other edge (so the microcode program ocunter outputs are stable when the analyser is trying to record them). For other systems you haven't got a suitable clock to do that with. You have to use the built0-in clock circuit of the logic analyser, which won;'t be synchonieed to the system you're working on. So you ahve to run the analyser considerably faster than the data rate of the machine under test. I would think that 10 times was certainly fast enough. That is certainly a problem (it's one reason I don't have a fast computer, I can't afford a fast enough logic analyser to maintain it), but it's not the problem I was thinking of here. I was thinking for farily traditional microcontrollers executing perhaps 20 million instructions per second at most. That is a rate that most logic analysers can keep up with. But the problem is that if the processor and program memory are on the same chip, there is no way of conencting the analyser to the address and data buses so it can see what's going on. -tony

A logic analyser is actually more usually used for hardware debugging (provided that hardware is not all inside an FPGA or similar where you can't proble the signals [1]). A good analyser will let you find a timing problem very quickly -- provided you know how ot use it and interpret the results. In my younger days, I thoguh that the reason I had problems debugging digital hardware (both of my own desing and fixing commercial stuff) was that I didn't have a logic anlyaser. I felt that was a 'wonder machine' that would solve all my problems. I now realise that the main problem I has was lack of experience (and intellegence), and that quite simple test gear will find most poblems. I now have several logic analysers, and while I do use them, and yes, they are sometimes essential for tracking down the fault, they are not a replacement for a brain :-) [1] It is sometimes claimed you can bring out internal signals in the FPGA to spare pins on the device and conenct a logic analyser to them. The problem is that any change to the FPGA configuration is likely to internally re-route sginals which will significantlu alter the timing. So if your logic design is poor, you will find glitches come and go ans you change the signals you're looking at. And if oyur logic design is good, you don;'t have problems anyway. This is one reason why for one-off designes I am much happier wiring up a few dozen TTL packages than using programmable devices. It's quicker to build and debug. The time I use a logic analyaser on the PDP11 (or any other minicomputer) is to track down hardware fualts in the CPU to gate level. Single-stepping the microocde, while very useful, doesn't pick up problems when a gate is 'going slow'. Similarly my technique for debugging an HP9810/9820/9030 'calculator' is to connect a logic analyser to the test conenctor on the CPU control PCB and trace the microcode. Armed witht he microcode source listing (it's the same for all the machines), I can then see just what the CPU thinks it's doing and see (a) if that's sensible and (b) if it's actually doing it. [...] There are 2 reelated problems. With a modern-ish microprocessor (external program store, but things like instruction pipelines, prefetch buffers, etc), you can't know what the CPU is actually doing at any point. If you have an internal cache, it is of course even worse. The other problem is that with microcontrollers, even if it's a simple, old-fashioned, CPU sturctur, the entire program memory is on the same chip as the CPU itself. You simply don't have access to the program store address and data buses. So you can't know what the CPU is actually trying to execute, or even what program locations it's read. I do seriously wonder about the real value of such chips used in control systems. I'd rahter have something simpler that I can show is working correctly. It seems to me that a lot of the time the extra power of these modern microcontrollers doesn't at anything useful to the final product. -tony

On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 19:01:14 +0000 (GMT) ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: Well. If you need more compute power then a 8085 you have to apply advanced technics such as caches and superscalar CPUs. Even if you can get away with a small 8 bit controller you want a high integrated single chip solution. At least I do. A single Atmel AVR with ISP programmer is so much more comfortable to use, cheaper and faster to deploy then a whole board filled with CPU, RAM, ROM, IO, ... A single chip solution will work out of the box. A discrete CPU, RAM, ROM, IO, ... solution needs lots of debuging in itself before I can start to address the real problem. Tony, I am afraid you have no clue what modern microcontrolers do. E.g. the controler in my washing machine can detect how much dirty laundry is in the machine. It does this by measuring the amount of soaked up water. So the machine uses only as much water as is needed. I.e. if the machine isn't loaded to the max. it will use less water and thus less energy for heating and less detregent. An other example. Modern car engine management systems do a closed loop simulation of the engine they control. (State observer a la Luenberger or Kalman filter.) This way the management system can estimate e.g. themperatures in various parts of the engine. This is needed to optimize ignition and fuel injection timing, ... and thus minimize fuel consumtion. A modern Disel common rail injection is a highly sophisticated mechatronical system. Not to talk about anti-lock brake system... This is somthing I definitely want as it saves my money and enhances safety. But you can't do this with a 8085. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

On Mar 23, 2010, at 3:27 PM, Tony Duell wrote: Or a NEW 8-bit processor, for that matter. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Mar 23, 2010, at 5:41 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: That's certainly a valid point. 8-bitters won't go away anytime soon, though. Engineers tend to design with what they know, and while 32-bitters are getting cheaper, well, 8-bitters are too. Further, one can design an mcs51-based chip without paying a dime to anyone...can't exactly do that with ARM. I think there will always be a market for small processors. FWIW, I've seen people loudly predicting the death of 8-bit processors for well over twenty years now. They're still here. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

That's probably why the Chinese have jumped on it (Godson/Loongson), not that they worry excessively about licensing, but anyway. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- If your happiness depends on anyone else, you've got a problem. -- R. Bach -

On Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:41:50 -0700 "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: Power consumtion? If you need somthing that runs off a button cell for years... And what speciffic Cortex M0 ARM controller are you reffering to? They seem to be still more expensive then 8 bitters. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

On 25 Mar 2010 at 7:42, Jochen Kunz wrote: http://ics.nxp.com/products/mcus/cortex-m0/ --Chuck

Actually my moan is not with designers who use microcontrollers when they need computing power. I would regard it as insane not to use a 32 bit ARM microcontorller or similar if that's what was really needed. No, my moan is about designers who use a microcontrollor (often a PIC or AVR) when they don't really need it, when there are simpler, more reliable, and more repairable solutions. Hmm... At least with a microprocessor+RAM+ROM+peripherals you can attempt to debug it. You can make meaningful emasurements and work out what's going wrong. With a single-chip microcotntroller there's an awful lot you can't check (whuch is what started this discussion). WIth some microcontrollers that I've used, mis-setting the clock configuration bits can cause 'intereting' results and there's no way to see that the darn thign isn't running While undoubtedly true, that worries me -- a lot. I can't rememebr who said 'Any 3rd-rate engineer can make a complicated device enve more complicated. It takes a genius to go back to first principles', but alas I feel there are far too manyy 3rd-rate engineers designing the things I have to use... -tony

Tony Duell wrote: Ugh, I've had that happen. Once on a PIC that had taken a hit from a 24V power supply, and once on a new-in-tube W65C02SP (which had a seriously screwed up ALU). You know, there is a reason Microchip released the ICD2, ICD3 and PICKit2 Debug Express. All of the three support in-circuit debugging over the programming pins -- set a code breakpoint (or watchpoint), wait for it to trigger, then dump the program state. Beats the LEDs-and-switches debugging method, or the "hook a terminal up" trick... -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

Not that I could see. And the specs that I was pointed to by some chap here give details on programming the PICs, but nothing on the debugger commands, so it appers you can't write your own debugging tools. Exactly. -tony

How 'open#' is this internface/specification. Is there enough detail availble for me to write the host program for a machine/OS of my choice (becuase I will bet the one Microchip supply doesn't run on the machine I would want to run it on, or indeed on anythign I own) -tony

Herbicides workl wonders, you know... Mroe seriously, I am wodnerign why the shed is the only place where you can use a soldering iron. Don;t you have a kitchen table? -tony

Or just add another shed ....

You beat me to it :-) -tony

Tony Duell wrote: I do. There are a few problems with its use: 1) It's currently covered in fruit, veg and other similar food products. 2) Said table is in close proximity to a cage which is home to a breeding pair of chinchillas (and two 3-month-old kits). Mum doesn't want them exposed to solder fumes and random volatile chemicals. 3) There's an active ban on the use of soldering irons in the kitchen after I burned a hole in the lino a few years ago. In my defence, it would have been a smaller hole if the blasted fire extinguisher had actually worked! Little hint: second-hand safety equipment is a false economy. Dad bought an "unused, but believed working" fire extinguisher from a "friend" at work -- I tried to use it and it sputtered a bit, then died. Dave McGuire> I was thinking more like "TIME TO MOVE". Top of my "To Do" list. Problem is it involves two things I don't really have at the moment: time and money. Based on a quick Google search, even a 1-bed "student" flat in a not particularly nice area of town (I've been told the police call it a "no-go" for walking patrols, which sounds about right) is going to cost me ~?200 a month unfurnished, plus electric bills and such. Not gonna happen on my wages.... :-/ Rob> Or just add another shed .... But that would involve removing either the greenhouse or the bird feeder. And no doubt the Luddite In Charge would just install shelves and grow more plants in there anyway... The garage might be an option, if I can get the car out of there (once again requiring the approval of the Luddite In Charge) and find a table and a space-heater. I sure as hell wouldn't try and lug the 16500B and a PC out there though, so debugging options might be, shall we say "limited". I've got him browsing the Internet on a Linux laptop so he's not a total Luddite, although the concept of a PVR is lost on him... "It's like a video recorder but it's better quality, has a programme guide and you can do Series Link so you don't have to keep reprogramming it every week" "So what was wrong with the video recorder?" Although curiously, despite having done a basic computer course that mandated the use of Windows, he picked up the basics of using Linux quicker than my younger brother. Said brother is still point-blank refusing to even try Linux because "if they have to give it away for free then it must be crap". And yet he uses Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, and a ton of other OSS/FS stuff. Hypocrisy in action. Some days it's not worth chewing through the leather straps in the morning. -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

Dave McGuire wrote: Well, I can't see that being a problem, as long as you include the source code 8^P He's in the doghouse anyway... apparently the software for his Zune deletes the file from the disc when you remove something from the "music collection". Doesn't even ask if you want to delete them, and doesn't go through the Recycle Bin either. Such an amazing decision could only come The clincher is that he mounted the MUSIC share on the fileserver as a drive on his PC... then set that as his Zune Collection folder. You can guess what happened. "Oh, I don't like Status Quo, Queen or Goo Goo Dolls.. *delete*. Tina Dico? *delete*"... I now have 14 albums that need re-ripping or buying again as MP3s from Amazon (some of them were originally bought from iTunes when it was the "only game in town".. and then promptly had the DRM stripped with MyFairTunes). You can insult me all you like, but deleting stuff from //FILESHARE/MUSIC... that's taking a serious disregard for one's safety. Especially when I warned him not to point the Zune software at the music share..... At this point he'll be lucky if he gets his LAN connection back. Or I might connect him back up through a 10Mbit hub with a machine constantly blasting out garbage packets - that could be fun :-) See above. 8^) -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/