Домашняя стеклодувная мастерская. Текущее дооснащение

Стеклодувная приборостроительная работа немыслима без прорвы разнообразного инструмента и оснастки. И в самом деле, манипуляции с раскалённым размягчённым стеклом специфичны — горячие заготовки приходится как-то удерживать, вращать, формовать. Известное дело — иной раз на подготовку к работе времени уходит больше, чем сама операция, и чем более разнообразные действия выполняет стеклодув, тем большим ассортиментом всякой вспомогательной всячины неизбежно обрастает его рабочее место. Читать дальше →

A tricky Commodore PET repair: tracking down 6 1/2 bad chips

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=nxilekpLp6g

In 1977, Commodore released the PET computer, a quirky home computer that combined the processor, a tiny keyboard, a cassette drive for storage, and a trapezoidal screen in a metal unit. The Commodore PET, the Apple II, and Radio Shack's TRS-80 started the home computer market with ready-to-run computers, systems that were called in retrospect the 1977 Trinity. I did much of my early programming on the PET, so when someone offered me a non-working PET a few years ago, I took it for nostalgic reasons.

You'd think that a home computer would be easy to repair, but it turned out to be a challenge. The chips in...

April Update: Risc It For A Biscuit

Hello and happy April! The past few months have been relatively quiet on the surface, but there is a lot going on behind the scenes. During the past three months we have seen some improvements for the PineTab2, PineTime and PineNote, along with the announcement that the PineTab-V is back in store and the new micro soldering tip set for the Pinecil. Charlie the Pinecorn also makes his yearly appearance in the update banner, artwork made by Caffeine.

We have been very happy with the feedback after the launch of the PineNote Community Edition. Users coming from the developer edition with...

Fritzing 1.0.5 released

Fritzing 1.0.5 is a maintenance release. It has been tested on Windows 11 24H2 (ARM and Intel), macOS Sequoia, macOS Ventura, Ubuntu 22.04, and Ubuntu 24.04. What is new Windows ARM Support for Windows on ARM CPUs. Fritzing uses Prism on Windows 24H2 to run on ARM. New Fonts We are fading out Droid Sans and Open Sans in favor of Noto Sans. This affects mostly the Breadboard and the Schematic View. A bunch of Fritzing parts was using unknown fonts, which resulted in using whatever fallback font the operating system provided. We have replaced these with either Noto Sans,...

Notes on the Pentium's microcode circuitry

Most people think of machine instructions as the fundamental steps that a computer performs. However, many processors have another layer of software underneath: microcode. With microcode, instead of building the processor's control circuitry from complex logic gates, the control logic is implemented with code known as microcode, stored in the microcode ROM. To execute a machine instruction, the computer internally executes several simpler micro-instructions, specified by the microcode. In this post, I examine the microcode ROM in the original Pentium, looking at the low-level circuitry.

The photo below shows the Pentium's thumbnail-sized silicon die under a microscope. I've labeled the main functional blocks. The microcode ROM is highlighted...

A USB interface to the "Mother of All Demos" keyset

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=DpshKBKt_os

In the early 1960s, Douglas Engelbart started investigating how computers could augment human intelligence: "If, in your office, you as an intellectual worker were supplied with a computer display backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day and was instantly responsive to every action you had, how much value could you derive from that?" Engelbart developed many features of modern computing that we now take for granted: the mouse,1 hypertext, shared documents, windows, and a graphical user interface. At the 1968 Joint Computer Conference, Engelbart demonstrated these innovations in a groundbreaking presentation, now known as "The Mother of All Demos."

Comments to USTR Opposing Tariffs and Tariff Increases

The United States Trade Representative invited comments from the public this past month to assist them in making recommendations about how to address so-called “unfair trade practices by other countries” and “non-reciprocal trade relationships”. This is the public comment I left today on the USTR docket. I have also submitted similar comments to my senators and representative in Congress.

“I am deeply alarmed by the Trump administration’s decision last week to impose tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods, as well as further increase tariffs on imports from China. As the CEO of Great Scott Gadgets, a small Colorado-based business that designs,...

Robotron S6130 — Восставший из мертвых

История ремонта этой пишущей машинки тянется уже 8 лет! Шутка что ли, это Самый Первый Артефакт моего YouTube-канала!

Robotron S6130 — многофункциональная пишущая машинка формата A2 на базе процессора Z80, с функцией запоминания набранных текстов во встроенной оперативной памяти, с записью и воспроизведением на магнитофон, а также возможностью приема и передачи текстов с ЭВМ по последовательному порту!

Но, перед тем как появиться у меня, агрегат порядка четырех лет пролежал в сыром, заброшенном помещении на горе заплесневевших книг. За это время питающая ОЗУ резервная батарейка протекла и пожрала дорожки на материнской плате. Коррозией покрылись и ноги ближайших микросхем, ОЗУ. Разумеется, на первом...

The Pentium contains a complicated circuit to multiply by three

This article is available in German at Heise Online.

In 1993, Intel released the high-performance Pentium processor, the start of the long-running Pentium line. I've been examining the Pentium's circuitry in detail and I came across a circuit to multiply by three, a complex circuit with thousands of transistors. Why does the Pentium have a circuit to multiply specifically by three? Why is it so complicated? In this article, I examine this multiplier—which I'll call the ×3 circuit—and explain its purpose and how it is implemented.

It turns out that this multiplier is a small part of the Pentium's floating-point multiplier circuit. In particular, the...

Emulating a PS5 Controller with Cynthion

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/MMZAyQuZHvs

We’ve recently published the second video in our Cynthion training series, so if you want to go deeper into exploring and experimenting with USB, this is for you. In this video, Martin explains the basics and evolution of Facedancer and demonstrates how to use Cynthion and Facedancer to emulate a PS5 controller. If you haven’t already, check out the first video- Sniffing PS5 Controller Packets with Cynthion.