@brouhaha@mastodon.social
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

brouhaha

@brouhaha@mastodon.social

#microcontroller #firmware #FPGA #SDR (SW Defined Radio)
#retrocomputing
#nonpareil HP calculator simulation at microcode level
Maker (with John Doran) of Nixie tube RPN calculators
CHM PDP-1 Restoration Team
Damned dirty ape
Call sign N2ES
he/him
cis male
Not a tame programmer
in #Colorado, not far from #Denver

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

MLE_online, to random
@MLE_online@social.afront.org avatar

There's a local lady who does estate sales, and they're pretty good, but I mostly subscribe to her newsletter so I can read her talking shit on her bad customers.

image/jpeg
image/jpeg

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@MLE_online There are apparently plenty of middle-aged teenage boys that buy them.

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

I just went digging for why Ethernet jumbo frame size is typically 9000, and found out that the reasoning is "until equipment supports much more than 9000 byte frames, we can use 9000, because it is an easy number to remember" https://docs.globalnoc.iu.edu/i2network//jumbo-frames/rrsum-almes-mtu.html

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@lain_7 @whitequark The Xerox Alto bus ran at multiple megabytes per second; I don't recall the exact number. According to Metcalfe, 2.94 Mbps data rate of the experimental Ethernet was picked rather than a higher speed due to limitations of the bipolar CRC chips available at the time. At a higher speed, they would not have been able to fit the entire interface on one card.
The Ethernet card used the Alto's mutitasking microcode capability to do 16-bit word transfers to/from main memory (DRAM).

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@lain_7 @whitequark A memory cycle takes three CPU clock cycles, which would put the maximum random single-word access bandwidth over 31.3 Mbps. Video uses transfers of consecutive double-words, which achieves much substantially higher bandwidth over the same bus. Video is also buffered by a FIFO, so that higher-priority real-time hardware can take some cycles away from video without disrupting the display.

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@lain_7 @whitequark I'll admit that I haven't done a full analysis, but I'm pretty sure they could have run the Ethernet with at least twice the bit rate without running out of memory bandwidth or disrupting video or disk activity. The controller would have been more complex, needed at least 32 bits of shift register instead of 16, or a FIFO lile the video, and would not have fit a single card.

yakkoj, to random
@yakkoj@fosstodon.org avatar

Very interesting that Apple expected vendors who wanted to implement copy protection on their then-new UniDisk 3.5 to write code to implement it and then send this code to the drive so that the drive's CPU will handle the copy protection.

Only to have the UniDisk 3.5 be relatively short-lived. It was going to ship with the IIgs, but before the IIgs shipped, Apple came out with the Apple 3.5 drive (which had NO intelligence; it was driven by IWM and software on the host machine.)

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@yakkoj Apple made an "Apple 3.5 Controller" that worked in the II/II+/IIr/IIgs that could control all the floppy drives Apple sold for the II family. It was more expensive than the Liron card, but much more useful.
It was the only controller Apple sold for the II series that could handle the Super drive/FDHD high-density floppy drive.

freemo, to random
@freemo@qoto.org avatar

What the hell is going on.... I lost 1.5 lbs (0.7 kg) in literally 10 hours where all I did was sit at my desk all day. I wasnt hot or sweaty, I drank water, I even had a pretty heavy breakfast (eggs cheese spinach, heavily buttered English muffin, and two huge pieces of greasy scrapple).. on top of that i had at least 2 liters of water today and no activity..... how did I loose that much weight in 10 hours.

These drugs they got me on is hitting on another level.

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@freemo
[You may know all this better than I do. I'm not trying to mansplain it to you, but explaining for the benefit of other readers.]
Did you urinate more than usual? If it's not water loss from sweating, the main way you lose body weight is by fat broken down into ketones (lipolysis, ketosis), excreted by urination.
The other alternative is muscle tissue being broken down (ketoacidosis), which is very bad, but shouldn't notmally happen.

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@freemo
Ketone test strips for urine can be useful, but don't distinguish between ketosis and ketoacidosis.

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

So I'm trying to install a piece of software on Linux, and I run a "./launch_installer.sh", and immediately it prints a message suggesting it is unpacking a JRE so it can run the installer inside the JRE, and I wonder if I am going to a dark place here

NOTE TO ZOOMERS: That's Java Runtime Environment not the other thing. "Java" is a programming language people used in the 1800s, when programming meant making punchcards for Jacquard looms

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@vwbusguy @mcc
Isn't sanity really just a one trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit!
– The Tick

brouhaha, to random
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an electrical engineer in possession of a non-working circuit, must be in want of an oscilloscope.
– Jane Austen, Electrified Circuit Analysis

jacqueline, to random
@jacqueline@chaos.social avatar

you know that meme, 'two kinds of electrical engineer: the kind that makes antennas on purpose, and the kind that makes them by accident'?

it's fucked up how that's just literally true.

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@jacqueline Amplifiers oscillate and oscillators don't.

philpem, to random
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

Good start to the day. My E4406A vector spectrum analyser is stuffed - started with a system crash and escalated to the thing forgetting its serial number and that of the plugin cards.

image/jpeg

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@philpem Didn't you just analyze spectra not that long ago?

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@philpem The message file must be corrupt or missing, or it would display, "It is now for this instrument to be replaced by a new Keysight N9010B."

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@philpem More seriously, though, good luck with getting it going again!

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@philpem Seems unlikely that EEPROMs on multiple cards would all fail at once, unless the software went berserk and rewrote all of them.
:-(

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@philpem Maybe there's corrosion or crud on a connector pin that's in the path from the system controller to the plugins, preventing reliable access to most or all of those EEPROMs.

brouhaha, to random
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

The difference between the fair elections in a democratic country, and the rigged elections under a dictatorship is:

  • In a fair election in a functioning democracy, it is important to vote for the correct candidate.
  • In a rigged election under a dictatorship, it is important to vote for the correct candidate.
philpem, to random
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

Siiiigh. "Clean, used, tested" Certance DDS72 drive... And it's DOA. Demanded head cleaning, and after that it throws read errors and more "clean me" alerts. Boooo. People really torture these poor drives.

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@philpem At least they got one of the adjectives correct. You didn't really expect all three, did you?
AFAICT, if a reseller says that a product is "refurbished", that means they put it into a shipping box.

Viss, to random
@Viss@mastodon.social avatar

cant wait for this to be a 'medium level finding' in nessus, and have all 6000 security taxonomies submit to gladitorial combat about its severity level and 400 years of bickering about how bad it is

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@f4grx @Viss
NIST has recommended a minimum RSA key length of 2048 since 2015, so this could easily just be Microsoft following the NIST guidance (albeit seven years later), rather than any inside knowledge or nefarious intent.

NIST SP800-57 Part 3 Rev 1, January 2015, tables 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 3-2, and some references in the text

Gargron, to random
@Gargron@mastodon.social avatar

We've updated the rules of our flagship server mastodon.social today. Most are the same with some clarifications, but one rule is new: Content created by others must be attributed, and use of AI must be disclosed. Profiles that only post AI-generated content will not be tolerated.

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@Gargron Natural Stupdity is still allowed, and even encouraged.
:-)

I like the new rule.

ned, (edited ) to random
@ned@mstdn.ca avatar

Just thinking about how wrong the phrase is, "You have to earn respect".

No, you have to earn disrespect. As a human being, I'm naturally going to respect you if I don't know you. It's when you earn my disrespect, that I'll stop showing respect.

I give people respect freely, until they prove to me that they don't deserve it.

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@ned There's a baseline level of respect that I'll afford everyone, unless and until they prove that they don't deserve it. But there's also additional respect that they can earn through their actions.

sundogplanets, to random
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social avatar

There are currently 5,591 Starlink satellites in orbit, launched in the last 5 years https://planet4589.org/space/con/conlist.html

There are 5,595 known exoplanets https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/ discovered in the last 30 years

Starlink is about to have more sats in orbit than known exoplanets, and with each launch, make it harder to do astronomy research

Imagine what astronomy (or any part of science) could do with the shittons of money that have been spent on occupying (and likely soon destroying) low earth orbit?

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@sundogplanets
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all
– Ogden Nash

drahardja, to random
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

I miss the time when computers were small. Not in physical size, but in complexity. Back when you had a fighting chance to understand most of what they do.

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@drahardja Exactly why I enjoy retrocomputing as a hobby. Notably:

  • HP calculators (of which I've done a lot of reverse-engineering and microcode-level simulation)
  • DEC computers, especially PDP-1, PDP-8, PDP-10, and PDP-11
  • CP/M (on 8080 and Z80)
  • Apple 1, II, and ///
mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Opinion: The automatic line ending translation in git is a very, very, very bad feature that has only ever made the world a worse place

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc Also true of EVERY automatic line ending changing in EVERY program that has ever done it, IMNSHO.

atomicpoet, to random
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

I own thousands of video games.

I have just spent one hour trying to decide what to play, and not actually playing anything.

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@atomicpoet I've played that game, and it sucks.

jbqueru, to random
@jbqueru@fosstodon.org avatar

The things you find when you're moving: H0BBIT BeBox motherboard, serial number and dates indicate 1993.

brouhaha,
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

@jbqueru I didn't realize that th BeBox had two Hobbies and three DSPs!

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