#Ebook of the Fairchild Analog Division, aka Discrete Small Signal Division, discrete [semiconductor] data book from 01985
#Chuck-Moore and C.H. Ting advocating the #MuP21 in somewhat unjustifiable ways in 01995. #architecture #stack-machines #hardware
“On top of these signals an RTK receiver takes in an RTCM correction stream and then calculates your location with 1cm accuracy in real time”!!! #GPS #metrology
#PDF scan of Intersil’s #documentation for their 4000-transistor (?) single-chip CMOS #PDP-8, the IM6100.
Purportedly the first microprocessor was Ray Holt’s 20-bit bit-serial MP944 from 01971, part of the #CADC, developed for the F-14 naval fighter jet, but the Navy classified it until 01998. #history
#PDF scan of the #paper on the design of the 20-bit bit-serial “MP944” CPU from 01971, part of the #CADC, which sure doesn’t sound like a microprocessor to me, despite the domain name.
The multiplier (“PMU”) was a 28-pin DIP, the divider (“PDU”) was another 28-pin DIP, the “special logic [functional] unit” was another 28-pin DIP, and the “steering unit” (of which there were three, one for each of the previous three modules) was another 28-pin DIP, and there were 19 vertical-microcode ROM chips: “Each functional unit is controlled by its own micro-instruction ROM.” To me it sounds like there were at most three CPUs, each consisting of a steering unit and either a multiplier, a divider, or a “special logic unit”, and maybe just one CPU split across 25 chips; when the paper uses the term “CPU”, it seems to be referring to all of these functional units together and perhaps the ROMs as well, not just one of them.
Moreover, the multiplier and divider just blindly did a multiply and, respectively, a divide, every “frame”. Only the “special logic function” could do “Conditional, and Unconditional data branching”. And all three “functional units” were controlled by some control bits from the “system executive control”, a group of ROM chips.
The “steering unit” was a “three channel serial digital data multiplexer” with three outputs which could add or subtract data under the control of part of the instruction word on its way to the PMU, PDU, or SLF.
It seems like the program counter, or rather counters, were located in the microcode ROM chips, which could increment them or reset or reload them under the control of some control lines. #hardware #architecture #history
“the outbreak, which the World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency of international concern. (...) Earlier on Sunday, the Congolese Ministry of Communication said on X that there were 904 suspected cases of Ebola, mostly in northeastern Ituri Province – a significant jump from the previously announced more than 700 suspected Ebola cases. (...) There is no available vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus, a rare type of #Ebola, which spread undetected for weeks in Ituri following the first reported death - in late April in the town of Bunia, the provincial capital - while authorities tested for another, more common, Ebola virus and came up negative.” #news
#roconnor wrote a combinator graph reduction machine in #RISC-V #asm #toread
Scientific American article from 01977 by Hoo-Min D. Toong defines a “microprocessor” as a “computer central processing unit on a single chip”, but then in the introduction to the article says, “(sometimes several chips)”. #etymology #history
#CodysLab #video #casting iron from #thermite made with pop-top can tops in Petrobond in an outdoor desert location. He had to stir the mix with his dedicated thermite shovel to keep it from petering out, severely damaging the shovel.
#news background on the methyl methacrylate #Garden-Grove-chemical-leak in California last week.
2-pixel high proportional font, sort of readable if you insert leading between lines. #small-is-beautiful #fonts
a new low-latency non-moving GC landed in GHC 8.1.0. #Haskell #garbage-collection
Semikey looks like another #hardware distributor similar to Digi-Key or LCSC, in #China (country code +86)
CAB is the plastic that makes screwdriver handles stink like vomit. “It has improved weathering resistance and lower moisture absorption compared to cellulose acetate.” #materials
"Preflight3D" is a new AGPLv3 C++ slicer for #3D-printing
PrusaSlicer dropped the use of #Perl a couple years ago. #3D-printing