#bkuhn on #Mastodon
Lars Wirzenius on #Mastodon
"Radicle" is another #GitHub alternative similar to Gitea or Gogs or whatever. “Radicle is an open source, peer-to-peer code collaboration stack built on #Git. Unlike centralized code hosting platforms, there is no single entity controlling the network. Repositories are replicated across peers in a decentralized manner, and users are in full control of their data and workflow.” #decentralization
0xabad1dea on #Mastodon; apparently she’s in Amsterdam now
this guy built an #ECL flip-flop on some copper-clad board with some 2N3904s (well, MMBT3904s). It only hit 40MHz; I wonder why he didn’t use like some 2SC3356es or something? #electronics #hardware
Twice Sold Tales on Capitol Hill in #Seattle.
#PDF of #Inmos’s ACM #paper on the #transputer from 01985. #history #retrocomputing
Wikipedia says that on p. 343 of this book from 01978, The Microprocessor and its Application: An Advanced Course, by D. Aspinall, the term “#transputer” is introduced, by Iann M. Barron, with the meaning of what we would now call a “microcontroller”: a computer on a chip including storage. (Indeed, Barron describe the Intel 8048 as a “transputer”, as well as the “Texas 9940” and the “Mostek 3870”.) That was the year he co-founded #Inmos with the objective of bringing such a thing to market. #history
Mentor Graphics’s Walden C. Rhines tells the #history of #TI’s late unlamented TMS9900.
“Indeed, some who know the history assert that the Intel 8088 was the worst among several possible 16-bit microprocessors of the day.
“It was not. There was a serious alternative that was worse. I know because I was in charge of the organization within Texas Instruments that developed it: the TMS9900. Although this dog of a chip went on to be used in the world’s first 16-bit home computer, you’ve probably never heard of it.”
There’s an aside about TI’s the “largely unsuccessful attempt to develop a compatible 16-bit microcontroller called the TMS9940”.
Another #history of the “debacle” of #TI’s “never fully functional” TMS9940. Sadly it doesn’t explain what was wrong with it.
The Beocord 8000 tape player from Bang & Olufsen was supposed to be built in #TI’s TMS9940, but TI kept failing to deliver it, so they switched to the Intel #8048, or actually the 8049. #history
FarmerPotato said, “[The #TI 9940] was a cursed CPU: it had so many bugs, Texas Instruments withdrew it from production. But it gave its name to the Home Computer.” Also mentions the TMS 990’s innovative conditional jump mechanism: “This machine didn’t have a conditional branch (like JEQ, JNE.) Instead, you modified the next branch instruction by adding a result to its jump target.” #history
#PDF scan of an 01980 ad for #TI’s TMS9900 CPU family, touting it as “TI’s 16-bit 9900 Family. For price. For performance.” Not. From the January 01980 IEEE Spectrum. Also has an ad for the Bellmac MAC-4, touting “its assembler language, C, also developed at Bell Labs.” #history #humor #electronics
More about how #TI’s delays in introducing the TMS9940, and increases in price from the initially promised US$38, led Bang & Olufsen to abandon it for the Intel 8048 in late 01977 for their Beocenter 7000. #electronics #history
#PDF from Guttag’s VCF talk about the TMS9918 and the invention of sprites, with schematics of “ratioless” dynamic NMOS gates, which used a #four-phase set of clocks similar to but different from the scheme used by Four-Phase Systems. Includes a scan of Guttag’s firebreathing memo to Wally Rhines about the problems. #electronics #history
The #MOSTek 3870 was a microcontroller introduced in about 01977. #history
The Abov MC96F6432 or very similar is the microcontroller in this microwave oven. #hoarding #datasheet #PDF