M Simon
Stack architecture
September 7, 2012 9:11 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsI have been interested in computers with stack architectures for a long time. I wrote a bit about one of the latest versions at ECN a while back: Testing The GA144 Eval Board. For those of you not familiar with the subject I thought it might be a good idea to present some resource material.
Hit them with a lightning bolt
September 5, 2012 3:22 pm | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsAs some of you may remember, I was having some trouble with the Atmel programming tools. Their Studio 6 assembler and simulator are excellent. But their chip programmers leave one or two things to be desired. Well I'm going to do the usual hardware guy solution. I'm going to hit the pins used for programming with lightning bolts.
A blow to wind energy
September 4, 2012 10:13 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsMy local paper says that the wind energy business is likely to slow down in 2013. They explain that it will be bad for a local manufacturer that makes parts for the turbines and who also makes machines to make the parts. When you make 10 ton hubs for the turbines it is best to make them as close to the installation site as possible. Otherwise the shipping costs can ruin your profits.
I ran across a few things
August 29, 2012 11:37 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsI have started a number of new projects. One of them is designing a simple Forth for the ARM processor. To do that I needed a simple guide to the ARM Assembly language. I like this one written by Peter Knaggs and Stephen Welsh. Peter is quite active in the Forth community, but that was just a coincidence (I'm a big Forth fan in case you didn't know).
Reality strikes
August 20, 2012 9:43 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsLife can be interesting - way more interesting than I like. I downloaded the driver for the Adafruit programmer I bought. I installed the driver required and I got stuck. My PC doesn't seem to recognize the programmer. Since the "power good light" is controlled by a pin on the programmer according to the schematic, I plugged in the board I wanted to program (MCU10 Developer)...
A few delays
August 13, 2012 8:59 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsThose of you who have been following along with my adventures with the Atmel ATtiny10 at A tiny bit of work and I found a bug, will know that I encountered some problems with the Atmel programmer I bought from Mouser. So I started in last week-end building the Adafruit programmer that I thought would solve my problems. But I ran into a snag.
I found a bug
August 3, 2012 11:46 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsLast week I was discussing a board I designed to do development (hardware and software) of the Atmel ATTiny10 microprocessor. I had gotten the board built and was ready to write some software in assembler (my favorite way of writing programs next to writing them in Forth). So I wrote a very simple program that just turned on the internal pull up resistors on three of the pins.
A tiny bit of work
July 27, 2012 9:29 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsI'm working on a project that is using the Atmel ATTiny10 microprocessor. The processor is a cute little device with 4 I/O pins, 1,000 bytes of flash and 32 bytes of RAM not counting processor registers some of which could be used as RAM in a pinch. In order to do the development I bought an AVRISP mkII programmer which comes with version 4 of the software development tools.
I put my finger on it
July 12, 2012 8:52 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsWay back in the Dark Ages (the late '70s) I was troubleshooting a military radio that had a phase locked loop (PLL) BFO. I couldn't get it to lock properly. The previous version of the loop worked fine, but the new layout was noisy. I was called in as a consultant because the regulars at the company had worked for six months on the problem and were unable to resolve it.
Getting kitted up
June 19, 2012 10:48 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsIf you are interested in going into the kit business, Jameco has a service for you. The process for getting your kit made is simple. You submit your kit idea to their forum and if it gets enough votes Jameco will go into production with your design. Kind of like Kickstarter. They are partial to parts in the Jameco catalog of course, but it is not a requirement.
Hacking space
June 12, 2012 9:22 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsBrent at Talk-Polywell (a nuclear fusion board) left a link there to a list of Maker/Hacker spaces involved in developing equipment for use in space. Here is the list: Hackers In Space. Let me add that it is not just an American phenomenon. One of the spaces on the list is in China. They are focusing on food production in limited spaces.
Finding a board supplier
June 7, 2012 8:31 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsI'm having a little difficulty with my board supplier. Lead times are lengthening which is putting my schedules for some projects in trouble. The market for the PCB service I'm using/looking for is kind of new and obviously things haven't settled out. And what is the service? Small volumes - 1 to 25 pieces.
Micro micros
May 29, 2012 12:16 pm | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsAtmel has some very neat microprocessors in a 6-pin SOT package. Sixteen-bit processors with eight-bit internal buses. About sixty-eight cents in onesies for the high-end version. It operates on 1.8 to 5.5 volts using milliamps to microamps depending. And up to 8MHz clock speed at full crank.
Low power, low-cost testing
May 4, 2012 12:29 pm | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsI'm sure some of you were wondering about the board I described in A Beauty. What is it for? It is an electronic load of sorts for power supply testing. Low power (under a watt) power supply testing. The principle is simple. You apply a pulsing load to the power supply and watch its response.
A beauty
April 20, 2012 11:18 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsThe picture is of a board I had made by the DorkbotPDX board service. It is a beauty. The gold plating is not guaranteed but depends on what others who use the service pay for. Dorkbot puts a number of boards on a panel in order to get a pretty good price.
Resource One
April 13, 2012 9:31 am | by M Simon | Blogs | CommentsI was looking around the 'net and came across the name of someone who worked on the design of Resource One. I logged on to Resource One in '74 (it was part of a hitch hiking trip with my girlfriend, and still wife, from Carbondale, Illinos to the West coast). There were 12 terminals around the Bay Area hooked up to an old SDS mainframe by modem.
Number nine
March 30, 2012 4:57 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsA while back I wrote up how to make A Perfect Divider which divides a voltage by 10, 100, 1,000 etc. using mostly very common resistors (100K, 10K, 1K etc.) with only two uncommon resistors to make a resistance divider that divides by decade increments.
From prototype to volume
March 19, 2012 5:18 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsDavid Jones has a very good video up on YouTube about how to go from a working prototype to high volume manufacture. The video is a bit over 50 minutes long so be prepared to put some time in. The information is oriented to the novice...
Forth is getting institutionalized
March 16, 2012 5:42 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsGreenArrays, a company I have written about extensively is opening an on line institute for those who want to learn more about how to program and use their chips. They call it the Array Forth Institute. First time log-in is fast and simple.
Notes from the electronic underground
March 9, 2012 4:19 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsI was hanging out at the FreePCB blog where commenter gnuarm suggested DorkbotPDX for production of hobby boards. The production process is not hobby grade. You get a solder mask on both sides, silk screen (legend), and a 6/6 process.
Gerbers: Food for designers
March 5, 2012 7:49 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsIn my search for good tools that don't cost too much (I like free) I have found an excellent tool for viewing Gerber and drill files. Those are the files produced by most PC board design software and required by most board producers to produce boards.
Sustainable?
February 2, 2012 4:02 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsI'd like some genius to define sustainable. Could we count something that we can keep doing for 100 billion years - beyond the death of the Universe as we currently understand such things - as sustainable? How about a billion years?
A Lovely Radio
January 18, 2012 9:23 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsThe kit is designed to teach radio theory. If you want a general theory of superhetrodyne radios I think the Radio Amateurs Handbook is better because it covers the theory in both a more detailed and more general way. This kit does go into some detail...
Xprotolab Live
January 3, 2012 4:24 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsA while back I wrote about one of the cutest test instruments I have ever seen. An oscilloscope that can fit in your watch pocket. Since I wrote that I have been looking at the Xprotolab manual...
In Training
December 21, 2011 4:01 am | by M. Simon | Blogs | CommentsI'm starting to get a feel for Altium Designer. After a few hours with ignorance painted all over my face I have started to find my way. What I found most helpful was their tutorial page that has their manual sectioned in 20 pdfs plus an index pdf.
