μblog: engineering from the trenches

For something different, here is Intel’s Microprocessor Hall of Fame. The page chronicles CPUs from the 4004 up until the Pentium M and includes die shots up until the Pentium 4. The page also gives an overview of the achievements of each chip, so it might be good information all together. Finally, the Intel Microprocessor Quick Refecence is worth a look.

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Here is a paper entitled Pole-Zero Phase Maps by Kent Lundberg.  It is a pretty easy read and goes over some basic transfer function analysis with a compensation example. A little bit of MATLAB code is also provided. This could compliment my previous post on filter design.

( csm_pzp.pdf )

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Sumotori Dreams is a game designed for Win32 whose complete executable is less than 96kB uncompressed.  The game was presented at Breakpoint 2007. The machines that they used to run things in the competition are XP SP2 with DirectX 9, so it is not unreasonable to expect that the game hooks into many of the available APIs to generate the graphics. It is also possible that the texture maps could be pulled from the XP installation. Even though this game is smaller in size than most spyware, it is truly impressive how fun it is to play.

( sumotori101.zip ) ( sumotori.zip )

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I promise this the last in a series of MEMS accelerometers [1] [2]. This chip, the ADXL311, is one of the most recent bi-axial accelerometers from Analog Devices. The fingers in the middle that determine acceleration have a different pattern from the 202. Again, the packaging of the dye has prevented me from using the higher power magnification, above 20x.

( adxl311.pdf )

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I received the formal letter today notifying me that I passed the ESM candidacy exam consisting of six hours of written exams, a written research proposal and an oral defense of the written research proposal. With the semester winding down, I can start thinking about working on some electronics projects in my spare time again. The ones that come to mind, in no particular order are:

• telnet to RS-232 bridge using msp430
• custom code on the NES using reprogrammable cartridge
• adding useful features to Fonera Linux distro
• changing the firmware on some DSL/WIFI routers I have around
• iPod control with msp430/AVR
• something interesting with a Peltier device
• wind-powered battery charger

Comments/suggestions are welcome!

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While thinking about cheap development boards, I remembered my NES (picture from 1up blog).  The system would be ideal for hacking by modern standards as it features a custom 6502 processor from MOS Technologies running at a very accessible 1.8MHz. All of the chips are in PDIP form and the system is pretty cheap. Memory can be wired directly to the ZIF connector used for cartridges, or a reprogrammable cartridge can be made. Finally, system architecture guides are available. Maybe I will open mine up to see if I can tweak anything once Nintendo puts Super Mario Brothers 3 on the Virtual Console.

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As a follow up to the ADXL150, here is a two-axis accelerometer. The die was recessed in the packaging, so I was unable to focus on it with the 40x or above, so we are back to 20x magnification here.

( adxl202e.pdf )

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Ok, I am not sure that Digikey is in the picture beyond a supplier, but there are two development bundles being sold: STK500 + AVRDRAGON and STK500 + JTAGICE2. The cost is $50 and $150 respectively where the second bundle includes a JTAG in-circuit emulator. Both are supposed to ship tomorrow, so back-orders can go in today.

(via Make)

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Looks like the final version of Opera is out for the Wii. I am guessing it is the final version since it no longer says “trial”. It is free for now. I haven’t had too much time to play with it, but I noticed that it can now auto-hide the tool bar on the bottom. Below are scandalous pictures.

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I decided to mess around with an old 486 laptop that I have around, perhaps to try to overclock it. Since it had no OS on it, I went looking for PicoBSD floppy images. It seems that PicoBSD has not been updated in a very long time and the semi-official PicoBSD site has been removed.  Luckily, I was able to find images on Bruce Montegue’s site. It looks to be hosted off a DSL line, so here are mirrors of the disk images. Note that the apl image will not boot on a 486 system.

  ( pico_biscuit.zip ) ( pico_apl.zip )

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