Author Archives: e8johan

A few bits of RAM

The growth of RAM is one of the things that boggles my mind. The available RAM of an average computer has increased many magnitudes during my days as a computer nerd and now I have far more RAM than I … Continue reading

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The first Unix

We can learn a lot from the past – you may even experience aha moments. Reading the source code of the first edition of Unix is such an experience. The simplicity of it all, combined with the knowledge that this … Continue reading

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The Raspberry Pi Screen Announced

The Raspberry Pi foundation has just released a long blog post announcing a Raspberry Pi touchscreen, available from $60 + local taxes. The screen is connected using DSI/DSP, meaning that the final connector on the Pi finally has a use. … Continue reading

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800×600 Video Output for Small Systems

The Mesa-Video is a low cost, low power, small open source hardware/software solution for providing graphics from embedded projects. It is, basically, a graphics card with an UART interface. The graphics card side of the solution can display text and … Continue reading

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NodeIT – stackable IoT

The NodeIT by Sweet Pea’s is an extendable, minimal IoT thing being launched on kickstarter right now. The project has already been funded, but is still open to additional backers. Based on the ESP8266, the core module, called ESP210, provides an … Continue reading

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Understanding ARM

As a follow up on Raymond Chen’s in-depth look at Intel’s Itanium, he has posted a set of links to an introduction to ARM. Also an interesting read. Part 1 – Processor features Part 2 – How Windows uses the … Continue reading

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Understanding Intel’s Itanium

Raymond Chen has written a multi part series on the Intel Itanium processor architecture. It really helps you understand the CPU architecture from a software development and performance optimization perspective. To quote Raymond: The Itanium may not have been much … Continue reading

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Built to Scale

Taking on the most complex, miniaturized part of a computer and going in the other direction takes a special kind of mind. Doing it “because I want to” takes it to the next level. James Newman is building a CPU … Continue reading

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An embeddable C interpreter

If you like scripting and embedded systems, but feel that Python, Lua, Javascript and the rest are too high level, I give you picoc. The picoc interpreter, created by Zik Saleeba, is an embeddable, minimal C interpreter environment that you can … Continue reading

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Transistor level Atari 2600 simulation

Based on the work from visual6502.org, Greg James has put together a transistor level simulation of the Atari 2600 console. The entire project is available from github. The simulator runs slowly, but that is the trick. Everything is simulated at half-clock … Continue reading

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