Category Archives: Programming

The first Unix

Posted on September 15, 2015 by e8johan

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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800×600 Video Output for Small Systems

Posted on September 2, 2015 by e8johan

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

Posted on August 19, 2015 by e8johan

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 Intel’s Itanium

Posted on August 12, 2015 by e8johan

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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An embeddable C interpreter

Posted on June 2, 2015 by e8johan

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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Python without an OS

Posted on April 29, 2015 by e8johan

Josh Triplett just did a presentation at PyCon demonstrating Python running in GRUB and EFI. He has a full interactive Python 2.7 environment, including the ability to peek and poke at memory, including the framebuffer. What excites me about this, … Continue reading →

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Embrio

Posted on March 23, 2015 by e8johan

This is a Windows only tip, so I’ve not played much with it. However, Embrio does look like a perfect experimentation kit. Take an Arduino, connect your peripherals and draw the solution. It even lets you work in a live … Continue reading →

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Compiling for the C64

Posted on March 11, 2015 by e8johan

Michael Steil from pagetable just posted a nice article on the art of migrating software to newer systems. Basically, he has built the code of a project started back in 1995 today. The code base has gone through both the … Continue reading →

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Open Source GPGPU

Posted on March 10, 2015 by e8johan

A GPGPU is a graphical processing unit, but with adaptations to make it possible to use it for general purpose computing as well. For those of you who followed Intel’s Larrabee project – that is a GPGPU. Intel’s project was … Continue reading →

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Learn about Compiling

Posted on February 21, 2015 by e8johan

Matt Godbolt has created an intriguing webpage letting you enter C++ code and then watch the resulting assembly code. You can try it right here. The compilers supported are gcc, lcc and clang in various versions. Hardware target architectures are … Continue reading →

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