The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

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#53 – Biarchy Birthday Bavardage

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Happy Birthday to us! One year in the bag! Thanks for all of our wonderful listeners!

That’s all for this week. Looking forward to another year of shows! Remember, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook or now on Google+

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  2. Why didn’t they use a very basic FPGA to do the HP-15C CPU emulation? Or maybe redesign the ASIC for a smaller pitched silicon wafer? (sorry for my very bad silicon speak, I know nothing about making chips).

        • If the core was purely static (i.e. no dynamic logic, dynamic adder chains or other hacks), you can more easily apply scalable CMOS design rules. So Ivan’s probably right, you HP could potentially spin out a scaled down version of the original core without much difficulty. I suppose the question is that of cost, although for anything slightly less than 1um, a set of masks should be no more than 250k. Another question may be, do they have the original artwork? Its embarrassing, but some companies loose that kind of stuff.

    • An FPGA would likely be more expensive and possibly more power hungry. And they were standardising on ARM across over calc platforms too.
      Also, I believe they bought rights to use someones existing emulator core, and then modified it (there are many HP emulators out there from the fanboys). That would be infinitely easier than trying to recreate the core in an FPGA.
      I am lead to believe that HP lost some or all of the info on the ASIC core design, so could not easily reproduce it.

  3. My favourite part of the Hakko tutorial is the part where Mr. Fusamura says a good solder joint looks like Mt. Fuji. What a great analogy.

  4. About the Hakko soldering comic: I don’t want to take the credit but I found the comic before Dave and posted it in the chatbox.

    Weird is the only word I have for it.

    BTW, are the libraries in Japan so huge to have info on soldering 3000 years ago?

  7. Bugs Bunny!, yes I ~knew that as soon as I heard it.

    for my vote, I don’t need the video unless someday you have something to show on it. I listen to the show during my commute. thanks!

  10. Ok Chris, I started the show over and I was doing some testing at the time and missed where you sed you guys lost video!!!! damn you need to nail down this video thing!!! lol LOVE THE SHOW GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  11. Apologies for the grotesquely out-of-date SPaRC website. It seems the people spend more time tinkering than updating the website.

    Basically, it is a student-run and faculty-sponsored (sanctioned?) organization on campus. They are provided lab space and equipment, and are financed by a few alumni.

    The purpose of the organization is to provide real-life(ish) engineering experience outside of the core curriculum of engineering. The organization has had students from all engineering majors (and a few business), where they tackle any projects that they can dream up. Students can get funding for new project ideas through a proposal process.

  12. Hey Chris and Dave, thanks for all the great shows, I have been going through them all, one by one, lot’s of good info I have a product for “”wank of the week”” This CD upgrade chip http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina64.htm does not have any electrical contact to anything, but will “upgrade” your CD/Blueray/DVD player by well, Magic I guess I upgrade my CD player with a banana sticker Now it only plays The Monkees greatest hits, Any advice? LOL..
    Claus

  14. Dave-How can a calculator be retro if there isn’t anything better on the market? The re-release of the 35 is pretty nice, though.

    Dave

    • Err, maybe because it was last made 22 years ago? That’s Retro in my book.
      Functionality doesn’t have anything to do with it.
      Are the saying the current HP50S can’t do what the 15C could in terms of computations?

      • I’ve used a HP50S and it doesn’t have the same quality feel, nice keys, or well-designed layout that the HP48G(X) has. Take a look at those lame cursor keys. Where is the wide enter key? Definitely designed by a work-study student.

        The HP15C was a great product that hit the sweet spot for scientific calculators. Right size. Right functionality. Good layout. Well built. A friend of mine ran over his HP15C with his car, but it still works great. There is lasting value in quality products that weren’t designed just to be cheap.

        Finally RPN is the way to go. Those calculators with parenthesis keys make me cry.

  15. I’m sympathetic to Dave’s views on Catalogue Engineering vs MakeItYourself Engineering. Unfortunately time, money and convenience wins out all too often over flexibility, control and quality. Happy Birthday,
    JD

  17. Talking about all in one chips. Just came across a PSoC 5 kit which I found very interesting because of the number of features integrated into this chip and the ease of programming. Compared to the AVR family which I used in the past this seems to me like a big step forward. I was able to solder on an electret mic and have prototype VU meter up and running in one hour with no prior experience with this device.

  19. I love the soldering comic. You definitely should have soldering theater: “All your flux are belong to us!”
    You mentioned about having to remember thermal. I would add to remember altitude. The thermal resistance to ambient at 11,000 feet (e.g. La Paz, Bolivia) is a significantly lower than at sea level.
    Regarding components’ performance having a Gaussian distribution, I wonder if that’s true. I bet some components would be better modeled by other distributions (e.g. Rician). In college they told me that resistors are best modeled by a bimodal distribution since they sort out the more accurate resistors to be sold as tighter-tolerance parts. So if you buy 5% resistor’s it’s rare to find one within 1% of the value b/c it will have been sold as a 1%.
    Wank of the week is an excellent idea. It shouldn’t be limited to wank product. It should include wank words and wank concepts.

  20. Hey,
    I heard you were in Melbourne looking for stuff to visit — Monash Uni Open Day 7th August– Clayton campus. Check out the Tesla Coil.

    David

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