On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 19:00:17 -0700, ChairmanOfTheBored
wrote:

On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:20:42 -0700, John Larkin
wrote:


Here's a simulation of a CRT vector character generator, for a
heads-up display on a military airplane. It takes into account the
character generator, DAC response, deflectiion amp response, and
phosphor characteristics. All done in a day, in PowerBasic.

John


Bull****. It is a neon sign generator app. Note how all the letters
connect together. Note how the app is called NEON.

I wrote it, and I called it NEON because, well, I like neon, and the
display looks sort of neon-ish. The characters connect together
because it's a vector character generator, d'oh.

The second photo is NOT a picture of a neon sign, d'oh.

Here's the HUD itself, on the right. On top is the beam-splitter the
pilot looks through. The box on the left is the GEC controller we
replaced. It had an MTBF of 22 hours.

AlwaysWrong, d'oh.

John

John Larkin posted to
alt.binaries.schematics.electronic:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:21:02 GMT, Rich Grise
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:23:27 -0400, robb wrote:
"John Larkin" wrote
On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:09:49 -0700, "Joel Kolstad"
"Joel Kolstad" wrote in
message
...
XEQ P (the parallel resistance program :-) )

^^^ BTW, while everyone knows that the parallel impedance
formula is 1/Result
= 1/Z1 + 1/Z2, for those of us who can get geeky with respect
to calculators
and numerical methods, using Result = (Z1*Z2)/(Z1+Z2) is more
accurate when Z1
is significantly larger or smaller than Z2... hence some of
the motivation to
write a program to do it each time.

When I have anything worth programming, I do it in PowerBasic.
It's
portable and archivable, and I can use double floats if needed.
PB
even has 80-bit floats!

if you need 80 bit floats ....
I am surprised you guys are not using some functional programming
language like scheme (lisp/Lambda calc variants) where your reals
are number abstractions with no language or data type imposed
limit on the number size or precision and of course no numerical
methods issues/errors from typical float/double data type
limitations
just wondering,

Loosely-typed or untyped data is a mare's nest of bugs just
waiting to happen.

There are no types in assembly. We don't need no stinkin' types!

John

Assembler on what machine? Most devices have various operand sizes
that it operates on. Or are you talking 8051? It has a default
operand size as well.

Joerg posted to
alt.binaries.schematics.electronic:

Fred Abse wrote:

On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 07:52:52 -0700, Joerg wrote:


I still use it. It's the Aristor-Scholar 0903VS


I still use my Faber-Castell 1/54 Darmstadt.


Why were they all made in Germany? Ok, I came from there myself so
in my case that's different. But even in the US 95% plus of the
slide rules I saw were Aristo, Boettcher, Faber-Castell, Nestler but
rarely a Pickett oder Fredericks Post.


Back in the day they were quite popular (due to price) but were
considered to be of inferior quality. In retrospect i cannot really
see why. I have owned both Pickett and Post rules. Lost track of
them. But i still have my Keuffel and Esser to hand.

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:27:43 GMT, JosephKK
wrote:

John Larkin posted to
alt.binaries.schematics.electronic:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:21:02 GMT, Rich Grise
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:23:27 -0400, robb wrote:
"John Larkin" wrote
On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:09:49 -0700, "Joel Kolstad"
"Joel Kolstad" wrote in
message
...
XEQ P (the parallel resistance program :-) )

^^^ BTW, while everyone knows that the parallel impedance
formula is 1/Result
= 1/Z1 + 1/Z2, for those of us who can get geeky with respect
to calculators
and numerical methods, using Result = (Z1*Z2)/(Z1+Z2) is more
accurate when Z1
is significantly larger or smaller than Z2... hence some of
the motivation to
write a program to do it each time.

When I have anything worth programming, I do it in PowerBasic.
It's
portable and archivable, and I can use double floats if needed.
PB
even has 80-bit floats!

if you need 80 bit floats ....
I am surprised you guys are not using some functional programming
language like scheme (lisp/Lambda calc variants) where your reals
are number abstractions with no language or data type imposed
limit on the number size or precision and of course no numerical
methods issues/errors from typical float/double data type
limitations
just wondering,

Loosely-typed or untyped data is a mare's nest of bugs just
waiting to happen.

There are no types in assembly. We don't need no stinkin' types!

John

Assembler on what machine? Most devices have various operand sizes
that it operates on. Or are you talking 8051? It has a default
operand size as well.

68332, mostly. One numeric format I like is 32.32, which is signed, 32
bits of integer plus 32 bits of fraction. Once you have that in a
register pair, you can just *use* any part of it you want, like the
low 16 bits of the integer part, or the high 16 bits as int/65536, or
just take the fractional part when you know it's safe.

The point about assembler being untyped is that you can do any
operation on any memory address as long as it makes you happy.

I wouldn't program an 8051 if you paid me 50 dollars per bit.

John

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:06:22 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:21:02 GMT, Rich Grise wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:23:27 -0400, robb wrote:
"John Larkin" wrote
On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:09:49 -0700, "Joel Kolstad"
"Joel Kolstad" wrote in
message
...
XEQ P (the parallel resistance program :-) )

^^^ BTW, while everyone knows that the parallel impedance
formula is 1/Result
= 1/Z1 + 1/Z2, for those of us who can get geeky with respect
to calculators
and numerical methods, using Result = (Z1*Z2)/(Z1+Z2) is more
accurate when Z1
is significantly larger or smaller than Z2... hence some of
the motivation to
write a program to do it each time.

When I have anything worth programming, I do it in PowerBasic.
It's
portable and archivable, and I can use double floats if needed.
PB
even has 80-bit floats!

if you need 80 bit floats ....
I am surprised you guys are not using some functional programming
language like scheme (lisp/Lambda calc variants) where your reals are
number abstractions with no language or data type imposed limit on the
number size or precision and of course no numerical methods
issues/errors from typical float/double data type limitations
just wondering,

Loosely-typed or untyped data is a mare's nest of bugs just waiting to
happen.

There are no types in assembly. We don't need no stinkin' types!


Yeah, but assembly doesn't have built-in 80-bit floats! ;-)

But it is rather fun to write them. :-)

Cheers!
Rich

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 10:40:31 -0700, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:27:43 GMT, JosephKK
John Larkin posted to
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:21:02 GMT, Rich Grise wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:23:27 -0400, robb wrote:
"John Larkin" wrote
On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:09:49 -0700, "Joel Kolstad"
"Joel Kolstad" wrote in
message
...
XEQ P (the parallel resistance program :-) )

^^^ BTW, while everyone knows that the parallel impedance
formula is 1/Result
= 1/Z1 + 1/Z2, for those of us who can get geeky with respect
to calculators
and numerical methods, using Result = (Z1*Z2)/(Z1+Z2) is more
accurate when Z1
is significantly larger or smaller than Z2... hence some of
the motivation to
write a program to do it each time.

When I have anything worth programming, I do it in PowerBasic.
It's
portable and archivable, and I can use double floats if needed.
PB
even has 80-bit floats!

if you need 80 bit floats ....
I am surprised you guys are not using some functional programming
language like scheme (lisp/Lambda calc variants) where your reals are
number abstractions with no language or data type imposed limit on
the number size or precision and of course no numerical methods
issues/errors from typical float/double data type limitations
just wondering,

Loosely-typed or untyped data is a mare's nest of bugs just waiting to
happen.

There are no types in assembly. We don't need no stinkin' types!

Assembler on what machine? Most devices have various operand sizes that
it operates on. Or are you talking 8051? It has a default operand size
as well.

68332, mostly. One numeric format I like is 32.32, which is signed, 32
bits of integer plus 32 bits of fraction. Once you have that in a register
pair, you can just *use* any part of it you want, like the low 16 bits of
the integer part, or the high 16 bits as int/65536, or just take the
fractional part when you know it's safe.

The point about assembler being untyped is that you can do any operation
on any memory address as long as it makes you happy.

I wouldn't program an 8051 if you paid me 50 dollars per bit.

I certainly would! Hell, I'd do it for 50 bucks an hour! I wouldn't
necessarily _like_ it (I'd much rather Motorola), but it does get
the job done, one you figure out how to use the timer. :-)

Cheers!
Rich

On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:14:32 -0400, robb wrote:
"John Larkin" wrote in

There's a secret, seldom-used, nearly foolproof way to avoid
program
bugs, which I will now reveal to the world:

Every time you write a line of code, think about it.

Damn John i wish i had not read that !

all those years of using software debugging tools of various complexities,
tedium, exorbitant costs in money and time and all i had to do was use
the John methodolgy of code construction the "T.A.I. method"

now if you could just work some traceability in to that method along with
peer review ideas, some QA stability and QC measures then you could sell
it

yes it was a joke (partially)

Just don't write comments like:

label: MOV CX, AX ; move the contents of the AX register
; to the CX register.

And don't comment in jive. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:13:28 -0400, robb wrote:
"Rich Grise" wrote in message
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:23:27 -0400, robb wrote:
[snip]
even has 80-bit floats!

if you need 80 bit floats ....
I am surprised you guys are not using some functional
programming
language like scheme (lisp/Lambda calc variants) where your
reals
are number abstractions with no language or data type imposed limit on
the number size or precision and of course no
numerical
methods issues/errors from typical float/double data type limitations
just wondering,

Loosely-typed or untyped data is a mare's nest of bugs just waiting to
happen.

I should have known better than to bring up software in hardware group :}

perhaps you meant flexible or dynamic instead of loosely and un typed ?

it is very strongly typed as there are a few predefined basic prmitives
and "everything" is a defined type even operators and and functions are
all user defined types (or library of other users types) some say scalable

i am sure they said the same things about basic when it was first
introduced along with a host of other seemingly magical things that
illicited suspicion at first and then gave way to acceptance and trust.

a scheme implementation is what ? basic with some datastructures
{stacks,lists,etc}

and look at that google reveals 'BIT' a scheme implementation for
microcontroller running in 4k ram and stored in 13k rom among others

not trying to start any wars i was curious why hrdw engy types still use
basic as opposed to other very useful tools that exist that have
eliminated many problems associated with those old tools,


Not everybody who likes to play with hardware likes to play with software,
and not everybod who likes to play with software likes to play with
hardware; I consider those of us who like both to be the lucky ones. :-)

Cheers!
Rich

On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:54:10 +0000, Joerg wrote:
Fred Abse wrote:
On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:38:14 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

t
1/x
p
1/x
-
1/x

If you want a good laugh, lend a reverse Polish calculator to a bean
counter.

I did that! Not out of malfeasance, I plain forgot that there are people
that use non-RPN calculators. Since nobody else in that meeting had a
calculator he asked me to run the numbers after after having given up.
Then at the end one guy let off a comment along the lines of "Ah, these
MBA types just don't know, lemme show you how it's done." A minute later
he sat there totally red in the face.

I got into a mini-holy war with an(a?) RPN guy once. He said, "Well,
you don't write down '2', then add, then write down '3'. You write
'2', then '3', then add."

I said, "But I don't want to write them down - I want the machine to
do the work! I just want to know, "two plus three equals what?"[1]

And when you're subtracting or dividing, how do you know which is
which?

Thanks,
Rich
[1] five. ;-)

ChairmanOfTheBored wrote:
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:45:39 GMT, Joerg
wrote:

Fred Abse wrote:
On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:00:51 +0000, Joerg wrote:

I think many of the German ones were melamine resin.
My Faber-Castell is wood, reinforced with brass strips.

Wow, must be an older one or some kind of luxury edition. It could be
worth quite some money by now.


I have one where the panels are Ivory veneer. Has a glass cursor pane.


That was outlawed much earlier in most of Europe because of what
poachers did to elephants. No ivory could cross the border.


Here's a reference that states they were obsoleted by a TI-30!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_r...d_linear_rules


Happened much earlier. I had (still have) the Texas SR-50. Very
expensive back then but my father was very generous one Christmas and
boy did that calculator make building RF stuff easier. Every serious
engineer had one over there in Europe. HP was kind of pricey back then
so TI was favored by most. So I grew up without RPN initially.


My first calculator was a commodore SR4148R. (great lil calculator!)

http://www.vintage-technology.info/p...re/co4148r.htm


Neat! I remember those. Do you still have it? Does it still run?


1 in mantissa, and 1 in both memories, it used .34 amps. All 8s in
mantissa and memories, it used .8 amps!


Ouch. The TI SR-50 is much less thirsty. Used the same three NiCd
batteries and it has once lasted non-stop through a grueling 4-hour exam
back at the university. Most others had to plug theirs in. I was
surprised the fire marshall never took a peek at all those stacked power
strips.

However, the TI has a little switcher in there so you could not listen
to the AM radio unless it was located at least 20ft away. Even then
you'd hear a faint meep ... meep ... meep when a calculation errored and
the LED array blinked.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Fred Abse wrote:
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:54:10 +0000, Joerg wrote:

I plain forgot that there are people
that use non-RPN calculators.

Like accidentally, on purpose ? ;-)


Honestly, no. I got so used to RPN that I didn't even notice. Similar to
getting used to shifting with the left. It's interesting when you drive
a car in the UK, tell a guest "Oh yeah, hop in the car, I'll be there in
a minute" and then they open the door and there is a steering wheel.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

ChairmanOfTheBored wrote:
On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:46:54 GMT, Joerg
wrote:

Neat! I remember those. Do you still have it? Does it still run?


Yes, and yes. :-] Though I have to feed it power externally as the
battery has puked.


Same here. I could probably solder AA rechargeables but I got so used to
RPN after I married and my wife introduced me to the HP calculator.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Joerg wrote:

I think many of the German ones were melamine resin. My Aristo is really
sturdy. But yeah, in school I had a simple one that always got stuck
when it was warm and the old trick with "soap greasing" didn't work. I
don't dare to do that with a piece that cannot be replaced but I always
wonder what Teflon spray would do.

Usually graphite for tight ones and chalk dust for loose ones worked
pretty well. I have a K&E log-log decitrig. I even remember how some
of it works.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:10:55 GMT, Rich Grise wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:06:22 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:21:02 GMT, Rich Grise wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:23:27 -0400, robb wrote:
"John Larkin" wrote
On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:09:49 -0700, "Joel Kolstad"
"Joel Kolstad" wrote in
message
...
XEQ P (the parallel resistance program :-) )

^^^ BTW, while everyone knows that the parallel impedance
formula is 1/Result
= 1/Z1 + 1/Z2, for those of us who can get geeky with respect
to calculators
and numerical methods, using Result = (Z1*Z2)/(Z1+Z2) is more
accurate when Z1
is significantly larger or smaller than Z2... hence some of
the motivation to
write a program to do it each time.

When I have anything worth programming, I do it in PowerBasic.
It's
portable and archivable, and I can use double floats if needed.
PB
even has 80-bit floats!

if you need 80 bit floats ....
I am surprised you guys are not using some functional programming
language like scheme (lisp/Lambda calc variants) where your reals are
number abstractions with no language or data type imposed limit on the
number size or precision and of course no numerical methods
issues/errors from typical float/double data type limitations
just wondering,

Loosely-typed or untyped data is a mare's nest of bugs just waiting to
happen.

There are no types in assembly. We don't need no stinkin' types!


Yeah, but assembly doesn't have built-in 80-bit floats! ;-)

Pentium assembly does.

John

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:17:16 GMT, Rich Grise wrote:

On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:14:32 -0400, robb wrote:
"John Larkin" wrote in

There's a secret, seldom-used, nearly foolproof way to avoid
program
bugs, which I will now reveal to the world:

Every time you write a line of code, think about it.

Damn John i wish i had not read that !

all those years of using software debugging tools of various complexities,
tedium, exorbitant costs in money and time and all i had to do was use
the John methodolgy of code construction the "T.A.I. method"

now if you could just work some traceability in to that method along with
peer review ideas, some QA stability and QC measures then you could sell
it

yes it was a joke (partially)

Just don't write comments like:

label: MOV CX, AX ; move the contents of the AX register
; to the CX register.


Since Intel does everything backwards, that comment is actually
helpful.

John

Phil Hobbs wrote:
Joerg wrote:

I think many of the German ones were melamine resin. My Aristo is
really sturdy. But yeah, in school I had a simple one that always got
stuck when it was warm and the old trick with "soap greasing" didn't
work. I don't dare to do that with a piece that cannot be replaced but
I always wonder what Teflon spray would do.

Usually graphite for tight ones and chalk dust for loose ones worked
pretty well. I have a K&E log-log decitrig. I even remember how some
of it works.


Graphite is nice but it does leave stains on shirts and then I am in
trouble in a whole 'nother department.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Fred Abse wrote:
On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:46:54 +0000, Joerg wrote:

ChairmanOfTheBored wrote:
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:45:39 GMT, Joerg
wrote:

Fred Abse wrote:
On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:00:51 +0000, Joerg wrote:

I think many of the German ones were melamine resin.
My Faber-Castell is wood, reinforced with brass strips.

Wow, must be an older one or some kind of luxury edition. It could be
worth quite some money by now.

Most of the wooden Castells were reinforced, I think. The brass strips are
set in the wood, *across* the grain. 1950s vintage. Still dead flat, just
needs a dose of talc occasionally. Needed a new cursor around 1970.

I'll take some photos and post them.

-snip-

Happened much earlier. I had (still have) the Texas SR-50. Very
expensive back then but my father was very generous one Christmas and
boy did that calculator make building RF stuff easier. Every serious
engineer had one over there in Europe. HP was kind of pricey back then
so TI was favored by most. So I grew up without RPN initially.

The price of HP reflected the quality. I had a TI-58, a TI-59, and an
HP41C all at around the same time. The keyboard died on both TIs after a
few years (just after support ended woldn'tcha know?). I still use the
HP.


Mine kept up. But yes, HP felt more like Mercedes-Benz. However, just
like in daily life not everyone could afford a Mercedes-Benz.


My first calculator was a commodore SR4148R. (great lil calculator!)

http://www.vintage-technology.info/p...re/co4148r.htm


Neat! I remember those. Do you still have it? Does it still run?


1 in mantissa, and 1 in both memories, it used .34 amps. All 8s in
mantissa and memories, it used .8 amps!

Ouch. The TI SR-50 is much less thirsty. Used the same three NiCd
batteries and it has once lasted non-stop through a grueling 4-hour exam
back at the university. Most others had to plug theirs in. I was
surprised the fire marshall never took a peek at all those stacked power
strips.

However, the TI has a little switcher in there so you could not listen
to the AM radio unless it was located at least 20ft away. Even then
you'd hear a faint meep ... meep ... meep when a calculation errored and
the LED array blinked.



--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Fred Abse wrote:
On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:51:13 +0000, Joerg wrote:

Fred Abse wrote:
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:54:10 +0000, Joerg wrote:

I plain forgot that there are people
that use non-RPN calculators.
Like accidentally, on purpose ? ;-)

Honestly, no. I got so used to RPN that I didn't even notice. Similar to
getting used to shifting with the left. It's interesting when you drive
a car in the UK, tell a guest "Oh yeah, hop in the car, I'll be there in
a minute" and then they open the door and there is a steering wheel.

I never really notice. I just shift with whichever hand is nearest the
stick.

Turn indicators / wiper controls on different sides of the column get me.
Happily, they're getting standardized, now.

Driving in the UK isn't that difficult, once you get used to no turn on
red, and the vercachte light sequence. Oddly enough, "no passing" lines
need care, you don't see the dotted line as being on the other side, you
see a familiar shape ahead, and get it wrong.

The European countries that have priority from the right, now that's EVIL.


Except Italy, Spain and southern France. Priority is with whoever has
the loudest horn or the more powerful vehicle. My first real driving
experience was there and when starting to drive in Germany people told
me to "cool it".

Very different here in the US. Four-way stops, first come, first serve,
quite confusing for many Europeans. "After you, sir" ... "No, after you,
ma'am" ... "No, no, you were first" ... We live on a corner lot. No
signs, no regs really, yet never had any accidents here. Best were the
turn-outs on long one-lane roads in Scotland. After a while one agreed
to start rolling and then it was customary to stop at the turn-out, roll
down the window and have a nice chat.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

John Larkin posted to
alt.binaries.schematics.electronic:

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:27:43 GMT, JosephKK
wrote:

John Larkin posted to
alt.binaries.schematics.electronic:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:21:02 GMT, Rich Grise
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:23:27 -0400, robb wrote:
"John Larkin" wrote
On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:09:49 -0700, "Joel Kolstad"
"Joel Kolstad" wrote in
message
...
XEQ P (the parallel resistance program :-) )

^^^ BTW, while everyone knows that the parallel impedance
formula is 1/Result
= 1/Z1 + 1/Z2, for those of us who can get geeky with respect
to calculators
and numerical methods, using Result = (Z1*Z2)/(Z1+Z2) is more
accurate when Z1
is significantly larger or smaller than Z2... hence some of
the motivation to
write a program to do it each time.

When I have anything worth programming, I do it in PowerBasic.
It's
portable and archivable, and I can use double floats if needed.
PB
even has 80-bit floats!

if you need 80 bit floats ....
I am surprised you guys are not using some functional
programming language like scheme (lisp/Lambda calc variants)
where your reals are number abstractions with no language or
data type imposed limit on the number size or precision and of
course no numerical methods issues/errors from typical
float/double data type limitations
just wondering,

Loosely-typed or untyped data is a mare's nest of bugs just
waiting to happen.

There are no types in assembly. We don't need no stinkin' types!

John

Assembler on what machine? Most devices have various operand sizes
that it operates on. Or are you talking 8051? It has a default
operand size as well.

68332, mostly. One numeric format I like is 32.32, which is signed,
32 bits of integer plus 32 bits of fraction. Once you have that in a
register pair, you can just *use* any part of it you want, like the
low 16 bits of the integer part, or the high 16 bits as int/65536,
or just take the fractional part when you know it's safe.

The point about assembler being untyped is that you can do any
operation on any memory address as long as it makes you happy.

I wouldn't program an 8051 if you paid me 50 dollars per bit.

John

OK. 68K class, 32-bit default operand size, though it will talk 16 or
8 bits. Your floating point choice is non-IEEE standard, is there no
fpu on board?

John Larkin posted to
alt.binaries.schematics.electronic:

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:10:55 GMT, Rich Grise
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:06:22 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:21:02 GMT, Rich Grise
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:23:27 -0400, robb wrote:
"John Larkin" wrote
On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:09:49 -0700, "Joel Kolstad"
"Joel Kolstad" wrote in
message
...
XEQ P (the parallel resistance program :-) )

^^^ BTW, while everyone knows that the parallel impedance
formula is 1/Result
= 1/Z1 + 1/Z2, for those of us who can get geeky with respect
to calculators
and numerical methods, using Result = (Z1*Z2)/(Z1+Z2) is more
accurate when Z1
is significantly larger or smaller than Z2... hence some of
the motivation to
write a program to do it each time.

When I have anything worth programming, I do it in PowerBasic.
It's
portable and archivable, and I can use double floats if needed.
PB
even has 80-bit floats!

if you need 80 bit floats ....
I am surprised you guys are not using some functional
programming language like scheme (lisp/Lambda calc variants)
where your reals are number abstractions with no language or
data type imposed limit on the number size or precision and of
course no numerical methods issues/errors from typical
float/double data type limitations just wondering,

Loosely-typed or untyped data is a mare's nest of bugs just
waiting to happen.

There are no types in assembly. We don't need no stinkin' types!


Yeah, but assembly doesn't have built-in 80-bit floats! ;-)

Pentium assembly does.

John

So did 68020 through 68060. As well as DEC Alpha, SPARC, HP PA-RISC
and PPC. Some MIPS did as well. I find it odd that ColdFire parts
do not.

On Sun, 14 Oct 2007 16:01:55 -0700, JosephKK
wrote:

John Larkin posted to
alt.binaries.schematics.electronic:

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:27:43 GMT, JosephKK
wrote:

John Larkin posted to
alt.binaries.schematics.electronic:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:21:02 GMT, Rich Grise
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:23:27 -0400, robb wrote:
"John Larkin" wrote
On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:09:49 -0700, "Joel Kolstad"
"Joel Kolstad" wrote in
message
...
XEQ P (the parallel resistance program :-) )

^^^ BTW, while everyone knows that the parallel impedance
formula is 1/Result
= 1/Z1 + 1/Z2, for those of us who can get geeky with respect
to calculators
and numerical methods, using Result = (Z1*Z2)/(Z1+Z2) is more
accurate when Z1
is significantly larger or smaller than Z2... hence some of
the motivation to
write a program to do it each time.

When I have anything worth programming, I do it in PowerBasic.
It's
portable and archivable, and I can use double floats if needed.
PB
even has 80-bit floats!

if you need 80 bit floats ....
I am surprised you guys are not using some functional
programming language like scheme (lisp/Lambda calc variants)
where your reals are number abstractions with no language or
data type imposed limit on the number size or precision and of
course no numerical methods issues/errors from typical
float/double data type limitations
just wondering,

Loosely-typed or untyped data is a mare's nest of bugs just
waiting to happen.

There are no types in assembly. We don't need no stinkin' types!

John

Assembler on what machine? Most devices have various operand sizes
that it operates on. Or are you talking 8051? It has a default
operand size as well.

68332, mostly. One numeric format I like is 32.32, which is signed,
32 bits of integer plus 32 bits of fraction. Once you have that in a
register pair, you can just *use* any part of it you want, like the
low 16 bits of the integer part, or the high 16 bits as int/65536,
or just take the fractional part when you know it's safe.

The point about assembler being untyped is that you can do any
operation on any memory address as long as it makes you happy.

I wouldn't program an 8051 if you paid me 50 dollars per bit.

John

OK. 68K class, 32-bit default operand size, though it will talk 16 or
8 bits. Your floating point choice is non-IEEE standard, is there no
fpu on board?

No fpu, but it has nice mul/div operations, including a few handy
64-bit things. The 32.32 format is fixed-place, not floating. It has
enough range to cover any real-life engineering measurement. Its real
advantage over floats is that adds and subs are very fast (no
normalization) and conversions to/from shorts or bytes or whatever are
also fast (ditto.)

Some semi-famous person said that if you have to use floating point,
you don't really understand the problem.

John

On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:57:56 -0700, ChairmanOfTheBored
wrote:

On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:05:20 -0700, John Larkin
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:00:21 -0700, IAmTheSlime
TheSlimeFromYourVideo@oozingacrossyourlivingroo mfloor.org wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:22:32 GMT, Richard The Dreaded Libertarian
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 09:06:46 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

so I wound up
fine-tweaking several factors iteratively until they gave the right
results.

Kind of like the warmingists do with their atmospheric "models"? ;-)


That's OK. I heard the dumb****s are thinking about giving Gore the
Peace Prize for his spew. Reminds me of the year they gave it to that
terrorist, nose picking ******* Arafat!

Don't forget Jimmy Carter, who bribed the Egyptians and Israelis to
make peace, when they were already at peace.

The Nobel committee has really degraded itself. The Emmy awards has
more integrity.

Bill Clinton was agressively lobbying for the Peace Prize; I bet he's
****ed that Al got it.


He even hired a PR group to assist.

Hey! You got one right!

I do that now and then, by sheer accident.

So, is Al going to run? He's already got a field operation trained
(ie, his slide-show presenters) and they are clamoring to draft him.
Maybe he'll run, "for the sake of humanity" or something heart-jerking
like that.

John

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:20:59 GMT, Rich Grise wrote:



Not everybody who likes to play with hardware likes to play with software,
and not everybod who likes to play with software likes to play with
hardware; I consider those of us who like both to be the lucky ones. :-)

I find it hard to believe that anybody can be good at only one.

John

"robb" wrote in message
...

So here are the finished pics.

I could not move traces to outside of chip because there is not
enough room for the PCB adapter under the cover that snaps on top
(in fact i will need to file down long sides of what is in pics
so that cover will close over the chip.

I am no solder wizard, some are passable most are hideous (i
know) but they seem to have a good connection
i show he resist, the etch the idea nad completed bottom and top.

i did try to make the images as small as possible
robb

On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:01:52 -0400, "robb" wrote:

"robb" wrote in message
...

So here are the finished pics.

I could not move traces to outside of chip because there is not
enough room for the PCB adapter under the cover that snaps on top
(in fact i will need to file down long sides of what is in pics
so that cover will close over the chip.

I am no solder wizard, some are passable most are hideous (i
know) but they seem to have a good connection
i show he resist, the etch the idea nad completed bottom and top.

i did try to make the images as small as possible
robb


Looks fine to me.

John

"John Larkin" wrote
in message ...
On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:01:52 -0400, "robb"
wrote:

"robb" wrote in message
...

So here are the finished pics.

robb


Looks fine to me.
John


Thanks John,
for the vote of confidence.
your too kind,

robb

"robb" wrote in message
...

"John Larkin"
wrote
in message ...
On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:01:52 -0400, "robb"

"robb" wrote in message
...

So here are the finished pics.

robb

Looks fine to me.
John

Thanks John,
for the vote of confidence.
your too kind,

oops :} i meant **you're**
robb

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 15:55:12 -0700, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:17:16 GMT, Rich Grise wrote:
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:14:32 -0400, robb wrote:
"John Larkin" wrote in

There's a secret, seldom-used, nearly foolproof way to avoid
program
bugs, which I will now reveal to the world:

Every time you write a line of code, think about it.

Damn John i wish i had not read that !

all those years of using software debugging tools of various complexities,
tedium, exorbitant costs in money and time and all i had to do was use
the John methodolgy of code construction the "T.A.I. method"

now if you could just work some traceability in to that method along with
peer review ideas, some QA stability and QC measures then you could sell
it

yes it was a joke (partially)

Just don't write comments like:

label: MOV CX, AX ; move the contents of the AX register
; to the CX register.


Since Intel does everything backwards, that comment is actually
helpful.

I think the philosophy might have come from CP-M's 'pip' command,
"peripherals interchange program", which worked kind of like an
assignment statement:

$ pip destination=source ; I think it actually used the equals
sign.

Cheers!
Rich

On Sun, 14 Oct 2007 09:13:16 -0700, Joerg wrote:
Fred Abse wrote:
On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:51:13 +0000, Joerg wrote:
Fred Abse wrote:
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:54:10 +0000, Joerg wrote:

I plain forgot that there are people
that use non-RPN calculators.
Like accidentally, on purpose ? ;-)

Honestly, no. I got so used to RPN that I didn't even notice. Similar to
getting used to shifting with the left. It's interesting when you drive
a car in the UK, tell a guest "Oh yeah, hop in the car, I'll be there in
a minute" and then they open the door and there is a steering wheel.

I never really notice. I just shift with whichever hand is nearest the
stick.

Turn indicators / wiper controls on different sides of the column get me.
Happily, they're getting standardized, now.

Driving in the UK isn't that difficult, once you get used to no turn on
red, and the vercachte light sequence. Oddly enough, "no passing" lines
need care, you don't see the dotted line as being on the other side, you
see a familiar shape ahead, and get it wrong.

The European countries that have priority from the right, now that's EVIL.

Except Italy, Spain and southern France. Priority is with whoever has
the loudest horn or the more powerful vehicle. My first real driving
experience was there and when starting to drive in Germany people told
me to "cool it".

Very different here in the US. Four-way stops, first come, first serve,
quite confusing for many Europeans. "After you, sir" ... "No, after you,
ma'am" ... "No, no, you were first" ... We live on a corner lot. No
signs, no regs really, yet never had any accidents here. Best were the
turn-outs on long one-lane roads in Scotland. After a while one agreed
to start rolling and then it was customary to stop at the turn-out, roll
down the window and have a nice chat.

Do they really have guys with bagpipes just standing there, playing
for donations? (I saw it on the trailer for some travelogue show, I
think.)

Thanks,
Rich

"John Larkin" wrote in message
...
Just don't write comments like:

label: MOV CX, AX ; move the contents of the AX register
; to the CX register.


Since Intel does everything backwards, that comment is actually
helpful.

A better comment would describe what was in the AX register.

On Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:49:15 GMT, Rich Grise wrote:

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 15:55:12 -0700, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:17:16 GMT, Rich Grise wrote:
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:14:32 -0400, robb wrote:
"John Larkin" wrote in

There's a secret, seldom-used, nearly foolproof way to avoid
program
bugs, which I will now reveal to the world:

Every time you write a line of code, think about it.

Damn John i wish i had not read that !

all those years of using software debugging tools of various complexities,
tedium, exorbitant costs in money and time and all i had to do was use
the John methodolgy of code construction the "T.A.I. method"

now if you could just work some traceability in to that method along with
peer review ideas, some QA stability and QC measures then you could sell
it

yes it was a joke (partially)

Just don't write comments like:

label: MOV CX, AX ; move the contents of the AX register
; to the CX register.


Since Intel does everything backwards, that comment is actually
helpful.

I think the philosophy might have come from CP-M's 'pip' command,
"peripherals interchange program", which worked kind of like an
assignment statement:

$ pip destination=source ; I think it actually used the equals
sign.

PIP was copied from DEC, perhaps first used on the PDP-10, maybe even
earlier. It did use the equal sign, but some things were faster, like

pip/l

to list a directory on the terminal (that would be 'dir' in dos-speak)

pip foo=/l is equivalent to dir foo

pip foo is type foo



pip eventually had a fairly rich command set. CP-M was modeled after
DEC's RT-11 os, which had pip too.

DEC also had a wonderful octal debugger, ODT, that was a lot nicer to
use than DEBUG. I did a hex version for the 6802/6803.

John

On Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:47:44 -0700, "Dan Coby"
wrote:

"John Larkin" wrote in message
.. .
Just don't write comments like:

label: MOV CX, AX ; move the contents of the AX register
; to the CX register.


Since Intel does everything backwards, that comment is actually
helpful.

A better comment would describe what was in the AX register.


Or even better,

MOVE.L PINDEX(A0), D4 ; NAB THE PHASE ROTATION, S32 FRACTIONAL

John

Rich Grise wrote:
On Sun, 14 Oct 2007 09:13:16 -0700, Joerg wrote:
Fred Abse wrote:
On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:51:13 +0000, Joerg wrote:
Fred Abse wrote:
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:54:10 +0000, Joerg wrote:

I plain forgot that there are people
that use non-RPN calculators.
Like accidentally, on purpose ? ;-)

Honestly, no. I got so used to RPN that I didn't even notice. Similar to
getting used to shifting with the left. It's interesting when you drive
a car in the UK, tell a guest "Oh yeah, hop in the car, I'll be there in
a minute" and then they open the door and there is a steering wheel.
I never really notice. I just shift with whichever hand is nearest the
stick.

Turn indicators / wiper controls on different sides of the column get me.
Happily, they're getting standardized, now.

Driving in the UK isn't that difficult, once you get used to no turn on
red, and the vercachte light sequence. Oddly enough, "no passing" lines
need care, you don't see the dotted line as being on the other side, you
see a familiar shape ahead, and get it wrong.

The European countries that have priority from the right, now that's EVIL.
Except Italy, Spain and southern France. Priority is with whoever has
the loudest horn or the more powerful vehicle. My first real driving
experience was there and when starting to drive in Germany people told
me to "cool it".

Very different here in the US. Four-way stops, first come, first serve,
quite confusing for many Europeans. "After you, sir" ... "No, after you,
ma'am" ... "No, no, you were first" ... We live on a corner lot. No
signs, no regs really, yet never had any accidents here. Best were the
turn-outs on long one-lane roads in Scotland. After a while one agreed
to start rolling and then it was customary to stop at the turn-out, roll
down the window and have a nice chat.

Do they really have guys with bagpipes just standing there, playing
for donations? (I saw it on the trailer for some travelogue show, I
think.)

Thanks,
Rich


I've never seen it there. But I did encounter guys in Ireland. Usually
well in they 70's or 80's, barely a tooth left but with the gift of a
great voice. They'd sing Irish folks and other songs. Then it was
customary to buy them a pint of Guinness.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

John Larkin posted to
alt.binaries.schematics.electronic:

On Sun, 14 Oct 2007 16:01:55 -0700, JosephKK
wrote:

John Larkin posted to
alt.binaries.schematics.electronic:

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:27:43 GMT, JosephKK
wrote:

John Larkin posted to
alt.binaries.schematics.electronic:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:21:02 GMT, Rich Grise
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:23:27 -0400, robb wrote:
"John Larkin"
wrote
On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:09:49 -0700, "Joel Kolstad"
"Joel Kolstad" wrote in
message
...
XEQ P (the parallel resistance program :-) )

^^^ BTW, while everyone knows that the parallel impedance
formula is 1/Result
= 1/Z1 + 1/Z2, for those of us who can get geeky with
respect
to calculators
and numerical methods, using Result = (Z1*Z2)/(Z1+Z2) is
more
accurate when Z1
is significantly larger or smaller than Z2... hence some of
the motivation to
write a program to do it each time.

When I have anything worth programming, I do it in
PowerBasic.
It's
portable and archivable, and I can use double floats if
needed.
PB
even has 80-bit floats!

if you need 80 bit floats ....
I am surprised you guys are not using some functional
programming language like scheme (lisp/Lambda calc variants)
where your reals are number abstractions with no language or
data type imposed limit on the number size or precision and of
course no numerical methods issues/errors from typical
float/double data type limitations
just wondering,

Loosely-typed or untyped data is a mare's nest of bugs just
waiting to happen.

There are no types in assembly. We don't need no stinkin' types!

John

Assembler on what machine? Most devices have various operand
sizes
that it operates on. Or are you talking 8051? It has a default
operand size as well.

68332, mostly. One numeric format I like is 32.32, which is
signed, 32 bits of integer plus 32 bits of fraction. Once you have
that in a register pair, you can just *use* any part of it you
want, like the low 16 bits of the integer part, or the high 16
bits as int/65536, or just take the fractional part when you know
it's safe.

The point about assembler being untyped is that you can do any
operation on any memory address as long as it makes you happy.

I wouldn't program an 8051 if you paid me 50 dollars per bit.

John

OK. 68K class, 32-bit default operand size, though it will talk 16
or
8 bits. Your floating point choice is non-IEEE standard, is there
no fpu on board?

No fpu, but it has nice mul/div operations, including a few handy
64-bit things. The 32.32 format is fixed-place, not floating. It has
enough range to cover any real-life engineering measurement. Its
real advantage over floats is that adds and subs are very fast (no
normalization) and conversions to/from shorts or bytes or whatever
are also fast (ditto.)

Some semi-famous person said that if you have to use floating point,
you don't really understand the problem.

John

Oops that is what you said. That is a whole different pan of sknarr.