| All | Electronics | Software | Security | Personal | Scouting |
Wed, 31 May 2006
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What an old machine! My first job was a summer job working for the School of Biochemistry at the ANU, writing a program for a Toshiba T-300 that controlled a Microplate reader, read the results from the plates, and plotted them. All the code was written in Basic. Essentially, the researcher would fill a tiny sample plate that contained 12 rows of 8 wells with stuff, and the machine would robotically move each cell (under computer control) to an absorption measurement device that would record the transmission characteristics of the sample at a specific wavelength. The data would be shipped off to a computer, and the process repeated for 96 cells. I don't remember the chemistry of what was occuring, but I do remember that the team ws trying to find a mechanism to seperate X and Y chromosome markers in Cow semen, so that a farmer could purchase a test tube containing only cows, instaed of bulls. Interestingly, this research was in 1986, and I saw on the news recently that a major commercial breakthrough had occurred and this technology is now commercailly viable. As a summer project, it was pretty cool, and the most interesting part of the problem wasn't writing the serial code to do the controll, instead, it was writing the plotting software to deal with abritrary scales on the data. The job was finished, and the final payment was a cheque to the value of a Shiny new TRS-80 Model 100 (with 32K of RAM). The ANU could not purchase a machine for me due to asset control problems, but they could make out a cheque. I remember depositing the cheque in mu parents bank, and marching into the Tandy shop, and having to attract the attention of the sales guy, as I surely wasn't really going to make a purchase.(Remember I wasn't 18 yet...) It wasn't long before I discovered that the internal modem only worked in the USA (Using Bell 103 tones, instead of the CCITT standard we use here). I spent the time to understand how the op-amp based bandpass filters worked to calculate new resistor values for the CCITT tones. The mod to the modem chip was trivial (change the mode pin from Bell to CCITT, but the bandpass filters caused me grief for a couple of weeks. The second mod was to allow the device to supply (or recieve power) along the serial cable (using pin 13 from memory), so I didn't have to carry around extra cables. And finally, I modified the light pen interface on the side to accept an Atari joystick, and replaced the proprietary Expansion ROM connector to allow me to use normal JEDEC standard parts. Those were the days - You could get the rom dumps, and make the changes yourself. I have also found my TRS-80 PC1 - Never did any hardware hacking with it, as the doco wasn't available, but have found that he full doco is available now. Just don't have the time available now days!
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I was referred to a story by Mikal that puts into words all that we have been seeing here on the news... That the opposition party here (Labor) does not want a nuclear power plant. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200605/s1646199.htm> (See story Here). The bit that Mikal neglected to bring to the attention of the world in his post was that Our Labor party actually isn't a Labor party in the true sense of the word. They are closer to being conservative, and are probably breaking some Trade Practices law by operating under the Labor party sign. All of those good votes from those sheep who have ALLWAYS voted Labor. Come to think of it, the current ALP here is operating under the same ethos, they are not the true ALP I know of the 1970's who would shut any public health fund without even thinking. They are, of course, happy to sell of any public infrastructure they can, as they believe that a buck in the hand is better than a hydroelectric scheme any day!!! In any case, it is a moot point, because the opposition is so far in opposition, that they have started launching debates in the House of Reps in inappropriate places - such as trying to replace all of the words after 'that' in the phrase "we would like to vote that the bill be read a second time....". OMG! Anything to get airtime in the house. They certainly won't win any votes, because they dont have the numbers. My point.... Well, I'm getting to that... Why do the opposition even bother talking, when it matters not? While they continue to meander down the path of enlightenment they are currently going down, all of the votes directed to them by the sheep who have always voted that way, are being negated by the votes being given to the ALP by the similar sheep. Until they do something that causes the voters who consider each parties issues on their merit to vote for them, then all is lost. All is lost... All is lost! On the whole nuclear front, it is very interesting to note the overall cost of developing a Solar Cell to the planet, is considerably higher than the amount of energy it will ever return. In spite of focused research over 30 years, this hasn't changed. It is about time we looked at alternative technologies. Just don't make it it my back yard!!! How about we start turning off the lights in the kids rooms when they aren't there, and turning off the PC's when they aren't being used. Gosh... |
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Well, I finally gave simplog the flick. PHP is simply not serious enough to use for a web site. I am now using Blosxom, which is a 'do it all yourself' environment. At least there are lots of examples from others, so it isn't hard. It is also statically generated, so the kiddies can finally go and get stuffed. If you agregare from me, you may like to point to index.php20 instead of rss2.php. love Doug |
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I thought I would put up a couple of pictures of a computer system I constructed in about 1987. A company in Queensland called 'Energy Control' distributed a single board development card based on a Rockewll FORTH chip (65F11 / 65F12). Essentially the development system had all of the required support components to support develpment (even a FDC). I constructed my unit is a small enclosure, and originally installed a 720K 3.5" drive that I borrowed from tech. Tech wanted their drive back after a couple of months, so I installed a 80 track 5.25" drive. 4 years ago, I decided to replace the 5.25" drive with a 3.5" unit. The 65F11 is an interesting device. It had a 6502 core, and all of the forth primitives in mask rom, as well as I/O controllers all on chip. Many fun hours were spent developing forth code on this system, and I eventually used it to develop my multi radio controller as a tech project. It used the 65F12, which had tons of I/O. I still have all of the doco rom Rockwell, as well as the binary images for the Rockwell forth development ROM, If anybody is interested, I'll post them online.
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I was cleaning the workshop the other day, and found my old acoustic coupler from the mid 80's. Those were the days, collecting dial up numbers for systems that would answer. The cut and thrust of guessing passwords, and trying standard admin accounts (especially on VAX boxes.) From memory, I received my first formal warning when the system admin of our school looked at the teletype records that were printed whenever anybody dialed up (yep, I didn't know about that *early* logging technology.) All at the blistering speed of 300 baud. At least it was battery powered, so the whole thing was portable. Those of you with a clue may ask 'But the TRS-80 Model 100 was well known for it's internal modem... Why did you have to resort to an acoustic coupler? ' Well, 1) Originally the internal modem of the TRS-80 was set for Bell 103 tones, not CCITT (The component changes hapened later on, and yes, it worked a treat, and 2) The acoustic coupler worked a treat in public phone booths..
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Both Otama and Oxley packs have been busy constructing some brilliant Kub Kars over the last 2 weeks. On Saturday, we had the first Kub Kar rally here in Canberra. The turnout was brilliant, and everybody involved had fun. Both Otama and Oxley packs were represented in the finals, which is an amazing effort. Here are some photos. I'll supply more to our magazine editor, so that they get published. Congratulations to Sian, Sam, and Megan from LTSS for being finalists.
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Otama pack were busy building Kub Kars over the last 2 weeks, here are a few cars that I took photos of. We all had a great night on Tuesday tuning our cars for the KubKer Derby on Saturday.
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Here are some photos I took at the KubKar Seeonee earlier this year |
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This is the track and some sample cars I saw. Great effort.
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I have just read a slashdot thread that indicates that Microsoft employees are likely to loose ADMINISTRATIVE RIGHTS! The simple tradition of each employee being responsible for their own desktop software set, and having admin rights, seems to run deep for Microsoft employees.
Now I understand why windows is so unmanageable without admin rights. None of the people who design the systems are subjected to the same controls that hundreds of millions of users have to put up with. Why on earth did they design a product, and then fail to use it in the way that they designed it? Here is the link: http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot?m=5621 |
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I saw an interesting thing this morning when an authorised Dell service engineer turned up to do some waranty work on one of the stuffed laptops. The laptop in question had a faulty DVD drive, and the PCMCIA eject button had fallen off. We logged the service call yesterday, so the service is extremely prompt, and the tech that arived was friendly enough. He had all of the appropriate spares. The faulty laptop was then disassembeld in it's entirety to replace the motherboard, on the coffee table... WITH NO ANTI STATIC PRECAUTIONS. The tech was wearing a large wollen trenchcoat, and was probably charged (it's a dry environment here..). When I were a lad, we used wrist straps, and everything was grounded. Either (1) things are no longer static sensitive, or (2) he was slack. We should know in a couple of months. |
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I have encountered a good article on 'Reputational Risk" at it-analytics.com.
http://www.it-analysis.com/business/content.php?cid=8503
In the past, I have worked for some companies that would have benefited from having a read of this article. Chris T - I strongy recommend you have a read.
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In August 1981, the IBM PC was launched into the unsuspecting marketplace. The major claim to fame of the design was that it was tried and tested (remember that the 8088 was released in about 1978), and it is probably fair to say that the design on the IBM PC was extremely conservative, as it was a rapid development project to provide IBM with the capability to compete against Apple Computer.
In the olden days, memory was a big deal. It was expensive and complex to manage in hardware. The IBM PC did not use the latest available memory technology when it was introduced; instead, it used 4116 chips from about 1974. 1974! I hear you say. Yes, the original IBM motherboard had the capacity to be shipped with 16Kb installed on the motherboard (expandable to 64Kb), using exactly the same memory chips used in the TRS-80 Model 1 from 1974. The original motherboard could support 64K on the motherboard, and could also support three 64K expansion memory cards, providing 256Kb in total. Remember that in that era, 256Kb was a big deal . the motherboard also had a cassette interface to allow data to be recorded onto tape. Because the IBM PC used 4116 (16 Kbit x 1 bit) dynamic memory devices, a -5v power rail was required to provide a bias current for the memory chips. A suitable power supply was specified that provided +5v, -5v, +12v and -12v for the system to cater for the memory requirements. Here is where it gets silly - We stopped using the -5v rail after 4164 chips (64kb x 1 bit) were common, but the brain dead, thoughtless, engineering involved in duplicating the IBM PC didn.t notice. Modern ATX power supplies still provide a -5v supply rail for these obsolete memory devices. But what about analogue cards you may say? In those cases, they use a -5v regulator off the -12v rail. All of those components being installed into boards, to supply a function that is not required. All because the original design was .conservative., as IBM wanted to get to market quickly! What a waste! |
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The call for papers for the 2006 e-crime and computer evidence conference has been extended to 22 May. From their web site, it appears as though they are yet to choose a theme, but they are interested in any of the following; * Technical aspects of data recovery and analysis * Technical aspects of network and/or internet investigation * Legal apsects of investigation, prosecution or defence * Criminological studies, theories and issues * Use of computers in court * Use of computers to support other investigations Looks like it would be a worthwhile conference to attend. Here is the link: http://www.ecce-conference.com/ |
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I have just loaded up the RS485 controller PCB I designed a couple of years ago.
Here is the link http://www.drj-electronics.com/projects/articles/4in-4out/index.html |
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A blast from the past... I remember in about 1987/88 spending *hours* typing in the source code for a version of Fig Forth (Z80) so that it could be adapted to a STD Bus based card I helped develop for the Electronics Unit at the Research School of Electronics at the Australian National University.
As a card, it was kind of neat - 32K of eeprom space, and variable ram (remember 28 pin JDEC pinout parts). The source code for the project is here; http://www.drj-electronics.com/projects/software/figforth/index.html I have included the CP/M test version that I used to play with. It runs under any of the curent Z80 emulators (Joan Riff, etc). To compile it, you will need a cross assembler called A80Z. It had a unique syntax. Gosh, that has rattled some brain cells. |
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Today, I came across an interesting variant of 'Yet another linux boot disk' (YALBD) This one is aimed at forensic investigations, in environments where the players have corporate credit cards, and limited time in their lives. http://www.forensicbootcd.com/ It looks like a nice product from the supplied advertising, but I suspect that unless I part with some cash, I am unlikely to get to play with it. |
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Spoke to some other Cub leaders last night, and they too are building tracks. Nobody seems to be building track timers.
Progress note - The basic design of the timer is finished. Just have to get it down on paper, and cut the code. As far as the basic hardware goes, it is trivially simple. |
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It hapened last night, I lost all of my hair for cancer research.
It is quite cold in the mornings, and I have started wearing a beanie.
We raised about $1000. A pretty good effort me thinks!
Here are some pics:
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Cool,
An IMSAI 8080 is going on Ebay. Looks like quite a nice system: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8804809289 It will be interesting to see what it goes for. Traditionally, these fetch USD$2500+ on US auctions. UPDATE: Well, it's been a couple of days and nothing has hapened on this auction. Either (1) nobody knows, or (2) there are many people waiting in the wings to snipe at the last second Final - It sold for slightly over $1500 AUS - Very surprising - The Australian market is quite diferent to the US. |
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I am seeing more and more evidence that Google is having trouble keeping up with the size of the internet.
A search that should find a page on my site - LED dice doug Jackson, finds nothing. It does find the original silicon chip article. The register has an interesting article. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/04/google_bigdaddy_chaos/ |
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I have come across an interesting story being run by the BBC that indicates that the EU will be mandating battery recycling.
The flow on effects on this are very interesting. Manufacturers will be required to ensure that batteries are accessible to allow removal for recycling. This potentially means that they will then be replaceable, so it may wipe out the throw away attitude. While that would be nice, I suspect that the manufacturers will design the battery removal facility such that it will damage the casing, and make re-assembly impossible. Let's wait and see. The story is here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4969544.stm |
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Hmmm, I just read a story on the register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/21/dmca_exemptions_controversy/ that indicated that copyright owners demand Digital Rights Management even if it causes "security and privacy harm" or "potentially endangers lives" I have been thinking about this, and now, I offer my $0.02 worth... To avoid any DRM on any Audio: Go to Dick Smith, and purchase a clable that will allow you to connect your CD player output to your PC soundcard mic socket. Place the CD into your CD player, and use some audio recording software on your PC. Hit play on the CD, and Record on the PC, and Bob's your uncle, instant unprotected mp3 content. Yes, you will receive second generation audio, but it will be *much* greater quality than the good old days of holding the tape recorder beside the TV speaker. To avoid DRM on any publication: Print your publication, and scan it in with your scanner. Convert the scanned pages to PDF and your'e done. Video: Hmmm, I'm thinking about that one. Does this mean when I next enter the USA, I will be arrested at the entry airport for providing the world with the secret information that is needed to break any DRM system..... Hmmmm... |
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I have also updated the temperature datalogger.
The circuit diagram is now there. http://www.drj-electronics.com/projects/articles/templog/index.html |
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I have updated the project page for my PIC based LED Dice project.
It can be found here. No more dead links. http://www.drj-electronics.com/projects/articles/leddice/index.html |
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I have discovered something interesting..
1) Google are sweeping my site. 2) My site has a set of project pages, one of which is a simple PIC based temperature logger. If I do a search on Google for 'extremely simple temperature data logger' 'PIC16F84 and a DS1820' which are 2 valid terms on the temperature logger page, I don't get any response. Does this mean that Google don't bother traversing into a site, and that they only look at front pages???? Possibly Mikal will be able to shed some light onto this. << Update - I have moved my Blog to Blosxom and are now using static generation - That may help >> |
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I re-read this old favourite the other day (The Mythical Man Month - Brooks - ISBN 0-201-83595-9)
While it is basically a software project management book, it can be applied in most other disciplines. The simple rule that doubling the staff does not mean that the project will be delivered in half the time is so true. Much of its contents is also touched on in a different and quite funny manner in - Down the Programmed Rabit-Hole [Anthony haden-Guest] The surprising revalation I saw was that books written in the mid to late 60's about systems engineering STILL APPLY - even now. Oh, how our discipline needs to grow up. Another interesting question, is how does this apply to civil engineering, and why do they get it right most of the time? This is an area that operates in a similar manner to software engineering, except that the bugs are deadlier. Is it simply that the typical civil engineers management knows that they can't build a bridge, and therefore they don't try? I suspect that this may be the case. It was refreshing to see my old friends at a previous employer fall into all of the well documented traps - They were just too busy to get out of them. |
Bernina Sewing Machine - Embroidery - External USB Hard Disk |
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I have sorted out how to add an external hard disk to a high end Bernina sewing / embroidery machine. It runs windows CE (an *old* version), and the USB support is a little suspect unless you have paid Bernina some cash for an upgrade (what an interesting, mainframe based, business model.)
Just buy an external USB hard disk enclosure, and a suitable drive (we used a 6gb one I had lying around), plug it into the bernina and power on (hot swapping would have been too simple for them) and let the Bernina format the disk - should take about 20 - 30 minutes. At this stage, your job is not done, as the Bernina machine fails to set up a suitable partition on the drive... Once that is finished, plug the drive into your laptop or desktop windoze system, and use computer manager to create a FAT32 partition. Format that and Bob's your auntie... It will all fly. Do not use NTFS... The version of windows CE that Bernina uses does not recognise NT partitions, so that will surely fail. It wont be recognised by the Bernina, and it will offer to re-format the drive. If that happens, just let it do it's thing, unplug it and set up a FAT32 partition. Have fun, and remember that you don't need to pay the stupid amount of money to Bernina for their overpriced hard disk. Doug. - Who's Mum owns a Bernina machine that in spite of its design flaws (it overheats..) still loves it. |
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An interesting article appeared e-week.com about IT certification. We first saw the high quality CNE from Novell that your average bricklayer could pass (I know, because the owner of one of the companies I worked for didi it...) Possibly, after almost 20 years, companies have figured it out!!! http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1954198,00.asp?kc=ewnws042706dtx1k0000599 |
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I have recently purchased some new reference books in the general field of Information Security from Amazon.com. One of the books I finished last night was 'Buffer Overflow Attacks - Foster, Osipov, Bhalla, and Heinen - ISBN 1-932266-67-04' It was well written, and easy to read. It starts off describing how Shellcode operates, including the various methods available to inject it, then it moves on to stack exploits and heap exploits. There are tons of usefull examples (Some of which I recognise from my early programming days!! - Who says gets() is bad...) which made the content even easier to understand. I was especially interested in the discussion of how to exploit heap overflows. Finally, it shows a few techniques for detecting potential exploits in source code. In all, well worth the money I paid. |
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I'm going bald next Friday - Participation in 'the worlds greatest shave' for lukemia is assisting in the process.
Photos should make it into the scouting newsletter. It will be quite cold for a while. And just in case you are asking, no, Megs isn't letting me shave my beard off. |
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Have to build a 3 lane timer and winner determining system. Sounds like another PIC project.
Wo Hoo Update - It will be a 16F84, with a 4 line backlit LCD Display. The lane sensors will be optical using phototransistors, and it will measure overall time taken to traverse the track. Nice, simple, and inexpensive to design. - I wonder if Silicon Chip would publish it. - On that subject, they published a LED dice project for me in 2001, but that simple project never made it into kit form - I suspect that they didn't like the construction technique. To-do:- talk to Leo Simpson - the editor- to discuss their requirements and write to that. |
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Did the planning for the term last night, quite a well rounded program. We should even be going to the planetarium.
Week 3 and 4 are building Kub Kars. UPDATE - I started the track for the Kub Kar program yesterday (Sunday) - *Lots* of routing involved. Have completed 2 of the 4 sections. I'll post some photos online when I take them. |
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The Cub group are going to run an activity this term,
where everybody builds a small car out of wood. They are called Kub Kars.
There are races involved, and we should be seeing a high level of parental involvement, which is a good thing (tm). Our kits come from scouts Canada. Google for them. The big derby is 27 May, so it should be a hoot. |
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Projects - Some of my projects
DRJ-Consulting - A site focused on saving energy. Dougs Word Clocks - I make my own clock that tells the time using words. we Just Dont Talk About That - A site for sharing funny family stories. Megan's weblog Email me at doug@stillhq.com |
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