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Re: Stuffs to read before going to bed

Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2013 9:32 pm
by MooZ
Ah TLDR; I also had this kind of remarks for some articles on my blog :|
There's a cool page to figure out acronyms : http://www.abbreviations.com/
Given the context I think ASP stands for Average Sales Price.

How to homebrew Sake. There's also an article about it in MAKE #33 and an article about growing one of the hotest pepper in the world.
And to stick to the topic, here's a video about the Galaksija, a Yugoslavian microcomputer halfway between a TRS-80 and a ZX 80 The Ulimate Galaksija Talk [29C3].

Re: Stuffs to read before going to bed

Posted: Tue Mar 05, 2013 3:50 pm
by MooZ

Re: Stuffs to read before going to bed

Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2013 7:48 pm
by MooZ
As a benevolent dictator, I'm posting here a short article I wrote about translating CDRom games.

Re: Stuffs to read before going to bed

Posted: Wed Apr 17, 2013 8:32 am
by MooZ

Re: Stuffs to read before going to bed

Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2013 5:02 pm
by Tanuki
A book on photography (WIP) by David Salomon:
Pho.pdf

from: David Salomon's Home Page

Re: Stuffs to read before going to bed

Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 1:13 pm
by MooZ
One day, we'll have all the Hu7 docs...

Re: Stuffs to read before going to bed

Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 8:51 am
by MooZ
It's Behind You: the making of a computer game
A book about the making of the ZX Spectrum version of R-Type.

Re: Stuffs to read before going to bed

Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2013 6:08 am
by Charles MacDonald
Here's the transcript of Michael Barr testifying about his analysis of the firmware in Toyota's engine control unit:

http://www.safetyresearch.net/Library/B ... DACTED.pdf

The gist of it is that too many tasks could be running at once, causing a stack overflow that would lead to system-critical variables getting overwritten, in turn causing unintended acceleration.

This was caused in general by poor programming practices; there were issues such as lack of comments, overuse of global variables, spaghetti code, trying to do too many things within single a task which isn't great for a RTOS, and adhering very loosely to coding standards designed for safety. It's sort of amazing the system worked at all and that there weren't more accidents.

It's lengthy and sort of a difficult read, but fascinating stuff nonetheless.

Re: Stuffs to read before going to bed

Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2013 9:38 am
by MooZ
Thx! I'll try to read it asap. This reminds me some of the bad stuffs I saw in my professional life :|
The weird things is that the code may have been "certified" at some point. Well... To be honest, from what I experienced this doesn't mean that your work is bulletproof.

Re: Stuffs to read before going to bed

Posted: Fri Nov 22, 2013 5:11 pm
by Charles MacDonald
I thought I posted this a while ago but I guess I didn't:

10 Ways to Destroy an Arduino
http://ruggedcircuits.com/html/ancp01.html

It's about all the different ways a circuit can be destroyed (in this case an Arduino), and how protection measures can be added.

In terms of making a more robust/safe power supply, I've found that the Murata OKI-78SR is a really, really great little +5V regulator:

http://www.murata-ps.com/data/power/oki-78sr.pdf

It doesn't get hot, operates with 90% efficiency, it supports a wide range of input voltages (+36V), and most importantly it limits current output during a short-circuit condition to only 10mA. A regular 7805 limits the current to 250mA which is still more than enough to fry whatever is connected to it. We've all plugged in EPROMs backwards once or twice (or thrice..) and know how they can be damaged, at least this way they'll come out unscathed.

They aren't cheap, about $4 USD whereas a 7805 is $0.75 USD. But since I've started using these I'd never go back!