Stuffs to read before going to bed

[Charles MacDonald]

After reading that soldering spec I forgot how much I hate turret terminals.

That site is a good find, it has tons and tons of specifications for the military, NASA, and JAXA amongst others. I liked this one:

http://www.everyspec.com/MIL-HDBK/MIL-H ... _279_1895/

It's about the types of radiation that semiconductor devices can receive and how they are affected. Like for satellites. The reading is a little dense but it's intriguing stuff -- at one point they mention nuclear weapons as a source of radiation exposure, and then consider this specification was written in 1986 with the Cold War going on. It's a little freaky. ;D

Clearly our next project is a radiation-hardened PCE that can withstand nuclear war and promote peace for humankind. A few rounds of Blazing Lazers or Bravoman will usually stop intercontinental conflict.

[MooZ]

Yeah, playing splatter house can ease the irradation pain. And in the following thousand years alien archeologists would find a working pce and enjoy our games :p

Sticking to the military/spatial trend, here's the Feynman's Appendix to the Rogers Commission Report on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident and a related blog post. This is a good insight/remainder about engineering.

And by the way give a look at the rest of Gustavo Duarte's blog. There're some nice articles about linux memory management.

[Dr Jefyll]

Thanks for the cool link Tanuki! ["How MOS 6502 Illegal Opcodes really work" from pagetable.com]

In the comments for that article there is a link to a guy who augmented the 65C02's illegal instructions (which were converted to NOPs) to implement entirely new functions based on external microcode and other crazy stuff:

http://laughtonelectronics.com/arcana/B ... onPg1.html

This may be the most awesome thing you can do with a 65C02 ever. It's sort of a dense read but just incredible. I wonder how long it took to design and debug the whole thing.

Hello everyone. I'm the fella with the project Charles is referring to. It's not PC-Engine related but I think anyone with a serious interest in hardware and/or the 6502 will find the article more than interesting... although perhaps not very well suited for reading before going to bed!

Thanks, Charles, for your comments. The article is subject to continual revision, and I think you'll notice some improvements in clarity and content since May when you saw it. The website itself is less than a year old, my first experience as a newbie Webmaster. There are dozens of other general electronics and computer articles there -- all MUCH shorter, btw!

cheers,

Jeff

[MooZ]

Welcome abroad and congratulation for the IBM mainframe repair

• FAT16 IDE Interface with 65C02/65816 routines
• TCP/IP stack for 6502

[MooZ]

• Add USB to almost any AVR microcontroller

[Charles MacDonald]

VRAM (BG/OBJ) memory management for AGB, but the concepts apply to any console:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3 ... gement.php

[Charles MacDonald]

although perhaps not very well suited for reading before going to bed!

It's the kind of article that keeps you up late because you just can't stop reading.

Thanks, Charles, for your comments. The article is subject to continual revision, and I think you'll notice some improvements in clarity and content since May when you saw it. The website itself is less than a year old, my first experience as a newbie Webmaster. There are dozens of other general electronics and computer articles there -- all MUCH shorter, btw!

Since my original post I've read through more of your website, and all the articles are absolutely fascinating -- the Wescode kludge is a real gem and I love the idea of adding a fourth processor just to cause a reset!

I suppose you'd find the PC-Engine's 6280 CPU a bit boring, it's a 65C02 with extra instructions but not nearly as "fun" as your KimKlone solution.

[Tanuki]

About the AGB:

There is an interesting patent titled "Memory for video game system and emulator using the memory" (193 pages):

patent 7445551 (from Google patents)

[MooZ]

• Random notes about Community Management

Instructive notes about the Oric community. And given the market shares of Oric, we may feel ashamed

[Dr Jefyll]

Since my original post I've read through more of your website, and all the articles are absolutely fascinating

It's gratifying to learn that someone takes an interest in what I wrote; I thank you. Especially since that material took such a heckuva long time to produce! Funny how much harder it is to produce good English, as compared with, say, HTML.

the Wescode kludge is a real gem

Yes, a kludge is not ordinarily something to be proud of. But THAT one solved a desperate problem -- very effectively... and not the least bit elegantly! In case anyone's wondering, the subject we're referring to is part of this article.

I suppose you'd find the PC-Engine's 6280 CPU a bit boring, it's a 65C02 with extra instructions but not nearly as "fun" as your KimKlone solution.

On the contrary -- I read about the 6280 with a keen interest. I wasn't aware of the chip until now. I certainly approve of the fact there are instructions that talk directly to the MMU. But what REALLY made me sit up and take notice was when I read that the role of the Accumulator could be assumed by a Zero-Page, X location! IIRC, that is -- and right now I can't seem to access the web page I was reading that mentioned this amazing capability. But I think it's maybe from the same site as this -- can anyone confirm?
http://shu.emuunlim.com/download/pcedocs/pce_cpu.html

BTW thank you MooZ for posting all the interesting stuffs to read.

cheers,

Jeff