#238 – Old Books, New Tricks - Iterant Inscription Irrationality

Dave Jones: This is the Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded February 25th, 2015. Episode 238. Iterant. Inscription. Irrationality.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the AEV blog.

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics.

Dave Jones: Woo! Coming in hot and loud from an Airbnb.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. It transmits well from here, you know. Got the big antenna on the roof. It's Airwave B&B. Antenna B&B.

Dave Jones: So you're in downtown San Fran or something?

Chris Gammell: I am in the Mission District right now. So kind of like more neighborhood-y. Yeah. So I'm down here and doing my usual California run.

Dave Jones: Complaining about how you hate travel again.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Well, no, I don't hate travel. I hate getting sick on travel and I hate being away from home. But I also didn't like only being at home. So I'm very grateful for what I have, Dave. I'm a lucky SOB. I'm just saying. I was lucky. I got to go. So the reason I'm out here, actually, or one of the reasons is I got to go to the Analog Aficionados dinner, which I mentioned, I think, two episodes ago. You did? Yeah. So that was fun. Do you know what that is or no?

Dave Jones: Yes, of course I do. It's a bunch of old graybeards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know why they even let you in.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, exactly. And there was actually a couple of people that were younger there. So younger, you know, relative, of course. Right. But yeah, that was a good crowd. And, you know, like definitely like looking around, it's like, hey, these people have designed a bunch of the chips that I use. So that was pretty cool. The thing I didn't realize, though, is the whole reason it's always this time of year anyways is because there's the Solid State Circuit Conference as well. That's just on the street. Oh, right. So that was the ISSCC, I think it is.

Dave Jones: So they all hang out there. But wouldn't they all be retired now? A lot of them are, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, a lot of them are just like they're just in the area. So, yeah, but, you know, it's a good group and it's interesting to kind of hear stories. And not all of them were like old. Like some of them are still working at companies. So, like, you know, I was talking to people from Maxim and ADI and, you know, just like all over the board. And it was just cool to kind of hear the good things or the bad things. And I won't repeat either here. But, you know, you don't care about it. We talk to people sometimes on the show. But it's not like it's not the same as when you're like having a pint and, you know, just kind of shooting the breeze with someone. That's different things come out, you know. Yeah, right. So next time, hidden microphone. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, that LTC, blah, blah, blah. That's a pile of shit. That is. I made it. I don't know why anyone's stupid enough to buy that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, no. Management made me design it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, I don't know. It's weird, right? And it's also interesting just kind of the just people who are designing that kind of stuff, just the difference in what the focus is on, right? You probably talked to them about CAD software. Like, not CAD software like you and I use, but like CAD software, like chip design software. The basic stuff. Yeah, like cadence, stuff like that. I'm sure that they have very strong opinions about it. But then you talk about like board level stuff and it's just like unless they're doing it as a hobby, it's less of a, you know, it's less of a, you know, a talking point. You know what I mean? It's more.

Dave Jones: Well, I can imagine none of them ever having laid out a board.

Chris Gammell: No, I doubt that. I mean, just because.

Dave Jones: Well, there'd be some of them out there who've probably never done it. They just go, no, what I do is I design silicon.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. I mean, but you said none of them. I mean, I think some of them probably have.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, sorry. Yes, no.

Chris Gammell: But I think, yeah, probably it's more in a, you know, probably more in a outside context because, you know, unless you're an application, like an applications engineer, why would you need to do that board layout, I suppose, right? It's more about, or maybe if you're doing test engineering as well, you're setting up fixtures, something like that. But not like you're, they usually have fixtures for that that are like clamped in fixtures or stuff like that or on-die fixture or on-die testing. So, yeah. Right. And plus, you know, big companies too, like, you know, the design engineers usually aren't the ones that are doing the layout either. That's another thing. That kind of was true at places I've worked in the past too. It was just like. Yeah. You have people that are really, really good at layout and they're just doing layout all day long and you just give them their stuff and work with them. So.

Dave Jones: The old throw it over the wall. Yeah. Well. Syndrome. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: If you want to do that, you get to deal with the consequences from doing that, right? Right. I mean, you used to do layout stuff like that, right? I mean, you were just layout only at one point.

Dave Jones: I was a. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: What was the, what was the worst thing that ever was thrown over at you? Was it just like. Did you ever just like go and redesign something like, well, this is shit. So I'm going to go.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. You would get napkins. Really? Thrown at you. Yeah. Yeah. You would get napkin sketches.

Chris Gammell: Thinkers of big thoughts at the bar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And yeah.

Dave Jones: And sometimes you would get people thinking that, okay, you're the layout guy and they'd throw you the design as well. Oh yeah. You've got to actually design it too. Oh really? Well, yeah, I can do that, but don't you know I'm supposed to be the layout guy? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, but that's what you do, right? When you lay out boards, you design something. No. It's not how it works.

Chris Gammell: Let's just assume that I do that. What do you do then, sir? Mr. Quote unquote design engineer.

Dave Jones: But hey, it's your lucky day. I can do design as well. And they roll their eyes and walk away.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Like. Oh yeah. Sometimes they don't have a clue. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, it was, I mean, it was just cool. It was, it was good to get. I mean, it's tough because like a lot of it's like, you know, these guys have all known each other for years too. So it's like kind of like me, the nerd in the corner. It's a bit of a boys club. Well, not even the boys club, but it was just like, I was in the corner. I was, you know, I also had a booth for parts.io and it was just like me in the corner, just like, Hey, come check out my.

Dave Jones: You had a booth?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, we sponsored it. So not a booth booth. You sponsored it. We like, we like, we like sponsored it and we were, you know, giving away t-shirts and stuff just to, you know, t-shirts are fun. And.

Dave Jones: Jeez. I thought this was just a get together at the pub. Yeah. Oh, it's gotten a little bigger. You guys have managed the shit out of it.

Chris Gammell: No, it's super casual still. It was like TI was there. They were giving away dev boards and like, like a bunch of like linear systems was, there was a bunch of authors. God. No, it was great.

Dave Jones: Next thing you know, it'll be taken over the McHenry convention center on, and it'll be, you know, over five days. Maybe.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That'd be a lot of, a lot of, a lot of drinking beer. Unbelievable. The nice thing was that like, there was a bunch of authors there, like of, of books that I really like. So like Sergio Franco was there and he writes one of the best op amp books. I always forget the name of it, but it's like one of my favorite. Uh, my favorite op amp books basically. Right. And, uh, so I get to meet him and like shake his hand and tell him I like this, you know, and he's like a former teacher and stuff like that. And which one is it? Is it this one? Yeah. Designed with operation amplifiers, analog integrated circuits. It like, that has the best. So like the best explanation of why open loop gain matters in a circuit. It's a little bit pricey though. It's 20, it's $230. Oh my God. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, they're most of them are.

Chris Gammell: Uh, but yeah, they, I mean, they're all that expensive, but, um, but yeah. Speaking of which. Yeah. Go ahead.

Dave Jones: We, we are almost entering the holy month.

Chris Gammell: Of the Chinese New Year's over?

Dave Jones: When the art of electronics is going to be released. Oh, really? We are not worthy. Bow down. Bow down. Everyone. Everyone pray. Okay. Yes. I, I will be getting the book this month.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you are? Oh, nice.

Dave Jones: Oh, well this month I'm talking, well it's almost March, right? So I like, let's just assume that we're in March.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. Wow. I'm supposed to be getting it.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's exciting.

Speaker ?: Yes.

Dave Jones: We've only waited like 25 years, 30 years or something. What if it's like a total letdown? Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Everything's integrated now. Just go buy these chips and it's just a list of, a list of parts.

Dave Jones: For all 1600 pages of it. Yeah. Because I do believe it is 1600 pages.

Chris Gammell: Wow. Wow.

Dave Jones: And they've chopped out some stuff from the second edition. Oh, really? So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, probably some of the micro stuff, stuff like that, right?

Dave Jones: No. Yeah. I don't know, but we'll find out. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Wow. Well, I mean, but there's so much like classic stuff in there. It's, it's still like, and people will still, hopefully maybe people will be able to get the old stuff a little bit cheaper too. I mean, that's the thing. These textbooks are always just so, so expensive.

Dave Jones: They are.

Chris Gammell: It really.

Dave Jones: But yeah, Wynhill personally recommends that you get a copy of the second edition as well as the third.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's weird. The guy getting royalties. Yeah, the guy getting royalties from it.

Dave Jones: But he said, no, there is stuff in there that is not covered in the third edition. Oh, interesting. So, you know, it's like a, it's not quite a separate volume. Do you know if they're going to have a digital edition?

Chris Gammell: Did you hear anything about that?

Dave Jones: No, I haven't heard anything about that.

Chris Gammell: Because that was always the big, like a lot of this stuff, like, I mean, I'm not a huge fan of e-books, but like, that's one where it's like having a reference book like that, like I would pay the 60 bucks or, you know, 80 bucks or whatever, you know, non-paper version should be. And, you know, just to have it just for, so it's searchable, right? You know, like that's nice.

Dave Jones: It's searchable. That's right. Although the art of electronics is well known for having an awesome index. I mean, it's indexed.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right up to the hill. I know, but like still, I mean, like indexes don't cover everything, right?

Dave Jones: To search. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So that's, that's, that's exciting. I mean, that's, that's really nice. It's a.

Dave Jones: Really nice? Dude, it's been 25 years in the coming. Get more excited.

Chris Gammell: I can't. I mean, I've only had it. So, you know, I haven't had it 25 years, right? I'm waiting for, I'm waiting for the fourth edition, Dave. Come on. All right. Yeah, there's a lot of good books out there. I get so pissed at textbook stuff. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if I should go on this rant now. But like, like my, my wife's in school right now and she's, she's at like a, a community college. But like all of these textbook makers now, because they, because they know that people buy used textbooks, what they do now is they chop pieces out of different books and then they package them together as customs for the class. And then they change stuff, except they don't change the page numbers. And it's just like, oh, it's the worst shit ever. It's. What? To what end? So like, so like she'll get a bound, she'll get a bound pack of paper that's supposed to go in a binder. It's not even like a bound book. It's just like a plastic wrap set of three hole punched paper.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Three punch paper. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: For $300, that's an amalgamation of, or combination, I suppose, of, of like three or four different books, like different chapters from each. And then if you buy it from one semester to the next, it's the exact same general content, but different page numbers. Basically, like they change one or two things. I mean, they've been doing this for years with like additions. Wow. With their update one or two things. Really? But like now it's become more extreme. And maybe it's just my way of school, but maybe I think it's probably more. And oh my God. And it's like we're paying $300 for this piece of crap that's going to fall apart because it's not a bound book either, right? You know, it's this thin, loose leaf, right? And it's just like I get that information is, you know, worth something, right? Obviously, you know, I make my living on it, but like come on. Like especially because like it's using content out of a book that hasn't been updated in 10 years and that costs maybe $60 when it first came out. And it's like what is going up year after year? Paper is not getting more expensive. It's getting less expensive. And I think that the same thing happens for technical books too. Like this book, when I bought it, I bought this Sergio Franco book I'm talking about for $80 and now it's $230.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: That's insane.

Dave Jones: That's crazy. So this is the college getting rights to reproduce parts of the book and doing that and combining them all together so that they can charge and make money.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Because like also because like that's, you know, with a lot of these schools, they're just looking for more revenue streams. They get kickbacks and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Of course. Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: And it's just like, you know, I understand the need to raise revenue, but a lot of it's the schools.

Dave Jones: Could this be driven by the book companies?

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's the other thing too, right? But they keep having... Is it driven by the publishers? Yeah, no, that's the other thing too. They get a big cut of that too because they get their volume is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking as well just because there's more variety and there's e-books now and stuff like that. And so they need to squeeze more money out of each customer. Again, these are business things, but that's ridiculous, right? Especially because now... That is bad. Now the class is a captive audience. And if you don't have the right book, when the page number is referenced by a teacher...

Dave Jones: When they tell you, yeah, your homework is, you know, go and read page 52, you know, and like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Ouch. I mean, some of this stuff's online, but like, why, you know, why, like with a design with operation amplifiers, right? Or some, you know, stuff that electronics, you should have simulations going along with it. And some of them do. Again, some of them do. But, you know, you should have like interactive environments there. And... Totally. It just gets... It grinds my gears. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no, that's... I share your anger at that. That is just ridiculous.

Chris Gammell: And the worst part about it is like, we all know... We're all thinking the same thing too, right? It's like, we all know exactly what's going to happen. It's like, if they keep jacking up the price more and more, more people will just go download the book from somewhere, right? You know, it's not like it's hard to find these books. Yeah, right. And it's like, I want a legal copy at a reasonable price. Like, why? And if more people go do that, then they have to jack up the price even more because their volume goes down. It's just like this stupid, stupid... It's like they looked at the music industry and they're like, hey, let's make all of the exact same mistakes that they made.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah, exactly. And the music industry has basically gone down the toilet. Artists don't make money on... They're on selling their actual music. They have to make money going on tour.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, now they're just endlessly on tour. It's just nobody's buying. I think there's still some stuff, but it's like marketplaces and stuff like that. Yeah, there's still some stuff, but still...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there's definitely dilution. So, it's... I don't know. I mean, ultimately, the thing that really sucks for the future, right? And this is the ultimate thing here. It's like if the whole state of it gets crappier and crappier, right? Writing a textbook used to be a really important thing and professors would do it and, you know, like leading thinkers would do it because it would, you know, get their name out there and they would, you know, make a little bit of money from it. But if it keeps getting worse, then they won't be able to pay them as much and they won't be able to get as widely distributed. And just people will just stop writing those, you know, good books. They'll just write books that make money quickly, you know? Right. And that sucks. Got it. So, I'm worried, Dave. I'm worried.

Dave Jones: I weep for the future.

Chris Gammell: Well, we grow more catankerous together. Speaking of catankerous, there's another site that someone sent me the other day that actually... So, I think you and I had talked about this on the show at one point. I said that, you know, I really wish that someone was interviewing these, you know, these veterans of the industry, you know, because, you know, like... Right, yeah. Like, we never got a chance to have, like, Bob Peace or Jim Williams or Hans Comins in on the show. You know, and it's like, they're gone, you know? They passed away and that's really sad. And it was... And I was always thinking that, you know, like StoryCorps, that was the thing I always thought about. Like, NPR does StoryCorps where you can kind of go record stories. And I didn't think anyone ever done it. It turns out since 2006, they have been doing it. Actually, Stanford's been doing it. This thing called Silicon Genesis. And... Nice. Yeah, so it's an oral history. And basically, it's all of these really, really poorly recorded real media format videos. Right. But the stuff is all archived, so it is in beta format. So, it's preserved somewhere, which is good. And then you can at least hear the audio, though. And that's actually the really interesting stuff. And they have stuff for Europe. And they have stuff for about Fairchild. And so, it's just... It's an awesome resource. And there's a lot of people in here, including Jim Williams and, you know...

Dave Jones: There's Bob Dodkin, Jim Williams. Yep.

Chris Gammell: I got to meet Bob, actually. It was great. All right.

Dave Jones: Fairchild, guys. Fagin from Fairchild. I mean, that's the thing.

Chris Gammell: And it's like all these names where it's like a lot of them, you just don't know the names. But then you look at what they're doing and it's like, oh, holy crap. You know? Like... You know, it's like... It's... You know, once you get past the first couple employees or, you know, like the very high... You know, the high... The ones that they really promote all of the fancy achievements from. Like, you know, like the inventor of the wide lower current source. Right? You know, something like that. Right. But there are really important innovations that were like, you know, also around the same time that may not have been named the same, but are also reused a bunch and circuits all over the place. And like, that's just cool. You know? Like, that's really awesome. And it's really good that they're calling these people out and, you know, like this guy, Stan Mazur, a member of the Intel 4004 design team. Oh, awesome. Right? You know? Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah.

Dave Jones: So, I mean, some... And guys you've never heard of, like the co-founder of NVIDIA who invented the GPU. Right. Yeah, right. Like, you know, who the hell knew?

Chris Gammell: You're welcome, Marvel. Right? No. Oh, man.

Dave Jones: Wow. There's a lot on here.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm still scrolling.

Chris Gammell: It'll take a while to go through it. Holy crap. But like this... Mostly, like I saw this and like my first thing was like, oh, thank God. You know, like I'm really glad that there are people doing this. Like this is a really awesome project. And so, if anyone out there is listening from the Stanford Library, thank you. I think that... Are they all video or are some of them audio? All the ones that I've clicked so far have been video. Some of them are really like... It's like 320 by 240 video.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I just actually played the Bob Dolkin one. It's like, yeah, 320 by 200. But it doesn't...

Chris Gammell: I mean, you're listening to them really, you know. They're just talking... It's all talking head stuff anyway, so...

Dave Jones: I do wonder if they have it in a higher...

Chris Gammell: Well, that's the Betamax thing, I think. You know, or not Betamax, but they said archival beta format copies. So, they have it on tape somewhere.

Speaker ?: Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: Right. Right. Tape.

Chris Gammell: Hey, man. It'll hold up, right? Oh, hey. Actually, I was talking to a guy that... He was a... Oh, who was... Oh, actually, he was really interested... Oh, shoot. I forgot his name. But he said the IBM... One of the first IBM hard drives... I actually told him about your hard drive, Teardown. Right. And he said, there's some IBM hard drive that was like the first one that ever came out. And there's only four of them that still exist today. But basically, him and some of the guys that worked on it, they got together, you know, many years later. They spun it back up like 50 years later. And it still had all of the data still on the platen. Is that the right term? Platen?

Dave Jones: Magnetic fields. Yeah. Platter. Platter. Okay, platter. Oh, platen. Platen, I think it is. Okay, that's what I said. With a name. Whatever. I mean, he's like, yeah, you know, you just get a three-phase motor and blah, blah, blah,

Chris Gammell: blah, blah. You know, it's this huge... You know, like, imagine the one that... Yeah, yeah. That $250,000 one that you tore down. Yeah. He's like, yeah, that's... That was modern compared to that. Yeah, that was super, super cheap and small compared to this one. So, yeah. And apparently it's...

Dave Jones: Of course they spun it up because the bit density, the magnetic bit density in there is... Like, you could actually move the head over with your hand and still read the data, I think. You know, it's that course. I mean, it's unbelievable.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think he said that the one that they got running again is the one that's at the Computer History Museum. Right. Oh, maybe this one. I looked up IBM hard drive. It was 1956. Yeah, that sounds right. Ouch. Five megabytes of storage. Oh, my God. That's so good. Back then, that was enormous. Oh, yeah, the RAM-AC. That's it. Yeah, the 305 RAM-AC. That's the one. So, yeah. I'm pretty sure it was that one. I think. Jeez. Yeah. And you can, like, see it. It looks like a stack of LPs is what the platens look like, you know, like, going up. So, unbelievable. So, yeah. I mean, that kind of cool stuff, right? You know, you get to talk to these guys and they have cool weekend projects. They've been doing cool work.

Dave Jones: Yeah, she can't beat magnetic storage. It's hard to beat. Yeah, I kind of asked him about that.

Chris Gammell: I said, you know, like, you know, because you think about, I asked him, you know, what's the future of magnetic hard drives? Are they ever going away? You know, because there's so much solid state these days. He's like, yeah, you know, solid state's great, but you only get 10,000 write cycles. And hard drives, you know, they haven't run out of room yet. So, you know, in terms of smooshing bits together more and more.

Dave Jones: Oh, they're getting insanely calm. I mean, it's bleeding edge physics. It's not just, you know, the amount of stuff they do. I mean, we've had Vincent on here, right? He worked in hard drive stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and Bart Davidson's, I think he did that stuff too.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: I think he did that.

Dave Jones: It's just, yeah. It's insanely bleeding edge physics. I mean, it's just unbelievable. The technology they're coming up with to cram stuff on, you know, four terabyte hard drives now for, you know, a couple hundred bucks. It's crazy. And your data is going to soon exist in a quantum state, you know? It's like, is my data alive or dead? It's like a Schrodinger's hard drive. Like, they're getting down to that level. It's just ridiculous.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's awesome. Wow. Yep. So, yeah. That's been my weekend with the aficionados. Sweet.

Dave Jones: We don't have anything like that here.

Chris Gammell: No.

Dave Jones: Nothing.

Chris Gammell: You guys must have, like, the old TV industry there, don't you?

Dave Jones: Don't you guys, like, have a TV?

Chris Gammell: I thought you had, like, a TV industry at one point.

Dave Jones: Oh, we did make TVs here, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I thought, like, I designed TVs, though.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes, we did.

Chris Gammell: Surely someone has designed electronics in Australia at some point, Dave, you know, since I'm talking to you.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah, we have. That's long gone, dude. That's long gone. No. I'm quite amazed at the amount of, like, hardware startup-y stuff, though, in Sydney at the moment, and co-working spaces. They're huge, you know? Yeah. And, yeah, not as much, like, hardware-focused, but, like, I'm just, oh, man. It's just so many of them. There's this new co-working space that's just opened up. It's massive, apparently.

Chris Gammell: Do you hate quiet rooms? Go there to join our working space.

Dave Jones: And, you know, learn to pitch seminars and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: Some of that stuff, like, it's so institutionalized now, like, the formulaic stuff. Yeah, I know. It's like, how effective can that really, like, okay, I get it. Yeah, it still works. But, yeah, I don't know. It's... Right. Yeah. The more I see of it, the less I like it, unfortunately.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I keep thinking, you know, like, oh, it's just like everyone's doing it. Everyone's getting startup money and doing a pitch and, you know, it's just boring.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Sorry.

Dave Jones: I'm sure if I had a great idea, yeah, I'd want millions of dollars, you know, and I'll have to go pitch. But, you know, couldn't be bothered. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, there are some startups that are doing interesting things. This new Spark Electron, did you see that thing?

Dave Jones: They're getting... They want to... Oh, no. Sorry, I'm thinking of the FAB, the ASIC one. Uh-oh.

Chris Gammell: Later, Dave. Come on, man. That's not them.

Dave Jones: I know. Jumping ahead of the show.

Chris Gammell: No, this is a new module. So, Spark are the ones who do... They have, like, a CC2500. Is that right? Whatever the Wi-Fi module is from TI. On board. Right, yeah. On their old product with, like, then a micro that, you know, is already talking to it. And then you can basically interface to that thing. And now, basically, they're doing the same thing, but with cell connectivity or mobile connectivity. Cellular. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: And so you can get...

Dave Jones: But isn't... I thought everyone was still doing... Everyone's doing cellular... They are. Modules and stuff like that. No, you're right.

Chris Gammell: They are. The interesting... But this one's super easy, right? Well, no, there is that. And then, actually, I... So I've tried Spark... The Spark thing before. And it is easy to get started. That's nice. Especially, like, the little mobile app. Just kind of toggle things on and off. Yep. But no, actually, the interesting thing is... I have... You know, the hardware is the hardware, right? That's interesting. But probably the interesting stuff of that is on the module, right? Yep.

Dave Jones: But what they're doing is a cloud service.

Chris Gammell: No, well... They are? Yeah. Sorry. So it's actually the... Well, it's a cloud service. It's the buying of the data, right? So usually you have to sign up for, you know, prepaid. You have to have some kind of contract, stuff like that. So basically, they're going to be acting as the service.

Dave Jones: As the actual carrier. Yeah. As the... They're going to be acting as the carrier. NVMO. Ah, see, that's... Well, I don't know what that stands for. What's an MVNO? No.

Chris Gammell: I had it before. It's gone.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So I've never heard that acronym before. But they... So instead of... So here in Australia, instead of going and getting... Buying a SIM card from Telstra or Optus... Yeah. ...or anyone, right? Yeah. You use them. Right. Except you can't use it. Is this US only?

Chris Gammell: You can't use it yet. They're Europe, Canada, and US right now. Just because that's who they've cut deals with. Yeah. I mean, would you want to talk to Telstra? Telstra? No.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Just like Amazon did their own, right? Amazon... They did? Well, they actually use the carrier, right? So they... You know, if you buy an Amazon Kindle here, right? Ah. That has the 3G thing built in. It's actually talking to Telstra, right? Or, you know, the local carrier here. It's not like, you know, Amazon go out and install their own cell towers. Yeah, right. Right? So they do a deal. But it's, you know, you never have to realize it's actually Telstra that's... Right, right, right, right. ...working on the back end. Yeah, the packets get routed through them. They become the carrier. Yeah. Amazon become the carrier, and they're the ones who...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, Telstra becomes the hardware people, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, the actual RF service, right? They're the carrier. Yeah. But, yeah, Telstra is...

Chris Gammell: Amazon are the service provider. Mobile virtual network operator. So, yeah, basically that. You know, they're buying chunks of time from someone and then handle all the other stuff. So I think that's interesting, actually. I mean, like, this is, you know, and they give some good examples, too. You know, like, talking about, like, monitoring stuff in the field. So, like, when Dave and Bob were back on, when they were on, when you weren't able to make it that one week, Bob Davidson was talking about his, I think it was like a monitoring in a vineyard, right? And so, like, how do you do that unless you set up, like, huge mesh network and stuff like that and bounce signals around? You know, cell towers kind of are a mesh network. Not really a mesh network, I suppose. But, you know, like, but basically it's connectivity out in the open without, you know, needing all of the other infrastructure there. So it makes sense. So we'll see what it looks like. I mean, three bucks for a megabyte is kind of a lot, but.

Dave Jones: Well, these things you're usually not sending much data. Right, right, right. Right. So, you know. Actually. You're sending, you know, bytes. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, another interesting example from a past guest, too, is when Larry Sears was on. This is basically what his, what Hexagram was doing. He's the one who was, he's in Cleveland and he was the one who, the only, one of two who's recorded from my basement. Tim and Martin. But that's basically what his product was. It was like you put it on your gas meter and then it would, that was just using a plain radio. You know, it was, I think it might have been encrypted, but it was bouncing signals, basically. And it was before the cell towers even really existed. And then they'd have, like, these access points. And basically this is kind of that, but now more standardized and available to everyone. So, interesting.

Dave Jones: Got it. All right. Anyway, they got, yeah, 4.9 million bucks to make an OS for the Internet of Things. Oh, that's just. Of course, of course they got the money for it, you know. With words like these, how do we fail? Yeah, exactly. Anyway, good luck to them.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Dave Jones: Do they actually have a product at the moment or they just got. . .

Chris Gammell: Well, they have the spark core and then the spark photon was the other one.

Dave Jones: Yeah, well, they spark core, yeah.

Chris Gammell: The photon was the other one and now this is the electron. So, I don't remember what the photon was. Right.

Speaker ?: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: We should bring up the other one because it also has a tie into the past guests as well. So, did you see the Pebble?

Dave Jones: I have ordered one.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really? Oh, wow.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know, I know. I hate smartwatches, but I thought, oh, you know, I'll get it. I'll at least have one so I can talk about it. You know, so, yes, yes. I ordered the new Pebble smartwatch. And it had some hacker interfaces, some IO hacker interface as well. So, I don't know. I might be able to use it for something. But it's an everyday watch. It's like, eh, you know. You've got to charge it every seven days. What's that bullshit? Anyway, that's better than most smartwatches.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah. So, Andrew Witte, who was on the show in the past as well, he's a. . . I think he's still there. Ooh, I should probably check that. Right. Pebble, though. And so, he talked to us about some of the tech and stuff like that. And so, it's interesting. I mean, the color screen.

Dave Jones: And they've got a color screen and, yeah, extra wank.

Chris Gammell: That sort of stuff. Is it? I don't know. Like, I don't wear watches, so I don't really have any real opinion on this stuff. You know.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: But I think the. . .

Dave Jones: I need a watch to tell the time. Right, right. And, you know, to be used as a stopwatch and a time, you know, and the date. Tell me the date. Yeah. You know, that's pretty. . . And have a timer. An occasional nerdy calculator. No.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That would come in handy.

Dave Jones: But apart from that, you know, like, no. Piss off. I don't want to be alerted when somebody messages me on my phone. So, why did you buy one then? I don't want my watch to vibrate. Oh, I don't know. I just wasn't willing to come.

Dave Jones: That sucked in. Sucked. Anyway, they've raised like $5 million in the first day. And now, it's like the second or third day. They're up to $10 million. Oh, really? Wow. Yep. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Well, someone in the . . . So, we had talked about the display a little bit. And I knew that it wasn't a true E-Ink display. Oh, I thought it was. No, for the original one, it wasn't. I remember it wasn't an E-Ink display. I remember Andrew telling us that, at least. Right. But basically, so, I think this is the next version of that. And someone linked us on Reddit. It was Kratz9 on Reddit. Linked us over to this possible one. It is the Japan Display Incorporated Memory in Pixel Reflective. I don't know. But basically, watching the video, it was interesting because, like, the update rate was pretty fast for, you know, thinking about E-Ink is usually, like, really slow. So, that's why.

Dave Jones: Yep. Although, this hasn't got many, you know, this isn't like a Kindle with a, you know, huge res. It's, you know, what, 128 by 128 pixels or something. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: It isn't like it has to update, you know, some full huge, you know, nine-inch screen or something. True.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Scan across and, yeah. Anyway.

Dave Jones: Football does that all. But still only seven days battery life. Yawn. You know. Unbelievable. Power's hard, man. Who wants to charge their watch? Power's hard. I can't. Oh. Yeah, I know. And people are saying, oh, you know, it must chew a lot of power if it only gets seven days. Well, no, I think somebody did the math on Twitter or something, and it's like it's drawing 600 microamps or something, you know, which isn't much. Yeah. But you can only fit a tiny battery. Right. Well, that's the problem. It's not like in.

Chris Gammell: Once you get, like, a flexible battery that you don't mind wrapping all the way around your wrist, then maybe you'll get more. Yep. Yeah. Batteries keep screwing us. Goodness. You know, it's just. Yep. Help us, Tony Stark. You're our only hope. Or, you know, alternate, we're the same technology that the Swiss have been talking about for many years and would be in good shape.

Dave Jones: What technology are the Swiss talking about?

Chris Gammell: They're called gears. You wind up a watch and it runs. Oh, right. Okay, right.

Dave Jones: And it's self-wind. I know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, those are nice. Free energy. That's right.

Dave Jones: We can make millions. Perpetual motion. Oh, man. Ah, yes.

Chris Gammell: Ah, dear, oh, dear. So that's your week in Kickstarter, I suppose.

Dave Jones: Right. Yep. Yep. Anyway, so, yeah, I got sucked in. So I'll see if they deliver. I think May or something we're supposed to get it. Anyway, I didn't get the early backers. They sold out in, like, 10 minutes or something. Oh, really? I've got the, yep. So I'm in the next. Yeah, the first batch was only 10,000 units and I missed out on that. Jesus Christ. I had to get the next 30,000.

Chris Gammell: Oh, man.

Dave Jones: Oh, there's one left. There's one left in the second batch of 30,000 as of. Buy now, folks. And if I refresh. Billy May is here. It was funny, right? I was sitting there, like, you know, waiting to, you know, ordering. And the page was just ticking up. Like, I'm sitting here now, 45,781. It'll tick over. It's slow. You know, but I was sitting there watching it and it was ticking over. This is the number of backers, you know, and it was just refreshing. And it was just ticking, ticking, ticking, ticking. It's insane. Unbelievable. They were selling, like, you know, three a second or something. Just madness. There we go. 45,782 backers. There you go. It's just increasing. It's going slow at the moment. It must be sleep time in the U.S.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's getting there. Yeah, it's like 9 p.m.

Dave Jones: Land of the disposable Kickstarter income.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, yeah, right. Right.

Dave Jones: People will throw money at anything. It's incredible.

Chris Gammell: Indeed. Like buying a 2400. I need to. And having it to tear down. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Yeah, I got a part of my big auction score. Yeah, so what? Keithley 25.

Chris Gammell: I didn't realize that was part of your auction score.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it was a big score. I got it as part of. Yeah, I got, like, ten items or something. That was one of them.

Chris Gammell: Nice. Well, I liked it. They really come up around here. I like, uh... I don't know. Anything you want to talk about with the 2400 or no? They're, like, my favorite piece of test equipment.

Dave Jones: You were just telling me that I've got the old one. You were going, ah, you've got the old one. You know, because they changed the CPU in it, apparently, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, just small changes, stuff like that, so.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And that was one of your jobs at Keithley, wasn't it? You were an obsolescence, a component obsolescence engineer, weren't you?

Chris Gammell: Damn it, Dave.

Dave Jones: I love that title. That's not what I was, okay.

Chris Gammell: Close to it, though. Close to it, yeah. Some things that were... But, yeah, a little bit more in depth than that. Damn it, Dave. Oh, goodness. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, no, it's a cool piece of gear. I mean, it has the AB stage output, and I think you drew that, right, at some point from the manual.

Dave Jones: Oh, no, I got it from the service manual. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you, like... They had a very crude output circuit. Yeah. So I just printed that out and talked about it briefly.

Chris Gammell: Hmm. Yeah, they still have the service manual, though, too. They don't... You don't get that many times these days, either.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but it hasn't got the schematic.

Chris Gammell: No, that's true. Yeah. It has the BOM. So it's just... With, you know...

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, it does the BOM and tells you how to calibrate it and stuff like that. Yeah, Keithley part numbers, though. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Why would you do a BOM? Why would you include the BOM if you're not going to include the schematic? What's the reasoning behind that?

Chris Gammell: Maybe if you see something that's charred and you call support and you're like, it looks like U18, which is IC576. Right. I don't know. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I did notice I had one of the components wrong. It said the main ADC ASIC is U610 or something. No, it was U609. Wah! Wrong. Flame them! Flame them quickly! Now they're buying Keithley again. Can't even get it right. They can't even get their 200-page service when you're right.

Chris Gammell: Nothing good comes out of Cleveland.

Dave Jones: No. Somebody asked on my comments on YouTube, so in plain English, please, what does an SMU do?

Chris Gammell: The main thing is the thing that's the easiest thing, but it's probably the easiest thing to illustrate is like, it's not just this, but like imagine a programmable current source. Most people don't have that. I mean, I know that some people do, right? Like there's current loads and stuff like that or dummy loads and stuff, but like having it over a wide range and high precision and then being able to measure the voltage. So if you want to program 10 milliamps through an LED and then also simultaneously see how much voltage is across that LED and then you want to step up the different currents and then you could start tracing a curve, it gets really useful really quickly. So, but it's really, it is tough to visualize at first. But once you have one, you never go back.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, they're mostly for semi, the reason people don't have one, they're not a general purpose tool because they're mostly used by the semiconductor vendors for semiconductor diode, you know, to actually get the characteristic curve of your diode, your LED, your transistor, etc.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you put two of these together and you can put one on gate to source on a FET and one drain to source and, you know, step one value and then, you know, run current for the other and get your MOSFET curves basically. So that's, and that's what even higher end equipment does, they do it on the wafer and stuff like that too. So that's how they make data sheets. And this is how a data sheet is made. When an engineer loves a silicon very much, get some test equipment.

Dave Jones: But yeah, so that's why you don't see them in your general purpose lab. I mean, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they're expensive as crap too, so.

Dave Jones: Well, that's fun though. That doesn't help.

Chris Gammell: That's cool, man.

Dave Jones: See, average Joe blogs isn't going to have a need for one. They're just nice to have around, you know, if you want to have a user as a user. As a precision current source, you know, that's handy. Yeah, right, right, right. So, you know, let's, I need to feed 10 milliamps through my lead to see how bright it is. I'll use my $5,000 shoe. Yeah, right, right. You know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, do the other direction too, like doing like a syncing current as well and just programmable sync currents.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, just, you know, having that in all directions is nice.

Dave Jones: Because there are four, four quadrant devices. They sync as well as source.

Chris Gammell: Right, you can.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, source voltage, sync current. You can sync, yeah, blah, blah, blah. All of those different combinations. So, it's, it can be cool.

Dave Jones: Yes. If people want to know the difference, your regular power supply is a single quadrant device. I.e., it can only source current. It can't sync it. So, because it's got an output pass transistor.

Chris Gammell: You can do two quadrant if you have a negative rail, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, you can do two quadrant if you have a negative rail, yes. But, you know, I'm just talking about your regular, you know, zero to 30 volt power supply. Yeah, zero to 30, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, three amp standard cheapo supply. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Because if you have a look at the, have a look at the circuit, it's got an output pass transistor. Current can go out. Yep. The supply, but it can't go back in. Right, and they actually put tires there to make sure it doesn't. Yeah, to make sure it doesn't. Yeah, exactly. Because that's a naughty thing to have. And why is that important? Well, I'm glad you asked.

Chris Gammell: Pull up a chair, boys and girls.

Dave Jones: If you've, you know, a common thing for a power supply, right, is to replace the battery in your widget, right, which you try to design, right, if it's powered from a battery. Then, you know, you might typically, you know, power it from a bench power supply when you're doing, you know, debugging and all that sort of stuff. Well, it's not quite the same as a battery because a battery is a four, well, is a two quadrant device as well. It can sync current. Right. You can charge batteries, even batteries that are not designed to be charged. You can sync current back into them.

Chris Gammell: If you charge them hard enough, they make a light show for you.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: So batteries have that dynamic characteristic of being able to absorb charge back into them. So if you've got a complex load that's kicking energy back into the battery.

Chris Gammell: Right. Say you're putting a battery through an inductor and then you snap that, you snap the connection off and it spikes up. And you snap it off. Yeah. It can go in the other direction.

Dave Jones: That's right. It absorbs, the battery can absorb that back. But if you power it from a regular one single quadrant bench power supply, which 99% of them are, I almost guarantee the power supply you've got in your lab is just a single quadrant one. And yeah, it can't. So it doesn't simulate that battery. You might think, oh, yeah, the power supply, it's got a low output impedance. Right. It's simulating the battery perfectly. No, it's not. So, yeah. And in some applications, that can matter. As you said, if you've got a big inductor there, like you've got a big mechanical switch to turn off your product. Well, that, you know, that can be a big deal. So your power supply may not perform exactly the same as a battery. That's what I'm saying.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's actually, you saying the power supply thing, too. That's another one that I liked a lot where it's, you know, I'd have like, you know, maybe a 20 volt output. You know, I was like powering the rails to an op amp or something that was a little bit risky. Right. And I could just, you know, dial in the exact current limit. So like, you know, 10 milliamps, 100 milliamps, whatever. And it's like, as soon as I short something out by accident, the current limit snaps on and it catches it. And it's very programmed and I know exactly where it's going to stop. And that's another nice thing. It's idiot proofing, basically. Totally.

Dave Jones: And then setting over voltage limits as well. Right. There's another, you know, if you've got, you know, we talked about this before. If you've got a $100,000 board you've just made and it's a one-off and you're powering it for your bench supply, you don't accidentally want to punch a button in that puts 30 volts on the 5-volt rail. That can kind of ruin your career.

Chris Gammell: Or at least your day. Maybe your weekend. Right. Have you had a $100,000 board before? It sounds like you've.

Dave Jones: I've worked on boards that are worth $100,000. Yeah. Holy crap. And powered them up the bench supply. Yeah. These are one-offs. These are one-off military boards. Whoa. And we've spent two years developing the damn thing. And, you know, these are the ones where if you enter the lab without a lab coat and you don't wear your anistatic wrist strap, they will fire you instantly. Oh, wow. It doesn't matter who you are. Whoa. You know, because this board is a one-off. It can ruin, you know, a $40 million contract, right, if you blow up this board, right? Because, you know, to make another one, you know, the entire project is, you know, six months, you know, is set back six months or something. Right? And, oh, yeah. Yeah. It's a big deal. That's bonkers. So you'll have it, you know, I can remember, like, you know, you'd have, you know, four guys all standing around going, right, we're going to power up this board. Right. Check it. Double check it. Triple check it. Triple check it. Triple check it. Triple check it. Triple check it. Quadruple check it. Who wants to flip the switch, you know? It's like, you know, have we set our over voltage limit? Have we set our over current limit? Bob, I just bought a house. I need you to flip it.

Chris Gammell: I can't do it, Tony. I just bought a new car. I need this job.

Dave Jones: Or then, you know, even we'd spend, like, a whole day thinking about and analyzing, like, as a group, if put in the current limit, like, you know, like, sometimes real expensive board, you want to start it up at a lower current limit than what it's designed to take, right? Just in case. So you want to, like, ramp up that voltage slowly. Well, ramping up voltages slowly can actually kill a board. It can actually kill a circuit, right, if it ramps up too slowly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's like sitting on a new region somewhere and it's, like, burning up.

Dave Jones: And it latch up and, yep, exactly. So we, you know, we'll spend ages analyzing the board, right? Can we power it? Should we power it up fast or should we power it up slow? Did anyone think to just make two? You know? Right. Right. Why build one when you can build two for twice the price than the other one? Yeah. If you haven't watched Carl Sagan's Contact, then watch it. Why build two $1 trillion products when you can build two for twice the price for $2 trillion? Anyway, yep. If you haven't watched Contact, you won't get it. Oh, dear. Love it.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's crazy, though. Yeah, so anyway. I can't believe that $100,000 boards, that's got to be pretty. And I wonder, too, like, I mean, like, hardware is getting cheaper. Not in all sectors. Obviously, military still has expensive stuff, you know, some space sectors. But, you know, like, it seems like that would be less often than before. Maybe not. I don't know. Because it's just a one-off. Like, the board cost is probably, that $100,000 was, you know, probably a big chunk of board, but also a big chunk of really expensive parts, too. So, I don't know. I just, I wonder about if there are as many of those crazy, crazy expensive boards still out there.

Dave Jones: No, I'm sure there are.

Chris Gammell: We'd love to hear from people if they're allowed to say, obviously.

Dave Jones: Speaking about crazy boards that have weird military shit on them.

Chris Gammell: And the old guys stuff we were talking about before, too.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. And it all rolls into one with this project, which, move over the Arduino. Here comes the Cosmic Elf. Cosmic Elf. Dearie. Anyway, yeah, normally we wouldn't, we thought, oh, we wouldn't mention this, right? But there are several reasons. Like, it does tie in, right? It's basically a little, um...

Speaker ?: You'd be the judge.

Dave Jones: Okay, yes, you'd be the judge. It fits, does it fit into one of these Altoid tin things? That's what it looks like, yeah. Is that the, right? One of those, I have no idea what an Altoid tin is.

Chris Gammell: It's never made sense to me, personally, because it's like, if you have any... No, it's just like metal. It's like... I don't get it.

Dave Jones: I know, I don't... Everything is going to short out. It's the dumbest...

Chris Gammell: If you catch something wrong.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no. Anyways. Anyway, I don't... Yeah, I never got the Altoid tin. Project craze. I never understood, you know, why. You can buy a project box out there for a dollar. You know, like, what the frig? You know, like, give me a break. Anyway, um... Yeah, it's like, oh, but, you know, it's being resourceful. Well, you weren't resourceful when you built that bloody thing and got your custom PCB made from Oshpark. And, you know, you weren't very resourceful then, were you? No.

Chris Gammell: You're not repurposing old circuit boards from your television, are you? Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Dave Jones: You know, using... You know, making your own crystals and, you know, filing down and, you know, a bit of germanium.

Chris Gammell: You know, like... Kids these days, huh, Dave? Let's keep this catacrystress going.

Dave Jones: Anyway, so this thing is like, oh, yeah, move over the Arduino. We're bringing back the 1976 RCA CDP-1802. And all of our younger audience under 50 are going, what the thing is that? Yeah, I had no idea. Anyway, it's an ancient processor. That, the reason I thought it was interesting is because apparently Intercel, it used to be an RCA device, Intercel still make it. Yep. Apparently. Yep. They still make the 1802. This is unbelievable. This is like Intel still making the 4004. Wait, are they? Or the 8008. Right, well, I don't think so, are they? No. I don't think you can still buy it. I'll check parts I.O.

Chris Gammell: I don't think you can. Sorry. Guess the plug in there.

Dave Jones: And, yeah, but apparently Intercel still make a, like, a military spec, of course, you know, because the only people stupid enough to still use this processor, apart from the person who's doing this project, right, is, you know, is the military aerospace. You can still buy it. It's still on their website, the CDP-1802.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: 8-bit CMOS processor. And they'll still sell it to you for $120 a pop, and that's in volume, of course. No, I found it for less. You know, you have to, like, special order it.

Chris Gammell: But it's all listed as obsolete.

Dave Jones: But not brand new, right? It's surplus.

Chris Gammell: No, it's not surplus. It's just, it's just, well, I don't think it is.

Dave Jones: No, I think it's surplus. Yeah, maybe. I think nobody's going to hold stock of this thing, dude. No, it's surplus. Trust me.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's probably true.

Dave Jones: But anyway, they will sell you in a traditional 40-pin, jewel-in-line, side-braze ceramic package. Yes. You know, they'll still sell you the CDP-1802A.

Chris Gammell: That's crazy.

Dave Jones: Unbelievable. From 1976. It's on their website. Wow. Anyway, I'm just stunned. Anyway, so then. Yeah, look at it.

Chris Gammell: It's actually, it's like, it's 8-bit, 3.2 megahertz, which, I mean, is kind of in line with, like, a 6502, right? Isn't it? Oh, that's scorching. It's like 2 megahertz?

Dave Jones: No, a 6502 was originally 1 megahertz. 1 megahertz, okay.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I've used a 6809, which is running at 2 or 4 megahertz, I think. Right. Right. So this is like high-end, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. This is, yeah, screaming back in the day. Yeah, the RCA.

Chris Gammell: Just think of all the.

Dave Jones: And you used to be able to buy, like, a training board for it. You know, it was like an engineer's training board or something, you know. Anyway, so they're bringing in back this thing where there's eight, well, there's, like, 12 toggle switches on the front of this board and 12, you know, and eight LEDs, and you can actually latch in words. Yeah. Right? You can latch in bytes into this thing. And, you know, just like the old school, you know.

Chris Gammell: Hey, kids, do you like switches? The old school PCs. Do you like entering instructions one switch at a time? Sorry.

Dave Jones: And the shitty thing about having an Altoids team where you flip, I bet you, you cannot sit this thing on a desk and flip these switches. I bet you, a million dollars. You've got to hold it down.

Chris Gammell: It'll just move across the bloody desk.

Dave Jones: You know, yeah, you know, the switches need, you know, 200 newton meters of force of pop, you know, to flick these bloody bastards over. Right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and I don't think you can close the lid either. I think it's just the bottom of an Altoids tent.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no, it's just, yeah. It sits in the bottom. Anyway, it's just, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, what Dave and I were talking about, though, is just like the value, is there value in doing this kind of thing? Like, is it, you know, in learning instruction sets like this? Maybe. I don't know. What do you think, Dave?

Dave Jones: I, no. Not like this? It's going a bit far. No, it's just retro. There's no learning value. Well, you could argue there kind of is if you want to, you know, physically flip. You know, I can remember doing that, you know, physically flipping individual, you know, bites into the processor and watching it, you know, move over to, you know, the different registers and things like that. But, ah, it's just so painful.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I guess from understanding registers, that's important, right? Like, understanding that there is still.

Dave Jones: I guess how it moves over from one register to the next.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there's still transistors in there and they're still, you know, shifting through and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And this is how CPUs still work today, you know. Data moves from one register to the next and, you know, through the pipeline. But now they're heavily, you know, multi-pipeline and all that whiz-bang jazz. Right, right, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, looking at.

Dave Jones: And, I don't know, is there value in it? No. Not really.

Chris Gammell: Oh, Dave puts the kibosh on it.

Dave Jones: Even old school Dave, you know. Well, I mean, like, but you can move a step up.

Chris Gammell: So, like, this is like, you know, this is like a step below doing, like, assembly programming, right? I mean, this is similar instruction set level, but it's just not using a keyboard, right? That's right.

Dave Jones: No, it's, you know. Old keyboards. If you're going to do this, right, if you're going to do this, go the whole hog where you've got a whole panel that simulates the processor. And, you know, instead of just having eight LEDs, you have eight LEDs on every register. So, it, like, pulls out every register. So, you can actually watch the data actually flipping from one register to the next and transferring. You know, we used to have these, you know, back in the day, we used to have these trainers, these CPU trainers, right? And that's what they would do. They would simulate, you know, and show you. You could actually see the data flipping between the A and the B register and, you know, and, yeah, transferring over and stuff like that. Because they'd extract that. But here, you've only got the eight LEDs, you know.

Chris Gammell: So, you think this is more for people that are nostalgic about this kind of thing anyways?

Dave Jones: It's totally nostalgia.

Chris Gammell: And then for that, it seems like, it seems nice. I mean, like, it seems like a cool little processor.

Dave Jones: Yeah, okay, fine. There's a niche market, I'm sure. You know, they'll sell a hundred of them or something. Yep. Anyway, anyway, yeah, all right. You know, it's cool, right? All right. Anyway, you can buy the kit. Seventy-nine bucks. We'll link it in down below. Make up your own mind. Right, of course. Yep. For an extra ten bucks, you can get the cover.

Chris Gammell: Oh. There you go.

Dave Jones: They also sell short-form bare-bones kit. You can just buy the blank boards. If you want to source your own CPU on eBay. Yeah, right, right. You go, oh, yeah, I can get one cheap. Oh, I've got one of those lying in my parts bin. Yeah, I've got an 1802. No worries.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's amazing, too. Like, I mean, it's just crazy because there is so much history now. And just so much, like, you know, it's getting, obviously, over the years, it keeps getting harder and harder to get these vintage parts and stuff like that. But there are communities that are interested in this, right? There's, you know, vintage computer clubs, stuff like that. And then just, like, seeing that technology expand in terms of, like, what's available to people now all the way up, right? I mean, like, hobbyists can route DDR3 signals, right? Yeah, right. And you can buy, like, what's this new, there's, like, two new, so there was these two new parts that just got released, the Blue Gecko, and that's, like, that Gecko microcontroller with a Bluetooth radio on it. And then there's another TI-CC2650, which is now, like, a generic 2.4 gig. Christ. You know, it's just, like, this stuff isn't, you know, it's, like, five bucks, right? I mean, like, well, I don't actually know how much that one is. But, like, you know, roughly, oh, no, this one says, so the new TI part is $3.80 and 1,000 units, you know, like, so probably seven, eight bucks for one of them. It's just, like, it's crazy, you know? Like, so it's a weird spread that we have. And I think it's just about, ultimately, I think that, I was talking to someone about this today. When you're starting out, you need to start at the highest level and then, you know, kind of go top down. You really need to, like, for no other reason, it's not that it's not important to learn the low-level stuff, but the important thing is actually just that you get some quick feedback so that you don't get discouraged when you get to the low-level stuff and you realize how shitty it is. You know, because it's going to be, right? I mean, like, that's just...

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know, it sucks.

Chris Gammell: To be honest, this was feedback I got on getting to Blinky, where he's like, yeah, there's too many steps.

Dave Jones: Right, yeah. That's right. I just want to blink a leg, damn it.

Chris Gammell: And he was totally on point, you know? It's just like, it's tough when there's so many options for other things these days and you're fighting for attention. And we could say, well, you know, people should just grin and bear it and only the strong survive and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, we could say that, but realistically, that's not going to work in the long term because, you know, there's a lot of stuff that needs to get done, you know, and people need to learn this stuff. And even if everyone in the world buys, you know, a module and integrates a module using it just at the software layer, there's still someone that's designing the silicon. There's still someone that's designing the application circuit. There's still someone that's designing the board that has the application circuit on it. You know, like, there's all these different levels that someone's still got to do it. And I don't think that even with the, you know, only the strong survive method, I don't think that actually works. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, goodness.

Chris Gammell: But if people are looking for the strong to survive, of course, they could sign up for Context Electronics. There we go. Nice little plug in there right at the end.

Dave Jones: Nice plug. Well done. And I'd like to plug, I don't know, nothing. I like to do a video blogging shoot. You know, you can watch it if you're not. I don't give a toss. That's good. I like that. Yeah. I sell microcurrents, but I don't advertise them.

Chris Gammell: He's never has them in stock.

Dave Jones: If you're bowing or not. Yeah, I don't have them in stock, so who cares? You're not going to get one anyway.

Chris Gammell: So, you know. Maybe someday. You might have an assistant starting soon. Is that right?

Dave Jones: Yes, yes, yes. A new employee. Well, he's already had a day here where we just, you know, I don't know. Shot the breeze. Shot the breeze and set up things and, yeah, did a few things. Did you guys make a decision yet? Should be started, I think. Decision?

Chris Gammell: TICAD? Yes? No? Yes? No? No.

Dave Jones: Oh, no. We'll probably still use Altium because he's an Altium guy.

Chris Gammell: Oh, which is why you probably picked him in the first place. Oh, no. Oh, no. Okay.

Dave Jones: Had nothing to do with it. No? Nope.

Chris Gammell: Well, cool. Darn. Oh, well. Lost another one, folks.

Dave Jones: Well, I was kind of hoping that, you know, somebody would, you know, I was kind of hoping that they'd be like a KICAD person, you know? So then, oh, okay. Yeah. That's the decision made, you know? Look, let's just force a move to KICAD, you know? Okay.

Chris Gammell: Well.

Dave Jones: But no, no, he's an Altium guy, so I don't know.

Chris Gammell: You should just force him and be like, I'm your employer now, man. So, sorry. It's been real.

Dave Jones: Anyway, we'll see. Altium still haven't released their low-cost version. It's just bullshit. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, actually, we should mention that, too. There is a review of the mid-cost version, Circuit Studio.

Dave Jones: Yes, which I was very surprised, because I thought they hadn't actually released it yet. Maybe I'm just behind the times.

Chris Gammell: I think this might be an aval copy, but it's Robert Fedevel, who does a course on Altium. Anyway. Yeah. It's great. Yep. Check that out. We'll link it in. Definitely. All right, man. Well, I should go, you know, be in California more. I'm going to go outside and enjoy the weather that does not exist in Cleveland. Right.

Dave Jones: Apparently, like, I've had complaints that my microcurrents aren't getting to some people in the U.S., and I phoned up Australia Post yesterday. I had to actually talk to a real human to actually try and get to the bottom of this, because their online reporting system's failed. So, you know, Australia Post sucks ass. And they'll tell me, yeah, like, a lot of the places, you know, JFK Airport is backlogged, and, you know, with all mail and everything, everyone's snowed in everywhere, and, yeah, apparently it's a, you know, huge deal. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So, sorry for those who haven't got it yet, but, yeah, it's not my fault.

Chris Gammell: It's Mother Nature. Yep. Yeah. It's Cleveland's fault. Oh, boy. All right, man. Cool. Well, we'll talk to you next week. Bye. Bye.

Speaker ?: Bye. Bye. Thank you.