Fact is, I have reason to believe these guys are solid. Here is a photo of the practice spot with band vehicles parked in front. In a town where I’ve had guitarists show up late from riding public transit, I'm okay with vehicles that could individually haul the entire band in a pinch. Did I mention the demo disks just now? Yes, so let me add a mite more.So, how did the band practice go? We are more than ready. I’m hesitant over the amount of gear that has to be moved before we can play. But four people chop that down to size. I’m just recalling my last band or two where I wound up owning 99% of the equipment. My mates were jerks, as in, it’s your equipment so you move it. The fact they sang and played through it didn’t enter their equations. But that was then.
At this point I stopped at Buddy’s to see the Sunday Karaoke in time to see the beginning numbers. The show was, no reflection on the host, second rate. The only spark in the audience was my “Spiders & Snakes”. The rest [of the show] was so bad, I left. How bad was it? So bad I think some of the regulars were asking for their money back.
Remember the VFW on Dixie west? I have not been there in years. Call me surprised when I walked in to find half the place half full of my old bingo crowd. The cheering was my best endorsement. The manager saw the whole thing. When I finally got out a half-hour later, she came by to assure me the disk was on her desk. My fingers are crossed. That place is not only just around the corner, we could pack it, and I’ve already had half that crowd dancing in the aisles to my bass playing alone. Many a time we had to stop the bingo. No pun intended but stay tuned.
ADDENDUM
A relaxing morning studying more electronics. The ROM project ramped things up another notch. Success is a great motivator, I say with a spring in my step absent but a week back. Contrary to predictions, I did not find a lot of material on ROM-building afterward [as usually happens once you do all the work yourself]. There is no guidance on what to do next. Some may say now build RAM, but they know not what they say. In fact, here’s a few of the considerations that are less than made clear by the teachers.
Memory needs to start from a known state, which means you must learn or devise a way to “clear” the memory before you start. Each piece of memory stores one bit, so you will need eight of them to store a byte. How are eight cleared? All at once? Sequentially? You need to decide parallel or serial and connect the bits to match. You’ll need some method of counting off to eight and stopping. That means clocking, which we have been unable to find any helpful instructions. Clocking books describe the internal workings and leave you stranded.
I got to thinking how the ROM is a grid with diodes at intersections where I want electricity to flow. There is another component that could replace the diode and work the same. The transistor. Only, the transistor could be turned off and on. Is this how programmable ROM is made? Or is that a secret, too? Anyway, here is what I’m thinking.
If I had a single such ROM circuit, then I could connect it to any number of buttons. (On the ROM project, I required ten “circuits” to match ten numerals.) If pressing the button activated the correct transistors, one byte of ROM could represent 256 different codes. I could not possibly be the first person to think of this, but the important thing is I did think of it independently. I had to. Because it is another example of a topic puzzlingly never mentioned in the teaching books.
Now might be a good time to start taking my little robot club more seriously.
