So look closely at the pictures. As far as I know I am the first and only person who built ROM like this. I got the idea from an obscure diagram on page 615 of an even more obscure book written forty years ago. And even then, it was an article describing how not to do something else. Now I know how to build ROM and I’m also reasonably certain nobody has built it this way before. At least not since 1971. Why? Because ROM is so cheap who would bother even if they knew how.If you examine these photos, you can see the development of the idea with my notebook always handy. I have to determine the shape of the display, that’s the letter 8 you see outlined several ways. Then a test to see which group of three stays brightest and but does not get brighter if one of the group burns out.
Then you see me laying out the grid. I was originally going to use regular diodes, then I thought about diodes I could move around (too complicated), then finally LEDs. Good move. I made so many mistakes I would have been swamped if I didn’t have the lights as feedback.
A year ago I complained there was nothing new in the way of projects. What’s out there was either child’s play or quantum physics, with nothing in between. Seen that way, this project has merit. This is hardly for the novice, it is not a toy, it can be built in nine hours, it uses easily available parts. And it would, in kit form, make an excellent science fair project.
Oh no, did I just give away the brainstorm of the decade? Nope. For every ten thousand that read this, one will think to copy it. And he’ll get about a fraction of the way through the design stage, throw up his arms, and walk away. On the other hand, I’m thinking, this thing has potential. But first let me get the thing working.
Before I leave this topic, let me answer the obvious question why I didn’t just buy some ROM. That’s easy. Doing that would have taught me nothing. Another consideration is that as electronics progresses, fewer and fewer people remain who can wire anything up from scratch. That’s not my intention (to do everything from scratch), but consider what would happen if they dropped the bomb tomorrow. If only one person remained alive who understood ROM, he’d soon be the new king. I learned an awful lot today.
ADDENDUM
Here is the blog as it was originally written.
Hey JP, you are lucky I wasn’t pounding on your door at 6:00 AM this morning. That will probably be tomorrow. And if you’d read the blog, JP, you’d be expecting me. Instead, it is a big bingo breakfast at a location as yet undetermined. But Senor Café is on the short list. I got sidetracked trying to find a good movie amongst all the trash that’s out there. Here’s yet another movie with President Morgan Freeman being kidnapped while they search the studio lot for a disgraced former Marine to save him. In the end, I stayed home.
At noon JP called. The house is sold, that source of friction, is finally gone. But for reasons unknown they need to send a crane over there to remove some sort of tank first. Let me think, closing time is 25 to 30 days. That’s when he’ll get that new truck the lack of which just caused him to miss out on the trip of the year, so far.
No pix, but the place a block south of here went up in flames. I’m fully insured and all vitals are backed up. Others nearby should take note. It shot up in minutes. The fire department is less than a mile away but it was over before they got down the ramp. There will be an investigation as it was an abandoned office vacant since before I was in the area. The neighborhood still smells of burning shingles.
That was on my way to Dunkin. I must find a better Sunday joint. That one is full of old coots, you know, the ones who’ve been trying to quit smoking for 30 years but are as successful at that as they are in life. People also bring their screaming brats in, to help everyone else stay fully awake, I imagine their thinking goes. What the hell? The fire flared up again and there go the fire trucks. Anyway, I’m in a fine mood from working on the motorcycles a couple hours last afternoon. I sunburned my shoulder blades.
While sketching some circuitry, I watched (as I often do) a documentary with a most interesting perspective. It concerns the role of Britain in the horrible situation stretching from early slavery to a few years ago. Called 1932, A True History of the United States, it spells out how English imperial interests was in direct opposition to the American way. If you are curious who was behind the assassinations of Lincoln and McKinley, you might want to watch this video.
It presents almost every problem in the world as a result of British manipulations. We know they caused the World Wars to destroy other countries as competition and wanted to rule the whole planet. But here’s two new concepts that struck me. One, the system the British called “Free Trade”. It meant they grabbed slaves from Africa to sell to the southern plantations to produce cheap cotton which they shipped to England to be manufactured by poor people toiling in the mills so they could trade it to India in return for heroin which they took by gunboat to push in China.
Two, and this made sudden sense to me because I’d never thought about it, but the British had a huge navy because of Free Trade. They only developed coastal towns and left the interior of continents to the wild. And whenever any country began to build away from the seacoasts, Britain quickly maneuvered them into a war of some kind. When Germany began to industrialize, when Russia built the trans-Siberian, when America moved inland, next thing you know, somebody gets invaded.
The legacy remains, I think. The interior of Africa, Australia, and Canada show this pattern. This video is very critical of the on-going British interference in international politics for their own gain. Strange, isn’t it, that when one country behaves like that, it forces all others to do so as well. One supposes that’s what made England the powerhouse it is today.
As a comment to those who post videos, please do your damn homework. If a video is not available because of copyright infringement, remove it from your index. What a waste of time to navigate to the video only to click the run button and get your stupid notice at that point. Clean up your site or you are a douchebag.
