One year ago today: May 1, 2018, another 150 feet.
Five years ago today: May 1, 2014, 11,775 miles.
Nine years ago today: May 1, 2010, memories of Barbados.
Random years ago today: May 1, 2008, RIP Roberto.
Today, other than finding a new barber who is keen on video editing, we are going to have another wee chat about computers and electronics. It’s overdue and something has come along that perked up my interest. Programmable arrays are here, and you can buy them off the shelf like an Arduino. It’s time to take a look at these gadgets, because within the year, these will be taking a look at you. A good start is a peek at my home-made ROM device of 2013. This contraption, being a Robot Club project, is very well documented and I could, if you’d like, bore you with every detail. After all, I built it myself. Was it Leonard Bernstein who said to finish a project you need two things. 1) an idea, and 2) not enough time.
Who remembers this device? I won’t link back to the drawn-out development process, but I’ll look up the specs because, built to club standards, these tend to be fairly rugged and will accept a spread of power supplies. The object in focus is the “array” of LEDs in the center of the picture. To the left, I’m pressing a key on the input device, looking for output on the large “8” on the right. The unit is dead and covered in dust, but you get this view as is because this is the only such home-made ROM most people have ever seen. The working part is that array.
What is the next big thing? That’s a personal question in some ways, I have that curiosity of who will be the world’s first instant billionaire plus I hope it will be via a microcomputer invention. It was around ten years ago I developed an interest in such things, but strictly as a hobby. I wanted to have an understanding because these days I’ve seen new trends get forced down people’s throats just as often as by choice. I’ve been around long enough to know even the best computer usages were not entirely welcomed. The IoT or Internet of things is definitely going to be shoved on people.
Things are not that bad for now, but next time you are in an appliance store, take a look at the newer models of, say, refrigerators. Appliances seem to be the first household target for embedding network circuitry. What caught my eye is these units cannot be fully activated without going on-line. It’s not as if you could flip a disable switch and have a fully functional fridge like your old one. True, only some features need to be activated on-line, but it’s a clear message that full compliance “or else” is coming down the pike. You will be assimilated. Your own house may one day soon be used against you. Don’t pay your cable bill, and your toilet won’t flush, as a gory example.
And unless you can read code, you will have no idea what your appliances are really doing. But Alexa, Chrome, and cell phone tracking should give you a head’s up. Okay, budding authors, time for a horror story on a house taken over by malicious equipment. You are the bank manager, locked inside your own house, the phones won’t work, the food is sealed in your cupboards, until you pay the ransom. That’s just your millennial-grade plot, waiting for some real author to use his imagination.
Now years ago, I produced my own ROM that would display numbers. This was a major project for me. I spent some time pondering how the diodes could be replaced by transistors (or some type of controllable switch) to produce RAM, but I’d also thought of how simple junctions could be replaced by array gates. I didn’t pursue it because somebody had already done something very similar. They are called computer core chips, you know, the Intel and AMT processors.
Similar, however, is not the same as identical. There is a new type of device appearing on the market, which I first noticed around a year ago. It is called a Field Programmable Array by many though I don’t know if that has become the colloquial term. It’s the same as my ROM turned into RAM, but instead of mere junctions being controlled, arrangements of those junctions called gates are what is programmable. What follows is my amateur description of what goes on with that. Your standard gates are like AND, NOR, and XOR, small groups of which are “burned” into gates, the only one of which I’ve followed is the half- and full-adder. This gate can add binary numbers and know if there is a “carry:.
Inside your CPU are millions of these gates, burned at the factory. They are permanent. If you want a special task performed, you buy a specially configured chip, or add a peripheral card. The most common, I guess, are gaming cards and math co-processors. But, what happens when a chip comes out where, instead of rigidly following coded instructions, the gates themselves could be configured to a particular task? That is my take on Field Programmable Arrays, because they are programmed “in the field”. I welcome these, but they are potentially very dangerous in the wrong hands. And that, computer history tells us, is exactly where these things wind up.
Marlon Brando’s old house.
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Yes, I’m guessing because electronics is a latecomer in my life. Should I be predicting anything? Why not? When I’m right, I’m very right, when I’m wrong it’s usually on the minor details. The biggest advantage I see [to programmable arrays] is that it breaks the monopoly of the C+ programmers. Their asinine brand of coding doesn’t work on field arrays, rather, you actually have to know your stuff. That involves thinking, not the strong point of C+ coders. No more “just make it work” coding which more than often turns out to be “just make it look like it works” garbage. That alone would re-revolutionize the entire approach to computer code, but expect entrenched opposition. And watch for bastardized hybrid units that try to keep these “new farts” employed, you know, History 101.
The chips are beginner’s models for now, but they are poised to do a number on the entire field of electronics, comparable to how digital knocked the stuffing out of analog. These chips have untold potential to operate in parallel or in tandem, although the instructions to do so are so mind-boggling it may require A.I. to generate the commands. A reminder to my readers that what you see and hear about A.I. nowadays is not real artificial intelligence (more like a joke instead) but it is already outperforming the majority of humans at assigned tasks.
What I foresee instead of complete “computers” based on programmable arrays is a type of driver that conforms the chip for you as you progress. These would be downloaded or be sold as a package similar to device drivers in current use, but making the CPU just another device. As you work along, the CPU automatically configures to best accomplish your task. This would be an ideal application for real A.I. as it exists, if any use can be found for it in the real world without massive programming effort. Watch those highly-charged sentences of mine if only because they are so susceptible to missing a word by my detractors.
Take a look at the picture showing the array enlarged for clarity. The “thinking” part was the arrangement of those red LEDs. Ordinary diodes would have worked, but I opted for light-emitting so it could be seen which are in operation. The tendency is to “read” the diodes left to right, but the logic is the 7 wires you can’t see underneath the circuitboard. A keypress on the right activates a corresponding diode on the left, which is read on the giant “8” not shown in this portrait. Where my interest in Field Programmable Arrays arises is from the construction of this panel. I could have used transistors instead of these diodes, but that both solved and caused problems.
It caused the problem of when power was lost to the transistors, you lost the configuration. Because this is ROM and transistors would make it into RAM. But the problem solved is that instead of requiring 10 sets of horizontal diodes, one would be fine. Just activate the matching transistors. But in 2013, I had not the skill to program the Arduino to control those transistors. And if I did, there would be a little red LED at every juncture on the board, and the unit would be far more capable. It is logical why I stopped at what you see here.
Nevertheless, it is not lost that I had touched on Field Programming, although lugging along the equipment to program the Arduino isn’t exactly everybody’s cup of tea. The next logical step is animation, but cheap devices on the market have been plentiful for years. There is a form of programming already in use, the old EEPROM units. (Electronically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory), but they involve exposing the core chip to an ultraviolet mean, which most of us don’t really have handy.
One other aspect I’ll show you if I can find the board in the shed is a similar project but 1,000 times more complicated. It’s a timer that changes the numbers automatically and counts up to 1,000,000 all without, repeat without, the use of any integrated circuits. The relevance here is that you will see an appalling amount of wiring on the breadboard. I used half of the club’s available lead wire at the time. Well, field programming would be like having a breadboard where every connection could be made in software, eliminating all the wiring. That would be something.
ADDENDUM
Long-term readers may recognize this as my ultimate Science Project, the unit developed for Hacktronics just before they went belly-up. The design is three stages, and they are evident. The classic input-processing-output is left to right (see top photo). Each component was to be built by a team of two students, plus an optional gofer boy. The trickiest part was the giant “8”, which has to be wired with a minimum of 22 tiny wires, of which one has to be “3D”. If you look closely, you see how I had to place the resistors inside the 8 or face even more difficulty.
’ve found the biggest obstacle in life is usually people. Even taking these pictures was a challenge. I needed help to push the buttons while I operated the camera, so this was up at the Fubar. We are at the far end of the room, as distant as you can get from the pool tables. Yet, every time we tried to act out this video, some local drunk found a reason to walk over and lean between the invention and the camera. Hey, this is a saloon, not the damn science museum, you two. Um, that’s why guys like them get to play pool all night, nomsayn?]
If I recall (it’s coming back to me), the array used 49 diodes, but I consumed over 300 to make the unit work. They were mostly burned out, cut wrong, broken leads, or simply failed. That should give you an impression of what was involved, and why I miss my hobby so much. Just writing this account, with knowledge that field programming has arrived, already has me thinking how relatively easy it would be to make a few changes to what I have here to produce a poor-man’s programmable array.
But I have a guest bedroom I didn’t work on today, already.
