Michael Chaney wrote: > My younger son is at Alabama working on an EE degree (you may remember him > as a baby 20 years ago when the wife and kids showed up to a meeting).
Yeah, I believe he unseated Brandon as "Youngest NLUG Member" at the time. :-) -J'n On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 1:12 PM 'Michael Chaney' via NLUG <[email protected]> wrote: > > My younger son is at Alabama working on an EE degree (you may remember him as > a baby 20 years ago when the wife and kids showed up to a meeting). Last > semester he had a class on microcontrollers, and they specifically used PIC > series microcontrollers. He (and I) bought this evaluation package that > comes with four different microcontrollers: > > https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/microchip-technology/DM330013-2/2802029?s=N4IgTCBcDaILYEsDGAnA9gZwC7INYAIEEQBdAXyA > > They're interesting because the package contains the CPU along with some > amount of RAM and a little bit of flash. All of the external pins on the > package are IO pins, except for the required power and clock pins. The IO > pins are remappable and come in a couple of flavors - some can do analog and > pretty much all can be digital. They have a couple of built in UARTs. The > whole thing is amazing. > > For the 16-bit versions the RAM tends to be a few K, program size is 32-128K > or so. It's a Harvard architecture where the program space and data space > are separated, so the program reads from flash. With that much memory > loading in libraries is iffy at best. I tend to write simple code to handle > cases that a library function would normally handle. It's the opposite of > modern programming where we go find a "module" or whatever to handle every > little task. > > Their programs are simple. The big one at the end was a clock with a few > buttons for setting the time and alarm. > > I've done hardware interfacing like this on an R-Pi, but there's something > just very different when doing it on a simple 16-bit RISCy cpu with limited > everything. I had to go all out because they were still doing some remote > learning and the kids weren't really getting it. > > I also have an arduino which is awesome, but someone has written code for > pretty much everything already and I'm not convinced that's the way for kids > to learn. It's a great way to get them involved, but the stuff I've seen is > the equivalent of putting together legos. If you learn it's a side-effect. > Of course, you can still write all your own code and all that - just have to > convince kids to do that if they want to learn. > > Anyway, it was interesting getting back to the basics. And kind of cathartic > to actually care about data and program space usage. > > On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 8:52 AM Jack Coats <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Welcome to 'data creep'. There was the day that we counted bytes of code in >> a program or data, now we just think in megabytes. >> >> IMHO, as we have more capability, we use it, sometimes squander it. >> >> One of my history examples, I came up with a cost analysis of having >> datacenters and terminals being cheaper than the gen1 (or 2) PCs on >> everyone's desk at the major company where I was working. My boss told me >> to trash the study because we were going to use desktops no matter what the >> facts were. ... Such is life. >> >> Since then the costs have changed and individual computers are now >> cheaper. Mainframes still have their place in real production (huge amounts >> of I/O or certain problems in engineering that can't be easily functionally >> decomposed for multiple small processors, etc, but their value for the more >> common efforts are dwindling as smaller/distributed machines make more sense >> on a case by case basis. >> >> Just my thoughts. ... I'm retired, so my opinion doesn't matter much to >> anyone but me. <<grin>> >> >> >> On Wed, May 26, 2021 at 7:42 PM Andrew Farnsworth <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> Does anyone else remember when the trial size storage offered by companies >>> like google, backblaze, etc was actually useful? Today it is still around >>> the same 10 Gb size, but that is much less useful today than it was 20 >>> years ago :-). Back then, it was HUGE. Today it is so small I'm not even >>> willing to give it a trial as my personal NAS has 3 orders of magnitude >>> more storage. 10 Gb would let me store one small VM virtual drive. >>> >>> More as it happens... >>> >>> Andy F >>> >>> >>> -- >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "NLUG" group. >>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected] >>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>> [email protected] >>> For more options, visit this group at >>> http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en >>> >>> --- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "NLUG" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >>> email to [email protected]. >>> To view this discussion on the web visit >>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/CAB%2B-c-q4SL9k7mqs4AWPQ5dyVYO1vWzAYotvv19Nuzci5DfHTQ%40mail.gmail.com. >> >> >> >> -- >> ><> ... Jack >> >> If you are not paying for something, you are not a consumer, you are the >> product. - Chamath Palihapitiya >> >> "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." - >> Ben Franklin >> >> -- >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "NLUG" group. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected] >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> [email protected] >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en >> >> --- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "NLUG" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/CAFq0N1z%3D-eriAGT29LSZW3xaAaU2aCicSKxwtkMSPWLTO0WGVw%40mail.gmail.com. > > > > -- > Michael Darrin Chaney, Sr. > [email protected] > http://www.michaelchaney.com/ > > -- > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "NLUG" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "NLUG" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/CAAtfUtEON95u6oA833Aqz_dgssPtgXcXXxE6-yANLuTT%2BcwHAQ%40mail.gmail.com. -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/CAEN3aJ62X5FBZ6PK8C8eY_ngRnGY2V8HHH9fyFOGrVrirj%3DrkQ%40mail.gmail.com.
