PymbleSoftware Pty Ltd was represented at the Canberra Computer Markets
February 7, 2010
October 25, 2009
The R2D2 Project
In these series of posts I outline the process of building an R2D2 at a scale close to the one original built for the first episode of the Star Wars saga,
You tape the thin layers of plastic down before gluing them down. Multiple layers of thin plastic are about as strong as a thicker layer.
The plastic is glued with something called Weldon. Its mostly MethylChloride and some equally evil and highly toxic chemicals.
You do tend to end up with bits of plastic left over.
No I don’t tend to use O2s as door stops that one had just been moved out of the way of something else at the time.
IT Business strategy.
In this series of posts I present my view on the current state the IT industry and brilliant ideas, plans and missteps in the media.
VME bus programming.
The VME bus is an old stalwart of military and aerospace applications. Coincidentally the edition of Dr Dobbs Journal, containing my BeRays ray tracer article also had an article on NASAs Mars rover and the MIL-STD-1553 bus and was published at the same time I was working on MIL-STD-1553 on a VME rack.
In these blog entries, I revisit and investigate the VME bus on SGI systems.
The VIA PCI device driver for IRIX.
I have looked at the Linux source code for the VIA 6212 for inspiration and verified that the card does in fact work under Linux/MIPS. You can’t of course lift the Linux or FreeBSD device driver directly but they can be sources of inspiration when you find something in your code not working and examine other source and ask “Why did they do it that way?”.
In these blog entries I will revisit some basic IRIX PCI device driver programming and extend the driver all the way up to USB classes and user space application programs to exercise the driver.
The IRIX (partial) USB implementation stops at the UHCI implementation. Developing a new driver that by-passes the current implementation, the driver can be extended to include EHCI and the whole range of USB class drivers.
October 24, 2009
Desoldering batteries from motherboards day.
The Indigo and the two Amiga 4000s need time of day batteries replaced. I will update this with pictures and some guides as to how it is done.
October 21, 2009
Lighting killed the Dialogic D41.
A lightening strike took out the old system, that used to prompt for departments, play live information from the internet, email recorded voicemail, etc.
Rebuilding a new system gives us a chance to come up with new ideas, transfer calls through skype, take more live feeds off the internet, etc..
