Open Hardware: RISC-V, POWER, Arma, and SparkFun
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The Register UK ☛ India’s homebrew RISC-V CPU debuts in cheap dev board
The Aries 3.0 board includes 256KB of SRAM, three UART ports, four serial peripheral interface ports, a trio of 32-bit timers, and two megabytes of flash memory.
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Talospace ☛ Firefox 123 on POWER
Finally getting back towards something approaching current. Firefox 123 is out, adding platform improvements, off-main-thread canvas and the ability to report problematic sites. Or, I dunno, sites that work just fine but claim they don't, like PG&E, the soulless natural monopolist Abilisks of northern California. No particular reason. The other reported improvement was PGO optimization improvements on Apple silicon Macs and Android. How cute! Meanwhile, our own PGO-LTO patch got simpler and I was able to drop the other changes we needed for Python 3.12 on Fedora 39, which now builds with this smaller PGO-LTO patch and .mozconfigs from Firefox 122. Some of you reported crashes on Fx122 but I haven't observed any with that release or this one built from source. Fingers crossed.
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Ken Shirriff ☛ The first microcomputer: The transfluxor-powered Arma Micro Computer from 1962
What would you say is the first microcomputer? The Apple I from 1976? The Altair 8800 from 1974? Perhaps the lesser-known Micral N (1973) or Q1 (1972)? How about the Arma Micro Computer from way back in 1962. The Arma Micro Computer was a compact 20-pound transistorized computer, designed for applications in space such as inertial or celestial navigation, steering, radar, or engine control.
Obviously, the Arma Micro Computer is not a microcomputer according to modern definitions, since its processor was made from discrete components. But it's an interesting computer in many ways. First, it is an example of the aerospace computers of the 1960s, advanced systems that are now almost entirely forgotten. People think of 1960s computers as room-filling mainframes, but there was a whole separate world of cutting-edge miniaturized aerospace computers. (Taking up just 0.4 cubic feet, the Arma Micro Computer was smaller than an Apple II.) Second, the Arma Micro Computer used strange components such as transfluxors and had an unusual 22-bit serial architecture. Finally, the Arma Micro Computer evolved into a series of computers used on Navy ships and submarines, the E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning plane, the Concorde, and even Air Force One.
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SparkFun Electronics ☛ 2024-02-16 [Older] What's the Buzz With Qwiic
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SparkFun Electronics ☛ 2024-02-21 [Older] The Power of Networking at CES
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SparkFun Electronics ☛ 2024-02-22 [Older] Raising your Buzzer Projects to the Next Level