diy solar

diy solar

Developing Software

Yeah, I do. Clock cycle counting, working out undocumented instructions from how the PLA was structured. They might seem incredibly limited by today's standards but there was still an awful lot to them. The Z80 with its bonanza of registers and complex instruction set, the 6502 with no general purpose registers but page 0 addressing modes meant you could use that effectively as registers but at a clock cycle penalty compared to the Z80. All a lot of fun exploring.

Unless I'm tinkering with microcontrollers machine code is largely out of the question with the complexity of today's CPUs and OSes.
 
gnubie said:
Unless I'm tinkering with microcontrollers machine code is largely out of the question with the complexity of today's CPUs and OSes.
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Yeah, it's in the past for me. Unlikely I'll ever do machine code again. For me, though, it was about hands on experience learning how the computer worked. That became the foundation for everything else going forward. You tackle 1s and 0s, and you'll always understand the limitations of AI.

One thing I did, because my macros in dBase II on CP/M weren't working, is create my own macros by intercepting Int 16h. It worked great! I later rewrote in C on x86 where they introduced terminate and stay resident (TSR), which launched all kinds of applications like Superkey.

Little did I realize at the time that I might of created the world's first key logger. lol

To demo, I'd tell friends to type the word "this"... and they'd look and see "that". Didn't matter what program they typed it in since my program became part of the OS, and was loaded on boot. I had the program monitor the buffer and do substitution on matches, adding backspaces in this case.

My program also extended the size of the keyboard buffer. Remember in DOS on x86 machines people would lock up their computers by filling up the 16 character default buffer by typing faster than the software could consume? Mine extended it to over 200 characters.

That was fun.

Also got pretty far but never completed a computer chess game with machine code on the Z80.
 
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I wrote a program for the TRS-80 MI/III that did a similar thing. It'd use the top of memory pointer that all the DOSes for those computers provided to shift itself to the top of RAM then set the pointer to below it. Key combinations would stuff strings into the DOS keyboard read routine and pop up a menu where you could set the strings. It only worked for programs that actually used the keyboard read routine. A lot of stuff on those computers scanned the keyboard memory map themselves. All in less than 500 bytes, including the string space.

I did a huge amount of mods to the MIII I had. 10MHz CPU (overclocked Z80H), 128k DRAM, battery backed SRAM+modded ROMs so it could be used as a boot device and more.
 
gotta stop reading this thread... too many flashbacks LOL... Takes me way too far back... TSR's and Keyboard stuffing.... When I ran a dialup BBS (Fidonet & SLBBS {Searchlight} ) we had to do so many little tricks and use DeskView (if mem serves) to switch / task swap with threading... ohhh what a joy those days were... full height 5.25" Maxtor 80-MB MFM drives sellng for $800 when a meg of DRAM was $55 (on sale cheap)… ugh....
 
gnubie said:
I wrote a program for the TRS-80 MI/III that did a similar thing.
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LOL you went there!!!!!! OK... here it goes...

I had a Trash-80 Model I! It came with an assembler and a book that no human could understand. More of a reference than a how-to.

So I later learned machine code on the TS1000 with a book that, as I mentioned earlier, was the most nostalgic book I own (and cannot find,) barring the Bible.

Then I came back to the TRS-80 and had no problem using the assembler. But, I can't remember what I wrote in ASS on that computer. I do remember the BASIC on that machine better, and the loud clunking of the huge 5.25" floppy drives (maybe 18"+ long?), and being banned from printing on my dot matrix at night by my parents. lol

I don't remember enough details to remember if I even tried to intercept the keyboard like you did on it. But, I do remember 80x24 video being in RAM... 1,920 bytes, and that being very easy to manipulate.
 
Steve_S said:
When I ran a dialup BBS (Fidonet & SLBBS {Searchlight} )
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Fidonet!!!! I year doesn't go by, Steve, where I don't make a Fidonet joke. Only took 4 days to get an email (message) from Ohio to California, but no postage!

To me, Fidonet was the true conceptual birth of the Internet, the beginning of inevitable user-driven connectivity.

Did you run a MUD, too?
 
I built a dashboard and control panel for my system using Node-Red, InfluxDB and Grafana. it all runs on a RPi

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L-P-G said:
I built a dashboard and control panel for my system using Node-Red, InfluxDB and Grafana. it all runs on a RPi

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1572522704129.png
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Wow! Very nice! Exactly what I want to do.

Did you open source it? Do you have a BOM for the hardware with sensors and relays?

Great selection in stack! I recently created my first Node API server with Express/TypeScript (not solar or hardware related). I love CrateDB. It is very similar to InfluxDB in its Niche, except it doesn't have a driver for Node. I went with it because it was a good migration for my Java based JDBC usage. But, now that I'm committed to Node, I'll have to look at Influx.

Grafana looks like a great UI platform for what you built. Probably easier to learn than what I use... Angular.
 
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I think I have the first edition of the Kernighan and Ritchie "Learning C" book, or whatever the title was. I had no idea who the authors were, but I loved the learning style of this book. Little did I know but my C programming class at uni required me to actually know C before I took the class. So I used that book to learn C in 6 days. What was that about?

Good ole plain C.

The first computer I owned was a VIC-20 with 3.5kb of usable RAM.
 
bulrush said:
I think I have the first edition of the Kernighan and Ritchie "Learning C" book, or whatever the title was. I had no idea who the authors were, but I loved the learning style of this book. Little did I know but my C programming class at uni required me to actually know C before I took the class. So I used that book to learn C in 6 days. What was that about?

Good ole plain C.

The first computer I owned was a VIC-20 with 3.5kb of usable RAM.
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C and C++ were my favorite languages for nearly 20 years. Nothing but positive memories of them. The simplicity of C, creating a simple text file, compiling into a standalone executable, then running from anywhere.. bash, batch or system call, with its stdin and stdout, just made it the most useful language ever.
 
erik.calco said:
@bulrush @Bob142 how long did it take before you two bought (or pleaded parents for) the 32KB RAM expansion on the VIC-20?
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I only remember the 16kb expansion. I got it after having the VIC-20 for about 2 years. I also had a little color plotter that used 6" wide roll tape. Color printing back then was a really big deal. I think the roll tape was 40 columns wide so I even printed my programs on it in small print.
 
for the record, i do not consider myself a professional. there are plenty of smarter people in this field than i am!

with that being said.. i started back in 1980, with BASIC, then C, then Turbo Pascal 3.0 through Delphi 6/7 and now XE7. I can't afford the latest since i can't stay long enough on a job these days. life is tougher than ever today.

i write code for hobby mostly, but i also do some on the job site. i also do excel and database as well. when building database ideas, i prefer the IDE approach, so i use ms access. at least this way i can work out the database structure and logic before transferring and debugging and fine-tuning the database portions over to the stand-alone Delphi project app for either windows (mdb) or android (sqlite). i also i like to code small utility apps that can aid me streamline in-between programs and things.

my current projects are search tools. i build small search tools originating from text. usually from text snipped from the web or on the job site. i am always trying to find something in the text and the old clunky notpad search/replace is old inefficient. so i coded a small utility that takes text and allows me to quickly find segments of text, and so on.

another project i recently started is a solar calculator, and if it becomes useful enough, will eventually post it here if allowed.

i spend most of my time coding in delphi and databases, and combining the two. my common tools are: excel, notepad, and the utility apps i mentioned. i am always on the web searching and learning, and so i am always finding a need to build a database from the things that i snip if useful, and then porting into a stand-alone app later.
 
oh, i just wanted to mention that i will be starting another project using a hand barcode scanner. something i've been meaning to get into in a Delphi programming project. i am ordering this guy https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LE5VV1C device. i want to build my own personal inventory, for my grocery shopping (where i scan the products and it shows the barcode and description, price, etc.) and home inventory of everything i own, and other fun projects as I think of them. i have other ideas for this barcode. but you need to have the code 128 and code 39 fonts on your system for it to work properly. anyway. i can't wait until it arrives ! ? and ?
 
JohnLM said:
oh, i just wanted to mention that i will be starting another project using a hand barcode scanner. something i've been meaning to get into in a Delphi programming project. i am ordering this guy https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LE5VV1C device. i want to build my own personal inventory, for my grocery shopping (where i scan the products and it shows the barcode and description, price, etc.) and home inventory of everything i own, and other fun projects as I think of them. i have other ideas for this barcode. but you need to have the code 128 and code 39 fonts on your system for it to work properly. anyway. i can't wait until it arrives ! ? and ?
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I had a college intern whip up a mobile bar scanning app for us using Cordova and Android. It just used phone camera. The skills are HTML/JavaScript/CSS. This was for an inventory application.

I love Cordova. When a bluetooth light manufacturer quit supporting their Android app, and it became useless, found a simple Cordova version. Installed it and have been controlling my lights with it ever since.
 
@erik.calco: i know you can use your phones/androids camera as a scanner, but I always wanted a handheld barcode scanner and write custom software for it. and for this project, i do need a plugin barcode scanner. and thanks for your interest in my hobbies (y)
 
i'm happy to report that i just received my barcode scanner. i mean. it feels like i only ordered it yesterday, that it arrived so quickly. they gave me 12/4 to 12/9 date. but here it is. i'm so happy! ? ? (y)
 
erik.calco said:
Please please share photo! That is super cool. Osborne I had CP/M and the Z80, though used 8080 assembler.

I have nothing left but memories of Ozzy; but only because floppy disks can't hold magnetivity forever. Otherwise, the Osborne I could easily out live us.
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I remember the z80
 
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