| kristianpaul | ha same ben issue with macs http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/528112/9773efa029df260d/ | 01:19 |
|---|---|---|
| e2580 | Only a few days left to order an open source hardware encrypted storage device on indiegogo www.indiegogo.com/CryptX2 check it out | 02:14 |
| wpwrak | hmm, not going too well ... | 02:21 |
| wolfspraul | I found this nice project reading through the recent llvm dev meeting... http://llvm.org/devmtg/2012-11/ | 02:23 |
| wolfspraul | it's called Shang HLS http://llvm.org/devmtg/2012-11/Hongbin-Generating.pdf | 02:24 |
| wolfspraul | sources are here https://github.com/OpenEDA/Shang/blob/master/README.md | 02:24 |
| wolfspraul | university of illinois open-source license, reading... | 02:25 |
| wolfspraul | always those licenses :-) | 02:26 |
| wpwrak | human stupidity may be incurable :) | 02:26 |
| wolfspraul | ah it's the same as the llvm license, bsd-like | 02:27 |
| wolfspraul | alright then | 02:27 |
| wolfspraul | at some point something like that shang (or c-to-verilog or legup) may be useful to me as a higher-layer to feed fpgatools | 02:27 |
| wpwrak | looks very interesting, yes | 02:27 |
| wpwrak | bring down another barrier of entry | 02:28 |
| wolfspraul | I will continue to focus on the bits, and access all the features in the chip | 02:31 |
| wolfspraul | but then I obviously need to plug something in above | 02:31 |
| wpwrak | yup. a nice translator from a popular language would go a long way towards making these strange fpga critters even more approachable | 02:33 |
| roh | wpwrak: well.. i dont bother too much with the languages.. rather the hostile development env. | 02:51 |
| roh | when using fpgas is more like mcu and cpus... use an opensource-compiler like llvm or gcc and be fine, have some loader tool like avrdude... then i guess the userbase will widen dramatically | 02:51 |
| roh | s/is/are/ | 02:51 |
| roh | i got literarly piles of develboards in access here, fpga, mcu, some dsp i guess... but most popular is the avr for me (and most others here) .. i guess only because its very easy, streamlined, uncomplicated and you know you can work on your code and hardware, and will not that likely debug your development environment | 02:53 |
| wolfspraul | that makes perfect sense | 02:54 |
| wolfspraul | but I do see all sorts of tools slowly improving, high quality open stuff | 02:54 |
| roh | i know some people who love to talk meta-compiler-theory for hours.. but that doesn solve a broken one ;) | 02:54 |
| wolfspraul | the good stuff will slowly bubble up | 02:55 |
| wolfspraul | :-) | 02:55 |
| roh | wolfspraul: i sure hope, that one day i can just install some packages and be set up to compile verilog or vhdl from a git repo into a bitstream to upload with another tool | 02:55 |
| wolfspraul | yes of course. and that's just about the special case of fpgas, I also think there is a market for nice chips right on digikey and elsewhere that are designed and manufactured in an entirely open way | 03:11 |
| wolfspraul | open design, open tools, open cell libraries, etc. so that there can be an ecosystem of chips where it's easy to customize or optimize towards use cases. | 03:12 |
| roh | sure. also i find it neccessary to be able to do full CI | 03:12 |
| wolfspraul | general-purpose fpgas of course also being an option, why not | 03:12 |
| roh | compiling, testing every revision... | 03:12 |
| wolfspraul | at least those are made and readily available in latest-gen processes | 03:13 |
| wolfspraul | (if only from altera and xilinx nowadays) | 03:13 |
| roh | i want to build a test rig for openwrt stuff soon.. we'll see if we can make it work for some series of soc... test every build | 03:13 |
| wpwrak | grmbl. i hate metal fatigue combined with fragile cables. one separated neatly without any damage visible from the outside. | 05:05 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | (tantalum mark) use a decent DVM and see what residual charge you find in the component ;-) | 10:41 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | odds are that this is the correct polarization | 10:41 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | (I found residual charge in the magnitude of several volts in 'normal' electrolytic capacitors, after they ripe for literally years in a box and bever were used) | 10:43 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | never* | 10:44 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | and even after shortcircuit that charge builds up again during minutes | 10:45 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | so in a certain sense electrolytic capacitors are quite similar to batteries | 10:45 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | also: after several years of non-usage a usual electrolytic capacitor can de-format and you need to format it again, which is a process identical to charging a battery | 10:47 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | formatting building up AlOx dielectric membrane again, which seems to slowly deteriorate over the years when capacitor never is charged | 10:48 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | sorry if last statement maybe is not entirely precise, it's knowledge I acquired 1969, I still recall my dad explaining it to me. Never checked back | 10:51 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | it's just funny as for 99.999% of my factoids I don't recall the source they came from | 10:56 |
| wpwrak | DocScrutinizer05: must have been a memorable factoid :) | 11:57 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | yeah | 11:57 |
| wpwrak | caps degenerating in such a way after long disuse could explain some equipment failures | 11:58 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | I asked him why he's keeping his "Metz mecablitz" electron flasher plugged in to mains and active for whole night | 11:58 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | dang, that been a monster | 11:59 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | like 5kg suicase with shoulder strap | 11:59 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | with electromechanical step-up circuit | 12:00 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | "wagnerscher hammer" | 12:00 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | basically a small relay buzzing all the time | 12:00 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | and alead acid battery | 12:01 |
| wpwrak | wow. did its brightness correspond to the effort that went into making it ? | 12:02 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | yep | 12:11 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | seems impossible to find a photo of that thing nowadays | 12:12 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | anyway it had a dish reflector made of alu, with a ring shaped electron flash tube | 12:13 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | diameter of the dish some 20+ cm | 12:13 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | I loved to do all kinds of weird experiments with that flash, that's why I was very interested in what my dad was doing with it when he 'reformatted the capacitors' | 12:17 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | wpwrak: I guess I already told you about the "Balsen Keksdosen Effekt"? | 12:25 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | you can hear the photons bouncing off a thin tin lid, like found on cookie tin boxes | 12:26 |
| wpwrak | (flash) fun :) single-use bulbs ? | 12:27 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | nah, no way | 12:27 |
| wpwrak | (balsen) photons ? why do i sense a sudden pull on my leg ? :) | 12:28 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | >>...with a ring shaped electron flash tube | 12:29 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | I'd guess some 150Ws, on hindsight | 12:30 |
| wpwrak | pretty powerful | 12:30 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | what's with your leg? | 12:37 |
| wpwrak | do you know the expression "pulling someone's leg" ? | 12:38 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | nope | 12:38 |
| wpwrak | ah :) i means that you're trying to fool someone. | 12:38 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | hah! | 12:38 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | do your math! a 1m^2 mirror 'feels' ~1pond force from sunlight's photons bouncing off | 12:39 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | iirc | 12:40 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | also energy on 1m^2 is ~1000W | 12:40 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | a 150Ws electron flash has an effective power of 150/10^-3 .. 150/10^-6 roughly | 12:42 |
| wpwrak | ah, you mean the whole output of the flash. i see. yeah, that should work | 12:44 |
| lekernel | 1pond? | 12:48 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | aka 1g | 12:48 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | though gram is not a proper force unit | 12:48 |
| wpwrak | lekernel: a unit old people use :) | 12:49 |
| lekernel | btw, if you have a directional light source like a LED, does it serve as a (very weak) propulsor? | 12:51 |
| wpwrak | why not ? anything else your little spaceship radiates could be made such that it doesn't counteract the led. | 12:55 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | photon propulsion is a long considered interstellar drive principle | 12:59 |
| wpwrak | lekernel: maybe you can hack this one up for EHSM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_photonic_rocket | 13:00 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/P/photon_propulsion.html | 13:00 |
| wpwrak | DocScrutinizer05: e.g., stationary lasers pushing an "unpowered" craft, as in the novel "accelerando" | 13:00 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | yeah | 13:01 |
| wpwrak | of course, as long as our incapable scientists still fail to solve something as basic as FTL, interstellar travel will still suck ... | 13:03 |
| Action: DocScrutinizer05 idly wonders how an externally laser propulsed(?) spaceship will *brake* when it reached its destination :-o | 13:04 | |
| DocScrutinizer05 | hard impact? X-P | 13:05 |
| wpwrak | i think in the novel they did it by ejecting the screen and have it act as a mirror | 13:06 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | haha, nice one | 13:07 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | did they consider the doppler effect though? | 13:08 |
| wpwrak | (on detaching the screen/sail) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail#Interstellar_flight | 13:10 |
| DocScrutinizer05 | a considerable amount of the laser's energy will accelerate the mirror even further, while the light bouncing back from mirror to ship is shifted far into the red | 13:10 |
| wpwrak | (doppler) dunno | 13:10 |
| wpwrak | well yes, it'll be pretty inefficient | 13:10 |
| wpwrak | you could also pick destinations with a very high escape velocity.. then slow down just enough to get caught, and gradually bleed off speed over the next few centuries. | 13:13 |
| --- Sat Dec 8 2012 | 00:00 | |
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