Am I A Nerd ?

So I checked out this website today that provides a test for nerdity (If that's even a word). check out my score:




So... am I a nerd ?

What OS should kids use ?

Okay I just came across the following funny today... made me chuckle.

But it got me to thinking... What would Gates say if his daughter preferred to use Linux ? - Which lead me to ask myself "What OS would I want my children to use ?"

Well... I would expect no less than for them to use Linux. Any distro is fine by me. I would expect no less that for them to download and install their favourite flavour on their machines by themselves.

What are your thoughts ?

Take a Mugshot

Okay I just signed up for this cool service named "mugshot". It's basically a multi-site aggregator (in english: it takes content from various sites and "mashes" them together). This is something that I've been looking for, for quite some time.

I've now added a mugshot link to this blog that points directly to my mugshot profile. I'm going to be playing over the next few days to see how well it works.

Oh by the way, the iPod Nano... is dead (RIP iPod nano). It seems that all the pads under the hold switch were ripped off. There's absolutely no way that I can trace them to see where they lead. If anyone has any ideas on how to proceed (ideas that don't involve taking another iPod apart) drop me a line.

Wow, it's definitely been a while since I last blogged. I've decided to turn around and start blogging again, hopefully more frequently.

A lot has been going on lately. I have a lot of projects in the "pipe", thus rendering the Logic Analyzer project temporarily on hold.

I finally caved to the presure and am starting to work with Surface Mount components. I got around to buying a hot air rework station and have been busy learning how to solder and desolder SMD components.

At the moment, I'm busy fixing equipment from friends and family. I have a laptop from the daughter of my wife's friend and a iPod Nano from my nephew.

The laptop (a Sony VAIO) seems to have a dud screen. The screen will get all distorted and fuzzy until it's pressed against the middle left edge. I'm thinking it might be a loose wire (I can only hope it's that easy).

The iPod, on the other hand is a whole different "kettle of fish". The hold button is permanently stuck on hold. It seems that my nephew trusted the iPod in the hands of his buddy to fix (when the switch was being temperamental) only to have it returned with the switch completely broken.

I have decided to build a Logic Analyzer. Why ? - Because I cannot justify myself paying $400+ for a commercial solution. I know there are items on EBay that are cheaper, and I almost purchased one, however, I feel that this would be a good project and a learning experience at the least.

My plan is to make this from an old 486 laptop I have sitting around and some external electronics. I have a lot of thoughts on how to accomplish this, but first I need to run some tests to see what the hardware is capable off, and what is feasable (ie. Don't expect a 100Mhz analyzer from a 486 33Mhz system - Actually, by my calculations I should be able to get atleast a 1Mhz sampling rate with external components).

I was originally planning on using Windows 95 on the laptop. Unfortunately, since there is no CDROM, I'd be forced to try and install from floppy, but the CAB files are too large to fit onto a standard floppy and I have no intention to play around to get them on. I have also considered copying the Windows CAB files onto the laptop HDD, but I can't seem to find either my Laplink or Null Modem cables. Since then, I have had a brilliant spur of the moment thought - use MS-DOS.

Bringing back old memories, I pulled out my old copy of DOS 6.22, Turbo Pascal 7 and Turbo C++ 1.0 and loaded them on. As an added benefit, I also have QBasic, which will allow me to perform quick prototyping to verify connections, etc.

The setup described above proved to be very useful last night. I have built a simple circuit to test the output capability via the parallel port. The circuit is simply a 7-segment LED display connected to all 8 data lines of the parallel port through an inverting buffer (74LS241). I will try and get a schematic up, if I can work out how to post images.

When I was done last night, the circuit worked great. I could cycle through each segment of the display individually or have some or all of them on a the same time. I am currently in the process of writing a program in QBasic to display 0-9, A-F and I might even write one to animate the display in some way.