MacroFab Engineering Podcast #23
MacroFab Engineering Podcast #23
AI and ChatGPT have been in the news about how it will change world views or will it be relegated, making sure NPCs in video games don’t repeat dialog?
How easy is it to make a retro gaming console? Stephen breaks down his design and build criteria that involves no custom PCBs.
Parker and Stephen examine an interesting mute circuit Stephen designed for his amplifier and the SN74LVC8T245.
Figure 1: Ben and Parker enjoying their time off.
Figure 2: Pinheck pinball machine PCB. Designed by Parker and Ben.
Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.
In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.
In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.
Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.
Stephen Kraig began his electronics career by building musical oriented circuits in 2003. Stephen is an avid guitar player and, in his down time, manufactures audio electronics including guitar amplifiers, pedals, and pro audio gear. Stephen graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University.
Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!
Ben
Hello, and welcome back to the macro fab engineering podcast. I am your guest today, Ben hack.
And we're your hosts, Stephen Craig and Parker Dillman.
Wow.
Welcome, Ben. Welcome to episode number 23.
Ben
It's such an honor to be on the show. You know, last time I took a vacation earlier this year. I was also on a podcast. And now I'm on another vacation, another podcast. It is inescapable.
Awesome, awesome. So where are you where you vacationing?
Ben
Well, let's see. It's my friend Parker, whom you know, of course, and Chris, and we're in northern Wisconsin on a fishing trip. Oh, excellent. Birchwood, Wisconsin, which is by Eau Claire, which is east of Minneapolis. Okay, that should be enough information for anyone to figure out where it is.
Try to triangulate your location. Yes.
Ben
People are like what, but everyone knows where Minneapolis is? Right? People? Most Americans should know. Where
is that? Where the Mall of America is that?
Ben
That's correct. It's also where Prince's from Mall of America is pretty cool. I was there when I was like 17 when it first opened in the 92 or 93. That was where they had the first Dactyl nightmare VR demonstration back in the early 90s.
What I'm not aware what is that?
Ben
Well, Dactyl nightmare was this VR game where two people put on headsets and had to fight terror attack tools. And it was kind of a big thing back in like 92 or 93. And the Mall of America in Minneapolis was one of the places where you could play it. Hmm, this was long before the Oculus Rift.
This was this was the Oculus, the pre Oculus. This
Ben
was that was even before the Virtual Boy. Oh, jeez. Yeah,
that was that was a nightmare. Yeah,
Ben
I actually want to do an episode where we do a tear down on one of those and see what's in it, and then try to improve it as much as possible. Like as a VR thing, you know, because VR is quote unquote hot right now.
Yeah, I'm not sure that we can. I don't think it's salvageable. There's there's not much hope for
Ben
the Oculus Rift or the Gameboy VR thing.
No, no, the Virtual Boy itself. I don't know if you can actually do anything with it.
Ben
I think we should back
up real quick. And just make note that Benjamin HC HC Hecker Dorn Am I pronouncing that correctly hack
Ben
and Dorn heck, heckendorn. Sorry.
He's the host of element 14, The Ben Heck Show which is a popular YouTube show for hackers and makers and enthusiast of electronics and all kinds of interesting things.
Ben
Yes, our show is so popular. It's almost as successful as people who do videos of unboxing products on their couch while complaining about Batman v Superman. Awesome.
So Ben, um, how do you get into hacking and modding and stuff like that? Electronics in general? Yeah.
Ben
Well, my background I educational work background was in graphic arts actually, as far as hacking money electronics goes, that was something I was interested in as a kid. Like when I was 10. I had like those Radio Shack electronic kits, the little wires with springs and stuff. I still have it by the way, it's in my shop and prototype with it. No, useless, but it's still intact. It's in pretty good shape for something that a six year old dragged around. And that's like, you know, 34 years old. Yeah, so I was into that when I was a kid like wiring LEDs, and I would stick like LEDs into electrical outlets and watch them smoke and stuff. But then I kind of I kind of got away from it for most of my teenage years. And I didn't really revisit it until I was like, almost in my mid 20s. And I started doing like hacking video game consoles. Like I took an Atari 2600 and hacked it up and tried to make it smaller. Just for fun.
Now remember that project? It actually used to batteries? Yeah, it was very ghetto. It had a nine volt battery sticking out the front. Cuz I didn't know what the hell
I was doing. Did Did it actually turn out and actually work? Oh, yeah, it worked.
Ben
It just was very crude.
I think it's the only project you've kept
Ben
one of them. Yeah, cuz I don't really have any emotional attachment to anything I build. I mean, that thing I guess I sort of do. I'd probably still sell it to someone enough money for it. I don't care. It's just a
thing. It belongs in a museum.
So your emotional attachment is more about the actual making than it is the Yeah, item itself,
Ben
right? Yeah. Like the journey is the reward? Yeah, sure. So I started doing that. And I just put it on Geo cities. I think just for fun, I made a website about it. Then I had all this interest. I mean, I was getting like 80 emails a day, like from different people wanting to, like, Oh, that's so cool. Could you build that? And I was shocked, because I didn't realize, you know, that there was a community out there that wanted that stuff. You know, this is before, the maker fairs and before a lot of the conventions and yeah, it was it was a weird time. One thing I've learned is that at that time, which is like 2000 2001. You know, people are always nostalgic for whatever they liked. 20 years ago, so 30 year olds are nostalgic for the video games they played when they were 10, like 1980. So a lot of people were like wanting to get back into this and like collect these vintage games. And you've seen that pass on like now Atari stuff is dead. It's all about NES, snares, and 64. Because people like Parker's age, are now thinking about the stuff they played when they were kids. Right. So it's kind of interesting to see like the nostalgia bowls I keep. It's a continually moving target. Yeah, it's a wave that always has an end to it. Yeah, I think there's a secondary wave, which is like when you like when you're 50 or 60, and you start buying motorcycles and crap like that. But I don't think they care about video games at all. So yeah, I started building more of those on the side. I did eventually got to the point where I was building a lot of them. And then I got a book deal to write hacking video game consoles for Wiley Publishing in 2004. And I was like, Well, it's a good time to, you know, quit my job, which I didn't like anyway at the time. So I spent like a summer writing that and then the thing was, I never got around to working for the man again, I just kept on doing acts and mods and projects, you know, contract work for people. And I pretty much continued that to this day. Although Yeah, 2010 we started doing The Ben Heck Show which is sponsored by element 14. But that's my story. I can also crack an egg with one hand.
Wow.
Ben
Awesome. Yes. Either hand to lefty. Righty doesn't matter.
Switch cracker.
That's awesome. So can you actually let it say what's been going on with the Ben Heck Show? What's what's coming up? And what's new with that? Because I asked because I certainly watch the show. It's on my kind of rotation stuff. So I'm curious what's coming up. What
Ben
was the most recent episode that you can remember? I actually have no idea when they actually air.
Oh, shoot. Oh, yeah. You put me on the spot.
Ben
We filmed them, like three to four weeks ahead of them airing so I lose track? Usually.
I hear I hear man, I'll save you.
Ben
Well, probably the coolest thing we've done is we actually got the people with the Playstations Nintendo prototype on the show. I don't know if you saw that in the news. No, I didn't.
So the latest one was the Raspberry Pi Zero portable computer. Okay,
that's, that's the one I saw. Yeah, you finally went back and did a Raspberry Pi project.
Ben
Yeah, we had a lot of requests for the Raspberry Pi Zero. The thing with that is they're hard to find because nobody can sell them at a profit.
Right? You just can't walk into Microcenter and just pull your own weight then and get one. No, I'm
Ben
talking about. I'm talking about the retailers. Like basically, hi shouldn't say that. But there's not much of a margin on it. So it's kind of hard to find. That's one of the reasons it's hard to find. But our audience really wanted us to build something with it. So we're like, Okay, fine. And we we acquired one, and then we tried to make the smallest Raspberry Pi device that we could. And it turned out pretty cool. And like we wired up a custom keyboard. Like I did the matrix wiring while Felix wrote the Linux code. So I'm really glad I hired a Linux guy. First rule of business hire people that can do things you can't second real profit. Yeah, so then we there was this. Actually, Parker, you know about the Sony prototype thing? Maybe you could?
Yeah. So we actually got to look at the Sony prototype back at the Midwest gaming classic, which was April and April. And so the thing about this is, is basically a early prototype of basically a Super Nintendo with a CD add on that was designed by Sony. Yep. And it was almost exactly like a SNGs except with extra RAM,
Ben
and it was called the PlayStation. So the PlayStation started as a Sony Nintendo joint venture to add the Super Nintendo.
Yeah, it was I was actually watching a video about that earlier this week. and Nintendo kind of poo pooed the idea and didn't Sony go off? I mean, that's when they made the decision to go off and make their own console.
Ben
Yeah, um, I think Nintendo kind of went behind their backs or didn't like the hardware and then started working with Philips as well. And that's where you got the Philips interactive CDI. We had all those awful Zelda and Mario games. That was a result.
They were so
Ben
bad. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, these guys found this thing in an estate auction in a box of dishes. And but a box of dishes that have been owned by former Sony CEO. Right. Wow. And I think like the dad had it in his garage or attic for a couple years. Like he didn't know what it was. And then his sudden casually mentioned that his dad had one on Reddit. And then he's like, dig it out dad. And then it's like, the world found out. Which is unfortunate because we found some leaky caps and parky said that could have been have damaged by the heat. Yeah, there's
probably heat damage how they were they weren't exploded out the top like if they were revolted. There. Were they probably they were leaked out the bottom. Yep. They were heat, the heat ate the seals. And it led out the not the magic smoke, but the magic goop.
Ben
So we saw this thing at MCC and Parker and I were like asking if we could take it apart? Yeah.
The first thing.
You know, I was just about to make a note that of course, you guys had to take it apart and take a look at the inside of it. Yeah, of course,
he wouldn't let us take it apart there, though. However,
Ben
um, Max and Karen, like, went up and talked to him for a while because I started talking to him. And I don't know, I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. So I'm like, I'm gonna go have a drink. And but then max and Karen persuaded them to come on
the show. So who's who's the two people you just mentioned? Oh, Max
Ben
is the camera person for The Ben Heck Show. And Karen is our social media person. Cool. They both work with me in Madison. And Karen, someone has been teaching me how to weld. Oh, cool, because I didn't know how. Anyway, so yeah. Then about two weeks ago, we flew them in to Madison, because the son lives in Denver, and the dad lives in Pittsburgh. And they brought the device with it with them. And they said the TSA, like didn't know what it was. And they scanned it. And the guy was freaking out. Because it's pretty valuable, rare prototype. It's probably one of a kind. And they let me take it apart. And so we made an episode about it. And we also fixed it up because it didn't work, right. It was kind of sad. They had like this crappy Radio Shack power supply. They're trying to use it and I'm like, Okay, we'll hook you up. And I had you remember the Sony power supplies we would use? Like for the rechargeable batteries? Yeah. Yeah. The plug in the back of it. It was like DC 7.2 volts. It's like, Yeah, this is totally a Sony thing. So I dug out one of those power supplies from my bin in the basement and
the PlayStation One power supplies. Yep,
Ben
it's the exact same thing, even though this is like eight years before that. And so I got like the 3000 milliamp one because that's used for the PlayStation and the screen and yeah, it worked fine. Well, we I had to redo the bodgers there is some pretty well you guys know what badges are? That green wire fixes. Yeah, there were some pretty hastily attached budget, so I redid them so they wouldn't get torn and forgotten. And then I put a little bit to tape on them so they keep them keep them in place so people wouldn't brush up against it. And then as Parker mentioned, there were three leaky caps and that was preventing the CD ROM from working once we did that everything worked fine even though we had no media.
Yeah, I was actually surprised they let you change this capsule.
Ben
Before I did everything, I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna do this. Are you okay with it? Okay. Okay, I'm gonna do this. Are you okay with it? The thing left in better shape and then arrived? Yeah,
but doesn't have that nice goopy capacitor patina over the board now
Ben
dank to it smelled you know, like, if like, you have like an infection or like a fever get like a root canal. It smells it. You know, actually would have smelled like, I bought one of those Atari 2600 landfill carts from Alma, what was it? Alamogordo? Yeah, yeah. From like, the E tea and like all those other cards. I bought two of those because I had to, and I was able to get one of those working as well. And it stunk. I for some reason. I didn't think it would stink. Like it was a bit dumb for 30 years. Yeah. Anyway, those capacitors smelled the same
way and probably had some like dirty diapers like leaking all over those. Those cartridges. Ah, now it's on your wall.
Ben
That's what I that's what I told Terry. I'm like, cuz a lot of people were like, oh, no, Ben's just gonna hack that thing and destroy it. And I'm like, No. Like, I'm, it's a part of history. I want to make it work. You know? Like that thing. They pull
the mag hearing podcast where we talk about the similarities between leaky electrolytic caps and the smells of root canals.
Ben
I take it back. It didn't smell like a root canal smelled like a dump. Which is different. Right, right, right. Yeah, it was weird. I was eating something last week. I think it was like a mint. And I'm like, This tastes like a battleship. That tastes like a battleship smells. It's kind of weird. Well, that was it. It was like oddly flavored Altoid. So anyway, I would say taking apart that, you know, prototyping unit was probably the coolest thing we've done and I'm sure it actually ended up being a two part episode because there's so much footage there was part one, take it apart and see what's inside part to make it work. And what we discovered about it was it's basically a Super Nintendo with a CD ROM add on
with a little bit of extra like, buffer RAM.
Ben
Yeah, it wouldn't even have been as good as the second CD, it would have been quite outclassed by at least in the RAM department, and it had no coprocessors so it's possible and the reasons that Nintendo didn't want to do it as it probably would have been kind of a dog. Yeah,
well wasn't the original intent just to make sure that the cartridge size could be larger? I mean, they just the available amount of memory.
Ben
Yes. Yeah, but if you think about like the turbo graphics 16 CD ROM add on that had some extra stuff with it as well. Mostly ram the Sega CD actually had a coprocessor a ko graphics processor extra audio a sick yeah,
there's almost like it's the Sega CD was pretty much its own console. Yeah, the add on itself, and then they you stuck the Mega Drive right on it.
Ben
Whereas this was just more RAM basically, more RAM to load the games into and a CD ROM drive, and it would have been slow because the Super Nintendo, its main bus is only eight bits, the data bus. So it had a double speed drive. We did learn however half the data bus of the Sega Genesis so yeah, it probably wouldn't apart a bit slow. Yeah,
well, and in the the processor in a Super Nintendo is only like 2.6 megahertz or
Ben
something like it tops off at 3.58, which is that of the Sega Genesis, the SEGA Genesis. And also on top of that, the Sega Genesis has a 16 bit data bus and the 68k is 32 bit internally, plus a Sega CD had a second 68,000 running at 12 megahertz. So yeah, if you think about the video and whatnot on the Sega CD, this the Super Nintendo thing would have been even slower and jankier that's all well,
that's how Sonic was able to run so fast. Yeah, 32 bit it was it was the
blast processing.
Ben
Last processing.
Well, I
Ben
mean, I think the Super Nintendo Yeah, it was slower and it only had an eight bit data bus. I mean, that's, that's not insignificant. I mean, I don't know if you guys probably were pretty pretty young when the Super Nintendo came out. But the joke was all the games came with free slo mo all the launch titles were at a lot.
I remember playing a Starfox on the SNS. And it's actually I think they designed it with the slomo in mind, because if you run that game in emulator at full speed, it's actually really really really hard to play that game.
Ben
No. Well think about it with that case. You had you had a RISC processor on the cartridge rendering the polygons into the cartridge is Ram then you had to copy that over an eight bit bus. From the cartridge to the Super Nintendo was bitmap planar. Every frame, which was like 15 frames a second. Yeah, it was a great game though. Star Fox is the best Star Wars game ever made. Right? Just like Galaxy Quest is one of the best Star Trek movies ever made. Same thing.
Can you do? Yeah. Do one of the voices from the star Starfox game?
Ben
Oh yeah. redriver right
it's surprising how perfect that is. Yeah,
Ben
cuz I Falco was always rude. German. Yeah, go look it up. You'll you'll be like, Wow, that's pretty good.
Yeah, no, no, that's pretty close. Now actually, we
joke about that game all the time.
Ben
Yeah. Yeah. I know. Like, you younger people played n 64. With actually talked, but the older folks we had to deal with. Right, right, right.
Yeah. Shoot, man. I was all Super Nintendo. That would that was my jam back in the day. Oh, yeah.
Ben
It was a good system. So yeah, I would say that was probably the coolest episode we've done lately. And we're also doing a BattleBots episode like a three parter. Felix, Karen and I are each building their own robot and we're gonna see whose robot is the best.
Oh, that's really fun to watch. Yeah. Awesome. Any any spoilers for that one?
Ben
No, not really. Just each robot has a different radio communication method. Like I'm using a RC plane servo controller remote. Felix is using the Bluetooth and Karen's is using XPS. I think Oh, that's cool. Yeah. So you know that's where we're getting the electronics part in there is just using three different ways of accessing the robots. But then I doubled the battery power my robot and then they're like you're cheating them like now? Yeah, I doubled it from 7.2 to 14 four volts. Yeah, like I got lipo pack from the hobby store. I'm kidding. As appointed though, we're not supposed to have projectiles or flames or spinning blades and I'm like, but I'm going to put on this so what I want to do is I want to cut out little images.
That should be the title of Battle Bots.
Ben
Yeah, well what my workaround is I'm going to cut out images of Wesley Snipes as blade and attach it to motors and have them spin. Whatever I'm actually probably gonna do is like a reciprocating ramrod with pins. So yeah, it'll be all right. I mean, if I had my chair, I would have the robot shooting acid at each other and duct tape guns to it. I mean, I would just go all out but yeah, want to make it safe. It's gotta be something we can film in the shop.
Yeah, actually, we were talking about doing doing that after we finished a couple of our projects at macro fab is doing a battle bot. Maybe we should do a Ben Heck verse macro fab battle bot.
Ben
Can we down can we have like no limitations with our robots?
I think we should just use the normal battle bot rules. Do you think you can do flame?
Ben
Is it what do you think it'd be actually legal like duct tape? Like pistols to your robots and shoot each other?
Do you have to take 10 steps and turn around? Yeah,
Ben
like, like Alexander Hamilton Alexander Hamilton. Yeah,
no, I think projectiles you cannot use projectiles and BattleBots
Ben
ever seen that thing at Maker Faire where they have the ships fighting each other and then yeah, Bay.
Yeah, they she bearings at each other? Yeah.
Ben
But I mean, yeah, they actually like to try to blow holes and the other ship and sink the other ships and but it's all behind like plexiglass so the audience won't get hit.
It seems like it's more fun and traditional and more I don't know like gentlemanly like to have a medieval Battle Bots you know, the ones that just have like an axe that swings or like a chopper arm or something like that,
or, or something that spins at very high rpm.
I think you know, I've been watching actually, I was watching some battle buffs the other day and I was watching Best of BattleBots. And and the guys who have like spinning bodies that destroy other other bots, tend to do better than most others.
Ben
See your CV saying something primeval about swinging axes and swords? That works in all situations?
Yeah, yeah. There's just some kind of like, robotic honor that needs to be held up
Ben
swinging a sword so you could call it right. Yeah,
there we go. So hey, actually, so since you guys are both on the line on the other side, real quick, do you want to tell the listeners how you to Parker and Ben know each other?
Sure. I I can tell that story. I remember that story. So I can't remember what year it was, like. 2009. Yeah, it was 2000. So back then, then had a online forum called The Ben Heck forums where we basically still up okay, so So it's still up. And I was friends with a lot of people on that on that forum. And we hacked consoles built electronics. That's kind of like how I got into electronics as well. And they were going to have the it was called The Ben Heck experience at the Midwest gaming classic in Milwaukee. Milwaukee. at the Olympia Hotel.
Ben
Yes. The one on the in the suburb. Yeah. And so I was like, Cool. I'll
go and so I booked the room and flew up there. And apparently everyone in the quote, Ben Heck experience. They just shared a room at like a Motel Six.
Ben
That was like a Ramada like five miles away. And it was it was it was a shithole.
Yeah, it was a pee. It was like 15 people that had like someone wasn't wearing deodorant. Oh, yeah, that's right. It was like musty in there.
Ben
Well, you get like four or more geeks together. And that's just a statistical you know, inevitability.
And, and so Ben was there and I'm like, this almost,
Ben
I thought that was like, I don't think I put you today. Oh, no, but yours. Thanks for sharing. Ben. You're welcome. I'm saving the environment, one arm swipe at a time. Because, you know, there's so many hot babes. We're gonna meet out on the lake, you know? Okay, so we were
at the Ramada. Yeah. And so I first thought that was the Olympia, right. Yeah. Where the event was. And then I went to go check in and they're like, We don't have a reservation for you. Excuse me. I'm like, Is this not the Olympia? No, like, No. And so Ben was going back to the Olympia where the show was
Ben
that Yeah, cuz I just went over to say hi to everyone at the at the other hotel. Yeah. So
I've gotten gotten a ride with Ben over to Olympia checked in. And then I went to the bar because that's like the first thing you do when you get to Wisconsin. Exactly. And Ben was at the bar, and we proceeded to drink each other or try to drink each other out under the table, and it did not work.
Ben
He was like, God, I was so hung over that next it's like four
o'clock AM when they like actually closed. I remember
Ben
that was the night with the hot ass sisters, you remember that? They also had karaoke at this place. It was really nice bar. And there's these two girls that went up and they kept doing karaoke and they're both really hot and I was like you don't care? I bet you those who are sisters, because no two women would both be that hot. But sisters are always equally hot. It's true.
I think it's the first time someone ever talked about that.
Ben
I even have a phrase for it. It's sisters are hot friends or not. You wind them in a bumper sticker if you want. Parker and I became friends just because you need to ride back from a hotel. Yep. And then that's the condensed story.
Yeah. I think the next day I woke up. That's pretty much the whole story. Yeah, that was the whole number. That's it. I think the next day I woke up at noon. Still a little drunk. Yeah. And Ben was like, he was having problems with his Xbox 360.
Ben
Yeah. Porter Darksiders. One that I did for th Q Yeah. And there was
like in like 100 pieces. And he had his hands in his head. Because he was so hungover and yeah, he's like Barger all over you. And I'm like, I'm still drunk. I was probably top 10. Hangover. Yeah, yeah, I was five. No, that would be a top five for me. That that trip. It was pretty brutal. Yeah. Anyways, yeah, that was I think I have been to every single MGC since then. Yep. And yeah.
Ben
Yeah. And then what we did was, well, you know, Parker, you know, helped found macro fab. And then he also helped us design our PCBs for our pinball machine.
Yeah, the the pin hex system and Chroma color. And all the other various little PC boards that litter the machines.
Ben
Pin hack was one of your first bigger projects right at macro fab. Yeah, that
was the first big project. Spooky pinball was our first customer at macro fab. Nice. I remember it being really, really, really cold for Houston, at least. Assembling PCBs. I mean, the only person and operations by hand, right? Yeah, cuz that was back when it was just me. Chris church and I were on the macro fab. So I think we built a built all the pin heck boards for the America's most haunted game like that.
Ben
Yeah. Real talk.
What is the pin headboard? What was that? What is the pin headboard for people to know?
So the pin hack board is a pic. 32 slash parallax propeller based Pinball Controller. That's an all in one solution. So everything you need is on one PCB board. Yeah, most
Ben
of the people were making short run or homebrew pinball uses thing called P rock or other systems where it's a computer that connects to a board with a USB or serial connection. And, you know, my my idea was like, No, that's too much money, do everything with microcontrollers, because it seemed like an overkill to me. Yeah. And so I designed a prototype system. I know a Parker did is he basically turned it into Eagle, which at the time, I didn't know how to use. Now I've learned. Yeah, so basically, he trans transferred it over an eagle to make something that could be manufactured and then we've revised it ever since. And it's still like one of the cheapest or I think it is the cheapest board set that there is.
Yeah, is the cheapest board set to get going on. For pinball. I think we're at 200 USD Olin. So
Ben
I think that's right. Yeah. So yeah, so we do the spooky pinball machines, like we did 150 units of the America's most haunted pinball machine, which I designed. So what's America's most haunted, man, it's a pinball machine. The premise of it is it's kind of making fun of all the supernatural spook shows on TV where it's like, oh, I think I heard a ghost you know, that kind of stuff. It's that premise, but done with a lot of humor, you know, and satire. So we did 150 of those and it took us a while to get started but then it took off and now it's like a really sought after game that cost more used and it did new. And now we're doing Rob Zombie, a pinball machine based off Rob Zombie, which uses the new PIN hex system with the rub seven
yet Rev. Seven, B. And then there's actually a rep seven See, we changed one of the connectors slightly, but yeah,
Ben
yeah. And so other people make pinball machines to like small runs, like not the big companies like Stern. And I don't know I've heard numbers like 800 to $1,000 is what they spend on their electronics and hardware and ours is 200. We don't have a computer. We don't have five pic. 30 twos, like one company does. It's just two microcontrollers and a bunch Have passives and fat transistors Yeah.
And we even use old school like tip one oh twos and one other sevens to appease the pinball crowd. Yep, the old the old through hole. MOSFET. Yeah, the old pinball wizards,
Ben
because they're all scared of surface mount. But
see, when a FET goes bad, it D solders itself and falls off.
Ben
Yeah, he puts a board upside down. So just fall to the bottom of the cabinet. Just pick them up and stick it in there. Of course you didn't do realize if we laid those fats down and we actually take a more board space. Yeah. It's okay. Okay,
so I've seen this board. I think you could pull it off. There's a lot of room on the board. I understand. There's a ton of traces, but I think he could pull it off.
Ben
But what we can't because it's one of those things like he put it in there old school pinball people will bitch it sucks. Oh, yeah, we've had to explain that it would shock and I have to, you know, Parker and I've argued about it and it's just, it's it's the nature of the beast, you know,
there's a bunch of there's voodoo in those MOSFET
Ben
I believe Stern's moss fats have a through hole or Oh God, the other node boards? You know, I don't know I we've seen the boards and most, most of its, I believe most of its surface mount. Yeah, it's mostly but and people hate it.
And actually, I really liked about Stern's new system is they put the back glass or the backbox LEDs on that board?
Ben
Yeah, no, I think they're a system that was cool. I mean, I don't really necessarily agree with the node part of it. But I think everything else they've done is really smart. Because it's just, they made it really cheap. There's one power supply. They knock it down. They have like rj 45 connectors. There's just a cheap old arm that's proven, although I guess they're gonna beef it up in the next game. Yeah, I mean, that was our philosophy was just to make it.
We basically got a WPC 95 system and then modernized it. If you think about it, yeah,
Ben
yeah. But yeah, I mean, you we use the pic 32 for the game logic and all the IO and then the propeller is really good at audio and video because it's got all the parallel processes to it.
And Ben, you did the code in the pic. Right?
Ben
Yeah, for America's most haunted. And then the propeller code. I wrote most of it we had some help with from Roy
actually mentioned or a lot on this show. Whenever Whenever I get stuck on a prop project. I'm like, Rory, save me. Well,
Ben
Roy is a is a game developer by day, but he's also really into the parallax propeller. MCU. But didn't he he wrote the code for the C compiler.
I think he
Ben
worked on it. And he knows that, that CPU inside and out. So one thing that we did, oh no, he rewrote we found a audio driver, like a DAC basically. And he's like, Oh, this thing could do way more. So he rewrote that and put like four channels of audio into one single cog. It was insane. And then when we are we're working on another game right now after Rob Zombie. It's kind of a bigger display. And I'm like, Oh, crap, we're out of RAM. So Roy and I worked together for like, a few weeks, we came up with this way of interlacing, the screen rendering where it uses like a character tile set, and it draws what does it do? It draws in the streams off the SD card, and then it draws the characters. And then it also sends it to the display like three processes using the three cogs and is doing all simultaneously. So basically, as it's drawing one line, it's sending the last line. And it's sped it up quite a bit. And we were able to get like 70 frames a second out of it or something. Wow. Which we don't need.
You got a pretty streamline now.
Ben
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, he's been a big help. Because yeah, he knows everything about that thing. He's like, Oh, yeah, if you change this variable to a constant or local variable, it'll speed it up. And this requires main hub access. And the order in which you arrange the bytes in the words actually affects things, which is insane. Like, you know how it's like Long's bytes and words. No matter how you define them in sequence, it's always going to put the Long's all together than the words and the bytes. So if you are doing if you're accessing something defined as a byte array with a long pointer, it can get basically it can get out of whack. But it's handy to do because that allows you to access it for at a time or one at a time. So what we did was we changed all the SD card drive routines to work with 32 bits instead of eight bits. And it massively sped it up. But then that meant we had to keep everything long align, is it a byte aligned, so if you went in and added a word, it would move everything in the variable map by two bytes and no longer belong aligned and crashed it. But Roy knows so much about the system. He's like, Oh, you added a word before the byte declaration which move the memory map and now the pointer doesn't work. And so you just put in an old word, and it works. That's awesome. Yeah, he's really knowledge So shout out to Roy H 101. Daybreak studios.
That's the game he works on. I think we have to get Rory on the show sometime.
Yeah, that sounds that sounds great. He sounds like a super cool dude. Yeah,
I think he's working on a our two d two project right now, like a full size full scale model of an R two d two robot.
I'm Star Wars, like an RC kind of thing.
I don't know it's RC. They, they have mad maker fairs and stuff. I don't know if they're RC or not. Or they're somewhat autonomous.
Ben
It's been really fun squeezing everything, we can have that 10 year old MCU. Like an America's most haunted the parallax propeller does a 128 by 32, pixel, four bit 16 shade black and white display. And Rob Zombie and we pumped up the board. But it's basically the same board is just the same board built better. Yeah, it's the same board just designed and built better. Yeah, and that game is 128 by 32 color display at 30 frames a second. And then the next game is going to be double the height 128 by 64 Dot Matrix display at 30 frames a second. So like with each game, we're like this squeezing more and more out of this next game is gonna be the limit of what we can Yeah, yeah. Oh, then we also we actually lowered the RAM because instead of like just trying a 4k frame and then streaming it to the video onto the screen. We actually only have 2k A video RAM that we do in slices. So we actually doubled the height of the screen and have the RAM by doing it a serial serial serially interlaced This is how we did it.
And this project didn't happen overnight. This has been years of of working on it, right?
Yeah, I think I started working on the pin hack project. Oh, 1013 2013 ish. Something like I started prototyping in a breadboard in 2011. Yeah. Well, the your first pinball machine the little packs of no packs in has half of a pen heck board in it. Yes. As a single propeller. Yeah. And then and then the board set after that had like it was all props. Yeah, that one was a turd. It was like, had like four parallax propellers on it. And it board was like 12 inches by 12 inches. No, it's bigger than that. I think. The cool picture of it.
Ben
Yeah, that's huge. And then, oh, someone had that at a show. They'd gotten it as a giveaway from Alma 14. They had me sign it. I'm like, Oh, my God, I can't blow this thing's big board. Yeah. But then what I did was we got to pick 32. Yep. And because pic 32. Wow, they weren't that new at the time, but they're, you know, fairly new. And I'm like, Wow, this thing has a ton of I O. So I'll use that to do all the IO and then use a propeller to do the audio video, like, use each thing to its best advantage. And we don't even use half the things on that pick that pick 32. I hate to say this, but has an RTC built into it. We just don't use it. Oh, no. I know. And then we added to the next Rev. Yeah. And then you had to change that bit in the config. Right? Yeah. Sorry.
Oh, well, we added an extra one. It'll probably be more accurate. Yeah, for just doing time on a pinball machine. Then we lose to
Ben
IO if he had to hook up a 32 kilohertz crystal.
Yeah, it's actually even with how much I owe the pic. 32 has? I think it's a T. TFP. 144. That sounds right. Yeah, at most. We actually still have shift registers on some of the some of the lines. Just we need.
Ben
Yeah. A lot. We dry it with. I think the reason for that is because we drive the moss threads directly. Well, not directly, but it's one pin one loss, but there's 24 of them. Correct. And then we have the eight by eight switch driver. So that's another 16 gone the eight by eight lamp driver. It's another 16 gone. And yeah, I mean, it actually goes pretty quick.
Oh, 24 FETs. For for the
Ben
solenoids. Yeah. Pretty much.
No, your 144 pins are consumed? Yeah.
Yeah, I think we only have one free IO pin. Do we? Yeah,
Ben
I think yeah, there's like one because we even loved ones we had leftover. We did other things with like the RGB driver. Yep. You know,
and then we broke them out onto the board. So we can expand the board later with the
Ben
UI to fight with Parker about that because I wanted this expansion board. And I'm like, take every available pin on both processors and bring it to this expansion board. And he's like, No, and
there's a lot of fights. We been won on that one.
Clearly, an expansion board
Ben
or pillar has like two free cogs still. You could have one cog that could work as a PWM motor driver.
No RAM though. No,
Ben
I increase the RAM. Our current kernel has like 6k of free RAM which is a lot so the propeller It's got a lot of cool features, but it's RAM sucks. All it has is 32k Ram, which is for program and RAM. What does that von Neumann Harvard? Which ones that?
Think it is? Okay.
Ben
It's one of those two.
I think it's Harvard architecture.
Ben
Yeah, I think you're right, because like a pic 32 has a separate? Well, it's all in the same memory map, but it's definitely separated.
I'm actually looking at that right now. Okay, Aries.
Ben
So we're looking at okay, so the difference between those two is like a Commodore 64 has 64k. And that 64k holds the program and the RAM used by the program. So that's one way of doing it. Most modern microcontrollers have one area where your flashes, that's your program, and then a separate area where your RAM is we are correct. Von Neumann is combined memory data and code. So that's what the propeller heads so that 32k has to hold your, your frame buffer, your audio samples, all your stack, and your code, and we still have 6k left schwing thanks, Roy. Yeah.
I know it's fun. Well, and you're all in. You're not You're only using five cogs. Right. There's three cogs left.
Ben
Uh, no, the, the new version of it only has two cogs left.
Well, you got to do something with them.
Ben
It's either two or one. It might only be one. Yeah, what, uh, well, what what I think I want to do is drive like, what's the NeoPixel? ws
2801 2820 12? Bs? 12? Yeah, that's it. So you
Ben
could use one cog to drive those LEDs so the propeller could drive them in a certain frequency and take no overhead. That'd be great. Or you could do a PWM motor driver. There's one or two cogs free on the new kernel. I guess we'll see. I'm not actually working on a game at the moment. So I haven't really developed anything with it. But thanks to Parker, putting up with my bitching reported every available pin, and I was also like, oh, you know how we have that RGB LED breakout connector? He's like, Yeah, I'm like, put pins to that from the pic. 32 and the prop. So you can either serially drive ws two zero ones, or NeoPixels. And he's like, but he did it. So
trust me, Ben, I sit next to him. I hear I hear every one of those groans. Well, I think about the old
Ben
days, like old computers. There's so many situations like the Commodore 64 has an error in its design that cuts the disk drive access speed by eight, or 8x. And it's just because one person forgot one little thing. So I'm like, You know what? Every bit of IO put it someplace just in case. And that actually that actually benefited us because it America's most haunted the pic 32 talks to the propeller using basically spy exchanging eight bits of data or Yeah, eight bits at a time to send a message of 16 bytes. And then just through sheer dumb luck, not that it really mattered because we did newborns anyway. The same lines we use for that also contained you art three. Hmm, so what I realized, because so we had this dumb dumb system of microcontrollers, right, which we did to be as cheap as possible. But it's really tough to update people basically had to, like, hook up a USB cable to their computer and update it like we would program a microcontroller. And people put up with it, but it sucked, right. So what I realized was like, oh, you know what I could do, I could change the bootloader on the pic. 32 To listen to you R three instead of UART. One on the production versions that are people's homes, and then I could program an SDK 500 bootloader on the propeller, using all of my spare RAM. So if you booted up the system and the propeller found a hex file, not while technically a binary file, found a binary file in the root directory of the SD card, you'd be like, Oh, I should program the pic. 32. So how the Rob Zombie game actually works as the propeller. If it sees that file, or if you hold a button on boot to force it to do it. It actually sends the SDK 500 start command to the pic 32 over UART three, puts it into bootloader mode and then one micro controller programs the other one hot troller on microcontroller action.
So it just hammers the other one with the hex file or the binary binary file.
Ben
Yeah, we actually have to convert it to binary. Yeah, because if you if you do a hex file, I'd have to write an Intel hex interpreter as well. It's easier just to like use a script to convert the hex file into a binary file and then dump it directly into its flash memory. Yeah, that makes sense. But yeah, that was a major coup to figure out because all the all the end user has to do is burn a new SD card image sticking in the game and hold down a button and the game will auto update itself. And that's what it is. It's one one microcontroller that has access to the SD card. Programming the other one. That's cool.
And it's way better than the old Hmh. You had to have USB cables and the right software to compile it and push it over and
Ben
it didn't work on Mac. It rewrote. Yeah, we made this mistake I was trying to like profile my users, which every company does, they just don't say it. And I'm like, Okay, well, Max, only like 10% of the market and blah, blah, blah. So I think it's okay, if our flash program only works on PC because Chris wrote it for us, Chris Kraft, other fishing buddy. But then what I forgot is that pinball machines are bought by rich people, and what kind of computers do rich people buy Macs because they're expensive. So we had a lot of people were like, oh, I want to do this, but I don't have a PC. And I'm like, what's going on? And then I stopped and think I'm like, Oh, damn it.
And we could never get it to work. Yet FTDI drivers would not working for some reason. Yeah,
Ben
it was a hardware issue. But whatever. Now it's no longer an issue. Yay. So that's the story of the pin hex system.
Yeah. Awesome. That's, that's a hell of a story.
So you want to go into the RFO? Section? Steven?
Yeah, yeah. RFO. Sounds great. Ben, does. Parker made you aware of what our RFO section is?
Ben
He told me what it was when I completely forgot about it. Oh, wait, it's a new section. Right?
It's sort of it's it's the rapid fire opinion section. So we kind of blurt out some things that have happened, and then just give some opinions on it.
Ben
Great.
So recently, Eagle CAD was purchased by Autodesk, the guys who make AutoCAD my fusion 360 along with a whole bunch of other things. And this is kind of sending ripples through the whole maker hacker community right now, because it's everyone is just on pins and needles with what are they going to do to my Eagle? You know, because it's been the kind of the standard for makers and hackers. So what do you guys think about that? Are you pro that? Are you happy with it? Are you kind of scared?
Well, we I think we talked about this a little bit in the last podcast, right? Yeah. Just
a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Um,
there was a interesting interview with with one of the guys at CadSoft, earlier this week, as well. And I think it was without a fruit. And the cool thing is, they actually we're talking about a lot of the things that we were talking about last week. Yep. Um, some of the interesting stuff like are they going to be changing how, how the free version works? Because like, right now, it's, the free version is for students only. And
Ben
I just handed Parker a beer, by the way.
Um, yeah, so it's a, it's a, it's a, the, the free version is for students and makers only. And it's only up to a certain board size and certain layer thickness and blah, blah, blah, right. And they're actually going to be streamlining that down to be more online like their fusion 360 and AutoCAD stuff, to where if you're a maker and you or you make less than X amount of money, it's all free. And so you will be able to get basically a full copy of Eagle if you're a maker, which is really cool. I'm thumbs up on that one. Anything they can make it to? I think they were saying like they have like 500 different ways you can buy Eagle different combinations. And they're basically yeah,
based off of like pin count and layer count and all kinds of jazz like that. And then you can add auto router all kinds of crazy upgrades and things like that. But yeah, I mean, pushing it crushing it all down into one is super convenient.
Yeah, they're gonna they're gonna start skew cutting all that stuff. Yeah. So I think it's a good idea. I can't wait to see what they do.
Ben
Well, okay, so disclaimer, like element 14 apparent company that sponsored The Ben Heck Show owned cats off but then sold it probably because they had an acquisition themselves. So yeah, that was, you know, something I wanted to disclose. But now that CadSoft is no longer associated with Premier far now. I
guess I can say whatever I want. It's what do you think of the cat's off software?
Ben
It's really cool. But it reminds me of somebody that was programmed in like the 1990s. I would agree with that. We know you helped me learn Eagle like three or four years ago. And it it as a former graphic artist. It's like I'm visually laying this out, but it's completely counterintuitive to me Every art program ever made. It didn't work like Inkscape or CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator. It worked backwards. Yeah. So if if Autodesk can use you know, their decades of visual design layout expertise to make cats our Eagle, more intuitive to use, I think that'd be great. I mean, it really needs like an overhaul make.
I know it's had an overhaul recently, but it needs more of one. As Steven always says, it makes it they need to make the left button do something on the mouse.
Please doesn't lift button is for select and right button is for modify. It's not supposed to be the other way around. Yeah. So So okay, so quick question, because there's been some kind of rumors about it. Having Eagle all entirely within a cloud, that also holds your designs. So you don't have to locally have your designs, everything is stored within some kind of magical system Far, far away. So how do you guys feel about something like that? Is that Is that like a benefit? Or what do you think?
I saw? No,
Ben
yeah, I
don't really like it too much, either. I don't like how that works in fusion. It just seems slow. Yeah, and slow. And fusion, especially over like the DSL, we have a macro fab
Ben
that happened to us, I think, was last week before we went on vacation. As either I don't know who it was, somebody at work was like, Hey, Ben, we need those files from the Raspberry Pi Zero project that you mentioned, Steven, and I was like, Oh, wait, there aren't any files because I designed it in Fusion 360. So good. One thing is really cool about fusion 360s, you can click on a body and go print, and it sends it directly, it opens up in MakerBot software, and you can push print, it's that's awesome. But then you don't have any STL files. I mean, you can say Export STL file, the fact that I had to manually go in there and export STL file, I mean, it shows a great, you know, iterative strength of the software to actually produce drawings. But I didn't even realize I didn't possess the files myself. So it's not really something like, oh, I don't want them to have my files. Because I use things like OneDrive and Google Drive all the time. It's just that I want to see them like I wanted, there should be a folder on my computer, like, oh, there's where my crap is. Yeah, that's my thing.
I agree with you on that. I like having at least I'd like to even just pretend that they're mine like that. They're right there.
Ben
Yeah, like, there's this thing like with Fusion, like, oh, I uploaded an SVG to my cloud. And now I can put it into the file. It's like, it's taking the long way around the bar. And ultimately, a program should be designed to make you get your work done as quick as possible. Yeah,
I would agree with that is because I use a GitHub for all my backups and file sharing pretty much for all my open source projects. And if if CadSoft change that, how do you share your Cloud Files? Easily? Or how do you do revision control? Or how do you do everything that GitHub does? How do you do it on their cloud service? Yeah,
that's a good point. If they do that, then GitHub is I mean, it's kind of like giving them the finger in terms of all the equal stuff. Well, I
Ben
mean, we can't just assume that, oh, Autodesk bought them. So they're going to make everything in Eagle work, like fusion 360. However, you know, as, you know, overall corporate strategy that they probably want to get to that point. You know, if you think about fusion, I mean, it has several things built into one program, like the cam, I mean, I don't know if you guys ever used that. But like, That's ridiculous. That's in there. I mean, it's cool. I don't think I'd ever use it. But, you know, it's cool that it's in there. But yeah, as Parker was saying, yeah, there is some value. Reason I don't use the cameras like, well, I've got this other program, I'm just going to use it because I know it. And I think at the end of the day, people do want files to do is do with this a please. Although I will take this moment to say, I think that Adobe Premiere Photoshop and After Effects should be combined into one program. Oh, jeez,
that'd be a monolith.
Ben
I know when that'd be awesome.
It'd be killer.
It come on a Blu ray. Or, what 40 DVDs.
Ben
Because that's a good example of like, you know, Adobe is a huge company, you know, it's like the size of the government is like a huge thing. So they've got all these different departments. And there's all this stupid crap with Adobe products that are completely inconsistent, like, if you go, Oh, I'm going to rotate this object 90 degrees in Photoshop, it goes in one direction, like clockwise. In Adobe Illustrator, rotating something 90 degrees goes counterclockwise. The two different programs from the same company use the same positive rotation and go in different directions. It's all over the map, if you look, but then there's really no excuse for it. Because if you look at something like Microsoft Office, all of those programs are really consistent design and feel, whereas Adobe isn't. So actually, yeah, Adobe is something where I would actually like to see everything merged into one,
because it would be cool, but a lot of that is due to tradition, right? I shouldn't say tradition, but just previous versions. and people are just used to it.
Ben
Yeah, well, I think they recently got rid of the cloud settings sync. Or like it, they got rid of it in some programs, but not others. That's like, okay, oh, we can sync in. You know, can I use Adobe, like on my home computer, my work computer, my laptop? It's like, oh, I can sync my settings to all three computers. But then some of the Adobe programs, it's like, oh, no, we removed that feature in the last auto update. You didn't know that happened.
Yeah. Lame, fun. So, next RFO. I actually found this on Hackaday. And Parker's probably rolling his eyes, because this is totally a thing that I geek out on. But I found an article about a guy who made a discrete level processor, he calls it the mega processor. Oh, yes, I saw that guy's name is James Newman. And he implemented 42,300 some odd trance transistors in a discrete level processor,
Ben
that is a lot of transistors, add
an enormous amount of transistors. And it was one guy working on this entire project. And he actually has it fairly well documented, I shouldn't say fairly well, he has it very well documented. He has like data sheets and opcodes and everything, like you can write a program for his his processor. And actually, he promotes that. He said, If you ever come over and you want to bring up a program, please do and he'll program this thing up. But one of the reasons why I wanted to bring it up is just because of the sheer monstrosity. Yeah, I'm looking at the size this guy did. It is ridiculous. And what's funny is it kind of reminds me of a Ben Heck project. Not just because of size, but because I've seen some of Ben's stuff. At macro fab actually some of the the pin heck testing stuff. And it kind of reminded me of that all this discrete level like hand soldering stuff and point to point wiring all the point of it, and I absolutely love it. I thought it was fantastic. But yeah,
I think I think that's what Ben excels in isn't just like hacking wires together and making crap work.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's, it's amazing.
Ben
So he says 42,000 transistors in that thing.
At a minimum, there's there's more than that.
And it's all wired point to point. stuff.
Ben
Yeah, it makes you think the Motorola 68k Guess why they call it that? 68k transistors.
So 43 point 42.3k.
Ben
I'm just saying that's pretty beefy. That's not like someone trying to wire together like a 400 or four. Yeah, that's a that's a pretty hefty process. But
it's the sizes 10 meters by two meters or in American about 30 feet by
Ben
American and the American imperial system. Well, he
I think he has it been in like something like eight or so different panels. And the guy went through so much trouble every single panel is is very neatly organized. And it has wiring diagrams that show every path of everything on it. On top of that, pretty much every logic gate has LEDs to indicate their states. So if you see this thing actually run, it's amazing. It's it's, it's by far equally a sculpture as it is just an electronic gizmo Oh,
Ben
a while ago, someone built their own Apollo Guidance Computer from scratch. Yep. So for anyone that's not familiar, that's the computer they had on the moon missions, which totally happened. And they built two computers permission one was in the lunar module and mom was in the command module. And you know, there's a third one was the one on the lander itself. Oh, it
was at NASA. Oh, okay. That was an exact replica so they can test stuff before sending up commands.
Ben
Yep. And then they built two of these for every mission as well. And that was important because it was the first computer built with integrated circuits. It was like 5000 NOR gates, right. 333 gates?
I think it was no, yeah, no, I believe it was NAND.
Ben
It was a NAND one of the universal it was like the
predecessor for all the 7400 series chips.
Ben
Yeah. So anyway, not I don't know, eight years ago, someone rebuilt that computer using you know, 1000s and 1000s. Of gates. But this transistorized thing you're talking about is even more insane. It reminds me of like Little Big Planet where someone's like, oh, look, I made a calculator that can add two to two digit numbers together. And now we have people in Minecraft building Pokemon simulators. It's just insane how far that will
go. Oh, yeah, you've seen that yet, Steven. Yeah, yeah. Have someone made a Pokemon? There was a Gameboy Advance Pokemon simulator in Minecraft with a working display. That was color. Yeah,
Ben
it's insane. Yeah. I thought it was insane when they had like eight bit adders in Minecraft and like, I know that guy blows it away. Well, I think the transistor, the mega computer is awesome because it it shows people like how computers actually work. I
actually think Ben was writing it nor gates. Oh,
is it really? Yeah,
I think it's NOR gates.
Ben
I'm kind of a panda wasn't
even invented back then.
Ben
And there were three input NOR gates. Yes, they were. Yeah,
you can, you can actually go. If you just type in Apollo Guidance Computer schematics. There's a there's a great website that pops up on Google that just has just banks and banks of all the schematics used in it. And it's insane. I mean, it's like the absolute worst homework problems you've ever seen ever. These schematics, but it's just solid logic.
Yep. That's Stephen, how much is this mega processor? All 42,000 of his transistors actually, like how big of a power supply do you need? Do you think it's super simple power supply can power it?
You know what, and that's just the thing. They didn't talk about the power supply. And if you look at the videos and the images, he's got it all nicely curated, and it's in the room and things he doesn't show the power supply for this thing. The power supply to run that many LEDs and transistors. Discreetly level has to be I mean, I don't even think the SSPs could handle it.
Well, you gotta think is the LEDs are going to be 10 milliamps each, right? Yeah, something like that. Okay, I'm gonna do a little little calculator right here. Okay,
take take take a wild guess take 40% of those transistors are on at any one time.
Yeah. So is 42,000 times 10 milliamps times point four. So we've got 168 amps at roughly point 2.5 volts.
Okay, so So you know, the thing is pulling to 250 to 300 Watts somewhere around that right? About 300 watts for LEDs. That's not too bad. So actually, you know, nevermind, the SSPs could totally pull that off with a single channel.
Yeah. Now all the transistors probably not, but that's a different thing.
Yeah, you're right, that you were just calculating LEDs?
Ben
Well, it's a lot better than a room size computer made out of vacuum tubes.
That's that's, that's probably 30,000 watts.
Ben
Oh, you have a MIDI controller on this box.
Oh, yeah, they because we're actually Ben and I are remote from our normal recording area. So I have this audio box USB thingy
Ben
brought to you from the North Woods of Wisconsin. Actually, we're gonna go fishing again after this. Yeah, yeah.
Well, awesome, guys. Do you guys have anything else?
You got one more thing on this RFO or you want to skip it?
Yeah, you guys sound like you guys need to go out and go fishing man.
Sounds good. You want to sign us out then.
Ben
All right. Well, that's been the macro fab engineering podcast. We hope you've enjoyed all this interesting, illuminating topics of conversation including the hottest sisters and transistors, the hottest transistor sisters. We'll see you next time.
Later guys. Take it easy.
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