Dr. Cockroach's pages

December 17, 2023 - Yup, after a rather long pause I have ideas to try out on the LLTP. The Sequencer circuit works and is odd enough but the timing pulses are less than desired yet I want to keep things transistor-less. I am going to regress a bit and try out a rotating drum with multiple tracks that will be either hand cranked or motor driven or both. Copper foil on a stiff cardboard tube should work for a start but not yet sure about the contacts to the drum. Springs, paper clips or ??? Should be interesting.

September 20, 2023 - Well, it has come to the point that the fixed retirement incomes of my wife and I are no longer enough to keep up with rising prices ( Rent, auto fuel and food ). I did start part time employment at a local senior outreach thrift store this week and that income will help out a lot. It will also get me out of the house and away from my other half and that is a good thing as long as she does not read this Lol. I have been much less active with my HaD projects but hope to change that soon.

July 9, 2023 - I keep cycling around my different projects. Right now I am getting back into my Ham Radio mode and working on my 40M CW receiver. Very warm if not down right hot and humid weather here in coastal North Carolina and best for my old bones to stay indoors and keep cool.

September 9, 2022 - Making sparks....

What with all the other projects I am working on or want to work on I now seem to have caught the Tesla Coil bug. Yeah, a most shocking direction to be taking but I hope it will be most illuminating.

May 24, 2022 - Wow, it has been a while since the last update. Lately my projects have really slowed down but I am still thinking up new things to try and taking notes. Light Logic and the processor projects are still alive, just trying to decide the physical form to proceed with. Other than that it seems that life these days and coping with rising costs is a whole hacking project in itself. I am planning on a week long solo hiking/camping trip the first week of June in the mountains of northern Georgia. I need this down time from life and rain or shine I am taking the dip. Perhaps serendipity will cross my path :-D

December 24, 2020 - Well...... I can be sure to say that this year of 2020 has at least been different for just about everyone. Not going to dive deep into the main news events of this year but lets just say that my projects came to a major slowdown and recently a total stop....

About three weeks ago I found that my sense of smell was flipping around and everything smelled wrong. Then the sense of smell and taste just shutdown. I had read that this was a symptom of the dreaded Covid-19 Virus but I was just in deniable mode as I, in general, stay clear of other people and avoid groups. Wore my mask and used hand sanitizer all the while having doubts of how effective that really was. On day two my temperature went up and would not break, reaching 102F and not budging. I was getting short of breath and loosing body fluids at a alarming rate. By day four I took the advice of others and went to the local ER. Man oh man. As soon as I told them the symptoms and my thought that I might have the Virus, I was placed as far a possible from others in the waiting room of the ER. Not long, I was taken back to MY room and was greeted with a vast amount of test supplies, IV's and everything in between. First off was the Covid19 test. NOT FUN...as the test I was given was the older style where the swab was placed way back in the back of my head. Well perhaps not but it sure as hack felt like it. The result came back a hour later and YUP, I had the Rona. In two days of ER work I was given 2 liters of IV fluids, enough blood drawn to paint my house. Chest X-Ray and a CT scan to check for bleeding in the lungs ( all clear ) The twin IV's were interesting as the the tech had a very hard time finding a good place as my veins had just about collapsed. My blood O2 level was between 91 and 92 so the Doctor gave me the option of going home for the night or stay in hospital. I choose home. This was in the first week of being sick and now it is week three and now feeling much better. I still have a bad cough and short of breath but even that is slowly improving. No fever for two weeks and about ready to think about my projects once again. At age 64, I know I am in the range where this could have gone much worse.

Do I think this Virus is game changer? I really feel that it is just another Virus that is out there to cause us problems. The thing I would have done is acted a bit sooner and got checked out a few days of when I did. I react very badly to ANY flu type vaccines so that is not a option.

Just a New Years wish to all that everyone gets a chance for a better 2021 that what we had for 2020.

Well, here it is mid August and my hacking is in full swing despite having company stay with my wife and I for a while and even through a cat 1 hurricane. Just was informed last week that two of my entries in the "Making Tech At Home" contest made the top thirty. Waiting to find out what is in the grab bag prize.

The LLTP processor build is coming along better than I expected as I have the Sequencer tied into the ALU and Accumulator to create a very basic Load function. So the first instruction is LDA - Load the Accumulator with the output of the ALU. There is still a long way to go with the LLTP as I am currently working on the Mux and then the Dmux and another register will follow. Beyond that is the PC - Program Counter and the IR - Instruction Register.

I have a very good outlook on the future for the LLTP. At first I was not truly convinced that a processor could be made with my Light Logic gates but now with the success I have had to date, I firmly believe that a complete CPU can be made without any transistors or relays. Diodes and resistors rule.

Just showing off all my Blinkin Lights to some TheFatRat music.

Hope that life finds everyone here safe and healthy. I just recently finished up a bit of a hacking job that was a bit out of my comfort zone. Back about a month ago I found a free TV at my local thrift store. It is a Philips 42 inch LCD 42MF521D/37 from 2009. No power at all and once home I removed the back to reveal the power and control boards. The power supply board fuse checked out good but there four filter caps that had vented and bulged, I could not see any other signs of failure so ordered up replacement caps from Mouser.

Low and behold, that was all that was wrong with it. The set now works just like it came out of the box and works great :-)

Never pass up on a free non working item as you never know how easy it might be to bring something back to life.

I think it is time to start a project to pass along any wisdom that I have either learned or has been passed down to me from my Mentor(s) through the years. To start off here is the cornerstone for all maker/hackers in life.

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The previous smartest man in the world was iconically disabled and lived four or five times longer than conventionally expected, and other than made a few nerds mess themselves did absolutely nothing but write a book that 90% of the population of said world understood. It paid for his healthcare tho...

It also changed nothing, except cost taxpayers an awful lot of money to build a machine that straddled national borders to prove whether God exists or not. Popular opinion is the denominator, who cares about the fabric of the universe when its falling apart around your ears on a macro level and its your fault.

Faith, much? And it wasn't the fault of the nerds, either, but its all a distraction just like Elon's latest venture.

IDK. Quit fucking around, pick up some shit and fix something with it. Never mind if you make a penny, its shit. Welcome to our world...

Well, I got a bit board today and decided to do something with a few bad parts that I was about to toss out. What can be made with a bad hard drive, its hardware and  bad CDs that will not boot properly?

I love hot glue :-)

Well, I am a tad late in saying Happy New Year to everyone but I truly do mean it. I have been in a sort of slump for several months, project wise, and there are a few ideas floating about but not exactly sure what to shoot for next. What ever it is, Light Logic will play a major part in it.

I still want to continue with my " Marcus " fursuit. I still need to get to work on the feet paws and then the full body portion as I do have most of the needed materials.

After drinking instant coffee for several years, I came across a French coffee press at the local thrift store. I have always wanted to try one out and this press found its way home with me. Oh boy what a difference there is in the taste and aroma. I have not had fresh coffee in my home for a long time and now enjoying this. I had thought that cleanup of the grounds would be an issue but the grounds go to the bottom and do not tend to stick to the filter screen at all. Just run some water into the carafe and then toss the grounds and water out into the front yard. The filter screen/rod and top rinse off very easily.

I love it :-D

#Light Logic - Diode Resistor Logic out of its cage is really taking off with a few more circuits to be added to this demonstration project. At this point I do not know how far I can take Light Logic but I feel drawn to it and want to see it through to the end, whatever and whenever that will be.

There, I said it. I am a furry who has come out of the closet so to speak. I attended my first fur con ( Anthro Crossroads East 2019 ) in January and I am hooked. I have already begun making my first wearable head ( fox ) and going to have a lot of fun with this :-D

A full fursuit will be the final goal - All from scratch as only a HaD maker would do.

I want to wish ALL of my HaD friends a very special Merry Christmas. This has been a roller coaster year but overall it has been fantastic. Another car gave out but the landlord has helped me get another one, I retire in just a few days from now, I had a project winner with ColorChord and met even more friends here :-D

I am looking forward to 2019 and all that it will be for all of us :-D

Had a little fun building a 4x4x4 led cube this past week and controlled by a Atmega328 ala Arduino Uno  that @Morning.Star  sent me last year. Learning a little on how to program this. The original project was found on Instructables.

I have been here on Hackaday for almost two years now and have noticed how my projects have morphed from one to another.

I started out with just a basic transistor adder circuit then decided to build a processor based on that adder.  That processor became IO -  The Cardboard Computer. Now in 2018 with the current HaD Prize contest, I decided to enter a color to sound device to aide the sight impaired to hear colors. That is called ColorChord and has already begun to morph as I am using part of IOs sequencer to improve the sound of Colorchord by controlling a drum voicer circuit.

Now this leads me back to perhaps building a complete synthesizer and keyboard as well as adding sound  to IO.  It's all a huge circle and having a lot of fun and learning new things every day.

I hope this illustrates how I build my nand gates.

Received my ham radio call in 1974 while in high school in Hialeah Florida. A friend got interested in computers so our group helped him build his Imsai 8080. What fun coding our first programs and playing catch the rabbit on the led display. My first of many computers was the TRS-80. Years later I started building my own ham radio equipment as new stuff just cost way too much. Last winter I got interested in relay computers but figured the cost of such was also too high for me but a friend of the family had passed away and left me with all of his electronic parts that included several hundred transistors and diodes. A web site by Simmon Inns got me pondering about trying to build a computer processor after I had finished building his 4-bit full adder with transistors. So now I have some but not all of the sections needed for such a build and currently working on a Mux and Dmux circuit. With these I SHOULD be able to start connecting the parts and see if they will play nice. I am having a real blast learning this logic stuff even if I have waited till I hit the 60 years old mark. I need to say that I have come across a lot of information about logic gates and cpu's. Most I could follow and some information that I could not get my head around with my self taught electronics education. All in all, this is fun. One other point is that when my wife complains that I am spending too much time on this project I just have to remind her that I could be going to the exotic dance clubs in Myrtle Beach. That stops her in her tracks real fast. Then she just says I love you and walks away.