Category Archives: Uncategorized

Whilst motoring gently along the River Wey, there is plenty of opportunity for reflection. As the narrowboat travels at a maximum of 4mph, it’s not unusual to step off the boat and walk along the towpath for a mile or … Continue reading →

Part 1 – The Adventure Begins…… There are few opportunities in our busy lives, to take some time off the day job and spend the time relaxing with friends.  Even more infrequently do those days align perfectly with a period … Continue reading →

In March of 2017, I began to follow a project on Hackaday.io for a microcomputer constructed entirely out of common TTL integrated circuits.  TTL stands for transistor-transistor logic, and appeared first in the very late 1960s.  Several of the iconic … Continue reading →

Last weekend I attended a retro-computing fair at the Centre of Computing History in Cambridge.  This was my first visit to this popuar museum and I was impressed by the range of exhibits that they had on show. 35 years … Continue reading →

Arduino is the Marmite of embedded programming – you either love it or hate it. Regardless of how you feel about it – Arduino in the last 12 years probably has introduced more people to embedded programming of microcontrollers than … Continue reading →

It’s not everyday that you meet someone with the talent and tenacity of Dave Banks (@hoglet67 on Twitter).  In less than three days, Dave ported his FPGA based Acorn Atom from Xilinx and VHDL across to Lattice ICE40 and verilog. … Continue reading →

In previous posts I began to describe a minimum interactive language toolkit which could work standalone in virtually any small microcontroller. Here are the following prerequisites I stated in the previous post:  Interactive – commands may be typed at the … Continue reading →

This post is concerned with minimal computing – a subject that is close to my heart. I write this on the day that my Employers have suffered a major ransom-ware cyber attack on their servers and IT systems, bringing the … Continue reading →

As I continue to explore the boundaries between computing hardware, firmware and software as part of an effort to reduce the perceived complexity to something that I can understand, the idea arose for a computing platform with an artificially imposed … Continue reading →

  Getting Started with myStorm BlackIce Introduction myStorm BlackIce is a unique combination of low power FPGA and ARM microcontroller designed and manufactured specifically to bring affordable FPGA open source  hardware and software to Hobbyists, Makers and Students. Working in … Continue reading →