Category Archives: Technology Insights

A 5 1/4″ floppy drive connected with USB?

Posted on by
Yup…that’s a 5 1/4″ Floppy Disk Drive, connected via USB to my computer. This board called a Greaseweazle reads the raw flux transitions from a floppy disk and recreates them as disk drive image files for modern computers. I just found disks full of music, sound files, and BASIC source code that I haven’t heard or seen since 1991, lost deep in formatted-over disks on an obsolete media that was impossible to read. Until now…If you have any IBM-PC formatted 5 1/4″ disks that might have some memories on them, I’m your guy.

Next, I need to work on reading old Apple ][ disks.

Display Systems 19S-8 Vintage Eggcrate Display Clock

Posted on by

There was a reason that CBS and other television networks used these type of displays on game shows when they had bright studio lights to contend with. The light is piercing from these!

Tonight, I got 22 wires soldered on 22 pins to mate with a Molex connector on the back of each display. Both digits are now directly connected up to the relay board. The software I developed can display an arbitrary 2-digit number, and then count up or down from that number until it reaches 00 or 99.

This has been a cool project! I’ll probably try to make a more detailed video in the future on the parts I selected and how all this works together.

Check out how this display worked on “Classic Concentration” hosted by Alex Trebek in the late 1980s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1izUPd87wmw

A relic and mainstay of all classic 80s gameshows…

Posted on by

Initial Test of a Display Systems 19S-8 Vintage Eggcrate Display (Light Bulb Matrix), common to television game shows of the 1970s-1990s.

This is one of two Display Systems 19S-8 eggcrate displays that I purchased from Surplus Sales of Nebraska. I plan to integrate both into a working count up/count down timer powered by a ESP8266 microcontroller module and a couple of relay boards.

This eggcrate display uses a common 28 volt DC power source on one pin. Then, depending on which pin the ground is connected, will light each of one possible digit: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 and $. It’s also possible to display strange characters by connecting multiple grounds between pins.

I plan to use a single 150 watt 12 volt DC power supply to power dual boost controllers that will output the needed 28 volts. The 12 volts is still needed for the relay boards. The ESP8266 module will be connected to a 5 volt DC output from the relay board.

In both displays, I only needed to replace one lamp upon receiving them. The lamp is a common 1820 mini-bayonet style incandescent.

The First Computer Bug

Posted on by
The First Computer Bug…

In 1945, Grace Murray Hopper was working on the Harvard University Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator. On the 9th of September, 1945, when the machine was experiencing problems, an investigation showed that there was a moth trapped between the points of Relay #70, in Panel F. The operators removed the moth and affixed it to the log. The entry reads: “First actual case of bug being found.”

Grace Murray Hopper, who lived from 1906-1992, found the first computer bug while working in a temporary World War I building at Harvard University on the Mark II computer where a moth had been beaten to death in the jaws of a relay. She glued it into the logbook of the computer and thereafter when the machine stops (frequently) they say that they are “debugging” the computer.

The very first bug still exists in the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution. The word bug and the concept of debugging had been used previously, perhaps by Edison, but this was probably the first verification that the concept applied to computers.

Google’s Role in Social Distancing

Posted on by
I thought this was interesting! Google is taking anonymized, aggregate data from Google Maps for public health officials to understand responses to social distancing guidance related to COVID-19.

Here is the data I pulled for the state of Minnesota. It looks like in general, 38% less people are travelling to work, 35% less people are travelling to grocery stores and pharmacies, and 58% less people are travelling to restaurants, cafes, and shopping centers. Rice County seems to be doing slightly worse at sheltering-in-place compared to the average in Minnesota, except in the travelling to work and parks categories.

Source: COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports (https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility)

The more you know!

Posted on by
The more you know!

Does a USB drive get heavier as you store more files on it?
Believe it or not, they get lighter. USB drives use Flash memory, which means the the ones and zeros of your data are stored on transistors. When you save data, a binary zero is set by charging the float gate of the transistor, and a binary one is set by removing the charge. To charge it, we add electrons, and the mass of each electron is 0.00000000000000000000000000091 grams. This means that an empty USB drive (which mostly holds zeros) weighs more than a full USB drive (which has ones and zeros). Add data, reduce the weight. However, you would need to weigh more USB drives than exist on the planet together at once before the difference in weight became easily measurable.

I’m a New Mac Owner!

Posted on by

I never thought the time would come, but I have to announce I’m a brand new Mac owner! Mind you, it’s not a new Mac, but I am a new owner! 😂