Arcfn - arcfn.com - Ken Shirriff's blog
General Information:
Latest News:
"I wouldn't have given a nickel for their stock": Apple in 1976 24 Aug 2013 | 10:21 pm
A guest posting from William Fine: I saw the "Jobs" movie yesterday and it revived some ancient memories of my dealings with Jobs and Holt in the "old days"! When I returned home, I researched Rod Ho...
Simulating a TI calculator with crazy 11-bit opcodes 11 Aug 2013 | 10:51 pm
I've built a register-level simulator of a 1974 TI calculator chip that shows what actually happens inside a calculator when you perform operations and shows the calculator source code as it executes....
Reverse-engineering the 8085's ALU and its hidden registers 28 Jul 2013 | 09:03 pm
This article describes how the ALU of the 8085 microprocessor works and how it interacts with the rest of the chip, based on reverse-engineering of the silicon. (This is part 2 of my ALU reverse-engin...
Four Rigol oscilloscope hacks with Python 19 Jul 2013 | 12:37 pm
A Rigol oscilloscope has a USB output, allowing you to control it with a computer and and perform additional processing externally. I was inspired by Cibo Mahto's article Controlling a Rigol oscillosc...
Reverse-engineering the flag circuits in the 8085 processor 17 Jul 2013 | 10:13 am
Processors all have status flags to keep track of conditions such as a zero value, a carry, or a negative value. Whenever you write a loop or conditional, these flags ultimately are in control. But ho...
Twelve tips for using the Rigol DS1052E Oscilloscope 5 Jul 2013 | 10:33 pm
In this article I share a few tips I've learned about using the Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope. The Rigol DS1052E digital oscilloscope. Push the knobs The knobs all have convenient actions if you push ...
The Mili universal car/wall USB charger, tested in the lab 21 Jun 2013 | 10:54 am
I received a Mili universal USB charger for review. This interesting charger has some features that make it my current favorite travel charger. It runs off both wall power and car accessory power. It ...
Teardown and exploration of Apple's Magsafe connector 3 Jun 2013 | 09:09 pm
Have you ever wondered what's inside a Mac's Magsafe connector? What controls the light? How does the Mac know what kind of charger it is? This article looks inside the Magsafe connector and answers t...
Tenma 72-7740 multimeter: review and teardown 16 Apr 2013 | 11:19 am
The Tenma 72-7740 digital multimeter is a multimeter in the $70 price range. Overall, it's a nice, solidly-build meter and it has performed well for me. I received this DMM from Newark element14 for r...
Wealth distribution in the United States 5 Mar 2013 | 01:09 pm
Today's Forbes billionaires list inspired me to visualize the wealth inequality in the United States. Use the Forbes list and other sources, I've created a graph that shows wealth distribution in the ...
