Ben's Blog

Well, I have got the board all powered up (I found “G” and “5V” silk screen markings hiding under one of the headers) and I think I have mostly figured out all the jumpers. There are two jumpers which I have called X and Y and the rest of the jumpers I have divided into sets R and S. The segments of the SSD I will refer to according to the following diagram from Wikipedia, with the leftmost digit being digit one and the right most digit being digit 3.

The jumper sets R and S are as follows:

Header set R

Header set S

Jumpers X and Y are found here:

Using Karnaugh maps, which I always find fun, the X and Y jumpers can be used to enable/disable header sets R and S.

__|X|~X|                 __|X|~X|
Y |0| 1|                 Y |0| 1|
~Y|1| 1|                 ~Y|0| 0|
Map for header set R     Map for header set S

This simplifies to R = ~X + ~Y and S = ~XY (ie. set R is enabled when either jumper X is removed OR jumper Y is removed and set S is enabled when when jumper X is removed AND jumper Y in installed). At first I thought that this setup might be so they could plop a bunch of headers in and be able to just swap around the X and Y configuration to get different readouts, but I don’t really see that being feasible with how this is all setup.

There are also a bunch of headers that don’t seem to do anything (every fourth set in the top and bottom rows). Perhaps it was just cheaper to install a wide set of headers than to install a few broken sections. Having set R spaced at every other header makes it easy to place jumpers so a dead space does make sense. There are traces I can see to some of these pins, but I suspect they are just grounded so that they don’t light anything. There is also a pin missing just above the X header. On the back side of the PCB you can see there is a via almost in the spot where the header pin should have been, but not quite exactly. If they really put the big headers in to save money/time, why pull this pin out of the header block? The via would have worked just as well if there was a pin soldered in the hole. The via connects from common B1 pin to the SSD, so that pin was likely removed to prevent the B1 segment from being lit by a jumper near X.

So a couple days ago I was tearing apart a bunch of old computers I had kicking around, pretty much just a bunch of PIIs and older. I figure they aren’t really of much value used as originally intended, but I don’t want to see them end up in a land fill or piled up someones backyard in India, so I’m stripping them down for components for electronics projects (if anyone needs any older computer parts (including CD-ROMs, floppy drives, power supplies, sound cards, CRT monitors, etc.) or components they suspect would be on an old motherboard, feel free to drop by).

Anyway, I pulled this one PCB out of the front of a computer that seemed a bit odd. All there is to it is a triple digit seven segment display, a single resistor (I suspect to regulate power to the display), and a huge amount of jumper pins. I think I count almost 100 pins. The thing faces out through the front of the computer case, I assume as a CPU frequency display (and older computer we used to have had a similar thing). What weirds me out is that I don’t recall there being any cable connected to this thing. I wasn’t really being too careful when disconnecting headers from the motherboards, but I really don’t recall ever unplugging this thing. Even if I had unplugged it, the majority of these pins look like they are just jumpers. There are two small 2×5 sections of pins that I suppose could have been headers for some other connector, but I don’t really see the necessity of all the jumpers.

Update: I have got the display powered up and played with the jumpers. Che out the new post.

I just found this weird UK short film. Quick synopsis: a guy gets dumped which spawns a computer virus that destroys the world. Oh ya, I almost forgot; it’s a musical.

Entry 13

Hello everyone. I am now back home, safe and sound and readjusted to the time zone. I figure it is about time to post my final Budapest log entry, so here goes. Sorry for the wait! (Also, I have now posted pictures for Budapest Log Entry 12, so check those out if you haven’t yet. The pictures of Budapest Log Entry 10 are also now viewable without being registered.)

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Entry 12 – May 22, 2010

A scale model of the central part of Budapest that appeared in the main BME building one day

Hey everyone. Here is another update. The notes I have been taking have slowly become less thorough and some days were completely omitted, so just assume not much interesting happened if a date is left out. Let’s get to it, shall we?

Note: I have not had a chance to add pictures to this post yet, but will be pretty busy for the next two weeks, so I thought I should post the text and the just get the pictures up when I can. Stay tuned for those.

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For the past couple of years I have been doing a lot of bike commuting. At first I was a little uncomfortable with the idea of biking to work every day, and when I started it was difficult, but it quickly grew on me until I willingly and gladly transitioned from my half hour round trip commute to my summer job into my two hour round trip commute to school. I think that cycling is a great method of transportation. It gives riders great exercise, it is light on the wallet (I hear the economy has not been great lately), it is easy on the environment, and in gridlock is way faster than driving your own car (and is still fairly quick the rest of the time). In my home town, it is also immensely faster and more convenient than public transportation, though I think public transit is also a valuable way to get around. My only issues with it are the exposure to the elements (our winter is many months long with lots of snow and it is VERY cold, plus riding in the rain isn’t as much fun), and if I have a particularly long ride, into the wind, on a very sunny day, I need to bring a spare shirt to change into at my destination plus a stick of deodorant. I think that both of these things are places where public transit can supplement the system relatively well. All in all I think it is a great way to get around and I think that I would like to be able to live car free. I love driving for pleasure, but driving for commuting purposes is just frustrating.

I just stumbled across this video which has a few good points about bike commuting. I might not 100% agree with his definition of NYC as the “greatest city in the world”, but his other points I think are still valid.

One thing that I think is a huge barrier for people to commute by bike is the lack of infrastructure. Many people find it too dangerous to ride on busy streets, yet it is illegal to ride on the sidewalk (at least in my city), which makes sense as it is very dangerous for pedestrians. Drivers get annoyed when cyclists share the road because in order for a cyclist to be reasonably safe, they need to have at least half of a lane which can bottleneck traffic, especially on roads with only one lane. What some places have done is implement a separate bike lane next to the curb lane. While this is sometimes fine, there are problems if water and street crap builds up along the curb, there are dangerous potholes or sewer grates, and cars wanting to enter intersections and don’t/can’t see cyclists approaching from this lane. Worst of all, if this lane is along a parking lane, there is HUGE danger for the cyclist if someone opens their car door. Some city’s have lanes along the median (as demonstrated in the above video). Although I have not tried such lanes yet, I wonder how difficult it would be for cyclists to enter these lanes.

A lot of European cities are extremely well set up for cycling. I recently watched a short documentary that examined why girls from the UK don’t ride bikes and one of their major concerns was infrastructure.

I often listen to KICK FM’s “Great Canadian Talk Show” with Marty Gold and, while I think there is a lot of great commentary coming out of that show, I have been a little disappointed by the bike bashing that goes on. I do agree with some of the comments made regarding some of the ideas for new cycling infrastructure, but one of Marty’s strongest points has been that there is no cycling community to use the infrastructure. I think that this fits in with the classic chicken and the egg problem; there are no cyclists because there is no infrastructure, and there is no infrastructure because there are no cyclists. I think the “if we build it, they will come” attitude is a much better one to have in this situation.

I don’t think it is possible to fully replace cars in our society due to the critical mass they have attained, but I think it is possible to improve the public transit and alternative transportation infrastructures in ways to significantly cut back on private automobile usage and, as a result, live in a much healthier world.

Entry 11 – April 25, 2010

Well, it looks like I’m down to one update a month. Hopefully they aren’t getting too long for anyone who is reading. This post doesn’t cover everything to today’s date, but I will post again soon.

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Entry 10 – March 21, 2010

Well, it appears it has been quite some time since I have updated this blog, so I will try to rewind the clock a bit and cover what has happened over the past few weeks. Here goes.

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This is one of the photo galleries for Budapest Log 10.

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This is one of the photo galleries for Budapest Log 10.

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This is one of the photo galleries for Budapest Log 10.

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This is one of the photo galleries for Budapest Log 10.

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This is one of the photo galleries for Budapest Log 10.

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