Daniel's Stuff

Bob Lives!

daniel — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 10:21:06 +0000

After a couple of false starts with dead voltage regulators, Bob (my daughter named it) the PIC based ethernet device lives in a more permanent incarnation. Bob is made from bits and pieces I had around the place (I now have several very dead network hubs). The budget for the project was zero

My Dad provided me with the PIC prototyping board pictured above and many of the pieces as well as the PIC18F452. The ENC28J60 ethernet controller was kindly provided by Microchip through their very generous free samples.

The original voltage regulator on the PIC prototyping board didn’t seem to be up to powering both the PIC and the ethernet controller, so I went through my old retired networking gear until I found a 3.3V regulator. Unfortunately I think I popped it in the process of removing it from the board and it no longer worked . In the end I used a 7805 5V regulator and then ran the output of that through a pair of diodes in a bridge rectifier (thank again for the help with that one Dad) to drop the voltage down to about 3.5V or so.

Now I need to get my PIC Forth running on this hardware and then I’ll have a networked Forth device I can play with

What I’ve been up to lately

daniel — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 01:43:21 +0000

I’ve been really busy recently and have not had much time to work on my side projects.

One that I’ve been working on off and on for some time is a networked PIC micro-controller.

This morning I finally got it responding to ICMP echo request (ping)

The next thing I need to do is make a board for it. That brings me to another project I’ve just started. I have started a port of the awesome PCB program to Cocoa. Things are coming along really nicely

A little further with the decompression routine

daniel — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 11:45:57 +0000

I’ve gotten just a little bit further with the decompression code

X-Message-Delivery: Vj0xLjE7dXM9MDtsPTA7YT0wO0Q9MTtTQ0w9MA==

X-Message-Status: n:0

X-SID-PRA: Daniel Parnell

X-Message-Info: JGTYoYF78jHVrAq/T4xfKLLpTvwPwE0t6g/vyq6tyzbqln5iNnXwcSMg41wQCSulCxd5N8UB57Lq6un/ug7i0YsGX30yo+pm

Received: from randymail-a4.g.dreamhost.com ([208.97.132.207]) by bay0-mc8-f11.bay0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.2668);

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:06:38 -0800

Received: from 192-168-1-101.tpgi.com.au (60-241-72-192.static.tpgi.com.au [60.241.72.192])

(using TLSv1 with cipher AES128-SHA (128/128 bits))

(No client certificate requested)

by randymail-a4.g.dreamhost.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 97A67194DD3

for ; Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:06:26 -0800 (PST)

Message-Id: <8EEE4310-25CC-47BE-8FCB-330EBCD75A21@danielparnell.com>

From: Daniel Parnell

To: danielparnell@live.com

Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=Apple-Mail-33–583770588

Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v930.3)

Subject: more test messages

Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:06:23 +1100

X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.930.3)

Return-Path: me@danielparnell.com

X-OriginalArrivalTime: 30 Jan 2009 00:06:38.0411 (UTC) FILETIME=[9F1AB1B0:01C9826E]

The headers of the email message are coming through now, and I’m starting to get the message body

More Windows Live decompression progress

daniel — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 01:37:40 +0000

I’ve not had much time recently to work on the decompression routines as family and work need to take priority over side projects… Last night I picked the code up again and had a bit more of a look. I found a couple of mistakes in the code I’d written and am now getting a bit further in the decompression

The expected results as before:

X-Message-Delivery: Vj0xLjE7dXM9MDtsPTA7YT0wO0Q9MTtTQ0w9MA==

X-Message-Status: n:0

X-SID-PRA: Daniel Parnell

X-Message-Info: JGTYoYF78jHVrAq/T4xfKLLpTvwPwE0t6g/vyq6tyzbqln5iNnXwcSMg41wQCSulCxd5N8UB57Lq6un/ug7i0YsGX30yo+pm

Received: from randymail-a4.g.dreamhost.com ([208.97.132.207]) by bay0-mc8-f11.bay0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.2668);

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:06:38 -0800

Received: from 192-168-1-101.tpgi.com.au (60-241-72-192.static.tpgi.com.au [60.241.72.192])

(using TLSv1 with cipher AES128-SHA (128/128 bits))

(No client certificate requested)

by randymail-a4.g.dreamhost.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 97A67194DD3

for ; Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:06:26 -0800 (PST)

Message-Id: <8EEE4310-25CC-47BE-8FCB-330EBCD75A21@danielparnell.com>

From: Daniel Parnell

To: danielparnell@live.com

Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=Apple-Mail-33–583770588

Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v930.3)

Subject: more test messages

Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:06:23 +1100

X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.930.3)

Return-Path: me@danielparnell.com

X-OriginalArrivalTime: 30 Jan 2009 00:06:38.0411 (UTC) FILETIME=[9F1AB1B0:01C9826E]

What I’m getting now:

X-Message-Delivery: Vj0xLjE7dXM9MDtsPTA7YT0wO0Q9MTtTQ0w9MA==

X-Message-Status: n:0

X-SID-PRA: Daniel Parnell

X-Message-Info: JGTYoYF78jHVrAq/T4xfKLLpTvwPwE0t6g/vyq6tyzbqln5iNnXwcSMg41wQCSulCxd5N8UB57Lq6un/ug7i0YsGX30yo+pm

Received: from randymail-a4.g.dreamhost.com ([208.97.132.207]) by bay0-mc8-f11.bay0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.2668);

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:06:38 -0800

Received: from 192-168-1-101.tpgi.com.au (60-241-72-192.static.tpgi.com.au [60.241.72.192])

(using TLSv1 with cipher AES128-SHA (128/128 bits))

(No client certificate requested)

Hopefully I’ll get some more time to work on the code soon

i48 1.1 is now available for download from the iTunes App Store

daniel — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:05:08 +0000

Get it while you can

I have just uploaded the next release of i48 for review

daniel — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:09:28 +0000

The latest version of i48 has been submitted review by Apple.

This new version adds support for running the emulation at full speed (although that has some interesting effects on usability). I have also added theme support and included a theme based on Power48 provided by Fabrice Roux. Finally the buttons now highlight when they are selected making it a bit easier to use the keyboard.

I was hoping to add sound support in this release, but have decided to submit what I have now and work on the sound support for the next release.

i48 is now available on the iPhone App Store

daniel — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 23:18:05 +0000

Get it while it’s hot!

BlogThing 2.0 has finally been released

daniel — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:46:51 +0000

After what seems like ages I have finally released BlogThing 2.0. This new release is totally rewritten from scratch and provides some very nice new features. The coolest one is the new video upload facility. Just add a video file to the page and press the Post button. BlogThing will encode the file and upload a custom Flash based video player. It just works automagically

New graphics for i48

daniel — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:59:52 +0000

The other day I received an email from Staffan Sevon containing some new graphics for the display of the application. These look so much nicer. Thanks Staffan!

More progress on the HP48GX emulator for the iPhone

daniel — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:36:20 +0000

I had a bit more of a play with the emulator code tonight and fixed up a few little glitches. I also changed the color of the emulation screen to look more like the real thing Now off to bed! It also looks like it is OK to distribute the ROM file as apparently HP released the ROMs to the public some time in 2000. The github repository (http://github.com/dparnell/i48/tree/master) has been updated to include the ROM file.