From righto.com
Antenna diodes in the Pentium processor
2 11
I was studying the silicon die of the Pentium processor and noticed some puzzling structures where signal lines were connected to the silico...
on Sat, 8PM
From righto.com
0 1
Computer history, restoring vintage computers, IC reverse engineering, and whatever
on Sun, 12AM
From righto.com
How the 8086 processor's microcode engine works
0 0
The 8086 microprocessor was a groundbreaking processor introduced by Intel in 1978. It led to the x86 architecture that still dominates de...
on Mon, 4AM
From righto.com
Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day
0 0
This article is now available in Japanese: 紙と鉛筆でビットコインをマイニング：1日に0.67ハッシュ and Russian: Майним Bitcoin с помощью бумаги и ручки . I decided...
on Oct 22
From righto.com
Wealth distribution in the United States
0 0
Forbes recently published the Forbes 400 List for 2024, listing the 400 richest people in the United States. This inspired me to make a his...
on Oct 10
From righto.com
Reverse-engineering a three-axis attitude indicator from the F-4 fighter plane
0 0
We recently received an attitude indicator for the F-4 fighter plane, an instrument that uses a rotating ball to show the aircraft's orienta...
on Sep 29
From righto.com
Inside a ferroelectric RAM chip
0 0
Ferroelectric memory (FRAM) is an interesting storage technique that stores bits in a special "ferroelectric" material. Ferroelectric memory...
on Sep 24
From righto.com
Inside the Intel 1405: die photos of a shift register memory from 1970
0 0
In 1970, MOS memory chips were just becoming popular, but were still very expensive. Intel had released their first product the previous yea...
on Sep 18
From righto.com
The Pentium as a Navajo weaving
0 0
Hurrying through the National Gallery of Art five minutes before closing, I passed a Navajo weaving with a complex abstract pattern. Suddenl...
on Sep 3
From righto.com
Inside the guidance system and computer of the Minuteman III nuclear missile
0 1
The Minuteman missile was introduced in 1962 as a key part of America's nuclear deterrent. The Minuteman III missile is currently the only U...
on Sep 1
From righto.com
Reverse-engineering the first FPGA chip, the XC2064
0 0
A Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) can implement arbitrary digital logic, anything from a microprocessor to a video generator or crypt...
on Aug 4
From righto.com
Reverse engineering the 59-pound printer onboard the Space Shuttle
0 0
The Space Shuttle contained a bulky printer so the astronauts could receive procedures, mission plans, weather reports, crew activity plans,...
on Aug 3
From righto.com
Inside an IBM/Motorola mainframe controller chip from 1981
0 0
In this article, I look inside a chip in the IBM 3274 Control Unit. 1 But before I discuss the chip, I need to give some background on main...
on Jul 26
From righto.com
"Maxwell's equations of software" examined
0 0
A recent post quotes Alan Kay's statement that expressing Lisp in itself is the " Maxwell's Equations of Software ": Yes, that was the bi...
on Jul 21
From righto.com
Standard cells: Looking at individual gates in the Pentium processor
0 0
Intel released the powerful Pentium processor in 1993, a chip to "separate the really power-hungry folks from ordinary mortals." The origin...
on Jul 7
From righto.com
A look at the die of the 8086 processor
0 0
The Intel 8086 microprocessor was introduced 42 years ago this month, 1 so I made some high-res die photos of the chip to celebrate. The ...
on Jun 25
From righto.com
Inside the tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets
0 0
To use the Montreal subway (the Métro), you tap a paper ticket against the turnstile and it opens. The ticket works through a system called ...
on Jun 24
From righto.com
Inside a vintage aerospace navigation computer of uncertain purpose
0 0
I recently obtained an aerospace computer from the early 1970s, apparently part of a navigation system. Aerospace computers are an interesti...
on Jun 1
From righto.com
Silicon reverse engineering: The 8085's undocumented flags
0 0
The 8085 microprocessor has two undocumented status flags: V and K. These flags can be reverse-engineered by looking at the silicon of the ...
on May 14
From righto.com
0 0
I'm interested in computer history and reverse engineering old chips. Some of my projects: Restored a Xerox Alto . Wrote the Arduino IRre...
on May 6
From righto.com
Inside the Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Soviet spaceflight
0 0
The Soviet space program used completely different controls and instruments from American spacecraft. One of the most interesting navigati...
on Apr 29
From righto.com
Talking to memory: Inside the Intel 8088 processor's bus interface state machine
0 0
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor. IBM's decision to use the 8088 processor in the I...
on Apr 28
From righto.com
Iconic consoles of the IBM System/360 mainframes, 55 years old
0 0
The IBM System/360 was a groundbreaking family of mainframe computers announced on April 7, 1964. Designing the System/360 was an extremely...
on Apr 6
From righto.com
The Z-80 has a 4-bit ALU. Here's how it works.
0 0
The 8-bit Z-80 processor is famed for use in many early personal computers such the Osborne 1, TRS-80, and Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and it is s...
on Apr 3
From righto.com
A new multi-branch algorithm to render rational-exponent Mandelbrot fractals: Part I
0 0
If you came here from Hacker News, thanks for visiting. You might want to check out the Hacker News comment thread too. The Mandelbrot fr...
on Mar 31
From righto.com
Inside a counterfeit 8086 processor
0 0
Intel introduced the 8086 processor in 1978, leading to the x86 architecture in use today. I'm currently reverse-engineering the circuitry...
on Mar 31
From righto.com
Inside an unusual 7400-series chip implemented with a gate array
0 0
When I look inside a chip from the popular 7400 series, I know what to expect: a fairly simple die, implemented in a straightforward, cost-e...
on Mar 30
From righto.com
0 0
Computer history, restoring vintage computers, IC reverse engineering, and whatever
on Mar 30
From righto.com
The Intel 8088 processor's instruction prefetch circuitry: a look inside
0 0
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor. IBM's decision to use the 8088 processor in the I...
on Mar 23
From righto.com
Macbook charger teardown: The surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter
0 0
Have you ever wondered what's inside your Macbook's charger? There's a lot more circuitry crammed into the compact power adapter than you...
on Mar 19
From righto.com
Inside the Am2901: AMD's 1970s bit-slice processor
0 0
You're probably familiar with modern processors made by Advanced Micro Devices. But AMD's processors go back to 1975, when AMD introduced t...
on Mar 7
From righto.com
Bitcoins the hard way: Using the raw Bitcoin protocol
0 0
All the recent media attention on Bitcoin inspired me to learn how Bitcoin really works, right down to the bytes flowing through the netwo...
on Mar 6
From righto.com
The first microcomputer: The transfluxor-powered Arma Micro Computer from 1962
0 0
What would you say is the first microcomputer? 1 The Apple I from 1976? The Altair 8800 from 1974? Perhaps the lesser-known Micral N (1973...
on Mar 4
From righto.com
Inside the mechanical Bendix Air Data Computer, part 5: motor/tachometers
0 0
The Bendix Central Air Data Computer (CADC) is an electromechanical analog computer that uses gears and cams for its mathematics. It was a k...
on Feb 19
From righto.com
IBM, sonic delay lines, and the history of the 80×24 display
0 0
What explains the popularity of terminals with 80×24 and 80×25 displays? A recent blog post " 80x25 " motivated me to investigate this. The ...
on Feb 14
From righto.com
Reverse-engineering an analog Bendix air data computer: part 4, the Mach section
0 0
In the 1950s, many fighter planes used the Bendix Central Air Data Computer (CADC) to compute airspeed, Mach number, and other "air d...
on Feb 13
From righto.com
Reverse engineering standard cell logic in the Intel 386 processor
0 0
The 386 processor (1985) was Intel's most complex processor at the time, with 285,000 transistors. Intel had scheduled 50 person-years to de...
on Feb 3
From righto.com
Reverse engineering CMOS, illustrated with a vintage Soviet counter chip
0 0
I recently came across an interesting die photo of a Soviet 1 chip, probably designed in the 1970s. This article provides an introductory g...
on Jan 28
From righto.com
Using Arc to decode Venter's secret DNA watermark
0 0
Recently Craig Venter (who decoded the human genome) created a synthetic bacterium . The J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) took a bacterium...
on Jan 25
From righto.com
Inside the mechanical Bendix Air Data Computer, part 3: pressure transducers
0 0
The Bendix Central Air Data Computer (CADC) is an electromechanical analog computer that uses gears and cams for its mathematics. It w...
on Jan 23
From righto.com
Reverse-engineering the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer's sound chip from die photos
0 0
The Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer was released in 1983 and became "one of the most important advances in the history of modern popular mu...
on Jan 22
From righto.com
Interesting double-poly latches inside AMD's vintage LANCE Ethernet chip
0 0
I've studied a lot of chips from the 1970s and 1980s, so I usually know what to expect. But an Ethernet chip from 1982 had something new: a ...
on Dec 31
From righto.com
The transparent chip inside a vintage Hewlett-Packard floppy drive
0 0
While repairing an eight-inch HP floppy drive, we found that the problem was a broken interface chip. Since the chip was bad, I decapped it ...
on Dec 20
From righto.com
Two interesting XOR circuits inside the Intel 386 processor
0 0
Intel's 386 processor (1985) was an important advance in the x86 architecture, not only moving to a 32-bit processor but also switching to a...
on Dec 17
From righto.com
Reverse engineering the barrel shifter circuit on the Intel 386 processor die
0 0
The Intel 386 processor (1985) was a large step from the 286 processor, moving x86 to a 32-bit architecture. The 386 also dramatically impro...
on Dec 6
From righto.com
Inside the Intel 386 processor die: the clock circuit
0 0
Processors are driven by a clock, which controls the timing of each step inside the chip. In this blog post, I'll examine the clock-generati...
on Dec 1
From righto.com
The Xerox Alto, Smalltalk, and rewriting a running GUI
0 0
Be sure to read the comment from Alan Kay at the bottom of the article! We succeeded in running the Smalltalk-76 language on our vintag...
on Nov 9, 2023
From righto.com
Reverse engineering the Intel 386 processor's register cell
0 0
The groundbreaking Intel 386 processor (1985) was the first 32-bit processor in the x86 line. It has numerous internal registers: general-pu...
on Nov 9, 2023
From righto.com
Xerox Alto's 3 Mb/s Ethernet: Building a gateway with a BeagleBone
0 0
The Alto was a revolutionary computer designed at Xerox PARC in 1973. It introduced the GUI, high-resolution bitmapped displays, the optic...
on Nov 2, 2023
From righto.com
Reverse-engineering Ethernet backoff on the Intel 82586 network chip's die
0 0
Introduced in 1973, Ethernet is the predominant way of wiring computers together. Chips were soon introduced to handle the low-level aspects...
on Nov 2, 2023