Computer Scientist, Electrical Engineer. Loves RF, efficiency, and boating.
Michigan
Joined February 2009
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I've always loved my HP 16500B logic analyzer, been using this fully populated beast for probably 20 years. But wow, this inexpensive DSLogic U3Pro is amazing. Being able to capture and decode an hour+ of i2c comm is amazing.
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Found this tonight, anyone remember installing Windows XP with this media? I probably installed hundreds of machines with it during a part time job in college. It prepped the machine for the first turn on where the end user would finish the installation with their own key.
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I see the NTSB is using ai to generate their illustrations now. While I understand the fuel selector position this illustration is showing, it still hurts my brain to look at it.
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For those curious on the backstory of this project, there is a thread here
I built a hardware multiplication accelerator for the 8086.
It’s an ISA card built around a TRW MPY12HJ parallel multiplier from the 1980s that offloads MUL instructions from the CPU.
It actually makes integer multiplication about 2.5× faster on early x86 systems.
#retrocomputing #electronics #vintagecomputing
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I’ve been thinking a lot about the news of Spirit Airlines shutting down this morning and it's hitting me a bit harder than I expected.
I took this picture a few years ago inside the DTW maintenance hangar. A friend of mine was up until this morning, an aircraft mechanic there. People love to joke about Spirit Airlines, but they ran a solid operation. They had a very young Airbus fleet, essentially perfect safety track record, never having an airframe loss, and a lot of good people who knew what they were doing. Seeing that go away sucks when you know people behind it. #spiritairlines 🧵
It wasn’t these recent things that took them out, more of just terrible circumstances. COVID hit right when they had just expanded. Then the Pratt & Whitney GTF engine situation made it worse. At one point around 20% of their fleet was grounded due to these engines being recalled. This was absolutely brutal for any carrier paying for new jets that can’t fly.
I took this photo at DTW in 2024. Six basically new Airbus planes just sitting there mothballed waiting on engines.
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For what it’s worth, I never had a bad experience with Spirit. I don’t fly that often, but the handful of Spirit Airlines flights I’ve taken were all solid. Crews were always professional and awesome, no issues at all. Always nice flights. This pic was from a flight last year on Spirit heading back home from FLL. During peak travel times, flying Spirit saved us thousands of dollars. I will miss this airline.
