turns – OfdmFORUM

Commodore C64: The Most Popular Home Computer Ever Turns 40

April 21, 2022 Audrey

This year marks the anniversary of the most popular selling home computer ever, the Commodore 64, which made its debut in 1982. Note that I am saying “home computer” and not personal computer (PC) because back then the term PC was not yet in use for home computer users.

Some of you have probably not heard of Commodore, which is kind of sad, though there is a simple reason why — Commodore is no longer around to maintain its legacy. If one were to watch a documentary about the 1980s they may see a picture of an Apple computer or its founders but most likely would not see a picture of a Commodore computer in spite of selling tens of millions of units.

To understand the success of the C64 I would first back up and talk about the fabled era of home computers which starts with understanding the microprocessor of the day, the venerable 6502. Check out the video and follow along below.

The 6502

The 6502 was the brainchild of Chuck Peddle and a team of engineers, Bill Mensch, Wil Mathes and others, who were all working at Motorola — we called them the Motorla Five even though there were seven of them. Chuck’s team successfully shrunk down a full sized PCB known as the main processor board onto a single chip, known now as a microprocessor, the 6800 to be exact. While this evolutionary step seems whole and natural to someone like you or I, the existence of the microprocessor was deemed a threat to those at Motorola who made their money selling the main processor board for tens of thousands dollars vs the $250 that the 6800 was slated to sell for. Mr. Peddle basically received a “cease and desist” letter from Motorola to stop work on the 6800 which Chuck took to mean that they were abandoning the project and the intellectual property it represented. Chuck and company then joined MOS Technology in Norristown PA and subsequently released the 6502 microprocessor which sold initially for $25 and ultimately less than a dollar. The fact that the lawyers disagreed with Chuck is a different story.

KIM-1

The 6502 is at the heart of many of the home computers of the era starting with Atari, Apple, BBC Micro, and of course Commodore. One of the earliest examples of the 6502 was a system known as KIM-1. Contrary to popular belief, the KIM-1 was not designed by Chuck Peddle but rather someone from the Calculator Group at MOS lead by John May. When asked about his contribution to computers in general, Mr. Peddle’s response was that he was proud of the Input/Output (I/O) chips of the day as a computer with no I/O is just a processor but add I/O and you have terminals, cash registers, printers, etc.

I cut my teeth on the 6502 as a young bench technician at a company named Pennsylvania Scale Company in the late 70’s, doing processor controlled instrumentation which was

Meet up with ‘CodeGen’: An AI Model That Turns Uncomplicated All-natural Language Requests Into Executable Code

April 4, 2022 Audrey

Please you should not forget about to be part of our ML Subreddit

Envision becoming in a position to convey to a machine to publish an app just by telling it what the application does. As significantly-fetched as it may appear, this situation is currently a truth.

According to Salesforce AI Analysis, conversational AI programming is a new paradigm that brings this vision to lifestyle, many thanks to an AI process that builds software.

Introducing CodeGen: Generating Packages from Prompts

The huge-scale language product, CodeGen, which converts very simple English prompts into executable code, is the very first move towards this goal. The individual doesn’t produce any code rather, (s)he describes what (s)he needs the code to complete in standard language, and the computer system does the rest.

Conversational AI refers to systems that enable a human and a laptop or computer to engage normally as a result of a dialogue. Chatbots, voice assistants, and digital agents are illustrations of conversational AI.

A Different Type of Coding Dilemma: Finding out a New Language

Up until now, there have been two methods to get personal computers to do beneficial get the job done –

use pre-present laptop or computer courses that do what you want the equipment to do
generate a new program to do it.

Possibility 1 is wonderful when the personal computer courses that are wanted are available.

But Option 2 has a created-in barrier: if the kind of application essential does not exist, creating new packages has often been limited to all those who can talk the computer’s language.

Below are 3 of the current programming paradigm’s essential drawbacks:

Time-consuming: just one need to study a programming language and the right way implement what they’ve figured out.
Challenging: some men and women locate studying a new language to be a difficult undertaking, and other people are unsuccessful to total the teaching.
Expensive: Coding colleges are rather costly.

These concerns usually impede or discourage new programmers’ education and learning and improvement, specially amid persons from traditionally deprived communities. To place it yet another way, conventional programming usually provides folks with a unique form of “code difficulty” — one that isn’t posed on a take a look at but somewhat a formidable actual-earth problem that many men and women can not defeat.

The CodeGen Strategy: Make Coding as Straightforward as Speaking

CodeGen will make programming as simple as speaking, which is the terrific guarantee of conversational AI programming. The conversational AI programming implementation provides a glimpse into the upcoming of democratizing program engineering for the standard general public. An “AI assistant” converts English descriptions into usable Python code – enabling any individual to write code, even if they have no programming experience. This conversational paradigm is enabled by the fundamental language model, CodeGen, which will be produced open resource to pace up research.

CodeGen’s Two Faces: For Non-Coders and Programmers alike

Though everyone, including non-coders, can use CodeGen to develop the application from scratch, it can advantage in

Raspberry Pi – the small British personal computer turns 10

March 8, 2022 Audrey

You can help subtitles (captions) in the video clip participant

If you experienced to guess, what would you say was the finest selling British computer system of all time? Not a great deal of providers make computers in the United kingdom any more, so perhaps you would go again a handful of decades. Perhaps this Amstrad, it sold much more than 2mn models back in the 1980s. Or maybe the BBC Micro. Even with becoming in colleges throughout the place, it only bought 1.5mn. Its much less expensive cousin, the Acorn Electron, even fewer, 250,000 models. Undoubtedly the ZX Spectrum then, 2mn of all those were bought.

No, the best providing Uk pc of all time is also a single of the smallest, the Raspberry Pi. Because its start in 2011 this personal computer the sizing of a credit history card has been a enormous business accomplishment providing more than 30mn units. It truly is an unbelievable United kingdom engineering feat that is now made use of by hobbyists, researchers, and market. And it is really a radically distinctive variety aspect as opposed to its 1980s ancestors with a Raspberry Pi Zero providing at $5 apiece. But the group driving this tiny device experienced one more goal. They needed it to demystify computing. They thought the Raspberry Pi could open the routes for young children into pc science. So why has reaching its social aims proved so tough?

My title is Eben Upton, and I’m the chief executive of Raspberry Pi Limited. I continue to imagine of myself as an engineer, but right now, it is really form of wrangling this enterprise that’s become a ton larger than we at any time imagined it would be.

Can I describe Eben? He’s form of constantly on. He’s incredibly pushed.

Have we scrubbed the lab for… let’s have a fast glimpse. Take a look at head, which is not key. I you should not think we have received something key.

He doesn’t genuinely sit down and take it easy very a great deal. If he is not doing work he is doing work on a thing which is not doing the job. My name’s Liz Upton. I am one of the founders of Raspberry Pi, and I run advertising and marketing communications in this article. I have accomplished since day just one.

We make personal computers. We are a computer system business. We make very little credit score card-sized computer systems initially intended for training, but now truly obtaining a great deal of use in other places.

It’s this unusual seeking small issue that appears to be like you have got it outside the middle of a phone or one thing. It is really bristling with GPIO pins and flashing lights. And we seriously shy away from selling them in packing containers as considerably as we can because we want people to glimpse at that and recognize that that’s what a personal computer is. And it’s essentially incredibly, very straightforward to get

Razer’s Job Sophia notion turns your desk into a modular computer

January 7, 2022 Audrey

Razer is no stranger to wild CES prototypes, and CES 2022 is no exception: the business disclosed its new Job Sophia concept, which aims to establish an whole modular desktop computer into a desk that appears to be like like a Star Trek LCARS console appear to lifetime.

Razer has had modular laptop aspirations prior to. There was 2014’s Venture Christine, a precursor to Job Sophia that imagined a desktop tower that was created out of conveniently swappable Jenga-like bricks. 2020’s Tomahawk took a much more practical tactic to that notion, based mostly on Intel’s Aspect NUC types.

But Task Sophia feels like Razer’s conceptual tendencies turned to 11. The desk is developed to element 13 unique swappable module slots, wherever consumers can add in a extensive array of distinct parts: temperature readouts, touchscreen software launchers, devoted chat and calendar shows, wi-fi Qi chargers, a mug heater, pen tablets, audio mixers, CPU and GPU monitors, and much more. Razer imagines that the modular nature of its laptop desk would allow consumers to customize it to their particular wants and use cases. A streamer, for illustration, would be equipped to quickly snap on much more highly effective speakers, microphones, and cameras for streaming, with extra displays to observe their followers chatting, even though a video clip editor could add audio mixing and enhancing modules for focusing on get the job done.

As for the precise “PC” part, Razer’s principle imagines that crafted into the desk, as well, in a tailor made-designed, magnetically connected chassis that can be easily taken off so that users can swap out parts when they get a new CPU or GPU. The total detail is connected to a significant OLED panel (possibly 65-inch or 77-inch) to screen your games in the greatest probable quality. And of system, there’s a lot of Razer’s RGB Chroma lighting — it’s nonetheless a gaming Personal computer, following all, even if it appears to be like a desk.

Of system, Razer’s heritage of flashy CES prototypes has usually been just that: a collection of fanciful, one-off assignments demonstrated off on a yearly basis as an illustration of the likely of future gaming PCs or add-ons which just about hardly ever turn into actual solutions. And searching at the flashy Task Sophia renders, it’s tough to visualize any other destiny for the notion than Razer’s solution graveyard alongside prior showcases like 2014’s modular Project Christine, 2017’s triple-screened Project Valerie, or 2018’s cellphone-docking Task Linda.

Modular computing equipment are difficult. Even the quite standardized world of regular Computer system creating is rife with various specs for SSDs, motherboard sockets, and RAM. Proprietary units are even tougher — recall Google’s ill-fated modular Ara smartphone job? The only way something like Task Sophia would exist is if Razer is willing to build all the modules and accessories itself. And even if it is inclined to do that, it’s difficult to visualize that the price would be nearly anything fewer than astronomical, specifically when when