Dill Pickle's electronics helpline

[Dill_Pickle]

Don't you think it is rather odd to have a few gigs of main memory available at 64 bits by 166Mhz, and the two or four core CPU operating at 1Ghz, and not have a program be able to reliably sample data at 1 KHz? How about that the vast majority of what I do on the PC is the same as 15 years ago, when everything was 10 times smaller? That describes Windows OS. Why do you think all those video cards sell? Why do you think PCs require sound cards?

It is a stark contrast to Embedded systems of 15 years ago...I have an 8051 from that era, with just 64K of program memory and 64K of data memory on a card, now I get that on a single chip with a 120Mhz clock rate from microchip. National Instruments sells a PC in a little card (though this is pricey), but it doesn't run Windows, and the kids in First Robotics program it in very CPU inefficient Java or Labview.

For these projects here, the complexity of Windows programming ( and/or decluttering) is going to be a significant cost...everybody has only so much time to spend ldealing with complexity which isn't essential to their project, and some also have extremely limited financial resources too.

[kevindhca]

If you need a light weight version of winxp, you can strip it down with nlite and remove all the parts of the os you don't need.

I have a old IBM 333mhz machine that I use as a music server on my network.

It has 256mb ram, and 1tb hard drive.

The full winxp would make this machine slow, so I took everything out of XP that I didn't need to play and store music.

The os went from 620kb down to 175kb.

I have it connected to my home stereo and and even though the computer is nearly 20 years old, it's fast on the network and quite secure since all it can do is play media.

[Diapered Jason]

Don't you think it is rather odd to have a few gigs of main memory available at 64 bits by 166Mhz, and the two or four core CPU operating at 1Ghz, and not have a program be able to reliably sample data at 1 KHz? How about that the vast majority of what I do on the PC is the same as 15 years ago, when everything was 10 times smaller? That describes Windows OS. Why do you think all those video cards sell? Why do you think PCs require sound cards?

It is a stark contrast to Embedded systems of 15 years ago...I have an 8051 from that era, with just 64K of program memory and 64K of data memory on a card, now I get that on a single chip with a 120Mhz clock rate from microchip. National Instruments sells a PC in a little card (though this is pricey), but it doesn't run Windows, and the kids in First Robotics program it in very CPU inefficient Java or Labview.

For these projects here, the complexity of Windows programming ( and/or decluttering) is going to be a significant cost...everybody has only so much time to spend ldealing with complexity which isn't essential to their project, and some also have extremely limited financial resources too.

[Dill_Pickle]

Kevindhca

I like your approach, kill off the majority of the OS and simplify. But KB??? (grin!)

Jason, yes, but what is going on with that Gig of ram? Most people don't work with more than 10 to 20 Meg of data at once anyway. It seems to me that Microsoft writes a bigger and clumsier OS just to sell bigger and faster new hardware! And, while I am at it, the need for antivirus in the first place is a symptom of a much deeper underlying problem: the computer you own will do things automatically without permission from you, the owner, and you do not actually control the computer. I won't go into it here, but this one is actually pervasive, it is in almost every OS.

[kevindhca]

Kevindhca

I like your approach, kill off the majority of the OS and simplify. But KB??? (grin!)

Sorry, that should be Mb, finished size of image on disk. I know you can go even further than that, with one of the guides on the net.

[feralfreak]

i got an invention i want to work on but i dont know the name of the circuit type i need, its electronic part would be just a place to plug in to a wall socket, leading to a battery backup incase the power goes out, leading to a potentiometer which goes to a led, i dont want to get into what this is for so i cant give too much information, but what type of circuit is this and can someone tell me what i need to do to make this circuit? i was thinking of having the part that goes into the wall socket just be a cell phone charger to step down the ammount of current to what an led can safely handle

[Diapered Jason]

Sounds like you need some transformers and rectifiers. There is also a special circuit to prevent over charging of the battery.

[eatenbywo1ves]

FIXED: Installed Ubuntu

 

So EFI is a pain to work around sometimes and the issue presented here isnt critical to anything.....

Was working on setting up a dual boot set up w/ each os being assigned to one of the two nvme m2 ssds installed. Since the system is not a desktop build, support by the manufacture for any raid 0 set up is non existent....

Yada yada yada....

After losing several backups across multiple devices, i finally was able to configure the system to boot using grub w/ kali as the main os and win10 pro as 2nd os...

Kali is being installed only for educational purposes, I can't stand it to be honest.

It only boots into kali 50 percent of the time from a completely powered down state... ended up having to do about 30 EC resets on the mainboard in two days

[    0.099913] APCI Error: No handler for Region [EC__] ((____ptrval____)) [EmbeddedControl] (20180531/evregion-132)

[    0.099917] ACPI Error: Region EmbeddedControl (ID=3) has no handler (20180531/exfldio-265)

[    0.099920] ACPI Error: Method parse/execution failed \_SB.PCIO.LPCB.EC._REG, AE_NOT_EXIST (20180531/psparse-516)

[    1.110871] mmc0: Unknown controller version (3). You may experience problems.
/dev/nvme0n1p2: Superblock last mount time is in the future.
    (by less than a day, probably due to the hardware clock being incorrectly set)
/dev/nvme0n1p2: clean, 365364/4890624 files, 2731946/19531264 blocks
[    2.360123] iTCO_wdt iTCO_wdt: can't request region for resource [mem 0x00c5fffc-0x00c5ffff]

[Diapered Jason]

In the bios, you can change boot priority, but sometimes with SSDs, the computer may not see the ssd. I have similar problems sometimes with my ssd, but my Corsair is very old and so is my computer. If you cannot fix it in bios, you may need to check your drive connection, especially if you have an old fashion ribbon cable. Otherwise, the drive itself may need to be tested. Of course, what I am saying is very preliminary. I don't know how to read those error codes but it sounds like incompatiblity problems or flaws in the hardware setup itself.

[feralfreak]

I wanted to know if this would be safe, attaching an old cell phone charger  (5v output), a resistor (68 ohm/1w?) A potentiometer to adjust brightness, and an led  (3.2v), is this ok? Any changes i should make? 

[oliver d]

On 5/29/2019 at 4:09 PM, feralfreak said:

I wanted to know if this would be safe, attaching an old cell phone charger  (5v output), a resistor (68 ohm/1w?) A potentiometer to adjust brightness, and an led  (3.2v), is this ok? Any changes i should make? 

What wattage is the LED?

[feralfreak]

13 hours ago, oliver d said:

What wattage is the LED?

i couldnt find the wattage on the page for the led, here is the page for it

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/tt-electronics-optek-technology/OVLEW1CB9/365-1177-ND/827113

ill email them for the wattage

 

edit: they surprised me with a quick reply, its .064 watts

[oliver d]

Okay your plan will work just increase your resistor to 100 ohm/1 watt.

[feralfreak]

17 hours ago, oliver d said:

Okay your plan will work just increase your resistor to 100 ohm/1 watt.

okie dokie, i was looking for the mentioned one, it seems there are different kinds, would any work or do i need a specific type?

[oliver d]

100 ohm /1 watt make does not matter just the value and the wattage.

[feralfreak]

On 6/2/2019 at 1:54 PM, oliver d said:

100 ohm /1 watt make does not matter just the value and the wattage.

I found something interesting that I forgot about, i was going through some of my junk, and found an ac to dc variable converter, gave me a question i thought I should run past ya, if i set this to 3v, would i be able to just put on the potentiometer and led or do i still have to add the resistor? 

[oliver d]

You can but I would not ,I would still put the resistor as the resistor protects your LED from over currents(amps).Those transformers are notorious for giving in acurate output voltages.You set it on 1.5v and it give out 3v.

[Firefly 35]

On 6/2/2019 at 9:26 AM, feralfreak said:

okie dokie, i was looking for the mentioned one, it seems there are different kinds, would any work or do i need a specific type?

Some thoughts:

Regular carbon fiber resistor should be fine.  If the lowest resistence on the potentiometer is around 100-150 ohms, you may not even need a resistor.  Also transformers such as the one you had pictured are known to have really low efficiency.  I would recommend just using 2 AAs in series.

On 2/5/2019 at 9:31 AM, Diapered Jason said:

Sounds like you need some transformers and rectifiers. There is also a special circuit to prevent over charging of the battery.

 

On 2/4/2019 at 7:22 AM, feralfreak said:

i got an invention i want to work on but i dont know the name of the circuit type i need, its electronic part would be just a place to plug in to a wall socket, leading to a battery backup incase the power goes out, leading to a potentiometer which goes to a led, i dont want to get into what this is for so i cant give too much information, but what type of circuit is this and can someone tell me what i need to do to make this circuit? i was thinking of having the part that goes into the wall socket just be a cell phone charger to step down the ammount of current to what an led can safely handle

If practical use a small solar panel.  They don't need rectifiers and will "max out" after reaching a certain current level.  

 

If the device has to plug into an outlet, a cell phone charger with the proper specs should work.

[oliver d]

Use the resistor as it protects the LED ,it regulates the amps to the LED to prevent it from burning out and the poteniometer lowers the voltage allowing you to dim the LED a phone charger transformer would work but its a pulse charger witch means its not a constant 5v.