I love some of the night time code ideas I have. Their silliness amuses me.

[honey the codewitch]

With IoT widgets you often have far more RAM in your frame buffer of your display controller than you do in your MCU. While you're not using the display, you could theoretically take advantage of it by "drawing" memory to the display and then reading it back off. If you did it with the backlight off it would be somewhat slow and less efficient than using local RAM but in some cases this means an extra 768kB, like you get with the RA8875. Then I realized how silly this is. Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean you should.

Real programmers use butterflies

[Peter_in_2780]

Exactly. "Because I can" is very rarely a good reason to do something.

Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012

[honey the codewitch]

That's why the approach in the OP won't go past conception. :)

Real programmers use butterflies

[den2k88]

Monty Python Flying Code - It's too silly.

GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++*      Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X

[ElectronProgrammer]

Actually, if I remember correctly, some time ago I read an interview with a guy that was a developer in the 1980s or 1990s (I think I got the decade right) that used their very limited graphics (compared to today) to, not only store, but do calculations. I can not remember what they calculated but he described that their CPU was very limited for the amount of data in terms of speed, so they used their unused graphics card for bulk storage and processing. Each (8-bit grayscale) pixel corresponded to a variable and they would write from RAM to the graphics card an entire screen (320x200?!?) at a time as a memory page. Then they would do the same operation on all pixels (variables) and read back the memory page (screen) into RAM. I searched my browsing history but can not find the link :sigh: . I did not bookmark it because I thought of it as just a curiosity. I do not know if something like this would apply to your case or if reading and writing in bulk to your IoT screen would be fast enough to be useful but when you can not stretch the hardware it is time to get silly inventive :)

[Dan Neely]

Well that's certainly a unique way to reinvent and modernize [CRT memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams\_tube).

Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius

[trønderen]

Old computer history can display some amazing memory technologies. Another one, from about the same time as CRT storage, is mechanical waves in a mercury filled tube (Wikipedia: Delay Line Memory[^]) - far from random access, but the 1948 EDSAC[^] actually used them for working storage. After the Apollo 11 crew left a reflector on the surface of the moon, I saw some apparently serious proposals to use such reflectors with a pulsed laser as an optical delay line for data storage. You can fit quite a few bits in a single laser beam 385,000 km & return with a 10 Gbps laser ... I guess those making the proposals live in sunny areas ... I never heard of any realization of the idea.