Nothing like my hardback TI TTL databook. (1984?)

Units in SPICE (analog design software) can cause some really big mistakes: m = 10^-3 M = 10^-3 MEG = 10^6 meg = 10^6 Kevin

I have a similar story about a once-per-49-days issue. Takes a long time to run those experiments, and to be patient enough to not interrupt them for some other test of the system.

Experienced musicians add "You can die from exposure." I'm a very part-time paid musician -- kind of past that phase -- but I have a couple of regular paying audio recording gigs. Kevin

I may still have that LP....

This discussion reminds me that it was years before I realized that Borland had likely intended their Quattro to be a Spanish-language-inspired follow-on to Lotus 1-2-3.

I remember using Turbo Pascal rev 1.0 on an Osborne "luggable." What a joy that everything fit on the double-density upgraded 180K (I think it was) floppy! Even better that I could open the floppy drive & remove the disk so that any bugs (yes, there were a few....) in the switch-the-memory-bank-to-access-some-hardware code had issues.

My brain went to 2s complement, and also considers largest negative int to be -128 for 8 bits, -32768 for 16 bits. As someone else said, my creditors consider think I owe them a larger amount if it's $32,768 instead of $1. But then my brain fried.... I know it would over or underflow, but exactly how? Hmm.... I've spent so many years programming to avoid such overflows that I no longer remember. Does it depend on the compiler? C# example: Int16 a = 1; Int16 b = -32768; Int16 c = (Int16)(a - b); C winds up being -32767, which means it wound up doing the 16 bit equivalent of (0001 - 1000) = 1001 in binary. The LSB being one makes sense to me. The MSB being one is not so obvious.

How often do values update? Once every 0.1 second? Once per second? Minute? Hour? Day? In the first two cases, display probably doesn't matter. If user has more than a few seconds of looking at the display, then it matters. (And how big is the display? "blank" you'd have space for, but I'm guessing not a "can't display value due to insufficient data" message would be too large.

I was also going to say "translating." I was thinking more of between groups of my "internal customers" in the company. Translating desires between laser physics folk, marketing, mechanical engineers, firmware/software engineers, electronics engineers, R&D management. And then there's translating field failure reports into something useful.

I remember that kind of BASIC (Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, if I recall correctly). Mostly I'm grateful that I was introduced to both assembly and Basic within a couple of weeks of each other -- I very quickly understood why the largest line number was 32767, for example. (Unless it was 65535, but I don't think so....) I don't remember using lots of "go to"s. I remember that being discouraged even then. But, hey, this was in the 1980s. The other advantage of starting back then was that I could follow the concepts, if not every detail, from transistor to gate to register to processor to assembly to compiler. Much harder to follow the details of what's going on in today's processors. And I'm grateful I rarely care -- modern compilers are wonderful tools. I haven't dug into the generated assembly code in a long time.

There's a reason everyone was so happy to have a PC (Personal Computer, that is -- one that was NOT part of a mainframe, not under an IT department's control) back in the 1980s.

Interesting to see so many negative comments about Epson -- I've generally had good luck with them. Of course, I don't actually print very much..... Have both an Epson color inkjet (like the individual ink cartridges and ability to print on CDs) and a much older Samsung B/W laserjet. Unfortunately, one of my newer OSs refuses to talk to the Samsung. Kevin

There's a reason we were happy when the Personal Computer was created. We got away from the admins of the mainframe. IT managing lots of users is easier if they can standardize on processes. The standards they pick work for most people (accounting, sales, shipping/receving....) Software & firmware engineers are an edge case of their user base.

Check the values of the pullup resistors. Too low and the drivers can't sink the current. Too high and they can't deal with the capacitance of the wires (sounds like you must have wires to an off-board display). You might try twisting wires, too, thought that's more to keep radiated noise out of other circuits.

Isn't the problem that he did not write the code? I understood that he is trying to understand the connections inside existing code. He is seeking help to understand the general intention of a previous programmer.

Similar experience from years ago in my college days --- in one editor, ^Y would "yank back" things I'd deleted. In another, ^Y would delete things I'd highlighted. Kept me on my toes...

I remember the double density upgrade on an Osborne "luggable" -- 180K. And Turbo Pascal rev 1.0; fitting editor, compiler, debugger all on one disk was a big improvement over previous compiler (name forgotten) on one floppy, Wordstar on the other....

I most often use the HP41CV emulator on my phone nowadays. My real one is still **in** my desk, but the emulator is **on** my desk -- or in my pocket in the lab when I need it. Much faster for me to use that than Windows calculator for most things I need to do.

Might be your expectation, but it doesn't match reality. See this from NASA or read the book/watch the movie "Hidden Figures."