blog.randallhyde.comRandall Hyde's Blog – Books, Software, Electronics,

Fun Randall Hyde’s Blog Menu The Book of I2C Written by randyhyde@me.com on April 2, 2022 in Books with one comment . No Starch has just announced the pre-production release of my new book The Book of I 2 C.” This book covers the use of the I 2 C bus used in many embedded computer systems. In particular, this bus is very popular for adding peripheral devices to Arduino and Raspberry Pi systems. You can find out more information about The Book of I 2 C at https://nostarch.com/book-i²c. Humble Bundle with WGC Written by randyhyde@me.com on March 1, 2022 in Books with no comments . No Starch Press is offering a Humble Bundle” which includes Write Great Code vols 1, 2, and 3. Check it out before it goes away! https://www.humblebundle.com/books/joy-coding-no-starch-press-books Art of 64-Bit Assembly Written by randyhyde@me.com on October 4, 2021 in Books with 18 comments . Due to Covid-19 and certain marketing constraints, No Starch Press is putting off the formal release of The Art of 16-Bit Assembly Language” until January 11, 2022. However, if you pre-order a copy (https://nostarch.com/art-64-bit-assembly), they will send you a hard copy as soon as they arrive from the printers (expected date: Oct 20, 2021). Of course, electronic copies will be available after that date as well. Sorry for the confusion and delays. Pray that next year the pandemic will start to become a bad memory. TRTR Written by randyhyde@me.com on August 25, 2021 in General and Hardware/Electronics and Software with no comments . October 17-21 (2021) I will be attending the TRTR (Test, Research, and Training Reactors) annual conference in Raleigh NC. I’ll be showcasing Plantation Productions’ Nuclear Reactor Digital Console upgrades (hardware and software). For more details, check out https://projects.ncsu.edu/mckimmon/cpe/opd/trtr/ and https://trtr.org. 2021-10-04: Just a quick note: Due to Covid-19, the TRTR organizers decided to go virtual again this year, so I will not be attending in person. Avoid Budget Truck Rentals Website… Written by randyhyde@me.com on August 25, 2021 in General with one comment . I was recently moving from California to Tennessee (just couldn’t take CA anymore). I wanted to compare truck rental prices between UHaul, Budget, and Penske. I made the mistake of going to the Budget truck rental website, entering email and phone number (required to get an estimate from them). I expected a phone call with a dollar amount. Low and behold, they released my phone number and email address to *dozens* of moving companies. Now I’m getting spammed, texted, and called constantly from companies all over the US. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Stay way from Budget Truck rental’s website. 2018 Mac Mini vs. 2020 Mac Mini M1 Written by randyhyde@me.com on June 25, 2021 in Books with no comments . I recently purchased a Mac Mini M1 in order to begin working on The Art of ARM Assembly Language . To preserve desk space, I just connected it (via Ethernet) to my iMac Pro and used Apple’s Remote Desktop application in order to operate the Mini M1 from my iMac Pro desktop (in a window, much like running Microsoft Windows in a Parallels window). While there was a tiny bit of lag (barely noticeable), performance was fine. This surprised me as the (couple of years’ old) reviews of the product suggested the performance was trash. Oh well, Apple’s product description in the app store mentioned that improved performance was one of the latest and greatest features, I chalked up my experience to that. One area where performance was noticeably lacking was when running Ubuntu Linux under Parallels on the M1 (this was an ARM version of Linux, so the performance drop was not due to emulation). The cursor was very laggy” when running under Parallels on Remote Desktop. Fortunately, I only use the command-line shell for my work on The Art of ARM Assembly, so this isn’t an issue. For those running Linux GUI apps, this might be an issue. One bug” in the set up is that when you instruct Remote desktop to shut down the M1, it properly shuts down the OS but does not always power off the Mac Mini itself. You have to hold the power button in for 10 seconds (or so) to complete the power-down operation. This is probably a bug on the Mac Mini M1 side. I also had a 2018 Mac Mini laying around (Intel i7, six cores, 32GB RAM) that I’d used on and off (mostly off) as an Apple Server (running Apple’s Server software). I figured I’d run it in a Remote Desktop window as well to get a little more use out of the thing (currently, I have to hook up a monitor and keyboard to it every time I use it, because of the afore mentioned lack of desk space problem). It works fine under Remote Desktop as well. Note, by the way, that powering down the x86 Mac Mini from Remote Desktop always works fine. Art of 64-bit Assembly has Arrived! Written by randyhyde@me.com on June 25, 2021 in Books with one comment . https://nostarch.com/art-64-bit-assembly No Starch is making the Art of 64-bit Assembly available as part of their early” access program. You can take advantage of this preview offer at the link above. Cheers, Randy Hyde The Cat is Out of the Bag Written by randyhyde@me.com on April 24, 2021 in Books with 11 comments . Well, Amazon has posted a preliminary (pre-order) ad for it, so I may as well announce it: The Art of 64-Bit Assembly Language is coming soon! (Amazon claims August 31; that usually means late Sept/early October). The book has gone through two-and-a-half sets of editing thus far: initial editing, technical review, and it’s about ⅔ of the way through a final edit phase now (I just returned chapter 10 of 16 to No Starch). Once the final editing (copy editing) is done, it goes to layout. There will be two passes on that (one pass with individual chapters in PDF form, one pass with the whole book in PDF form) and then it’s off to the printers. Based on my past experience, Sept/Oct looks very good. Next week I’m supposed to start getting PDF proofs for the individual chapters. That probably means that No Starch will put the book into their early access program” within a month or two. In any case, the new support web page is now active. You can check it out at https://artofasm.randallhyde.com/ It used to point at the 32-bit stuff, now it’s been hijacked for The Art of 64-bit Assembly Language . Raspberry Pi in Secure Embedded Systems: WTF? (What? That Fails) Written by randyhyde@me.com on April 24, 2021 in Hardware/Electronics with 6 comments . Although I haven’t made much use of the Raspberry Pi as an embedded CPU, I’ve always wanted to make more use of it and I constantly promote the little board as such a tool. The Pi isn’t perfect, but at the price point and hardware capabilities, I’ve always thought it was a great tool for many embedded uses despite a common joke I repeat about the Pi: The Pi is great for embedded system except during three different times of execution: during startup, during normal execution, and during shutdown.” The follow up is this: During startup, the Pi takes too long to boot. Many embedded system require near-immediate operation (operating within a couple of seconds) and can’t tolerate the 30 seconds to a couple minutes boot time of Pi OS. During normal operation, the Pi cannot support real-time response, so it is completely unsuitable for those applications requiring real-time operation. During shutdown, you must explicitly shut down the Pi (i.e., you cannot simply cut power to it without risking damage to the SD card). Very little can be done about the boot time. Fortunately, not all embedded applications require immediate operation after applying power, so although the Pi isn’t usable for all embedded application, it can still be used for many that can tolerate a slow startup period. If your application requires real-time response, you’re not going to get it out of Pi OS. Fortunately, not all applications require this type of response time. Furthermore, for many...