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Having been in fintech for a while, I’ve noticed something in common between the many new startups that come and go. They all require access to personal information. A specific example that comes to mind is the Plaid-like solution we developed while working on amal. We’d ask customers for their bank credentials[ajy] and then proceed to login on their behalf in order to share the resulting account information with the 3rd party application they are using (e.g. for transferring money, tracking their spending, etc). I’ve noticed similar things with companies that try to optimize the checkout experience – almost always by becoming the interface layer that users use, necessarily being exposed to sensitive cardholder information like the card number, CVC and even PIN number in some instances[axo]. The problem in all of these situations is that these apps require users to trust them, but provide no means for verification that this trust is not misplaced. “Trust, but verify” — Russian proverb Is there a better way? Some Assumptions Many throw their hands in the air and point to the protectionist practices of financial institutions that prevent data sharing — without APIs, the only real option for authenticating users is with the same credentials they use themselves. To explore better ways forward, let’s make a few assumptions (and eliminate thorny edge cases that frontload a lot of complexity): The application handles sensitive data It performs a deterministic task (i.e. same inputs result in the same output) It does not rely on state The application doesn’t keep logs (or retains anonymized and desensitized logs to aid in debugging) What we’re after Let’s be clear about what we’re after. If an app holds the assumptions we set earlier, then we should be able to use that app in a way that allows independent third parties to verify that the app is doing exactly what it says it’s doing. In the case of a checkout app for instance, we should be able to verify that it’s not stealing customer’s card details and siphoning them off to the Russian mafia. Front-end applications This is simple-enough to do, to some extent, on front-end applications – because we can inspect the code ourselves (albeit, obfuscated code to an increasing degree). Still, worst case we’d still be able to track network requests being made from the application – as well as any usage of local storage to ensure there’s nothing fishy going on. Backend But what about the backend? They are completely opaque to anyone outside the server; true black-boxes, where only the inputs and outputs can be observed, but not what’s performed inside. This is exacerbated by the fact that front-ends are also the front-lines of the war against all sorts of user-side attacks (CSRF, poisoning, etc). This has resulted in things like CORS, that prevent clients from making HTTP requests that would otherwise work completely fine on backends. Options For Greater Transparency 1. Fatter front-end’s for security [ajy] It’s so sad that it’s come to this. Sharing bank credentials with 3rd parties should never be ok, and yet it seems to be the only practical way that third party apps can communicate with financial institutions.
Optionality’s one of those things you don’t really think about. People don’t generally wake up one morning thinking “Why, it appears I’ve spent the past several decades of my life optimizing for optionality. Perhaps I should figure out why?”. Most don’t even recognize the term – until it’s already explained to us. If you’re one of those people, this could well be the most important posts you read this year. What Is Optionality? Optionality has been drilled into our heads ever since we were young. No one calls it that, but every one of us has heard the advice to follow opportunities that “open up doors” or “unlock opportunities” down the road. Now that’s all fine and dandy when you’re 12, but our generation is increasingly becoming crippled by the abundance of choices – making it damn near impossible to decide on anything of significance anymore. That’s tragic because optionality is also a privilege. And this disease has a tendency to afflict the most privileged among us – rendering them hollow. In this post, we’ll run through how optionality has pervaded our entire livelihood, why it can unconsciously derail entire careers, and what you can do about it. Let’s dive in! The Obsession With More (Options) We’ve been taught to seek out options that open up horizons, unlock doors and unleash possibilities. This expansive approach to life works great early on, enabling us to have more choices about what we’d like to ultimately do. The trouble is that last bit “(what we’d like) to ultimately do” – opening doors is a means to an end, not the end itself. By the time we’re young adults, we’ve had this idea of optionality engrained into our heads – and we don’t stop to reconsider what we’d actually like to ultimately do. We keep opening doors like it’s nobody’s business – resulting in so many unlocked doors that it’s crippling to pick just one. This phenomenon seems to have existed for a while, but has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. You see it in students choosing varied majors/minors, to people choosing to rent instead of buy. We crave choice, and are horrified of its opposite: commitment. Why this deep seated aversion to risk? I believe it originates from two human afflictions: Fear of missing out (FOMO): What if the choice I make is the “wrong” one, and the other choices somehow diminish in value. Fear of failure: There’s something scary about committing to an idea; that decision can bring about the possibility of real failure. It’s easy to see the allure of deferring the decision, in favor of collecting more and more safety nets to soften a (potential) fall down the road. Unlike their financial brethren, amassing a portfolio of choices is actually pointless beyond a point. An individual option is useless unless nurtured through the dedication of time and effort – and there’s only so much we can do in one life. But there’s more to it than that. Let’s take a deeper look at the downsides of optionality, and what we can do about it. Why Optionality Is Bad 1. The Opportunity Cost Our net output is the result of focused effort; and optionality is the exact opposite of focus. Rather than exploit any single option, we defer it for some undefined later – a later that often never materializes. This is akin to someone, in the early 90s having the ideas for Facebook, Google and Amazon all at once – and pursuing none of them in favor of unlocking more doors as a business consultant. Over 1,000 octogenarians (those aged 80 and above) were asked about their single biggest regret in life. The most common answer by a landslide was this: they regret the risks not taken. You can bet that’s what our fictional character from the previous paragraph would say too. “Oh, I had that idea years ago” means nothing if you chose not to do anything about it. 2. The Paradox of Choice More options make it harder to choose later, not easier. That’s unintuitive; you’d think more is better, but it’s leads to all sorts of strange side-effects. In his book “The Paradox of Choice” (find an example of the paradox of choice – jam, watches, etc) …. The trouble with accumulating options is that, like money, you can never have enough. You postpone your dreams, stuck in a continuous loop of preparation that’ll never end. And if you do ultimately stand to pick between the options, you’re less satisfied overall – the sheer number of choices makes you second guess your decision, and ultimately leads to a less fulfilling life. 3. It Changes How You Think Finally, and worst of all, the pursuit of optionality changes you. It turns you into a dreamer, always amassing options but never executing on any of them. It shares plenty in common with wantrepeneurs, the variety of entrepreneurs that never get started – always waiting for the perfect circumstances to unfold (which, they never do). The Cure To Optionality Addiction Now that we realize the grave downsides to optionality, we’re ready to talk solutions. The first one should be clear: commit. That means picking a single course of action that you would like to pursue – picking one option of the portfolio that you’ve amassed. You should take your time to study the options, deliberate, and find the one that makes the most sense for you. But once you’ve decided, there should be no looking back. To assist you in making sure that you don’t turn back halfway, consider publishing this commitment publicly. Tell your friends, write a blog post, publish it to LinkedIn. Sharing this commitment with others can provide the social pressure necessary to continue, despite the internal urge to resist. Also, as you exercise your option, ignore all the others. Focus solely on the task at hand.
Been having a hard time lately focusing. It’s like whenever I start doing anything of any significance I get derailed, and fall into this spiral of thought where I reconsider whether what I’m about to do matters, why it would, and whether I could be doing something else that would be more “productive”. The end result is that I end up doing nothing (no, the irony is not lost on me). This is a strange state for me to be in, because it isn’t one I recall having gone through before. I’m usually able to operate at a high cadence, get stuff done and just generally apply myself to projects with high autonomy and little structure. I think it may have something to do with the overall situation around COVID, and that I’ve been effectively operating indoors for the past 9 months (!). Cafes, restaurants and most public places are still take-out only, so this makes it difficult to hang out in person (if you’re not working at an office). I don’t know if these are symptoms of depression, or if they are just general apathy resulting from severely diminished social contact. Maybe it’s a bit of both? Again, don’t recall ever having going through a “proper” episode of depression before, so I’m unsure it is in fact that. I was reading about it on Wikipedia yesterday and came across an article describing negative self-talk, something I definitely encounter alot more as of late. The article suggested Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) as a solution (in addition to exercise, which I do a few times a week already). CBT is a program often run by a counselor (in-person) and involves examining the Behavior, Thoughts and Feelings of a subject in order to pinpoint the specific behavioral pattern that needs to be changed (either intensified, or diminished). This all sounds great in theory, but finding a therapist that I trust to do this sounds like a real chore - especially in Bahrain. I’ve found online providers that delivery virtual therapy; I’ve also read that CCBT - Computerized CBT (delivered primarily via apps) can be effective if used consistently. And so that’s what I’m doing now - using an app called MoodKit (iOS only) that sends me occasional triggers to jot down what I’m thinking, and walks me through the process of assessing my thoughts to see if they’ve fallen victim to “distortions” (yes, you bet they have!). I’ll report back once I’ve had at least a few weeks of experience with it and let you know how it all went. Of course, I don’t plan to just sit around all day while I wait to get better. I want to apply myself, to express myself creatively, and make something useful. But that’s the operative word: “something”. Like, “one thing”. Not 500.
It used to be that you needed to know Kotlin and Swift to develop apps for both Android and iOS, but those days are long gone. Even the fundamental reasons for doing so have changed — some sort of compromise between performance and speed to deployment. React Native apps were kinda slower than native apps by a smidge, but with the introduction of Flutter — that difference was wiped out almost entirely. With Flutter, you get native app performance because you leave HTML and JS behind. Getting the Basics Flutter has an excellent reference for web developers that I found more useful than alot of the intro guides out there. I don’t need to know what a variable or for loop is — just tell me the concepts I need to hit the ground running. Coupled with this brief high level overview it’s pretty much all you need to understand Flutter conceptually. Getting up and running with Flutter, quickly A great place to start was to quickly paste snippets from the web developer article I mentioned above into DartPad and see the results immediately. This gave me a feel for how things works in Flutter land, without fretting too much about setting everything up locally. A+ Resources Build a sick planet app from scratch. No fluff, all goodness. Loved recreating this myself. Flutter Layout cheat sheet Build a functional Startup Name Generator, start to finish, from scratch Comprehensive reference for more great resources on Flutter 👉 Stay tuned for my first app on Flutter, in a future post!
Yes, that’s right. The best bank in Bahrain is … Meem. This nomination will be especially shocking to those of you that read my last post that ripped the Meem app to shreds. Criteria for ‘best bank’ My criteria for “best bank” isn’t the best user experience or customer support. It’s all about the best bank for buck. There are two main parts to this: What’s the best cashback rate I can get back on my spending? What’s the best profit rate I can get back on my deposits? While I always limit myself to shariah-compliant options, you’ll soon see that the rates Meem offer are actually superior to even the non-compliant options in Bahrain. Cashback 💳 I’m always befuddled when I’m standing in line at the cashier and see the person in front of me whip out a debit card. Why on earth are you paying with a debit card?? Paying with a credit card that has Cashback is literally free money (assuming, of course, that you pay the bill in full at the end of each month). Here are the cashback rates for the Meem credit card[1]: 1% cashback for spending below BD 500 a month 2% cashback for spending between BD 500 — BD 1000 a month 3% cashback for spending above BD 1000 a month (capped at BD 50) Take a second here to recognize how insanely good these rates are! Not just at the local or regional level … even globally. You’d have a hard time finding a card that offers more than 2% cashback in the US; see for yourself[2]. As for Bahrain, no bank even comes close. Here are the cashback rates for a sample of popular Bahrain banks: Ithmaar Bank — 0.2% NBB — 0% Credimax — 0% on local purchases; 1% on international Not. Even. Close. I hit the 3% rate consistently with Meem (since I use my card for paying alot of my online business bills), and this means BD 50 of free money each month, or BD 600/yr. Nuts! Return on deposits 💰 These are typically known in the industry as “fixed-term deposits” (or Fixed Deposits). This means locking up your money for a fixed period between 1 month and 1 year, with a guaranteed rate of return (always quoted per year, regardless of the term you pick). While fixed deposits are not Sharia compliant, Murabaha is — a variant where you purchase something from the bank (usually a commodity, like cement) and sell it back for a profit at the end of the term. Once again, the rates Meem offer are higher than anything I’ve seen offered by any other bank in Bahrain. Fixed deposits are tricky to compare since the rates change during the year (with the change in the base rate by the CBB), and they also vary by currency. Here are the rates for Meem in January, 2020[3]: 2.33% on USD (90 day term) — no minimum 1.17% on BHD (90 day term) — no minimum Obviously, huge difference between BHD and USD — and so you’re better off converting to USD when you deposit. Meem makes this easy by offering multicurrency accounts (the BHD/USD rate is capped by the CBB; Meem provides a significantly better rate of 0.3765 BHD/USD vs the 0.375 BHD/USD that most banks in Bahrain provide). So, 2.33% for Meem. Let’s compare to a few other banks in Bahrain, shall we: KFH: 1.85% BHD (90 day terms) — BD600 min. Citi: 1.75% BHD / 0.85% USD (90 day terms) UPDATE: A friend tipped me off to Jazeel, a Digital Bank launched by KFH, that offers Wakala rates that match Meem’s USD rates but for BHD[4]. Details: KFH Jazeel: 2.3% BHD (90 day terms) — BD1000 min. If you can meet the BD 1,000 minimum then they’d be a better option for BHD deposits than Meem’s. I’m unable to provide more links to banks in Bahrain, because they don’t share the rates online. To my knowledge, the rates are less competitive than those of KFH cited above (and Meem, of course). If you’ve got more numbers for me to include, please let me know. Conclusion Using Meem’s financial products can earn you: BD 600 / year in cashback BD 23 / year for every BD 1,000 you deposit (on a USD denominated Murabaha deposit @ a 90 day term) That’s better than every other bank in Bahrain I’ve come across, and they are Sharia compliant. There you go, folks — you’re welcome! Share this post around if you found it useful. 👣 Footnotes [1] Meem isn’t very forthcoming on their website about the cashback rate, simply saying that they offer “up to 3% cashback” on credit card purchases. Their app provides the breakdown that I shared. [2] Any rates over 2% are usually guarded with multiple qualifiers limiting their utility specifying either merchants or a specific category that is included, and always capped at a very low yearly amount. [3] Not shared on their website, but available in the app. Screenshots below: [4] Not shared on their website, but available in the app. Screenshots below:
More in technology
I uploaded YouTube videos from time to time, and a fun comment I often get is “Whoa, this is in 8K!”. Even better, I’ve had comments from the like, seven people with 8K TVs that the video looks awesome on their TV. And you guessed it, I don’t record my videos in 8K! I record them in 4K and upscale them to 8K after the fact. There’s no shortage of AI video upscaling tools today, but they’re of varying quality, and some are great but quite expensive. The legendary Finn Voorhees created a really cool too though, called fx-upscale, that smartly leverages Apple’s built-in MetalFX framework. For the unfamiliar, this library is an extensive of Apple’s Metal graphics library, and adds functionality similar to NVIDIA’s DLSS where it intelligently upscales video using machine learning (AI), so rather than just stretching an image, it uses a model to try to infer what the frame would look like at a higher resolution. It’s primarily geared toward video game use, but Finn’s library shows it does an excellent job for video too. I think this is a really killer utility, and use it for all my videos. I even have a license for Topaz Video AI, which arguably works better, but takes an order of magnitude longer. For instance my recent 38 minute, 4K video took about an hour to render to 8K via fx-upscale on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro, but would take over 24 hours with Topaz Video AI. # Install with homebrew brew install finnvoor/tools/fx-upscale # Outputs a file named my-video Upscaled.mov fx-upscale my-video.mov --width 7680 --codec h265 Anyway, just wanted to give a tip toward a really cool tool! Finn’s even got a [version in the Mac App Store called Unsqueeze](https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/unsqueeze/id6475134617 Unsqueeze) with an actual GUI that’s even easier to use, but I really like the command line version because you get a bit more control over the output. 8K is kinda overkill for most use cases, so to be clear you can go from like, 1080p to 4K as well if you’re so inclined. I just really like 8K for the future proofing of it all, in however many years when 8K TVs are more common I’ll be able to have some of my videos already able to take advantage of that. And it takes long enough to upscale that I’d be surprised to see TVs or YouTube offering that upscaling natively in a way that looks as good given the amount of compute required currently. Obviously very zoomed in to show the difference easier If you ask me, for indie creators, even when 8K displays are more common, the future of recording still probably won’t be in native 8K. 4K recording gives so much detail still that have more than enough details to allow AI to do a compelling upscale to 8K. I think for my next camera I’m going to aim for recording in 6K (so I can still reframe in post), and then continue to output the final result in 4K to be AI upscaled. I’m coming for you, Lumix S1ii.
Talks about the famous Dragon's Lair
totally unreasonable price for a completely untested item, as-was, no returns, with no power supply, no wiring harness and no auxiliary daughterboards. At the end of this article, we'll have it fully playable and wired up to a standard ATX power supply, a composite monitor and off-the-shelf Atari joysticks, and because this board was used for other related games from that era, the process should work with only minor changes on other contemporary Gremlin arcade classics like Blockade, Hustle and Comotion [sic]. It's time for a Refurb Weekend. a July 1982 San Diego Reader article, the locally famous alternative paper I always snitched a copy of when I was downtown, and of which I found a marginally better copy to make these scans. There's also an exceptional multipart history of Gremlin you can read but for now we'll just hit the highlights as they pertain to today's project. ported to V1 Unix and has a simpler three-digit variant Bagels which was even ported to the KIM-1. Unfortunately his friends didn't have minicomputers of their own, so Hauck painstakingly put together a complete re-creation from discrete logic so they could play too, later licensed to Milton Bradley as their COMP IV handheld. Hauck had also been experimenting with processor-controlled video games, developing a simple homebrew unit based around the then-new Intel 8080 CPU that could connect to his television set and play blackjack. Fogleman met Hauck by chance at a component vendor's office and hired him on to enhance the wall game line, but Hauck persisted in his experiments, and additionally presented Fogleman with a new and different machine: a two-player game played with buttons on a video TV display, where each player left a boxy solid trail in an attempt to crowd out the other. To run the fast action on its relatively slow ~2MHz CPU and small amount of RAM, a character generator circuit made from logic chips painted a 256x224 display from 32 8x8 tiles in ROM specified by a 32x28 screen matrix, allowing for more sophisticated shapes and relieving the processor of having to draw the screen itself. (Does this sound like an early 8-bit computer? Hold that thought.) patent application was too late and too slow to stop the ripoffs. (For the record, Atari programmer Dennis Koble was adamant he didn't steal the idea from Gremlin, saying he had seen similar "snake" games on CompuServe and ARPANET, but Nolan Bushnell nevertheless later offered Gremlin $100,000 in "consolation" which the company refused.) Meanwhile, Blockade orders evaporated and Gremlin's attempts to ramp up production couldn't save it, leaving the company with thousands of unused circuit boards, game cabinets and video monitors. While lawsuits against the copycats slowly lumbered forward, Hauck decided to reprogram the existing Blockade hardware to play new games, starting with converting the Comotion board into Hustle in 1977 where players could also nab targets for additional points. The company ensured they had a thousand units ready to ship before even announcing it and sales were enough to recoup at least some of the lost investment. Hauck subsequently created a reworked version of the board with the same CPU for the more advanced game Depthcharge, initially testing poorly with players until the controls were simplified. This game was licensed to Taito as Sub Hunter and the board reworked again for the target shooter Safari, also in 1977, and also licensed by Taito. For 1978, Gremlin made one last release using the Hustle-Comotion board. This game was Blasto. present world record is 8,730), but in two player mode the players can also shoot each other for an even bigger point award. This means two-player games rapidly turn into active hunts, with a smaller bonus awarded to a player as well if the other gets nailed by a mine. shown above with a screenshot of the interactive on-board assembler. Noval also produced an education-targeted system called the Telemath, based on the 760 hardware, which was briefly deployed in a few San Diego Unified elementary schools. Alas, they were long gone before we arrived. Industry observers were impressed by the specs and baffled by the desk. Although the base price of $2995 [about $16,300] was quite reasonable considering its capabilities, you couldn't buy it without its hulking enclosure, which made it a home computer only to the sort of people who would buy a home PDP-8. (Raises hand.) Later upgrades with a Z80 and a full 32K didn't make it any more attractive to buyers and Noval barely sold about a dozen. Some of the rest remained at Gremlin as development systems (since they practically were already), and an intact upgraded unit with aftermarket floppy drives lives at the Computer History Museum. The failure of Noval didn't kill Gremlin outright, but Fogleman was concerned the company lacked sufficient capital to compete more strongly in the rapidly expanding video game market, and Noval didn't provide it. With wall game sales fading fast and cash flow crunched, the company was slowly approaching bankruptcy by the time Blasto hit arcades. At the same time, Sega Enterprises, Inc., then owned by conglomerate Gulf + Western (who also then owned Paramount Pictures), was looking for a quick way to revive its failing North American division which was only surviving on the strength of its aggressively promoted mall arcades. Sega needed development resources to bring out new games States-side, and Gremlin needed money. In September 1978 Fogleman agreed to make Gremlin a Sega subsidiary in return for an undisclosed number of shares, and became a vice chairman. Sega was willing to do just about anything to achieve supremacy on this side of the Pacific. In addition to infusing cash into Gremlin to make new games (as Gremlin/Sega) and distribute others from their Japanese peers and partners (as Sega/Gremlin), Sega also perceived a market opportunity in licensing arcade ports to the growing home computer segment. Texas Instruments' 99/4 had just hit the market in 1979 to howls there was hardly any software, and their close partner Milton Bradley was looking for marketable concepts for cartridge games. Blasto had simple fast action and a good name in the arcades, required only character graphics (well within the 9918 video chip's capabilities) and worked for both one or two players, and Sega had no problem blessing a home port of an older property for cheap. Milton Bradley picked up the license to Hustle as well. Bob Harris for completion, and TI house programmer Kevin Kenney wrote some additional features. 1 to 40 (obviously some thought was given to using the same PCB as much as possible). The power header is also a 10-pin block and the audio and video headers are 4-pin. Oddly, the manual doesn't say anywhere what the measurements are, so I checked them with calipers and got a pitch of around 0.15", which sounds very much like a common 0.156" header. I ordered a small pack of those as an experiment. 0002 because of the control changes: if you have an 814-0001, then you have a prototype. The MAME driver makes reference to an Amutech Mine Sweeper which is a direct and compatible ripoff of this board — despite the game type, it's not based on Depthcharge.) listed with the part numbers for the cocktail, but the ROM contents expected in the hashes actually correspond to the upright. Bipolar ROMs and PROMs are, as the name suggests, built with NPN bipolar junction transistors instead of today's far more common MOSFETs ("MOS transistors"). This makes them lower density but also faster: these particular bipolar PROMs have access times of 55-60ns as opposed to EPROMs or flash ROMs of similar capacity which may be multiple times slower depending on the chip and process. For many applications this doesn't matter much, but in some tightly-timed systems the speed difference can make it difficult to replace bipolar PROMs with more convenient EPROMs, and most modern-day chip programmers can't generate the higher voltage needed to program them (you're basically blowing a whole bunch of microscopic Nichrome metal fuses). Although modern CMOS PROMs are available at comparable speeds, bipolars were once very common, including in military environments where they could be manufactured to tolerate unusually harsh operating conditions. The incomparable Ken Shirriff has a die photo and article on the MMI 5300, an open-collector chip which is one of the military-spec parts from this line. Model 745 KSR and bubble memory Model 763 ASR, use AMD 8080s! The Intel 8080A is a refined version of the original Intel 8080 that works properly with more standard TTL devices (the original could only handle low-power TTL); the "NL" tag is TI's designation for a plastic regular-duty DIP. Its clock source is a 20.79MHz crystal at Y1 which is divided down by ten to yield the nominal clock rate of 2.079MHz, slightly above its maximum rating of 2MHz but stable enough at that speed. The later Intel 8080A-1 could be clocked up to 3.125MHz and of course the successor Intel 8085 and Zilog Z80 processors could run faster still. An interesting absence on this board is an Intel 8224 or equivalent to generate the 8080A's two-phase clock: that's done directly off the crystal oscillator with discrete logic, an elegant (and likely cheaper) design by Hauck. The video output also uses the same crystal. Next to the CPU are pads for the RAM chips. You saw six of them in the last picture under the second character ROM (316-0100M), all 2102 (1Kbit) static RAM. These were the chips I was most expecting to fail, having seen bad SRAM in other systems like my KIM-1. The ones here are 450ns Fairchild 21021 SRAMs in the 21021PC plastic case and "commercial" temperature range, and six of them adds up to 768 bytes of memory. NOS examples and equivalents are fortunately not difficult to find. Closer to the CPU in this picture, however, are two more RAM chip pads that are empty except for tiny factory-installed jumpers. On the Hustle and Blasto boards (both), they remain otherwise unpopulated, and there is an additional jumper between E4 and E5 also visible in the last picture. The Comotion board, however, has an additional 256 bytes of RAM here (as two more 1024x1 SRAMs). On that board these pads have RAM, there are no jumpers on the pads, and the jumper is now between E3 (ground) and E5. This jumper is also on Blockade, even though it has only five 2102s and three dummy jumpers on the other pads. That said, the games don't seem to care how much RAM is present as long as the minimum is: the current MAME driver gives all of them the full 1K. this 8080 system which uses a regulator). Tracing the schematic out further, the -12V line is also used with the +5V and +12V lines to run the video circuit. These are all part of the 10-pin power header. almost this exact sequence of voltages? An AT power supply connector! If we're clever about how we put the two halves on, we can get nearly the right lines in the right places. The six-pin AT P9 connector reversed is +5V, +5V, +5V, -5V, ground, ground, so we can cut the -5V to be the key. The six-pin AT P8 connector not reversed is power-good, +5V (or NC), +12V, -12V, ground, ground, so we cut the +5V to be the key, and cut the power-good line and one of the dangling grounds and wire ground to the power-good pin. Fortunately I had a couple spare AT-to-ATX converter cables from when we redid the AT power supply on the Alpha Micro Eagle 300. connectors since we're going to modify them anyway. A quick couple drops of light-cured cyanoacrylate into the key hole ... Something's alive! An LED glows! Time now for the video connector to see if we can get a picture! a nice 6502 reset circuit). The board does have its own reset circuit, of a sort. You'll notice here that the coin start is wired to the same line, and the manual even makes reference to this ("The circuitry in this game has been arranged so that the insertion of a quarter through the coin mechanism will reset the restart [sic] in the system. This clears up temporary problems caused by power line disturbances, static, etc."). We'll of course be dealing with the coin mechanism a little later, but that doesn't solve the problem of bringing the machine into the attract mode when powered on. I also have doubts that people would have blithely put coins into a machine that was obviously on the fritz. pair is up and down, or left and right, but not which one is exactly which because that depends on the joystick construction. We'll come back to this. Enterprises) to emphasize the brand name more strongly. The company entered a rapid decline with the video game crash of 1983 and the manufacturing assets were sold to Bally Midway with certain publishing rights, but the original Gremlin IP and game development teams stayed with Sega Electronics and remained part of Gulf+Western until they were disbanded. The brand is still retained as part of CBS Media Ventures today though modern Paramount Global doesn't currently use the label for its original purpose. In 1987 the old wall game line was briefly reincarnated under license, also called Gremlin Industries and with some former Gremlin employees, but only released a small number of new machines before folding. Meanwhile, Sega Enterprises separated from Gulf+Western in a 1984 management buyout by original founder David Rosen, Japanese executive Hayao Nakayama and their backers. This Sega is what people consider Sega today, now part of Sega Sammy Holdings, and the rights to the original Gremlin games — including Blasto — are under it. Lane Hauck's last recorded game at Gremlin/Sega was the classic Carnival in 1980 (I played this first on the Intellivision). After leaving the company, he held positions at various companies including San Diego-based projector manufacturer Proxima (notoriously later merging with InFocus), Cypress Semiconductor and its AgigA Tech subsidiary (both now part of Infineon), and Maxim Integrated Products (now part of Analog Devices), and works as a consultant today. I'm not done with Blasto. While I still enjoy playing the TI-99/4A port, there are ... improvements to be made, particularly the fact it's single fire, and it was never ported to anything else. I have ideas, I've been working on it off and on for a year or so and all the main gameplay code is written, so I just have to finish the graphics and music. You'll get to play it. And the arcade board? Well, we have a working game and a working harness that I can build off. I need a better sound amplifier, the "boom" circuit deserves a proper subwoofer, and I should fake up a little circuit using the power-good line from the ATX power supply to substitute for the power interrupt board. Most of all, though, we really need to get it a proper display and cabinet. That's naturally going to need a budget rather larger than my typical projects and I'm already saving up for it. Suggestions for a nice upright cab with display, buttons and joysticks that I can rewire — and afford! — are solicited. On both those counts, to be continued.
Hard data is hard to find, but roughly 100 million books were published prior to the 21st century. Of those, a significant portion were never available in a digital format and haven’t yet been digitized, which means their content is effectively inaccessible to most people today. To bring that content into the digital world, Redditor […] The post This machine automatically scans books from cover to cover appeared first on Arduino Blog.
