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Exactly a year ago today, I changed something about myself that had been part of my life for ten years. What that "thing" is won’t be mentioned here, so as not to take the subject out of context, but I can tell you a few things about it. Because it had persisted for a decade, it had become more than a habit, it was an identity marker. Whether people knew me well or not, they could easily list "being that thing" or "having that thing" among my traits. Among my friends, family, and relatives, there were many who were deeply attached to this version of me. It felt as if their entire connection to me depended on my possession of that thing. I started thinking about changing this thing a long time ago. About 4 or 5 years ago. In other words, half the time I spent having that thing was spent imagining letting it go. Throughout that entire period, I believed it was absolutely impossible for me to change it. Knowing I couldn't change it and continuing to live that way only brought me pain. Though I tried to ignore it most of the time, it was with me at almost every moment of my life, and the discomfort it created caused me to shy away from many possibilities in life. Many. One day, I was crying like a regular tuesday night, I decided to change it. And I changed it right then and there. I went for a brisk walk, and by the time I came home, I was someone who had changed that thing. It was over. Now, the next step was for everyone around me to find out that I had changed it. Because until everyone knew, I wouldn't be fully changed. As I said at the beginning, there were people among my loved ones who were truly attached to me being "that thing"; even though my changing it had no direct impact on their lives, and even though it was entirely, solely, and only about me. There were people who had nervous breakdowns, people who cut off contact with me, people who were shocked, people who were overjoyed, and people who made no comment at all. This process gave me a lot to think about how people become attached to versions of us that they find convenient for themselves I went to therapy for a while to decide if I should keep the change and how to do so. The discomfort of the change was so intense that I began to wonder if it would be worth it. It took several therapy sessions to figure out if I actually wanted to change the thing about myself. It felt as though the happiness this change would bring would never outweigh the discomfort it caused. I was very close to giving up. But whatever happened, I somehow endured. I am not exactly sure how that one year passed, but I'm glad I didn't back off. The people who matter most to me accepted this change. Our communication returned to normal in a few months. As for me, I often find myself sighing. Even though everything looks normal, I am still living with the inner ache of that change. I believe part of me, no matter how much I wanted the change, was somehow connected to that thing. Probably because it was an identity, a habit, something I lived with for 10 years. It is hard to let go such a thing. I have some people I cut out of my life so that they will never find out about the change and I will never have to put on an explanation. I am 26 years old, and I believe this is the first time I choose my own way of life even if it conflicts with everyone else's opinions about it. It took me five years to decide on a change. It took a single night to take action. And struggling with the discomfort of that change has taken about a year. About six months ago, I began to feel the sting of regret for not finding the courage sooner. Still the change reminds me of its presence from time to time, bringing back that familiar uneased state of mind, and I don’t know how much longer that will last. Yet, the moment I actually started to enjoy the change was the very next morning after that walk. When I thought beyond everything else and realized I had finally achieved something I’d spent years doubting and deeming impossible.. that excitement was priceless. I don’t know how much time must pass before the transition is complete and the act of changing finally leaves my daily thoughts. But in a way, I don’t want it to. Making this change was one of the most significant decisions of my life. Even with all the discomfort and the struggle, I wouldn't trade the excitement and fulfillment it brought me for a smoother, easier path. Thanks for reading. If you have any feedback or would like to discuss further, I would be happy to hear from you. twitter | [email protected] Previous
Thanks for reading. If you have any feedback or would like to discuss further, I would be happy to hear from you. twitter | [email protected] Previous
Most of the audience reading this post think of some random new programming tool dropped recently when the word library comes up. Let’s leave our déformation professionnelle in the door and think about the libraries. Book ones. This post is an ode to them. I am not sure if libraries work the same way everywhere around the world but in my country they are completely free, you can sit for hours, borrow books, again, for free. The idea of borrowing something from an institution without owing them anything in this time we’re living in amazes me. I mean who gives you free stuff (except free pain)? This fact itself is enough for me to think libraries are amazing. I consider myself a decent book reader and it’s been a long long time since I had to pay for a book. But this isn’t the only think I like about my libraries. So the story begins with me, a remote working software developer getting married to a remote working software developer. My husband and I are a newly wed couple with all the fun and silliness but life (work) gets in the way naturally. Traditional couples see each other a few hours every day, and usually spend the weekends together to make up the lost time. We don’t have the lost time. We’re together, always. Working in the same room (our home office) resting in the same room etc. and god, we annoy each other. Love only goes so far, folks. Love is great for your daily life, for your home. But what if your home is also your work? And what if your work needs some limits on the PDA? You can (ideally) leave your work stress and burden when you leave company building. However, when remote working, you’re not leaving work at all and even if unintentionally, that mood rubs off on your partner, who has the same tension from work. I’ve spent all of my teen years and a couple of my twenties in student dormitories which I had to share my room with at least 4 other girls. That fact alone justifies that I love and need my personal space and time in my home. And my partner also needs that, even if he doesn’t say so, I know he needs. And we respect each other on this and try to leave the house for a couple hours every now and then. Again, any traditional couple may not need this kind of arrangement, one or both of them having to leave for work, but we’re not like the other couples. It’s not always related to your partner / roommates / family. Even if you’re having enough personal space, enough distance from others, home office still can be life sucking. I’ve spared the biggest and prettiest room of my house as the home office. I’m talking about wall-size windows, glittering sea in front of me, big sky and trees. There is a real view I can’t describe enough. (It’s a house that’s a few decades old, and we are just tenants so don’t think too much of me lol) And I’ve decorated the office pretty nice, spaced, refreshing. Even with that perks, being at home all day just consumes my soul. I can't focus after a couple of hours. Especially if I haven’t left the house all day, rolling out of bed straight to the desk, it becomes too draining. I need the concept of leaving home for work, and I need the feeling of “arriving home”. Getting cozy again after a long day, hiding from darkness of the outside world (work) Being at home while working AND while resting, my brain just can’t switch off between work and rest, drawing a line between bad and good. I’ve talked about my feelings, but no need to mention here, you’ve probably read all about health and psychological problems that remote work causes. With all these said, it’s almost mandatory for me to adapt a hybrid work approach. You may think, just go back to the office. No, no. This is not an option. First I don’t even live in the same city with my office building. Even if I did, it’s too late for me to adapt to office work. My work life started remote, even my internship was remote. I don't have office experience. I don’t know what am I going to do if I have to work in an office job in the future. Leaving your warm bed, rising before the sun in the morning (and I’m a morning person believe it or not), getting ready, commuting, traffic, thinking about what to eat in the office, commuting again, leaving you no time to live your life.. No. I don’t want to think about that possibility. It’s not for me. Also having a home office is not bad at all. Somedays you just don’t want to leave the house, maybe you’re a bit sick, or just not feel like it. It’s good to have the option to stay in bed while working. In other words, stay in bed and get paid. I just need a context switch for a couple days in a week. So what to do? Go to nearest coffee shop. You’re lucky if they don’t play tasteless trendy music. You’re lucky if a waiter doesn’t keep asking if you need anything, isn’t intrusive, and doesn’t subtly let you know when it’s time to leave by checking on you constantly . You’re lucky if no teenagers talking loudly about their-whatever-teens-talk-about-these-days. Oh, by the way, pay a lot of money to be here and to drink a nice cup of burnt coffe. Working in the coffee shop might feel cool just for one day, just for the vibes. Not maintainable. Then rent an office or subscribe to a co-working space? What? I get paid to work, not to pay for it. And here comes the raison d’être of our ode, libraries. Go to your local library. Set up your working tools. That’s it. No one will talk to you, if you’re in a relatively small one, chances are no one will be there. Just you, the nice vintage smell of the books surrounding all over, and a nice vibe. You’re tired, want to take a break, you’ll walk around book shelves and you’ll see there are very odd books on very specific topics. Take it, or laugh at the title, free amusement. Share it on twitter, free likes. Find some hard-cover, old, brown page books. Smell them, feel good. Free joy. Get back to working. Stay focused, finish your tasks without your bed luring you to itself. No distractions, no funny businesses. I use a technique that maybe we can call laptop-driven-development: working until my laptop does not feel like it anymore. I don’t plug my laptop so my work has a natural deadline for the day. I need to stay focused and get things done, or I’m gonna have to get back home with leftover tasks. Fall is on the way, maybe it’s raining outside. With big windows all around you, overthink your life while waiting for the rain to stop before heading back home.. This is my call to all the remote workers or students or any other people staying home too much: Go to your local library, enjoy it, support it. Cherish it. Not just for working. Use it for thinking, for reconnecting, writing or creating. The library is a sanctuary where your mind slows down, even though the world outside keeps running. Maybe you’ve been postponing to think, to reflect, to spend time by yourself, like I did before I discovered my local library. You’ll find some kind of joy and productivity in there. We don’t have so many pure-good organizations in our world. We should appreciate them while we still have them. I’ll admit that this post can be a little biased, because my local library isn’t exactly a popular spot. Most of the time, I’m the only one in a room, and there are only 3–4 people in the rest of the library. It’s just a 20-minute walk from my home, so I get to walk my daily steps in on the way there and back. And some of the rooms look like this: Yes, I’m lucky on that. Yes, this is where I write this blog post. This post has been discussed on Hacker News, you can join the conversation there. Thanks for reading. If you have any feedback or would like to discuss further, I would be happy to hear from you. twitter | [email protected] Previous
know thyself There is a new lifestyle imposed on almost the entire world, willingly or unwillingly, perhaps by powerful people or by many small people that want to be powerful, which somehow affects all ordinary people: a consumption-oriented life. Fast consumption, constant consumption, more consumption. I don't have much to say about the "shopping" side of this consumption craze because it's a topic that's been around for many years, born out of -ism movements and studied numerous times through -ology disciplines. It has been the subject of public service announcements, romantic comedies, and personal development books. The public has been constantly educated about it for years. Two guys known as The Minimalists and some "smart" people like Marie Kondo made a fortune out of this movement. Personally, I believe I am a conscious consumer, and the shopping craze doesn't affect me much, so I want to look at the other, often-discussed side of the issue. The consumption I will discuss is digital content, information, and emotion/thought consumption. I know there are social science studies that delve into the intersections and background connections of all these consumptions, but as an ordinary person, I want to talk about the effects on my own life, particularly my professional development. Although it has been on my mind for a long time, I haven't been able to read a comprehensive book based on these studies (the reason being the vicious cycle based on this topic), but I have consumed plenty of content... I've watched various TED talks, several indie YouTuber videos with a wholesome background, selling personal development under the hood on their newly launched channels, and of course, read tweets... I've also had plenty of opportunities to observe myself. At this point I am convinced that fast consumption is harmful to the brain, mind, and soul. The main reason I pursue this topic is that, aside from all the side effects in personal life, it also prevents me from being better at my profession as a brain-worker as Jules Payot puts it. In disciplines like software engineering, constantly improving oneself and being in a state of continuous learning is an inevitable process. Even if you don't put in extra effort and just try to do your job, you have to learn a new concept or technology. If you do put in the extra effort, you become someone who does their job better. Since graduating from undergraduate studies (which marks exactly one year as I write this post), putting in extra effort has been my top priority. Working more, reading more, knowing more. In addition to technical studies, I also read about and received advice on soft skills related to "software crafting." One of my first mistakes, I think, was taking every kind of advice from everyone. Even if I didn't implement them directly, these pieces of advice took up space in my mind, and thinking "what if that's better" prevented me from putting any of them into practice. The problem with online advice is that the person writing the blog post is doing so entirely from their own perspective and lifestyle. They have no idea about you, and you have no idea about them. There's no guarantee that what works for them will work for you. Moreover, you don't get a chance to question causality, you just read the advice, consume it, and move on. It takes up space in your mind and on your to-do list, but you don't get a chance to internalize or filter this topic. You don't even realize that you should actually do so. One of the pieces of advice I took without realizing it was to systematize the mentioned studies, work regularly, and similar. Once that idea put in my mind, things became complicated for me. While working full-time, I had to balance my personal life and stick to the plan. No matter how much your willpower sticks to the plan, your health, developments in your life, and your brain, which sometimes refuses to accept more information, don't always stick to the plan. When this happens, it becomes difficult to establish the system I mentioned, and you start looking for more advice, reading more blogs. You find yourself in a quest for productivity, feeling productive because of the quest, but not really doing any productive work. Advice also has the effect of reducing creativity and problem-solving skills. When I have a problem, technical or other, the first thing I do is research the solution. As a result, I don't get enough chance to think about my problem, let alone produce a solution, and I don't fully understand the problem. I've "consumed" what I should do and how I should do it many times from different people. With all this information occupying my brain, I no longer had the energy and resources to produce a tangible output. Because of my profession, I like learning different concepts from different fields. I am particularly curious about the low-level infrastructures and systems behind high-level tools, and I am aware of the contribution of knowing these to doing my job well. However, because of the constant rush and haste imposed by social media in my life, I can't devote enough time to these resources. Because I am so used to seeing information, quickly taking it in, and moving on to another topic. Because the short content I constantly consume, whether written or visual, has made me accustomed to this. I want to know everything, immediately, quickly. Since this is not humanly possible, I end up doing nothing. I can't think long-term; I can't stop myself from thinking that working on a book for 6 months, doing its projects, is a huge waste of time for me, and because I already feel late, I find myself, yet again, in a cycle. When I'm focused solely on consuming, my ability to produce naturally decreases. I include speaking, being able to express oneself, and having a good command of words in this context. After knowing myself as someone who has always been good with words for years, seeing that I can't choose the right word when speaking, or that I can't convey the message or information I want to give more clearly and simply when writing, naturally bothers me. Although it is said that software development is an antisocial job, you constantly need to communicate with people, either in writing or verbally, and you need to express what you have done and what you will do well. I am approaching the point of losing this skill by consuming instead of producing. While all this disrupts progress and confuses my mind, I also have to deal with the physical and mental side effects of fast consumption. Difficulty concentrating, lack of focus, inability to understand what I read, stress, anxiety. I see these kinds of complaints from many people lately, and in my opinion, our biggest common ground is digital content consumption. The relativity of time is a reality I feel to the core while doom scrolling. Besides the lost time, there's the confusion after realizing it and putting the phone down, trying to get my dazed mind back to normal. And then, not finding anything to do, not being able to putting yourself together, and reaching for the phone again. Everyone has seen the articles about the brain's approach to social media content, which offers a quick, easily accessible way that makes you happy or, even if it doesn't make you happy, offers an escape from the thing that makes you unhappy. When you put these into words or write them down, it bothers you a lot, but I think knowing yourself is the most important thing to do before changing yourself. I know what I'm doing wrong, and now it's documented in front of me. I also know what I need to work on. We are talking about the harms, but I have always been fascinated by the opportunities the internet offers. Being able to communicate and chat with someone from anywhere in the world within seconds is an invaluable blessing. It just takes a little effort to filter to see and reach the right people's content. Otherwise, I don't think completely withdrawing would be very beneficial in my industry and the era I live in. I won't go against what I mentioned so I won't end this problem-filled post with advice or plans. That's why I started with the quote "know thyself." I just tried to see and make the problem tangible. I will stop researching what I can do for a while. First, I plan to clear my mind of clutter, quit this fast and excessive consumption habit I have acquired without realizing it, and then learn how to consume slowly and gradually. I have enough raw information to discover how to do all this myself; I will now give myself the opportunity to process it. This post has been discussed on Hacker News, you can join the conversation there. Thanks for reading. If you have any feedback or would like to discuss further, I would be happy to hear from you. twitter | [email protected] Next
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In the corner of the rear Floodgap lab sits a pile of classic game consoles. It used to look like this: Sega Dreamcast all the consoles here only came with NTSC RF output and date from the pre-flat panel TV era. That includes multiple Atari consoles (including the inevitable VCS, here a Darth Vader 2600), several Pong machines — including two Commodore units — with various chipsets, an Intellivision (as the rebadged Tandyvision One, my first) and a Bally Astrocade with lots of upgrades. It seems wrong to use them with a flat panel, and CRTs lag less. Plus, games with a light gun (here the Dreamcast and one of the Pong consoles) often rely on the CRT's rapidly scanning beam to know where they're pointed. So what do you do when the CRT TV goes bad? I should note that this isn't all the old school gaming fun in the house. In the commons next to the pinball machines are an Xbox 360 Slim and a PlayStation 2, and in the home theatre connected to the 3D projector is a PlayStation 3 since it has some stereoscopic titles. These might appear in future articles. But most of the rest are here. I bought this Panasonic Omnivision PV-M2035 from a friend at church in 1999 for $100 [about $200 in 2026 dollars]. He had no use for it, and the top of the plastic shell had been heat-warped by sitting in his car too long, but it worked, still had the remote, and was a suitably cheap TV for my unsuitably cheap studio apartment. I used it for local news and Friends with a set of rabbit ears, VHS movies, and speakers for playing music by connecting a CD player to the single rear input. When I moved to a less cheap 1-bedroom, it came along, and its flat top was flat enough to become a shelf for a DVD player. I got the Dreamcast from Fry's in 2001 after Sega discontinued it and managed to share the composite input between them. That apartment was my crashpad for about a decade before moving to the current orbiting HQ, whereupon I bought a passive-3D flat panel TV and moved the Omnivision to its current location in the back of the house. It shared the RF input between the Inty, and later the Atari 2600, and later still the Astrocade and various Pongs. At any one time there were at least four consoles always connected to it via switches and switchboxes, and I wired up an accessory port for more. plastic was broken and on these TVs that's pretty much the load-bearing part. When it arrived at the mailbox and I unpacked it, I could see the lower half had sandwiched right through the VCR slot, with visible PCB fragments and broken buttons; aside from the tube itself (ironically), the thing was a total loss. The seller nevertheless made good on the refund, to their credit, and I got to schlep it to the recycler. Overall, however, it had occurred to me that there were very few TVs sufficiently contemporary with the M2035 out there, which might be a hint about their general longevity. So, if I was going to be forced to buy a different Panasonic, then it might as well be a more recent one, and it should be one of the "triple play" units (i.e., TV, VCR, DVD) so that I could at least get rid of the external DVD player. Mission: Impossible '88 and '89 DVD sets, where the "in stereo" animation was even burned into the video stream.) not recording and thus impossible to watch many DVDs, for which the Sima CopyMaster was the cheapest solution: it simply blots out that portion of the vertical blank along with the pulses, which also has the side effect of sometimes stripping closed captioning (in the vertical blank as well), though DVDs with proper subtitles are of course unaffected. Later Sima devices could regenerate portions of the vertical blank for better quality, and Macrovision actually sued them over their products in 2005, but later settled. The mixer on the right was purchased literal decades ago at Radio Shack (more specifically a "Video Enhancer Stereo Audio Mixer") that I think we used for a Halloween display exactly once and then forgot about. Here it was used first as a cutoff switch, and second as a way to match the audio volume from the DVD player with the audio volume from the Dreamcast, which was also directly connected to the second rear Y-cable. This TV is mono, so the stereo channels from the audio mixer and the DC get merged using their own Y-connectors (also Radio Shack) before going into the Y-cable to the single line audio input. The video function isn't used here at all; it was just a audio mixer on the shelf I wasn't otherwise using. The DVD player is under the mixer and the CopyMaster, a cheapie Sony special that will only eject discs if it's in the mood or summarily threatened with violence. You already met this system when we adjusted the laser pickup and refurbished its rechargeable battery. you met the Tandyvision One (otherwise identical to the Mattel Intellivision Master Component, and manufactured by them as an OEM) when we installed a composite video modification and a front power-cutoff reset. I later upgraded it with an original Mattel Intellivoice speech synthesizer (Tandy never rebadged these) and a CuttleCart. But you haven't met the Bally on the bottom, officially introduced in 1978 as a game console and simple home computer, sold under various names such as the Bally Professional Arcade seen on early units, later the Bally Computer System badging here, and now collectively referred to under its final incarnation as the Astrocade. These machines were based around a 1.789MHz Z80 (half NTSC colourburst) combined with the same graphics hardware Dave Nutting Associates used for Midway's arcade games Gorf and Wizard of Wor, among others. Unfortunately, much of its theoretical graphics power went unrealized because it only has half the video memory of the arcade units (i.e., 4K) — and that's all the memory it has, so it has to interleave bits in the video memory to store BASIC programs, meaning only game ROMs can take full advantage. Still, that was enough to be solid competition for the likes of the Atari VCS and Fairchild Channel F, and it holds its own well against the slightly later Intellivision. does have is a doozy: the cooling vents are on the underside. These machines are very prone to overheating and can be easily damaged by it, which is why I use two foam struts to keep it off the carpet. The yellow label is for Astrovision, a separate enterprise that had been attempting to develop their own console. The (then) Bally Professional Arcade was selling poorly, though part of this was due to a tardy launch and Bally's weak retail presence, and Bally decided to sell off the consumer products division in 1979. Astrovision, unable to get their unit to market quickly, bought it in 1981 along with a limited license to the Bally name and reintroduced it at Winter CES 1982. Astrovision units are otherwise the same except for the badging and are the most common Astrocades today, though the company became another victim of the 1983 video game crash and went bankrupt shortly afterwards. Simultaneously, an Astrocade derivative merged with Bally's unfinished ZGRASS-100 expansion chassis was reworked into the Datamax UV-1 graphics generator, sold in small numbers until around 1982. the wall warts and power strips, and do a little spot vacuuming with the Roomba. out in spring. Gremlin's Blockade; and a simple calculator and screen paint toy ("Scribbling"). The display is a bit noisier than the Inty/Tandyvision, probably because of the difference in shielding, but still quite good. Videostak Video Game Center, which allegedly could accomodate a VCS, Intellivision or ColecoVision. The front decal is somewhat worn and the woodgrain veneer doesn't match the Vader VCS nearly as well, but it's still a fun-looking setup. Intellivision System Changer which has Atari 2600 hardware in an expansion box for the Intellivision II (useable on the original Inty with modification). It might be fun to explore the reputed irregularities between what is believed to be a VTI clone TIA in the System Changer and the slightly earlier Coleco Expansion Module 1 (and the related Coleco Gemini), and see how they differ in practice. Now for the Pong machines. These attach to the "accessory port" on the input switcher. The current Pong menagerie are mostly MOS 7600-based, MOS' own Pong-on-a-chip: two from Commodore themselves but PAL only using the MOS 7601 (the TV Game 2000K and TV Game 3000H), plus two MOS 7600 (NTSC) systems, a Coleco Telstar Gemini, not to be confused with the Coleco Gemini or Coleco Telstar, and an Allied Leisure Name of the Game II, possibly the earliest use of the chip in NTSC regions. We'll play the Name of the Game II and Telstar Gemini below. These will be consoles for another day, but I also have a boxed Atari Video Pinball, an "honorary" Pong machine though it plays several other games, and a boxed Atari Ultra Pong Doubles, which we had before we got the Tandyvision, but I don't ever recall it working fully and it later failed to power up and got thrown away, so this is a replacement. My least favourite of the Pongs here (I really only picked it up because it was cheap) is a 1977 Magnavox Odyssey 3000. The 3000 is basically an upmarket Odyssey 2000 with proper handheld controllers, but otherwise the same me-too AY-3-8500 Pong-on-a-chip generating the same black-and-white display. Allied Leisure Name of the Game II is a two-player Pong based on the MOS 7600-001. This chip notionally contains three field games (a tennis game, a "goal" game usually billed as either soccer or hockey, and a racquetball game) and a skeet shooter, but the racquetball game can be put into a single player mode by setting it to "four" players and the NotG2's switch triggers this mode in place of the skeet shooter. It was noisy on the other TV and it's noisy here, possibly because it has its own internal RF switchbox, but it plays fine. Coleco Telstar Gemini, an MOS 7600-004 system. This has two "pinball" variants (with flippers and moveable Pong paddles, so it's still a Pong of sorts) and two shooting gallery variants involving shooting a deformed bear sprite. The light gun connector is the same as the Coleco Telstar, so I borrowed the gun from that. sing along with The Offspring. But the output looks crisp through the rear jacks, the sound is proper stereo, and we now have front inputs I can use for something else without rigging a whole bunch of Y-adapters again. Plus, if the Telstar Gemini's gun works, it's all but guaranteed the Dreamcast's does. am likely to play some Video Pinball, and in its box that's easy to move, so that can go on top of the 2600 and the NotG and Telstar Gemini can sit next to it. The old TV is out in the garage and as I have time I'll extract its circuit boards and go over them more thoroughly, since I had a lot of good times with that television and it would be nice to fix. If I do, I'll write it up here, since it's an actual old VCR. Meanwhile, I have some possible projects in mind for the Tandyvision and Astrocade, and maybe some mods to go in the VCS, and you can read about those in future articles too. In the end, with the new TV all set up, the 1980s can live again in my rear office. Or, as my wife likes to point out, they never actually died there either.
By a mile, the iPhone Duo has garnered more questions about what I think about it than any other phone I’ve ever had. It’s clearly a phone that has people intrigued, so I thought I’d jot down some loose, unorganized thoughts about what I think about it after about ten days. If I could sum all my thoughts up into one word, it’d simply be “fun”. I think for the vast majority of people, myself included, the iPhone 18 Pro is a more practical phone that through scientific analysis you’d likely even find a better phone. Even if they were priced the same, its package is more traditionally comfortable and ergonomic, with a better quality main camera, a helpful telephoto camera, a screen that’s more practical to use more of the time, a better biometric system (Face ID versus Touch ID) and a more established software experience. But damn if the iPhone Duo isn’t fun. Phones have been downright boring for so long. Incredible technology, lovely apps, but the hardware has been a bit slow moving since the iPhone X. Maybe that’s why I jumped onto the iPhone Air so readily. Even that slight departure from “black slab of glass” to “a dramatically thinner black slab of glass” was exciting versus what we’ve grown accustomed to. So I pick up the Duo, and it’s kinda just exciting to hold a phone for the first time in ages. Maybe that’s a honeymoon period and after a few months I’ll be over it. Maybe everyone who tries a folding phone for the first time experiences this. And to be clear, it’s not just all raw novelty. The fun aspect is fueled by having an absolutely incredible inner screen that fundamentally transforms what a phone is and can be. In addition, support the Apple Pencil has turned out to be phenomenally handy for me to be able to jot down quick thoughts and notes. For downsides, Touch ID is objectively worse than Face ID, but honestly, I don’t mind it as much as I expected I would. The smaller camera sensor than the Pro series phones is still decidedly great (rumors were it was a 17e size which was not correct, it’s the size of the normal 17’s). Software support gets better by the day, though iOS on the Duo is still decidedly a bit buggy at times. Other random thoughts Touch ID is objectively worse than Face ID, but honestly, I don’t mind it as much as I expected I would, previewing notifications is where I miss it the most After getting used to having a single speaker in the iPhone Air for a year, having stereo (not to mention great sounding) speakers is amazing The FaceTime camera on the inside is indeed not great for selfies/photography but honestly perfectly acceptable for FaceTime, and I’d definitely prefer this solution over a cutout on the inside so I’m happy! It definitely has a heavy feel to it, but it’s nothing honestly that bothersome A lot of the reviews said something to the effect of “the crease is practically invisible” and while I don’t really mind it or anything I definitely would disagree with that statement, you can see it a fair bit even with light content The hinge is a bit harder to open than I expected, I’ve found the secret is don’t pry from the middle of the side, instead put a thumb near the top and bottom (also helps prevent pressing Camera Control instead which I was doing all the time). I imagine this is necessary to have it be able to stop at arbitrary angles once open (which I do like) and hopefully it loosens up a bit with more use, but playing with Android foldables at Best Buy I did find their hinge easier to open I am really split on the inner, nano texture screen. It definitely helps reflections, has a neat look to it, and is super nice to draw on with the pencil, but it’s significantly less vibrant than the outer display which to my eyes looks a fair bit nicer. I think they made the right decision ultimately but it’s definitely not a zero-compromise solution. I was considering nano texture on my next MacBook but after this I think I’ll stick with glossy. My glass half full take with the Duo for now though is that we get two really cool screens to play with The outer screen is awesome for taking photos, unlike taller iPhones, your viewfinder fills the screen completely so it’s the largest feeling viewfinder I’ve used on a phone I miss the action button, nice little launcher for ChatGPT/Claude depending on which month it is Battery life is downright phenomenal versus my iPhone Air and 15 Pro (two devices admittedly not known for having great battery life) So, I don’t think the Duo is for most people who either don’t care much about phones, or care a lot about having the perfect phone, but for a decent amount of people in the middle I think the Duo represents a fundamentally different experience, that’s a ton of fun, and I’m excited to be excited about a phone again. (But, Apple, please figure out a way to add a telephoto lens.)
Going through a collection of old parts, CuriousMarc encountered some ICs that he couldn't identify. He opened up one of these ICs, and I studied it under the microscope. After some reverse engineering, I determined that it was a logic chip that implemented four NAND gates using old-fashioned diode-transistor logic (DTL).1 The chip turned out to be the ST680A, a member of the Signetics 600 series of chips from 1965. In this article, I discuss the circuitry in this chip and how diode-transistor logic works. The die of the ST680A under the microscope. Integrated circuits can be packaged in many ways. One of the most popular is the plastic DIP (Dual In-line Package), a black rectangle of epoxy with two rows of metal pins. This type of package was invented by Signetics: "Introduced in late 1965, the 600 series was the first integrated circuit family to be offered in a solid, plastic, dual in-line package (DIP)." Earlier integrated circuits were packaged in round metal cans or in small flat-packs. In 1965, engineers at Fairchild invented the DIP, which had two rows of pins on 0.1" spacing. Unlike the surface-mounted flat-pack, the DIP had pins that were inserted into holes, making manual or automated assembly quick and easy. Because the pins of a DIP were on a regular grid, rather than the circular pattern of a metal can, circuit board design and manufacturing were also easier (details). The first DIP chips had ceramic packages. The plastic DIP, introduced by Signetics, was much cheaper and became very popular. An advertisement for the Signetics 600 series. From Electronics, March 21, 1966. The plastic DIP is less popular with me, however, because it is harder to open. With a ceramic package, I can simply tap it with a chisel and pop it open, but that doesn't work with epoxy packages. An epoxy package can be dissolved with nitric or sulfuric acid, but I try to avoid dangerous acids. Instead, CuriousMarc used Antoine's hot air decapping method. Unfortunately, the hot air technique doesn't always work. In this case, tiny bits of epoxy were stuck to the die, obscuring the circuitry. I used a few drops of boiling sulfuric acid to clean the die. (I'm okay with sulfuric acid in tiny quantities.) The die on its metal frame. The photo above shows the silicon die on its metal frame, the lead frame. The golden blobs are where the bond wires were attached to the die. You can see the doped silicon regions that form diodes and bipolar NPN transistors, as well as 16 resistors in the center, forming serpentine paths. Most chips have a passivation layer—a thin layer of silicon dioxide—over the chip. Inconveniently, this old chip didn't have a passivation layer, so the acid also stripped off the metal layer. (A few remnants are visible in the upper left.) Without the metal layer, I had to guess at how the components were connected to form logic gates. The die has very faint color differences where the silicon was protected by the metal, so that helped. Eventually, I came up with the diagram below, showing how the metal layer was probably configured. This wiring reveals that the chip implements four DTL NAND gates, which I'll describe in more detail below. One puzzle was that the chip has two unused diodes, indicated with question marks below. The metal layer for a quad NAND chip. I desaturated the image to make the labels clearer. Transistors, diodes, and resistors In this section, I'll explain how the patterns in the image correspond to components of the circuit. The silicon die is doped with various impurities to form regions with different electrical characteristics. These regions appear red or green under the microscope due to thin-film effects. As a result, the chip's transistors, diodes, and resistors are visible. The chip is made from bipolar NPN transistors, which have a completely different construction from the MOS transistors in modern ICs. In an NPN transistor, the current from the collector to the emitter is controlled by the current through the base. The collector is a large region of N-type silicon, silicon that is doped with atoms such as phosphorus or arsenic. Since these elements have one more valence electron than silicon, they give the silicon more negative charge carriers, so it is called N for negative. The N-type silicon happens to appear reddish. On top of the collector, the base is a thin region of P-type silicon, which appears green. This silicon has been doped with atoms such as boron or gallium, which have one fewer valence electron than silicon. The missing electrons form "holes", which act as positive charge carriers. Finally, the emitter is N-type silicon, on top of the base layer. These layers work together through semiconductor magic, amplifying the base current. Two NPN transistors on the chip. The second transistor is a larger output transistor. The chip's output transistors are slightly larger so they can sink more current. In the transistor on the right above, note that the collector contact wraps around three sides of the transistor. The emitter is also larger, with an L-shaped contact. According to the datasheet, each output transistor can sink 2.5 mA of current. The chip uses many diodes since it is diode-transistor logic. The structure of a diode is similar to a transistor, but without the emitter. In a diode, current flows from the cathode (P-type silicon) to the anode (N-type). A diode and a resistor on the chip. The chip uses 16 resistors, located in the middle of the die. A resistor is constructed from a long, thin region of doped silicon. Since silicon has moderately high resistance, a long strip of silicon acts as a resistor. Most of the resistors have a serpentine layout to fit a long resistor into a smaller area. These resistors consist of P-type silicon (green) in a "tub" of N-type silicon (red). The tub is connected to the positive voltage supply; since current doesn't flow from N-type silicon to P-type silicon, this isolates the resistors from each other. Operation of a DTL gate Logic gates can be created in many ways. The earliest integrated circuits (such as the ones in the Apollo Guidance Computer) used Resistor-Transistor Logic (RTL), where logic gates were constructed from resistors and transistors. In March 1962, Signetics announced the first family of commercial Diode-Transistor Logic (DTL) integrated circuits (details). By using diodes on the inputs instead of resistors, DTL provided better performance than RTL. However, DTL soon became overshadowed by TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic), which was faster and used less power. (If you built digital circuits a few decades ago, you're probably familiar with the popular 7400 series of TTL chips.) The diagram below shows how the DTL NAND gate works. If both inputs are high, the current from the first resistor flows through the base of the first transistor, turning it on. The transistor amplifies this current, passing a much larger current from the transistor's collector to the transistor's emitter. This current goes through the base of the second transistor, which turns on the second transistor. The second transistor passes an even larger current from the output pin to ground, pulling the output pin low. The DTL NAND gate with both inputs high. The schematic is from the datasheet. This circuit is considerably more complicated than the DTL gate on Wikipedia. But if one of the input pins is pulled low, the current from the resistor goes through the diode instead of the transistor. The first transistor turns off, and without a base current, the second transistor turns off. The third resistor pulls the output high. Thus, the output is low only if both inputs are high: a NAND gate. The DTL NAND gate with an input low. I'll point out a few features of this circuit. The diodes on the inputs ensure that one input doesn't affect the other input. The diode in the middle raises the voltage on the first transistor's emitter, so it requires more voltage to turn on, reducing the sensitivity to noise. The output uses a resistor to pull the output high; more advanced circuits use another transistor. When the output is low, the third resistor is still "trying" to pull the output high, which is wasting power. Moreover, the resistor limits the output current, so the high output is fairly weak. In some DTL families, you can get gates with different values for the output resistor, so you can select the tradeoff between wasting power and having an output that is too weak. If you've used TTL integrated circuits from the 1970s, you know that chips usually have power and ground on diagonal pins: ground on pin 7 and power on pin 14. (Putting power and ground diagonally opposite both helps die layout and circuit board layout.) Much to my surprise, I found that the Signetics chips predate this standard and have ground on pin 1 and power on pin 8: still diagonal, but the wrong diagonal! The diagram below shows how the four NAND gates are wired in the chip. Pinout of the 680A quad NAND gate. From the databook. Three chips from one die When I examined the die under the microscope, I figured out the circuit, but I was puzzled by two extra diodes, as if two NAND gates had a third input that wasn't used. The explanation is that Signetics used the same silicon layout for at least three different chips, applying a different metal layer for different functionality. This saved money since it's much cheaper to produce a single optical mask for the metal layer than a complete set of new masks. Signetics sold semi-custom ICs to customers, using an approach called variFEBS (Variable Functional Electronics Blocks). This approach used a custom metal layer on top of fixed silicon, providing custom circuits without the cost of a full mask set. These circuits didn't sell well, but Signetics used the same approach for standard ICs. Pinout of the 670A triple NAND gate and the 616A quad NAND gate. All three chips have some similarities, such as using pins 2 and 14 as outputs. From the databook. One IC with the same silicon as the quad NAND gate is the 670A chip, which has three NAND gates, each with three inputs (above left). The diagram below shows how the silicon can be wired to provide this functionality. The hypothesized metal layer for the 670A triple-NAND gate. The layout for the triple chip above is a bit tricky because the top gate has inputs on both sides of the power (Vcc) pin. This creates a layout problem because the power and ground metal runs vertically to the resistors, blocking metal wiring from one side to the other. The solution is a "crossunder", a region of silicon that allows a signal to pass under the metal layer, connecting the inputs on the left to the rest of the circuitry on the right. This crossunder is visible near the top of the chip. Another chip with the same layout is the 616A dual NAND gate, with five inputs on each gate. Since this chip has 10 inputs in total (compared to 8 on the quad gate), this chip uses the two "extra" diodes that I spotted. If that isn't enough inputs, each NAND gate has an expansion input; by connecting external diodes to the expansion input, the gate can be made as large as desired. The hypothesized metal layer for the 616A dual-NAND chip. Some history The history of Signetics is closely tied to Fairchild. The story of Fairchild's founding is well known: in 1957, eight engineers—the Traitorous Eight—left Shockley Semiconductor and created Fairchild Semiconductor. Hundreds of companies (the "Fairchildren") were started by engineers who left Fairchild. Signetics was one of those companies, formed in 1961 and said to be the first company to exclusively design and manufacture integrated circuits.2 Signetics announced its first product in 1962, a NAND gate that cost $125 (over $1000 in current dollars).3 Not surprisingly, sales were weak. Signetics soon ran short of money, so in 1962, Corning Glass invested $1.7 million for 51% ownership of Signetics. Corning Glass may seem like a strange investor, but Corning was more of a high-tech company than you'd expect, making components such as resistors and glass capacitors, and later creating fiber optics. Moreover, in the early 1960s, integrated circuits were the hot area (much like AI now), and everyone wanted to get involved. In 1963, the Department of Defense pushed for contractors to use integrated circuits in new products. Riding this wave, Signetics became the leading producer of integrated circuits.4 However, Fairchild soon introduced a series of DTL chips that competed with Signetics. The Fairchild 930 series was faster than the Signetics chips and less than half the price, so Fairchild took much of the market from Signetics and dominated the IC market. Signetics also produced analog integrated circuits. Signetics is probably best known for creating the 555 timer chip in 1970, said to be the world's most popular IC, with billions sold.5 Signetics was acquired by Philips in 1975, and then Philips Semiconductors was spun off as NXP (Next exPerience) in 2006. NXP is currently the #10 semiconductor manufacturer worldwide, so the heritage of Signetics lives on. For more, follow me on Bluesky (@righto.com), Mastodon (@[email protected]), or RSS. Thanks to CuriousMarc for providing the IC and thanks to TubeTime for finding the databook. AI statement: Despite the presence of the em dash, no AI was used in the writing of this article (details). Notes and references After I had reverse-engineered the chip, TubeTime found datasheets for it, making my reverse engineering unnecessary. (See the Signetics Condensed Catalog 1969, Utilogic II Databook 1971, and Utilogic 2 Databook 1972.) We must have been unlucky with our original web searches since we didn't find anything. But this way you get to see what's inside the chip :-) The Signetics ST680A IC in its package. The large circular depression marks pin 1. From the date code, this chip is from 1971. ↩ For more Signetics history, see Signetics Founding History, written by Lionel Kattner, a co-founder of Signetics. He states that the company name was inspired by the words "signals" and "networks", as well as the high-tech suffix "-netics". ↩ See History of Semiconductor Engineering, page 156. ↩ The book Making Silicon Valley describes the history of Signetics. It has a negative view of the Corning investment, saying that Signetics executives "Van Poppelen and Kattner dissented on the grounds that Corning was not a good fit for an integrated circuit company. In their view, Corning was a staid Eastern firm, ignorant about semiconductors and antithetic to the ways and culture of the electronics industry on the West Coast. Their view later proved to be correct." ↩ The 555 timer was created by analog IC wizard Hans Camenzind. If you're interested in analog circuits, you should read his book Designing Analog Chips, which you can download for free. ↩
