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12/25 |
2009/1/18-23 [Computer/HW/Languages] UID:52413 Activity:nil |
1/18 http://www.circuitcity.com/closed.html oopsie doodle! \_ How much cheaper will I be able to get a Canon 50D or 5D for? \_ i dunno, but you should go today and report back. the liquidat'n sale isn't very well known yet, IMO. however, such sales are also known for having crap discounts. \_ who knows, check the forums. from what i've read it's "10% off" and no idea how the bigger ticket items are doing which is usu where you can get the better deals and a few deals here and there. http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/deal-discussion/895549/?start=0 \_ 10% is lame. I can get over 10% from B&H Photo or Adorama \- you're not going to find magic deals on highly liquid stuff. |
2007/9/27-10/2 [Computer/HW/Languages] UID:48196 Activity:nil |
9/26 Has anyone had a head unit installed/replaced at Circuit City or Fry's? If so, would you recommend them for installation? Also, if there are better places than CC or Fry's in the South Bay, please let me know. tia. |
2006/3/12-14 [Computer/HW/Languages, Computer/SW/OS/Linux] UID:42193 Activity:moderate |
3/11 Which non-commercial Linux 64bit distro is most compatible with enterprise tools (in particular the Cadence/Synopsys tools?) \_ Probably CentOS b/c it is RHEL recompiled from SRPMS. \_ I didn't like CentOS 4.2 very much. (64-bit). It's possible it was misinstalled, but I found it lacking in polish. It was hard to compile things for it, things wouldn't work... --PM \_ Knowing some of the people behind CentOS and cAos, I'm very nervous to build on them. I am pretty sure at least one of their core people will not know what Cadence and Synopsys are. You are probably best off asking the Cadence/Synopsys communities about their Linux experience rather than Linux users about their experience with these "enterprise tools". BTW, if you hadn't clarified, those are not the tools I would have assumed you were referring to. We also found a number of other weird behaviors and possible file systems bugs in 64bit AssOS, but I think that's expected with their lacking quality control and testing systems [e.g. file with diff sizes having the same md5 hash] ... but that was at least 6mos ago. Lately the bugs I am dealing with are in more obscure areas like infiniband drivers, and it's possible nobody is perfect there. perfect there. Linux works ok for some of my integer crunching projects which can be naively parellelized. My colleagues doing more complicated MPI stuff see wierd, hard to reproduce problems. \_ They both recommend Redhat Enterprise. I have run the 32bits variant with not much problem. Not sure what it's like in the 64b env. RHEL 32b works fine. Trying to see if RHEL 64b exists and works fine. \_ RHEL 4 + most recent update seems to work pretty well on our dual opterons in 64b mode. Try it out. \_ Stupid question, but I'm not familiar with either of these--got a URL that actually describes what they do? Looks like sort of a set of cost management tools (aka part of SAP) -John \_ iirc, cadence and synopsis make circuit/chip design and verification tools. \_ Yes, very expensive tools. If you are using such expensive tools then why not shell out for a commercial OS like RHEL? To do otherwise seems penny wise and pound foolish. \_ He might want to avoid the cost of the license if he is running a very large (100+ system) cluster. Personally I agree, just run RHEL. Another option is to try Slowlaris x86, it runs fairly well on x86_64 (opteron) systems. \_ If he's running a large cluster then the cost of the licenses is even less per node. It's silly to spend, say, $100K on hardware and $100K on tools and then worry over $2K/year for RHEL. \_ In my experience, the 64-bit RHEL 3/4 and it's CentOS derivative aren't as polished as the 32-bit versions. The package managers often get confused about 32/64-bit issues and throw weird unimformative errors. They're supposed to be 100% compatible with 32-bit software, yet some libraries come only as 64-bit objects and there is no rpm for 32-bit (but you can grab those manually from the 32-bit distribution). Of course, I am using Linux in a different environment, so my comment might not be very useful to you. \_ I agree w/ this. I've seen a lot of libc6 issues in 64bit mode on RHEL 4, but the same problems do not occur in 32bit RHEL. Another option for OP is to try SuSE's Enterprise Linux Server (SLES). |
12/25 |
2005/11/5-8 [Computer/HW/Languages] UID:40450 Activity:nil |
11/4 http://www.bangedup.com/bu_posts/ratmonstermig74.wmv Category: humor Synopsis: pranksters hire a PETA member to clean up a biological laboratory who gets scared by a live mutated mouse man. |
2005/4/27-28 [Computer/HW/Languages, Computer/HW] UID:37381 Activity:nil |
4/27 What's a good replacement for the Byte magazine? I want something more technical than PC Magazine, but less extreme than the art of computer programming. \_ Uhm, Dr. Dobb's? Maybe too technical? Are you doing only a software mag or do you want a hardware mag? If you want pure hardware, you can try circuit cellar (for ee in general, not only for computers). |
2004/9/13-14 [Computer/HW/Languages] UID:33494 Activity:low |
9/13 What's the industry standard (if any) VHDL simulation program? ie, the photoshop for image editing.... thanks. \_ It really depends on what you want to do. The short-short answer is don't use VHDL. If you must, then it depends on what you're trying to do. FPGA guys are big on Modeltech, I hear. For ASIC types, it's the usual VCS and NC. NC used to have the better VHDL/verilog cosim. Not sure what the state of the art is now, since I haven't shopped for simulators for a few years. \_ I need it for a class. What are some well known and easy to use programs for writing code in vhdl? My professor is using a demo version of some software from ages ago.. \_ emacs vhdl major mode \_ I think modelsim comes with an editor. It's probably the easiest simulator for a single user too. |
2004/8/10 [Computer/HW/Languages] UID:32803 Activity:very high |
8/9 Triffids! \_ Zulus! Thousands of them! \_ Dive bombers! Enemy dive bombers! \_ That's no moon. \_ Nazis. I hate these guys \_ Yo she-bitch, let's go. \_ looks like i picked the wrong time to quit sniffing glue \_ Joey, have you ever been to a Turkish prison? \_ Midnight Express. \_ GUNS! BIG! FUCKING! GUNS! \_ You cannot do that without the will of the people, Mr. President! \_ I *like it*!! \_ We got nukes, we got knives, sharp sticks... \_ Can someone please provide a synopsis of the Day of Triffids? \_ Better yet, a synopsis using quotes from other films. \_ "Apples, Apples!" "Rain!" "Very small rocks!" "A DUCK!" "" |
2003/7/8 [Computer/HW/Languages] UID:28957 Activity:nil |
7/8 Now hiring. see /csua/pub/jobs/Synopsys -mel |
2003/5/25-26 [Computer/HW/Languages, Computer/HW] UID:28550 Activity:high |
5/25 Getting a new PC, $500 range. Is it a better deal to buy from Dell, Circuit City, or PC Club, etc? \_ Dude, get a Dell. \_ Is it because it's more reliable, has better customer service, better deal for the money, or just cuz they have a funny commerical? \_ too bad, someone erased my post \_ you think the commercials are funny? \_ I think she is using this definition of "funny": dict - 4: experiencing odd bodily sensations; \_ Throwing up or feeling queasy isn't odd. It is unpleasant but not odd. |
2003/5/10-12 [Computer/HW/Languages] UID:28402 Activity:high |
5/10 What's the difference between a simulator and an emulator? \_ Emulation is along the lines of "perform all the same actions as" while simulation is "a system or enviornment where conditions are the same." The distinction is highly contextual. And as you give absolutely no context, your question is pretty unanswerable. \_ no, it doesn't. \_ are there simulators that do not try to "perform all the same actions as" the design under simulation? is non-trivial simulation ever performed where "a system or environment where conditions are the same"? \_ Don't be daft. Without valid context, this discussion means nothing. "But those words can be used almost interchangibly! And they might even be SYNONYMS!" You're beating a dead horse behind chicken coop doors. \_ yes. The Palm OS Simulator is one example. \_ Emulator: VirtualPC, VMWare, etc. Simulator: VCS, VerilogXL, etc. \_ an emulator tries to mimic hardware. \_ and a simulator doesn't? try again. \_ No. He means mimic in that the host environment pretends to be capable of what the guest environment is capable of giving an illusion to the user. For example, VirtualPC gives the user an illusion that a Mac is running Windows software. Simulators make no pretense of doing so. For example, VCS is a verilog simulator. It doesn't allow the computer it's running on to mimic the hardware it's simulating. \_ what's the point of running a simulator if it doesn't mimic the hardware it's simulating? if i give you a black box, how can you tell if there's a simulator or an emulator running underneath? \_ We use an RTL simulator for ASIC design so that we can pass it some test vectors (similar to how things would happen in real life) and view the results in a waveform viewer. Simulators are orders of magnitude slower than a real machine but the purpose is not to have a usable system but something which you can debug through a waveform viewer. The engineers at Intel, for example, are not using RTL simulators to run WindowsXP on a chip that doesn't exist. That would be impractical. They use it to run small bits of code for design verification purposes. \_ ah, an asic "expert". have you done hardware/ software co-design, where the low-level driver and firmware is developed on the hardware simulator? and they call that... co-emulation? no! it's called co-sim, son, as in co-simulation. and just because win-xp is too bloated and modern processors are too large, that doesn't mean that no os has ever been booted in simulation in the history of hardware design and simulation. \_ AMD used to boot NetBSD on Hammer simulations regularly. \_ speed. a simulator can be faster than an emulator at the expense of accuracy. \_ ah, speed. so let's say you have an OS running on a cpu and system that is being simulated on a (say) verilog simulator. are you simulating or emulating the OS? can a simulator emulate? can an emulator simulate? \_ I don't think there's always a clear-cut distinction. \_ Maybe he means stimulator. Oh, yeah. That mimics hardware also. |
2003/2/5-6 [Computer/HW/Languages] UID:27309 Activity:nil |
2/5 Anybody know the address of Sun Microsystems in Sunnyvale, the one right across Synopsis? On Corte Madera? Thanks. |
2002/9/16-17 [Computer/HW/Languages] UID:25901 Activity:high |
9/16 I need [a] recommendation for a couple of books. One an introduction to verilog. And another an introduction to how to write good verilog that can be synthesized. Or one book if it covers both topics well. I'm the SW guy looking to get into ASIC design. Amazon has 100s of verilog books. They're very expensive and I don't want to waste money buying the wrong one. Thanks. \_ Take EE319 @ Stanford. \_ for synthesis, ask a friend for the Synopsys tutorial. \_ My recommendations (no, I don't personally know J. Bhasker): "A Verilog HDL Primer" by J. Bhasker - Intro to verilog "Verilog HDL Synthesis, A Practical Primer" by J. Bhasker - Intro to synthesis Side note: We'll see when verilog -> C occurs (if it ever occurs). - yakura |
2002/7/19-20 [Computer/HW/Languages] UID:25391 Activity:high |
7/19 Can somebody recommend a book (or a web site) that has step by step descriptions of how an ASIC is built? From the verilog/vhdl to actual silicon. What tools are used and what happens at every stage, etc. Thanks. \_ If you're still in school, take 141 or 152 or intern at an ASIC design group. If you're out in the job market, join one. Unfortunately, ASIC design is not something easily done "on your own" as is with software where you can just write your own stuff or download the Linux/BSD source and muck around with. Many of the tools like VCS and DC have very expensive license fees. Learning Verilog or VHDL isn't that hard. Just pick up an HDL book (I'll look up the one I use) and try it on a free simulator like Icarus. But learning an HDL is kind of trivial and only a tiny portion of the entire ASIC design flow. For more HDL info, try going to http://home.europa.com/~celiac/othersite.html \_ The book my co-workers use is Verilog HDL by Palnitkar. Like K&R, it's a crappy read but a decent reference. \_ I took 152 ten years ago and it didn't tell me how an ASIC is built. --- !OP \_ Well, he/she wanted to gain experience using an HDL and 152 made you use VHDL, at least. \_ there's a difference between HDL and synthesizable HDL \_ I'm not an ASIC guy but all the ASIC guys I know say it's *very* boring work. What's your interest in the topic? \_ really? architecture and microarchitecture is fun. so is coding. simulation and bug-fixing is fun, tho i find test writing moderately boring. i like hacking synthesis stuff, but then i'm an old fart. back end is mostly boring, tho there are some interesting bits as i look more into it. lab bring up is highly amusing, tho i've noticed that other people don't seem to share my enthusiasm. \_ dunno. like I said I'm not an ASIC guy. I know nothing about it. I was mostly curious as to what the OP saw in it that my ASIC buddies don't. \_ http://parts.jpl.nasa.gov/asic/sect.1.1.html \_ sjmercury, 1/31/2002. there's a 3/4 page graphic on page 4c of the business section that explains all the steps from arch to bring up to system integration. |
2002/7/15-16 [Computer/HW/Languages, Academia/Berkeley/Classes] UID:25362 Activity:low |
7/15 So I have 3 days to (re)learn VHDL. The only EE class I took was cs152, no 150, no 141. Any advice? \_ uh, what is this for? And how can you take 152 without 150? \_ so, is comp arch considered software or hardware? \_ it's the boundary in between them. \_ they teach it now in 61c/150. \_ 141 is probably irrelevant for most vhdl coding tasks. 150 is more relevant. if you've learned vhdl in the past, just do a few exercises and you'll be fine. if vhdl is new, find someone who knows the language well to teach you. of course, this only addresses syntactical sugar. learning how to design once you've learned vhdl is another matter. \_ what's the diff between Verilog and VHDL? Adv/Disadvantages? \_ the diff? the syntax. they do the same thing but vhdl requires more typing and in my exp. the latest tools etc. are targetted more at verilog. vhdl has some higher level constructs like records and shit that can be nice for some things. verilog is used by the vast majority of valley companies. |
2002/3/18-19 [Computer/HW/Languages, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:24149 Activity:moderate |
3/18 Anybody supported Cadence CAD tools before? An application has a license file that's expiring and I'm asked to put in a new license file. Is it a simple case of entering the path to the new license file or is it more complicated? Thanks. \_ yes. \_ is it a node locked license or a floating license? if floating, with redundant license servers? cadence isnt too bad but there are a few distinct and fairly common cases -jon \_ it's a license for one single machine. No license server. \_ put the license file anywhere and have the environment variable LM_LICENSE_FILE set to be that pathname. having it in the same place as the old license file is the easiest way to accomplish this. -jon |
2002/2/26 [Computer/HW/Drives, Computer/HW/Languages] UID:23977 Activity:high |
2/25 What happened to the "vis" program? The one that shows the output of a program repeatedly? \_ http://vlsi.colorado.edu/~vis/whatis.html \_That's not the program I am talking about. \_ That's not the program I am talking about. I want vis: "a program that repeatedly executes a specified command and refreshes the display of its output screen" from O'Reilly \_ From what O'Reilley? They publish hundreds of titles. \_ O'Reilly Unix Power Tools. 1st ed. This Program: http://www.chemie.fu-berlin.de/cgi-bin/man?Vis \_ Most of the power tools were on the included CD, not necessarily part of any OS \_ There's a similar program called "display" http://www.ipsmart.com/src or misc/display in FreeBSD ports. Be careful if you have ImageMagick installed; it also has a binary in /usr/local/bin named "display" (which no one ever really uses, so, well, don't worry about it) --dbushong |
2002/1/4 [Computer/HW/Languages, Computer/SW/OS/Windows] UID:23462 Activity:high |
1/4 W2K has by default a button next to the "start" button that is used to clear the workspace. I'm not sure what happened to mine. How do I get it back? What executable do I look for in creating the shortcut? Thanks. \_ What do you mean by "clear the desktop"? My W2k never had such a button. Maybe you want the tool bars menu you can find by right- clicking on the system tray? \_ you mean the button that automatically minimizes/restores everything? It's in the Quick Launch toolbar or something. Or hit Win+D. \_ right click on the desktop toolbar. choose the item for Toolbars. make sure "quick launch" item is checked. like the other people said, pressing WIN+ D will work. as well as WIN + M \_ oh crap. I toggled the "quick launch" thing and now the quick launch buttons are on the right hand side. It used to be next to the "start" button. Moving it to the left doesn't work. the window icons always get in between the start button and the quick launch buttons. Is there a way to fix this? the help index doesn't seem to talk about the placement of quick launch buttons. \_ geez. what do you mean moving it to the left doesnt work? it does. if you still cant get it to get to the left side, close all apps, then with the vertical bar, shove it to the left and it should stay there. \_ Look, this guy is obviously a clueless Windoze moron. \_ Yes and you're obviously a clueless linux bigot. So what? You don't see anyone going off on you about it. \_ Is there a diff between Win-M and Win-D? |
2001/1/19 [Computer/HW/Languages, Computer/SW/OS/Solaris] UID:20376 Activity:nil |
1/19 Related question to the contract post below. I'm currently charging customers $100/hr for solaris sysadmin work. Setup machines, servers, networks. And some basic CAD tool maintanance and compilation/build jobs. Is that too much or too little? What are your rates for the different types of jobs? Thanks. \_ Where can I get some of your contracts? $100/hr is great! |
2001/1/17-19 [Computer/HW/Languages, Computer/SW] UID:20351 Activity:nil |
1/17 Another CAD tool question. I have spice files with multiple layers of circuits. I understand that spice flattens the circuits down to a single level before running it. But it doesn't produce that single layer circuit in a file. Is there a tool out there that will flatten a spice file? I want to use this one layer circuit file as input to another program, not spice. Thanks. |
2001/1/17 [Computer/HW/Languages, Computer/SW/Languages/Perl] UID:20342 Activity:kinda low |
1/16 Has anybody written perl scripts that translate CAD related data files (all in text) from one format to another? Or know of one? I'm just looking for an example of this type of program. Thanks. \_ Which CAD software? \_ from some PC program whose name I don't remember to berkeley's MAGIC. The translation is straightforward. There's a set of keywords and numbers following keywords. I'm looking for an sample program that does something similar. \_ Magic was a piece of shit. Even with its so-called "user friendly" Tcl/Tk GUI Max it still stunk. Fortunately, in the real world, you use real CAD tools (which unfortunately Synopsis will charge you 7 digits for). |
2000/4/11-12 [Computer/HW/Languages] UID:17972 Activity:high |
4/11 What's a good book for Verilog (kind of like the Larry Wall for Perl or K&R for C type book)? \_ the one that's red. -ali. \_ ali is the next generation tom. fuckin-know-it-all, gives completely fuckin' useless answers. fuck off. \_ I agree. That was about the most useless response I had ever seen before. --original poster \_ that's nothing! ali took a notepad and pencils from the office once. \_ yer just a playah hatah \_ guess how i'd reply to "who is the biggest dipshit lacking the most sense of humor?" on the motd. -ali \_ yer mom is red, and haha, that is funny!!!!!!!!!!! \_ Nobody likes a little shit who just bitches about other people's answers and doesn't provide his own. And then doesn't sign his name. \_ depends on what you want to do with the language. if you want to write synthesizable code, synopsys used to publish a verilog tutorial that's pretty good. of course, this was like 12 years ago, and synopsys may not publish that document anymore. don't know what's the book to read for doing verilog dv stuff. |
2000/1/21 [Computer/SW/Languages, Computer/HW/Languages] UID:17284 Activity:high |
1/20 This is a long shot, but can anyone tell me how a frequency divider circuit works? Assume I have a voltage v(t) = cos(2wt). How would I build a circuit that outputs cos(wt)? By the way, this isn't homework; I was curious but couldn't find it on the net or in my old EE textbooks. I know how to double a frequency by squaring and filtering, but how to do a divider eludes me. \_ idiot way - convert the sine wave into a square wave, attach the result to the clock of a flip flop, insert an inverter loopback into the flip flop, buffer the output of the flip flop, and attach a capacitor to the output of the buffer. also known as the rube goldberg (however you spell it) solution. \_ squaring and removing DC only works on sinusoidal signals. a non-causal solution is trivial, but if you want caual and works only with sinusoids, use a PLL or use the fact that sin^2(u/2) = (1-cosu)/2, and somehow put the sign back in after square rooting. homeboy's solution above is just as elegant. noone deals with sine waves any more dude. -ali. \_ you're an idiot. i suppose you think the carrier signals on the 10 GHz irridium phones are TTL pulses, and that the engineers who designed them are all digital monkeys like yourself? I know guys who are running mixers at over a terahertz; do you think they designed those by clever use of digital circuits? -physicist sick of ignorant EE students \_ If digital monkeys bug you so much, get the hell off of soda and start your own party on the s00per analog computer you've got back at the lab, physics-boy. You're just bitter because physicists, as a group, have to be the only set of people with worse hygiene and poorer social skills than EECS majors. \_ Math grad students are fighting for pride-of-place at the bottom of the list, too! |
1999/12/31 [Computer/HW/Languages, Academia/Berkeley/CSUA] UID:17133 Activity:high |
12/31 Great soda crashes. Anyone have a history of it? I think the last major one was in 1995? \_ 1992. Soda Mark I died when some moron left the grounding cable for the internal tape drive hanging loose and it landed on the motherboard causing a nasty short circuit and frying the mb. On the bright side, the downtime resulted in the acquisition of Mark II, the first of the mighty Sequents. \_ A moment of silence, please. |
1998/2/9-11 [Computer/HW/Languages] UID:13646 Activity:nil |
2/9 Tetris arcade (and many others) emulator for PC is out. Go to http://www.davesclassics.com and look for "System 16". -- cm1ee |
12/25 |