Re: [neonixie-l] 14-digit nixie calculator project with clock function
Today I assembled the IN-16 calculator and wrote the assembly instructions. Documenting things seems to be hard work… I’ve uploaded the instructions, “Docs/Assembling the IN-16 calculator.pdf” -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/23d81c67-9476-4d31-ac89-fd483361490dn%40googlegroups.com.
Re: [neonixie-l] Re: Four Letter Word Clocks
Ray Weisling went to extraordinary lengths to fit his code and all the words into very limited memory. Today, because memory is plentiful and cheap, one would simply create a large table of all FLW, each word using 4 bytes. It would be so simple. But instead he resorted to bit tricks. For example he created an alphabet consisting of only 16 letters (not 26). That way a single letter would use not 8, or 5, but just 4 bits. Thus any 4 letter word that was a member of that alphabet required only 16 bits to encode, a 2x memory saving. Very clever. By creating several different sets of 16-letter alphabets he was able to generate almost all the words you see. The remaining few exceptions were done with a 4 byte table. To me it looked like a massive amount of manual work, almost like a puzzle, but that's what you did as an embedded programmer in the 90's when literally every byte counted. I've seen the source code. It might be on the web, I don't know. Ray hit hard times (again) in 2013; we exchanged a lot of Nixie email that year; he sold me his personal FLW and GEEK clock to cover bills. He died not that long after. His clocks, of course, live on and work perfectly. /tvb www.LeapSecond.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/9cadb94f-670b-c31e-cec5-61d31ed347ce%40LeapSecond.com.
[neonixie-l] Re: Four Letter Word Clocks
That's an interesting site that I hadn't seen before. I never suspected the algorithm that RW used in the original FLW clock was so circuitous but taking the technology of the time into account it's not really surprising. I have made several FLW clocks over the years both with B7971 tubes and with CRT displays. By the time I got interested in them it was possible to download the entire Scrabble 4000 word four letter dictionary into a $5 microcontroller and have enough memory left to run the clock, generate random numbers (for indexing) and do vector graphics. In my clocks the word changes every 5 or 10 seconds and there is a switch on the back to control whether or not "rude" words are shown. The grandkids love it as a word game. Incidentally the price of US$195 in 1973 is equivalent to about US$1195 today. Only a certain demographic could afford one! Morris On Friday, 28 May 2021 at 13:17:15 UTC+10 J Forbes wrote: > A start here...but there is lots more if you delve deep into the old posts > on this group. > > https://www.oocities.org/tokyo/8908/fourletterword/index.html > > On Thursday, May 27, 2021 at 7:54:48 PM UTC-7 celephicus wrote: > >> Greetings, >> >> I am doing a Hackaday project on my enormous FLW build, and I would like >> to know the history of the FLW concept, I know Raymond Weisling invented >> them, is there an authoritative history of them? In particular, who came up >> with the idea of using a word association database to generate the words? >> >> Tom Harris >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/339002df-a053-45cf-a46f-999e5b597e16n%40googlegroups.com.
