<2022-10-19T22:01:30.000Z> john_rando: Hey man, are you looking for a job? I keep seeing you poast about how unemployable you are so I figured you were. The place I work at is hiring. It's in the west-central Florida area and involves automation systems.You'd be working with analog and digital sensors that feed into PLCs, which are basically glorified industrial-grade microcontrollers like the Arduino. Your BG is in programming so handling PLCs should be  a breeze for you. I read that you've also been dicking around with USB lately; how much electronics and electrical experience do you have? If you know Ohm's law and understand basic circuits and how to read diagrams you'd do fine.We have a lot of sensors, pressure sensors, flow sensors, pH sensors, chemical analyzers, etc. For the most part those are easy to do so no big deal if you haven't messed with them before. 
<2022-10-19T22:02:54.000Z> john_rando: Oops hit enter too soon. If you're interested let me know and I can give more details. Some things about the job aren't so good, for one thing the plant is very old, documentation is spotty and lots of undocumented "improvements" have been made over the years, which can be very frustrating.
<2022-10-20T00:11:24.000Z> deprecated_ii: I appreciate it and if I lived closer I'd jump on it -- sounds like the kind of work I'd like to be doing -- but unfortunately I'm in the great lakes region and can't move. Elderly parents, that sort of thing.
<2022-10-20T00:17:13.000Z> deprecated_ii: I'm half joking about the "unemployable" thing, it sure feels like it a lot of the time because the software industry is going in the opposite direction I am, but I know there are jobs out there that need what I can do.
<2022-10-20T00:51:31.000Z> john_rando: No problem. Just figured I'd throw it out there. 
<2022-10-20T01:08:26.000Z> john_rando: The automation software scene has it's share of soy-dev faggotry too, given what I've seen with the "new" software that's being foisted on us with the new control system being installed here. I mean, we now have a "modern" system, yet in some ways it seems to suck more than the old "outdated" system we are replacing. The only real problem we have with the old system being replaced is all the parts are EOL and it's hard to maintain. It will be interesting to see what the control logic looks like once the project is completed. I'm not super impressed with the vendor that has control of that stuff right now.
<2022-10-20T12:14:02.000Z> deprecated_ii: Yeah, I imagine they're injecting a shitload of new software complexity because it'll be "easier" to work with. I'm not that familiar with the industrial side of things but in the hobbyist/consumer side of embedded programming the trend is toward high level code and sticking a whole ass operating system on chips that are being used for trivial things.
<2022-12-30T02:54:28.000Z> john_rando: The octal digital clock is finally finished. https://i.poastcdn.org/f1e582b65fd0f54a192830aa0e468be3b2dd9d6c5fcaac8caeb3986760f6705b.jpg
<2022-12-30T02:54:37.000Z> john_rando: Just call me Clock Boy
<2022-12-30T18:03:23.000Z> deprecated_ii: nice, and surprisingly I find it easier to read than hex
<2022-12-30T18:04:49.000Z> deprecated_ii: How did you handle converting the clock pulse into time? I can't really tell by looking. The way I know to do it is to just mask bits on the individual hour, minute, and second counters so when it hits the target value it sends a pulse and resets to 0
<2022-12-30T18:38:52.000Z> john_rando: I think you're doing the same as I am. I used a second counter ic to drop the output of the oscillator/14-bit counter to a 1hz signal, then sent that to the 4-bit counter on the ones digit for the seconds portion of the clock. Then I just daisy chained that to the tens position by connecting Q3 to the clock up pin of the next counter.
<2022-12-30T18:41:31.000Z> john_rando: For all resets I used logic gates. That way the clock up signal gets sent first before any resets get sent out.
<2022-12-30T18:48:43.000Z> john_rando: For the ones position I used an OR gate tied to it's reset. Q3 of the ones counter is tied to one of that OR gates inputs. The eights position is reset by a 4 input AND gate tied to Q0, Q1, Q2 of the eights position counter and Q2 of the ones position counter. That gates output is also tied to the other input of the OR gate that resets ones position. Oh and I have to remember I'm working in octal so I'm working in ones, eights, 64s, etc. Not ones tens hundreds and so on.
<2022-12-30T18:49:11.000Z> john_rando: Probably better to draw a diagram instead of walls of text.
<2022-12-30T18:56:12.000Z> john_rando: Anyways, the reset for seconds is the clock up pulse for minutes which is wired the same as seconds. This in turn clocks up the hours which resets on reaching 30 octal. I used 74ls193 chips for the counting digits, 74ls47s to drive the 7-seg displays. The gate logic was a 7432, 7421, and 7408 IIRC.
<2022-12-30T19:16:34.000Z> deprecated_ii: sounds like about an 80% overlap with the design I came up with for a real time clock a few months ago. minor differences in chip selection and purpose is all
<2022-12-30T19:17:05.000Z> deprecated_ii: I really like the discrete logic stuff, I don't know why but it's just so neat doing complex stuff with nothing but counters, a few logic gates and a clock pulse
<2022-12-30T19:19:09.000Z> john_rando: Yeah I was playing with an Arduino but ditched it for the ttl. Arduino is just overkill for this, and it's internal clock just isn't as accurate as a discreet 32k crystal oscillator anyways.
<2022-12-30T19:20:20.000Z> john_rando: I'm probably going to redo in all CMOS next time though. My little 5v power supply is running super hot right now
<2022-12-30T19:21:06.000Z> deprecated_ii: I *really* like not having to screw around with some IDE to push code into the ROM and blah blah blah. If I can do it in discrete logic and the physical footprint doesn't need to be tiny, I'm gonna do it in discrete logic. Or even just analog if I can
<2022-12-30T19:21:58.000Z> deprecated_ii: I try to make sure everything will run on 3.3 volts. If I can only find a 5V chip to do something I redesign to avoid it
<2022-12-30T19:23:30.000Z> john_rando: That 5v power supply is from a kit I bought at a surplus electronics store years ago. Came with a big textbook that taught basic electronics.
<2022-12-30T19:26:24.000Z> john_rando: The book culminated in a binary clock project that didn't work. So I gave up trying to follow the book and just started reading datasheets. I used the example application for the oscillator chip to finally get.a.usable clock pulse and just.went from there. I built a working binary clock years ago just by reading datasheets and wiring up the circuits one step at a time.
<2022-12-30T19:27:10.000Z> john_rando: Over the past few months I've been getting back into it, hence the new clock.
<2022-12-30T19:29:55.000Z> john_rando: Funny thing about the old clock I did was that was when the clock-boy hoax happened. I was first infuriated thinking some Boomer teacher who didn't know shit freaked out for nothing. Then I saw the clock in question and got mad at that lying kid. Then Mark Zuckerberg complimented the boy on his "nice clock" which convinced me that faggot was an imbecile.
<2022-12-30T19:32:22.000Z> john_rando: I want to get into PCB development next. So I can use CAD software to remake my breadboard projects into something permanent.
<2022-12-30T21:43:50.000Z> deprecated_ii: Got any specific projects planned? I'm still dicking around with a music player design, took some time away to do other stuff but I'm getting the electronics lab set back up now
<2022-12-30T23:50:18.000Z> john_rando: no, not really right now. I'm still letting the clock run to see how accurate it is. I'll probably look up some sort of PCB CAD software and start figuring out how to design boards. There's websites that will fabricate boards for you if you give them the layout.The only additional items I see myself adding to this clock is a proper way to set the time. To set it I've just been using a jumper wire to send the high speed clock pulses off that 14-bit counter.
<2022-12-30T23:50:53.000Z> john_rando: That speeds up the clock, and once I get close enough I send slower pulses until I get to where I want then put it back on 1Hz