Since its inception, all digital machines were meant to serve man and help him perform his daily tasks in the office, on the factory floor or at home. However, in order for a machine to be useful, something was needed so that humans could understand it. Nowadays, it is quite normal to have all kinds of screens on which digital systems display information that we can understand, but this was not always the case.
Practically every day we encounter bar codes of various kinds. Although we don’t usually pay attention to them, they play a very important role in today’s world – the identification of products in the store, the flow of packages in logistics centers or the proper distribution of components in production processes. Barcodes are used in each of these areas, thanks in part to their simplicity. The small size of the code can be easily scanned by an automatic scanner or an operator equipped with the appropriate equipment.
There are cases in which a manufacturer releases a device that is already obsolete on the day of its release, lacking modern solutions. An example of such equipment may be the Soviet calculator Электроника MK-33 (Elektronika MK-33), but are you sure?
In the early 1970s, engineers from the Leningrad Electronic Instrumentation Association “Svetlana” (Светлана) began work on the next calculator, the Электроника C3-07 (Elektronika C3-07). This device was a rather simple design with only fifteen keys, meaning that some functions had to be assigned to the same button. Such a solution was quite problematic, more than once there were mistakes, and also just typing in the right sequence took quite a long time. In the successor to the C3-07, the designers had to eliminate these inconveniences.
ALUs, or arithmetic logic units, are part of every processor today. In the past, they were produced as single, physical chips or a collection of multiple logic chips. In today’s material, I will tell you about the construction, history and operation of one of the first ALUs.
The LFSR (Linear Feedback Shift Register) is one of the simpler designs we can run on an FPGA chip, yet it is very useful. This type of application is primarily used for.
Practically every day we encounter bar codes of various kinds. Although we don’t usually pay attention to them, they play a very important role in today’s world – the identification of products in the store, the flow of packages in logistics centers or the proper distribution of components in production processes. Barcodes are used in each of these areas, thanks in part to their simplicity. The small size of the code can be easily scanned by an automatic scanner or an operator equipped with the appropriate equipment.
A little bit of calculators were produced in socialist Poland. There were models dedicated to the ordinary Kowalski, scientific designs for professors, printing for accountants or pocket calculators for school children. The basic and probably one of the most popular models was the Elwro 144, a classic base design, on which quite a few other calculators produced by the Elwro plant in Wroclaw were based. Today I would like to tell you about the latest evolution of the 144 model, the Elwro 151 calculator.
Some time ago on my site appeared the first material about bipolar transistors. In it, I told you a little about their history, construction, we put the first circuit into operation together, and also took a look inside this unusual element. Today we are once again taking on this element, but we will take a closer look at its operation. I’ll tell you about the basic working circuit of the transistor, we’ll check its operation, and finally we’ll set it on fire.
There is no doubt that the transistor is something that has revolutionized the world. It is hard to imagine today’s electronics without this small component. It is so versatile that in today’s world we can find it in virtually every electronic circuit. Transistors are found as individual elements, but they are also the main building blocks of integrated circuits, it’s hard to imagine, but a modern circuit such as the M1 Ultra processor from Apple, for example, consists of about 114 billion of these elements, a truly astonishing amount. In today’s material I will tell you a little about the history, operation and construction of this remarkable electronic element.
