Year 2010

CPU Angst

I’m starting to fear that Tiny CPU is a short-sighted design. It occupies a strange spot between ultra-simple soft-CPUs like MCPU, and much more capable soft-CPUs like PicoBlaze. The hardware is nearly as complex as PicoBlaze, but the functionality is…

Assembled Tiny Board Test PCB

Board Test Success!

Hot diggity damn, it works! It took me about four hours to fully assemble the Tiny CPU test board with all the components, which was good soldering practice. The surface-mounted navigation switch was a little challenging, but not too bad.…

Bare Tiny Board Test PCB next to a penny

Got Board

My “Tiny Board Test” custom-designed PCB is here! The BatchPCB order took 18 days from design submission to delivery, but it seemed like an eternity. It’s pretty awesome to see my ideas rendered in copper and fiberglass. Somebody might even…

DIP and PLCC chip packages compared

Bits of Progress

Lots of good news on the Tiny CPU front! I successfully programmed a Flash ROM via the JTAG indirect method today. Woohoo! I was never able to get it to work previously, and couldn’t figure out why. Several possibilities: Comically…

SMD soldering workshop tools and instructions

Maker Faire 2010

Ah, Maker Faire. It’s part garage inventions, part Burning Man reruns, part techno-supermarket, and all awesome. Can it possibly be a year already since Maker Faire 2009, where BMOW was featured in Wired, Slashdot, Digg, etc. and I talked myself…

Small ROM

In my ongoing effort to make the Tiny CPU board as small as possible, I’m looking for a small Flash ROM or EEPROM. That’s small in physical size, not necessarily capacity. My search has led me to examine many different…

Page 2 of 7