Casio PB-1000 PERSONAL COMPUTER

So I was at work the other day and our resident IT guy had two of these stashed away in one of his drawers. The Casio PB-1000 Personal Computer. Not having much use for them, he gave my coworker and I both a unit.

The CASIO PB-1000 with extra 32kb RAM module capable of running programs in C61 BASIC and Assembly, Circa 1987

I’m a pretty big fan of old, obsolete systems such as this one and like to tinker around with things such as these. This portable unit running on 3x AA batteries is capable of running programs written in C61 BASIC (a Japanese standard of BASIC) and also can run compiled Assembly programs. For those of you who don’t know what Assembly language is, think of it as being only one step above machine language, or pure 1’s and 0’s. Assembly language is known to be the fastest running language for any system, due to being the closest interface to the hardware itself, but extremely difficult to program with. Fun fact: The game Roller Coaster Tycoon was written using 99% Assembly language by only one person; Chris Sawyer. An incredible feat indeed! No wonder the game ran very well on Pentium II / Pentium III / P4 systems.

Computers made back in the past had such good documentation! In addition to an Owner’s Manual, there is also a Command Reference Manual which describes the operation of most of the system commands.

The complete set, including Owner’s Manual and Command Reference. An assembly program source code is also shown that runs an electronic keyboard program.

I decided to take the unit home with me to play around with. I found out that the 32kb RAM module had been already installed and boosts the unit’s ram to a whopping 40kb. Unfortunately, the RS232C cable that interfaces the unit to a modern PC was not included. The rare MD-100 disk drive is also absent, leaving no way to transfer programs to and from a PC. Bummer.

Luckily, the documentation and also other sites on the web include many example programs which can be manually input into the PB-1000. My goal is to have the electronic keyboard program up and running here in a couple weeks.

Menu of programs

June 30, 2015 by greg26752 4 Comments

New Graphics Card

Well, it arrived yesterday. I got a new Nvidia GTX 980 Ti.

Evga Nvidia GTX 980 Ti SC w/ Backplate, Supercomputer on a card!

Everything was working smoothly and the install was pretty easy except for one annoying problem that arose during testing it. Coil Whine:(

Coil whine, as I understand it, is caused by the high frequency vibrations of certain components, mainly transformers, inductors, and capacitors, when the coils or materials of the components are exposed to certain electrical loads. When these components vibrate rapidly, they can cause sometimes irritating squeaks and squeals to be emitted. Unfortunately, there aren’t very many ways to mitigate coil whine problems. Most people will try swapping out the graphics card or power supply in an attempt to eliminate coil whine, which is often hit or miss…

Luckily, the source of the coil whine turned out to be coming from the PSU (power supply unit) instead. Strange. During the early stages of building this PC, I had a GTX 760 that had coil whine, but not the lower power PSU I had at the time. Getting annoyed, I swapped the 760 out for a GTX 770, and the coil whine was greatly reduced. Just the issues of high end components I guess.

In an attempt to fix the issue, I ran out to Best Buy and bought an EVGA 600W power supply to swap out the EVGA 750W I had previously. For the most part the whine is greatly reduced and only pops up when running at high framerates. A good solution that I plan to use is by using EVGA Precision software to limit the framerates manually in those cases. Problem solved for now.

In addition to the last post I made, the main function of this card will be for Folding@Home. I ran the computer overnight as usual to fold some more, and this morning my points earned jumped up a whopping 60,000 which is excellent. This number should jump up more rapidly as I complete more work units. Hopefully this will help out the research on new cancer drugs and treatments.

Out of curiosity, I also ran 3DMark on the PC to get a benchmark in and performance numbers on the new card. The results; the PC performed at the 96th percentile of all PCs tested under the 1080p Fire Strike benchmark (I only have the free version of 3DMark). Feels good to be top of the line.

More updates to come, meanwhile the Raspberry Pi has been gathering dust…

June 26, 2015 by greg26752 Leave a comment

Folding@home

Well, I guess I’ll get right down to blogging some of the projects that I’m working on.

The first one that peaked my interest probably a couple of years back was a program called Folding@home, which was initially released in 2000 by Stanford University. What Folding@home does in a nutshell is the simulation of protein folding and molecular dynamics to find cures for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s disease, and other forms of cancer. When these proteins fold properly, they help the body fight disease and illness. When these proteins misfold, they can cause diseases such as the ones listed. Through the analysis and research of how these proteins fold, the hope is one day some vaccines and treatments can be found.

Unfortunately, protein folding is computationally expensive to evaluate. The vast amount of computational power that is required to simulate protein folding is done by using distributed computing, where users volunteer their computers and systems to process the simulations. More information and the technical jargon is explained here. A simple cartoon-y video explaining the basics of the program is available here. Apparently, there have been over 100 papers published on the results from the simulations run so far. No cures found yet, but I think this a step in the right direction.

For a time I contributed a couple of hours as an Anonymous user back in college, but my interest for the program waned. Now, for the first time in my life with a fairly decent desktop, I pledge to dedicate more computer time toward the cause:

Computer specs: CPU: i7 4790K @4.0GHz, GPU: GTX 770 (this GPU will soon change, more excitement to come!)

The only issues is that my bedroom heats up by a couple of degrees. If I stick my hand by the exhaust, it’s like a small heater. To make matters worse, my A/C was not working that well the past couple of days and I woke up a couple nights ago and was a bit sweaty.

Not to fear! My A/C was fixed today (maintenance put more R-22 into the tank). Also, the amount of electricity that I’m using will be a bit higher as well. The math works out that I’m paying an extra ~$8 every month for running the computer from 9pm to 6am every night. Oh well, a small cost for a greater cause in my opinion.

Dedicated to Uncle Riz’s memory.

June 23, 2015 by greg26752 Leave a comment

HELLO WORLD

More information to come. This is where I’ll post projects that I am working on, interesting stuff I found, and other shenanigans. I’m still working on the site layout (the typography and background needs some work).

Hope you enjoy.

June 21, 2015June 21, 2015 by greg26752 Leave a comment