Ken Shirriff's Blog
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Reverse-engineering a low-power LED flasher chip
.hilite {cursor:zoom-in} a:link img.hilite, a:visited img.hilite { color: #fff;} How do you make an LED blink? A vintage way is the...
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Reverse-engineering an early calculator chip with four-phase logic
.hilite {cursor:zoom-in} a:link img.hilite, a:visited img.hilite { color: #fff;} In 1969, high-density MOS integrated circuits were...
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Reverse-engineering the clock chip in the first MOS calculator
.hilite {cursor:zoom-in} a:link img.hilite, a:visited img.hilite { color: #fff;} In 1969, Sharp introduced the first calculator built from...
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Reverse engineering RAM storage in early Texas Instruments calculator chips
.hilite {cursor:zoom-in} a:link img.hilite, a:visited img.hilite { color: #fff;} Texas Instruments introduced the first commercial...
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Reverse-engineering the classic MK4116 16-kilobit DRAM chip
.hilite {cursor:zoom-in} a:link img.hilite, a:visited img.hilite { color: #fff;} Back in the late 1970s, the most popular memory chip was...
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Reverse-engineering the carry-lookahead circuit in the Intel 8008 processor
.hilite {cursor:zoom-in} a:link img.hilite, a:visited img.hilite { color: #fff;} The 8008 was Intel's first 8-bit microprocessor,...
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Inside the stacked RAM modules used in the Apple III
.hilite {cursor:zoom-in} a:link img.hilite, a:visited img.hilite { color: #fff;} In 1978, a memory chip stored just 16 kilobits of data....
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How the bootstrap load made the historic Intel 8008 processor possible
.hilite {cursor:zoom-in} a:link img.hilite, a:visited img.hilite { color: #fff;} Near the end of 1972, Intel introduced their first...
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How to multiply currents: Inside a counterfeit analog multiplier
.hilite {cursor:zoom-in} A recent Twitter thread about a counterfeit analog multiplier chip attracted my attention since I'm interested...
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HP Nanoprocessor part II: Reverse-engineering the circuits from the masks
.hilite {cursor:zoom-in} In 1974, Hewlett-Packard developed a microprocessor for control applications in their products, from floppy disk...
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Reverse-engineering the first FPGA chip, the XC2064
.hilite {cursor:zoom-in} A Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) can implement arbitrary digital logic, anything from a microprocessor to a...
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Inside the HP Nanoprocessor: a high-speed processor that can't even add
.hilite {cursor:zoom-in} The Nanoprocessor is a mostly-forgotten processor developed by Hewlett-Packard in 1974 1 as a microcontroller...
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Reverse-engineering the 8086's Arithmetic/Logic Unit from die photos
.hilite {cursor:zoom-in} code {font-size: 90%;} The Intel 8086 processor was introduced in 1978, setting the course of modern computing....
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Inside a counterfeit 8086 processor
.hilite {cursor:zoom-in} Intel introduced the 8086 processor in 1978, leading to the x86 architecture in use today. I'm currently...
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How the 8086 processor handles power and clock internally
.hilite {cursor:zoom-in} One under-appreciated characteristic of early microprocessors is the difficulty of distributing power inside the...