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Pointers can be a confusing topic for the new C programmer, often explanations get bogged down in too much technical detail, or are just too simplistic. I’m going to attempt to show in both a simple and comprehensive manner just what pointers are and how to use them. First let’s consider the design of a…

I bought a couple of 68008 CPU’s years ago always meaning to make something, as the 68000 series has a great instruction set and is fun to code on! First job was just to verify that I hadn’t been sent a counterfeit or DOA part… sadly something that is always a possibility theses days. As…

Its fairly common to see libraries that are written in C++ but only offer a C API (some also offer C & C++ API’s). As someone who much prefers to code in C, I’ve sometimes needed to link my C application with a library that’s written in C++ (for example ODE). My initial solution was…

For the purposes of this post, a very simple scenario is going to be considered. Given a Model structure that holds a pointer to a Mesh structure, the issue to be addressed is to whether or not there are references to a particular Mesh. Once all Models that reference a Mesh have been freed we…

While this product is intended to be used with a Raspberry Pi, I bought it specifically to use with my FPGA board, having a HDMI (DVI) port on such a tiny board, just inspires a mobile build! While there is a PI type connector on the board, you can simply use the LCD as a…

While originally waiting for my board to arrive I found and got a Z80 soft core working (in simulation) I was a little disappointed that tri-state logic seems to cause issues with yosys (I think that might be what was causing the logic “loops” later down the toolchain anyhow). Having recently gotten around to soldering…

Well, you could knock me down with a feather, if you thought remote programming was blisteringly fast….. File name Time 1 Time 2 Time 3 Time 4 Time 5 Ave Time (ms) /blink.bit 518 518 548 521 522 525 /blink.bit.gz 1140 1140 1142 1141 1141 1141 /blinkc.bit 86 84 87 83 86 85 /blinkc.bit.gz 189…

It was pointed out to me that ecppack has a compress option and it has quite the impact on programming speeds, so I thought I’d do a simple test and try a few different compression combinations and see what impact they have (you never quite know with these things till you try) File name Size…

I’ve been wanting to try project Trellis out for a little while now, I was impressed with the open source toolchain for the ICE40, however the ECP5 has everyones favourite feature (MOAR!) it’s basically bigger and faster – what’s not too love. There is a slight issue with the current state of the toolchain, but…

As anyone who’s regularly used a Pi in their projects knows, sooner or later either the power gets lost unexpectedly or you manage to lock it up playing fast and loose with low level coding… and you’re likely left with an SD card that’s corrupted. Equally with a finished project you don’t want to ssh…