Floating point calculations

load
md 1000 1100
g 122a
md 1000 1100



I have type those lines sooo many times while trying to debug these undocumented floating point routines in ICC12. __tofp1, __tofp2, __fpmul, and __fromfp1 seem to like to mess/use space that you have not indicated.

Now I get to spend time coding my own floating point routines in assembly. If anyone knows some open source code that does floating point calculations for the hcs12 microcontroller, that would simplify my life. C is starting really good right now, let the compiler and assembler do the work.

My brain in shot, so time for circuit analysis!

Xilinx

Norton Antivirus did the normal annoying scan which it does every Sunday. Typically when I let it run, it takes about a hour and a half. Now with Xilinx installed a couple weeks ago, the scan took two and a half hours. I knew xilinx was a large program, but I didn't realize that it contained so many files that it extended a file scan almost an hour.

Point of this post... Xilinx ISE (even excluding model sim) is bigger than Visual Studio. yikes!

Sometime I may post my RISC machine that I developed in Verilog (with Xilinx ISE of course) for my computer architecture class. Of course the risc machine only had 256 bytes of memory (thankfully I fit everything required in about 40% of the space).

Resistors...

Classic. (From http://xkcd.com/227/)

Monte Carlo and Reliability Engineering

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_engineering

Tonight I spent sometime developing and helping a fellow friend with a vb.net application to calculate the reliability of a system using a Monte Carlo analysis. Suffice to say, I learned quite a bit (which I shall bore you with at another time). Interestingly enough, my engineering economy class covered the basic aspects of the Monte Carlo simulation. The engineering economy class focused primarily on the financial side instead of the reliability side.

As you can tell from my fragmented thoughts...I'm tired. Thus, I shall fall asleep now!

MS SQL 2005 Express

I have successfully transferred my entire website project from my laptop to my desktop. Logically one would setup a database that is accessible through the internet. However, I still wanted a local database copy to work from (which is great for getting data out of sync between the two sources). Thus, I had to do a backup database, and then sent the backup to the destination computer, and restored database (allowing overwrite). I know, probably a really bad way to transfer a database, but it worked.

The only issues I ran into while transferring this project is that database mdf file for personalization requires MS SQL 2005 Express. After installing sql express, success!

Vista Profile Service

A post that may be of use to someone on the internet:
Currently I am working on a Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop with Vista. Scrolling through the event viewer while in Safe Mode, it appears that the User Profile could not be loaded so it loaded a temporary profile. The next login, however, Vista was unable to load the user profile. In fact, it started throwing a
"The User Profile Service service failed the logon. The UserProfile failed to load."

The best fix is to use the System Restore. I restored the computer back to the lastest restore point, and the computer logs in normally. Complete instructions follow:

1. Turn on computer
2. Press F8 until you get a menu with System Recovery/Safe Mode/Safe Mode with...
3. Select Safe Mode
4. Login with the user account. This solution assumes you are able to login to your account through safe mode.
5. Start All Programs Accessories System Tools System Restore
6. Restore your computer to an earlier point. Your computer will reboot and you should be able to login now.
7. Success! Celebrate with a can of Mountain Dew or something...

Another option (basically the same as above but using a different means). I used the method above, but I presume that this approach will accomplish the same task.
1. Turn on computer
2. Press F8 until you get a menu with System Recovery/Safe Mode/Safe Mode with...
3. Select the System Recovery Mode
4. Login with an admin user account. This solution also assumes you are able to login.
5. A menu is displayed with a couple options:
a) You can try to automatically detect and fix any problems (this most likely will only help if you have driver issues during boot up).
b) Select System Recovery. <-
6. Restore your computer to an earlier point. Your computer will reboot and you should be able to login now.
7. Success! Celebrate with a can of Mountain Dew or something...

At last! I hope this post helps you in a time of trouble.

cheers

Maybe it's time to start writing down my thoughts again...First up is my bike trip, most likely not a surprise if you've talked to me any time recently. Below is the general direction of my route. I will be Forrest Gumping it, or rather just biking where I feel like biking. In general, however, below will give you a good sense of my current plans.