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The Ultimate Reset Button
Gary writes "The gigantic red switch looks more like a mushroom straight out of Super Mario. It can be connected easily using two wires and can be activated in any direction. To get rid of the blue screen of death all you have to do is hit it with something (like, a fist)."
Wow, this is just amazing....almost rivals the development of the polio vaccine.
Thats for Windows users. Unix guys would rather like to have a pedal under their desk that is mapped to Escape. Imaging how much fun vi could be...
Your parents must shit themselves every time they hear you coming up the stairs from the basement.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I don't have parents anymore. They had an untimely accident tied to a series of unfortunate events.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
I inherited it my current living arrangements.
Just because they're in the freezer doesn't mean they're not still your parents.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Real men don't fool around anymore with digital potentiometers and op-amps when it comes down to the nitty-gritty task of controlling an LED.
Now it's far cheaper to use a microcontroller with pulse-width modulation to guide the LED into it luministic destiny. Get an 8-pin AVR (like the Tiny11) or even a 6-pin PIC microprocessor for less than 50 cents US, preferably one that is in a new surface-mount package much smaller than the LED and fits underneath it. Then write the code that gently awakens the LED from its inner darkness. Be guided in your code by the idea that just as the LED is being raised from its inherent chaotic darkness, so too is man raised from his internal chaotic darkness by the direction and focused energy of Jesus, God, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, Great Spirit, or Whoever (grammar goblins, note the proper capitalization of the indirect pronoun that refers to the deity).
The point is that now it is cheaper to effect a hardware solution with an ultra-cheap microcontroller than it was in the 20th century to do with cheap 555 timers coupled with resistors and caps or to do with TTL clusters. It does require software skills that weren't needed previously. It's a whole new frame of reference for electronic designers. This trend will continue as very fast, (50 MegaHertz system clocks, fast for microcontrollers), very powerful 32-bit microcontrollers with large internal memory continue to fall in price [the 50MHz/32K FlashROM ARM controller has broken the $5 barrier].
Will we ever use a 32-bit microprocessor to control a single LED? Don't laugh too hard. Using a chip that has more internal resources than the original IBM PC to control a few LEDs is not rare now. If some future 128-bit CPU has the ability to be programmed just by talking to it, and it's cheaper than an LED, then why not?