371
submitted 10 months ago by kalkulat@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

First, wear your dust mask. Who knows where these machines have been?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] WaterWaiver@aussie.zone 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Very pretty stuff. I particularly recommend Ken Shirriff's Reverse-engineering the mechanical Bendix Central Air Data Computer:

He goes into detail about how non-linear equations are implemented using shaped cam gears (and how such functions can be difference-encoded against linear forms). It's insane.

And because it’s analog, there is no quantisation, rounding errors, floating point errors.

Eh, I'd say that runout and stiction are their own demons with potentially more bias than those error types :) Not to mention temperature sensitivity -- hot days will give different answers to the equations!

[-] towerful@programming.dev 6 points 10 months ago

Eh, I'd say that runout and stiction are their own demons with potentially more bias than those error types :) Not to mention temperature sensitivity -- hot days will give different answers to the equations!

Ha, oh yeh. Good point.
A bit of dirt throwing off the calculations.

this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
371 points (96.0% liked)

Technology

58965 readers
3746 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS