The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

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Travis B.
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Re: The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

Post by Travis B. »

Well, polyfill.io has been nuked. Apparently a ton of websites use(d) it to provide, well, polyfills, but unbeknownst to most it was hijacked by what seems to be some Chinese company and used to deliver malware earlier this year. When this was originally discovered Cloudflare rewrote references to polyfill.io in hosted free sites to refer to a backed-up good copy of the original site. Now, though, its DNS provider has taken down the whole domain, much to my relief. However, I am now paranoid about what has happened between the time this originally started and now.

Thing is, there are a whole lot of paranoid people on Hacker News and like who are ranting about how it's bad that Cloudflare redirected polyfill.io to to a known-good copy. Do they wish that Cloudflare hadn't done that? Would that be better somehow? Sure, you can have your paranoid ravings about how Cloudflare will change the "truth" and whatnot, but isn't things like this what people use Cloudflare for in the first place?
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Ennadinut'a gaare d'ate eetatadi siiman.
T'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa.
Travis B.
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Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2018 8:52 pm

Re: The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

Post by Travis B. »

I have now implemented tools for transferring files to and from boards running zeptoforth over serial or USB CDC connections. The need for this arose from FAT32 filesystems in block storage in on-board Quad SPI flash, which unlike SDHC cards cannot be disconnected from your board and accessed from your computer. (I am using a simple protocol that sends data in 512 byte chunks, the size of a sector in the FAT32 filesystems, with CRC32 checksums to ensure data integrity, and encoded with Base64 so as to be able to be compatible with the zeptoforth console, which by default traps control-C for rebooting and control-T for special "attention" sequences.)

I was considering implementing ZMODEM, but from looking into it it seemed to be overly complicated, and also it requires 8-bit clean data transfer; while there is a way to make the zeptoforth console 8-bit clean, the problem with that is that then there would be no way to forcibly reboot zeptoforth or interrupt the data transfer tools other than to manually reset or power cycle your board (and Raspberry Pi Pico's, for instance, have no built-in reset button, making a physical power cycle the only means possible in that scenario).
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Travis B.
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Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2018 8:52 pm

Re: The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

Post by Travis B. »

zeptoforth 1.6.1 is out. This has important bugfixes to the heap allocator and zeptoed, adds LIST-FILE and LIST-FILE-WINDOW to FAT32-TOOLS for listing files with endline conversion (to avoid stair-stepping that results from dumping files with LF endlines to the console with DUMP-FILE in FAT32-TOOLS), and adds the aforementioned tools for transferring files to and from a host computer via serial or USB CDC.
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Ennadinut'a gaare d'ate eetatadi siiman.
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Raphael
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Re: The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

Post by Raphael »

Have any of you been affected by this Crowdstrike globe-spanning bug thing so far? I've heard about it on the news, but I haven't seen or experienced it directly myself yet. How about you?
Travis B.
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Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2018 8:52 pm

Re: The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

Post by Travis B. »

zeptoforth 1.8.0-alpha.0 is out. This is an initial alpha release of support for the RP2350 (e.g. the Raspberry Pi Pico 2) and also includes binaries for the RP2040 (e.g. the Raspberry Pi Pico) because the RP2040 codebase was significantly impacted by the changes made for the RP2350 (due to seeking to share code when possible).

Note that there already has been a significant bug identified in this release, specifically that when using REBOOT rather than control-C or the Reboot button of zeptocom.js to reboot when using the USB CDC console the USB CDC console is liable to be wedged so hard that the USB cable must be disconnected and reconnected to un-wedge it.

Also note that there is a known issue in the RP2350 A2 pertaining to input GPIO's when not with internal pull-ups or external pull-up/down resistors, so take care when using input GPIO's which are floating or have internal pull-downs. This is not a bug in zeptoforth per se.
Yaaludinuya siima d'at yiseka wohadetafa gaare.
Ennadinut'a gaare d'ate eetatadi siiman.
T'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa.
Travis B.
Posts: 6589
Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2018 8:52 pm

Re: The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

Post by Travis B. »

zeptoforth has reached 1.8.0-alpha.2. The USB CDC console lockup-on-reboot issue has been fixed, as has been an issue where the Always-On Timer would be reset to the last time set on reboot.
Yaaludinuya siima d'at yiseka wohadetafa gaare.
Ennadinut'a gaare d'ate eetatadi siiman.
T'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa.
Travis B.
Posts: 6589
Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2018 8:52 pm

Re: The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

Post by Travis B. »

zeptoforth is at 1.8.0-alpha.4. This release includes bugfixes to pull-up-pin, pull-down-pin, and floating-pin in the pin module on the rp2350 platform, where calling these previously caused hardfaults.
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T'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa.
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