Dave Harpe

Presently the most obscure musician in Sacramento, CA. I have been looking for other ways to make money lately, and was sort of invited into doing an electronic project for a friend. It's a machine which makes colloidal silver, and it's all analog, no microprocessor. Once I got back into electronics, which used to be my living from the 70s to 1997, I quite naturally started checking out microprocessors again. It seems that Picaxe is the only one I can actually get running with my old obsolete computer, a Power PC Mac running System 10.4. My previous building experience with microprocessors was with the Motorola 6800, and for those who are familiar with that, it makes it clear that I'm kind of an old fart. My favorite project with that was a motorized robot which worked OK, but ran down the 6 C nicads in about an hour. It's impressive stats were 2K EPROM, 128 bytes of RAM, 1MHZ CPU rate, and a handful of relays, micro switches and gear motors. It was programmed in 6800 assembler, not even enough room for BASIC in something like that. I was using an assembler that ran on a "SWTPC 6800" to write the code.
Now I am starting again with Picaxe.
After much fussing, letters back and forth between me and Picaxe management, I found that my machine will not work with the new 8 pin chip, and there is no fix for that. I ordered again, a kit for the 20M2, and gave it another try. It drove me crazy until I began to suspect the data plug. I pulled it out, and replaced it with the one on the 08 board, and finally got it working. My life runs like that on most things, a PLUG, of all things, was bad. Anyway I finally got that LED blinking with the test program, and I never felt so good looking at a blinking light before. (I'm a 60s kid, so...)
Now I am looking at my collection of gear motors, power FETs, and an old Erector set, and saying "Hmmmmm".
No doubt there is more to this story, stay tuned.

Music, bicycles, photography, and crafts