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Another Transmeta Patent 115

Posted by CmdrTaco from the its-not-unraveling-much dept.
Arrgh sent us a link to a new Transmeta Patent filed for what they describe as "Method and apparatus for correcting errors in computer systems". That doesn't help much. Now back to trying to figure out why connecting my cable to my VCR makes my whole stereo humm. Why can't audio/video be as easy as Linu- oh, wait...
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Another Transmeta Patent More

Another Transmeta Patent

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  • Hmm, more world domination. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Perhaps transmeta plans to dominate the world? Whats next, neural nets in hardware?

    To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion. . .

    - drom

  • Cable Hum (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is your cable grounded? Is the sound a 60 Hz hum?

  • Re:Sounds like 60 cycle hum (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A surge protector will not ensure a good ground connection. The ground connection is ensured by making sure that the electrical outlets being used: 1) have a 3-pin configuration 2) have a ground wire connected to the center ground pin 3) the ground wire must be connected to ground, usually at the fuse/circuit breaker box.

    Plugging a surge protector into an ungrounded connection will not solve the problem.

    My guess is that the problem is actually caused by a ground loop from the cable connection. Try just connecting the center conductor of the cable to the VCR without screwing the connector on. The signal to the VCR should be fine, and if there is no hum, you have a starting point.

    Good luck.

  • Date the patent was filed... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Anyone notice the date of filing on the patent? It's Feb. 28, 1997. 1997. This is not new technology. Imagine what these guys have come up since then. Another of their patents (US5832205: Memory controller for a microprocessor for detecting a failure of speculation on the physical nature of a component being addressed) was filed for in Aug. 1996. I'm now wondering how long most of these companies have had these technologies before they file for patent, or publicise in a press release.

  • Not a safe idea... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ... the third prong is there for a reason: it protects the user against potential should some sort of power supply failure (i.e. - mains wiring touching the chassis, etc.) occur.

    Ground loops (and its attendent hum) are caused by the signal in question finding more than one path; usually through the mains ground or chassis (equipment in a metal rack, etc.) and the audio cable (signal path).

    Two safe ways to alleviate this are:

    1. Do as the previous poster suggests by breaking the signal ground on the audio cable. Signal will then travel through the mains ground.

    2. If #1 doesn't fix the problem, do a 'star' ground arrangement: use a heavy cable (>10 AWG) to connect all equipment chassis to one central ground point. Break all signal grounds and ideally lift any mains ground - signal will have only one route (through the star ground) and any residual potential will be swamped by the star ground.

    Simply lifting mains grounds as your 'pro audio' friend suggests achieves the desired result but is exceptionally dangerous and is too often employed by unwary studio 'techs'. I've seen a few injuries result from doing this in the 20+ years I've been working in recording studios. Play it safe and do it the right way!

    ~AC

  • A line of reasoning... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So if Intel or Microsoft patents something, it's bad, but if Transmeta patents something, it's good?

    "But Transmeta employs Linus and lets him work on the kernel!"

    So Transmeta is good because it sponsors good work? Well, billgates donated 5 BILLION dollars to charity recently, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna pucker up and kiss his whip-scarred ass.

    And I realize that SW patents != HW patents. And I recognize that companies may need to protect their interests... but: "Method and apparatus for correcting errors in computer systems"?

    -No Name Specified

  • Re:old houses (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    heh... I lived in a really old apartment house once. Someone had actually installed some 3-prong outlets but they weren't grounded properly. Funny thing, one day I started hearing voices in my room, and there was no one there, and the neighbors weren't home either. I thought I was going crazy until I realized that audio signals from someone's radio were intermittently migrating up the electrical ground and becoming audible on the speaker of my clock radio (even with the radio turned off). Weird.

  • Microsoft VCR 2000 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The ground-loop solutions above -might- work, but you really outta wait for a Microsoft VCR or DVD Player. It won't make that 60 Hz hum, however it will have selectable tunes that it can hum, the ability to change the display color, and a nifty little assistant (who will actually get in the way rather than helping you set the clock). You will also have to replace all of your other AV gear for any level of compatibility, but look on the bright side, it'll look nice sitting next to that Microsoft cordless phone.

  • Re:Isn't that everyone does? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    yup everyone does this - they build a C architectural model and a Verilog/VHDL RTL model and they run them in parallel and compare the results.

    Sometimes you only compare the results at well known places - like exceptions or branches - because state might be heavily pipelined and not that obvious - or in TM's case maybe they're recompiling x86 code into their native ISA and can only figure out what the x86 state is easily at certain places.

    I can think of 3 projects planning the past 10 years where I've been involved in design of a chip/cpu and we've done DV this way - this is definitely a case of someone running off and patenting the state of the art - probably just to build a patent portfolio with the long term goal of an IPO in mind.

    You're not supposed to patent something that's has prior art or is 'obvious to a practioner in the field' - by applying for and getting a patent like this you devalue the whole value of having a patent - it used to be that having one was a big deal and someone who had one was respected - they had done a great piece of original thinking - now it's simply a matter that someone manged to claim the mundane first

    I think that patents should be reserved for grand, wonderfull, new world-changing ideas. My suggestion for how we fix this sort of thing is to go back to the days where the inventor him/herself had to queue at the patent office with a model of their invention waiting to show it to the examiner (forget the lawyers) - by making patents harder for engineers to get than and hour with the patent attorney hopefully people willthink twice before the apply for them

    Frankly this sort of thing sucks - it just makes work for the lawyers - but, more importantly, it steals from the bag of tricks I use day to day to do my work - it leaves minefields in my day to day life - where any day some bozo's patenting of the obvious will spring up and bite me, toss me in court - do any of us know for sure than any line of code we write is not covered by one of the millions of patents out there?

    (signed) A holder of 6 of those bozo patents, 8 pending ones and one really cool one I'm actually proud of - who just gave this same speech to the company patent guy last week

  • Audio is exactly as easy as Linux - at least it is for me, because I'm doing my audio with Linux... I can ssh to my stereo... :)

    /me sings:
    The speaker's connected to the amplifier
    The amplifier's connected to the sound card
    The sound card's connected to the 4*4x CD-ROM drive...

    Hmm. Okay. I won't quit my day job.

    ObTransmeta: This post has no tyops.
  • Wow... Sounds official. :-)

    This almost makes Commander Taco seem psychic via the way he just happened to "mention" his VCR and stereo. :-)

    Okay, let's look over this, shall we?

    Dependancy on high-bandwidth connections would not be likely; ISDN is too expensive, Cable Modems are not widely implemented yet, ADSL is even less-spread; And do you even know the cost of a T1, much less a T3? Transmeta would have to wait a LONG time. How long would their capital hold out under such circumstances? Even with the likes of Paul Allen filling their budget, the timescale that would call high-bandwidth connection for appliances would be a long time coming.

    Also, Appliances do not require much in the way of instruction, being specialized as appliances are. This would also rule out emulation, as emulation allows a computer to support other platforms. (It's funny to think of a television emulating a fridge, although it would be a cool thing to have... :-)


    --

  • Several good comments to read have been made.

    At headquarters (not where I work) all the labs have a 2 inch my half copper bar running all the way around the lab. Battery cables (8 gauge or better (smaller)) is connected from that to every workstation. This assues a common ground and helps to avoid problems. As someone else mentioned, you can duplicate the same thing yourself)

    Ground fault interupters (which in the US are required in bathrooms and kitchens. often called GFCI) do not protect look at the ground wire, if any current goes through the ground wire the GFCI should trip. I suspect that if you pluged the bad equipment into a GFCI it would trip.

    Grounding is complex, electrical engineers can take senior level courses on grounds. Don't think that you will learn all you need to konw about them here.

    Make sure all your grounds are tied togather, doing the best you can to be sure of the connection. Beware that wires can induce current into your ground (transformer work on this principal) just by running close to it.

    If you leave the mains ground connected to your equipment, make sure your ground and the mains ground are tied togather. Don't trust a water pipe, use a real ground. Make sure if you try this that the connections on the mains ground is good everywhere.

    If you have two different stakes in the ground, you can make a battery, which is short circuted when you connect the two togather. There are other problems, but in generally it isn't a bad thing to have two ground stakes.

  • That looks exactly on target to me. a great way to test emulation firmware or a just in time translator.

  • Well this completely fits with the previou patents and the theories spring from them that Transmeta is producing chips with a completely new instruction set, but will also emulate other hardware.
  • I also have an audio problem.

    Here's my setup. I have a "Y" off the out on my computer, so I can hook it up to both my computer speakers and my amp. My VCR is also hooked up to the amp, and when the amp is off, and the VCR is on, I can hear the VCR through the computer speakers.

    Any thoughts? I'm pretty sure it's related to the "Y" cable, except I can't think of another way of cheaply doing what I'm doing.

    jamus
  • It is indeed.

    The cable company has another ground potential than your electricity company.
    Try a voltmeter between ground on cabel TV (outer conductor) and earth in your electricity outlet.
    It will surely give you a reading.

    There exists filter that is put on the cable between your VCR and cable TV connector in the wall.
    I place to try to find such a device might be Radio Shack.

    Good Luck.
  • I am going to throw my theory into the ring, why not, everyone else has!

    Transmeta is NOT developing new computers! I predict that transmeta is developing "high tech appliances" like TV/VCR/Media/Stero/HomeAutomation systems. I guess they will be heavily dependant on a high bandwidth connection (thus they are not in a hurry they will take thier time and get it right, and be ready to OWN the market when broad bandwidth comes to home users).

    It fits to me, all the high tech chip designers, OS guys, Media gurus. But, my prediction is the end users won't even see the OS, and the will not be marketed as "computers," but "high tech media appliances" insted.

  • Yea, I got the consept from an NPR interview with Kary Mullis on Talk of the Nation. He went to "this company" his buddy "Paul" runs in California for a visit, and I guess he didn't know there was massive NDA involved for most visitors. Then he talked about it on the radio! Whops...

    Interesting to note, the RealAudio clip for that day is no longer avaliable on NPR's archives ;-)

  • Cool, thanks. Got any referances for them? (I only caught part of the show. So this guy has two companies that don't have an actual product out yet? I really don't have a clue, but would like to find out more.)

  • Here's the link (Score:3)

    by BadlandZ ( 1725 ) on Wednesday June 09, 1999 @08:08PM (#1859543) Journal
    HREF="http://www.scie ncefriday.com/pages/1999/May/hour2_052199.html [sciencefriday.com]

    I tried to tell Malda, but he won't listen.

  • Along with SP2 of MS VCR 2000 will come some new technology dubbed ALE (Appliance Linking and Embedding), which will let you embed an Audio CD object (among many other ALE-enabled appliances) into your VCR 2000 and control it from the VCR 2000's front panel. And viceversa: you'll be able to control your VCR 2000 from any ALE-enabled appliance in your home. So if you want to go to your fridge to get a pint and suddenly remember you have to start recording the Packers game that is going to start now, you can just embed a VCR 2000 object into your MS Refrigerator and start recording.
  • Never mind. Got rid of the BEos Central Section on the sidebar and my problems have disappeared. Looks like bad html is coming across and causing the Box to be much wider than usual cramping the space of the normal headlines. I think I'll just talk to myself now :) Thank you....
  • Isolation transformers work wonders. They exist for cable in many forms. You can go from the coax to 300 ohm through those little impedance transformers flat and back again. No more direct connection or ground loop! They also add just another barrier from lightning hits.
  • The slashdot way of finding an electrical problem in house wiring might involve a voltmeter. In a grounded electrical plug, there are three terminals: hot, neutral, and ground. The hot is what you think it is, neutral is the middle phase of the 220 volts at the breaker box, and ground is the official safe, grounded into the earth, return for leakage from appliances, etc. The neutral is hooked to the ground at one point and nowhere else, usually at the breaker box. If neutral is tied to ground anywhere else, interesting things may happen, like getting shocked by touching the stove, AC hum in stereo, fire, etc.

    Another thing to check for is loose wiring. Loose connections happen over the years and tend to get warm and melt things. Not too cool if you don't like fire. Realize that if you check and fix things yourself that electricity is energy. Energy has lots of potential, like inducing seizure like dances, fire, death, etc. If you don't know what you are doing, you might learn the hard way and your family will have always known that it would do you in. They warned you.
  • Yes, I have heard great things about the Clock Wizard, that helps you install a licenced copy of Time 12.00. Of course, it is leased, and will require you to install an upgrade of Time at a later date.

    The VCR-X feature you can get at Shortcircuit City. Only VCRs with MS-VCR-X can play MS-VCR-X movies. No rental fees or late charges! Just hook up your VCR-X up to the phone line right to Mr. Gatus home network of intrigue. Plug into MS-VCR-X today!
  • The problem is called ground loop. Basically the ground of your cable system and the ground of the electrical circuit you are on are at different levels.. this results in a slight voltage potential at the audio inputs of the reciever, since household current in the us is 60hz, the sound you here is a 60hz hum. The different grounds are the cable which is earth ground (you should see a wire going into the dirt attached to a cable splitter somewhere), and the electric co's own ground). One way to eliminate this hum is to cut the ground of the cable and just have the inside copper make contact. However don't blame me if something blows up =). The second way is to find a 75-75 ohm transformer.
  • hehe, i have no better suggestions than the ones already mentioned, but i thought I needed to point out the fact that i am yet another of the people who cares more about an annoying hum in audio equipment than a new Transmeta patent...not that the news isn't appreciated, but geeeze! Hums suck!! you have you tried an isolator/surge protector? Panamax makes a unit called the Co-Ax Max that has six outlet surge protection, cable surge protection and noise filtering on all of it, it also has a $0.5 million connected equipment warranty! they're a little expensive, but when lightning strikes you'll be glad you have it!
  • When I was in high school, I played electric guitar in the second-string jazz band. Of course, since we were the second-string band, we got the crappy equipment and I ended up having to plug into a massive refrigerator-sized, 1950's vintage tube amplifier which had no ground prong on the plug and a plate reverb that sounded like ocean waves crashing on the shore if you bumped into the cabinet.

    But, note. No ground prong. Typically, in that sort of layout, the strings and most of the metal stuff in the guitar are connected to ground to reduce stray hum from lamps, fans, nearby transformers, &c, but since the amp wasn't grounded, it hummed something fierce if I got near anything electric. The director's solution: "Stand far away from electrical things."

    But worse than that, somewhere inside the amp there was a leak from the power rail to the signal ground so if I stood on the ground, I got shocked by the amplifier. The director's solution: "Sit on this wooden stool."

    And then there was a concert where they put a microphone directly in front of the amp, and I got lots of pretty blue arcs when I accidentally bumped the grounded mic chassis with the tuning heads on the guitar. The director's solution: "Yeah, so?"

    The moral of the story: Don't go cutting ground lines unless you really, really, really know what you're doing. The results can be painful, injurious, deadly, or any combination of all 3.

  • It might be useful for automatically diagnosing and fixing ground loop problems!

  • NTSC and PAL both use vertical sync rates in the 50-60 Hz range, but the overwhelming majority of signal is going to be in the horizontal sync (525 lines for PAL, 480 for NTSC, a total of around 28Khz, far out of human hearing range) because the horizontal line information is over 95% of the total signal information.

    However, that doesn't mean the VBI (vertical blanking interval) would be inaudible; just that it would be low in level and have strange tonal characteristics atypical of 60 cycle sine-wave hum due to EMI/ground loop troubles.

    Because of impedance mis-matches between the audio and video lines, there would probably be some severe issues with signal amplitude, too.

    But now I'm curious to try it, just to see what NTSC sounds like. Buggardly Slashdot!

  • Rob was eaten by a bear.
  • What they're talking about is realizing that they've taken the wrong branch in a set of code (INTERPRETED MICROCODE!), (probably) generating some kind of exception, and replaying the code back for the correct branch(es).

    If my pet theory is right that TM's processor will be a virtual machine, they might have just gotten a big patent edge with the whole branch-prediction side of pipelined/fetchahead execution of microcode tokens.

    I don't really know crap about processor design outside of Tannenbaum's example CPU in one of my school textbooks, but it's a theory. ;o)
  • It's really hard to look at the top of one's head in the mirror, but the last I checked, I wasn't balding. Maybe if I moved my awkwardly long hair to one side.

    Why is it that they must always take me for some puttering old fool?
  • sounds like I've been patented by Transmeta again... may as well just hand them over brain, spinal cord, arms and fingers and get it over with. Sounds like they are trying to patent the average troubleshooting IS guy. *grin*
  • I was gonna say...

    If you're using the red, white, and yellow A/V cables, those aren't magnetically shielded. Although they carry a miniscule amount of current, they still kick out a considerable magnetic field, which will move the drivers in non-shielded speakers. I would try to move the cables around; changing the orientation of the magnetic field might help. (This assumes, of course, that I remember my E/M well at all.)


  • I don't know if many /.'ers have played (read: experiment) much with audio equipment, but if you 'accidentaly' plug your VCR Video out to an amplifier input, you get noise. Most of it is in the high freq. (15 to 50kHz ?) range, so you don't hear much of that. But there is a 60Hz 'carrier' component which, when amplified, is your predominant signal.

    So... I have a hunch that CT plugged it in wrong, and the post was a sort of inside joke.

    Then again, maybe not.

  • I've always lived in pre-1940 houses and
    rarely have grounded outlets
    maybe this could be turned into a poll question
  • I thought it was already almost obvious that Transmeta is working on emulation technology - e.g. one which allows you to run code for many/all major platforms efficiently. You even mentioned David Keppel and Robert Bedichek. Just look at their research interests... (fast emulation techniques mostly).
  • The third way works if you've got a decent amp/receiver. Connect a fairly hefty wire (NOT speaker cable) from the ground terminal on the back of the amp/receiver to the same ground your cable compnay is using. (A water pipe will usually work as well).

    And if you're living in an older (early 60's or before) house, try flipping the plug on your amp/receiver.
  • ... and cause a flurry of advice from a panel of trained slashdotters ;)
  • I was about to suggest that. Oh well I'll include a link to how to fix it to make this reply worth while:

    http://members.aol.com/htbasics/

    It's listed under Mod/Proj./Upgrades it's the first project. Very simple.

    Disclaimer: Just another from my bookmark file

  • That's actually a fairly accurate description of the chip in question--at least AFAIK. The most promising feature of this chip may be the ability to emulate various architectures at speeds comparable to hard-wired versions of the same. John Dvorak of PC Magazine [pcmagazine.com] has this [zdnet.com] to say about Transmeta's "Neon" chip. From the article it's not really clear if the chip is also low-power, but there's no doubt that Transmeta's working on the low-power angle as well. Since the rumors state that the chip will operate using microcode as a basis, I'm assuming it'll be almost completely programmable--though it's beyond me as to whether or not the chip will be directly programmable by users. If it is, it'll be a fun toy. :)

    And just for a little levity here, you can find more non-information on the Transmeta home page [transmeta.com]. View the source for some nonexistent hidden messages.


    -W-
  • Radio Shack has a Ground loop isolator for $15 bucks. I had the same problem. Plugged the GLI in and everything worked like a charm.

  • Looks like a generalization of regression testing (Score:3)

    by SurfsUp ( 11523 ) on Wednesday June 09, 1999 @04:42PM (#1859567)
    Just from the abstract, it looks like a generalization of the idea of regression testing. My (shoot from the hip) guess is that the needed this to check the logic of their new processor in simulation, to verify that each iteration of the design result in a functional system, and if it didn't to pinpoint the place where it started going wrong.
  • There are ~$10 RCA to RCA audio ground-loop isolators available from the er... crack shack ;-)

    Seriously... they work wonders (all my components are isolated this way, long story :). They're basically audio-isolation transformers in the middle of an RCA patch cable.

    These will kill 90%+ of the 60/50Hz hum present in audio equiment "chains" of devices... (ex: LaserDisc player to VCR to TV...).
    -Phyxis

  • Sounds like 60 cycle hum (Score:3)

    by Gulthek ( 12570 ) on Wednesday June 09, 1999 @04:44PM (#1859569) Homepage Journal
    About that stereo problem you mentioned, it sounds like the common effect known as the 60 cycle hum. The US electrical system runs on a 60 Hertz cycle (iirc) and that cycle is sometimes picked up by stereo equipment and broadcast thru the speakers. Theatres usually have a problem with this. The easiest solution for you would be to make sure that your stereo is grounded by using a good surge protector. Most surge protectors now come with a grounded indicator light that should help you debug this problem and they are a good idea for any major electrical equipment you'd like to have around for a while. :-)

    --

    "The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us."

  • Once optically-isolated digital audio becomes standard, these problems will go away (wishful thinking...).
    Actually, using balanced audio everywhere already solves pretty much all the problems. It's just never made it into consumer equipment, sad to say.

    cjs

  • "Rob is on leave from Transmeta Corp." it says on his homepage [arctic.org].
  • Inventor(s):
    Klaiber; Alex , Menlo Park, CA
    Bedichek; Robert , Palo Alto, CA
    Keppel; David , Palo Alto, CA

    "The PPCArch simulators are based on a type of simulator originally developed for the Motorola M88K RISC microprocessor by Robert Bedichek for Tektronix [Bedichek, R. Some efficient architecture simulation techniques. In Proceedings of USENIX, Winter 1990.]. Bedichek developed a style of threaded code simulator that used a unique C language and assembly-code macro function to emulate each instruction in the 88100. He was able to decode an instruction once and use the decoded form many times, depending on locality of code reference and size of simulated nstruction cache. He was also able to simulate the 88K virtual machine sufficiently to boot Unix on the simulator. The performance of this simulator was also very impressive: an average of 130,000 instructions per second when hosted on a 2.5MIPS 68020 Tektronix workstation."
    --Communications of the ACM, June 1994 v37 n6 p64(6)
    An overview of Motorola's PowerPC simulator family. (The Making of the PowerPC) (Cover Story) William Anderson.



  • I know this has nothing to do with the subject. But there are a couple reasons why your VCR might be interfereing with your stereo.

    One is that your VCR emitts alot of background "noise," to solve this you could either buy audio cable with more shielding or move the stereo unit away from the VCR.

    Another reason may be if it is a 60 Hz it might be your audio cable grounding (one of the hot wires are touching ground), and that would require new audio cable.
  • This could be because of a lack of a good ground, but something to watch for is that there isn't actually power coming in on the cable.
    Cable systems power their amps by sending a 60Hz power signal down the coax. This is done to reduce the number of power hookups in the cable plant. Anyway, the taps are supposed to block power from going to the individual cables. Every now and then the capacitor that does this fails and sends 60Hz power down the cable. It starts out at 60 volts on most systems, with a 15A supply. So be careful.
  • Someone does this every time . . .

    The general idea on /. (though not everyone holds this opinion, I'm sure) is that vague software patents are bad. A smaller subset believes all software patents are bad. This is not a vague software patent.
  • Oh, I did not see you said "I know SW!=HW". My apologies! I thought you were a troll.

  • It also comes with this other very usefull feature. Every so often the Microsoft VCR 2000 will stop the tape and display this blue screen, reminding the kids that they have better things to do. It's there to keep the kids from watching to much TV. It's been programmed to happen so often that that the kids will get so frustrated with the VCR they will go and play outside instead of spending hours apon hours watching movies.

  • I do belive these guys are affiliated with the government, and the military, according to most insiders, the military is TEN YEARS in advance to anything we have now, if you look at the way technology has developed in the last 10 years it gives you a pretty good Idea of where they are now, probably cold fusion and the whole 9 yards, antigravity (suppose to happen iin our life time), advanced cloaning technology. and computers that make that HAL (the programable logic hal not 2001) look like a 286, The United states, a great place to visit, here in canada the government is too dumb to do anything super secret.. =)

  • *SMACK*

    Try, maybe, a DPDT SWITCH?

    Diodes will RECTIFY the signal, only allowing part of the audio waveform through. Last I checked, at least. Transistors are much the same way, if used in "diode mode"
  • From Claim 1:
    a reference system different than the test system;

    Have a look through the Background of the Invention and Summary of the Invention for a more verbose description of differences between what's been patented and prior-art. USPTO [uspto.gov] has full-text available.
  • Actually, Bill Gates donated $5 billion to his own charity, one that he founded.

    Makes me even less inclined to leave my lip marks on his posterior.

  • Actually, the easiest way would be to head down to Radio Shack and buy a ground loop isolator. I got mine for my car computer and it cost me $10. Since then, all the buzzing went away and the music sounds great!
  • Two words: shielded cables.

    -Chris
  • I got the impression this was hardware-level... I.E. compare a reference chip (such as a P3) with a test chip (theirs for example)...

    Some of the phrasing is interesting though... They talk about "selectable comparable points". That would indicate that the execution of code/code being executed is not identical on both systems, but is intended to have the same *result* on both systems.

    -JF
    BrainPower - "Jobs for Smart People"
    http://www.brainpower.com
  • The above suggestions are good, although I've found that it can be more then the vcr and stereo/amp that causes it. Get yourself one of those adaptors that allows you to plug 3 prong grounded plugs into a 2 prong non-grounded outlet and use that to disconnect the ground of every grounded appliance on that electrical outlet/circuit. When the hum goes away, you've found what's inserting the ground hum. You can then leave things that way without worrying too much about anything blowing (I know guys who did professional audio that used that trick, and actually did that with my roommate's amp because we had the exact same problem).

  • Ok thanks for the answer.

    What's the question agains????

    ;)

  • "If it weren't for Paul (I became a billionaire by being pals with Bill Gates) Allen, they'd have been out of business already"

    Are you talking about Transmeta or Microsoft???

    That's sure that if it wasn't for Paul Allen Microsoft wouldn't have become what it is. Of course he never was behind the politic but in the beginning he was the computer engineer far more than Bill Gates was. If they managed to sell DOS it was not only because Bill Gates was smart enough not to say to IBM that they hadn't any OS contract with Digital Research (though they redirected IBM to DR in the first place) but if they managed to sell DOS it was also because it was sufficently working to be sold. Microsoft has made is money not on good products but on products that work just enough to be sold, and without Allen (and the first creator of QDOS) they wouldn't have had something that would have been working enough to present to IBM.


  • sounds like a ground loop. make sure all of your stereo equipment is plugged in to the same outlet (or surge protector) then try moving the tv plug to the same one.
    Ground loops happen when the audio equipment has a better path to ground than say, your tv. so the tv will try to ground out through the stereo.
  • It may help if you just rearrange the cables, in order to minimise the area enclosed by the loop. This will minimise the amount of magnetic flux that can pass through it, which in turn minimises the current induced in the loop by stray 60 Hz magnetic fields. (A ground loop acts like a shorted secondary turn on a transformer.)

    People have been electrocuted after lifting mains grounds to reduce audio hum loops. Please don't do it.

  • Possibly you have power cables running next to your audio cables - I had a similar problem. My T.V. and VCR were plugged into my stereo and in a *fleeting* moment of [ghasp] organization, I bundled all the wires together with zip ties. I could hear tons of noise through my speakers. So, I upgraded to quality speaker wire (from old beat up lamp and phone cord) and seperating the power feed cables and audio and video into three seperate bundles, and spaced them as far apart as the limited space behind the TV allowed. Problem solved.
  • lol

    and for the few who still don't get it, the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42!
  • Don't you mean ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha.

    "They pointed to the clause in the ticket contract that said the entities whose lifespans had originated in any of the Plural zones were advised not to travel in hyperspace and did so at thier own risk"

    For more information please refer to the message on top of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountians in the land of Sevorbeupstry on the planet Preliumtarn, third out from the sun Zarss in Galactic Sector QQ7 ActiveJ Gamma.


    p.s. If you don't get it, you need to read more books.
  • Although this has nothing to do with Transmeta...

    First thing to do is make sure that your house's wiring is good. This could be a symptom of a more serious problem (like having no ground connection in your house) that could result in nasty stuff like electrocution or a fire. You could get an electrician to check everything, but that wouldn't be the /. way *grin*.

    Somewhere around your house, you may find a metal stake driven into the ground with a wire attached, or an attachment to a cold water pipe. Make sure all the connections are good. If the house is old, you may want to test each ground circuit individually to make sure it's connected to the (actual) ground. Really old houses use two-prong plugs instead of three-prong, because one of the two prongs does double-duty as ground. (To figure out which is ground, stick something metal in it--no pain means ground *grin*).

    If everything above is good, try grounding the outside shielding of your cable by attaching it in some manner to your electrical system's ground. Don't just remove or disconnect the outer shielding--it acts as a capacitor, and doing so will alter the signal-carrying abilities of your cable.

  • Why can't audio/video be as easy as Linu- oh, wait...

    Linux may be many things, but my experience has been that "easy" is not one of them.

    Scott
  • research.ibm.com/vliw if i recall correctly, transmetas working and has patents on VLIW.
  • ha ha only serious ?
  • A ground loop happens, as you say, when there is more than one path to ground. What you miss is the fact that if you lift one of those paths, there is still a path to ground. Granted... I wouldn't want 15A to ground through a thin RCA cable, but in a live audio situation (what I do), I usually have on the order of 24 XLR cables (a snake) running from my mixer. There's a lot of shield (ground) on that snake. I'm not too worried about lifting the ground on my FOH gear if it fixes the hum. Of course, getting all power from a common distro is a better solution, and leaves everything grounded through the 'proper' channels.

    ttyl
    srw
  • I would concur, and add that the incoming cable feed should be checked for an adequate ground. I often ran into this when installing home theatre systems - there is a terminal block for the cable mounted somewhere in the basement or outside the house, grounded to a water pipe (or to a metal rod in the ground). If this ground is insufficient or broken, a nasty ground loop can result.
  • Run a small wire from each component to that nice little ground lug on the amplifier... It's there for a reason... remove the ground loop by making everything's case to each other (I.E. a screw on the VCR to the amp, to the cd player, to the Mp3 player, to the PIII-9904mhz 689Meg ram and 9000X dvd-rom player, and to the automatic toilet flusher... Voila all grouning problems gone :-)

    Gawd, everyone posted something really wrong on this subject -- Learn your electronics people!
  • ahah, the emulation, that's what I knew I was lacking. I beleve that's where I read it, regardless, a cheap CPU that can emulate others, run low power, and programmable (see my re-flash analogy) would be a blessing. Pile Linux on top (Linus, Transmeta, Linux, connection perhaps?) and I'm sure it'll knock the existing semiconductor industry on it's cache. ;) Of course, it could also employ fun new techniques, like Gallium Arsenide fabrication, copper, Sperical fabrication... or maybe it's a quantum-processing "coffee cup". Then again, it could just be another new-fangled refrigerator decoration.
  • Long long ago, I beleve this time last year. I had heard, in Wired magazine, or was it PC Computing.. One of those magazines geeks love so much. I had heard that Transmeta was working on a new CPU, if I recall the article correctly, it was x86, RISC (I think), low power, and was.. programmable.. I'm not sure that has rammafications to "downloading" a new CPU, like re-flashing your BIOS. I think however, it was meant that it's not programmable in the sense of a typical CPU.. but soft-wired, where the whole architechture can be burnt like junctions are blown for an EPROM. But, it'd be cool. I heard that it was named Neon. But then again, who really knows what Transmeta's up to. Correct me if I'm wrong
  • > Don't you mean ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha

    I didn't have my Guide handy, so I tried to use the first half and not the second -- because we've already got a chip named the 'Alpha'...

    -_Quinn
  • Sounds like a way to test hardware emulators. You rack up your Pentium II (running Linux) next to your Transmeta ZZ-Plural (running Linux), plug this thing into both of them and wait for a mismatch. The auto-replay stuff mentioned near the end sounds like a means to determine if the error was transient (bit rot) in either machine, by re-running recent history. If the mismatch occurs again, I'd imagine you log it for the engineers to look at and start up a different test run.

    -_Quinn
  • Go out and grab an APC SurgeArrest Personal (PER-7T).
    As well as having Ground Fault checking, it CONDITIONS the line, which seems to get rid of most hum. (It works for my church's sound system anyway. It even gets rid of the hum from the outdoor flourescent sign attached to the sound system electrical panel)
    The Keeper
  • I believe this is common practice in avionics (flight computers). You run three computers, and if one of them produces an output different from the other two, you know you should ignore it. Seems to me many years ago I read a news article describing such a system in the Space Shuttle.

    Perhaps the difference is that they specify a "test" and "reference" system rather than three systems that are equally under suspicion.

    The patent has 23 claims. Some of them are quite specific: e.g. using a binary search to find the problem. But claim 1 is incredibly general.

    Chris
  • Yes, hum indeed. A simple (and quick) solution is often to ground the VCR to the AMP. I used some 10 gauge speaker wire running from one of the chasis screws on the VCR to the Ground Point (where you'd hook up a turn table) on my AMP. Wham, bam, no more hum.
  • The patent itself doesn't really say much. Judging by the first (primary) claim listed on the patent summary site, it still needs a program-specific "control mechanism" in order to find errors. Sounds like a rehash of error detection/ameobic variability programs we've seen before.
  • It's not a charity he founded. It's a charity organisation ihs father founded.

    Stuff like that pisses me off, cause you obviously know NOTHING solid and are just spreading crap hoping that noone here will notice cause everyone here knows
    Linus==GOD
    Bill==Devil.

    Like hell, Linus is arrogant and ignorant compared to gates. Running around yelling windows sucks, and yet claims to never use windows.

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