• RedEye FlightControl
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    2124 months ago

    This brings them to about mid 90’s tech… They’ll be able to make microwave ovens, tamagotchis, and a counterfeit N64 that runs a game called “Mushroom Plumber 3D”

    • AggressivelyPassive
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      824 months ago

      … And they’re able to make chips good enough for their military.

      Russia’s military is in large parts only slightly refurbished soviet gear. For a T72 or even T90, a 90s era chip is still good enough.

      Why do you think they dismantled all those washing machines? The microcontrollers in there aren’t high tech at all.

      • @[email protected]
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        224 months ago

        Why do you think they dismantled all those washing machines?

        This is a bit further than sane. I think you’ve got the idea from Russian marauders stealing washing machines. They were just marauders.

        But yes, and not even Soviet, but relatively new things may not require too advanced chips.

        I think a lot of that works on TTL logic and relays frankly. And not even only in Russia. While NATO countries had access to a much easier supply of chips, reliability is a factor too in military tech. Keep it simple, stupid, and all that.

    • @[email protected]
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      344 months ago

      Fun fact about tamigotchis, a couple years ago I was looking up if they still made them and I ran across something talking about the tech in modern versions and apparently the newest version of them at the time was running a variant of the MOS6502 microprocessor. This is the same microprocessor that Commodore used a variant of in the Commodore 64.

        • @[email protected]
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          124 months ago

          Not literally a tamagachi, but if you want to go down the super niche rabbit hole that’ll include interfacing a TV and keyboard to a 6502 processor, there’s a guy named Ben Eater who does a great job covering that stuff. eater.net or search his name on YouTube.

        • @[email protected]
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          74 months ago

          No. The 6502 itself is probably the simplest CPU to be used at scale in home computers: it has only 3 registers, a handful of instructions (you don’t even get multiplication) and is made of around 3,500 transistors (less than half the number in the Z80). All the things that gave the C64, Apple II, BBC Micro, NES and such their recognisable qualities were provided by support chips used alongside the 6502.

          6502s were used in a lot of simple electronics after general-purpose computing moved on. They used them in battery-powered pocket chess computers in the late 80s, for example, and I wouldn’t be surprised if cycle computers or microwave ovens contained them as well.

        • @[email protected]
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          24 months ago

          Like is it capable of that sure, could you actually do that with a modern tamagotchi, probably not.

          • @[email protected]
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            44 months ago

            I mean you could technically do it with any microprocessor if you’ve got enough time and patience, though in a lot of cases you’d need to essentially build a whole computer around it.

        • Kokesh
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          14 months ago

          That is some Matrix s…t right there

        • @[email protected]
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          14 months ago

          you’d have to graft on a lot of IO that doesn’t exist but probably. good project to show off on hackaday.

    • Diplomjodler
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      184 months ago

      My Pentium II back in the day ran Diablo, StarCraft and AoE. So way more than a Tamagotchi. Glorious Mother Russia bringing back the good old days…

      • ferret
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        74 months ago

        You are limited on frequency with older nodes, and while that often isn’t a huge deal, it can mean a lot for things like flight control computers in missiles and crap, forcing the use of expensive analog buffers (if that even fits the situation)

    • @[email protected]
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      154 months ago

      “Dash through the Gulag, collect potatoes, and save the Motherland in Mushroom Plumber 3D!”

    • @[email protected]
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      4 months ago

      In fairness, that was a pretty solid era. It wasn’t peak tech but I’d be ok going back.

      It was probably a mistake for society to advance beyond the era when computers weren’t super portable and phones were just “smartish.” Like that BlackBerry era where you could communicate and get news if you needed it but it was enough of a hassle that you usually just waited until you were at home or the office to get caught up.

    • @[email protected]
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      94 months ago

      Sure but weren’t they raiding washing machines to get chips for their tanks? This is a pretty big step to avoid embargos and pretty significant that they need to do it.

    • @[email protected]
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      84 months ago

      … And combat jet MC’s or brains for missiles\simple suicide drones.

      N64 is sufficiently good for a lot of things.

      If this is real. Living in Russia I doubt that.

    • Zos_Kia
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      4 months ago

      Love that the article header is a picture of a Pentium II. That’s cold as ice 💀