#this is a rom dram

[hiraethedits]

corey + allyson + the bike

[decorativecollar]

Today i learned...

How to make faster memories

While computer processor's speed has increased esponentially in the last 30 years, reaching millions of clock cycles per second, the same can't be said for memories. In fact, the access time of DRAM volatile memories is one or two order of magnitudes slower than the clock cycle time.

From gameprogrammingpatterns.com

Clock cycle: the time that a processor spends to fetch an instruction from memory, decode it and execute it.

There are multiple types of memories. A distinction can be made between volatile memories, that lose their data when the computer is turned off, and permanent memories.RAM ( or Random Access Memories) are volatile, while ROM is permanent.

SRAM (Static Ram) is the fastest type of memory, but also the most expensive one: it's 5000$/GB to make.

DRAM implements the main memory of most computers. It's a compromise between price, dimensions and speed.

The computer's hard disk is made of ROM, and that's where the data are saved when you turn it off. ROMs only cost between $0.40 and $0.05, but they are also extremely slow, allowing less than 1 GB per second transfer times.

Here's the thing: having a really fast processor is going to be useless if it has to wait for several cycles to load and store data in memory.

Caching

One part of the solution is introducing a cache: a small-sized, fast memory (SRAM), where we can put the data the processor uses most often, or is more likely to use next.

There are at least three levels of memory: the cache, the main memory, and the hard disk. When the processor requests a piece of data, the cache is the first place to search. If it's there, a cache hit occurs. Otherwise, it's a cache miss, and it goes down a level to look for the data in the main memory. If it's still not found, it's time to look for it in the hard disk.

Since cache capacity is largely inferior to main memory, the computer engeneer has to decide which subset of the main memory should be stored on cache. When a cache miss occurs, it must replace the old data with the new one. The two most common strategies are LRU (Last Recently Used), and random replacement. This decision is based on the principles of temporal and spatial locality, which state that the processor is probably going to reuse data that it has just used, or it's going to use the data next to it.

Types of cache

A cache is subdivided into blocks and sets. Blocks are chunks of the main memory which usually comprise multiple words the size of an integer number. Sets are groups of blocks. Caches have a mapping function that associates every address of the main memory to a set in the cache. So, a memory address will always be put into the same set, but may be put in different blocks of that set.

A direct mapped cache has as many sets as it has blocks. This means that a chunk of memory will always be put in the same cache block. A fully associative cache has only one set, so a piece of data can be put in any block, regardless of its memory address. In a set associative memory, a set contains multiple blocks, and the cache contains multiple sets. The set associative memory is a compromise between the two other types.

The fully associative memory has a lower miss rate, but it's heavier to implement. Having larger blocks increases spatial locality, but it also increases the penalty in case of miss. Direct mapped cache is easy to implement, but it's too rigid, reducing temporal locality. At the end, the best course of action has to be valued case by case.

Your computer probably has many levels of caches, and more than one cache for CPU.

I post the things i learn on social media to document it. This is not the original TIL (rip).

[admiralgiggles]

While romantic type films aren’t usually my thing, there are always exceptions.

[levibloodmobile]

[youremyheaven]

Dramatic Essence & Makeup pt 2

I thought I'll make a post about how Dramatic Essence becomes more evident when someone who has it wears makeup (this is especially true if you have both Dramatic & Romantic essences) and how they can look a bit washed out or plain without makeup.

Lisa

Lisa is gorg and makeup helps enhance her Dramatic essence, without makeup she looks younger and cuter

Selena Gomez

Like Lisa, Selena also has Romantic, Dramatic & Ingenue essence and without makeup, the Ingenue essence is more evident than the Rom-Dram one

Rihanna

Even Rihanna has the same combination of essences and the drama ✨💅🏼 becomes more evident when she makeup on

Elizabeth Gillies

Makeup helps enhance sharp features we have. Without makeup we're all Yin and with it our Yang is more apparent.

Odeya Rush

Look at how her features pop with makeup?? She already had sharp features but with makeup they became even more obvious.

Ni Ni

Makeup doesn't have to be heavy for this to work. Even soft makeup can accentuate features.

before you say "everybody looks better with makeup" 🙄🙄no they dont

Aishwarya Rai

granted that some of these are just the wrong seasonal colors on her, i still think Aishwarya Rai is one of those people who look better with minimal makeup. in the middle pic, it's just some eyeliner and some lipstick thats similar to her natural lip color and she looks amazing.

Deepika Padukone

the way her Dramatic essence jumps out with makeup is amazing. you can almost always tell whether or not someone has Dramatic- Romantic essence based on whether or not they look good with a smokey eye look

Haifa Wehbe

she's stunning either way but the smokey eye really makes her eyes pop even moreee

[techav]

More Speed, More Power, Pretty Pictures

I added some crude functions to the ROM monitor on my Wrap030 project to read the root directory of a FAT16-fomatted disk and load binary files into memory to execute. This opens up a new option for developing programs and running them on the computer, and makes it easier to keep programs on-hand for loading when I demonstrate the computer.

So what new program do I build first for running from disk? The same Mandelbrot renderer I've been using all along, of course! All I needed to do to get it running from disk was adjust a few load instructions to use PC-relative addressing and then change the vasm output to raw binary.

It ran without issue ... mostly. I had been noticing some instability with the system in general. It's not really related to the programming work I've been doing, it just tended to show itself more when doing the kind of FPU-intensive processing required for the Mandelbrot program. Sometimes the system wouldn't boot at all, sometimes it would continually reset. Other times it would run fine for a while, but randomly throw a coprocessor protocol exception (especially when using double- or extended-precision floating point values).

I had a pretty good idea of where this instability was coming from ...

As someone on Discord put it, that's a pretty little antenna I've got there.

High speed computers don't like excessively-long wiring between components. I made the ribbon cables long because there were other boards I developed for this system. But, I'm only using the CPU board, the FPU + IDE mezzanine board, and the video generator board. All that extra wire is just making things more difficult.

A year ago, when I first put these three boards together, I had to bump the bus speed down to 25MHz to get it to run. I could run the CPU board up to 56MHz by itself, and I could get it to run with one expansion board or the other up to 40MHz, but with all three boards, 25MHz was the best I could do (out of the oscillators I had on hand). I have some 33MHz oscillators now, and while I could get it to run sometimes, it was obviously far more unstable.

It was time to trim those pretty little antennas.

I left room for one more card, in case I can get my DRAM card working later, but trimmed a few inches off. The result? Rock solid at 25MHz now.

... and at 32MHz.

... but 40MHz still doesn't run.

I am quite pleased with that result. My target for this system in the beginning was 25MHz. That extra 30% speed increase is very noticeable, especially when running a program like the Mandelbrot renderer.

But I had a thought.

My FPU is rated for 25MHz, and here it's running solid at 32MHz along with the rest of the system. But my FPU board was designed to support the FPU running at a separate clock speed from the rest of the system (the 68881/68882 FPU is actually designed to support this, so I implemented it when I built my mezzanine board).

What would happen if I tried running the FPU even faster? Perhaps using that 40MHz oscillator that I couldn't use for the complete system?

Surprisingly, not a problem running the CPU at 32MHz and the FPU at 40MHz.

... or 50MHz

... or 55MHz

... or 67MHz!

Once again, I've run out of faster oscillators. This computer is running stable with its FPU clocked at over two and a half times its rated speed.

The video above is a real-time capture of the VGA output of this machine running that Mandelbrot renderer (now modified to use 96-bit extended-precision floating-point arithmetic!) with the CPU & main bus clocked at 32MHz and the FPU clocked at 67MHz. Some frames take minutes to render. Some complete in as little as seven seconds.

I am in awe. While I had big dreams when I first started working on this project six years ago, I never could have imagined it running this well at that kind of speed. I am very happy with how this project has turned out so far, and can't quite believe I actually built something like this.

I typically wrap up these posts with a plan of where to take the project next, but the project has already exceeded my expectations. There is so much it is already capable of now that I have a permanent storage option available. I guess I could try getting that DRAM card running to expand the main memory beyond 2MB, or try adding a keyboard and some text routines to complement the video card. Both are good options towards getting a proper operating system running, which has always been a goal of the project.

Either way, I'm sure I'll have fun with it.

[turtlecano]

someone's GOT to also have had the thought "charlie/zoey/pim love triangle: queue drama"...right?

i can see the title now: "If Smiling Friends Was A Rom-Dram" call to the void? hello?? has anyone played around with this? is there a reason why i havent seen anyone play with this? does the fandom not like that idea?? its literally the most un-characteristic thing the show would ever do but that's the fun in being a fan i guess lol i mean, some of yall are already FREAKY with Smiling Friends like that soooooo why not angsty too? (that isnt grim and gnarly lore lol)

Im genuinely curious. Someone out there, please... tell me your thoughts. It pops into my head whenever I scroll past ship art

I'm not a shippartist in ANY capacity, but hear me out: IN👏THIS👏VERSION👏: There's a feeling in the air that Charlie and Zoey are falling out of love, and the feelings Charlie and Pim have for each other deep down is starting to show itself, but Charlie and Zoey haven't properly sorted out they're relationship issues, and broke it off yet.

I imagine Charlie is checked out of the relationship. At first, he was definitely into Zoey, but he felt she never really reciprocated any advances he made on her, but somehow, they still got together. He felt confused, a bit betrayed, but now, he's stopped trying to even put any effort into it anymore. He doesn't feel it's a very deep or meaningful relationship at all, and all he can think about deep down, how things might be different if he was with Pim. Like, he's had these emotions that he's packed down all this time, thinking "how could Pim EVER see a relationship there?". But he still indulges in the idea in where he could have something so much more fulfilling with the one he's BEEN having feelings for, for the longest time. THEN, I like to imagine Pim feels the same way Charlie does toward him. Not seeing how the other would EVER wanna be their boyfriend and repressing those emotions. Pim is especially good at it though. Along with that, he could NEVER think of backstabbing Zoey with how her and Charlie are still together.

I think Zoey sees the relationship that is actively withering away in front of her, and from her perspective, she's the only one who's trying to make it "work". But her and Charlie see they're needs they need from each other pretty differently. Over time, she starts to realize, she's mixing up platonic, with romantic. I like to think when she starts seeing little things in their interactions with one another, she feels the teeniest bit jealous, but deep down, knows that Charlie should be with Pim, not her. But shes scared she'll lose him all together, and they wont be friends in the end. She wants to still hang out and create those new memories and experiences with Charlie, just yknow "not like that"

Like is that too much?? As an demi/ace, Ive never EVER got into speculative shipping and relationship drama about fictional characters before, untillll i got into my first relationship almost 2 years ago. But OF COURSE, it had to be with this goofy ass show ands its goofy ass characters and hypotheticals you arent supposed to take seriously. Im thinking of this big ol' story with all these nuances, while on the other hand i've seen NOTHING I cant be the only one! If there's someone doing something similar to this, PLEASE TELL ME!! Im super curious as to how someone else would shove such a heavy plot point like that into a simpler show like Smiling Friends (simple baisic plot wise that is)

[priropro]

📣✨️A new trailer has been released for📣✨️

Parfum Nostalgique!

❤️The click-through josei slice-of-life dram-rom-com about a 265-year-old therapist-by-day dom-by-night vampire❤️

Come meet Val and his whimsical friends in Act 1 of this ongoing visual novel series!

[excusethequality]

My 2023 in Film

Part 1: 1-50

I went a bit overboard with my movie watching this year. Although in my defense I was working at a movie theater for most of the year.

I'll just put a brief plot description for each one, but if you're curious about my thoughts on anything specific, just ask. ^__^

* = rewatched

[++] = I loved it [+] = I liked it [=] = I am indifferent about it [-] = Not my thing [--] = I hate it

Click on the list number to get a trailer for it.

1.

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993) * ---Animated Superhero Noir Crime Drama From the team behind Batman: The Animated Series. Bruce Wayne's life is about to get a lot more complicated when a former lover, the Joker, and a mysterious and deadly vigilante come into town at the same time. [+]

2.

Demons (1985) ---Horror A group of strangers try and survive when people at a special movie screening start turning into demons. [+]

3.

Near Dark (1987) ---Horror A young man is bitten by a cute vampire drifter and is offered a chance to give up his old life to join her roving band of vampires. [+]

4.

Tremors 2: Aftershocks (1996) ---Creature Feature Comedy Years after the events of the first movie Earl and Burt decide to take a job helping an oil company in Mexico who are having an issue with graboids. [=]

5.

Get Duked! (2019) ---Dark Comedy A group of young delinquents try and win an award by navigating the Scottish highlands by themselves with only a map to aide them. But things get much more challenging when a rich man begins to hunt them for sport. [+]

6.

Tremors 3: Back to Perfection (2001) ---Creature Feature Comedy Burt returns back where everything began: Perfection, Nevada. Unfortunately he soon learns he isn't the only one to return when a pack of graboids shows up. [=]

7.

Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (2004) ---Creature Feature Comedy It's 1889 and the inhabitants of the nascent Perfection are about to have their first encounter with the graboids. [=]

8.

Tremors 5: Bloodlines (2015) ---Creature Feature Comedy Burt heads to Africa on a graboid-hunting job and winds up playing a father-figure to his new cameraman Travis. [-]

9.

Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell (2018) ---Creature Feature Comedy Burt and Travis head to Northern Canada to investigate reports of graboid activity in the glaciers. [-]

10.

Holy Spider (2022) ---Crime Thriller A female journalist in Iran heads further and further into the dark criminal underworld as she attempts to track down a serial killer who has been targeting sex workers. [=]

11.

Fire of Love (2022) ---Biographical Documentary Volcano Romance The story of volcanologist couple Katia and Maurice Krafft. [++]

12.

Dinner in America (2020) ---Punkl Rock Comedic Rom-Dram

In the Midwestern suburbs, a punk rocker on the lam from the police decides to hole up with a strange fan. [+]

13.

May (2002) ---Horror/Drama

An unusual and sheltered young woman tries to broaden her horizons, but winds up going down a dark path. [+]

14.

Sightseers (2012) ---Comedic Crime Adventure

A man and his girlfriend desperately want to have romantic road trip, but they are gonna have to fight for it when the fates are determined to derail them. [=]

15.

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020) ---Sci-fi Comedy

The owner of a cafe discovers that his security camera gives him a 2 minute peak into the future. [+]

16.

Pride & Prejudice (2005) * ---Period Romance

Elizabeth Bennett is one of five sisters and her mother wants nothing more than to get her daughters married off. But when two eligible bachelors come to town things are about to get complicated. [++]

17.

Broker (2022) ---Drama Crime Road Trip

A pair of well-meaning baby traffickers team up with a new mother to find a good home for her newborn child. [=]

18.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) ---Comedy Crime

Two con men make a bet to see who can swindle a rich woman first. [-]

19.

Coherence (2013) ---Sci-Fi

A group of friends are having a dinner party, but things are about to get strange and dangerous when a passing comet gives them a brush with another world. [-]

20.

The Company of Wolves (1984) ---Fantasy

Dreams interweave with reality as a young girl's fears and aspirations mix together into different stories. [+]

21.

Starfish (2018) * ---Sci-Fi Drama

A strange event leaves a young woman alone in the world. In order to set things right she'll have to confront her grief and decipher the messages her best friend left for her to find. [++]

22.

The Girl From the Other Side (2022) ---Animated Fantasy Adventure

A curse haunts the land and anyone infected by it will slowly lose their humanity. In response humans have retreated into the cities, leaving the creatures to lurk in the surrounding wilderness. But when one of the creatures comes across a child sleeping in the woods he finds himself compelled to protect her. [++]

23.

Turning Red (2022) ---Comedy Coming-of-Age

A 13-year-old girl has to deal with her changing body when her body starts turning into a giant red panda without warning. [=]

24.

Streets of Fire (1984) ---Rock 'n Roll Action Adventure

A wandering badass has to rescue his old flame when a gang of bikers kidnap her in the middle of her rock show. [+]

25.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) ---Super-hero Shitshow

Ant-Man and company go adventuring in the Quantum Realm because of reasons. [--]

26.

Begin Again (2013) ---Music Drama

A down on his luck music executive is inspired by a chance encounter with a young singer songwriter and together they seek to find the creative voice they thought they had lost. [+]

27.

An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe It (2022) ---Animated Short

A stop-motion doll begins to see that his world is a lie. [=]

28.

The Flying Soldier (2022) ---Animated Short

A sailor is caught in an explosion. [=]

29.

Ice Merchants (2022) ---Animated Short

A father and son have created a simple life based around routine together. But the only constant in life is change. [+]

30.

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and the Horse (2022) ---Animated Short

A boy, a mole, a fox, and a horse say motivational-poster style platitudes out loud to each other 32 long-ass minutes. [--]

31.

My Year of Dicks (2022) ---Animated Short

A young woman is on a mission to lose her virginity, and maybe, just maybe, learn a little bit about herself along the way. [+]

32.

Sunshine (2007) * ---Sci-Fi

The sun is dying. In a last ditch attempt to save humanity the crew of the Icarus II must journey to the sun and attempt to restart it. But everything is called into question when the crew discovers a chance to learn what happened to the Icarus I. [++]

33.

Enough Said (2013) ---Dramatic Rom-com

Two divorcees start a new relationship. But their mistakes in past relationships might cause issues in this new one. [=]

34.

Cocaine Bear (2023) ---Animal Attack Crime Comedy

A daring drug heist leaves packages of cocaine all over the woods. And the motley crew of characters in the woods that day are about to meet a bear who was recently developed a nasty drug habit. [=]

35.

Collapse ---Drama Short Film

One night a couple's strained relationship begins to reach its limit. [=]

36.

Jigoku (1960) ---Crime Horror Drama

After a terrible accident a man must deal with the overwhelming guilt and face the consequences for the actions that have set him on a path to hell. [=]

37.

Adult Life Skills (2016) ---Drama Comedy

A woman has been stuck in a depressed rut ever since her twin brother died. But when the young boy next door encounters a loss of his own the two discover that they might be the person each other needs to help deal with their grief. [+]

38.

Desert Hearts (1985) ---Queer Drama Romance

A literature professor goes to a ranch in Nevada while waiting for her divorce to go through. But while there she begins to develop feelings for the woman next door. [+]

39.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) * ---Sci-fi Action Adventure Drama

A woman finds the life she has built for herself is falling apart around her. And if that wasn't enough she has just received a message from a parallel world informing her that she's the only one who can stop an inter-dimensional being set on the destruction of the multi-verse. [++]

40.

Prospect (2018) ---Sci-Fi Adventure Drama

A teenage girl and her father are on a mission to gather rare resources from an alien moon. But they soon learn they aren't the only ones there looking to get rich. [=]

41.

Prospect (2014) ---Sci-Fi Short Film

The short film that the above was expanded from. [+]

42.

Guns Akimbo (2019) ---Action Adventure

A loser wakes up to find guns nailed to his hands and a group of underground assassins are after the bounty on his head. [=]

43.

Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988) ---Zombie Sequel

A group of kids come across one of the misplaced army canisters containing the dead-reviving gas from the first movie and trouble is soon to follow. [-]

44.

Strawberry Mansion (2021) ---Fantastical Sci-fi Adventure

In the future people's dreams are recorded, taxed, and commercialized. A dream auditor is sent to perform an audit on an eccentric older woman. However, her dreams are about to change his mind. [+]

45.

Jojo Rabbit (2019) * ---Comedy Drama

During WWII a young German boy dreams of being best friends with Hitler. But when he discovers his mother has been hiding a Jewish girl in their house he is forced to reevaluate what he has been taught. [+]

46.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) ---Coming-of-age Crime Drama

A native girl in Canada in 1976 is selling drugs to get the money to bribe her way out of being sent to a residential school. But when she concocts a dangerous plan to fight back against a world set on her destruction she quickly discovers she might have gotten in over her head. [+]

47.

Creed III (2023) ---Sports Drama

Adonis Creed has quit while he was on top. But an encounter with a figure from his past forces him to get back into the ring. [=]

48.

Cooley High (1975) ---Coming-of-age Comedic Drama

A group of high school seniors in Chicago try to live life to its fullest, but soon realize that life has more to offer than they expected. [+]

49.

Muriel's Wedding (1994) ---Dark Comedy Drama

An ABBA loving social outcast dreams of being married, but an encounter with an old friend from high school has her reconsider what it is she really wants out of her life. [++]

50.

Catch the Fair One (2021) ---Thriller

A boxer prepares for a real fight as she tries to learn what happened to her missing sister. [+]

[judesmoonbeauty]

Help me choose, please!

I haven’t made it there yet, but I��m trying to decide if I should choose Licht’s Act 2 Rom or Dram ending first. I usually go with Rom first in EN, but I’m thinking of going dramatic 1st like I did with Yves’s route because it usually has extra deets about future LI’s….

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

In UK cinemas now

Despite the marketing, Love Again is not a rom-com. It’s a rom dram, a romantic drama in the vein of The Vow or Me Before You, a mostly earnest, syrupy love fest starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan, punctuated periodically by some camp, self-aware cringe comedy in the form of Celine Dion playing herself (and of course, providing the soundtrack).

Is it good? No. But in a world where Jennifer Lopez is almost single-handedly upholding the much-called-for revival of the rom com/rom dram, is it too bad to enjoy? Definitely not. Love Again delivers on the promise of an undemanding, mildly heart-warming night out (or night in).

Sam Heughan in Love Again (Photo: Giles Keyte)

Chopra Jonas is Mira, a children’s book illustrator whose boyfriend John dies in the opening scene of the movie. Two years later she wearily agrees to move back to New York with her sister after wallowing at her parents’ house in a deep depression. Her upbeat sister Suzy (an extremely watchable Sofia Barclay, just begging for a rom com of her own) persuades her to get back out there on the apps.

Around the same time, Mira decides that texting her deceased love will help her better process all that latent grief and starts sending long, sorrowful messages to his old number. Which, naturally, now belongs to Rob (Heughan), a lovelorn journalist whose ex left him at the altar and whose editor has recently threatened to take away an imminent gig interviewing Celine Dion because he doesn’t have enough “heart”. Cue lots of gently funny montages of Rob listening to Dion with increasing enthusiasm and determination to meet the mysterious scribe behind those romantic texts clearly intended for someone else.

The two do of course eventually meet, but how can he now tell her he’s been reading all those messages? No problem – this is where the Canadian queen of power ballads steps in, keen, naturally, to spend her limited junket time giving a random hack love life advice.

Love Again knows what boxes to tick. Central Park montage including cheesy slow dance? Check. Kooky sidekicks whose sole raison d’être is to encourage the protagonist to make bold choices? Check. Wilful misunderstanding of how newspapers operate and strangely accented journalists who never seem to do any work (Russell Tovey and Lydia West half-heartedly attempting American)? Check.

I enjoyed the sheer silliness of Love Again, the strict adhesion to romcom/dram norms and the delightful Dion cameos. This isn’t great movie making but it is simple fun. Go and have a silly night out. And you’ll be blasting Dion all the way home.

** If SH’s fans think ‘Love Again’ Will Be the Cinema Event of the Year, they are wrong 😑

[lokisbirdofhermes]

@lokisbirdofhermes so I was reading one of your fanfic and saw you never done, a enemies to lovers with a fake relationship aside from your Proposal fanfic. Thus leading me to my request.

Loki and reader had a bet, Loki lost said bet leading reader to gain one favor out of him. Now it is time for reader to cash the favor in as she needs a date to a wedding, as she claimed to have a serious boyfriend that knew who she was. Problem is that she and Loki hate each other, at least she hates him with how much he flirts. Flirts that she doesn’t know is real, but she has no choice. As she is forced to make Loki her boyfriend, Loki taking this chance to woe her over. Perhaps making another bet that if he can by the end of their fake relationship he can take her out for real. Reader agrees because he won’t win her over or will he?

Troupes: Fake dating to lovers, enemies to lovers, and male lead falling first.

Potential Title: The Faking Bet

Now if this doesn’t sound good right now consider it an idea for later. I won’t force you to write it just thought it was something I could suggest.

So this is a little bit of the plot from The Wedding Date (the 2005 Debra Messing rom-com-dram, but to be fair, she hired an escort to take her) and I had been flip-flopping about if I wanted to attempt it since it's been done to death in fics and in movies. I also didn't want to accidentally lean into too many scenes that would overlap with The Proposal, which you cited, so as long as I can avoid those pitfalls, I don't see why not.

I had someone commission me with a Ko-Fi for a Harry Dresden/Reader fic so I will be working on that over the weekend/into next week, but I think I will tackle this one starting next week (if this stupid fucking migraine and my stupid fucking PMS can get under control by then anyway). Thanks for the idea!

Update for the others: I'm working on the final chapter of Passengers, so if I can get over this migraine, it should be posted by tonight.

Ko-Fi link if anyone is feeling generous BTW. Birdie loves you.

[jessread-s]

Thank you to @ireadyabooks​ and Ann Liang for providing me with an ARC at yallfest in exchange for an honest review.

✩☔️🌷Review:

It did not take long for Ann Liang’s rom-dram “This Time It’s Real” to win over my heart!

The novel centers on Eliza Lim, an aspiring writer, and Caz Song, a famous actor. Their worlds collide when Eliza’s essay about her relationship with her boyfriend goes viral…only she doesn’t really have one. Caz agrees to play the part in exchange for receiving Eliza’s help with his college applications. From the outside looking in, the two could not be more different, but Liang shows that there is more than meets the eye. 

Both characters struggle to grasp their identities and feel a sense of belonging. Though Eliza was born in China, she does not feel at home there when her family returns because she is not fluent in the language and familiar with their customs. Liang creates tension in having Eliza up and move every few years due to her mother’s line of work. As a result of her inability to take root and hold on to the friends she meets in each city, she believes she is unlovable. Eliza’s pain surrounding the memory of her past lives in Los Angeles, New Zealand, London, and Singapore feels real because of the way in which Liang captures her complex emotions on the page.

The reader is able to empathize with Caz’s fear of vulnerability. Because of his public image, Caz puts on a mask to cope with the pressure he experiences. Before Eliza became his fake girlfriend, he never felt like he could ask for help when he needed it or let his true self shine through.

I loved watching their fake relationship turn into something real because they helped each other grow and confront their insecurities. 

I experienced a full range of emotions while reading this book! I cried during the 3rd act breakup, swooned over Caz and Eliza’s experimental dates around Beijing, and laughed when their differing personalities clashed. This novel truly mimics a c-drama and I could not recommend it enough!

➤ 4.75 stars

Cross-posted to: Instagram | Amazon | Goodreads | StoryGraph

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

my sister: yeah, i read the book thief

my partner: isn't that a rom-dram?

me: what

my sister: it's about the holocaust??

my partner: it's about—oh, i was thinking of the notebook

[midnightsandmadness]

Writblr Intro

My name is Alyssa but I go by Luna online mostly. I'm twenty-four and I've been writing forever and want to get better at sharing my work. Hoping to find a community here! Critique partners and just friends so we can support each other!

I'll hopefully be posting random writing updates, thoughts on different things to with the process and hoping to do some writing experiments as well. Might also do a deep dive type series with a focus on writing.

I write mostly fantasy or contemporary feels with magic added in.

Current work in project (no working title yet and I wanna mock up a book cover and full intro to it soon)

The plan is for two books that can be read as stand alones or as a duology. Book one is mostly contemporary with a bit of magic in the form of some ghosts and the love interest.

Book two is completely fantasy post apocalypse about loss and loving despite the pain. Kind of a why you should give a damn book if that makes sense.

Ryland finds out his abusive parents have died suddenly and returns home to deal with their will and to confront Aaron, his older brother who left with no warning.

He books a room at an Inn run by a mysterious man named Isaac, and fluff and family drama commences. It's sort of a coming of age rom/dram.

In book two, there's an apocalypse, and we follow Ryland trying to mourn Isaac's death while helping to build a community with the people left behind.

We also follow Isaac who was returned to The Isle of Reapers, as he is one. Now he's on the revenge path for the God that started the apocalypse because Isaac believes Ryland died as result.

Feel free to message me or ask questions. I'll be back soon with more posts!

[techav]

Wrap030-ATX Remembers

No general-purpose computer will do much without a good amount of Random Access Memory for transient storage of code and data. Now that I have confirmed basic operation of CPU, bus controller, ROM, and serial, it's time to turn my attention to main system memory.

Every homebrew computer I've built to date, including previous iterations of the Wrap030 project, has used Static RAM. Static RAM is nearly as simple as peripherals can be — give it an address, assert a Chip Enable and a Read or Write strobe signal, wait a bit, and release. Done, cycle complete. If you don't need to retrieve some data for a good long while, it's no matter so long as the chip still has power. For a small system, SRAM is reliable and dead simple to use.

The problem with SRAM is it is also very expensive. The 2MB of SRAM I had on the previous iteration of Wrap030 cost over $20 — and it's still far from enough to run an operating system like Unix System V, NetBSD, Linux, etc. This is the reason computers generally use Dynamic RAM for primary system memory.

The difference is SRAM uses several transistors to create a flip-flop for storing each and every bit of memory, whereas DRAM uses a capacitor to store each bit of memory. This reduces manufacturing costs and increases storage density, but does come with some trade-offs. Most notably, the capacitors that store bits in DRAM will lose their charge — and the stored data with it — after a rather brief period of time. This means the DRAM capacitors need to be topped off regularly in a process known as a refresh cycle.

Another complication of using DRAM is the bus interface has been changed to allow much larger storage capacities without the physical chip package growing to absurd sizes. Instead of the chip accepting the entire address at once, it expects to be given a Row address (along with a Row Address Strobe [RAS#]) then a Column address (along with a Column Address Strobe [CAS#]), with myriad specific timing requirements for when each signal should be asserted and deasserted.

In short, DRAM is much more difficult to interface with compared to SRAM, so I've never really gotten around to it.

With one of the long term goals of this project being running a *nix operating system though, I'm going to need the larger memory that DRAM affords. So i made provision for a CPLD to serve as a dedicated DRAM controller on the Wrap030-ATX motherboard and added a couple 72-pin SIMM slots. In theory this setup should be able to support up to 256MB of RAM (if rare 128MB SIMMs should fall into my hands...).

So where do we turn when dealing with complicated timing with multiple modes and a bunch of I/O? Why, Finite State Machines, of course! That bit where the DRAM expects a row address for a little while, that's a state. And the following bit where the DRAM expects a column address is another state. And then another state to make sure the DRAM has enough time to write or fetch the data. The round it out with one last state to tell the CPU data is ready.

What about that weird refresh timing? Well, that's just few more states for the state machine. And then one last "idle" state that waits for a refresh timing counter to hit 0 or for the CPU to start a bus cycle. Laid out like that, the DRAM controller became a state machine with 7 or 8 states, a counter, and an address multiplexer.

The logic actually came together easier than expected. Not completely without bugs of course.

There's this note in the datasheets about startup initialization where the DRAM should not be accessed 200μs after power on, and there should be 8 refresh cycles before the first access. Initially I had built this entire sequence into my logic. It consumed a ton of resources and didn't really work right.

I realized that my reset circuit held the CPU in reset for longer than 200μs on power on, so I was guaranteed that first initialization time. So I removed that startup delay from my DRAM controller logic, and made a few tweaks to the state machine so it could do 8 back-to-back refresh cycles after reset.

I was able to successfully write to DRAM and read that data back!

That much proved to be the easy part. The next steps were confirming DRAM accesses worked reliably, that I had the order of my byte select signals correct, that I could identify the amount of installed memory, and that all of the installed memory was working. These are programming problems, not logic problems, and I am not a strong programmer. On top of that, not only am I working with unproven DRAM logic, but I'm also using untested SIMMs that I had picked up from Computer Reset.

I quickly ran into errors, but was it a problem with my logic? A problem with my timing? A problem with the SIMMs?

I had a large back of 72-pin SIMMs, split fairly evenly between Fast Page Mode (FPM) and Extended Data Output (EDO) types. I tried them all. Some would pass the tests for nearly all addresses but fail at the end. Some seemed to have a stuck bit. Some were just plain bad and gave errors everywhere. It didn't really answer the question about whether my logic was bad, but results were consistent enough for me to think that maybe the logic might be ok.

And then finally I came across a pair of HP-branded 8MB EDO SIMMs that passed a simple write-read test without error ...

... right around the time my serial port stopped working. But the memory test was passing, and I could at least see the serial output on the logic analyzer.

The serial port problem was a bit setback. It had been working but suddenly wasn't. Clearly the UART itself was working, I just wasn't getting anything past the level shifter. Well that at least gave me a starting point of where to look. Sure enough, one of the 12V supply pins was not well soldered. Thankfully a quick fix.

Back to testing memory, I started writing a program to identify the size of the installed SIMM and write a register I added to the DRAM controller to configure the specific geometry of the installed memory. See, DRAM has another lovely quirk — chips of the same size may have a different configuration of Row and Column sizes. For instance one chip may have a 9-bit Column and a 10-bit Row, but the next may have a 10-bit Column and a 9-bit Row, and both are the same size. If the DRAM controller just assumes 12-bit Row and Column (the largest supported by 72-pin SIMMs), then there will be gaps in the memory map that will need to be accounted for in software (using MMU, for example). If the DRAM controller knows the geometry of the installed memory, then it can present the memory to the CPU as one contiguous block of memory.

And that's where I found my next bug. The system would just hang when trying to write to that DRAM controller configuration register.

... because I had forgotten to complete that part of the state machine. The result was the state machine would end up in a state for writing to the configuration register, but then it couldn't get out of it. Once I added the missing condition to the state machine logic I was able to correctly identify the geometry and size for my installed memory!

Wow that was long. This has been the biggest, most involved step in the process of bringing up this computer yet. It turns out there are a lot of moving pieces that have to all work together to get the computer running code from ROM and reading/writing DRAM.

Now that I have my main memory working, I should be able to get some software running. I'm hoping to at least have BASIC running in time for VCFSW at the end of June.