Cosmac Elf Computer - Tales from the Crypt

COSMAC ELF COMPUTER - TALES FROM THE CRYPT
Humanoido discovered an ancient historical dusty crypt with tons of original COSMAC Elf stuff from the 1970s, topped with the original color photo album over 40 years old (when common digital cameras did not exist).

The time capsule was opened on Friday September 4th, 2015, exactly 36 years from January of 1979. 

Remarkably, almost 4 decades later, near a half a century of time has passed, propelling the contents of the lonesome COSMAC ELF computer system and its original photos into a future world. Photos, amazing they survived the time travel experience, show the working COSMAC Elf computer, with power supply, an analog meter monitoring supply voltage, SONY 5-inch diagonal TV, Motherboard and ASCII keyboard for expansion.

Humanoido got his start on the 1802 processor chip, and by home brewing a wire wrapped 1802 computer system on a phenolic electronics board. This system was later expanded with Netronics boards.

This COSMAC Elf may have become the first vehicle computer, being placed in a Dodge pickup truck to keep track of mileage, navigation distances and directions, rates of travel, and displaying graphic trip maps.

The system was also the first to calculate telescope design data from the observatories first Telescope Systems Design Program as written and expanded by Humanoido in Tiny BASIC. This was instrumental in creating 40 and 50-inch telescopes, the largest amateur telescopes in the world at that time. The Elf program has survived the time and evolution of 8 different computing systems and language variances, and is currently in use today for designing CCD telescope systems.

Humanoido used the Elf computer in another science mechanics application to design a mirror grinding machine for astronomical telescope making. The program written calculated the size and rates of belts, pulleys, and motors.

The Elf was also used to compose and reproduce classical music and explore computer programming with the 1802 chip. The chip is often referenced to the 1802 chip series found in the Voyager spacecraft, the longest lasting probe in NASA's space program which has left the outer boundaries of the solar system and is approaching deep space.

This Netronics Cosmac Elf version with the RCA CDP1802MPU primary processor chip is running the famous Star Ship program. The graphics at the top are actual program code. The system has an RF modulator to feed the video to the TV, and since the photos were taken in 1979, this system was fully expanded and can run Tom Pittman's TINY BASIC software in 4K of RAM.

Like the Voyager Spacecraft in Deep Space, this COSMAC Elf computer system is working perfectly.  We can only speculate on the discoveries from new worlds in the next 40 years.

The materials and contents of the Crypt are now donated to the science museum. More information will appear at the COSMAC Elf web pages, links given below.

http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.com/2012/03/propeller-elf-ii.html

http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/04/cosmac-propeller-elf-ii-page-2.html

Brain Cortex Simulator Machine Part 33c

BRAIN CORTEX SIMULATOR MACHINE part 33c

Created 6 Feb 2007

Discovered from the archive crypt, The Cortex Simulator Project encompasses the development of a tiny machine program to emulate one facet of the human brain Cortex. This represented the first beginning work started to construct and understand a machine brain cortex. As the project was successful, the tiny machine program was expanded and developed as an application for humanoid robotics.

It took a time span of almost 3 years, from 2007 to 2009 for the construction of an actual cortex that was embedded in a super computer.

http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/11/the-undiscovered-brain-cortex.html

Index to the Brain Cortex
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/11/brain-cortex-index-part-16.html

Lab Log Update November 2013

Brains in jars focus November 2013

LAB LOG UPDATE NOVEMBER 2013

The Lab is working on a space probe robot of great complexity that is designed to explore the outer limits of the solar system and new worlds. The project is ongoing with the collection of parts necessary to assemble the AI life form.
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/09/robot-explorer-index.html

The machine brain cortex project has eclipsed all other projects temporarily and ramped up with full resources placed on it.
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/11/brain-cortex-index-part-16.html

The blog has received world wide interest with growing information about brain cortex transfers and immortality potentials for humans
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/10/immortality-global-futures-conference.html

Amazing concepts of immortality are introduced.
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/11/brain-cortex-immortality-part-29.html

Remarkably, the tomb of the ancient crypt archives of the Lab's first brain cortex were unearthed.
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/11/the-undiscovered-brain-cortex.html

It's hard to believe this time has come - real yet simple "human brain" to "machine brain" H2M transfer is being developed in the Lab.
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/11/brain-cortex-mind-transfer-part-28.html

New and more interesting brain cortex designs and protos are in the works.
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/11/brain-cortex-update-part-14.html

Time travel with the exampling penny.
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/11/simple-time-travel-with-penny.html

More time is being devoted to creating transferable brain cortex'. In other words, you can stick portions of your brain into the jar and move the Katra from one jar to another.
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/11/brain-cortex-katra-part-31.html

New telescope invention is released. (Smapping)
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/11/telescope-smapping.html

Index to the current brain cortex is available and updated.
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/11/brain-cortex-index-part-16.html

The Bare Bones was updated.
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/11/bare-bones-propeller-update-v14.html 

The blogger now shows ten blogs to a page instead of seven. This will facilitate backups in ten blog increments.
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.com/

The Genealogy, the list of machines invented and built before and after the Big Brain, is now updated to include about 1,500 machines. The new found "lost archive" is now included.
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/p/genealogy.html

The Quotes section is updated.
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/p/quotes.html 

Brain Cortex Undiscovered Part 33b

1st cortex inside this supercomputer

THE UNDISCOVERED BRAIN CORTEX part 33b
A BRAIN CORTEX LAY UNDISCOVERED ALMOST FIVE YEARS!

The tomb archive was unearthed and while sifting through ancient lab records, a very interesting treasure appeared. Apparently the first brain cortex was constructed using the Lab's first BASIC Stamp Supercomputer (BSS) in March 2009 and then became buried in the annuls of time.

(Prior to this time, in February of 2007, an early cortex simulator machine was built. It's undecided if this was the Lab's first Cortex or not. For more information, follow the link.)

http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/11/cortex-simulator-machine.html

This first brain cortex lived and resided inside configurations of the BSS super computer and had an expanse extending into the Master Offloader Machine M.O.M.

This special brain cortex was created by using the existing hardware that made up the supercomputer and its peripherals.

The first brain cortex was developmentally dubbed the Partial Brain Cortex because it showed exampling simple ways that a real cortex functions, it served to create a portion of a brain and then a detailed analysis was performed on it.

This is the first record of the construction of a brain cortex in the Lab using a series of BASIC Stamp boards located inside the BSS. The power of the cortex was accessed in a variety of boards connected in Parallel. In essence, this may be the Lab's only Basic Stamp brain cortex as following this time period, cortex were created with Parallax Propeller chips.

As seen in the photo, the configured partial brain cortex has access to not only the Basic Stamp Supercomputer, but its M.O.M. Master Offloader Machine for ten additional processors. The brain cortex experimented with interfacing, software and was one of the first machine-in-a-machine experiments. The BSS had a varying number of processors leading up to a 22 core machine. Together with the M.O.M. machine, the experimental cortex could max out at 32 parallel processors, more than enough to run experiments and develop new brain cortex algorithms.

The first brain cortex is now added to the list of machines in the Genealogy section.

During March of 2009, to get an idea of what the lab was working on, research shows that work was progressing with the Master Offloader Machine, the Basic Stamp Supercomputer, and the 3DSC (3D Stamp Computer). StampOne News! was ready for release with a featured 3DSC construction article. Penguin robot had 12 brains with eleven more that were added to create a big Penguin brain.

In the time period following 2009, the focus was creating a general brain which led to the Big Brain. By July 2nd, 2011, the Big Brain offspring was reduced to the size of a small jar and "Propeller Brain in a Jar" was born. However, the large focus was not on the brain's cortex until the year 2013, when the Lab introduced new concepts of human-to-machine (H2M) brain transfer, immortality, and a cortex in a large jar. 

Index to the Brain Cortex
http://humanoidolabs.blogspot.tw/2013/11/brain-cortex-index-part-16.html

Search for Dry Dock

THE SEARCH FOR DRY DOCK

YIKES!!! I don't know if the the Big Brain is angry, upset, or fully cognizant of what happened. The emotion chip is not yet fully installed. Maybe that's a good thing.

Will the Big Brain hide under the bed like da-Chong, a big BS1 Bug?

It has rained day and night here for three weeks, mostly nonstop. As a result, there's a water leak!!! A pan can catch the temporary drips, but these drops could be highly damaging and deadly harmful to the Big Brain. Did we remember to waterproof the Big Brain??? I wonder why that was never suggested when the project was getting started. What if the Brain fell into a swimming pool or a bottle of soft drink fell into it the boards and Propeller processor arrays? What if the Brain went outside for a Robotic Blob Walk and it started to rain? Or the ceiling dripped!!! The drip will need to be fixed immediately and the brain may end up hiding under layers of plastic wrap until the repair work is completed. So now there's a delay for Big Brain to fully move into its snugly Crypt, at least until we can guarantee a dry dock. In the mean time, the Brain will fully operate on main floor, using a rigged bi-parted home station. This may be comprised of rows of cardboard boxes placed end to end to act as big lab benches. Currently a wood bench, inverted by 90-degrees, is in use.

If the Brain must hide under the plastic wrap, it reminds me of the fictional story by Franz Kafka, "The Metamorphosis," published in 1915. It's a story of a traveling salesman that awakes to find himself transformed into a giant bug and ends up hiding under the bed! On the surface, Gregor’s story seems simple enough. He wakes up, he’s a bug. (Kafka establishes early on that his transformation is not a dream.) But what kind of bug is thisungeheueren Ungeziefer? Translations vary from “gigantic insect” to “monstrous vermin”; at one point a maid calls him a dung beetle, and Vladimir Nabokov has drawn a very helpful picture. Most people think of a cockroach, which is more an instinctual reaction of disgust than anything else. However, the physical details are unimportant, and Kafka insisted that published editions of The Metamorphosis contain no actual illustrations of the bug. What matters is that the main character has become something despicable, horrifying, and yet kind of funny – a scurrying little chaos hiding behind the bedroom door. Link

Moving Update

Big Brain Moving Update

If you're wondering what's up after the New Years celebration, it's all about the Big Brain moving into its own new territory. Expansionism into a new domain, literally...

On the agenda today is the move in of computers that support the loading of programs into the Big Brain and the posting and maintenance of its new internet domain.

A computer desk/center was purchased and assembled and systems are live as internet is fully installed and cables are active. That took up the entire night - an excursion across the city to IKEA where furniture is found.

In order to maintain the fake NASA clean room status, a dust collection mat was installed in the traffic area and cleaning supplies and products obtained.

We're still organizing and trying to decide on the best orientation and fit of the Brain into its Crypt. The Crypt may seem to be misnomer naming, as it locates into a kind of attic vault, a chamber dominated by the Big Brain. Though closer inspection reveals its true nature and indeed it rests amidst the deep recesses of the lofted lab in a crypt fashion.

Its position is backed up against the wall on one side with storage compartments built in on the other. The opposite walls are open and one is over the lower level. This is where the Brain will conduct more Micro Space research.

Brain Lab Update

BRAIN LABORATORY UPDATES

The new lab for the expanding Big Brain will have two desks delivered on Saturday. Internet will be installed, a new large TV/Monitor delivered, and some last minute work will be completed on improvements to two space environments. The Big Brain Crypt will have some upgrades. Plans are made for some organizational improvements. Plans for parts and supply stocking is underway. Yours truly is elected to do the cleaning which includes two levels, the Brain Loft, main living quarters, and the deck. (pretending to be a NASA white-room) Yikes! More weekend work!

Brain Crypt Astro Observatory Lab

Brain Crypt Observatory

Big Brain Crypt Lab Loft before moving in

This entire space is dedicated to one lucky expansive Big Brain!!!

The new Big Brain Crypt and Lab Loft has lots of windows (at left & center), though it looks bigger in the photo than in real life.

Any one of the many Big Brain robotic telescopes can set outside on high rise skyscraper roof top access to observe a complete sky panorama, according to a Big Brain's astronomical agenda. Observation equipment controlled by the Brain can also set on the outside home Deck. Control is possible by direct means, wireless and routed cables through the windows.

Will the Big Brain fit into this Lab space? Initially the space seems large for one project but never underestimate the constant growth of the Big Brain!

Brain Crypt & Lab Loft

BRAIN CRYPT & LAB LOFT

The real potential exists for the Big Brain to now move into an upper loft where it will perch above all other locations. Will the massive Big Brain fit into the large bed crypt? Will the loft provide other unexpected benefits?

Will the massive Brain fit the bed crypt?

The new laboratory has a loft extension which has the ultimate use of extending the dynamics of the Big Brain's Micro Space Program. Missiles and micro space craft can launch from the Airport and rocket launcher complex at the upper altitude and then coast down to main recovery level, extending the range and functions of the Space Program. This is a boon for Micro Space Craft Test Gliders and the Aerial Photography program. The new laboratory was first announced here.