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• The "Secret Life of..." series
  
• Muppets multimedia
  
• How to make Millionaire's shortbread
  
• 6502 processor written in VHDL
  

The "Secret Life of..." series

This section concentrates on the Channel 4 series "The Secret Life of..." with Tim Hunkin and his ever suffering assistant Rex Garrod - who seems to get lumbered with all the dangerous stuff.

If you're not sure why those names sound familiar, Tim also had a cartoon series of 'do-it-yourself' experiments in a leading UK newspaper and now mainly occupies himself building interactive displays for museums.

Rex was one of the team members on the BBC's Robot Wars with his extremely successful robot 'Cassius'.

Since the "Secret Life of..." series videos are primarily targetted at educational use, they were always quite hard to find. After much searching, and a nice letter to Channel 4 I got a set from the now defunct Team Video in London which seem to be PAL/VHS dumps of the broadcast tapes as they include the lead in timeclock which would have been replaced on air by the channel ident and continuity announcer.

There are 9 videos in the series, each containing two programs. In June 2021 they were cleaned up and put on YouTube with an extra commentary from Tim at the end:

• Video 1: Comprises Sewing machine and Refrigerator
• Video 2: Comprises Central heating and TV set
• Video 3: Comprises Washing machine and Vacuum cleaner
• Video 4: Comprises Motor car and Internal combustion engine
• Video 5: Comprises Quartz watch and Telephone
• Video 6: Comprises Video recorder and Radio set
• Video 7: Comprises Fax machine and Lift
• Video 8: Comprises Word processor and Electric light
• Video 9: Comprises The photocopier and The office

Muppets multimedia!

Complete sound sample

Every time I look around for "The Muppet Show" music for the original 1980's show, I always find they're bits missing. To avoid disappointment you can download them in full from the following links, with thanks to Dan Maloney for digitising them:
"The Muppet Show" Opening titles (A zipped 44.1kHz WAV file, 50 secs duration) 1.9MB
"The Muppet Show" Closing titles (A zipped 44.1kHz WAV file, 40 secs duration) 1.6MB

You might also want to look at the official Jim Henson's Muppets website by following the link on my links page.

Making Millionaire's shortbread

Though unlikely to make you millions of pounds, they're still quite fun to make - the following recipe is enough for 20 pieces which despite the four stage process required is still worth it for the outcome.

1. Making the base You will need: 7oz plain flour 5oz butter or margarine 2oz white sugar Cream the soft butter and sugar together in a large bowl with a wooden spoon, and rub in the flour to form a fine breadcrumb mix. Add a couple of teaspoons water then get your hands in: form the ingredients into a ball. Put the ball straight onto a large (12x9") baking tray and flatten out to the 4 corners. Cook the shortbread on gas mark 4 for 25-30 minutes until brown, and leave to cool completely.

2. Adding the caramel You will need: 5oz butter or margarine 2oz sugar 2 tbsp golden syrup 150ml condensed milk Chuck everything into a pan and place the pan on a medium heat in order to melt the butter completely. Continue to heat while simultaneously stirring with a metal spoon, be sure to stir in a figure of eight rather than just round and round as this will lead to a very burnt pan! When the mixture comes to a boil reduce to a low heat just enough to sustain the bubbling. Keep stirring the molten lava like mixture until it starts to change colour from cream to fudge colour. Pour the caramel layer on top of the shortbread and leave to cool in the fridge.

3. Melting the chocolate topping You will need: 5oz milk chocolate ½oz butter Prepare a bain marie with an inch of boiling water at the bottom of a pan whose diameter is slightly less than that of a randomly selected glass bowl. Break the chocolate into small pieces to make melting faster and more even, the butter (optional) makes it easier to spread out later. Take care not to 'cook' the chocolate to the point where it separates and goes dark and slimey, the consistency should just be like a tin of light brown paint. Swiftly transfer the bowl of hot chocolate and pour over the chilled caramel layer, spreading evenly with a palette knife.

4. Consumption You will need: knife stomach Once the chocolate has hardened cut the contents of the tray into 20 pieces. To prevent the caramel layer dragging and the chocolate layer cracking cut in two stages - one partial cut through the soft upper and a second pass to cut the shortbread. Remove from the tray.

6502 processor written in VHDL

• 6502 binary code compatible.
• Written in 100% VHDL.
• Simple 8-bit bus interface.
• Entirely synchronous design.
• Registered I/O for simple porting and integration.

Implemented at 12.5MHz (using only a clk period constraint)

• Free6502 core only
  Used 563 CLBs (from 784 in a 4020XL-PQ160-2), 71% full
  
• Free6502 core with my test ROM also
  Used 607 CLBs (from 784 in a 4020XL-PQ160-2), 77% full
  

1. Foundation project - for use with the Xilinx Foundation M1.5 software, this should be unzipped into the C:\fndtn\active\projects\ per usual. It contains a simple schematic using the core; a testrom; and some i/o buffers. This can be used as a basis for other designs or at the very least as a quick way to evaluate the core with Xilinx family parts.
2. Details of changes - a summary of the changes made to the original VHDL to add the BCD arithmetic to the arithmetic and logic unit (ALU). Also includes a simple test ROM and source code to validate the changes made compared with a real 6502.
3. The original VHDL - suitable for use with other vendor's FPGA tools, archived here are as the original website seems to be offline.