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About the Chipdir

What is and was new?

This page is in reversed historical order.

200206: PHP etc.

Lately (already some years) I'm studying PHP (and Python and Perl and MySQL) in order to automate the Chipdir even more. It's this unclear to me which parts will be automated off-line and which on-line, but things will get more automated. In the mean time I'm getting to be a real wizzard at PHP and even wrote the currently standard PHP script to access XML-data from Amazon.
Recently DIV2 the games making software version 2 was released, see www.div-arena.com/ and I'm very pleased with some of the improvements. Of course Amazon's XML feature was also nice although developments aren't going as fast as we had hoped.

It's summer

And it's summer so the plants in my 10 by 10 back garden grow like crazy. The herbs valerian and venkel have even grown taller than I am and I'm of quite normal size (about 1.8 m). The valerian is already almost as high as the young cherry tree next to it...
Speaking of the cherry tree: It had about 40 cherries on it in it's third year. The raspberries are getting ripe during these weeks and I also have a lot of forest strawberries and real strawberries who are also getting ripe these months. And I haven't even mentioned the redberries and blackberries yet... And in late summer the graphes will be ripe again...

200112: Faster computer

I bought a faster motherboard with a 1 Ghz AMD Duron. My mother had computer problems, so I wanted to let her have my current computer and therefore I had to upgrade my own computer. Now some of the games (Wiggles/Diggles demo) run faster, but now my graphics card (still TNT2) is the bottleneck for 3D games and it needs upgrading. But I can't use upgrading my mother's computer as an excuse, because she already has my old TNT card and never plays 3D games...
By the way, I'm running Linux now in the form of Mandrake Linux 8.1 and I have removed NT because I got frustrated that it was too non-standard in the Windows world. I do serious things under Linux of course and I found W95 to be very stable anyway. I upgraded W95 to W98 because a lot of game demos didn't run under W95 anymore. Due to circumstances the W98 is a Dutch version so I get very weird error messages that I first have to translate back to English before I can understand them. Can Microsoft really not afford to hire good translators? Oh, and in case you're wondering: Yes, I'm licensed to run W98... My name is Bond, Jaap Bond.

200004: Linux!

I have finally ported everything from my 166 MHz DEC Alpha running DEC UNIX v3.2 to my AMD K6-2 333 MHz running Linux. I was already using it running NT and W95 since 199810.

199704: The "Tech Ten" award

The ChipDir was awarded the April "Tech Ten" award of the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, Silicon Valley, California, because of it's usefulness for middle-school and above students, teachers and parents.

Award criteria:


199612: What was changed?

199609: Trying to improve Chinese - Russian relations

This message was sent via an anonymous remailer, but I'll remove all possibly tracable information. Bonafied secret services may contact me directly to get more information... ;-)

date 19960918
to Jaap van Ganswijk
subject Re: Identifying old Soviet chips

Dear Mr. Jaap van Ganswijk!

I can not express in a simple words all my gratitude to you for the job you are doing - maintaining your ChipDir. This is a great heroic deed.

But, please, be careful with Chinese!!!

I can guess, what are they interested in. Combination of chip names you mentioned, confirms that they are trying to reverse-engineer a military equipment, obtained from the USSR - and I know almost for sure, what kind of the equipment ...

Please, do not help them in doing this!!!

Please, do not publish any information on Soviet military electronics, even if this electronics seems to be old and outdated. Do not help Chinese to make it modern and advanced.

I hope, you do not want to participate in any form, in dangerous military preparations. Please, remember that almost all kinds of terrorists all over the world are equipped with Chinese clones of second-hand Soviet weapons!

With best wishes
A.

Was it the CIA, was it the KGB or just a concerned citizen? I tried to find out, but communications were broken off quite soon after...

199608: Praise

The praise for this site keeps coming in!
Here is a very literate example:

Thank you for an amazing effort! You have created a resource of inestimable value to the electronics community.

David Gibson (dgibson@microconsultants.com, www.microconsultants.com)

199608: New logo

Finally a new logo in which not only the color of the letters has changed!
(As was done in the past, to denote a new version...)
Here are smaller versions in case you want to use them in your links to the ChipDir:



(Links are still appreciated of course!)

199608: Thanks!

Date:         19960828
From:         Marvin D. Thorell <mthorell@wi.net>
Organization: Electronic Systems of Wisconsin
To:           Mail-a-note <ganswijk@xs4all.nl>
Subject:      Chip Select

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I think this is the greatest thing since sliced toast! I used to swear by the IC* Master for years. It was a great source of info for pin outs and looking up unusual IC*'s, etc. Then it got less and less useful over time. More and more advertising appeared. Pinouts began to dissappear. I don't recall the last time I referenced it. I can't imagine that I ever will, now that you have provided this wonderful reference.

Thanks again for making my day!

199606: New in the media

199604: New

New in the media

New mirror sites

New in the ChipDir itself

New links

Compiler for this site

199602: New in this version

-- Newsflash --

Changes in the tools

Changes in the content

The commercial aspect

199602: One of the many people that was helped by this ChipDir wrote:

I've been looking for a phone number for Curtis Electromusic (now OnChip) for weeks but found it within seconds here. This is an incredibly useful resource.
Thank you.

Modesty forbids me to list any more of the 100's of thank-you letters here...

199601: The European semiconductor market

Revenues from sales in Europe (in billions of dollars)

3.48 Intel
2.15 Motorola
2.13 Siemens
1.69 Philips
1.60 TI
1.59 ST
1.56 Samsung
1.52 NEC
1.10 Toshiba
1.03 Hitachi

Intel leads with a big difference the market for semiconductors in Europe. In 1995 the worlds biggest manufacturer of processors sold for an amount of 3.5 billion dollars of chips in Europe. The total size of the European semiconductor market amounts to 30 billion dollars according to market researcher Dataquest.

(Translated from an article in the (Dutch) Automatisering Gids, ag@wkths.nl, 19960126.)

199509: New in this version

Changes in this version:
Ad for PCI video capturing boards by Dektec.
Goto: Main Mirror About Author
Register: Yourself Company
Feedback: Correction Addition Question
Request quote: Chips (Deutsch) Chips (English) Chips (Nederlands)

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