- I remember when I was a kid and Solaris was one of those games that I had bought with my own money. I proudly inserted it into my Atari 2600 I knew right away that this game was different from the rest. It had a plot, a goal and an ending; something that was a rarity for Atari games. I was immediately fascinated and after reading the instruction manual, something I always did, I was determined to finish the game. I spent hours on my living room floor happily drawing maps by hand on graph paper and trying to reach Solaris. I never did, but the strategic game play was so good that I actually enjoyed failing and didn’t get frustrated. Time passed. I never forgot this game and over the years I would keep coming back, each time more determined to finish it. Now, decades later, the internet has finally given me the tools I needed to complete this amazing game. I have made this guide so that others can do the same.
- Inside the 8086 processor, tiny charge pumps create a negative voltage (righto.com)
Introduced in 1978, the revolutionary Intel 8086 microprocessor led to the x86 processors used in most desktop and server computing today. This chip is built from digital circuits, as you would expect. However, it also has analog circuits: charge pumps that turn the 8086’s 5-volt supply into a negative voltage to improve performance.1 I’ve been reverse-engineering the 8086 from die photos, and in this post I discuss the construction of these charge pumps and how they work.