Wednesday 4 March 2009

Update on my C++ learning

So I've finally stopped looking through that awful code I've been given to modify. It's a pure mess and to be honest, I don't know enough about either C or C++ to go and try and figure it out. So I've taken a day or two out of messing with the code and got myself a copy of Sam's Visual C++ in 21 days. I'm going to try and do it all in about 3 days, it's fairly simple stuff and I've been through most of it before. I really need the background for this code and for trying to figure out how to find out exactly what's going on and how I can modify it without getting a load of compile time errors.

So I've finally gotten my head around using Visual Studio 2008: Standard Edition. It's a very handy tool when you want to write in C, C++ and Visual Basic. I'm not sure what else it does. Currently I'm only writing out test code in a Win32 project environment just to get a feel for the functions and operators mentioned in the Visual C++ book.

I really should be spending this time watching and learning from the other guys here as they debug the server board. It hasn't been fully powered on yet as we've had some initial problems with incorrect voltage levels throughout the board. We finally got the voltage monitors, so we can actually power up the rest of the board. These were part of the power good circuit and held back the powering up of most of the standby voltages and IC's throughout the board. Current problem lies in the 1.8V we're receiving for the onboard DDR3 RAM, when we should be getting 1.5V. We think the problem lies with the DC/DC convertor and that the internal sense resistor has been modified from it's original settings in the datasheets. I can't say anymore for the moment, but that should suffice for the minute.

Now, back to C++

Now I'm a twitter person

Ok, I've joined twitter, Still don't see the point. I'll give it a few days.
Find me under the name Pyrolith. I'd link, but where's the fun in that?

I've been a member for about 5 minutes and I've got 3 followers already. That's just plain weird, I've nothing to say and even less time to be saying it.

Twittering eh?

Twitter this, twitter that. To be honest, I don't think I'm mad about the whole idea. It's been referred to as a 10 second phone call, except instead of one person, it goes out into the twittersphere (not sure if its a word, but sure why not?). Either way it goes out to many many people.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I get the point of throwing a message out into the void for the sake of joining in with the masses and being able to say that I'm not old, I've joined the latest trend out there, therefore I must be cool.

At the same time, now that I've written this blog, I'm tempted to go and see what all the fuss is about. More on this later.