ZX81 Goes Nuclear - Controlling a Nuclear Power Plant
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- čas přidán 9. 09. 2021
- This video is a ‘tongue in cheek’ look at controlling a nuclear power plant with a ZX81 and is inspired by the marketing of the time.
The software available as a .P file and .wav file can be downloaded from here, the instructions given below.
glasstty.com/wp-content/uploa...
The instructions are included within the above archive.
Attributions
Chenobyl Control Room Image was supplied by www.flickr.com/people/3506889... under the Creative Commons license and was modified by John Newcombe to include a Sinclair ZX80 Computer.
Chenoble Images supplied by Bennish, CC BY-SA 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons
• What /Actually/ Happen...
Chenobyl Control Room Image was supplied by www.flickr.com/people/3506889... under the Creative Commons license and was modified by John Newcombe to include a Sinclair ZX80 Computer.
Chain Reaction sequence provided by Nuclear Fission 101
• Nuclear Fission 101
Enrichment sequence provided by Inspecting the Nuclear Fuel Cycle • Inspecting the Nuclear...
Kim1 Images are Public Domain, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Image of Students provided by Reading University under Creative Commons Licence. CC BY-SA 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/...
All other images used are either provided under the Creative Commons licence or are public domain. - Věda a technologie
Hi there! My undergraduate thesis for automation engineering, at the end of last year, was controlling a nuclear reactor using a brazilian ZX81 clone (a Microdigital TK85). I designed a whole load of hardware plugged into the expansion port, for analog inputs and digital and analog outputs, and a display panel. The software was written in Z80 assembly language, and ran a SCADA system for the controlling the reactor, not simulating the reaction. I took most of my weekends in 2020 to get it running, but I managed to demo it during the online presentation for my examination. I simulated the reactor through the analogue inputs, controlling things like temperature, pressure and so with potentiometers.
Hi Simon, I'm so glad you got in touch. Did you post something on a discussion forum some time back? I'm not sure if it was you but I saw a photo of the control panel that was built and tried to get in touch at the time. Either way, it would be good to read your thesis and see some photos of what you achieved.
Please share a details!
Fabulous. Would like to read your thesis also!
This particularly resonated with me, People find this hard to believe, but as part of a special tour I have actually stood on the metal grate over the water tank of a 1MW research reactor as it was operated at low level and been bathed in the blue Cerenkov glow. And then almost immediately heard the 'kerchonk' of the control rods being shoved into place as an unplanned SCRAM shutdown was performed *while I was standing over it*, and was immediately ushered out. An experience I will never forget. And I don't think the control system was much more sophisticated than this. p.s. my dosimeter was fine.
Wow! That sounds amazing, what an experience. Take care. J.
Controlling something like a nuclear power plant is great fun.
I remember typing in the "Apple Nucear Power Plant" program (BYTE, Dec 1982), and then later experimented with putting different user interfaces on it for a human factors class.
I hadn't heard of that apple program before. I will have to route that out and give it a try. I have a couple of Apple IIs here.
@@GlassTTY I need to look for my variants. I’m pretty sure I put them on a flash card.
The problem with the original simulation was, it was written, assuming a TTY user interface, and so when things went bad with the reactor, critical values like the reactor temper, coolant flows, and heat exchanger temp, scroll off the screen due to too many alerts and warnings.
So I rewrote the UI, one used screen positioning, to keep critical parameters in the same position on the screen, and the second rewrite used Hi-Res graphics and speech synthesis.
Then I did experiments. People did poorly when I added the speech synthesis because the text to speech algorithms at the time weren’t very good and I was using a TMS5220 chip for speech.
@@ralphhyre4973 thats awesome.
5:20: Rare example of British humour that is both wet and dry.
Thanks for the comment, appreciated. Glad you liked it.
I've been waiting 40 years to see this. Thank you!
Thanks for your comment, I can't imagine the video was worth such a long wait but I'm pleased you liked it.
That comment about the switch-mode power supply hit home. The Timex Sinclair 1000 was my first computer, back in 1982. This was the ZX81 in the US, basically (I think there were very minor differences). The heat in the summer was bad enough that the thing would just white-screen and I'd lose all that sweet BASIC code I'd been working on, so I cooled the thing with a bag of ice sitting on top of it. The condensation wasn't a problem for the plastic case and membrane keyboard. Take that ice off for 30 seconds, though, and the computer would lock up. I sometimes had to race to refill the plastic bag with fresh ice before that happened.
That's a great anecdote thanks for sharing...
6:27 and just after 12:35, for anyone wondering.
Very cool simulation, and I loved the humour, thanks. Bonus credit for the Acornsoft posters and copy of 4-tracks on the shelf ;)
Glad you enjoyed it, take care.
You're like the real life Doc Brown! I was lost at 'many'.
🤓
Those are the most amazing ZX-81 displays I've ever seen.
Thank you, glad you liked the video.
Well the algorithm eventually brought me to your video, a bit late to the party. This was great. I remember seeing the ad which mentioned controlling a power plant, and those of us in the know have always known it was possible. Great job for demonstrating it and providing a simulator to boot. Will have to look into running this on my old TS1000 some rainy day. My first thought was 'Phil from the safety department will want a SCRAM shutdown hotkey' so glad to see you've got that covered..
Thanks for the comment and I'm glad you enjoyed it. I certainly had great fun making it! 😀
Most stuff I see on CZcams with old 8 bit computers is games, games, games... And that's not really what I was into back in those days... so your power plant simulator is finally the nostalgia of MY 1980s that I've been looking for all this time. And it really really did take me back to my youth, a little tear in the corner of my eye an' everything.
Quick glimpse of a Compukit UK101........... (Sigh!)
I agree completely with your comments re: games. The aim of the channel is to turn the focus away from games. Having said that, probably as you do, I recognise the amazing achievements of the games programmers and the fact that without the global interest in games by others, there might not be a retro community at all.
I'm really glad you enjoyed the video and thanks for taking the time to comment.
John
I loved the euphemism 'standard 16K ZX81'. :) We used expressions to save two bytes when we needed 0 or 1 as a constant (PI-PI for 0 and PI/PI for 1) because of the 1K RAM, 721 bytes of which was consumed up by the display. Having a 16K RAm extension was a royal feeling. :)
Your right of course 16k was a real luxury back then. I remember the struggle I had trying to do stuff with 1k using the ZX81 kit I had built. Great fun though.
Were you using a clone in those days in Hungary? I'm British (but I now live in Hungary) and I'm of a 1974 vintage. In the UK I built a ZX80 and then later had a ZX81 but I don't think I've ever seen one on Marketplace or Vatera etc.
@@yrath5034 Was this message for me? Unfortunately, I have never been to Hungary nor ever used a ZX81 clone, there is still time though! :)
@@GlassTTY Sorry, it was directed at Zoltán.
@@yrath5034 I had a friend who had lived in Britain before we met. And he brought a ZX81 from there. While he served in the army as a conscript, I could use his computer. It was around 1984 - 85.
Right now I have three ZX81s, all of them from Vatera. :) It's not an everyday find, but with patience it'll show up from time to time.
I was 14 in 1981 nice to watch someone around my age making interesting content and bring bach good memories Cheers mate
Thanks for the compliment... I was 23 in 1981. Glad you enjoyed it. Take care.
Entertaining and educational. And likely one of the more complex programs ever written for the old 81!
Glad you liked it. Take care.
"extra blu tac anyway" LOL =D Great video =D Enjoyed this, subbed! Nuclear Powerstation Simulator - could have been a Codemasters game!
Glad you enjoyed it feel free to share :) Atari did have a game called Scram, with a user guide that could have been required reading for student Nuclear Physicists.
One of the best videos I’ve watched in a long while! Thank you!
Wow, thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.
Really enjoyed that video! I think you hit the nail on the head when you described the difficulties of actually selling the public on the usefulness of home computers back in those pioneering days. Fantastic software modelling too, can't wait to try this out on my own Zeddy.
Thanks for the comment, really appreciate it.
That was the most awesome ZX81 video I have ever seen! Great Job!
Thank you, really appreciated. What to do next though eh!
P.S. Please feel free to share, I would love to get a few more subscribers. :)
Excellent work and video! Thanks for sharing
Glad you enjoyed it. J
Both the ZX80/81 were a little before my time but I'm slowly digging into them. Loved this vid - so well presented and thought out! #Subbed
Thanks for the comments, really appreciate it. The ZX81 was such a game changer as it made computing so accessible.
Kudos for the power plant program. I thoroughly enjoyed this video 😊
Glad you enjoyed it, take care.
Absolutely wonderful. Bravo ! 😀
Many thanks, glad you enjoyed it.
Wow; a very cool programming project (though I was relieved for your mental health when I realised that you'd written it in C and not in Sinclair BASIC). I like the way that you have interwoven the background technology, the programming itself and the demo, and then brought the whole story back to the original advert. For me, at the time, learning about computers was an end in itself. Your comments on "what would people use computers for" are not something that crossed the mind of teenaged me, but presented here (and in our conversation at the pub) I found them quite thought-provoking and a useful reminder/social commentary on that point in history. Finally, I doff my hat at your awesome production values!
Thanks Neal, your comments are really appreciated.
A great video, subscribed
Glad you liked it.
This is the best ZX81 video I’ve seen on here. Loved it. Also couldn’t help noticing the picture of the beeb behind you…
Thanks 👍 really glad you liked it. I have a few machines including a Beeb and some Apple IIs and some earlier stuff such as Nascoms etc. Are you a ZX81 fan?
@@GlassTTY Sounds great! Yes, the ZX81 was the first computer I came across and started to learn BASIC on. Later on it was all about BBC Micros at school but I also managed to occasionally get my hands on Commodores, ZX Spectrums and the odd Dragon 32. I still have a ZX81 knocking around somewhere. It left me with a soft spot for 8 bit computing 😄
This is absolutely brilliant.
Thank you, feel free to share 😊. I am trying to get to 100 subscribers so that I can get a custom url.
Don't give him any sponsorship ideas.
Brilliant!
Glad you enjoyed it. Take care.
I watched it twice but still couldn't spot the Tyrannosaurus. Could do better. 6/10
😉
Absolutely brilliant - nice to see sensible PPE for handling the 'Uranium'...
I'll have to finally build my ZX-81 kit, languishing in the attic near my old QL stuff, and see if Hinckley C needs a hand.
Glad you liked the vid, and thanks for the comment. I would love it if you could make a video of the ZX81 kit and you building it. It's an experience that should be captured IMHO. The QL, well... If it were me... I would turn that into a kit, if you see what I mean. :)
@@GlassTTY It would be a great little project! I can't rememember where I got it, but the build instructions and guides are all in Spanish. Me no habla bueno Espanol, as you can tell... :D
Back in the day, I had in mind to get one of the PC QL cards, but things moved on. It's been fettled by Tony Firshman over 30 years ago - better CPU to get around the problem of my Gold Card expansion not working on the original item. It already is a mini kit, I guess! I had a few PD titles out, plus some software for sale that has now joined the PD library - fond memories!
Fond memories indeed.
Superb. Subscribed.
Thanks for the comment Paul, glad you liked it.
That is great!
Glad you liked it. Take care. J.
Brilliant project and video. I recall running something similar on a BBC Micro (I don't think it was so detailed).
Can you remember what it was you were running?
@@GlassTTY It was probably Nuclear Reactor Simulator by Longman Software.
Thank you, I look forward to trying it in an emulator - oh, and subbed!
Thanks for the sub! Glad you enjoyed it. Take care. J
That's impressive
Thanks Corey, appreciated.
wooooow... this is waaaaaay better than SCRAM!
Glad you liked it. J.
Don't remove the rods too quickly. Good thing you told me.
😉
"extra blu-tak" LOL!!!!!!!!!!!! Brilliant!
Thanks, glad you liked it. J
"Extra blu-tack...", hahahaaa!
Ye gods I came to loathe my ZX81 for it's wobble habits! twas the Beeb that saved my sanity, and it's BASIC was far superior too, as I'm sure you're more aware than most...
I know exactly what you mean. except that had I not had the ZX81, I probably wouldn't have boaught a BBC. If nothing else, I love the Zeddy for that.
I choked on my cider at the extra blue-tack comment. I used bluetack on my '81 to stop the wobble ( It didn't work, so I upgraded to velcro which was better but didn't really work either )
I'm glad you enjoyed it! The video that is, not the choking. :)
I was convinced the flicker and the restart came from the acid rain we had in the Leipzig area back then. And actually - cleaning the contacts of both computer and extension RAM helped for a while. But the machine was delicate - especially times when saving the program was not as easy as typing :w (as of today I still save my source code every couple of secounds coming)
I put my ZX81 on a book so the RAM pack didn't nudge against the table. It was still a bit scary, but worked OK for me.
It says power *station* though (to many of us, a plant is a plant).
Not to me I hate horticulture I am pleased that the advert was vague enough for me to opt for the 'popular culture' version, and go Nuclear!
@@GlassTTY Vague to you, precise to me, perhaps. I don't like gardening either, but outside the english or american (?) realm, a plant is nothing but greens. We say kraftverk (cognate with english craft + work) or perhaps kraftstation. A plant is always stuff like wheat, rye, majs and such :)
The wobble problem was caused by the fact that the motherboard was on a slight slope, and the ram manufacturers made the ram like the motherboard was perfectly horizontal.
Thereby the connections were not having a firm contact, and when the connection was broke because the computer moved a little from typing -- boom -- everything reset.
There were a few solutions. Put something under one end of the ram pack to match the slope of the motherboard, and 2 use some duct-tape to hold it together.
Yes it is true, you can prevent nuclear power plant melt downs with duct tape...
Thanks for sharing Jay, take care.
US former TS1000 user here.. Not denying that there was a wobble issue, but back in the day I explained the problem to my grandfather, who proceeded to fabricate a custom steel clamp with a heavy thumbscrew. That thing didn't move anywhere after that. And it would still reset. My theory is it was the RAM pack overheating (and the wobbly connector has been a bit overblamed).
i read an interview once from owner of the software house, 'Software Farm' and i am sure he said a family member (older brother) did something like this for real. Memory is a bit sketchy now though.
Interesting... After I made the video a guy got in touch to show me a thesis he had done at university about controlling a power station with a ZX. He built a control panel as the UI, it was brilliant.
*The ZX80 didn't have floating point in BIOS so the RAM pack would have been required for floating point software routines. Got to say the ZX80 case to my eye is still the prettiest ever made. Glad I could not afford one as I would have been sorely disappointed.*
The 8K ROM upgrade added it though didn't it? I can't remember the details now. My ZX80 case fell apart after only 25 years, it was very flimsy and the stick on air vents left me feeling disapointed. The ZX81 case was much stronger and makes a great door wedge. Take care.
@@GlassTTY You're right about the ZX80 ROM upgrade. Essentially identical to the ZX81. Seems I'm always the last to know.
In z88dk too. Nice.
-Dx
Yeah, cross compiling C makes things nice and easy.
@@GlassTTY does anything make C easy?
@@mdr7878 I honestly think that C is one of the easiest languages to learn and it's available for almost every platform. I love Go too or should that be GOTO :).
@@GlassTTY it is - unless you mess around with pointers too much which would give you a ZX81 like development experience :-)
It would be great to make another video about the math behind (how it works), for educational purposes. This is nice stuff but It looks like a black box for people not familiar with thermodynamics. Also : I noticed some display values (eg: digits or bar charts) get refreshed every frame despite not changing. You can probably save few precious CPU cycles by only refreshing what is needed.
Thanks for the comments, much appreciated. I did used to check for changes before displying the data but had to strip it out due to constantly being low on memory :(. All the maths used floating point numbers which made it slightly harder to compare etc. in the end I just removed it. I cant remember how much memory I had left out of the 16k but it wasn't very much.
In terms of a video re: calculations and those people not being familiar with thermo dynamics, I'm one of them :). This is an area where I had some help from a third party and the IP ownership of that help wasn't clear. I decided not to publish the source in order to protect those concerned, just in case. I guess it might be the same for publishing a video. To be honest I would struggle to explain it after all this time anyway :).
Glad you enjoyed it though.
J
Nice 16 kb socket 👍
Thanks.
I remember seeing an article for building a (model) nuclear power station, and I think, code in BASIC, for a TRS-80, 40+ years ago, with lights and switches for simulated reaction and control. Though I can not find any reference in the net (too old and obscure?).
That sounds like fun, if it turns up, perhaps you would let me know.
One wobble and it's Windscale all over again
That's going back a bit... 1957? I wasn't born until 1958.
ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum were not designed for mission critical and mission safety uses, not sure if this was stated in the small print of the computer adverts.
These were times when cups of coffee didn't have warnings "may be hot" on them and messages didn't have disclaimers larger than the content while compliance departments were still unheard of in most companies let alone larger than the development teams. Good times for adults - when I was still a kid playing around with my ZX81to figure out how to program it.
I'm saddened that I was an adult when the ZX81 came out :(
@@GlassTTY Bring older does have it's advantages as life experience opens more possibilities for working with technology and its appreciation.
THE ZX81! IS THERE NOTHING IT CAN'T DO?!
It can even wedge doors open! Glad you enjoyed it.
sirs... have you given any thought to simulating a thorium reactor? rather than a U 235/238 reactor...
Not until now... :)
So is the ZX81 powerful enough?
I don't know, but the PLC that I cut my teeth on was a GE Series Six (the S6) that in its earliest form, came with 1K of program memory and 4K of register memory. And these could be used in a power plant, most likely with the expanded 4/8K, 8/8K, 16/8K, or 32/16K (or was that a 40/8K memory card?) memory cards. To explain the "4K/8K" bit, the card's total memory would be 12K for the 4/8K card, with 8k reserved for register memory, and a whopping 4K for program space - which usually was more than enough.
My first project was on a Berstorff Extruder/Calender/Splicer that had the smaller memory cards, the 1K/4K memory cards IIRC, and it was a bit of a challenge to get the code in there.
The processors in the S6 was a 4-bit AMD processor, albeit there were four of them cobbled together to make a 16 bit CPU.
The scan time of a bare program was 7ms, which was fast. Loading the PLC up with code would almost never exceed a 100ms scan time.
That's amazing, thank you for sharing.
You mentioned it in a short sequence how you programmed the simulation - in C - then compiled into Z-80 machine code and loaded into the ZX81. There must be some modification to get the code into the ZX81 run time environment - especially the quirky video ram (which shinks in size when memory is scarce) Did you program all of that yourself or are there libraries to program a ZX81 from a modern IDE?
i wrote the model in Go first and once that was working I converted it to C which very straigt forward. Once in C I used Z88DK as the compiler, this comes with tools to create a zx81 application. The IDE was VSCode running on a Mac with a few scrpts to build and launch the Clock Signal ZX81 Emulator for testing before creating a tzxduino file. I think I detailed it on glasstty.com.
I use the same environment for writing nascom stuff. Its more straight forward than it sounds.
The ZX81 only shrinks the display if it had =3.25kB the screen is always padded out to 32x24 in BASIC and won't shrink even as your program reaches the last 1kB. Machine code or 'C' programs generally pre-pad the screen to the specific size they need and then just address the memory locations for the screen, which will typically be SystemVariables.DISP+(lineLength+1)*y+x. (it needs a +1, because there's a CHR$(118) at the end of every line).
I can't help noticing that the seller of that nuclear power plant on eBay was one John Nuke-em...
I have just realised why, back in the 90s, everybody called me Duke. 😉
@@GlassTTY I really hope that's true
You should offer your controller for Hinkley Point C (blue tac costs extra)
Thats a good idea, I have 118 bytes left to upgrade it in order to support Generation III+ EDF plants. I will see if I can sort it this weekend, :)
do you have a GH or similar repo for the reactor C code? I'd love to port this demo to another microcontroller, display, etc. . Thx.
Unfortunately not, there is a small snippet of code that may have some interlectual properly attached. I was going to do a fudge and remove it but I never got chance.
@@GlassTTY understood. Any pointers to the equations you used for the simulation?
It was, what I understand to be, the standard 6 point kinetic equation. I'll try and sort out what I can re: C code, I may still have the early workings in Go (golang) which is a very easy port to C. Remind me in a week or so if you haven't heard from me.
In high school I bought a zx81 as my first computer…I used it for several years doing basic and z80 assembly on it. No cross compiled c code for me but I did run into people what do you plan to do with that. Well write games was my response, so I did that.
Thanks for the comment, what games did you end up writing?
How about modelling an RBMK reactor, circa 1986?
In all seriousness, this is brilliant. Can you put the software online for download?
Sorry, seen you already have!
Glad you enjoyed it. J.
Or possibly the one in 1957? Graphite should be left to pencils. :)
Although we made "TMI" an acronym for something else long before "Too Much Information" came around.
And who can forget Fermi #1?: czcams.com/video/Zh0WOhbGlvk/video.html
The problem with the ZX80 is that the program has to stop running in order to display the results...if you have to stop running the power station every time the operator wants to see whether it's going to blow up or not - it's probably going to blow up.
Youre right, Thank goodness I used the ZX81 :)
Not bad for a doorstop!
The thought of a ZX81 being wedged under a door makes me very anxious... but I suppose it's one answer to the question, "what do you use if for?"
@@GlassTTY The Timex-Sinclair 1000 was my first computer. Even with a 64k RAM expansion, I was not resourceful enough to get much use of it.
Did you run your nuclear reactor with BASIC? Or Assembly?
Neither, I did it C and cross compiled it using z88dk. :)
Can you let me know your setup for writing code? It looked like you were doing it on an emulator. Thanks. This is a great vid!
For this I coded in C using VS Code as an editor. I then used the Z88DK compiler to produce a .p file. The emulator was Clock Signal as I was developing on a Mac. Hope that helps.
@@GlassTTY Thanks so much, really appreciate it!
Hello, please would you tell me what is the software that your channel's picture showing? Left corner, on the orange monochrome screen.
I assume you are referring to the ZX81 software that features in the video? If so, this is the software I wrote especially for the video. There is a link to it in the description.
Hope that helps.
@@GlassTTY Thank You but i meant the software that can be seen on your default yt channel picture, on the orange colored monochrome monitor at left.
That would be a CP/M game called Ladder shown running on my Altair clone.
@@GlassTTY Thank You!
siempre y cuando no se te queme la ULA en medio de la fusion jjajajajaj ahi explotaba todo
The ZX81 keeps it all under control. :)
i won't trust the reliability of cheap components in a zx80 to run a nuclear plant
I must admit, tryng to initiate a SCRAM from a membrane keyboard might be an issue I guess.
I gave you the like at the blue tack comment.
Glad you enjoyed it, take care.
Darn I thought you were gonna actually hook up some temperature sensors or servos to the thing like would be in real life.
Ah sorry for the disappointment. Maybe I could do that in a future video.
@@GlassTTY some real IO examples would be cool. How does the program eventually get to a valve or whatever.
Nice gui and control system! I never mastered the art of controlling real systems with a computer. I advertise if you’d like to control a real nuclear reactor attend my school, Satorgate University. “Real-time Control Engineer” would make a great program! Just send me a note if you choose to.
Thanks for your comment, glad you liked it. I had great fun making it an learning about the details of power generation.
DoubleM55
Really sorry, I accidentally deleted your comment whilst trying to edit my dodgy reply. Your comment related to the fact that a ZX81 could run a power station whilst your 8 core i7 was struggling to run a web browser. Its a fair point, but Web is so last year... Switch to Viewdata. czcams.com/video/MFkFPfOnGWo/video.html
Did you make it on 1K of the internal RAM or you had to add 16Kb of the external? (:
It uses all but 11 bytes of the 16k. I could probably improve it a bit though.
@@GlassTTY 11 bytes? (: That is 5 Z80 instructions ... You mean 11Kb? But original verison of ZX81 (I have a few here a tome is only with 1Kb built in RAM, and external extension via extension port to 16Kb). My first lines of code were on ZX81, then I moved to C64 tribe, I've made in 80' several games coding only in machine language direct in the RAM ... Some good old times!
@@TheAndjelika Yes, 11 bytes... The final code was just under 16K to get the model running properly. It was written in C though and cross compiled using DK88. The C library was around 2K in size.
@@GlassTTY 11 bytes is about 4-6 Z80 instructions (fill in some register(s) and jump to another location), nothing more. So I guess it is just to call what you have done in DK88 and compiled. What I could see in video, graphics and the rest can't fit in 11bytes anyway. I was doing lot's of codding in machine language (directly in RAM) in 80' mostly on 6510, but Z80 too, I was developing games, and earned my first money that way.
@@GlassTTY Thanks for the insight about how the simulation was put together
Surely it should be a simulation of an AGR, for maximum britishness
You are right of course but it was determined by our son who designs PWRs. He helped me understand the maths. The other deciding factor was that I couldn't find any Graphite on eBay