Welcome to the "Darrens Desktop" website. This site was created to share information about my various hobbies and interrests with other people having the same interrests.
My longest running project at the moment is building a Tesla coil which converts 240v to half a million volts. Although this project is still not complete, my Tesla Coil site has information covering every aspect of it's construction. It is nearly complete and when the weather gets better towards the end of the year, I may get the chance to test it. If you like high voltage, click on the link and take the tour.
Programming is another long term interrest of mine, working in IT makes it a very usefull tool. I'd go as far as to say it's even essential to be able to program. I started programming on a Commodore CBM then moved up to a Commodore64, then onto the AMIGA. The Amiga was my real inspiration and in order to write Demo's, I stopped programming in basic and started programming in C. I quickly found that C was a usefull language for writing utilities but for the speed I needed, 68000 was the way to go!! Now I program on PC's in Borland C++ Builder V6 and I now have a section of my site devoted to some of the programs I've written. As I finish more programs, I'll add them to it so be sure to check the "C++ Programming" section from time to time.
PIC Microcontrollers are legendary in the electronics industry, their performance, flexibility, low cost and ease of programming have made them the first choice for thousands of hobbyists and professionals for a number of years. I started out with Phillips 16c750 series controllers and found the instruction set fairly easy to work with and thought they were greatest. This changed when I went to buy an OTP (One Time Programmable) chip and found that the place I used to buy them from couldn't get them anymore. Only one place in Perth was selling them and they cost nearly as much as the comparable PIC microcontroller with flash memory. For $2 more, I could have a chip which could be reprogrammed and I didn't need to mess around with debugging my code using an Eprom version of the chip. The change over to PIC's was very easy when you have so many benefits. I now have a section here devoted to some of the projects I've done with them and as I complete more projects, I'll add them so be sure to drop by and take a look now and then. |
