A software thing I built: GPS on a 25MHz 486-SX
4 hours ago
- Built a real-time GPS-driven moving map display in 1993 on a 25MHz 486-SX CPU with 32MB RAM.
- Used the Hipparchus library with Voronoi cells to replace heavy floating-point math, achieving higher resolution and speed.
- The prototype worked but client had financial issues; IP was not owned by the contractor.
- The system predated first consumer GPS devices by 5 years, with faster updates (2 sec) and a large color display (1024x768).
- Later realized a clean-room approach might have allowed re-implementation without IP issues.