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Ever wondered what\'s actually happening beneath your code? Welcome to NCOT Technology, where we strip away the abstractions to explore the \"how\" and \"why\" of computing. From building 3D engines...
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Ever wondered what\'s actually happening beneath your code? Welcome to NCOT Technology, where we strip away the abstractions to explore the \"how\" and \"why\" of computing. From building 3D engines without a GPU to wiring up binary adders and mastering IEEE 754 floating point, this channel is for the curious programmers who want to fall down the technical \"rabbit holes.\" What we cover: * Low-Level Engineering: Logic gates, CPU architecture, and hardware arithmetic. * Graphics from Scratch: 3D projection and rasterization without the libraries. * Computing Standards: Deep dives into the standards that make the digital world work. * Hands-on Code: Technical walkthroughs in C++, Python, and Assembly. If you aren\'t satisfied with a library doing the work for you and want to understand the circuitry driving it all, hit Subscribe. Let\'s see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
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Episodes & Posts
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31 AUG 2026 · This video explains the Von Neumann architecture and demonstrates, with real BBC BASIC and C code, how computers fundamentally cannot tell the difference between data and executable instructions. Join Patreon : https://patreon.com/ncot_tech One time donation: https://ko-fi.com/ncot_tech Website : https://ncot.uk From typing in BASIC listings on a BBC Micro in the 1980s to modern x86 machine code on a PC, this video breaks down the Von Neumann architecture and the fetch-decode-execute cycle at the heart of every computer. We look at raw opcodes and ASCII data sitting side by side in memory, show how a CPU can be tricked into executing data as code, and connect that same principle to real-world exploits including the famous Super Mario World RAM manipulation TAS by Seth Bling. Along the way we cover why modern CPUs use an execute-permission bit (the NX bit) to guard against buffer overflows and code injection, how the Harvard architecture differs by physically separating code and data memory, and why this isn\'t a bug but a fundamental, necessary part of how programs get loaded and run. Topics covered: Von Neumann architecture, CPU fetch-decode-execute cycle, BBC BASIC and machine code, x86 assembly, memory mapping in C, buffer overflow and code injection exploits, and hardware execute protection. Chapters -------- 00:00 Remembering BASIC Listings 00:35 The Von Neumann Architecture Explained 01:21 Inside a BBC BASIC Program with Embedded Machine Code 02:12 Decoding the Opcodes: Data or Instructions? 03:05 Recreating the Trick in C on a Modern PC 04:47 Super Mario World TAS: Hacking RAM to Skip the Game 06:10 How Hardware Fights Back: The NX Bit 06:40 The Harvard Architecture Alternative 07:01 Flipping the Execute Bit to Run Data as Code 08:01 Why This Isn\'t a Bug - It\'s the Architecture Credits ------- Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio ## Keywords #vonneumannarchitecture #cybersecurity #computerscience #machinecode #bufferoverflow #cpuarchitecture #retrocomputing #hacking #programming #infosec
25 JUN 2026 · Get your own UPERFECT monitor using the following link https://shop.uperfect.com/4dNpTOl Use the following offer codes for a discount ncotech50, $50off for order amount above $300 ncotech60, $60off for order amount above $400 I picked up a Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) — an ESP32 with a built-in LCD — and tried to get it working from scratch. I had no idea what I was doing. So I asked ChatGPT. That was my first mistake. I thought this would take ten minutes. It took six hours. This is what ChatGPT actually taught me — and it wasn\'t what I expected. What followed was six hours of boot loops, library rabbit holes, vibe coding, and the slow realisation that I\'d stopped thinking entirely. At some point I became the slower, more confused half of the conversation. But here\'s what I actually learned: the real problem in embedded programming isn\'t the code. It\'s vocabulary. You can\'t search for what you don\'t know exists. And it turns out that\'s where AI is genuinely useful — not as a code generator, but as a way of finding the words you need to go and read properly. Zero to moving text on screen. Six hours. Not sure I\'d have got there without it. “Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio” ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0:00 Six hours. Just this. 1:25 The ASCII aquarium that started everything 2:28 Enter ChatGPT (first mistake) 3:50 Hello World — after an hour 4:40 The library maze 5:23 I realised I\'d stopped thinking 6:57 What\'s actually different about this board 8:34 Sponsor — UPerfect portable monitor 12:49 The breakthrough (I\'d been ignoring a setting) 15:38 A spinning cube I don\'t understand 17:17 The AI trap: outsourcing your brain 18:05 Back to the actual goal: ASCII text 19:05 Why learning is hard (it\'s the vocabulary) 20:01 What ChatGPT is actually good for 21:44 Six hours well spent. Mostly. #uperfect. #WatchWithUPERFECT #ESP32 #CheapYellowDisplay #EmbeddedProgramming #Arduino #ChatGPT
11 JUN 2026 · Summer Living Starts with FlexiSpot – [https://go.flexispot.co.uk/ncot_tech-deals] Get £170 off the E7 Pro Standing Desk Now – [https://go.flexispot.co.uk/ncot_tech-e7pro] DOOM ran on a 386 with 4MB of RAM and convinced an entire generation they were walking through actual 3D world. They weren\'t. It was an elaborate trick designed to squeeze the most from a CPU designed for boring business tasks. Every corridor, every monster, every firefight — all of it built on a stack of deliberate lies. We dig into the actual Doom source code to expose six of them: how the world is secretly 2D, why you can never look up, why cacodemons are effectively infinitely tall cylinders, and why the physics engine is beautiful nonsense held together with genius and barely-controlled desperation. This isn\'t a hit piece. The constraints didn\'t hold Doom back — they defined it. Chapters: 0:00 — Introduction: Running Doom on a toaster (the 386 problem) 2:17 — Lie #1: The world isn\'t actually 3D (2.5D maps and BSP trees) 7:18 — Lie #2: You can\'t look up or down (y-shearing and auto-aim) 10:44 — Lie #3: Floating enemies are infinitely tall cylinders 16:19 — Lie #4: Every monster is a 2D cardboard cutout (8-angle sprites) 17:43 — Lie #5: Monster AI is beautifully, brilliantly stupid 21:06 — Lie #6: The game runs at a simulated 35fps 22:43 — Why the constraints made Doom great “Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio” This video contains unpaid product placement from FlexiSpot.
31 MAY 2026 · Why does Python tell you that 0.1 + 0.2 = 0.30000000000000004? The answer is IEEE 754 - the floating-point standard baked into every CPU on the planet. In this video we go under the hood: from the limits of fixed-point arithmetic, through scientific notation in binary, to hand-converting 3.14 into its 32-bit IEEE 754 representation - and then proving it in C with a union hack that reads the raw bits directly out of memory. We also look at what happens at the edges: divide by zero, and rather than a crash you get infinity. Divide zero by zero and you get NaN - Not a Number. IEEE 754 doesn\'t just define the happy path, it defines all the weird paths too. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0:00 The 0.1 + 0.2 Problem 1:01 Fixed-Point Arithmetic 5:57 Scientific Notation & the Birth of Floating Point 6:48 The IEEE 754 Standard 7:01 Converting 3.14 to a 32-bit Float 11:12 Proving it in C 13:24 Edge Cases: Infinity and NaN 15:20 Why IEEE 754 Changed Everything ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ LINKS & RESOURCES ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Support the channel on Patreon (+ 24hr early access, no ads): https://www.patreon.com/ncot_tech Scientific Calculator - Thirunavukkarasye-Raveendran, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Intel 486 DX2 Die shot - This file was derived from: Intel 80486 DX2 die.JPG by Pauli Rautakorpi CC BY 3.0 Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio
24 MAY 2026 · How does a computer add two numbers — not with code, but with actual electronics? In this video we build the circuits that make addition happen at the hardware level, starting from the simplest possible adding circuit and working up to something that can add multi-bit binary numbers. We cover: • The rules of binary addition (and why carrying works the same as primary school) • The half adder — the smallest adding circuit, built from one XOR gate and one AND gate • The full adder — why the half adder isn\'t enough, and how to fix it with two half adders and an OR gate • The ripple carry adder — chaining full adders together to add 4-bit (and larger) binary numbers • Overflow — what happens when the answer doesn\'t fit Everything is demonstrated in a logic gate simulator so you can see exactly how the signals flow through the circuit. No code required — just logic gates doing what they do.This is the foundation of how virtually every processor ever built handles addition. Next time we\'ll look at how computers deal with fractions and floating-point numbers — which is where things get weird. -- Chapters -- 0:00 Introduction — How do computers add? 0:53 Binary addition rules 2:41 The half adder (XOR + AND gates) 5:28 Half adder demo in the simulator 7:15 Why the half adder isn\'t enough 8:20 The full adder (two half adders + OR gate) 10:45 Full adder demo in the simulator 12:30 The ripple carry adder 14:15 4-bit adder demo & overflow 15:40 Conclusion & what\'s next “Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio”
17 MAY 2026 · What happens when a computer encounters -1? The answer is weirder — and more elegant — than you\'d expect. In this video we dig into how computers actually represent negative numbers in binary. We start with the obvious-but-broken approach (sign-magnitude), show why it fails, then work through one\'s complement and arrive at two\'s complement — the system that quietly powers every processor you\'ve ever used. Covered in this video: → Why you can\'t just slap a minus sign on a binary number → Sign-magnitude: the intuitive approach and its inherent flaw → One\'s complement: almost there, but not quite → Two\'s complement: the elegant solution and why it works -- Credits -- Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio --- Boost your YouTube audience with vidIQ. Use this link to unlock 500 bonus credits when you upgrade to a premium plan: https://vidiq.com/r/?code=YtfDjC
31 MAR 2026 · Support the channel, visit patreon.com/ncot_tech Every frame of a 3D game you\'ve ever seen ultimately reduces to pixels written into memory. No matter how fast the GPU or how impressive the graphics, it all comes down to plotting pixels on the screen. Today we\'re taking a short look at how triangles get turned into pixels. It seems easy enough, but this is something early software 3D had to do by hand, and something modern GPUs are doing all the time. -- Credits -- Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio -- hashtag soup -- #OpenGL #CPP #GraphicsProgramming #GameDev #Programming #ComputerGraphics #CodingTutorial
15 MAR 2026 · Support the channel, visit patreon.com/ncot_tech In this video I build a classic vapourwave scene from scratch using C++ and raw OpenGL. No game engines, no shortcuts—just direct graphics programming. The scene features the iconic retro grid floor, distant mountains, and a glowing neon sunset sky inspired by 80s aesthetics. I walk through the full process of how the scene works, including the C++ code structure, how the shaders create the vapourwave look, and how the geometry is rendered using OpenGL. Along the way I also show some of the mistakes and debugging steps that happened during development, which helps illustrate how real graphics programming problems get solved. -- Credits -- Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio Contains clips from Robocop (c)1987 Orion Pictures Amstrad CPC 464 Photograph by Rama, Wikimedia Commons, Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr Billingham ICI Plant across back gardens, Billingham, Cleveland © Copyright Pete Chapman Fort Lauderdale Motel Barry Lewis https://www.flickr.com/photos/16179216@N07/8714120481 Greenwood Flats, St Julians, Newport - Tower Block Miles Glendinning CC BY 4.0 -- Chapters -- 00:00:00 Intro 00:00:33 Patreon 00:00:45 Setting the scene 00:01:47 What we\'re making 00:02:28 Hello World, OpenGL Style 00:04:56 Shaders 00:08:11 Loading 3D Objects 00:12:51 Texturing 3D Objects 00:17:49 Vaporwave Grid Shader 00:21:27 Vaporwave Mountains 00:27:13 Neon Sunsets 00:33:58 End Result 00:34:27 Outro -- hashtag soup -- #OpenGL #CPP #GraphicsProgramming #GameDev #ShaderProgramming #Vaporwave #RetroAesthetic #OpenGLTutorial #LearnOpenGL #IndieDev #Programming #ComputerGraphics #ModernOpenGL #GameDevelopment #CodingTutorial --- Boost your YouTube audience with vidIQ. Use this link to unlock 500 bonus credits when you upgrade to a premium plan: https://vidiq.com/r/?code=YtfDjC
26 JAN 2026 · This video is my journey through learning how early games drew 3D graphics before 3D APIs and modern GPUs existed. In fact, before old 3D APIs like OpenGL and old GPUs existed, too. Just me, the computer and some code and maths. No 3D hardware or 3D libraries were used in the making of this video. Support the channel ------------------------------ https://patreon.com/ncot_tech https://ko-fi.com/ncot_tech Website: https://ncot.uk Credits ----------- Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio Tags ------- #3dmodeling #3dgames #programming #retro #cprogramming #gamedev #gamedevelopment
4 JAN 2026 · Welcome to the next edition of Gamedev The Hard Way, my attempt at writing a game from scratch for the Agon Light, using nothing but C. This time I create a tilemap system. The tilemap system is able to load tiles drawn in Aseprite, load a tile map drawn in Tiled, and scroll around a world that\'s larger than the screen. I also develop an Aseprite plugin for exporting image data, and a Tiled plugin to export map data. Support the channel ------------------------------ https://patreon.com/ncot_tech https://ko-fi.com/ncot_tech Website: https://ncot.uk Credits ----------- Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio Tags ------- #agonlight #programming #retro #cprogramming #gamedev #gamedevelopment #retrocomputer
Ever wondered what\'s actually happening beneath your code? Welcome to NCOT Technology, where we strip away the abstractions to explore the \"how\" and \"why\" of computing. From building 3D engines...
show more
Ever wondered what\'s actually happening beneath your code? Welcome to NCOT Technology, where we strip away the abstractions to explore the \"how\" and \"why\" of computing. From building 3D engines without a GPU to wiring up binary adders and mastering IEEE 754 floating point, this channel is for the curious programmers who want to fall down the technical \"rabbit holes.\" What we cover: * Low-Level Engineering: Logic gates, CPU architecture, and hardware arithmetic. * Graphics from Scratch: 3D projection and rasterization without the libraries. * Computing Standards: Deep dives into the standards that make the digital world work. * Hands-on Code: Technical walkthroughs in C++, Python, and Assembly. If you aren\'t satisfied with a library doing the work for you and want to understand the circuitry driving it all, hit Subscribe. Let\'s see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
show less
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