On the Move
- Sunday afternoon Royals game project: a virtual keyboard for VICE
- This Blows My Mind
- I Wish I Had Your Problems
- I wrote an iPhone calculator app
- I wrote a book
- My wife found this for me and gave it to me for my birthday. I still know every word.
- Make homebuilt computers great again.
- Project Hail Mary Review
- Every once in a while, people surprise me with the coolest things. A friend is now using a Commodore to read my writing. Awesomesauce!
- On life
- My custom Obsidian plugin
- Friday fun: Time to bring out the Osborne 1 I spent quite a few hours restoring last year.
- Does everyone need an audience?
- Learning as a kid
- This philosophy still holds up
- A body of work
- The circle is complete
- Picked up a gorgeous hardcover version of Enigma: The Battle for Code
- I don't have a RAM shortage. This is plenty for a lifetime
- My advice to 6-18-year-olds who want to learn to program
- It's going to take me a few minutes to get through this book set. Definitely worth it.
- Be more than average
- Journals are private. Period.
- Four business plans
- Working on a fun Enigma codebook generator for the Commodore
- Here's my first crack at a personal year-view calendar using my Apple Calendar data.
- I asked my wife for a Mainframe for my birthday so I can use this tape I picked up from Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
- Fun little side project
- Timeline cleanse
- For you
- Visual Sorting
- Christmas is better when there are 5 1/4" floppies around.
- A Python Guide to Advent of Code 2026
- AOC 2025
- In today's episode of stupid races between old computery things
- First principles AI. I'm not joking.
- X just sent me an ad for $100 sweatpants. People are NUTS.
- I love doing puzzles and brain teasers in the Christmas season. Like Advent of Code and books like this.
- New website
- Advent of Code Day 3 - Vintage edition. I used my Commodore 64 to get today's puzzle. 8 hours, not bad.
- Day 3 of Advent of Code 2025
- Continuing to compute 100k digits of Pi as quickly as possible (without using an LLM, just my brain)
- Advent of Code 2025 Day 1 was easy, so I challenged myself and did it in FORTRAN.
- Green phosphor monitors count as Christmas decorations in my office. I'll die on this hill.
- Alright, since this week I was computing Pi in six languages, let's add a seventh.
- This thing needs an OS upgrade.
- AT Time
- Pi as fast as I know how in six languages
- Novella complete
- Doing actual writing in Hugo
- Doing math like it’s 1962.
- This is a GREAT Modbus device for the Raspberry Pi
- Been looking forward to the SwissMicros R47 for some time.
- If you're looking to type like a complete moron all day, switch back and forth between a MacBook Air and a Windows gaming laptop all day. Sheesh.
- Accents
- Timeline cleanse: The soft glow of a PDP-8 in a dark office.
- Working on a side hustle idea
- If writing is thinking
- Prediction: 2026 will be the year of the FreeBSD desktop.
- Actually ahead on my NaNoWriMo goal for this year
- I started playing around with writing an OT asset discovery tool
- National Novel Writing Month Platform
- Self hosting
- Working appliances
- Perfect answers
- Apparently there was an AWS something something this week.
- My "North" for 2026
- The Villiage
- Resume update: sooo many cool things...
- For the first time in many years, I'm trying not to be burned out with my day job.
- This is my favorite Amazon message. Makes me feel good about having spent money on this.
- Claude Code and Obsidian
- Moving my office to a different room of the house and I got distracted
- Wazuh
- Super useful tech to learn about
- There are days I need this stapled to my forehead.
- I love this Starlink mini so much
- Hear me out: Omarchy but with BSD
- Erika Kirk’s speech today might be the best half hour speech I’ve ever heard.
- Moving my office
- I really miss being able to slam a phone down to hang up
- Got this brand new book on Rust
- Blog as my primary posting platform
- This is the best computer hacking tutorial ever made
- Blogs vs social as a posting platform
- Am I doing Omarchy correctly?
- Distracted
- I’ve crossed a threshold. I now bring a magnifying glass for weekend board games. Sigh.
- Super fun find yesterday
- A Universal plug isn’t really the best idea. What happens if I take the sticker off or forget?
- 50 years ago this month, issue #1 of BYTE magazine was born. They sure don’t make em like they used to.
- PfSense and OPNSense Firewall Manager
- I miss mix tapes
- Enigma Emulator
- What happened to small sharp tools?
- Time to do some writing with the Schrödinger’s cat of computers.
- Commodore Bookmaker
- Next step?
- I'm sure this is fine. Batteries in a Commodore calculator from 1975. It'll buff out ;-)
- Computer equivalent of touching grass
- Kayaked Tuckasegee with Caleb today
- Tap tap
- Ruby for Commodore 64 (not really)
- Matrix Rain in Ruby
- Two different people suggested I start podcasting again
- I’ve read this book almost every summer since it came out in 1999. I’m guessing this is the 20th time. I still find it as entertaining as the first time.
- Do We Have the Authority to Know Someone Is Saved?
- TI-99/4a recursive maze generator
- 10 PRINT on TI-99/4a
- Life moves pretty fast
- Clean up
- You can save a lot of desk space if you put your high speed storage device directly onto your AI vibe coding machine.
- Spent some time with the ZX81/T1000 in June. Just sitting down to decide what to do with July. I'm thinking these two.
- BYTE Magazine Collection
- Empty
- Why is the terminal bell on by default in Windows 11?
- Fountain Pens
- Boat time with Dad
- ZX81 Maze
- I do not need another hobby
- Say a prayer for me
- Have fun making slides
- White water on the Tuckaseegee was fun. Only had time to snap a few pictures during the calm sections.
- Old notebooks
- I much prefer playing chess against a human. But, if I have no choice but to play a computer, it will be a VIC-20.
- Old computer number crunching
- Knocking some rust off. First shot in a while. At least I’m not in the dirt.
- Caleb is in the ensemble cast of the Asheville Community Theater’s production of the Little Mermaid. It’s opening weekend.
- This feels sketch
- Stuff to learn this week
- Make interfaces great again
- Steve, I wish they were sorry about it man
- Monday deep thoughts of a Commodore 64.
- Found a breadbin case and some brown keycaps for my Elite-II. Leave the C64 badge or replace it with an Elite badge?
- “Work” trip this week
- Just checking, double-checking Monty Hall since my brain still finds it odd.
- Still playing around with maze generation. This time with a grid pattern on the Commodore 64.
- Holy Toledo that was a pain to dig out.
- I think about this a lot
- What you can use the internet for
- I still love maze generation
- Ultimate64 Elite-II
- DO. THE. WORK.
- Random maze fun
- Early draft of my weekly planner
- Even lower
- Still got it
- Some areas have had backward progress
- More color work on my VIC-20 drop in VIC chip FPGA replacement. I feel like I'm getting pretty close on the NTSC colors here
- Vic's Revenge Update
- Over the top
- 10 PRINT in Verilog
- Vim was worth it
- Warning signs
- Do kids still go to school?
- Vim upper/lowercase
- Modbus CRC-16 for "work"
- Too many interests
- It's nice when your son out fishes you
- I mean... I suppose a bunch of 6502 assembly code counts as "words."
- Sometimes you need to sleep on it
- There's an untapped market
- What I used to love about Unix systems
- 10 PRINT Fortran
- Ultimate 64 Upgrade... not too happy
- Expanded Mars colony game
- Pretty zippy
- A cluster?
- Since I started going back to the gym and lifting heavy my resting heart rate has plummeted.
- Boat
- Mars Colony Game
- A fantastic dream - OR IS IT?
- 10 PRINT on KIM-1 Seven Segment Display
- 1200 baud and 49K of RAM is more than a growing boy needs.
- The PAL-II KIM-1 Clone came together nicely
- Finished the Osborne 1
- I have no memory of acquiring this KIM Uno but it works. Huh.
- Anyone else have the Death Star playset?
- This movie freaked me out as a kid
- Face to face
- I have a "production" EPROM eraser. I'll bet you could get 75 chips in this thing at once. But my "production" quantity is usually... 1. Happy Monday ;-)
- I've been sitting on this KIM-1 clone too long. It's supposed to rain, so I'll pick away at it.
- Having some trees cleared at our house today. I've never been so happy to have gotten into computers 40 years ago. I just called my Dad to thank him for buying a Commodore 64 in 1983.
- Osborne restoration day 5 continued: 10 PRINT
- Osborne 1 restoration day 5 (non consecutive)
- RSA on Commodore
- Happy Easter
- Osborne restoration day 4
- Picked up an Osborne sticker. Thoughts on what to do with it?
- Osborne 1 Restoration Day 3
- It's been one of those mornings
- RPN on Mac Calculator...
- 10 PRINT on the TI-74
- Friday Picocalc
- Long Books
- Math is crazy
- Haven’t used my Apple IIe in a bit. This game is still pretty great.
- Our charter captain loves his job
- Reflections
- Tell me you're an old-school computer peep without telling me you are. I'll go first.
- Beyond our screens
- Hump Day PicoCalc fun: Some "high energy" bouncing balls. You can add or remove them with A or R
- PicoCalc Primes
- Starting the week by adding a device to my "10PRINT on all the things" list. Happy Monday!
- The Myth of "Nothing to Hide": Why Privacy Matters for Everyone
- Is it net positive? I'm actually asking.
- IF
- I'm tired of the privilege of apathy argument
- Opening day of baseball
- That sweet, sweet sound.
- PicoCalc arrived today.
- You can learn anything in 45 minutes now
- Happy Spring!
- Game of life
- Magic
- Finally, I found a working 16C at a reasonable price.
- Need to give back
- Left handed mouse
- Without that AI switch flipped, it’s just vibes and no substance—might as well call it 'air guitar programming'.
- Quiet heros
- Like .338 Lapua has recoil. Pfft.
- 1988 wish list
- Happy Pi Day from one of my VIC-20s!
- Rawdog it
- The 3+ Penultimate "Turbo" arrived yesterday.
- Characters who drink
- Almost perfect mobile setup
- Dreams
- I used to love flying
- Austin
- Angry eyes
- I've written thousands of words about how I feel about "AI," and someone has nailed it with a short sentence. Sigh.
- Bets on how this is going to fare with American Airlines baggage handlers this week?
- It didn’t need the f bomb, but this is something to really think about.
- So I figured out what happened with the Epstein list.
- Ahh, that's better—no AI in sight.
- When you must dive deep into a subject, a book is still the best format
- Introextovert
- Amazon, shame shame
- This is new in the wrapper, but we must open it, right?
- Saturday thoughts...
- They’re sorry Steve Jobs. Or at least we wish they were.
- I feel pretty prepared for that part in Battlestar Galactica where only the non networked (no AI) systems survived. Plus it just looks cool.
- Journal entry this morning. Sheesh I had a lot to get out
- Artificial
- Buying this book has saved me from another multi-thousand-dollar hobby.
- Behold: the best computer book cover of all time
- Theme for the week
- Make face to face great again
- I love this new AI trend
- Set up a Wyze camera on the freeze dryer so we don’t have to keep checking in it.
- Preparing for American Airlines to have my rifle… how much foam is too much foam :)
- I picked up a Boox Go Color 7. The color ePaper looks pretty great IRL.
- Maybe social media will die, finally
- Deepseek-r1 on my laptop w/ GeForce RTX 3060
- The perfect camping setup doesn’t exi… ohhhhh
- We forgot to ask if we should
- Had this thing for 20 years. It’s still my best distraction free writing tool.
- Avoidable air disaster
- My go-to "this meeting should have been an email" is this game
- A random find in my basement
- The complete series is only 29 hours in total, but it is worth every minute.
- Again
- AI chess
- I will not have time to assemble this today, but my PAL-II arrived. Serial number 2. Woot!
- Gyms
- Devices as babysitters. A bad idea since 1981.
- These paper apps are my new favorite thing. And a D6 pencil, brilliant!
- It would be cool if they made it in Commodore beige, but red will do :)
- Surprisingly, this vintage Apple Intelligence is more interesting and useful than 2025 Apple Intelligence.
- My high risk court record
- Friday Go Fun
- Winter office work
- Learning Lua ADHD Moment
- Checking in
- Pirates
- Make wired headphones great again! (Also, happy Monday!)
- A game with calculators... yes please
- 10print on the PICO-8
- Day 9 of carnivore January: I have to remind myself to eat.
- This is more like a 10-course meal than a light read, but I will try and get through it in January
- Listening
- The barber shop
- That's a lot of data
- work playlist for the week
- Kinda late to the party, but this is my first time using PICO-8.
- Kinda neato. "The Probability Broach" also has a graphic novel.
- Time to do some CAD work.
- The VIC project
- So so so much potential. But he couldn’t keep his politics out of it. What a shame.
- Been waiting for this to arrive since the summer. Looks fantastic.
- Urg, coal in the stocking. I’ve got to be better next year
- I always wanted a one-handed watch. She found me one with a cool 80s vibe.
- I was too cool for school when my Mom offered me piano lessons as a kid. No time like the present.
- 2025 music
- Strangers
- Merry Christmas! I finished Advent of Code for the 6th year in a row ;-)
- Christmas songs
- VICs Revenge
- I forgot I picked this up a few months ago
- I just submitted my #VCCC2024 Entry
- Drone practice seems prudent this week…
- I didn't want a minivan until now...
- AI... sigh
- Christmas Trolley
- Day off shenanigans
- OffGlobe
- I am success!
- Just think, you could be getting into the Holiday spirit with the soft glow of a restored PET 2001 from 1979...
- Arg, I hate seeing a dead SID. At least I have 50-year spares on hand.
- Lazy programming...
- ALL computer (and recipe) books should be spiral-bound
- If officially the Christmas season in my house when Karen Carpenter is singing.
- Happy Friday!
- The Kawarii...
- Well, hello, old friend.
- It's been a while this year since I did any Assembly programming on a C64. I almost forgot just how much I love developing on-hardware.
- Keyboard shopping
- I regret using Hugo
- VCCC 2024
- Curating music
- I am still working on this PET 2001-8N board. Both 6520s are bad. That's unfortunate.
- On today's episode of "Stupid Races Between Old Computery Things," the Radio Shack PC-4 (1983) and the TI-74 (1986) are competing
- I can't say enough good things about this book—easily in the top five favorite books I've read in 2024.
- 10PRINT on the TI-74
- One's compliment head scratcher
- It's supposed to snow tonight. Does someone want to let our tomato plants (and marigolds) know? They are both still flowering...
- Fighting what?
- I think most of you know that I adore Advent of Code.Tuesday timeline cleanse: Sure, you've seen "The Last Starfighter," but have you seen it on LaserDisc?
- What might have been
- Peak handheld. I used the one on the right every day for years (they both still work).
- Who or what
- I love the Maze Algorithm from Compute! in 1981. For fun, here it is using pygame on a modern computer. Happy Tuesday!
- Veteran's Day
- An Int Button
- Books are just better
- Just give it a try
- It's always a fun game to take the Commodore Plus/4 out to see if it still boots. Yep, still ticking...
- Flight planning like it's 1976
- TI-58C Fault
- My first direct node-to-node Meshtastic message... I couldn't resist ;-) Happy Monday, and keep it Commodore!
- Trolley reverser
- How important is it to win?
- Meshtastic nodes are multiplying around here
- Book club is more than that
- Today's Timeline Cleanse
- I've struggled to articulate the part of "AI" I'm afraid of
- Today's timeline cleanse:
- Monster Mash
- This is the way
- Elvira
- Just arrived from China. I wonder if any of them work or are real.
- Seems like an appropriate weekend for Mansions of Madness. Has anyone ever won this game ;)
- Friday timeline cleanse
- My Wednesday controversial position
- Every once in a while, I can trick my iPhone into taking video of the screen on this PET in a way that we can see it ;-)
- This is my entire Starlink set up out in the field. Powered by a DeWalt battery and sitting on the cover of my truck bed. Works great.
- This week is gonna be a dive into Meshtastic. This T-Deck has a great BlackBerry vibe.
- Parents not needed
- Apple makes crazy good laptops
- I love Peggy's books so much!
- Well, if it won't be a neat project, then at least it's not well-documented. Happy Friday!
- AI Bias
- Gotta give Starlink some props here
- Leg press
- Content is...
- Well that's not ideal
- Top 10 NES games
- Starlink week one
- With great power comes great responsibility.
- This is what I call a great set of bedtime stories.
- Random radios
- The Starlink Mini hardware is one of the most elegant designs ever created
- Tuesday thought
- Starlink for the win
- Every time I assemble this antenna, I’m surprised that all the pieces are in the case. Good job, self.
- Behold! The undisputed champions of "I need to flush out this idea."
- I've been looking forward to this one for a while.
- It just occurred to me that it's officially fall.
- Reframe your relationship with your phone
- Bridge is finished and got a coat of paint. Really happy with how this turned out.
- Be kind. Rewind.
- Greeted at the door
- Analog E6B
- Number pad
- “Have you seen that Shogun TV series? Seems up your alley.”
- Graduated from boot camp 31 years ago today. It seems like both longer and shorter than that
- Pico2 is working out great.
- Not the answer
- I've been ruminating on a couple of things I used to spend a lot of time talking about
- The new iOS weather app uses strange precipitation colors. I thought it was gonna snow looking at this.
- Monday thought
- We’re doing a Christmas themed trolly over our kitchen cabinets this year.
- Dragon Curves to cleanse your timeline
- Interactive Fiction
- New workout plan
- Egon’s PC-4
- If my calculations are correct, I’ll need four of these per computer.
- A little Saturday timeline cleanse.
- Well, they took long enough that I wish I had ordered 10, but 3 will do for today.
- Short week ahead. Cleaning the timeline from the beginning with Defender on the C64.
- Did an 8 mile section of the AT today with my favorite person. 1200 foot elevation gain so not too difficult.
- This month's book club main topic is a fun one
- Replaced our old workhorse espresso machine this week after the water pump died (RIP)
- Friday morning timeline cleanse.
- So impressed
- I have no idea where the case and cover are, but this is my original from 1982. It still plays pretty well.
- Just picked this one up. Pretty good.
- Mirrors
- Books I'm looking at
- Book club
- Finally
- Finally, a chess engine I might be able to beat. Happy Tuesday!
- Shorthand fail
- There’s always time to go back to first principles.
- PIO Fun
- The zone
- Deep thought wednesday
- Our latest five book club topics make me smile.
- More skills work
- Almost Christmas
- Random stuff in the lab today
- Bread time
- Would you want them to grow up to be you?
- Open cores on the Pico 2!
- No middle ground
- Fun puzzle
- I spent my lunch break grabbing all of these signals, and then I realized that this board is PAL, and I'm currently working on NTSC. Happy Monday!
- I need a filter for the "you may be old, but are you this old?" memes.
- Phew, this one is intense.
- I do a lot of bit/counter-slicing in Verilog. Sometimes, it's hard to visualize what a slice will look like on a counter, so I made a quick visualizer with a data table to help my brain.
- VIC-20 FPGA VIC replacement Friday lunch break progress.
- Having twenty-five 14.31818Mhz clocks is basically 360Mhz.
- Still a Swift virgin, so I decided to kick the tires. My "Hello, World!" is to do 10PRINT in any new language. Pretty straightforward. Happy Wednesday!
- I’m so impressed with these that I got two.
- Just some Monday morning "avoiding the AWS issue" I'm struggling with...
- Happy Dog
- I don’t often 80 column on 8 bit machines, but when I do…
- Laurel river hike with some friends
- Friday update on the VIC-20 VIC chip replacement
- VIC's Revenge Update
- What does your doctor call you?
- Quote of the week
- Ouch. Remember when one of the design goals was to make this board inexpensive? The FPGA is no longer the most expensive component. /sigh
- Ouch. Remember when one of the design goals was to make this board inexpensive?
- This kind of stuff drives me crazy.
- Phew! Crowdstrike didn't get me.
- A rabbit, er, dinosaur hole
- Well the color bars setup was weirdly easy. Maybe I’m finally getting good enough at FPGA development to trick people into thinking I know what I’m doing.
- If there was just one thing I'd like to master in the rest of 2024, this is it.
- Social media blah
- Is that the right tool for the job?
- It's always time to go WAY back to first principles.
- It’s okay to mig weld in shorts right? Asking for a friend.
- Great hike with a friend this morning. 3.8 miles and just under 1000 foot elevation change on the way up.
- Smart Apples... errr... Commodore
- Blah
- Just tell the truth
- DIY truck stuff
- Smart Apples
- I get to
- Being early
- Too many?
- Turns out #10PRINT on the Atari VCS/2600 is pretty complicated. Happy Friday!
- Distraction free writing
- The last time
- What’s interesting about this little guy hanging out in this pot is that it’s on our upper porch deck about 15 feet off the ground. Didn’t expect to see him there.
- For the last year or so, I've been studying large companies to learn how to bring my business into the AI world.
- Mr @cltrudeau 's new book arrived today in print. Excellent stuff
- The AI you really need
- Sometimes, you gotta do whatever you gotta to make it work
- Well there’s a topic for discussion.
- I’m just learning just how versatile these are.
- Logging my first four miles with “barefoot” shoes. I’m a fan so far.
- I read slightly ahead
- I’m generally not a fan of ripping on other people’s work, even if the games are bad, but I do like learning about stuff I’ve not seen before.
- The first Star Trek Movie really is the best one in the whole franchise.
- Book from another book club I belong to arrived yesterday. Gonna be a quick read.
- Heaven does exist
- Well that’s new
- Ah hah, found it
- 100k miles and still going strong. Never even changed the oil. Happy Friday!
- A handful of the many desktops I use where no one is spying on me.
- Hype Driven Development
- Email sucks
- I've done 10PRINT on so many computer like things. I should make a list ;-)
- Lined up like little soldiers ;-)
- Neater? Maybe.
- This lady...
- Bailey Mountain Hike
- Got a hot tip from @8BitShowAndTell on the entire first year(1977) of Personal Computing. Expect to be bombarded with 1977 goodness over the next weeks. Happy Friday!
- I’m sorry Dave
- Deep thoughts from my Commodore VIC-20 (which will be just fine when the Cylons come back).
- It’s always something
- Now to pick a machine to test it in. Happy Wednesday!
- New CAN bus hacker. Should be fun.
- Hater's gonna hate
- What? Don’t look at me like that. It’s for science.
- Sometimes you just need to step away
- Sitting on the porch listening to the rain. Might as well up my Verilog/FPGA skills while I’m at it.
- Now that’s what I call a proper breakout board. Happy Thursday, go make something.
- The cycle I'm trying to get out of
- Endless fun
- For no particular reason at all I’ve started taking inventory of the many computers I own that don’t take screenshots of everything I do every few seconds.
- Losing my FujiNet virginity this afternoon
- This is my workstation cleaned up. I might need an intervention.
- Supposed to be stormy this afternoon so I’m gonna try and come up with some fun things to do with the Neo6502
- I agreed to teach some FPGA first principles to a small group. This is my recommended board for beginner FPGA development. Has everything a growing boy needs :)
- Finally figured out how to beat @8BitShowAndTell 's Hypothetical "Game 31" from his Iwata video without watching the spoiler. My life is now complete.
- Compressed and decidedly not better
- Doing a little breadth first searching on the KIM-1 using a Commodore 64 as a terminal.
- Oh cool, iOS release. I’ll bet it has groundbreaking new functionality. Or… a wallpaper.
- If you're not learning Fortran today, what are you even doing with your life? Happy Monday!
- THIS
- Outside today because it’s 65F and Sunny, but yesterday I finally got my Neo6502 fixed. Was a bad solder joint from manufacturing.
- I still use Practicalc almost every day. It’s quirky but it works. Happy Friday!
- Company retreat at a Casino, which means I don’t know what to do with myself. Also, breakfast places don’t open till 7. I guess I’ll go for a hike. Sigh.
- Trying to decide if I want to go down this rabbit hole
- Fishing with Dad is always better than work
- More reflecting on the 60th anniversary of BASIC
- I have a number of books without decent scans available online. I kept the bookmark that came with this once since a punchcard seemed appropriate. Scanning this one (carefully) this week.
- My hat is off to the person who designed this DIP/CPLD Board for the ULA81.
- Stole this from X...
- Sure you’ve used Super Snapshot, but did you know it before it was Super? Made in Canada…
- Impromptu trip with my youngest to Charleston for the weekend where he continues the family tradition of people taking pictures of me looking at water without me knowing they are.
- I love that a small community will form so quickly around stuff like this
- I just picked up a handful of processors from Mouser. I always find the date codes on brand-new hardware interesting. They must have a ton of these on the shelf.
- The grass isn't always greener
- With a ZXpand+, this thing rivals any modern supercomputer
- Learning AI Week 2
- Head down mode
- This is the flattest part of our whole property, so that’s where the garden got moved to.
- On a side quest mission for @8BitShowAndTell because… science.
- How do you spot an "AI" developer?
- Single Stepping for the WIN
- Okay, fine, I'll jump on the AI bandwagon.
- If you wake up early enough, you can sneak an hour of trout fishing in before work.
- Still my favorite laptop
- Fasting
- Actual footage of the IRS behemoth computer system processing your returns today. Gonna be a while.
- Fancy keyboard
- Recording retro tape output to Audacity
- Pixel perfect?
- Rethinking the approach
- More than a like please
- Okay, the Sinclair 1000 / ZX81 is pretty cool
- Sometimes you find gold with thrift stores. A VERY good copy of The First Book of KIM for… $3. Crazy.
- Update on the donated Sinclair 1000 that "doesn't work"
- Updating the firmware on all my test equipment today
- You know you're doing something right when you have your own directory on people's SD2IEC cards.
- Eclipse 2024
- There's always something.
- I might have to hug a VIC-20 after this
- A little Friday fun… continuing my quest to do 10PRINT on all the things. This morning I figured out a reasonable version for the HP-42S.
- My HP-42S has had this crap on it for years, and I don't know what it is. I can't easily scrape it off, and it really bugs me. Old calculator problems...
- After the xz supply chain attack news last week, this is now the newest computer I have any faith in whatsoever.
- Some truths are self-evident.
- Doing another composite mod for someone
- I'm not an April Fools fan at all. I think I'll switch to platforms that can't even access the internet.
- Took a deer hair spinning class today. From left to right my first to the final one I did. The last one turned out great and I feel like I can make these now. An afternoon well spent. Next is to see how they fish.
- xz vulnerability on a Mac with Homebrew
- Any progress is progress.
- This is a fun game but you NEED the manual and accompanying stuff for it to be playable. What other games from pre 1993 do you like that are like this?
- This was released yesterday and I’m about halfway through it. If you have kids, this might be the most important book published in quite some time.
- The best thing about remembering the time before cell phones: When you were really mad, you could SLAM the phone down to hang up. It was glorious.
- Stuck
- My youngest got me a travel Mig Welder and new helmet for my birthday because “you never know when you need to fuse metal on the go”.
- This handwritten note fell out of this book.
- I write, even if no one reads it.
- Moving the garden this year, and it’s basically like starting over. Progress is being made.
- Working on my 10 top games of all time list. I've got it down to the top 150. 150 is close to 10, right?
- If you think it’s subliminal messaging instead of a plan and discipline that’ll be your key to success, then boy do I have a cassette for you.
- “Vintage gaming TV”
- I often have a PET demo or game playing in the background of video meetings. Today’s choice is a fun one. Happy Friday.
- I found some coins I brought back from a trip to Moscow in 1992 and used my Commodore calculator to estimate their current value.
- My version of the McNuggets problem in BASIC. Happy Thursday!
- I was skeptical about these, but I have a fair number of devices that use 9v batteries. These rechargeables work great.
- Brush clearing day two. I win for most arm and leg cuts from thicket.
- Brush clearing day. I can skip the gym today for sure.
- The Bloody Hundredth
- My Ti Programmer (1977ish) is a curious one.
- Happy pi day from me and my Commodore PET 2001-8N!
- Partly metal, partly real
- My least favorite X feature:
- I don't use the ESP32 module on my Ultimate64 much. But I deserve some credit for my choice of DHCP address reservation.
- Less
- Blog forward
- On the laptop prowl
- Low resolution is fine
- I spent a few minutes working on the visuals of the Enigma ring positions in Assembly.
- I picked up this promotional poster for this Sybex title because I love this book so much. Palm V for scale on both the book and the poster… the poster is MUCH bigger than I expected. Now to find a place to put it.
- My modern graphing calculators from most to least favorite.
- I happen to like my day job, but a slow day fishing with my Dad beats work any day of the week.
- Today’s $25 thrift store find: AI resistant writing tool. These Electra series typewriters are fabulous to type on.
- Reimagining our property in 2024. Project number three for the winter is a mini high tunnel.
- Happy leap day! Decided to do some Gregorian calendar leap year calculations in assembly the hard way. KIM-1 clone is the right tool for the job!
- This "Caring for your Computer" book by Rodnay Zaks/Sybex from 1981 has some EXTREMELY RELEVANT life advice for 2024. Control your emotions... brilliant.
- The keys on this Commodore calculator look pretty familiar to many of us.
- Decided to take the plunge and buy a computer for our home. There are a lot of choices so I found this book to help us decide what’s right for us.
- I have absolutely no memory of this day or who took this picture. But there is proof that I smiled once. It was the 90s, and this is probably at 2 am, so that's my excuse.
- Another super interesting book for my Zaks collection.
- Interference? Whatever, my signal wiring is perfect.
- I get so many questions about this thing on Zoom calls.
- Another great one in the Sybex/Rodnay Zaks collection.
- Change
- I propose we change AI to AIT, meaning Automated Idea Thief.
- Enjoying this add-on to the Flipper. "Games" will be cool, but making screen captures of the Flipper is really what I wanted. Almost as cool as a Commodore (which can also play DOOM).
- Converting my 6502 Cluster to run WOZMON and MS BASIC. It was running just machine code and sometimes Eh-BASIC, but this fits my style better. Happy Thursday!
- Ah HAH. So, THIS is how they came up with those patterns in the 80s
- Funny how time goes by so fast. I put almost 500 hours on that plane in 3 years
- It's a fun and very short little book, but the number of typos, especially in the code listings, is next level. Bravo!
- It's day 12 with the Atari 800XL, and I'm wrapping my head around how far ahead it was in several areas. For example, graphics like this are actually relatively easy.
- You say caps lock, I say return key. Let’s say we all get along.
- Game starts early in my time zone.
- I heard that Canada is thinking of banning these. I only use mine to play asteroids. Silly Canada. 😇
- There are countless places to be an audience member. Just by using my phone, I could be a passive listener for 1000 lifetimes. I'm looking for community and relationships.
- I feel really spoiled on the C64 with TMP. I use Merlin on the Apple II, which is pretty good. Currently trying MAC/65 on the Atari 800. Does anyone have a different Assembler they like better?
- I found what I think is the greatest computer book cover of all time. Please tell me I can find a physical copy of this somewhere
- More Atari BASIC vs Turbo BASIC XL fun with my "standard marginal method" benchmark. I always thought the jiffy clock wasn't available on the Atari, but it lacks a convenient method. It still works fine if you use it directly.
- Stupid races
- Ported my Commodore 64 N-Queens solver to the Atari 800. It's only about 8% slower and was a snap to port.
- Looking for something fun to make with this thing. Suggestions?
- It's been a weird week. Also, Turbo BASIC seems like a required upgrade for the 800XL. Happy Friday.
- Hello darkness, my old friend.
- Too head down?
- Daylight savings is not in the winter!
- Adding another one to my Zaks collection. Love this one.
- Switched to this serial multiplexer by Atlas Scientific for my 6502 cluster communications. This lets me keep everything serial and control it with an 8-bit computer for job scheduling and data aggregation. Happy Friday!
- I got the last Christmas present of the year from my Son today. He had a custom wood map made for me that took months longer than anticipated. Definitely worth the wait.
- My Dad was a mainframe guy from 1974-2007. He was cleaning out a drawer and says “hey, do you want this?” Why yes, yes I do.
- Modern PCB manufacturing has become so easy and convenient. It's basically the same price to get 50 as it is to get 5 boards made. So that means I have 49 spares...
- We have about 12 inches of dead space above our kitchen cabinets. My better half suggested that a train might work up there. There isn’t really room to turn one around so something that can run equally well in either direction seemed appropriate. Now to design a bridge to go over the window… I’m not into celebrities, but if pressed I don’t have to think hard to come up with my favorite. Any guesses?
- It's a random lunchtime side quest, working to generate a circle with 41 of character 81 on a Commodore 64. Each iteration has been getting smoother. If you have a better way, let me know.
- The first two games I have any memory of playing. They both still stand up today. I didn’t intentionally start alphabetically, but it worked out that way.
- Walmart beats DHL by miles
- This is why I always remove the RF shields.
- What’s the best way to get this stick-on heat sink and the adhesive off of this VIC-II?
- Snowed/iced in this evening. Might as well hook up the 6502 cluster to a VIC-20 and get it calculating things at blazing speeds :) Been using the EEPROM emulator since early last year to really speed up my ROM development cycles. Oh, here’s another 100% AI free zone.
- I’ve been saving the Kawari for when I have a VIC-II fail which is silly. They are 40 years old, why would I think they’d fail this year?
- These are books 1 and 3 in this series and they are some of my favorite computer books of all time. I’m on the prowl for books 2 and 4. Happy Thursday!
- I’m the one who put this “working” label on this power supply but I have never, ever plugged it in without verifying. It’s actually my only working 2 prong. I have three with bad transformers.
- Checking for AI free zones. Found one.
- Porting Wozmon to my 6502 cluster nodes and I spent several hours chasing a “bug” in my code. Turns out I had this box unchecked in my terminal emulator. Was working all along. Doh.
- This week’s side quest: going to interface my Flipper Zero to a 6502 SBC. Should be fun.
- Grover > Elmo
- Emulator vs real
- This is the first time my 2020 Intel Mac has been too old for something. Too soon.
- Rust isn't an excellent language for scripting, but I've been playing with it in JupyterLab just for fun.
- Visualizing the 23-bit random number/noise generator in the Commodore 64 SID
- How much will it cost?
- This album makes excellent use of the record sleeve. I had this on cassette as a kid and I feel like it was also on the cassette sleeve, but I’m not trusting my memory on that.
- A little after Christmas, Christmas present. The detail is really impressive.
- This is why I went back to buying physical books and movies. I can’t read this at the hotel because my Kindle hasn’t been able to verify the DRM this morning. It was online YESTERDAY. Make paper great again.
- Found these in a bin this morning. I can throw away all of my other electronics now that I have 4 do anything chips :)
- The Spudger is the most used tool in my shop. I need a 10 pack of them.
- Any calculator where the manual mentions two's compliment is a keeper in my book ;-)
- In 2021, I did a deep dive into Swift; I no longer use it. In 2022, it was Julia. I don't use it anymore. 2023 was Elixir; my usage is dropping off. In 2024, it's going to be Rust. Will it remain in my toolbox or be another tangent for me? Time will tell.
- My all time favorite book
- Just finished building this guy. It's a fun project and a decent learning environment to mash the RP2040 C++ environment with 6502 Assembly. It's an unlikely but surprisingly good pairing. What would be better on the RP2040, though? Rust.
- A little Logo fun this morning on the C64 since I saw a few snowflakes outside.
- Don't be a drone
- 21 years old, still a useful book. Not many computer books can say that.
- Day 6 of #AdventOfCode part 1 was a snap for the PET
- Alright Mr PET, you’re sitting #adventofcode2023 out today. Today’s is a doozy and you’ve earned a break.
- I appreciate modern conveniences more: first principles are worth it. Today's #adventofcode2023 in Python was 14 lines. Was 68 on the PET. Things like re.split("\s+", line) and list(map(int, parts[2:12])) feel like cheating. Do y'all even know how any of this works? ;-)
- It's just a big screen
- Didn't have much trouble with #AdventOfCode today BUT I'm reminded of how modern languages can do things like s.split(":") and get a nice list. Appreciate how much work went into that built-in function we take for granted. String splitting 1979 style for that 1st set of cubes...
- When is it cheating?
- Just popped over to the local Sears to get some new paddles. Totally rad.
- Wow, #AdventOfCode Day 1 was much more challenging than how it usually starts
- Selling this or cannibalizing it for parts. It’s the only green Cerberus 2080 I’ve seen.
- Haven't had this guy out for a walk in a while. Happy Thursday!
- Minor Micro-Soft (yes, 1976 spelling)/Commodore BASIC nitpick. Arrays are zero-based (as god intended), but MID$ is one-based. I mixed up this as a kid and sometimes get tripped up today. Anyway, I'm reviewing my 2022 #aventofcode stuff to prep for Friday.
- Today's Pomodoro breaks are brought to you by the VIC-20 and Virtual Burnout by LukHash
- Ephemeral things
- Fixing a VIC-20 for someone. That’s a bad clock signal, but it’s also kinda neat looking.
- I’ve completed all 25 days of #adventofcode the last 4 years. Last year I did about 1/3 of them on my Commodore PET 2001. Sometimes the data was too unruly to try to get onto it so for those I resorted to Julia. Should I use the PET again this year or a different 8 bit computer?
- I take excellent notes, but every once in a while, I'll take something out and stare at it wondering... where is the CPU for this one, and why did I take it out?
- In case you were just sitting there wondering... C64Forever/AmigaForever seems to run okayish in Whiskey on an M1 Mac.
- A little light ARM assembly reading this morning. And yes, we have three Christmas trees. You’re not the boss of us.
- Got a fun emulator project in the works with a mechboard. Since the keycaps are breadbin colored I went with the breadbin colored case even if it’s not traditional for the C64c case.
- I keep seeing this 1982-3 ad of a Commodore 64 in a briefcase. It DOES, in fact, fit in a standard-sized briefcase, although I'm not sure I know why I would have wanted to.
- 10print on the TI-nspire. Also Python and feels like cheating. Still fun though. Happy Friday!
- Happy thanksgiving in the US. For Today’s 10PRINT the @NumWorks calculator has Python instead of Basic and I got it on one line even if it’s hard to read like that. This calculator sure is fast!
- A little Thanksgiving week fun. Here's 10PRINT on a TI-92. I couldn't find a way to escape a new line, so I tried a different approach. Also, iPhones have difficulty locking focus on this screen.
- Has anyone considered that maybe the AI is coordinating the board coup at OpenAI? Where are my wire cutters?
- A little sanity/verification that my two's compliment circuit is working. It is, and it was without any debugging, which freaks me out. Happy Monday!
- Okay, I'm putting the C128 away and going to my happy place. I've always wanted to love the 128 but give me a VIC-20 or C64, and that's where I'm truly happy.
- One of the many “don’t forget to teach your kids how to” things.
- A little Friday night VIC-20 VIC chip replacement fun. Finally getting around to NTSC. My test bench looks right for the clocks I need to generate. Wild and crazy around here on Friday nights ;)
- These ROMs have 8 switchable ROM images on them. And by using a rotary switch to select them, you can play Russian roulette. Which ROM did we get this time, Dad?
- Safety third.
- Sometimes, I've just got to step away. Went to build my FPGA test bench, and now GTKWave on my Mac needs an obsolete module from an ancient Perl version to launch via the command line. I give up for today. The VIC-20 video test will have to wait. Sigh.
- Anyone else need to do something with their hands during meetings?
- I’ve decided to start theming the years.
- When I sit and think about WHY I'm building a VIC chip drop-in, I sometimes lose sight of the goal. But just today, one of the CIAs on my Commodore 128 died. So happy for products like the J-CIA. This 128 has many drop-in replacement parts and is a good motivator.
- A donated 1541 with nice VIC colors. It does work but the fuse holder is broken and there’s a scorch mark next to it. Might replace it with modernish power supply after I thoroughly clean it. Cool to have a long board variant.
- Designed a simple demo in Logisim, which worked great. But it's not nearly as satisfying as making it for real. So... out comes the breadboard. I wonder if I can make the wires neat... probably not. Happy Friday!
- These are a few of my favorite things
- Just found this in a box. We RAN home from school to catch this at 4pm on weekdays.
- Out of all the gates, XOR is my favorite. Happy Wednesday!
- Commodore AND keyword
- The Mechboard64 does not work out of the box with a KeyRah v3. I did figure out a workaround so I’m going to write up some detailed instructions in case anyone else wants to put these two things together. VIC-20 colored keycaps for me of course.
- ChatGPT is like a terrible junior engineer
- Another impressive SwissMicros replica.
- Looking forward to when those new keycaps will be available again. I CANNOT bring myself to cannibalize a perfectly working original C64 keyboard for this.
- Working on myself
- I love these things but it took a long time to get here. Going in a Breadbin tonight in time for some holiday tunes.
- 1541 surgery time
- I have tried several 80 column solutions. The RGBtoHDMI by @TexElecUSA is the best by a long shot. Happy Friday!
- Saved my #NaNoWriMo2023 work to a 5.25 today to keep @GetOuttaHeah from yelling at me for using modern stuff like 3.5 inch floppies. Happy Thursday!
- Both of the programmer calculators I have are missing y^x functions. At least on the HP-16C I can write a short program to do that. I use y^x more than the average bear. Still like this Casio a lot though.
- My post earlier about writing on a KIM-1 by typing in hex ASCII codes by hand was a joke, obviously. My real distraction-resistant writing platform for #Nanowrimo2023 is my HP t5710 Thin Client running FreeDOS and WordPerfect 6. Just for fun, I'm going to save my work on floppies
- Alight @8BitShowAndTell, challenge accepted. Until 3 minutes ago I wasn’t even sure the 128 had the Kernal routines for the Datasette.
- Working on my distraction free #NaNoWriMo setup. Using this table I’m up to typing as fast as two words a minute. If I don’t sleep, there’s 43200 minutes in November so I can hit the 50000 word goal for the month of I account for the inevitable going crazy from lack of sleep
- My copy of David Youd's book came today. I had already implemented $3A earlier this week, which timed nicely with my n-queens implementation in BASIC. Pretty fun!
- Untested 1541. Just spins and spins. I’m sure this capacitor came from the factory like that :)
- That is quite the clever hex-to-decimal converter for the 6502. Embrace constraints and happy Friday!
- I’m excited to be able to really study this text.
- The N-Queens problem feels easier to understand and more fun to implement on old computery things.
- N-Queens solver is working great on the KIM-1. Now to finish the article ;-)
- Somebody was glad my puffy coat was in the truck. 38 degrees on our hike today.
- It's October, so Halloween themed Zoom meeting help is in order. Just in case this game wasn't hard enough, try the Commodore 64 version on a joystick with a single button. Jump is up... so hard like this.
- Is this good for me?
- Solving the 8-queens problem on a Commodore 64. I won't leave it in the final version, but sometimes it's fun to print the output of loops to watch your backtracking algorithm work. Happy Friday!
- Wednesday shenanigans
- On my morning walk/hike and I just saw a bear run through that foggy area. I think I will turn around a little bit early this morning.
- This is the correct layout of cursor keys. All other layouts are inferior.
- These are the two keyboards in my office. Both brown mechanical switches and are fantastic to type on, but the fact that they have different arrow key layouts really trips me up sometimes. Anyway, happy Monday!
- Some people say my 35 year old bow should be retired. New bow technology is better or some nonsense. The secret to archery is in the archer, not the bow. That’s why I shoot better than you, whipper snapper.
- Still my best distraction-resistant writing setup. FreeDOS, Wordperfect 6.22, mechanical keyboard with brown switches on an HP t5710 thin client (they make GREAT DOS machines).
- I'm stuck on something in my day job. Gonna switch gears and do some therapy, back to implementing Enigma 8-bit style. Where we're going, there's gonna be a lot of assembly coding ;-) Happy Fall!
- I read every single page and typed in every single line of code in both of these books. Something I told myself I would do when I was a kid, but you know kids. Definitely worth the effort.
- If I am remembering correctly, I graduated boot camp in San Diego 30 years ago today.
- GM touch screens are comically unreliable. Dealer wanted $800 to fix it. A little parts research, Torx bits and a heat gun and I did it for $34 in an hour. New touch screen is all shiny. Hack the planet.
- I'm trying to decide if I knew you could do this in MS style BASIC before just now or not. Surely I did right?
- Found this receipt in this book being used as a bookmark. Decided to keep using it as a bookmark. Happy Friday!
- A rare occasion where I prefer the look of the beige model.
- Had a lot of fun learning TI Extended BASIC for the TI 99/4A to port a Rail Fence Cipher from my Commodore 64 version.
- Alright, the TI 99/4A is really growing on me. Decided to get my hands a little dirtier and write a simple Cipher in Extended BASIC. There is a lot of string manipulation in Cipher work. Commodore version, side by side, and article tomorrow. 34 lines of code, easy peasy.
- One issue with the TI fixed. Cassette interface now good to go. I have another cassette player around here somewhere with a counter on it which would be useful. On to what’s wrong with the cart port.
- Slowly undressed the TI 99/4a… made bow chica wow wow sounds while I did it. Cassette interface and cartridges don’t work. Time to find some schematics.
- What a super interesting book.
- Whelp, it's #Septandy. Since I only have Cocos, we'll see how long I can look at the soothing toxic green before turning into a Ninja Turtle. Is it #VICober yet?
- Keys are all unstuck. That. Was. Tedious.
- More Septandy prep. Still my least favorite line of retro computers to actually use but I’m gonna try to find some parts to love.
- Tandy Coco 1 keyboard: it’s nice and clean inside but the plungers on this side are mechanically difficult to press and get hung up. Ideas?
- Without using TI Extended BASIC (yet), this is the shortest I've managed a 10 PRINT on a TI 99/4A. It's not 1 line, but it's easy to understand and has the advantage of making any two characters you want quickly on the fly to randomly print.
- Just arrived. Pretty cool! I was in VAQ-209 from 1994 to 1999.
- Attempt #3 of 10 PRINT on the TI 99/4A: While a far cry from the elegance and simplicity of the Commodore 10 PRINT, this version at least got me to learn how to redefine characters on the fly and make it look much better.
- Take number two is even uglier so I decided to do it a second pass vertically. It's also super slow which is... nice... Next I think we redefine some characters to at least make the "maze" look better. If we can't make it fast or even close to one line, we can at least put some lipstick on it.
- Playing around a little with TI 99/4A BASIC. It's different than what I'm used to, but I do like the IF-THEN-ELSE. Here's try #1 at a 10 PRINT program. Surely we can do better than this.
- Always a good morning when there's @8BitShowAndTell Turbo Macro Pro code to study and contemplate. Happy Tuesday!
- I feel weird opening this but I need the cable… 1982 in the package.
- Traded a Coco2 for my first TI-99/4A "untested." I don't have direct experience with TI hardware. Assumed my experience meant I would be able to fix whatever might be wrong. It works just fine, which is slightly disappointing because I love restoring old computery things.
- I was a guest on @8BitShowAndTell's last video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTxiR4ZKfvo) and in it he gave me a new title. This is a longstanding inside joke between Robin, @DarrenFoulds and me from their 80s podcast (which is on a break). I decided to make it official by getting it in print.
- All computer books should be spiral-bound
- I’m about a year into the DM42 replacing my 32SII that was my daily driver for almost 30 years. Hard to argue with how well that HP stood up to being abused in my laptop bag all that time and still works like a champ. They don’t often make ‘em like they used to.
- Using the old “RF modulator from a broken VCR” trick again.
- Fishing was slow, but the rest was fantastic.
- Still working on these routines. Happy Friday!
- Don’t forget to show your PETs some love. Happy Wednesday!
- ML line drawing routines are working well. Happy Tuesday! #firstprinciples
- Had these two books on my shelf as a kid. Always thought that I should spend the time to understand them. At 11, self-discipline was hard. I might be late, but just finished the first one. Every page, every line of code. Starting the second tonight. First principles is the way.
- Nice and cool in the balsam forrest.
- I’m trying to imagine getting my VIC replacement even close to the size of this thing. Really impressed.
- Error checking type in data entry is all the rage these days. Happy Friday!
- Just another random stretch of my daily walk. This is the only flat part. I’ve been doing more or less the same 3.5 mile walk 3-5 times a week for 10 years. It wasn’t until I took out the headphones and stopped tracking my health stats that it became really transformative.
- I don't think Forth is some closet technology waiting for its moment. But it makes me think about problems differently, so I continue studying it.
- The back of the Super Expander manual has some fun listings. Here's the first one.
- Many asked about making the grid with the stock BASIC. It can be done, and is even fairly straightforward, but it's awfully slow (40 minutes). Still fun though.
- French Broad was low today. Julie led most of the way for about 6 miles as we picked our way through the rocks.
- It's rumored that @elonmusk's first computer was a VIC-20. I thought doing the logo would be easier than it turned out to be, but it's still just 10 lines of code, thanks to Super Expander. #commodore #vic20
- I’ll probably get good money for these deck boards if I call them vintage.
- :%s/A.I./Master Control/g
- I saw this in a grocery store in Ely Minnesota. I wish I had bought it.
- At Commodore in 1982, someone was like "let's make a knockoff, but should we at least make it look and sound like it's not at knockoff?" Nahhh, ship it!
- These are nutritionally interesting but texturally challenging.
- I'm sitting here realizing that I don't actually know how to send a high res screen on the VIC-20 to a printer. Hmmm.
- Can't leave out the VIC-20. Happy Friday
- More than one person called me out for using Python to make my Commodore screen grid. Assembly is easy enough, but I already had my SuperExpander out for another project. I had both it and SIMON's BASIC in the 80s, so I'm calling it "fair to use" as it's authentic to my childhood
- I’m jaded with 2023 technology at work today. Time to revisit the 80s.
- Visualizing the season's progressing, nerd style.
- So I'm to understand that everyone doesn't write Python programs to generate 40x25 sheets to lay out vintage computer screen ideas on Tuesday nights. Apparently just me. Okay then. ;-)
- Hi res 10 Print style render inspired by @8BitShowAndTell this morning. Takes a lot of Mississippi’s to finish the whole screen.
- Looking through my photos and noticed this strange nighttime glitch shot of the Adler Planetarium from a boat in the harbor. Trying to figure out how this happened but it’s kinda neat.
- I want to use a PET to explain simple shift ciphers. The challenge is comparing the current and standard English distribution with only 40x25 characters. Two graphs on the screen would be better. Giving it another think because I'm not happy with this.
- I’m thinking maybe a PET theme for August. Haven’t had the MiniPET out in a while so I’ll start with that.
- There’s a view I don’t get often.
- Second Great Lake this summer.
- Happy
- There’s a lunch provided at the conference but I have science data to gather.
- I’ve reached that part of my career where I’m supposed to write my own FORTH which is what FORTH is best at.
- Not a city boy at heart, but Chicago is nice to look at during the night.
- Studying 8-bit FORTH for a couple weeks mainly to look at problems differently
- Finally repaired my beloved Sharp 9300(from High School) so it’s in today’s episode of stupid races between old computery things. Fibonacci to 35 and the VIC-20 still wins. Good effort though.
- I use cartridge port expanders quite a bit. I don’t have much use past 2 ports on either the Commodore 64 or VIC-20. I kinda want to see if I can devise a memory map setup on the VIC-20 to use all 5 slots. For science.
- This HP-45 Emulator is freaking amazing.
- Found this in a box. I wonder what it is a backup of. Don’t have a drive to read it anyway.
- Happy Monday
- I have a friend who wants to start a new business with me. He just sent me mock-ups hand drawn on graph paper. This is my love language.
- Short bed truck problems.
- Okay, FORTH language people, what problem areas is FORTH particularly well suited for? I'm past the super beginner stages and ready to apply it to a problem area to see how I feel about it.
- Godspeed Kevin
- Four mile walk and wrote 833 more words on a position paper for a DevSecOps industry strategy before 8am so I rewarded myself with a random game on the VIC-20. Rod's Random Runner Picked Splatform which is one of my favorites. What are the chances?! Happy Wednesday!
- I’m sure quite a few people were sitting sipping some morning coffee, wondering if there was a good cheat sheet for SpeedScript. Well, Compute Gazette May 1987 has your solution. Happy Tuesday!
- Mint in the box. And certified for freshness. Maybe there’s some 1990s air trapped inside.
- Sure it's crazy easy to create visuals these days, but why did it somehow used to seem cooler even if it's not as accurate?
- Morning workout route never disappoints even if the fog is obscuring the mountains.
- My morning reading combo. These go together right?
- It’s a hard knock life
- Made a minor adjustment to get the 10PRINT in Forth from @8BitShowAndTell 's 64FORTH video adapted to VICFORTH on the Commodore VIC-20. Using VICFORTH itself as the source of randomness which starts at $A000 on the VIC. Nifty.
- This is a quirky and interesting Forth implementation. Gonna try some frequency distribution on it to see if it'll work for some of my silly crypto on 8 Bit work
- Still my favorite writing setup (besides a typewriter). HP Thin Client I paid $10 for running DOS and WordPerfect 6. I use a 3.5 inch floppy drive to move documents on and off of it just because I like it.
- VIM on DOS… interesting. I’m here for the WordPerfect but I’m intrigued.
- I’d like to announce that I’m also forking RedHat. I’m starting with a slightly earlier version (the last time it was good).
- Whelp, this is a good start. I have two working spares. Now to wire it up on a breadboard to reverse engineer. But first, we read the datasheets! #RTFM
- Sigh. Mounted my Corsham KIM-1 clone on plexiglass. Had this project on my list for months and cracked it on the last hole. Can’t win em all.
- That’s a weird place for a loose connection. At least it’s easy to get to. Happy Monday
- And now we do the dance of joy. A lot of folks are into this new Cart for the games, but I’m here for this menu.
- I needed to calculate (26! / (12!(26-12)!))*(12-1)!!
- I don’t know. I think we could stack at least three more.
- Confession. Sometimes I use a 1541-II with a VIC-20 because I’m too lazy to look through storage boxes.
- I love that @ben_eater is doing a deep dives into Wozmon. Been in my KIM-1 toolbox for some time. Amazing how much is packed into less than 256 bytes of code. Doing another month of my Corsham KIM-1 on my desk in memory of it's late creator Bob Applegate who passed last month.
- Working on my VCS cartridge collection. I vividly remember selling ours at a garage sale in the late 80s. Definitely need Pitfall next. Happy Friday.
- Happy Friday, Apple IIe style ;-)
- I am working on the VIC chip replacement project this morning. The color palette is tricky on VIC-20s. Spending a lot of time building resistor ladders with available values to try and get it closer. Why did I insist on this being composite out? VGA would be done by now.
- I can do a real Rubik's cube in about 2 minutes, but this version takes me so much longer. Happy Wednesday! #commodore #vic20
- This is the oldest one I’ve seen. It would need a lot of work.
- The latest Ultimate II+ and Ultimate 64 firmware supports 128k cartridges. Naturally the first one I have to run through its paces is Snappy ;-) #commodore
- It’s Monday morning and I realized I’ve not done 10PRINT on this AIM 65 clone yet. There, universe is no longer tilted.
- What is it about calculations in columns on a monochrome screen like a Commodore PET that’s so appealing? I can’t put my finger on it, but it just makes me smile. Happy Friday!
- Haven’t used my One Time Pad helper for the Commodore in a while. Broke it out tonight to work on performance improvements. Getting zippy.
- Interesting… so I had to use an Intel Mac to build it, but it RUNS just fine on my M1 Mac. So there’s now a MacOS version of @HansOtten KIM-1 simulator now that’s caught up with the most current version. Not bad for a long lunch break side quest.
- I've built @HansOtten 's KIM-1 Simulator for Mac (Intel... Atom doesn't work AT ALL). Now I need to figure out how to make a script into a .app file on Mac so he can distribute it.
- Picking up where I left off on the VIC-20 6560/1 replacement project. It’s still working after having been in storage so that’s a good start.
- My pocket chip still boots. This was a good project and I’m sad it didn’t make it in the long run.
- Broke out my hash collider program on the Commodore 64 this morning. You know, science n stuff.
- I just found out that Bob Applegate passed away on Tuesday. I only knew Bob through email exchanges, but he was wonderful to correspond with. I'm going to spend the next weeks with my KIM-1 Clone, in remembrance. Godspeed Bob.
- This fanless laptop is just sooo satisfying.
- Having a hard time finding anything interesting lately. I’m gonna put the 6502 cluster away and try something else.
- One of my side quests this week is to thoroughly clean this guy and work a little on the video output. Then it'll be ready to write a novel on. Chicklet keys are so smooth for long typing sessions.
- Julie is threatening to make a picture book titled “Where’s Michael?”
- Hubble caught an Aurora Borealis on Saturn. Don’t forget to look up at night.
- Assembly coder friends will appreciate this
- You don't HAVE to "create a video for this."
- Today’s lunchtime learn something new is sorting out all of the Rockwell AIM 65 monitor commands. The built in assembler is pretty good. Happy Wednesday!
- I loved the poem by @K0FFY_Radio so much that I framed it and hung it in my office.
- Finally found breadboard IDC connectors that actually stay in breadboards
- I've loved fixing things as long as I can remember. Instead of a lunch break, I'm fixing two keyboards. Not just any keyboards, the BEST keyboards. Happy Monday!
- Needed a quick second logic analyzer for a slow circuit. It’s a hack but it works :)
- 10 years ago today I witnessed a hit and run which resulted in an elderly couple being stuck in their car which caught fire. Manager at the restaurant across the street was pretty upset when I stole their fire extinguisher to put the fire out. I guess that Navy DC training stuck.
- My "Complete Lance A. Leventhal" library is one more book closer to completion
- When you get a new to me breadbin Commodore 64 (the best computer ever made) from @K0FFY_Radio you get dot matrix letters AND an unexpected software bonus. Woot!
- Taking the printer interface on the AIM 65 clone for a test drive. A sine wave should do the trick
- I don’t have diabetes, but I’m a health data nerd. For the next 14 days I’m wearing a Freestyle Libre CGM. They say it takes a bit be accurate. Let’s hope that’s true because compared to a finger prick meter (which is pretty accurate) it’s not even close.
- I’m on the prowl for this book. Physical or scanned electronic. There’s a copy on Archive.org but it’s not downloadable. Check your attics and basements
- Package arrived from Japan today. I’m super excited to be a small part of this project. AIM-65 clone for the win!
- Writing mirrors thought. Outsourcing it to AI may sideline our cognitive engagement. I value AI's potential yet value intellectual growth for people. Use AI to help cure cancer (or MS), but do not stop thinking and creating. Also, quit being lazy; it makes you boring.
- I found a tube with 8 old school 6551’s in it. I’m running the 6502 cluster nodes at 1.843Mhz so I needed the “AP” model which is what I have. Sooo much easier when you’re trying to multiplex 5 serial devices to not have that transmit bug and delay math in the newer model. Woot!
- Pretty sure everyone has a serial tap these days
- Ooooo nice, a 6551 without that nasty hardware bug. Fancy.
- Still lots of work to do on the job scheduling and "worker node" software side for sure, but my 6502 Cubesat sized "cluster" is up and running on a VIC-20 controller node. Not a bad cap to the week. Happy Friday!
- Iiiiittttt'ssss worrrrrkkkingggg. Iiiiittttt'ssss worrrrrkkkingggg.
- Been having an intermittent problem with my Corsham SD board.
- Been obsessed with James Nestor's book on Breath for the last week or so. Wanted to dive into learning Vue, so here's my simple Breathe app to reset my breath throughout the day.
- Working with these great bi directional signal mux boards from @sparkfun today.
- That’s the best packed and shipped old book I’ve bought in a long time. Bravo random eBay seller.
- Nothing says “easy to read” like a VIC-20 serial program in 40 column mode connecting to a remote BASIC machine. I mean, it takes up almost 2/3 of the screen. Plenty of room ;-) I do have a Commodore 128 with a very good 80 column display, but who wants this stuff to be easy?
- This is turning out even better than I hoped. Three 6502 cluster nodes and their serial multiplexer are now hardware complete + tested on their Commodore 64 controller. Hard part is next: writing software. Is VERY close to cubesat sized so now my brain is whirling about that idea
- I’ve had a working “world’s worst paper tape reader” for a year now. Where does the time go?
- Moving my serial multiplexer hack to a more permanent ish setup. I really dig these gold and black proto boards.
- I want to stack my 6502 cluster nodes to save space. They have standard motherboard mounting holes on all four corners. Thoughts on how to mount them about 5cm apart 3 to 5 boards high? It’s for science so….
- Sometimes the best debugging tool is to just print the values. Found it.
- Who has a primer on sizing pull up and pull down resistors? These work but I just guessed.
- Sticking to first principles wherever I can. Moved my serial multiplexer prototype over to the Corsham KIM-1 clone. Working great and ready to be moved to a more permanent proto board. Maybe someday I’ll learn KiCAD and get this fabbed for realz. 6502 cluster 1 day closer!
- My current build project is getting a little out of control. I’m gonna need a bigger house.
- Everyone but me at my company is at RSA in San Francisco. I was invited but declined. For reasons :)
- Flash, insert, test, remove, and reflash are time-consuming. I picked up this ROM emulator to shorten that test cycle on the 6502 Cluster nodes, probably 10x. Less than a week (probably) from having the whole cluster setup first run. Happy Friday!
- All three 6502 cluster nodes are assembled and tested. Next up is to mount them on something and then devise a way of connecting them together and to a control mode (leaning Commodore 64 for that). Then we can calculate all the things.
- Got all three of these boards, two 6502 single board computers (blue)and a bazillion pin FPGA (green) all set up to be soldered on the bottom here. I’m counting 712 pins to solder this evening.
- Post workout / pre day job shenanigans. More Commodore RS-232 work. Happy Wednesday!
- Shout out to @HansOtten for pointing me in the right direction to get the 68b50 ACIA sorted out on my Corsham KIM-1 clone. The retro community is awesome. Actually could be an interesting choice for the Control Node on my 6502 cluster system. Hmm…
- It’s tax day in the US. One of my least favorite things on earth. Using paper forms and public school handwriting for said forms feels right. For reasons.
- Weeding this evening and had to get the long weed puller from the garage. If you’re not familiar, that’s Poison Sumac. Makes Poison Ivy/Oak seem tame. I would not recommend using the leaves as a facial cleanser.
- Some people relax on Friday by drinking or streaming shows, etc.
- Got EhBASIC ported to the second half of the ROM (it’s on a switch). First 6502 cluster node is now complete. Time to build the other two. Happy Friday!
- Got UART working on the first try on a 6502 Compute Cluster Node. No OS, these just run straight machine code. Might make up for yesterday's snafu. Maybe ;-) Happy Thursday!
- You ever spend several hours trying to connect a VIC-20 to multiple serial terminals (troubleshooting) before you realize that the null modem connector isn’t… you know… connected between them? No, just me? Alright then.
- Finally picked up a physical copy of this book. I had it in the 80s, but who knows where that copy ended up. I have the wrong computer on my desk today though :)
- First of my 6502 cluster nodes is online. Occurred to me that I need to decide which Commodore model will be the control nodes for these little guys.
- It was hard to get a FlipperZero in the US for a while. Mine just arrived. Time to hack all the things ;)
- Writing a "serious" Django app for a security suite I'm working on.
- I don’t need the LED matrix built into this FPGA board but I might as well have some fun with it.
- It’s apparently the spring where my chainsaw gets a workout every weekend.
- Super fun thrift store find. Even has route maps. Neato.
- Had to steal this one. Seriously, learn how stuff works.
- 1 Megahertz crystals and the best crystals
- Pre ordered this January 3rd and it was released today. Time to sharpen the pencil and take notes.
- Changing it up on my desk this week. Going nifty clones of 70s computers for a change of pace.
- Goose eggs
- Our yellow oysters are ready already. This growing your own food is neato.
- Quitting
- Using my super scientific method of just placing parts on the PCB to inventory I see that I have enough of the expensive parts to build 3 nodes of my 6502 cluster to start. Happy Wednesday!
- Always impressed by Mouser’s packing of sensitive components.
- Vintage computer commercial for today
- Brush clearing day 2. Colorful PPE gives my location away.
- Finally. A cheap and small FPGA dev board with more than enough easy to access IO pins. Open source tool chain is a must for me. I’m gonna need a few more of these ;)
- Interesting read this morning
- Out of all of the dystopian futures in Science Fiction, it's disappointing that the most accurate one was Wall-E.
- I bought a single 2SC1959 transistor and don’t remember why. Extra weird because I keep pretty good notes about my 57 ongoing projects. Hmm
- Not by AI
- 8 bit clusters
- Current Mood
- Ahh, that's better. The correct position of this toggle for this guy is off. I'll do my own summaries thank you.
- Several more modern “advanced” calculators are controversial
- Driving clocks with FPGAs
- Happy Pi Day! Another year of 6502 machines verifying the digits. #commodore
- New to me TI-92. I did not realize just how huge these things are.
- Just looking over the Minnesota fishing regulations. I feel like I've missed a memo.
- If I view this Commodore PET picture on a C64, does that break the space-time continuum? The picture itself represents the very moment computing peaked. Long slide into mediocre since then. Happy Friday!
- Canadian Bacon
- The PET Diagnostic boards designed by Sven Peterson arrived and I just realized I have the BOM loaded in a shopping cart but never actually pressed “submit order”. This is what happens when you have too many simultaneous projects.
- Back in the saddle on the VIC chip replacement. Today I’m implementing the internal registers. Nice (but slow) progress. I’ve decided not to bother with implementing interlacing on the first version. #commodore #vic20 #vicsrevenge
- Everyone prints their MOS component datasheets and binds them right?
- My arms might work again on Tuesday.
- Anyone else have several VIC-20s with test clips more or less permanently attached? No? Just me. Okay then.
- Happy Friday. Time for some Blinkenlights! Here's a couple of LED patterns on the VIC-20 and PAL-1 (KIM-1) clone.
- VIC Chip "drop in" replacement work this evening and got distracted. Why make a simple drawing in your notebook when you can have a VIC-20 do it? Back off, man; I'm a scientist.
- Finally got around to assembling the PAL-1 gadgets. Can an office have TOO MANY blinkenlights? I don’t think so. Might use this with my “worlds worst paper tape reader” setup.
- Happy Tuesday. You don’t have to be angry on the internet today. Just do cool stuff and share it. Repeat.
- This has gotten a little out of hand.
- I've had the Numworks calculator for a couple years now. I find myself reaching for it more often lately. The base conversions are easy to access, and it sure is fast.
- A coworker had this GIANT flag made for me. So great.
- I need to wait to do the final touches until Oscar sends me the correct LED bracket but it went together nicely. Happy Friday !
- Getting back to my drop in VIC 6560/1 replacement for the VIC-20. Broke out the big guns textbook to get my mind back in the right space. #vicsrevenge #commodore
- Whelp I was going to assemble my PiDP-8 but it looks like the wrong LED bracket was included. That’s the PDP-11 light layout. Whoopsie. I can get the rest of it up and running, but won’t be able to complete the assembly without it.
- Asked over the weekend what the most difficult thing I've done in Assembly was. SHA-256 isn't the longest program I've done, but it was the most difficult to date. It's pretty fast which makes it extra neato to me. #commodore
- Had an altercation with a deer a few weeks ago. Took the opportunity to do a little customization on the front end of my truck. Basic dude stuff.
- Gotta wait for random numbers
- Valentine thinks Commodore is pretty rad.
- I made a gallon of sauerkraut for 79 cents (that’s a quart jar next to it with granola in it). Add this to the long list of things I don’t buy at the store any more.
- Recycled Crap
- So... I find myself in need of a PDP-8 simulator/emulator. Uncharted territory for me, but it's for science so...
- This week’s nonfiction books. On track to read 75 books this year.
- Thinking about starting a new podcast. Might as do some dry run recordings to work out topics and format. Happy Monday.
- I have one of the few Snappy prototype carts in the wild. Doing the ROM upgrade today (it’s 128k) so it’ll be Turbo Macro Pro, REU and enhanced Super Snapshot happy time in my office this week. #commodore
- Building railings on my Dad’s lower deck today.
- I was looking for a ribbon cable after my morning workout and found a shortwave radio I don’t remember acquiring. It’s neat but they sure looked cooler in the 70s.
- Can you imagine having resources like this for modern computers? Nothing even close exists. #commodore
- Thursday
- Breaking down someone else’s old assembly code that I converted into Turbo Macro Pro format. Surely I’m not the only person who would rather reverse engineer assembly by printing it out right? #commodore #6502forever
- Walking among dinosaurs
- These Schmidt refills fit my favorite pens. Happy Wednesday
- Converting my favorite Maze program from Machine Language to Turbo Macro Pro. Wouldn't be complete without a machine code vs BASIC speed comparison. You know, for science. Article on how this one works by the weekend. Probably. #commodore
- Opportunities
- Monday thought on mini celebrities
- Converting a handful of servers this morning from Ubuntu to Debian. 18+ years and I've had enough.
- This is a common practice for @FedEx around here. I’ve been on my driveway for the last 90 minutes so this reason is completely made up. You know hat would be better (besides actually delivering)? The truth. Poor form FedEx.
- Excellent read.
- Thinking about how I want to connect this Simple I/O board to my PAL-1 (KIM-1 clone). 18 pin IDC cable might be the cleanest and most flexible option. #commodore #deepthoughtswithmichael
- On today's episode of "learn something every day," I did an LFSR on an IceStick FPGA. Pretty straightforward. Tomorrow I'll do an LCG and put them together to get a terrible Pseudo Random Number Generator. You know, for science.
- Yes, if you know my password, please forget it. On a "security" company website. Sheesh.
- Gotta prep for a webinar. Sanity is important.
- Young person I'm mentoring in math and computers wants to learn how mazes work. Printing values on a simple program on a slow computer is by far the best way to explain this. He got it immediately, plus it's a cool visual. Happy Monday! #commodore
- That last bolt
- It’s difficult to understate how much better the left one is over the right one. The VIC-20 guide launched me on a career path and a lifelong love of learning. Crazy how the right book at the right time can steer someone. I was 6 in 1981. #commodore
- Still have an eBay search going for season 2.
- I have a number of C64s but only one is PAL. Happens to be a 64C. Gonna keep this one on my desk for the next week or so. For science. #commodore
- How do I get into programming?
- I’ve been wearing an Oura ring for 3 or 4 years now. This is the highest sleep score I’ve ever gotten.
- We moved in 1981, so I can pretty confidently put this in 1980 based on the furniture and room. My Dad got it as a gift, but it had a much bigger impact on me than him.
- Okay 80s fans, anyone else as obsessed with Robo Force as I was in 1984? I really should not be allowed on eBay…
- Always had these memories of a space plane I had as a kid, but I could not remember what it was called. Today I found a picture of the Christmas unopened it and a clear shot of the box. I’m not going to look on eBay. Nope, not this guy.
- Solving problems for fun with 3583 bytes of memory has made me dramatically better at my day job. Embrace constraints.
- Solving problems for fun with 3583 bytes of memory has made me dramatically better at my day job. Embrace constraints.
- Really loving Pocketbase for my personal database. The Python library is a little behind, so I forked it and updated it to bring it current with the new API syntax. Now to import the last 15 years of finsihed books from a CSV file :)
- I’m about to let some air out of this sealed package from the 90s. Should I play Nirvana or something while I do it?
- Took me an hour this morning to troubleshoot my Corsham board. Turns out the ribbon cable was bad. All better now.
- Move over iPhone. My new (in the box) planner even has a dedicated secret button. It’s where I’ll keep all of my passwords from now on and it’ll still be more secure than LastPass :)
- Our neighbor’s ducks are laying eggs faster than she can eat them. This is a good thing for us :)
- I try to spend a month with a particular retro computer at a time. January 2023 is the Corsham KIM-1 clone.
- Bo dee do we. Boop beep. Somehow this has survived in my possession for 43 (ish) years and even works.
- Still on the prowl for an HP-16C. My replica is cool. Similar in size and it does feel solid thanks to the aluminum construction, but nothing beats the key feel in the voyager series.
- Stays crunchy in milk
- More Atari VCS/2600 programming fun this week. Hats off to the folks who made decent games with 128 bytes of RAM.
- For no particular reason I've been learning Atari VCS/2600 Assembly this week. It is pretty challenging with no built in fonts and it makes the 3583 Bytes in a VIC-20 seem like a luxury. Anyway, counting up a score was satisfying.
- I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever made it through this whole show. Ever.
- Many of us in North America should maybe embrace this opportunity:)
- Off of work for a while now. I relax by studying and/or outdoor activities. As the temps are plummeting in the US this week, going to be more study than outdoors. On my current list are these two gems.
- Figured I should take a stab at #VCCC2022 this week. I've got the algorithm I want, now to rewrite in Assembly and shrink it ;-) Happy Monday! #commodore
- Wim Hof
- Put a 128 motherboard and PET next to it so we can appreciate how big this 6510 die shot is on my wall. Amazing.
- Lunch break shenanigans… first time I’ve ever done this in under 3 mins.
- I can't overstate how great this is as a distraction-resistant writing device.
- Still working on iOS animations before the day job starts. This morning's project was pretty fun.
- 10 PRINT is cool, but there are soooo many 1 liner possibilities. Need to try this on the VIC-20 next. #commodore
- I should have just used my front porch as a tree stand
- Time to cartridge ROM dump following along with an @8BitShowAndTell video. You know, for science
- I was very lucky to get a 6502 high resolution die shot print from Siliconinsid
- I love that HP still makes the 12C. I never have one out of arms reach. 41 years and running and the CPU is very 6502ish. Make RPN great again.
- I did #AdventOfCode Day 6 on a #commodore VIC-20 today just for a change of pace. Pretty fun.
- Commodore PET 2001 #AdventOfCode Day 5 sorting crates and stacks.
- I spent WAAAY too long today figuring out #AdventOfCode Day 4 on the Commodore 64, but it works. Took me 10 minutes to write my solution in Julia this morning and 3 hours this evening to write it for the #commodore. Probably can't spend that kinda time on work days, though. Fun!
- Got a Coco1 from @K0FFY_Radio today including some other goodies. Doing the ol route the RF through a VCR trick to get that soothing toxic green screen. This is now in the running for the worst computer in my collection and I couldn’t be happier about it.
- I did #AdventOfCode Day 3 in @julialanguage because it's Saturday and I needed to knock it out quickly. If I have time this evening, I'll try it on a retro computer.
- In December, I am adding SwiftUI to my skillset. Not bad for a first pre breakfast session.
- These are a few of my favorite things…Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashesSnowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes… Happy Friday!
- Alright, part 2 of #AdventOfCode Day 1 went to my Commodore PET 2001. Only took 58 seconds to do it, including reading the 2200+ data points from a floppy disk #commodore
- Been asked several times today if #AdventOfCode2022 is possible on vintage computers. The answer is "some of it". Today's was doable. Takes a minute to read 2200+ inputs from a floppy, but it worked. #commodore
- Well @8BitShowAndTell made me get the paddles out for a deep dive Ultimax cartridge/LeMans Patreon exclusive. Don’t tell anyone I’m using my #Atari paddles on a #commodore though okay?
- Well, #AdventOfCode2022 is off to a good start. I'm using @JuliaLanguage this year, and I realize I'm not nearly as good at Julia as I thought. The month's challenges will be hard, and that's great.
- We have two Christmas trees, so naturally there are two trains.
- It’s that time of year. My kids are grown but trains have schedules to keep.
- I have 3 Raspberry Pi 4s that are being used for tasks like FPGA development. They are unobtainium these days but I do have 8 Raspberry Pi 3s. Any fun uses for these you can think of? Putting Homeassistant on 1 so that leaves 7 left. Happy Monday!
- Can’t say I didn’t get my money’s worth out of this thing. Waaaay better than modern phones.
- A year ago I got suspended from Twitter for posting this video because the post had the word “snowflake” in it. Ahh, the memories #commodore
- My favorite album this year is by@lukhash. Bought the CD last December, but the vinyl was sold out. New pressing was announced and ordered on Jan 28. Supplier screwed up many times. Those with patience finally received this gorgeous record this week #Commodore game is on side 2
- Did @somacdivad's weekly code challenge in BASIC this week. Because, uh, science or something. It's a “peculiar English dialect in which the numbers of letters in successive words follow the digits of the number π.” Pretty fun. #commodore
- Does your holiday travel go bag have the proper emergency supplies? Mine does. #Nintendo
- Knot untangler
- Nice, new Floppy Emu firmware has graphics now. #appleiie
- Working on a code challenge from @shieladixon. Part 1 is total permutations 1 to 9 as fast as I can manage on a #Commodore. Here's an NTSC C64 doing it without printing in 48 seconds. Part 2 is a little harder, have to give it a think.
- A little silliness while waiting for backups to finish. Happy Friday! #commodore
- Christmas tree farm day. You know the day when the animals wonder why we’re bring a tree into the house. Crazy hoomans.
- I get asked a lot about how to do the “off screen” images on the SwissMicros calculators. The short short version is crop your photo to 400x240 and run this little Python. Then just copy it over usb to the offimg folder.
- I need to pay attention to details more. I meant to buy 10 SN74LVC245A’s and bought 100. If you need me, I’ll be looking around the shop for a couple dozen more things to level shift :)
- Everyone uses @JuliaLanguage to create data statement sets to do calculations on vintage BASIC machines right? I can’t think of a better use for modern computers than the assist for their elders. Happy Monday!
- I forgot that I DO have one calculator that can do very large exponents. But calling it a calculator is kinda a stretch. More like an ARM computer running python in a calculator costume. Still a fun device, though.
- This morning’s #NaNoWriMo22 word count was at 5 am on my Electra 120.
- Family game night tonight is @theRealKiyosaki ‘s Cashflow game. Who knew doing finances could be such fun?
- Finally decided on the upgrade to my iPhone 11.
- I am success! Now to make this WAY faster. But still, pretty neato. Can do up to 2^847 before we overflow in this iteration. Stretch goal is 2^5000, but getting there. #commodore
- In the age of endless selfies and pictures of our food, it's weird to think that I spent 6 years in the Navy and have maybe 6 pictures from that time. Happy Veterans Day to all Veterans and the families that tirelessly supported them.
- ALL computer books should be spiral bound. Cookbooks too.
- Back to some video generation with FPGAs this evening. VGA instead of composite this time.
- Not sure why it never occurred to me to try my favorite retro demo program on an 80 column PET. Universe wrong now righted. Happy Wednesday! #commodore #PET #retrocomputing
- Just making sure I remember where the overflow is. Back off man, I’m a scientist. #commodore
- I stumbled into @JuliaLanguage in January. Spent this year being in love. Last night a young man I tutor asked “what does 2 to the 5000 actually look like?” Julia makes this crazy easy. And @8BitShowAndTell has me thinking I need to do this on a #commodore now
- Unopened Palm V charger needs to be opened. Got Palm devices to charge!
- When I fly a retractable gear plane, I check that my gear is down at least 3 times. At the final approach fix, at IFR mins (even on a clear day) and once across the runway threshold. Those that fly with me often know my routine. I wont end up like this poor guy. Hopefully.
- Mobile computing peaked with this model. Everything after it is a productivity suck. Both of these beauties are getting battery replacements this evening.
- Most aspects of life were better before smart phones and always on internet. Something I’m reflecting on as November begins.
- Distraction resistant #nanowrimo2022 system ready to rock.
- One more possible writing platform for #NaNoWriMo is a KIM-1 clone. Have to memorize the hex codes for ASCII characters. 45,000 words at 4 words a minute in hexadecimal is… 187 hours just to “type” it. Extra credit: decode this. Happy Friday! #commodore
- Kivy-ios certificate errors fix
- A little lunchtime fun. Here's a little program to examine characters from the character rom by location. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/commodore?src=hashtag_click">#commodore</a>
- It’s apparently Global Encryption Day. I’ve done quite a few ciphers on old computers, including SHA-256 in assembly (5 whole hashes per second). I really prefer encryption that can be done by hand. One time pads and the VIC cipher for example. Happy Saturday! #commodore
- My PET it always in the background on video calls, so I started using @8BitShowAndTell ‘s scroller to send subliminal messages. Happy Friday! #commodore
- This crap is why I started using Linux almost 30 years ago. Ads in my terminal window are my new least favorite thing. Poor form @Canonical, be better.
- I often intentionally spend a week with a particular 8-Bit machine at a time. This week is my nicely yellowed 128, a computer I desperately wanted to replace my beloved C64 when it came out. Still, a delight to use. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/commodore?src=hashtag_click">#commodore</a>
- A post over the weekend by @8BitShowAndTell has me thinking about how to do 10 PRINT on a PC-4. No backslash, hmm
- MiniPet works pretty well on my 9 inch PET CRT. Now I'm working on a way to have both the original board and the MiniPET in the case at the same time. Everyone dual boots their PET these days right? Happy Friday! #commodore #10print
- Stuck in the weeds on a couple things right now so I broke out a project from last year that I left hanging. Progress on Enigma in ML on the #c64 got my brain unstuck. #commodore
- My submission to David Amos' Code challenge yesterday
- I don’t know who at Commodore in 1979 thought that riveting voltage regulators on was a good idea, but I’m grateful for all of the rivet work I’ve done on airplanes. Could be really intimidating if you’ve never drilled rivets before. Repairing a Twitter friends PET this evening.
- Starting to think about National Novel Writing Month. If I use a VIC-20 for it and a tape deck, my working title for the novel could be "Self-Inflicted Pain." Would be fun to try. I'm reasonably sure it'll be the Apple II this year, though. #appleII #commodore #nanowrimo2022
- Well that's pretty fun. I'll have to think about some 320x200 source images that will render really well at 40x25ish ;-) #commodore
- I spend a ton of time on video calls these days. My tiny profile in a call has a PET in the shot, and the number of conversations this starts is wonderful. #commodore
- Sorta listening on a conference call I'm not sure I need to be on. How about studying some code to do 32 C64 sprites? I think I will thank you. Happy Thursday! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/commodore?src=hashtag_click">#commodore</a>
- Success. This “untested” PET 2001-8N is now back in service. The whole thing was filthy and had some corrosion. Every keyboard plunger needed Cailkote and it had two bad linear regulators. Fairly easy repair. Happy Monday! #commodore #PET
- Started with zero keys working and this morning every key works flawlessly. #commodore #PET
- My phone learned a new trick.
- Took me a long time to find a decent hard cover copy of this book. Fascinating story. Edwin Layton was quite the guy.
- Not a single key on this PET keyboard worked so they are getting the full treatment. Be good as new after the 24 hour drying period for the conductive coating. Gave everything a bath while I wait. #commodore
- My very reliable PET keyboard tester
- Looking much better after a distilled water bath. Tomorrow I’ll sort out the lack of 5V power on the board. For now, we dry. #commodore #PET
- Do WAAAYY more with less
- Best writing tool ever made
- Just a little silly randomness to brighten up my Thursday morning. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/commodore?src=hashtag_click">#commodore</a>
- Someone needs a bath. #commodore
- New to me PET 2001 and it doesn’t work. Makes me a happy camper. #commodore
- Ever go looking through your stuff looking for a Tandy Cassette Deck and find something you have no memory procuring? Apparently I have a Pinebook. Huh.
- Love my Romulator. I need maybe 3 more of them. Maybe 4. #6502
- This week's nonfiction read. Quite good.
- For the next couple days, there's a humble bundle of 21 Linux books by No Starch
- Visualizing concepts
- One can’t really have too many Verilog Books.
- 20 year old life coaches
- The best computer hacking tutorial ever made.
- Happy Friday from peak computing. #commodore #VIC20
- My ideal cyberdeck
- I don’t understand the TV in the bathroom at restaurants thing but I’m at a taco place on Florida that has one. Princess Leia watching you pee is unsettling.
- Long tree searches on a Commodore 128. Some things are better explained and learned on older hardware. Easier to see what’s happening and feels less like magic.
- Traveling to Orlando this week for work. Want to be in the right mindset for the rest of 2022, so this new book is my theme for the week.
- I sold my airplane project and I feel really good about it. An enthusiastic guy outside of Charlotte bought it. I don’t subscribe to the “you must finish a book because you started it” type philosophy.
- Workout done before 6am, so might as well move to some light reading. Much of this book I practice every day already, but getting the basics right is always a good plan.
- I suppose it IS #septandy so I can spend 15 minutes this year with my Coco 2. Soon it’ll be #victober and all will be right with the world. Until then….
- It’s September, time for the annual reading of my second favorite book
- Why would they take a clean, natural, healthy food and turn it into an artificially flavored bastardization?
- Everyone doesn't teach CIDR notation with a C64? No? I'm the only one? Okay. #commodore
- Have you seen XX show?
- A month not tracked
- I’ve been using a modified version of Ryan Holiday’s notecard system for a week and it’s already transformative. Analog for the win.
- Details matter
- This book has Verilog and VHDL side by side in the examples. Super helpful. #fpga
- Been a while since of my episodes of “stupid races between old computery things“
- Haven’t read this one in a while. Oldie but goodie.
- Sometimes the Sunday project chooses you. New water heater since the old one tried to flood the basement. Basic dude stuff.
- Idle time and compound interest
- This game came pretty late in Commodore 64 history, but I'll never forget the look on my younger brother's face when he first saw it. And yes, the gameplay is still really awkward with a lack of mouse on the 64. Happy Friday!
- My planner was super boring. Fixed.
- I just looked at a calendar... it's almost <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/septandy">#septandy</a>. I don't know if I can do it.
- We collect many old cookbooks. This gem from 1942 has a wartime supplement section and tips on a healthy weight. Example, a 5’8” thirty year old man should not be more than 154 pounds. Also sections for things like box lunches for “hard workers” and “a business girl”. Fun read.
- Breaking in a C64 repair I did for a local friend with my favorite 8 Bit Maze generator. This one never gets old. Happy Friday! #commodore
- 25 whole cents. AND this is better than ANYTHING on “tv” in 2022 by a long shot.
- The peak
- Just in case this game wasn't hard enough... try it on a Commodore with a single button joystick. Decrunching to the REU is a nice add on :-) <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/commodore?src=hashtag_click">#commodore</a>
- Adding the Genie framework to my @JuliaLanguage toolkit. The OscarsExplorer example is pretty neat.
- Everyone has 3 keyboards on their #Commodore PET clone right? No? Just me? Okay then. #WoodPET build
- Multiple Dispatch is kinda @JuliaLanguage 's super power. Never really grokked it until I followed this example. Mind explodey.
- Pretty happy with the way this turned out. 5 coats of acrylic should hold the vinyl on the keycap labels. A PET with Cherry Black switches is a PET you could even write a novel on :) #commodore
- Well this is tedious
- Super underrated game
- My arms are bendy
- As a long time Commodore guy, I've under appreciated the Apple 8Bit computers. Really quite amazing for the early 80s. This took just over 3 hours. Happy Friday!
- Still testing the timing with the W65C02S-14 running on this VIC-20. Super expander cart seems to be fine and it can do math well enough. 90 minutes to complete this isn't bad for 1981. #commodore
- Giving the Julia Language another go for a new project. Lot's to love about it...
- The VIC-20 palette voltages are kinda tricky. For this alpha version of the project I’m just going to have to be okay with this particular background blue for now. Funny, if you pick up 470 ohm resistors out of the box instead of 270 how much trouble you can make :) #commodore
- Probably only funny to me… I was working out some resistor ladders for the VIC replacement project and got two values wrong. Think anyone would mind #commodore 64 colors on their VIC-20? Happy Wednesday!
- I wonder if there's any value in writing a VIC chip and 6502 protocol decoder. Hmmm #commodore
- New stretch goal: get the most accurate pixel timings on VIC-20s possible with equipment I already have. We'll have to resort to... dun dun dun... math! #commodore
- Before day job two steps back on the VIC replacement project: since PAL was progressing nicely I switched to NTSC to catch up but broke something along the way. Hmm… that isn’t right AT ALL #commodore
- I’ve always wanted an original Commodore PET 2001, but they are now crazy expensive. What’s a guy to do? I’ll just make one :)
- Today marks the first time in history that a human has managed to wrestle a tent back into the bag they sell them in. Rainy day garage projects…
- This might be my favorite thrift store find to date. And it’s fully working. We will add all the things.
- No one is ever going to accuse me of being good at surface mount soldering. But they are at least on and it works :) #commodore
- My all time favorite book is $1 at the thrift store. Never mind I already own like 7 copies…
- I'm still SUPER tempted to use VGA instead of composite for the VIC-20 VIC replacement. Much of this is known but in multiple places. Probably will make a dedicated page for all of the calculations I do for myself. If others can use it, then cool. #commodore
- Replaced the 65c02s adapter on the Vicky Twenty with @shieladixon’s board of who was very kind to send me a couple from the UK with a nice note and postcard. Not using a transceiver seems to be working fine on this board and definitely takes up less space. #commodore
- Fixing a friend’s VIC-20 and I hastily assembled a character ROM adapter. I then spent an embarrassing number of Mississippi’s wondering why it didn’t work. Details Michael, details. #commodore
- Good grief, these are still waaayyy too long. I’m gonna have to break down and buy an IDC cable connector crimper. Until then, let’s get the VIC-20 memory map more organized in my Verilog shall we? #commodore
- Back on the VIC chip FPGA replacement this evening after a needed break. Having to level shift both directions between the VIC-20(5V) and the FPGA(3.3V) is a recipe for a crazy breadboard mess. Working on tidying it up. Looking better already.#vicsrevenge #commodore
- Happy Thursday! #commodore
- This is what I settled on for the @TexElecUSA #commodore PET keyboard arrangement using ANSI 104 keycaps. Now I need to get stickers printed but I’m very happy with the way this is turning out. Went with Cherry MX blacks on this one.
- Today’s side quest: take these 208 ANSI keycaps and come up with a reasonable arrangement for my #commodore PET replica keyboard. Should be interesting.
- Not terrible for an inexpensive signal generator.
- 14 pounds (not a typo) of the last of the local Mangalitsa we bought over the winter is spending all day on my ancient, beat up, hand me down smoker. It’s a hard knock life. :)
- This afternoon’s festivities include soldering $60 worth of Cherry switches #commodore
- More CPU testing. The 65c02s with the transceiver is consistently slower. Gonna have to break out the scope and look carefully at timing and propagation delays. Same machine, same code, different CPU setups. #commodore
- Had my romulator for about a year. Unfortunately came pre assembled with square header pins which are VERY hard on sockets. Anyone have any adapter ideas for square headers? Can’t get them off without removing the cpu socket so I’m reluctant to desolder 80 pins if I can help it
- Fun with strings anyone? Making and breaking codes Part 14 - VIC Cipher on the unexpanded Commodore VIC-20. Who needs more than 3583 Bytes of Memory? Not this guy. #commodore
- Alrighty this VIC-20 is now running a brand new WDC65C02S manufactured recently thanks to the @AtticThe adapter. Now the only part left without an easy to source or modern replacement is the VIC chip. I did hear some nutball is making a replacement for that though. #commodore
- Took me a minute to figure out what these are. There’s a 100 foot section of my daily walk lined by Rugosa roses. Sometimes called potato roses. Can’t wait to see what they look like when they bloom.
- Been using these in one form or another for 40+ years and still not remotely tired of them.
- Tough choice this evening. Both worth the time.
- RGB green for the win! The real reason for the RGBtoHDMI purchase is for my MiniPET case build. Currently code named WoodPET. Coming soon to theaters near you. Er, my office. One of those. #commodore
- I have tried about a half dozen solutions to get reasonable color 80 columns out of my flat Commodore 128. The RGBtoHDMI is hands down the winner here. #commodore
- Most asked question of the drop in VIC chip replacement is: when will I be able to buy it. The trick is that I would be TERRIBLE at supporting a “consumer” product. Apparently “I find you too annoying to answer this question” is not a good tech support response. #commodore
- Friday VIC chip replacement progress: this is an NTSC VIC-20 without a VIC chip (or internal clock) running as PAL off of the FPGA (clocks and video)outputting composite correctly. No RAM access yet, but I'll take a square box at this point. Happy Friday! #commodore #vicsrevenge
- How is today the first day I've ever heard of SpaceVim?
- Green is the best color.
- Not that I'm surprised… I need ONE 74HCT245N for a @AtticThe adapter. Do I have one in my huge parts inventory? Not one. But if you need 74LS245Ns, I'm your guy. Mouser has 12,500 back-ordered until May 2023. Sigh. #commodore
- Not that I need another project, but I’ve been gathering things I need to make a PET 2001 replica out of wood. Working chicklet keyboard: check. Gonna disassemble and do a restoration and preservation session. Anyone have one that can measure the case for me? #commodore
- Deep woods #Vicsrevenge VIC drop-in FPGA progress: Finally have an internal pixel clock 4.434Mhz driving a composite (no color yet) pulse with the correct timings for a 2µs character width (225.5ns per pixel). Probably doesn't seem like much but it matters a lot to me #commodore
- Watch out for computers full of electronic debris. #appleiie
- When I said “drop in VIC replacement” did you take that as “true to the original in every respect”? Because Composite video with the VIC-20 colors is a royal PIA. VGA is much more easier. I know, I know, there are no shortcuts. This is also why I gave myself a year. #commodore
- Finally got me some real (r@re) punched paper tape. Actually have no idea what’s on these so I’m gonna have to break out the worlds worst paper tape reader to give it a go.
- Lived here 10 years and gone for a walk 4-5 times a week (including winter). So I’ve probably come over this hill 2000+ times. Still not tired of the view around here. Happy Saturday.
- Wow this book arrived crazy fast. Guess the Apple IIe is the vintage machine I’m keeping on my desk for July.
- I need an ESP32 that's like an Arduino Mega. Can I have like 60 usable GPIOs please? Sigh.
- I'm a decent 6502 assembly programmer (milage may vary) so I figured hopping onto an assembler on the Apple II would be a snap. It is... except I never learned ProDOS... got hung up there. Much reading and now I'm comfortable. #appleiie
- Taking a break from a VMWare certification to have a little Apple IIe fun. I don't have a color monitor (my Apple monitor is Green) so to get color I HAVE to use my capture setup. Works pretty well ;-)
- Wait, everyone didn’t save their Trapper? I’m the only one? Huh.
- Designing composite video in FPGA for the 6560/1 VIC replacement project #vicsrevenge... this might be the most useful visualizer/synthesis tool I've ever seen. Load your Verilog and get a visual representation AND what amounts to a test bench setup. Brilliant! #FPGA #commodore
- Today's side quest is to get back into computer vision. Might was well kit-bash it with reading paper tape right?
- A year later and I finally soldered the keyboard header pins in. Coming soon :) #commodore
- I blame the influence of @K0FFY_Radio for this purchase
- I need the 80 column mode on my 128 for a long number project this week. July is my scheduled maintenance month for this machine so I might as well do that first since I have it out. No retrobrighting happens in my shop. This thing earned it's yellow ;-) #commodore
- JiffyDOS on a VIC-20 is a strange animal
- I forgot that I have this butane powered soldering iron. Very convenient for a single quick job. Gotta keep it in mind.
- eBay, have you lost your mind? Literally no one should be interested in this.
- I needed some window tint for the overhead window in the airplane, and it’s just a bonus that it is just the thing you need on a KIM-1 (clone) to increase the visibility of the LED display. Before and after is pretty stark. #commodore #kim1
- Pulled out the FabGL board. Apparently I was running Windows 3.0 last time. Seemed more fitting to turn it into a VIC-20. And what’s the first game on the list in the distribution? Splatform by @8BitShowAndTell… That guy sure gets around #commodore
- Squeezing @BrunoLevy01's RISC-V core onto an Icestick #FPGA is a lesson in "you really can do a lot with just a little". So many lessons to be learned. At 50Mhz Pi and Mandelbrot work really well. I'll leave the Icestick permanently hung off of this Raspberry Pi from now on.
- This is the best cure for writers block that I know of. There are no shortcuts.
- There’s an add on to the romulator that uses an ESP32 to get rid of the need for a Raspberry Pi to flash it. But it does result in a strange tower of instability. I think I’m gonna just add a JTAG cable between them and lay it in the case out of the way. #commodore
- Getting back to the 6560/1 drop in replacement project. Ended up just using a foam board to lightly double side tape everything on. This allows me to move the whole thing when I need the desk space for something else. Need to connect all the wires now #vicsrevenge #commodore
- Put @adumont’s custom bios and 6502 Forth implementation on my CERBERUS 2080. I guess I’ll have to actually learn Forth now :) Happy Friday!
- Happened to open Hacker News this morning and noticed someone submitted my article and I’m number 3 this morning. Since this internet is only for complaining these days, I think I will NOT read the comments.
- Had this DIP-40 to IDC socket cable custom made and it looks fantastic. At least one part of the project will be neat and tidy #commodore #vicsrevenge
- Broke out the Cerberus 2080 this morning to test out an idea on a 6502 at a fast clock speed. 8Mhz should do.
- Ended up springing for the most up to date version of this book because… RISC-V. Lots and lots to study in here. #fpga #riscv
- Another piece of unobtainium has been obtained. #fpga
- This is just the summer book pile that’s on my nightstand. There’s another this high on my office desk. Good thing I’m a fast reader :)
- Atari VCS/2600 composite video mod is pretty straightforward. What better game to smoke test with than Yars’ Revenge :) #atari
- Before work this morning I got an okayish mod to the “worlds worst paper tape reader” working. Now can somewhat reliably read the sprocket holes and use them as a timing signal. Super happy at this point and I may call this “complete”. #kim1 #commodore
- Same price for 1-25.125 Mhz clock as 16 of them. So now I have 15 spares...
- Guy up the road from me called and said he found this unopened laptop in storage and do I want it? I literally just pulled the plastic off of an Everex 386. The screen contrast/over brightness needs work and the hard drive is toast. 40 pin DIP EEPROM is kinda neat.
- Rereading this book today. Seems important at the moment for so many reasons.
- I was feeling like living dangerously today so I broke out Schrodinger’s cat of computers. The cat is alive today ;-) #commodore #plus4
- Broke out the PC-4 to use for my day job today. Post by @HeyBirt reminded me how great it is :)
- Look who has developed a RAM fault. My least favorite machine in my collection.
- Okay, so I got off on a bunny-trail working out how to get Jim Butterfield's Lunar Lander for the KIM-1 printed on paper tape. Back off man, I'm a scientist! #commodore #kim1
- Waiting on some parts for the VIC chip replacement project so that’s on hold now this week. Might build this Super Snapshot replica board this evening. #commodore
- I know you were just sitting there wondering if a VIC-20 will boot off of an external 3.3v clock signal. The answer is surprisingly: yes. Scope here shows activity on all of the RAM from the CPU. Neato! #commodore
- This VIC-20 got HOT. Swapped the linear regulator with a modern switching ($9). Before: 46C drawing 2.3 amps. After: 26C drawing 1.03 amps. Much better. #commodore
- I’m gonna need to set up a dedicated workspace for this #vicsrevenge project. My desk can’t look like this for a year. Hmm. #commodore
- I'm collecting Verilog examples and tutorials. If you have recommendations, please let me know. Bonus if they are in book form. #FPGA #Verilog
- Happy friday! How about a little 80 column PET love this morning? Zig Zag array will do nicely. #commodore #PET
- With bi directional level shifters the final board will have less chips. VIC-20 system clock replacement from the FPGA. 3v logic input is yellow, 5v output is purple. Freq is correct. Shape needs work. Ringing is mostly breadboard parasitics #commodore #vicsrevenge
- Feel super spoiled with 32 channels. #commodore
- Romulator by @bitfixer is turning out to be a great troubleshooting tool for repairing VIC-20s. This is the second board donated to the #vicsrevenge 6560/1 drop in replacement project I was able to get working again in a few minutes with the Romulator's help #commodore
- I'm sure there are libraries for this, but creating the MOS parts in KiCAD is helping me wrap my mind around everything. 6560/1 is this morning's project, I'll open source (Github) when I have them all done and correct #commodore #vicsrevenge
- Least favorite keyboard I’ve ever used. Also pictured, an Atari 400. #atari
- These are a few of my favorite things. #atari
- At least this transformer is in a case with screws. Might be nothing more than this fuse being blown. #commodore
- This first VIC-20 I received to repair just ate a transformer. What the hell is this? Looks like a solder blob dead short to me right? Good one is second same part. #commodore
- Pro tip: riding lawn mower engines don’t start if your fuel cutoff solenoid goes bad. I didn’t want to cut the grass today anyway :)
- Taking a couple day break from the VIC project until some 74LVC245s arrive. In the meantime, I think I’ll take a little detour.
- Crazy good
- I love the VIC-20, but sometimes formatting stuff on the screen can be challenging. Happy Friday! #commodore
- Ever flip over to another virtual desktop and have to ask yourself more than once “wait, why was I working on this?”. Yeah. Thursday.
- Wrote some scripts to create 32 and 64k ROMs so I can test sending addresses and reading the data bus without worrying about RAM timing with the CPU for now. Split the problem and tackle one half at a time right? Put a 'frozen' screen at A000 for now. #vicsrevenge #commodore
- Even my new favorite calculator loves the MiniPET ;-)
- My new favorite browser plugin. Your brain, like your body, is what you feed it. Don't let others (or algorithms) feed it for you.
- I was just looking at my logbook and need a couple approaches for IFR currency. Do you think the FAA will accept this VIC-20 Simulator? It works surprisingly well. I'm just saying FAA, could be good enough. #commodore
- One of my 2022 goals is to finish both of these including typing and understanding (as best I can)every example on both the C64 and VIC-20. Just finished the BASIC book, so slightly ahead of schedule. On to the Kernal book. I blame @8BitShowAndTell for this one :) #commodore
- I know you were just sitting there thinking "What IS the clock divider setup to run a VIC-20 without needing the onboard clock circuit working? 1.10822Mhz is pretty specific." Well today is your lucky day. #vicsrevenge #commodore
- Just thinking it would be nice to be able to read VIC-20 video RAM in real time. Then I remembered I have a Romulator (for a year, never used). Unfortunately the vram isn't implemented yet, but I can still dump the rest of memory to a file which is nice. #commodore #vicsrevenge
- So many Mega 65 posts. This is like a Mega 66 so there. #commodore
- Picked up a DM-42. I blame @svenpetersen191 for this one. I resisted the purchase as long as I could. Amazing how it’s almost exactly the same size as my very well worn HP-42
- Two more boards donated to the VIC project arrived today. Awesome. #commodore
- I don’t think I can get away with NOT level shifting from 3.3 to 5v on a VIC-20. Probably not… But there sure are nice and cheap tools for things these days. Need a completely configurable 3 output 8khz to 160Mhz clock generator? That’ll be 6 whole dollars please.
- Beautiful VIC-20 board donated by the amazing @cmherndon79 for the 6560/1 project. This board will be the one that gets the prototype board for testing. #commodore #vicsrevenge
- Well that.. DEFINITELY looks like a Composite video signal (PAL). Woot! Now on to the interlace math and the NTSC version. Urg, do we REALLY need interlacing? VGA is SO much easier... #commodore #vicsrevenge
- Why spend 10 seconds sketching a timing diagram for VIC-20 video output signals when you can spend 20 minutes doing it on an actual VIC-20? Happy almost Friday ;) #commodore #vicsrevenge
- Didn’t get a chance to post this earlier (work), but the next step in the VIC 6560/1 project is to create composite out on pins 2 and 3. This is at least starting to look something like a composite luma signal, kinda. One step at a time. Back to day job! #commodore #vicsrevenge
- First time I've used this modeling software and was impressed. Working out NTSC Luminance timing logic is a big help after just a couple mins. 100Mhz clock on the FPGA so we can just count nanoseconds. Can export to Verilog after simulation. Most excellent #commodore #vicsrevenge
- Rated at 11.5 and puts out 11.9 under no load. Not bad for 41 years old. #commodore
- Progress this morning before the day job kicks in: I have an externally clocked VIC-20! Internal timing being driven my an ICE40 FPGA. It’s a couple cycles slow but getting there. Now to start on video signals. The math makes my brain hurt. More coffee #commodore #vicsrevenge
- One of the very strange quirks about NTSC and PAL Composite video on VIC-20s is the half frame interlacing and the offset odd numbers you have to "count". So how long exactly is each frame SUPPOSED to be… #commodore #vicsrevenge
- Next step in the #vicsrevenge project is to create the two out of phase clocks that the CPU uses. This 6561 outputs pretty close to the spec. #commodore
- I do buy legit copies of JiffyDOS from Jim B and even buy the official switcher when I need them. Sure I can burn my own with pirated copies, but a legit license is $8 whole dollars. Cmon man. #commodore
- In case you're one of THOSE people who was just sitting there thinking "what ARE the startup values in the VIC chip registers on a VIC-20?" Well, you're in luck. #commodore
- Gonna have to build some sort of test bench jig if I’m going to have 32 leads connected to the VIC chip at once without it being a wire hot mess. Good news it the DreamSourceLab 32 channel analyzer arrived and took about 60 seconds to set up. #commodore
- Well this is good, turns out I do know how to create a B&W PAL (and NTSC) Composite/S-Video signal from scratch. My timings aren't quite right, but it's close. Good first crack though. #commodore #VIC20hacking #learnallthethings
- Package delivered from
- Actually read the manual for my scope yesterday. Turns out it’s crazy easy to trigger on a PAL horizontal scan line number. On 110 here you can clearly see the blinking cursor. Turns out RTFM is a good idea after all. #commodore
- Yes, even the KIM-1 (clone) can count to a couple quintillion with ease ;-) #commodore
- I read this cover to cover sitting by the river yesterday. Can’t recommend it enough.
- Current situation
- I think I've decided on a working codename. Logic analyzer ordered and shipped. I'm shooting for a working version in a year.
- 8 Bit processors can count to 18 Quintillion just fine. "Wheat and chessboard problem" in 6502/10 Assembly for my "learn something every day" task. #commodore
- I tell myself I have some lofty career aspirations to justify my deep dive into learning to code FPGAs this year. But I know deep down it’s so I can try making drop in replacements for things like this, which I found in my stash. It tests good in my only NTSC VIC 20 #commodore
- I wonder where in my yard I should be looking for this package…
- Think I found the color film I’m adding to all of my 7 segment displays to help them show up better on phone cameras
- I own a couple dozen calculators. I checked and only two of them can multiply two 32-bit numbers and give me the full 64-bit product. The@NumWorks and TI Inspire. Oh, and a Commodore 64 if you can code in Assembly;-) #commodore
- I own a couple dozen calculators. I checked and only two of them can multiply two 32-bit numbers and give me the full 64-bit product. The@NumWorks and TI Inspire. Oh, and a Commodore 64 if you can code in Assembly;-) #commodore
- Always meant to read this series. Found em for a dollar so no time like the present.
- Finally got around to doing the S-Video Mod on my Vicky-20. The results are pretty good. Probably about as good as you can get from a VIC-20 of any kind, so certainly nothing to complain about there. #commodore
- Had some fun last night playing with SYS parameters and learning a lot. Here's extending BASIC to implement a PRINT AT equivalent on Commodore 64/VIC-20 to do the 100 Door problem. Again ;-)
- Writing an article and occurred to me I need to add a word to my Mac dictionary... #commodore
- Picked up a set of gymnastics rings to add to my workout setup at home. I do enjoy these “users instruction enjoyment and importance” lost in translation comic books they included. These tapes are kindly prepared…
- Next to the Corsham KIM-1 the KIM Uno looks crazy tiny (it is). I heard from questionable sources that it’s more about how you use it than the size so don’t worry little KIM Uno, it’ll all work out. #commodore
- I built a paper tape reader from scratch without any reference designs. Someone pointed out there there’s a book from 1979 that has designs for this in it. Annndd I happen to own this book…. Sigh. Let’s tell people I wanted to do it the hard way on purpose shall we?
- Alright, going outside for the rest of the day but I promised myself I'd go from novice to expert(ish) in @JuliaLanguage in 2022 so I needed a project I want to work on. Implementing a 6502 emulator seemed pretty natural to get started ;-)
- Success! The world's worst paper tape reader: Decoding on the PAL-1(KIM-1 Clone), LEDs (because blinkenlights) AND VIC-20 at the same time!
- Success! The world's worst paper tape reader: Decoding on the PAL-1(KIM-1 Clone), LEDs (because blinkenlights) AND VIC-20 at the same time! Timing is tricky by hand, but I couldn't be happier with this complete hack job that actually works. Are YOU keeping up with the #commodore?
- Worlds worst paper tape reader mid week progress: Test creating the enclosure peices. Not thrilled with the PVC as a material. Might move to ABS or maybe even a hardwood, but this cheaply confirms my design looks good. Happy camper.
- Being inside today seems like a silly thing to be doing.
- Well that's pretty satisfying. Happy Wednesday from my PAL-1 (KIM-1 Clone)!
- Worlds worst paper tape reader progress: this is just as good as drawing schematics right?
- Made some changes to the Turbo Macro Pro / Super Snapshot Cheat sheet based on input from @K0FFY_Radio #commodore
- Submitted some changes to the Commodore BASIC version of the Identity Matrix on @rosettacode so it displays better. The original was a copy of the AppleSoft BASIC and had way too much whitespace. If it looks good on a VIC-20, it'll look good on the other #Commodore machines ;-)
- Took a break from @JuliaLanguage for a bit but I’m gonna try it for an ML project I’m starting. Sure is zippy
- Picked two of these up from @CommodoreKazz for use in hooking up a VIC-20 and a 128 to the worlds worst paper tape reader #commodore
- Worlds worst paper tape reader needs some custom parts so I pulled the X-Carve out of storage. Got it cleaned and calibrated. Figured making a sign was a good verification test as letters require then precision I’ll need.
- I generally wear my mistakes as a badge of honor. But I made a mistake on the vertical stab that's gonna require me to probably have to rebuild it. Very expensive mistake. Sigh.
- Happy 40th to the ZX Spectrum. Broke mine out today to celebrate.
- I LOVE Mr Hildon's Inner Space Anthology. But every once in a while I get to a part that is... kinda wrong ;-) #commodore
- Been a fan of Dave’s YouTube channel a long time and finally picked up his book. Really looking forward to this one.
- Couple conference calls in a row this afternoon. I pay attention better if I’m doing stuff with my hands so I started building another Eater 6502 breadboard computer. Everyone has two these days right?
- When I was a kid, the USR ports on my #Commodore machines were a mystery. Now, they are crazy useful and easy to understand. Always learning...
- Worlds worst paper tape reader mid week update: I can get a pretty solid 1.4 volt square wave with cheap copy paper. Thicker paper will be closer to 2.4. Both are clear enough waves to be fully usable. Time to fire up the CNC machine to make the mounting brackets. Awesome!
- Worlds worst paper tape reader update:This tiny LED at half this brightness creates a usable signal to this tiny phototransistor through ordinary copy paper. Very happy with the results. Now to build a dark enclosure and wire up 8 of them in a row. This might actually work :)
- It was nice of Chevy to include rod holders in my truck.
- Driving the LEDs on the Corsham KIM clone is cool too. It’s second RIOT is busy with the SD card board, so I’m using a 65c22. Still waiting on parts for the paper tape reader so I figured learning the 6522 was a good evening activity. #commodore
- Whelp, that was harder than I thought to make manually. Already sketching out designs for project number 2: The world’s worst paper punch tape puncher ;-)
- Figured that debugging in binary would be best so gotta wire up some blinkenlights
- Waiting on some parts from Mouser for my "world's worst paper tape reader" project. I don't actually have any tape, so I'm creating it by hand. Might as well have a C64 assist in helping me punch the tape. ASCII format fits my brain the best on an 8 dot 1-inch tape. #commodore
- Happy Friday from KIM-1s (and clones) everywhere. Thanks to @masterhit for taking the time preserve this one from the 70s! #commodore
- Watching a new acquaintance react to “I really love tinkering with old computers” has proven to be a remarkable method for judging someone’s character.
- Super busy with day job today, but this evening starting to layout my first crack at the world’s worst paper tape reader, KIM-1 powered.
- Well, I do have a CNC and a lot of aluminum. Paper tape punch might even be doable.
- I’ve got it in my brain to build an 8 dot 1 inch paper tape reader. Because… science? I dunno.
- Going back through my own Cipher series for fun. I figured Vigenère cipher is a good one to port to the KIM-1. BASIC first, next ML and making use of the seven segments and keypad somehow #commodore
- Well @8BitShowAndTell has me down another rabbit hole. I suspect this one will be MUCH better than that time I had to endure watching Slipstream…
- Had this tool more than a year and still use it all the time. Super useful.
- April snow brings May flowers?
- I AM SUCCESS! Now using my PET clone as the TTY terminal for one of my KIM-1 Clones with PETTERM. Both 40 and 80 columns look pretty good! Kudos to @K0FFY_Radio @tynemouthsw @ChartreuseK @svenpetersen191 and @HutchCA for the moral support ;-) #commodore
- Exploring different ways to do visualizations over a slow TTY/Serial terminal. #commodore
- Proof that older computer books (1976) just did it better.
- Cutting my teeth on the TTY ROM routines on KIM-1 (clone). Here's my version of hello world: count 0-9 and newline after each. I've definitely got the hang of these now. Soooo what to make with it... #commodore
- Right on the edge of being slightly dated, but still the best primer for this subject.
- Sometimes I need to use a modern computer instead of a vintage machine as a serial terminal for KIM-1 (clones mostly). So I figure a retro font (Thanks Style!) and amber color at least get me in the right frame of mind. #commodore
- Truck tailgates… endless uses. #1455- Camp stove platform.
- First day of trout season. Haven’t found any trout but I have figured about where a half dozen smallmouths are.
- A little ice on the tent is no excuse for coffee to be skipped. All good, I put my hands in the cooler to warm them up.
- Tent camping near a creek in the mountains this weekend with Julie. Only going to get down to 31F tonight ;)
- On today’s episode of learn something every day: RISC-V core running on a Lattice FPGA at 50 MHz driving a Max7219 with a 10x10 LED matrix using 100% open source tools. Building and deploying from a headless Raspberry Pi so completely portable. Feels pretty good :)
- My colour Maximite has developed a RAM fault for no particular reason. It's surface mount, which I have a negative desire to try and remove and replace, so it is dead to me. Please, no more "modern retro" projects with surface mount. Bleh.
- Another breadbin saved by a PLAnkton #commodore
- When you don't really care if it works on battery power for more than a few minutes.
- Cutting my teeth on HP-16c (clone) programming while listening to some new LPs we bought this week.
- I'm all for a couple hours of burn in, but double digit days? I mean I guess you could... #commodore #vic20
- Which Computer?
- Went together easily. I’m very pleased with this. Aluminum case and adjustable contrast and backlight are nice touches.
- I’ve wanted an HP-16c for a looonng time. They are now in the $350-$400 range so I got a kit instead. Aluminum front and back plates, feels really nice.
- Well that's new... hmm. #commodore #VIC20
- Oh yeah, @JohnKennedyMSFT just updated the VirtualKIM app so it displays correctly on iPad mini. Most excellent.
- Needed a cassette player for my Coco 2 and KIM-1. Thrift store for the win.
- Friday fun: Running James McClanahan's Sudoku solver on the KIM-1. Lowly 6502 solves this in around 20 seconds… not too shabby! #commodore
- Finally have a working FPGA (Lattice) development environment with ALL open source tools on a Pi.
- This morning’s pre dawn learn something every day was Fibonacci 1-10 on the KIM-1… hand coded (ie the hard way) using the keypad and pencil and paper. Also iPhones REALLY don’t like to take video of red seven segment LEDs. It’s much brighter IRL #commodore
- Learn something every day lunch break edition: soldered up the ROM expansion board for my PAL-1(KIM-1) to give Apple I integer BASIC a go.
- This says “tamperproof scoring”… clearly they underestimate the raw processing power of the mighty VIC-20. Challenge accepted. #commodore
- In the summer I don’t love that my hangar door faces east, it gets hot quickly. But in March when it’s 38 degrees (F) in here, that sun pouring in is super welcome.
- I mean, knowing yourself well does seem like a sound strategy… #commodore
- It’s best to put the shorter KungFu flash cart behind the others on an X-Pander. Gotta let the KungFu exercise its inner stealth Ninja chops. #commodore
- Pretty cool thrift store find. Gemini on 8mm. Neato!
- They are DEFINITELY not for sale, but I just looked up prices for the 42s… they are nuts. But having used both of these for many many years I get why they are still in high demand.
- Today's quick "learn something every day" breakfast (which I don't eat) edition: Trying to get used the the non contiguous screen memory locations. I know there is some good technical reason they did this, but man it makes certain things more complicated. #appleII
- Shifting gears the next week or so to something I’m less familiar with.
- Always looking for a good biography I’ve not read yet. Just picked this one up. It’s a beast!
- Studying the random number routines of various Commodore machines. Interesting how much of a pattern there is on the C64 compared to the PET. MUCH less random by default. SID vs VIA which is interesting. Identical code except screen location. More research to do... #commodore
- Pi with logo is not only inefficient but also inaccurate. But it sure is fun!
- Another one of my favorite ways to estimate pi. The PET did a good job with this one in just over an hour. #commodore
- Yep, still satisfying. Gonna see how many people I can upset for one reason or another (Y'all need to relax) by posting all of my favorite ways to calculate pi on old computers today ;-) #commodore
- Ever try calculating pi with only 6502 machine code (KIM-1) and no kernal or basic floating point routines? Not trivial. Happy Pi day!! #commodore
- At some point over the last few years I’ve gone back to getting everything in print. Not even sorry.
- Well playing in the snow is done…today’s learn something every day I broke out the 128 to learn some graphics techniques. I don’t spend NEARLY enough time in 128 mode so maybe this week I’ll do something about that. This is a tricky but fun one(about 40x speed) #commodore
- Well I don’t need to do yard work today…
- Keeping an eye on a large data migration that is taking place this evening so I can’t go anywhere. It’s progressing well enough that I had time to replace a failing PLA. Hey look, when I put it back together it still works :) #commodore
- My slightly convoluted but perfectly serviceable way of getting green/amber out of my Mini PET 40/80 to a 4:3 LCD. Composite to VGA to color adapter to HDMI. Works well. And yes, I do have an Apple Green CRT, but this is a nice solution if you didn't for less than $50 #commodore
- I know it's a little hard to see in the screen capture… I just completed Week 1 of @ShawnHymel's "Computer Vision with Embedded Machine Learning" on @coursera. It's pretty confidently identifying resistors and capacitors out of my parts bin. Neato
- Some more unobtainium has arrived at my house.
- A Patreon exclusive from @8BitShowAndTell released today has me following along on my 128 in 128 mode which is pretty rare in my office. My 128 spends most of its time as a C64 that takes up a hearty amount of desk space. Robin’s deep dives are always fantastic. #commodore
- Good progress this morning. I forgot to take a picture of it assembled, but I did get the rudder and vertical stabilizer mounted permanently. More about the journey than the destination anyway. AND I even remembered where I put the hinge pin this time ;-)
- First time I’ve been out to work on this in 2022. Warm weather helps ;)
- Sometimes dead trees highjack your Saturday.
- Some visualizations don't get old to see on "all the things". MS Basic on the KIM-1 Mandelbrot. 10x speed. #commodore
- In case you were just sitting there wondering how to land in Lunar Lander on the KIM-1 (clone) in just two actions… start the game, count 3 Mississippi’s, thrust to 1. When your speed hits EXACTLY 85, thrust to 6. Works on this Machine... We can all rest easy now. #commodore
- At some point, my KIM-1 setups have become more complicated than a VIC-20 and I'm not even sorry about it. #commodore #problemsthatarentproblems
- Today's "learn something every day" lunchtime edition: Studying this fantastic example of a custom stack implementation to keep track of recursive searches to solve mazes. I ported it to Turbo Macro Pro of course ;-) #commodore
- I suspect no one is surprised that I started studying how to do Machine learning with cameras by detecting Commodore machines right? Eventually want to try detecting skin cancer, but that's a long road ahead. Never know when you might need a Commodore detector though #commodore
- Going to spend a fair amount of my “learn something every day” time this week with the @openmvcam. Pretty nifty.
- Someone asked me how to make a split color screen on the Commodore 64 in Assembly last night for... reasons. Easiest way I can think of is to squish the screen to 24 rows so the row count is even. #commodore
- Today’s learn something every day is tricks with 7 segments on the Corsham KIM-1. Happy Sunday :) #commodore
- Yesterday’s kitchen experiment turned out great. Had 3 pounds of leaf lard that we got 3 solid pints of snowy rendered lard from. Saved the last half pint and the cracklings as well (for science )
- After a fair amount of bug hunting I got this Rubik's cube on the VIC-20 working. Now to do a solver in 1000 bytes (yes, in ML for speed) Does require a 3k expansion. #commodore
- In Today’s learn something every day I’m making some improvements to a 40 year old Rubik’s cube game including adding a solver on the VIC-20. I forgot how hard it is to figure out which symbols to use sometimes when typing from printed listings. #commodore
- In Today’s learn something every day I switched back to this book that I’ve committed to going all the way through in 2022. But to mix things up I switched from the C64 to the VIC-20 for a while. Why make it easy right? #commodore
- Obligatory 2/22/22 on a TUEsday post.
- I still get a kick out of the MS BASIC Easter eggs that go back all the way to 1977 (at least). MS BASIC for the KIM-1 if you press A for the memory size gives you the authors ;-) #commodore
- Today’s “learn something every day, lunchtime edition” is a short one. Clock divider on an FPGA. This is really starting to click in my mind now.
- Today's "learn something every day: Lunch break edition" is a transient planet finder (Pluto in this case) from @nostarch Lee Vaughan's "Real World Python" book. Learned a lot from this one. #python #poorpluto
- Nope, still not tired of implementing Sierpinski on all the things #commodore #logo
- Logo's recursion on the Commodore 64 is fast enough to be pretty useful. Neat. #commodore
- Today’s “learn something every day” is Moore Finite State machine that implements a simple 4 bit counter on an FPGA. Green indicates the done state. Neato! Thanks to DigiKey for the tutorial.
- This label order is SUPER confusing on the HP Prime since it can do both standard and RPN modes. I’ve got 30 years of muscle memory for the stack order and this label messes me up all the time.
- I’m one KIM-1 clone away from having everything I need to make a 1977 style blockchain network ;-) Could always use a VIC-20 as the third… hmm #commodore
- Julie and I are traveling again this weekend. I’m a very early morning person and she is not. Gives me a couple hours to invest my time or spend my time. My choice here is probably not surprising.
- This book is much larger than I expected. #commodore
- Now that I've got some extra ram on the KIM-1, it's time to try Microsoft BASIC on it (controlling from a C64 of course). Here's a breadth first search… not only works well, it's even pretty fast. #commodore
- Putting a kettlebell ON my desk means it’s a constant reminder. Every hour during work it’s 20 push-ups and kettlebell work. Worked great!
- I bought the PAL-1 to see if I'd like noodling with the KIM-1 platform. Turns out I like it enough to have now purchased all of the available expansions … AND the Corsham KIM-1 clone as well (ships later, chip shortage) #itsonlymoneyright #sevensegmentsarethefuture #commodore
- If it’s above freezing my 3.5 mile daily hike is game on.
- FedEx has just left this piece of unobtainium on my porch. Good luck getting one of these in 2022…
- My Monday morning vibe...
- This is hands down the weirdest thing I’ve ever found inside a used book I bought online. #commodore #maybetherearesecretsonit
- The @Basic10L is <em>usually</em> about games. Since those aren't my thing, I started thinking about other interesting 10 liners. I can easily fit RC4 encryption in 10 lines with lots of room to spare. Wonder how I can expand on this… #commodore
- Just home from a really good week on the road to a delivery of this fantastic book.
- How much of a nerd am I? I’m pleased with my hotel room number for more than a couple reasons :)
- How much of a nerd am I? I’m pleased with my hotel room number for more than a couple reasons :)
- We don't need more "new" retro computers. But replicas… We DO need more of these. #commodore
- My resting heart rate has settled right at 50 very consistently. Not too shabby.
- It’s just before sunrise and I remembered that exactly 10 years ago today we jumped off a cliff. We uprooted our family from the DC suburbs and moved to the mountains of North Carolina. The view from our front door never disappoints even if you can’t really see the mountains this morning hardly at all.
- I have been looking for a physical copy of this book for some time. The cover on it is a little rough, but the rest of it is in okay shape and usable. SUPER happy to have found this. #commodore
- Occurs to me that using an Assembler on a Commodore 64 and then loading that program onto a KIM-1 isn't cross assembling. It's just assembling and loading. Not only isn't "cheating" but kinda feels good. #pedanticfridaythoughts #commodore
- Only have 1 RIOT chip until my second one arrives from overseas so had to modify the classic Asteroid by Stan Ockers (1976ish) for the KIM 1. Another surprisingly playable game on such a simple interface. Loading paper tape format files over serial from a real C64 ;-) #commodore
- Sooo many great programs to explore on the KIM-1. Spent a bit of time during lunch learning how the seven segments are wired. There is a surprising amount of example code out there with really clever techniques. KIM tribute to @8BitShowAndTell seemed appropriate #commodore
- Got conferences and shows coming up the next few months so my badge needs updating. Converted Style’s C64 fonts to binary format and I think I’m getting close on the correct screen colors. I think I’ll also implement a 10 PRINT demo on it #commodore
- Looking forward when I feel comfortable enough to do a 10 minute prototype for an idea on an FPGA platform. Microcontroller for now. Need to put in the work on learning FPGA better #therearenoshortcuts
- At a party: “Play any sports?” Me:”Football for about 40 years.”
- Did a full restoration of my wife’s Grandfather’s TI-58C. They are notorious for bad ram and this one needed replacing. Also converted it to a DC wall plug. Now accepts assembly language programs and the built in functions work. Very cool late 70s tech. But .27 amps, yikes!
- These are a few of my fav-or-ite things.
- I managed to enter all 196 Bytes of Lunar Lander by Jim Butterfield (BYTE April 1977) by hand with no errors on the first try. Such a fun game and a great way to learn 6502 Assembly programming the hard way. #commodore #shortcutsareboring
- Got this KIM-1 replica together in a couple hours tonight. Was a fair bit of soldering but now I can computer like it’s 1976. 17 instructions to do a counter. Tomorrow morning we’re playing Jim Butterfield’s Lunar Lander on this thing! #commodore
- My KIM-1 replica came way faster than I expected. Should be awesome. #commodore
- Mentioned yesterday I've been going through this Math for Deep Learning book this week. The examples are all in Python, so I've been reimplementing every one in Julia. This not only gets me to really think about what I'm doing, but strengthens both my Python and Julia chops
- Tearing through this book during breaks this week. Highly recommended.
- The Apple Lisa was released 39 years ago today. While it was a market failure it was crazy innovative. If you think about it, the computer you use today doesn't REALLY do anything more than this computer did.
- This group in my collection contains some really fantastic articles. April 1977 was one of my favorite issues of the whole BYTE magazine run. Never mind that I was 2 years old when it was printed ;)
- Well the fix was to reflow the solder joints around the connector. Must have had a cracked or marginal one. #commodore
- Hmm, getting a fault on my MiniPET 40/80 on the IEEE port. Anyone know if this needs a loopback to pass or is this really a fault? #commodore
- When picking up a new language (Julia this time), I like to solve new problems to get used to it or solve a problem I've solved in another language. Monty Hall will do nicely . Since Julia on an i7 is slightly faster than a 6502, I let the 64 do 1000 and Julia did 2^29 #commodore
- This 1977 game on the KIM-1 is surprisingly playable and really fun. A whopping 196 bytes. The number of things I’ve learned from Jim Butterfield is staggering. Something to think about as I write and try to contribute even a small thing here and there. #commodore
- Always wanted to add a python example the 100 Door problem article I did with the 8 Bit machines last year. Stumbled onthe fun Asciimatics library and then it was a snap.
- I’ve collected something like 30 calculators over the years. Most at least 30 years old. In the “modern” category I have 4 graphing calculators. In theory I should like the HP the most, but in practice the order of most to least used left to right is this. Even I’m surprised.
- Got the offending RAM off no problem but I just realized I don’t have a socket that will fit here. Off to mouser…
- In case you were just sitting there asking yourself “what DOES the inside of an HP-58c calculator from 1977 look like”
- Professionally packed… just like this loose rattling around in a box. Sigh.
- I've been on Udemy for a decade and started but never finished many courses. And this is now the second one I've completed this week. Learn. All. The. Things.
- Creating a simple hello world DApp. Have I ever mentioned how much a loathe nodejs and Javascript in general? Urg.
- This is gonna need some work. My shots at 25 yards are consistently grouped like this which ain’t gonna cut it. Practice practice practice.
- So cool. Made a jet engine sounding cook fire with a handful of dry twigs. Science is awesome.
- Pocket knives
- This numworks calculator is really fast
- Doing a couple thousand-word article on the history and some usage of the Logo language, including code examples. Here's an example of some supporting stuff I'm creating for it. Fractal tree on Python (turtle) next to the same algorithm on a C64. Super fun. #commodore #python
- I've signed up for 43 Udemy courses over the years. This is the VERY FIRST course I've EVER completed to the end. And… I'm planning to go through it from start to finish again.
- The Commodore 64 was introduced 40 ago at CES. You couldn't get one until about August, but you could argue that today is its 40th birthday. It was and continues to be a heavy influence in my career. This very C64 was in my bedroom for a decade. Still runs like a champ #commodore
- I love a program example that starts with "contrary to most available literature about USR…". This book is SO dense I have to go slow to keep from missing nuggets (rushing is dumb anyway). Like pulling the return address off of the stack at the end. SOOO GOOD. #commodore
- Okay, Julia's plotting syntax is SO much better. Kinda just fits the way I think without having to look things up. Might be my new goto language… #JuliaLang
- Alright, resistors are all placed. I’m leaving two out until I decide if this is going to be a PAL or NTSC board. #commodore
- I’ve had this 250407 replica board for months and haven’t built it yet. Time to get started. #commodore
- I hate it when I break something that’s a result of my carelessness. And… I don’t have any spares. Sigh
- Okay, now I can clearly see why I'm going to keep learning Julia. Python took 18 seconds to do 100k iterations. Julia (almost identical code, definitely same approach) took 706 milliseconds. Dayuummm.
- Completely unscientific and meaningless benchmarks are fun. My favorite BASIC program of all time is this maze from 1981 originally written for the Atari 400/800 and the PET. Turbo BASIC XL sure does help the Atari 800XL be the machine it really is. Impressive. #atari #commodore
- These warnings exist because someone did it. I reserve ruining my broadheads by missing and hitting a tree… like a man.
- Seriously my new favorite album. Listening through my late 80s Boze speakers in my office all day. @lukhash is amazing. Does anyone want to sell me their Vinyl copy?
- Finally acquired an UnoCart (used, chip shortage and all that) for my Atari machines. Now I can properly try Turbo BASIC XL. This evening will be some completely ridiculous and shockingly unscientific benchmarking. #atari
- Stealing my own Assembly code from my Enigma project for another project. Kinda love when you get to that point where you say "oh, I've done a bunch of the work for this already" #commodore
- Working on the next article in my "ciphers on old computer things" series and reviewing some supporting code for a couple of the articles I did last year. Very simple code here but the BASIC built-in string slicing routines are fast enough for many fun visuals. #commodore
- I think this is the first time I've ever used the BIT operator in my life. No longer a virgin ;-) #commodore
- Compute's BASIC Toolkit book example 3 is passing parameters to SYS. So satisfying to be just getting into the weeds with 412 pages to go in the book ;-) #commodore
- My linear algebra is really rusty so I'm going back and reviewing today. SO much better if you can visualize along the way and the tools for this these days are crazy good. How can you not love open source and the people who pour themselves into these libraries?
- Still not decided on Assemblers on the VIC-20 so just doing it in the monitor for now. #commodore
- Cold front will be here soon, so putting some miles in. We moved here 10 years ago this month and I still have to pinch myself that we live here.
- I'm planning to go through this book this year on the 64 and VIC-20 at the same time. It may very well take me a good part of the year, but there really aren't shortcuts to anything worth doing. Means I need to re-evaluate VIC-20 assemblers again which is fun. #commodore
- I eat broccoli sprouts by the fistful. If you grow then at home a quart costs like 3 cents.
- Might not seem like much, but set out at the beginning of the week to get past the raw beginning stages of FPGA development. Button presses, LEDs, seven segments, counting… check. Super happy with my progress.
- Spending some time learning <a href="https://twitter.com/JuliaLanguage">@JuliaLanguage</a> this week. Just realized arrays are 1 based instead of zero. I don't know Julia, this new relationship might not be working for me.
- Went the fairly traditional route to get this <a href="https://twitter.com/lukhash">@lukhash</a> program from the album onto my 64. Played it onto a tape and into the datasette. Other than having to hook up one my PAL 64s, was a snap. Very very cool. But I NEED this on Vinyl now ;-) <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/commodore?src=hashtag_click">#commodore</a>
- This finally arrived today. I was disappointed the LP was sold out when I ordered it back in November, but having it on CD does make it easier to get the bonus track, a Commodore program, onto my C64 so there’s that. Awesome artwork @lukhash #commodore
- Challenging by myself to do this part, but got the elevator on today and it has all the right clearances for good movement. Now to balance it. #myzenith750
- Change of pace for the build today. Working on the interior which is currently a hot mess. #myzenith750
- Adding @JuliaLanguage to Jupyter is easy, but it's interesting that labs still calls this an ipynb by default which can't be right…
- Heh, this rabbit hole is brought to me by <a href="https://twitter.com/somacdivad">@somacdivad</a>
- It’s raining, so back inside this afternoon. In the interest of keeping to my principals, switching to a Lattice FPGA since at the moment it’s the best if you want a 100% open source tool chain. My Alchitry CU will do. BTW Digikey looks to have iCEsticks available mid Jan
- We started this puzzle on Christmas morning. She just put the last piece in place. Julie did about 80% of it :)
- Taking a break from FPGAs this morning to get the 5 of these I bought earlier in 2021 up and running. Got a lot of uses for these.
- Feels weird to be walking around on Dec 28 in a T Shirt
- Great first day progress learning FPGAs. Seven segment display counting from a Xilinx Artix 7 in Verilog and I even understand what's happening which makes it even sweeter.
- My bow is 32 years old. It has zero fancy features. Shoots true. I’m finding many things in my life that I prefer to have less features.
- I’m off all week and not a “relaxing is actually relaxing” kinda guy. I bought this a year ago and always meant to really get into FPGAs. No time like the present.
- Easily my favorite food and stupid easy to make. Somehow I scored this at $6 per pound last week.
- One of my favorite Christmas gifts… my wife found an unopened vintage Mastermind from the early 70s.
- My twitter account was locked for this tweet which contained only a video of my own code. No music, nothing offensive.
- Definitely have the hang of Logo on the C64 now. Since it's Christmas eve, I'm calling challenge from @101Computing done for now. I'll do more snowflake leg randomization here and there, but was fun to play with Logo this morning. #commodore
- Yet another rabbit hole I'm down thanks to @8bitshowandtell. Been REALLY enjoying this book and through some patience (okay, A LOT...took like 6 months) I acquired a physical copy for less than highway robbery. #commodore
- After quite a bit of work, I'm now getting a VERY good video signal out of this VIC-20(PAL). Even my cheap video capture device does a good job with it. #commodore
- Today's beginner python challenge from @101Computing is a randomized snowflake challenge with Turtle. Since I'm not a beginner in Python (25 years), I figure Logo on the Commodore 64 was not cheating. Should be fun. #commodore
- Just pulling this one out of storage. It was my wife’s grandfather’s who was an aerospace engineer at Lockheed. Works great but needs a bath. Am I reading this price tag right?
- Six month check on my Vicky-20 build: I’m going to either have to remove and replace most of the precision sockets or figure out a way to hold the chips in. Every few days the ICs work their way out. Maybe zip ties? Double wipe sockets for me from now on. Sigh. #commodore #vic20
- This HP32SII has been in my bag every day for about 25 years. Simple, rugged and powerful. But this HP Prime is really growing on me… hmmm.
- Working on "cracking" simple ciphers on old computers next. Letter frequency, then word frequency. Step one works well enough #commodore
- Coincidence that this person shares my name. But I’ve found my 2022 overall theme.
- Permutations of 1 to 9 in Assembly/Machine Language, BASIC, and Python. It only took 30 hours in BASIC ;-) (Python was 2 seconds without optimizing) You know, for science https://imapenguin.com/permutations-of-1-to-9-in-6502-assembly/ #commodore #python
- Sonic for the C64 is out today. I happen to have a 64C in my collection that's PAL. So combined with the UltimateII+, its 1581 drive, and 16MB REU, this game runs very very well. #commodore
- Some people watch TV, I sort out graph theory concepts in a machine code monitor with my “laptop”. Like what you like and don’t apologize for it. #commodore
- I was just thinking that this morning instead of being productive or doing holiday stuff I’d count how many times I can unintentionally hit the CAPS and break keys. #atari
- A twin with actual head room. Now there’s a crazy idea.
- What, that program only took... 29 hours. Don't ask questions ;-) #commodore
- I really enjoyed Nick’s “Racing the Beam” so I figure this will be my next weekend reading.
- Can you do #adventofcode with 40 year old machines? The answer is “some of it”. Even counting takes a long time, let's get into some of the details. https://imapenguin.com/can-you-do-advent-of-code-on-8-bit-machines/ #commodore
- Finally getting back to writing up some of the ciphers I’ve done but not yet published. Only took like a 5 month break (detour?) Tomorrow I’ll post the VIC Cipher on the VIC20 which does just barely fit on an unexpanded VIC. #commodore
- Hard not to be in awe of nature sometimes. These burrs are particularly good at clinging to sweatshirts.
- I have been doing Breadth and Depth First Searches on Apple II and Commodore for a couple months, so Day 12 of #AdventOfCode was doable (but slow) on a C64. END is a keyword in BASIC so I changed it to FIN #commodore
- Airplane isn’t going to build itself even if it’s 38 in here. #myzenith750
- We bought a whole Mangalica pig from a local farm, used a local butcher. Having the whole animal means you have to use scraps, everything. Made some “cottage bacon” with some pieces and happened to have decent ingredients for an English breakfast (dinner).
- For #AdventOfCode Day 8 Part 2, figured it out in Python first to wrap my brain around how to do it iteratively. After an "ah ha" moment in sorting the unique segments it clicked. Python: 0.04 seconds and PET: 25 minutes.I could refactor it to be faster but not bad. #commodore
- Still having fun doing these #AdventOfCode puzzles in the morning. I changed the delimiter from "|" to a zero since old computers don't always have that character. Part one was a lot of data, but the PET got through it pretty quickly. #commodore
- Something interesting I like to do on these long calculations is to compare machines to the fastest Commodore computer, the PAL VIC-20. In this case, the VIC-20 finished 48 minutes sooner than the NTSC C64. Very scientific of course 😉 #commodore
- Part 2 of #AdventOfCode Day 7: my rough estimate is that my current code will run for… well a LONG time on a lowly #C64. So what to do… I know! Run the exact same code on BBC Basic on a 2.6Ghz i7 in 60 seconds ;-) Cheating? Maybe. Am I happy anyway? Yes #commodore #BBCBASIC
- Might have to start doing these in Assembly starting tomorrow if I want to keep using 8 Bit (around 1Mhz ish) computers. Part 1 of #AdventOfCode Day 7 took almost 6 hours. Good thing I started it in the middle of the night ;-) #commodore
- Trying this out for more or less the first time ever. Feels awkward...
- Been working on a magic square solver for a couple weeks now. My recursive backtracker in Python typically takes about 290 tries. Iterative approach on the PET I've got down under 100 tries (although it takes 15 minutes). Pretty happy with this. #commodore
- Most of my favorite antidotes for a great many things cost no money at all.
- Used my favorite VIC-20 for #AdventOfCode Day 3. Did need to use a RAM expander on the lowly VIC, but it worked out okay. #commodore
- Quick look at the Biltmore Christmas decorations with my favorite person.
- For the #AdventOfCode Day 2 Part 2 my 8 Bit platform is short a single digit to display the precise 2 billion+ answer (intentionally blurred). So my 1983 Tandy PC-4 got recruited for the assist. I’m counting this as fair play. #commodore #PET
- Blurred my answers ;-) Weapon of choice for #AdventOfCode Day 2 is the #commodore #PET #AdventOfCode2021
- The two best Christmas albums of all time. We have many, many albums and these two are the best.
- The #AdventOfCode Day 1 part 2 was a three-measurement sliding window. See, who needs more than 8 Bits in a computer? I blurred the answer, no cheating ;-) Url if you want to participate is: https://adventofcode.com/ #commodore #C64
- Doing the #AdventOfCode for December using my weapon of choice. Day 1 part 1 was a snap. If I don't print the lines (looks cooler if I do) it gets the correct answer in 31 seconds. Not bad for a 39 year old machine #commodore #c64
- Today's learn something every day: Back implementing manual stack and memoization on systems that don't REALLY do recursion. To help visualize loops, I started printing the status on every loop on a delay and reversing the stack pointer digit so I could follow it. #commodore
- Christmas AND math. Sign me up.
- Today's "learn something every day": Been studying recursion implementations in modern languages like Python. Taking this back to 8 Bit machines...this is the first time I've ever studied implementing a manual push/pop stack pointer combined with memoization. Got a lot of uses to ponder for this. #commodore #VIC20 #python
- 25 years together and she still takes my breath away.
- Back to noodling during lunch with the "AI" computer player algorithm for this "connect five" game which I can still pretty handily beat. #commodore #appleII
- Apparently it’s Fibonacci day (who makes up these days). Anyway, seems like a fun job for my crazy slow 1991 Sharp 9300C Hat tip to Andy Anderson for bringing this to my attention #FibonacciDay
- This took me a while to figure out: All permutations of a naturally ordered string. In Python/Rust I'd use recursion, but on an 8-Bit you run out of space on the stack pretty quickly. Managed to come up with a working iterative version. Now I'll redo it in Assembly ;-) #commodore
- Writing some weighted depth first searches for some security software in my day job. Can't think of a better way to refresh my tree searches knowledge than doing it on a PET. #commodore
- I’ve never cared for the 80 Column hacks for the Commodore 64, but I love the Mandelbrot PETSCII program on the PET 8032 so much I could not resist. On this weeks episode of “Stupid Races Between Old Computery Things" PET vs C64(80 columns) vs 128 (10x speed) #commodore
- I acquired this white TI nspire today. It’s disqualified from being on my episodes of “Stupid Races between old computery things” because it’s not old and with an ARM9 @ 396 MHz is more like a baby Raspberry Pi than a calculator. Still will be fun though.
- Slipped out to the Christmas tree farm yesterday during lunch.
- I'm always looking for something to do with an 80 Column PET. Mandelbrot in PETSCII might be cooler than any high res versions I've seen. Real-time took about 13 mins. #commodore #mathisfun
- Barnsley Fern on Apple IIe, Commodore 64, and TI-84. The 8-bit machine videos are sped up 300% to match the much faster calculator render speed so they complete at similar times. This was VERY satisfying to do. #TI #commodore #appleIIe
- I think today's learn something every day is going to be to take this Apple II Barnsley Fern (sped up) and port it to a #commodore
- What? I'm just sitting here thinking about how to best do recursive backtracking in BASIC... #commodore
- I’ve had a train under our tree for 20 years. Caleb is moving to Texas right after the holidays so it seemed like a good idea to get him his own so he can start his own traditions. We happen to have two trees this year so…
- Rainbow on the runway this morning
- I do this same walk loop every weekday I work from home. Typically after lunch. It’s 3.26 miles. Just a couple shots from today as the leaves are really starting to turn now.
- I have hunted for and acquired a lot of wonderful vintage technology pieces over the last year. This is easily my favorite of them. I use it every single day. 1962 was a good year for these.
- What the hell? Did they use MT RAM? Another thing I really wish I hadn’t spent money on this year. Arg.
- The amateur mathematician in me has to believe that there’s an excellent chance that I’m the only person on the planet doing #NaNoWriMo21 on a Commodore Plus/4. Living dangerously:)
- Doing some AT backpacking this week. This is what the vertical looks like in the section we'll be on ;-) It's brutal #commodore
- With very little help from me, young guy I'm tutoring in math took this C64 book listing he found and "ported" it to his VIC-20 including sound. Pretty soon he wont need me. Awesome sauce. #commodore
- Well @8BitShowAndTell I finally found my original C64 Pac-Man cartridge. Can confirm it has that same title screen bug. I did find one online that someone fixed. Well at least they fixed the fruit anyway. Put that version on my UltimateII+ #commodore
- A young person asked me to help him port this to the VIC-20 so he can play it. I'm aware of a port already, but if we actually do the port together there's more opportunity to learn so we're gonna do that. #commodore
- Very happy with progress this morning. So good to be back at this. Tail is back on it, closer to being permanently mounted. That skin on the front is going to need a fair amount of trimming next. #myzenith750
- Was making a plaque on the CNC for my “wall of shame” to showcase stuff I’ve screwed up on this plane build. How’s setting the depth incorrectly and slamming the router head into it for irony? Scratch one plaque and expensive bit. Pro Tip: Screwing up is just learning.
- Today is the first of 9 days off in a row for me. Despite the fact that it’s still dark out and 43 degrees (F) inside the hangar, gonna route some fuel and brake lines. #myzenith750
- On a tip from @NoelsRetroLab I found these ROM adapter boards. Picked @PCBWay to manufacture 10 of them to me. I'm still blown away that they can make these and have them at my front door all the way to the US in 6 days. Incredible.
- This morning's "learn something every day" is some polar plotting. R=1+2*COS(Z), pretty neat patterns from this one #commodore #c64
- I love these equation plots. A little lunchtime fun today to relax. This one only took 16 minutes to render, faster than I anticipated. #commodore #c64
- Anyone aware of a scan of this book online? I see some others by him, but not this one. I just copied the Floppy to a disk image. Could scan it easily since it’s spiral bound. #commodore
- Since I was scolded for taking out the Plus/4 yesterday, I figured I might as well fully get in trouble by powering it on and having it do something. #commodore
- Another @8BitShowAndTell book recommendation arrived today. This will be a fun one.
- The road to our house… At some point recently I had realized I have everything I dreamed about 15 years ago. I wonder what our next adventure will be.
- Afternoon walk is starting to feel like November.
- Well, it’s a good start. Just need to do that 29 more times. It’s not even 7am #NaNoWriMo
- Same Sierpiński's Carpet program but with PETSCII instead of graphics. This is a job for a PET! (2x speed) #commodore #PETober
- Sierpiński carpet on the Apple IIe took 3 1/2 hours. Here sped up A LOT. Machine language version is next and should be WAAY faster #appleii
- I’m doing #NaNoWriMo for sure, but looking for another thing in November to also dig deep on. I’m thinking about mashing these two concepts.
- I LOVED @Ayliean's Tower of Hanoi video on @numberphile this week. I wanted to try it with some "soothing" sounds from the 80s with the SID from a Commodore 64 #commodore #c64 (sound on!)
- Warranties are for losers.
- I just picked up this 386 laptop from a guy up the road from me. New in the box. I literally cut the plastic from the factory on it
- TI-81 Screen pixel issue was a manageable repair. Took just a couple minutes. Reflowed the solder on all of the ribbon cables with the hot air station. She's all set for 30 more years of mathing.
- Well this is sad. My TI-81 has developed a column of dead pixels. I wonder if I can replace the LCD.
- Neither my son or the dog care that it’s way too cold to be in the river today.
- A little lunchtime fun: I have my Commodore PET Tic-Tac-Toe "AI" playing against itself with about a 95% tie rate. A couple more tweaks and I think I can get it to 100%. #PETober #commodore
- Started wearing a 30 pound weight vest on my daily lunchtime hike. Feels really good. Also I think this is the longest my hair has been since 1992.
- A week diving deeper with the PET day 1(take 2): I stand corrected, the COMMODORE PET is a graphics powerhouse. Better graphics than any other computer invented since 1977. #commodore #PETober
- Have had a great week with the Atari 800XL and then another with the VIC20. This week my choices are:
- You know the boat electrical repairs are getting serious when the bench power supply gets moved in.
- Wrapping up a week with the VIC: Unexpanded VIC with a keyboard version of Breakout. Getting a fair amount of help from machine language here, but it's a very playable (and simple to code/understand) version. LOVED this week with the VIC and appreciate it even more! #VICtober
- A week diving deeper with the VIC-20 day 6: Pretty much the best graphics of any computer ever made. #VICtober
- I’m thinking seriously about doing #nanowrimo2021 with ONLY these tools
- Got an Apple II 80 col/64k expansion card failing a RAM diagnostic. I have at least 4 testers for this type of RAM and plenty of spares.
- A week diving deeper with the VIC-20 day 5: Smooth scrolling isn't too hard. Getting close to the end of my week with the VIC and I appreciate it even more than I did when I started. #VICtober
- 10 minute lunch break "learn something": More of the "AI" book - Breadth first searches are nice and zippy. Apple IIe for this one
- A week diving deeper with the VIC-20 day 4: The VIC-20 is a graphics powerhouse ;-) #VICtober
- On today's episode of stupid races between old computery things: A brute force tree solver on a Commodore 128 in 80 column mode vs a VIC-20. The 128 is easier to visualize what it's doing, but as expected, WAY slower. #commodore #VICtober
- A week diving deeper with the VIC-20 day 3: While not as visually interesting, implementing tree searches to solve shortest path problems is fun for my brain, just maybe not your eyeballs. #VICtober
- I figured out the problem with my MiniPET/SD card access. This connector is already not making good contact. Going to work on a way to extend the base of my setup so that it’s not just hanging off the end. Or maybe just put feet on it. #commodore
- This is a REALLY excellent book. I’ve been going through this a chapter at a time. Very little changes to get the code to work on Commodore machines too although I’ve mostly been using the Apple IIe. Great primer to modern AI techniques if you can believe that. I give it an 11/10
- A week diving deeper with the VIC-20 day 2: Some people say the VIC is underpowered and you can't do interesting things with just a couple k of RAM. Whatever slackers! #VICtober #commodore
- For those who say "3583 bytes isn't enough to do anything useful", a decent cipher fits with 58 whole bytes free. Take that!
- A week diving deeper with the VIC-20: Starting the week finishing up the VIC Cipher on an unexpanded VIC. It's not fast, but it's fast enough to be useful. One of the few of these I've done that's 100% in BASIC #commodore
- Since my MiniPET is down I’m shifting gears this week. This is one of my favorites anyway so I’m already looking forward to it.
- Working on an old boat today. Just pulled these off of the deep cycle battery. Both red. One was on the positive and one was on the negative. They run under the floor… and the wire chasing begins because the colors sure aren’t right and they aren’t labeled.
- This is week’s books to devour. Really looking forward to these.
- A week diving deeper - PET: Cramming code into single lines isn't just for Perl programmers. Here are two one-line subroutines to convert hex to decimal and back. Hint: you have to use the shortened keywords to get them to fit in 80 columns #PETober #commodore
- A week diving deeper with the PET: Since I have a fair amount of Commodore experience, seemed prudent to think about and work on text screen program UI concepts. A loan calculator is even a useful one to have on disk in 2021. #PETober #commodore
- Some thoughts on my week of "diving deeper" with the Atari 800XL.
- New to me 1962 Olympia SM7. It’s in amazing shape. #lessfeaturesplease
- My week with the Atari 800XL is over. I’m writing up my thoughts and some things I learned. In the meantime, this one is next. #octaci #PETober
- Was just thinking “it’s 3pm and I’ve been super productive today, I wonder why…”. Oh right, that’s why.
- Diving into Atari 8 Bit: Horizontal movement is pretty straightforward. Vertical is a little more tricky. Using an ML program and calling it via USR() makes it MUCH faster. Still having fun(ish). #octari
- Two of my favorite distraction free productivity tools
- This chip is still on my desk. Even though I’m one of the people who has the thermal printer it goes in. The mystery was cooler than the reality. #commodore
- Diving into Atari 8 Bit: XIO is completely new to me. Combined with joystick inputs to draw a "road". Pretty fun. #octari
- Diving into Atari 8 Bit: More graphics learning and using TRAP which is very nice. Pretty impressed at how well graphics work even in BASIC. #octari
- Diving into Atari 8 Bit: I'm actually off today, but always 5 minutes to learn something. Quick color and plotting. Atari BASIC makes this stuff really easy. #octari
- Diving into Atari 8 Bit: Getting a handle on CTIA chip capabilities. Shading is a pretty cool feature #octari
- Diving into Atari 8 Bit: Reading joysticks is really easy, and Atari BASIC is good enough to make joystick movements smooth in BASIC. Neato #octari
- A little lunchtime fun: revisiting this old maze listing to see if we can get it to be just a little more random. Atari BASIC sure is slow #octari
- The 3.10a Firmware update for the Ultimate II+ seems to have resolved my long time C128 disk access errors on this particular machine. Neato. #commodore
- This perfectly sums up what my study focus for October will be.
- Test fitting the instrument panel trays. I may have found an actual use for TheC64 Mini. #commodore
- Floppy emulator arrived today for the Apple II. Plug it in, turn it on. Works. Too easy.
- In today’s episode of “stupid races between old computery things”: Apple IIe (128k RAM) vs unexpanded VIC-20 with a boring version of the 100 doors problem. Almost identical performance since they have the same processor running a very similar clock speeds. #commodore #apple
- Here’s what the Apple II external power supply installation looks like. It’s dramatically cooler inside the case now and no Rifa caps to explode. Even still works
- Spent most of the afternoon chopping wood. Time to move to figuring out how to get this Gotek floppy emulator into my Osborne 1.
- Mead I start today will be ready in April. Always plan ahead.
- A bunch of people have asked about my future proofing of the Apple IIe. The core of my strategy is this externally power supply that replaces the troublesome internal unit completely. Not “authentic” but it will keep a ton of heat away from the rest of the machine
- Always loved a green phosphor monitor for the PET. Took a risk of tearing apart the universe by putting my MiniPET on an Apple monitor. Seems like we’re all still here so far. #apple #commodore #10Print
- Well I’m trying not to be disappointed that it works. I do enjoy fixing them. But I love that I have this in my collection now. #10print
- I was lightly scolded by @8BitShowAndTell for learning LISP on a machine with a lot of bits so this morning I've shifted back to a machine with the proper number ;-) #commodore
- This morning's "learn something new every day" I'm learning a LISP dialect... finally. I've never been cool enough to learn LISP, but I can fake being cool
- Some of my notebooks from 1993-2008 or so when I made the mistake of switching to mostly digital. 20 years from now I’ll bet you would be glad your notes/thoughts/journal today was on paper. Ask me how I know.
- 10 Minute Lunch break progress: I have this dumb idea to do a simple (insecure) blockchain as a teaching tool. My first crack at it is sorta working already ;-) #commodore
- For a long time I’ve averaged reading two books a week. It’s almost as fun figuring out what to read next as it is actually reading. This next week will be:
- Finally bottled the rest of the first batch of this winter’s mead. This is about 1/3 of the batch and will age until about November. It will mellow out a lot by then and the cloudiness will be gone. Two more 3 gallon batches are a month behind and still fermenting.
- Doing a little French Broad River Kayaking with Julie today. Not too shabby
- What kind of music do you guys like? All the kinds. Julie’s thrift store finds today fit right in
- This socket is going to have to go. This is working its way out when it gets warm. #commodore
- It’s #septandy day 15. I give up.
- This keyboard layout is the recipient of a lot of criticism. If you use it for a while a lot of it actually makes perfect sense. #commodore
- Is it #Septandy day 14 or only 16 more days with Tandy machines? I'm trying to like them… they are like a, uh, warm blanket. Yeah, that's it.
- The Munsters are FAR superior to the Adam’s Family.
- My number one productivity technology for creative work
- It’s #septandy day 13… wondering a little if I can do this for 17 more days. The blue and white are pretty okay, why aren’t those the default colors? #mysteriesoftheuniverse
- On #Septandy day 12 I’m trying unsuccessfully to tweak the video to make it more readable. Toxic green just doesn’t work that well.
- Tonight’s double feature.
- Playing around with colors for the Zenith and at the moment leaning towards an Army Jeep Green
- The actual building is gone now, but I was in my office on the 10th floor facing south in the red circle on the phone with my wife.
- This is a fascinating feat of engineering
- On #Septandy day 11, I need a sanity break #commodore
- We had a very late frost so our favorite orchard only had a 25% yield this year. We went out to support them and with much standing on our toes found more than a few.
- It's #Septandy day 10. Today's program is a "timebomb" (with sound effects). Feels pretty timely for some reason.
- Super speedy delivery from Alissa at Viking Aircraft. They just started making these instrument mounting trays and saved me a ton of time getting them pre made from them. Excellent quality as always from them.
- One of my first "real" programs was a blackjack game I made in BASIC on a Sharp 9300 calculator to impress my Adv. Algebra teacher. Since it's #septandy day 9, here's a slot machine on a "Tandy" PC-4
- For #septandy day 8, learning GET and PUT in Coco BASIC which I'm not too familiar with. This is better than some of the generative art I've seen for many dollars on the NFT sites. If I do dumb things and "secure it" as "one of a kind" with a blockchain am I doing it right?
- On #Septandy Day 7 future value of investment planning in Toxic green is where it's at
- For #Septandy day 6: I'll bet there's an untapped market for abstract art with an #nft on 8-bit computers. Not that the Coco would be my first choice for this, but since I'm keeping with the #Septandy theme…
- Starting to have that fall feel in here. Early morning wing root section work. The answer to when will the plane be done: when there are no more things left on the todo list.
- So many great resources for learning how to do more with retro computers. My #Septandy day 5 choices
- For #septandy day 4, I did the beloved 10 PRINT program. The Color Computer’s slash and backslash characters are a 5 × 7 region in a larger box of 8 × 12. It’s not a great character set to demonstrate this as a random “maze” or even really a clear connected pattern. Still fun.
- In today's episode of "Stupid races between old computery things", we have a #Septandy day 3 duo of a Coco2 with and without extended BASIC vs a VIC-20. Curiously Color BASIC is missing the exponent function so we had to implement it. Will #commodore win?
- The PC-4 is a neat little handheld, but it isn't going to win any speed competitions. Simple "benchmark" on my Coco2 takes 39 seconds. Exact same code on the PC-4 took 3:35. But BASIC in your pocket is pretty nifty! #Septandy
- It's September 1st. Getting the #Septandy train rolling. All aboard!
- Well, thanks to @8BitShowAndTell this is on my VIC-20 today. Follow him on the YouTubes for Gorf goodness in a couple days (or on Patreon for sooner). All the cool kids are doing it.
- This evening I’m exploring the first CAD software I ever used seriously. Where’s a light pen when you need it?
- Well I know what I’m adding to my Christmas list.
- Time to up my game. I own a nice collection of various knives but not a proper bowie knife. Never leave home without it.
- Gonna try to get through both of these this week.
- Spent time dodging thunderstorms today. This was the one clearing that was long enough to get a shot of.
- Early morning summer departures means bugs on the windshield.
- Interesting that @VansAircraft and @SonexAircraft are working on high wing models. Apparently I missed some industry trend memo somewhere.
- bow chica bow wow
- Haven’t been flying much but we kicked off the rust for a couple minutes this morning after almost finishing the flaps on the zenith. Was nice to have my buddy Simon help with the building this morning.
- I’m short a transistor to do a composite MOD on this Atari VCS/2600 so it’s the ol route the RF through a VCR trick for now #atari
- Since I only eat once a day now, I had time to recap and heat sync an Atari 800 during lunch. Working like a champ
- This morning the "learn something every day" was a maze walker in BASIC
- The Selectric II restoration was a snap. About an hour, and it’s working like a champ. It’s built like a tank and probably has 100 years of life left in it. It’ll take me a little bit to get fast on it, but that sound is just so satisfying.
- Lunchtime fun "for science". I was playing with Atari Turbo-BASIC XL the 800XL and couldn't resist doing the same tests on a VIC-20.
- When someone asks why you are doing so and so thing... the answer is ALWAYS "for science".
- My next restoration project isn’t a vintage computer, but it counts as vintage. Always wanted a Selectric. Mechanical pencil for scale. It’s huge.
- Autobiographies
- The other book I finished last week was Howard Scott Warshaw's. He contends that most people who say that E.T. is "The Worst Game of All Time" have probably not even played it. I have it, have played it, AND I don't think it's even close to the worst game of "All time".
- Really enjoyed the 10PRINT book this past weekend. Who knew there were at least a couple hundred pages of things to talk about from just one line of code? For fun, during lunch today, I looked at many of the variations of it.
- I’m probably going to hell for this
- New life skill for me: yellow jacket nest removal. They sure are mean.
- For the most part I’ve been sticking pretty close to the plans. Today’s deviation was to add some stiffening L angles to these pulleys. Once this section is riveted they’ll be hard to access and I didn’t like the amount of skin flex I was seeing.
- Working on flight controls again before it gets too hot to be in here today.
- While waiting on my date I worked on the next part of Nick Hampshire's VIC Graphics book. Multi Colored "fan".
- I didn’t go to Blackhat this year. A friend brought this back with her for me. If I had known this sort of thing would be there I definitely would have made the trip :)
- This morning's quick "learn something new every day": Been going through Nick Hampshire's VIC-20 books. 2nd books is on graphics. #commodore
- Lunch shenanigans: Now I'm on a quest to find the slowest machine I have that will run this "benchmark" (I call it the @NoelsRetroLab benchmark). The PC-4 is the current leader.
- Installed BreakIntoProg's BBC BASIC Port to the CERBERUS 2080. On the Z80 at 8Mhz it runs this quick benchmark in around 11 seconds. Pretty neat.
- Trying something different on my Atari 800XL this week. The keyboard on the top has switches instead of a membrane. First time all of my keys have reliably worked :) #atari
- Finished the 100 door problem on a bunch of systems. Atari 800XL, Cerberus 2080, VIC-20, PET, Color Maximite
- Last of the 10 machines in the 100 door demo is CERBERUS. Is unfinished. Last because it's the hardest to do (for me). It's WAY too fast for the visual demo. Wasting a couple million clock cycles. Needs the result output and custom characters to be finished. Happy with progress
- Taking a break from the cipher series for a bit. This weeks article will be on the 100 door problem done on 10 different systems. Wouldn’t be complete without a calculator in the mix would it? (PS, the VIC-20 is my favorite solution set so far). Also, TI-84’s BASIC is really fast
- Old computers make good teaching tools in part because you see huge efficiency gains when changing your approach. Reducing your execution time from 30 minutes to 5 minutes is more satisfying than .003 seconds to .0003 seconds a modern system.
- I’m on the prowl for a 386 desktop. Less bells and whistles the better.
- Took months of patience but I finally picked up a copy of this book for a price that wasn’t highway robbery
- Afternoon 10 minute break noodle: Atari BASIC is not my favorite but it works
- 10 minute lunchtime noodle: Taking a quick initial swing at @somacdivad's challenge this week on a VIC-20. Looks like I'll have to do the extra credit part now.
- Since we seem to be on an early 80s book kick, my favorite from this time period is “Once Upon Atari”. Fascinating story and better writing than most small run books, most which could REALLY use an editors red pen.
- Installing the elevator pulleys this morning. It’s a measure twice cut once kinda deal. Really not something I want to have misaligned. It was more like a measure 2^8 and cut once kinda deal. The other one is inside and upside down and required some gymnastics on my part.
- Pre dawn tail work. Questioning my decision to be on a ladder before sunrise ;)
- Waiting for my date to be ready gave me a few minutes on the PET. If you take two @8BitShowAndTell videos and mash them together... (this is Robin's game, not mine)
- Finished @BilHerd’s book in one sitting. Very cool to see many of these stories in one place.
- This such a flawed and also beautiful piece of hardware. I love everything about it
- Turns out direct sunlight works. This is before and after on the Plus/4 Keyboard after 4 hours. AirPods for color comparison with an actual white.
- On the left is a flawed but decent product I’ve used every day for three years. On the right is the worst product “upgrade” I’ve ever purchased. I can’t believe how they made it so dramatically worse in every way.
- I have bitten off more than I can chew with this Maze article I've been working on for a week. It's stopped being fun which means it's time to shelve it. This morning, it's a blank slate for me.
- Ported the Maze code to the CERBERUS 2080. Just like the Commodore Assembly version the maze is created instantly and the ball is too fast to see. Have to waste some cycles for the final article on this so we can see it. No SID here, so had to do an LFSR for random numbers ;-)
- Ported the maze program to assembly this morning (you know, learn something every day). It's slightly faster, as in the screen capture device isn't even picking up the ball flying around ;-)
- On today's episode of "Stupid races between old computery things" we have a Commodore PET vs an Atari 400 doing the maze program from Compute! December 1981. The program was written for these machines, so it's a fair "fight".
- I’m channeling my inner @8BitShowAndTell and fixing a bug in a listing in Compute! from Dec 1981. Atari version does not work as listed in the mag. My fix is on line 1020 here
- The MiniPET does pretty well with the screen capture. I originally wrote this for the VIC-20 because you know, VIC cipher on a VIC... but I like using my own software for testing. A lot of people ask about the "chicklet" keyboard and I actually kinda like it
- Weekend side project is learning Atari 8 bit disk stuff with my new SDrive.
- I needed a change of scenery today. Was getting grumpy in my “office”
- When you don’t have a spare DIN connector to test out a board sometimes improvisation is more fun.
- New to me Atari 800XL. It was listed "untested", which to me means "cheap and almost certainly repairable".
- Today’s learn something new every day is a deep dive into cellular automaton.
- Steak and eggs for dinner, killer workout, and recapped/reassembled the Atari 400. Not too shabby.
- I created a brute force version on a Commodore that's truly horrible, but it does work. Had to change the states to integers and borders to letters because of my system limitations. I'll get it in Github tonightish
- I can walk to trout streams and do often. First cast. He's a little too small so he's going back to grow up.
- Well I was shooting for completing it in a week. Or less than 24 hours. One of those. Works great @futurewas8bit #commodore
- Still need to do the case and the key caps but I couldn’t resist trying a first boot of the MiniPET 40/80. So great. #commodore
- This would be fine.
- I made a clean spot. Sigh, now I’m going to have to do the whole thing.
- It’s MiniPET 40/80 day. The first 10 are numbered and I have number 3! Pretty neat. These switches are gonna take quite a while to assemble and solder. As usual, fantastic packaging by @futurewas8bit I’ve been looking forward to assembling this for quite a while. #commodore
- Today’s “learn something new every day” is pretty challenging.
- Delivery from @FW4511 in the UK today. Thanks!
- Just trying out my dual video capture. Might as well have a couple of them race. Atari 400 vs VIC-20 same program. Curious that the Atari has the same processor clocked higher but is slower in this version of BASIC. It sure was harder to type on versus the VIC. #commodore #Atari
- SVideo out on the Atari 400. Have to hold the cartridge port switch down when it’s out of the case to get it to boot but it’s working. #atari
- Finally have a reason to use my iPad.
- 10 minute lunchbreak progress: Porting an old PET maze routine to the VIC-20 and Atari 400 for a project (also just for science).
- VickyTwenty ended up being two things: The unsoldered pin on the character rom that was only making contact sometimes, and it turns out that the socket under the VIC was cracked. Not in love with these precision sockets, many chips fit loose. May have to change brands
- Switching gears. My first dive into a 400.
- Unity…
- Troubleshooting a VIC-20 with a strange color memory issue. Is working other than this. I've swapped all 5 RAM chips.
- This is the first "real" video out of my VickyTwenty. I used a video mod board to get S-Video out on it.
- Parts order from retro8bitshop came today for my 250407 replica. I may start this one next depending on if/when the MiniPET 40/80 ever ships.
- New to me Atari Tank. Hey, at least I’m keeping it 6502 in the house right?
- Finally getting to the Romulator in a little bit. I'm thinking a VIC-20 will be the target for it tonight for first tests
- Helping some students with math contests and they're having trouble visualizing cellular automation (Rule 30 in this case). Doing it nice and slow with a color change on the row being worked on was the trick. Old computers are still valuable teaching tools
- I’ve taken a long break from this project but it’s time to get back to it. #myzenith750
- I almost never get landing shots because... well kinda busy. It's nice when someone is sitting in front and takes them for me ;-)
- I love that someone else is hacking the CERBERUS 2080 bios. Working on some hacks to mine already. Too fun
- Definitely my strangest flight path to date. Had us doing circles for weather for about 45 minutes
- Hey it even works. I’ve got a bad 6522 so I ordered those WD “modern” replacements. It boots to a cart just fine without the one so I suspect that’s the whole of the problem. If not, VIC-20s are a joy to troubleshoot. My third favorite computer of all time.
- I find this sort of evening activity pretty relaxing. #commodore
- The Mechboard64 ended up in the Ultimate after much deliberation on my part. It's rock solid and I'm very happy with it. The keyboard it replaced is in good shape and will live on in the VickyTwenty.
- Actually getting back on track with ciphers on the C64 this evening, but during my lunch I just wanted to make sure I could do a 3 line assembly program on the CERBERUS. Easy enough, but the removing SD card every time to make changes is gonna get old. Time to extend this thing!
- Patience and troubleshooting prevails! First boot of my CERBERUS 2080!!! Woot!!
- Friday night bootloader burning. It’s wild around here
- Since I'm waiting on 4 components that weigh a total of about .1 ounce for the Cerberus, I figure my lunch break can be used to make progress on one of my other 12 million boards to build. VickyTwenty, you're next
- New to me TRS-80 PC-4. More things to do dumb races against the VIC-20
- Who wants an old computer that looks new? Pre distressed jeans are a thing right? So starting next week I’ll be offering a product called “retro yellow”. I think it’ll be HUGE!!
- Today on “dumb calculator races vs the VIC-20 I changed this to repeat 10 times for better comparison. A PAL VIC20 beats the TI-81 (z80 running at 2Mhz) by about 10%. A screen blanked NTSC C64 (POKE53265,PEEK(53265)AND239) is neck and neck with the calculator. #commodore
- The mystery of the VIC-42 chip is much less interesting than I hoped. I happen to have an Alphacom VP42 printer. It has the chip in it
- This week on “dumb calculator races vs the VIC-20” we add the TI-81. Its z80 processor is a much more formidable opponent than the Sharp 9300 from the same period.
- Evening CERBERUS progress. Got all 56 10k Resistors done. I'll wrap up the soldering tomorrow with the taller components with the exception of a transistor I had to order. Still might be working by the weekend if I don't screw anything up.
- And in other news, I bought a working working Plus/4. For now. I've doomed it by posting it here.
- Lunchtime project... Composite video mod on my Coco2. I didn't even blow it up or anything. Haven't used this in many many years, the green is just as horrible as I remember ;-)
- I started flying too late to have been required to use one of these. Modern equivalents are much faster, but I did learn how to use it. I love the big picture understanding of how things work in relationship with each other that only analog tools can reveal.
- New to me UNTESTED Plus/4. Now those are some yellowed keys!
- Morning progress. Couple hundred pins soldered. Not hard, but the pads are tiny so it requires some patience. All of the sockets are done.
- As some have pointed out, the print routines are probably VERY slow on the calculator. I took them out and made the VIC code the same as what's on the calculator as close as I could. VIC-20 is still faster. Pretty fun. Next up, head to head with TI-81
- What do you do when you have a bunch of 25-35 year old calculators than can run BASIC? I know what I'd do, I'd race them with a 40 year old computer. They have pretty similar RAM, but the VIC-20 beats a Sharp 9300c from 1991 easily #commodore
- It’s 72F and low humidity today. Moving my office to the front porch.
- My morning routine is to work out and then spend 15 minutes learning something new. This morning it's @TechTinkering 's tutorial on using screen memory as extra storage to do the 100 door problem on unexpanded VIC-20s. Good stuff.
- The 250407 Replica by @bwack77 arrived today. It's amazing. I now have a trifecta AND the MiniPET 40/80 hasn't even shipped yet. This is gonna be A LOT of soldering...
- Pro tip: AirPods are not machine washable. Sigh.
- When you put VIC-20 CR machines back together, you have to keep the bottom RF shield because it helps with mounting. They are always terribly rusty so I paint them. Apparently my paint supplies are low and I have... white. No one is gonna see it anyway so white it is.
- I’m not huge on multi tasking, but recapping a board during a conference call worked for my brain.
- Oh yeah! VIC cipher decryption on an unexpanded VIC-20 is finally working! This was a lot harder than the encryption part. Now we work on cracking it
- Well I have one of these mystery VIC-42 chips and it doesn't test "good" as a VIC or VICII on the backbit. I think this might be something we just have to make up a story about. "There I was, wire tying a Commodore 264, when I was attacked by a Spectrum…"
- Mechboard64 is almost done. Need to print the key cap adapters and bend some piano wire. #commodore
- I was an AT in the Navy which required extensive color blindness testing. But these things are practically impossible…
- Rainy weekend project number 3. Let’s call this one “preparing for winter”.
- Testing a new video capture device on the VIC-20s. Only one of them is good enough to probably be post-able. Something to work on
- Rainy weekend project number 2
- Going easy on myself with the next in the crypto series since I wanted to do a couple of these on the VIC-20 in Assembly which is new for me. Fibonacci in was simple enough. Now to do a Lagged Fibonacci.
- 10 Second review of this drop in RAM replacement for your 128: Works like a charm. If your RAM is already socketed installation is 4 seconds. One more future proofed item in the bag.
- This sums up my retro theme for June 2021 #commodore
- Interesting, removing this resistor and adding a 220uF cap across these two lines DRAMATICALLY improved this PAL VIC-20's picture. It's hard to tell from a photo of a screen, but this looks excellent IRL. Not 100% sure why this works...
- 10 minute lunch break progress: I think I’ve found a VIC 20 Assembler that fits my brain. Flashing screen warning.
- More than one person gave me a hard time about using Monte Carlo to test my PRNG without a visual. Okay, here’s a squished PAL VIC circle and point plot of it :)
- Why are PAL VIC-20 (CR) video output circuits wired like the left and NTSC like on the right?
- Before morning workout progress: This is the last of these before the refactor to do large sets on an unexpanded VIC-20. This one cheats and uses a 128 to do 30k DIMs. #commodore
- SUPER happy with this so far. Generating 100 random mod 256 integers with a Lagged Fibonacci Sequence, then test the distribution for randomness-Monte Carlo value for pi (is it in the circle?) on an unexpanded VIC 20 #commodore #embracecontraints
- Well, that random distribution count really sucks. Gonna have to work on this algorithm a lot more… In 10000 iterations, 1 came up 358 times and 2 came up 1669 times. Bleh.
- Sometimes during conference calls I do weird things.You know, like write a Lagged Fibonacci Generator (PRNG) on a VIC 20...
- Headed out for a holiday cookout, but while I'm waiting for everyone... I need top 500, 1000,10k and 50k English word files in SEQ files. Was simple enough
- I’ve read a lot of marginal documentation over the years. This one is in the bottom 5 of all time. I’ve read it twice and I still don’t know how to do anything with it.
- Done a fair amount of Commodore Assembly now but never on the VIC 20. No time like the present. Seems simple enough but I’m going to have to find a decent editor, the monitor method only works so long.
- Another new to me VIC 20 “untested” and cheap. Looks good, packed well and passes tests. Sweet.
- Back to implementing Enigma. These rings are obviously horizontal for testing, but top down they are left, middle and right. Middle should rotate when right(bottom) gets to V (the "notch") and top when middle gets to E. Making progress...
- I'm doing a Pi computation demo over the weekend for some young people and want to do a couple on Vintage machines. Then I remembered that @8BitShowAndTell did one with Logo graphically. Perfect, I shall borrow (steal) Robin's demo as well.
- Just renewed my HAM radio license. N4LNX lives on for another 10 years ;-)
- Earlier today I was annoyed when my truck’s software served me a damn ad. Then I remembered the flier in Pirates Cove from 1980. I guess this isn’t a terribly new idea. Be careful Chevy, or I’ll replace that software with a VIC 20
- This little bastard was causing all kinds of gremlins to intermittently appear. Crazy how much better things run if the power into the board is clean.
- Chased down a VIC-20 flickering screen for quite some time. Came down to this solder joint being weak. Reflowed it and all better
- Finally properly badged. This is easily my favorite piece of “modern” hardware
- Phew, this board is a mess. 3 bodges so far and here are the next 4.
- Such a great series. I wish I had read these back then, but there’s no time like the present.
- Pretty good lake view in the distance from our hotel room this weekend.
- Here's a fun one. Another friend brought over a 128. It started up but it was acting really strange. Probed a couple voltages and they came in at 4.1... Deoxit in the power switch and its fixed. I'm basically a wizard.
- Actually really busy with day job today, but had a 10 minute break and decided to put a 128 back together. I spent more than a minute scratching my head on a U4 failure message. Maybe I no fix hardware today huh? Sheesh
- Morning workout math:
- My CERBERUS 2080 Boards came today from @JLCPCB and look great. A couple of these chips are backordered but I'm really looking forward to getting this working. I had to order 5...
- I am looking for a manual or documentation for Vickit 4+5 on the @futurewas8bit Penultimate cart. Anyone have it handy? #commodore
- Working on the Retro pinout project a little at a time. 128 pins captured and about 4500 to go. Thanks to all who have offered to help so far.
- My new open source project: Collecting scope outputs on every IC on retro computer boards. I'll need lots of help from the community
- I went right to getting the VIC working yesterday and am just now getting to the bucket of other stuff @TheGavNinja sent me. Lots to check out #commodore
- These are the chips getting the dreaded X on them just from this evening. Sheesh
- Brought another vintage computer back to life from the trash bin. Some probing around with the oscilloscope narrowed it down to a bad VIC chip. Desoldered, installed a socket and replaced it and it’s back in service.
- The first spreadsheet I ever used was Practicalc. Seems appropriate to use it to hold a BOM for a new retro board build
- Sunday morning Enigma work. Because reasons… #commodore #crypto
- Six years ago today I became a licensed pilot ;-)
- Just reading this book for the first time. It’s really good. Seems like a possible candidate for an @8BitShowAndTell book club.
- Did you know that Bruce Schneier created a cipher for Neal Stephenson in Cryptonomicon(1999)? Uses a simple deck of cards, so naturally…Commodore 64! Should actually work on most 8 bit machines of the era with slight mods.
- I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but 3583 bytes on an unexpanded VIC-20 really isn't much. My Pontifex program doesn't fit ;-)
- I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but 3583 bytes on an unexpanded VIC-20 really isn't much. My Pontifex program doesn't fit ;-)
- Retro computer repair people problems… when you need an NTSC VIC and TWO PAL versions arrive first
- It freaking works. I can't believe this thing actually works. #commodore #c64 #crypto
- I think screenshots from my scope desktop software is better than a photo of the scope screen. I'm going to start with pinouts of a Longboard 64 NTSC and organize the github repo. This would be much easier with two people in person. One to probe, the other to record. #commodore
- I want to see scope pinouts of every pin on every chip on a VIC-20, C64 (long and short) and 128. If it doesn't exist, I may create this as a resource. Just power on and pin out, screenshot scope. Nothing running. #commodore
- I will never take list/array slicing in my day job for granted again. Doable, but so messy. #commodore #crypto
- Don't get impatient. Silly mistake. #commodore
- Another 128 today. I’m not sure I understand this yet, but a wonky 8563 (80 column chip) was causing an issue on the CIA at U1. Took a while to figure this one out for a friend. When did I become my local 128 repair shop? I barely know what I’m doing #commodore
- Out of all the vendors I deal with @futurewas8bit is one of the best. Consistent and great products. Penultimate+ and a 6502 this time. #commodore
- 10 min lunchtime progress: Running all rotors with 26 possible starting positions on a 3 Rotor Enigma with 5 rotors to choose from (I want this to finish in my lifetime). So 1,054,560 combinations in 71 seconds(BASIC takes 2+ hours). Not bad. #commodore #c64 #crypto #enigma
- Least important applicance
- On the couch so no screen capture. I’m sure there are efficiencies to do but it works. Moving to the next step: 3 rotor Enigma, 5 rotors to choose from First need all possible combinations. Tomorrow we’ll add 26 starting points to each and crunch numbers #enigma #commodore #c64
- Forming a new club. I'm calling it "Folks who run calculations on all combinations of a 3 rotor Engima at 1.022727 MHz durning lunch breaks". Membership will be limited, so sign up early. #commodore
- Well that doesn’t look anything like a square wave. Bad multiplexer. Saved a Vintage computer from the scrap heap with good tools and a 79 cent chip that is still being manufactured
- Because what I really need is another project… #commodore
- Something is different...
- That worked even better than I expected. #commodore #fixallthethings
- This might be the worst non chicklet keyboard I’ve ever used.
- 10 minute lunchtime progress: Working on more advanced ciphers I need a modulo 32 rotater (wraps 32 bit numbers around by bit at a time). Took a few minutes to wrap my mind around it, but I got it. Step 1 of a bazillion for ChaCha(and AES) complete but I'm happy at the moment #commodore #c64 #crypto
- Implementing ChaCha… I need 4 eight bit ROLs, but the 6502 is really a 9 bit ROL. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to just to a CMP #$80 until now to set the carry before the rotate. Problem solved.
- My first ever VIC-20 arrived. It seem salvageable, black screen, and you can't beat $25US... I don't own a dead test for a 20 so working on it old school. It was after I desoldered the horrible socket on UE11 that I realized I'm apparently out of 24 pin sockets. #commodore
- Late lunch 10 minute progress: Next up is Pontifex from Cryptonomicon. Occurred to me while planning that I better do some card routines first so I don't bite off too much at once. So create a deck and shuffle (requires two different jokers to work) is done. #commodore #c64
- Today on my operating table is my very reliable Evinrude 50. Just changing the plugs, it’s not even sick or anything.
- Had a young coder(11) ask me to do my BASIC prime number code program without Simons BASIC so she could do it on Dad’s VIC 20. Here you go Ms. Lisa. I hope you can improve it for us. Sorry about the lack of video capture. I’m on my front porch :) #commodore #vic20
- Tweet sized review of the @retrorewindca carts and harnesses: built solidly and they do what they are supposed to. This is machine number 4 back in service using them. #commodore
- You haven’t REALLY lived until you try and demonstrate hash collisions using the bug repellent program from Ahoy! Magazine and a type in program called Salvage diver, then cross it with checksums and SHA-256.
- Had quite a few ask about SHA-256 execution times in 6510/6502 Assembly. I'm seeing about 21 jiffies ($15 hex) on average. So 2.857 hashes per second on an unaccelerated Commodore 64. Not too shabby. Imma be Bitcoin rich!! In 50 trillion years.... #commodore #c64 #Crypto
- Ha! Reseated the ROMs and it works. I am basically a wizard.
- Getting into the nitty gritty of the crypto series on the Commodore now. I want to demonstrate hash collisions. Only 1Mhz so I'm doing shorter hashes and looking for occurrences of collisions that result in english words.
- Current mood
- This TNC for Raspberry Pi just arrived. Plugged it in and not only did it fail to work, it got so hot I couldn’t touch it. Bleh.
- Brought it with me today in case there was an opportunity to work on it. Had to take cover during heavy rain, so I was prepared to make use of the time AND I fixed the bug. Woot!
- 10 minute morning progress before heading out for the day: Tiny bug... this gets all the primes to 2^24 except 3,5,7,11, and 13. And I am really stuck on WHY. Not gonna win any speed records, but it's good demo code anyway. #commodore #c64 #crypto
- I'm actually doing some fishing this weekend, but my other project is to work on the ISS to Commodore config. Step 1 is serial connection to Raspberry Pi which was simple enough #commodore #c64 #Space
- Youtube still has me in timeout. Isn't it lovely when they do that and you really have no idea why?
- This took my Python script 207 seconds. My Commodore 64 just crossed the 24 hour mark. I'm hoping it finishes in time to post the article next week! Brute forcing all the primes between 1 and 2^24. But... it's for science! Yeah, that's it!!
- 10 minute lunchtime progress: Part 9 is on prime numbers. Following the SLOW BASIC version of this with an Assembly version. Next is printing in decimal and some speed work. Happy at this point though
- Since I'm not allowed to comment on YouTube today, here's the YMT/Elysium Bitcoin miner using the Ultimate64 in full turbo mode. Kinda cheating and feels dirty: 26 seconds. My stock Commodore 64 takes 24 minutes.
- The Commodore 64 N.O.O.C.U.L.A.R futbal "project"... I can't say it's the craziest idea I've EVER had, but it sure is fun!
- Gather around the fire kids while Grandpa recounts tales of yesteryear. It was a time where brave men departed on grand adventures in their simulators...
- In case you were wondering, SIMON'S BASIC modulus is 16 bit. Imma need to implement my own to do the next cipher which needs at least 2^24 to match my assembly version
- Oh my, what have I started?
- This cheat sheet gets a lot of use these days
- 15 years after we landed on the moon, a Commodore 64 running BASIC could find the prime numbers between 1 and 10000 in 16 minutes. Same algorithm in Python on a MacBook: 0.04 seconds. Rust: 0.002 seconds. What are you doing with this power? Nothing. Lame.
- This satellite tracker is very cool. You have to hand enter the TLE data which isn't a big deal. It's in BASIC though so just oh so slow ;-) #commodore #c64 #hamradio
- Gonna try to do a Commodore 64 to Commodore 64 Packet session THROUGH the ISS with @K0FFY_Radio. The only thing I was missing was a TNC, so I picked this one up that's a HAT for a Raspberry Pi. If it works, it'll be nice and portable.
- Loving the collaboration between @DarrenFouldsand @8BitShowAndTell so much it’s my office theme today. Even running on a real floppy for the occasion.
- Made a Python, Assembly and BASIC version of RC4 encryption on old computers. Other than questioning my existence on earth for a few days in the process, it went swimmingly!
- Oh. My. God. THIS mistake took me hours to see. HOURS. Okay, NOW I have a working RC4 in Python, Commodore BASIC, and Commodore Assembly. I need a drink.
- RC4 in Assembly is still kicking my butt. This is close but wrong. The python and BASIC versions took and hour, I don't know how long I've been at this version this week, but I still don't have it. Sigh.
- Trying out a thing on Fridays I'm currently calling "The Nostalgia Files". In this first one I reveal my favorite book of all time.
- RC4 in assembly... stuck on the nested loops with a double position swap. This one is making my brain hurt. I’m sure it will seem obvious once I get it but I’m putting it down for the evening.
- Some new additions to our library
- 10 minute before work progress: Confirmed this is a working RC4 in BASIC with both a standard library and my python version. Assembly version is already about 60% complete. My first real stream cipher... super happy at the moment.
- Am a little stuck with the next few ciphers so I’m turning to Bruce. This book weighs like 19 pounds. Light bedtime reading.
- My controversial stance on modding retro hardware: I'm fine with modern drop in functional equivalents, but I don't want a replacement that implements extra features. I want the original experience extended past the life of some of the components
- Way fewer people will read my long form posts than watch a video, but Reason number 27 why I put the bulk of my effort into long form posts on a platform I have full control over:
- I truly love this movie despite its strange plot holes. This novelization actually does a good job of making sense of some parts of the plot the screen version misses
- Package arrived from @FW4511 Is it weird that I really love the box? And I do need more Commodore Notebooks in my life
- Visiting with a friend yesterday and he politely said, “This Commodore thing is close to obsession man.” “What do you mean?” I replied. He took my phone from my hand and turned it over. Okay, maybe just a little…
- I kinda feel like I AM keeping up with the Commodore. #commodore #c64 #tigerbaron
- I happen to have a RedBird TD2 AND a mobile Commodore 64 running Kennedy Approach which is an Air Traffic Control game. How cool would it be to make a game that interfaces with the RedBird? I have an idea for a data interface…
- Working at the airport office today but I don’t want to slow down. Mobile 64 rig for the win. The next cipher to tackle is RC4. This one might take more brain cells than I actually possess.
- Stuff to play with and then review from DIY Chris came today. Gal PLA, 4146 RAM tester, flash-able Kernal/BASIC/character rom chip and an adapter for these types of chips for my 866 programmer.
- My 128 trouble maker is on the mend. I’m short two 4146s to test completely but mail should bring them soon. Socketed now and even recapped a lot of the Ceramics too. Lower checks out anyway :)
- Turns out serial cable was attached to a Keyspan. Double win and it only took me a half hour to find. Now who’s gonna clean up this mess?
- Desoldering 16 memory chips with 16 pins each is NOT something one should do when feeling impatient. I got them all without a single lifted pad. This 128 will live to fight another day.
- The next two parts of the Cipher series are on Symmetrical Encryption and the algorithms take quite a long time to run at 1Mhz. Having a portable rig has been really nice.
- After listening to an episode of @GUp80s with @DarrenFoulds and @8BitShowAndTell I've gotten back into one of my favorite games: Mastermind. So simple, but it's a good conference call thing. There's a great port of the IBM version to the 64.
- My childhood best friend has never really been on social media and checks email every other week. I asked his wife the best way to chat with him. He overheard the conversation on the phone and sarcastically said “mail me a floppy”. I thought, well okay, 3.5 or 5.25? #thatwaseasy
- 10 Minute lunchtime progress: My 6502 experiment board is fully working. Love the way this turned out. #commodore
- Well... this is new. Sigh
- I haven’t done HAM radio stuff in a couple years now, but this combination may rekindle this interest. My call sign is N4LNX #commodore #c64 #hamradio
- Off on a pre workout tangent this morning. Decided to dump the SID output for 16Mb to look for evidence of that 23 bit LFSR. I can't actually find repeats at all and this should be 24 bits. #commodore #c64
- 10 minute evening progress: This is moved over from the breadboard onto a compact (and neat) PCB. Last thing is the Arduino HAT daughterboard, but I'm thrilled with this at the moment. How it started, how it's going. It's got #commodore bones anyway ;-) 6502 is my favorite.
- I’ve owned many many many laptops over the years. The one is my favorite.
- 10 minute lunchtime progress: Making headway in Cipher Series Part 6 where we talk about the magic of XOR in data integrity and then encryption. #commodore #c64 #retro #security
- Strange flickering after I installed the JiffyDOS mod on my 128. Quite uncharacteristic of me, I did not inspect this switch carefully. Something seems off… :)
- It just occurred to me that Choose Your Own Adventure is CYOA. Huh.
- Almost finished with the 6502 board while listening to @GUp80s read choose your own adventure stories. Missing a latch switch. Where’s a Radio Shack when you need one?
- The c0pperdragon mod has a default pallet that's just not my cuppa… luckily it's editable. How it started vs how it's going. MUCH better.
- Recording a video response to the @8BitShowAndTell Easter egg(s) on the vinyl album video. I think I need a bigger desk. Let’s sell the house! #commodore #c64
- And the answer is:
- Okay, how long do you think this rig will run on an old 20 amp hour battery with the screen at full brightness? I want the 4 hour square. I gave it some work to do to keep it from sitting idle.
- Cannibalizing an Easy Flash case for @adrianglz64 Snappy cart. The wifi module even fits. Time to get to work on this thing.
- 128 jiffy dos time. Maybe it’ll start playing nicer now. #commodore
- Wyze watch came today. On the left: $20, on the right: $420. One of them will make it almost 24 hours on a charge. The other one will make it more than a week.
- Still waffling on which machine to use in this. If I go with "TheC64" from @THEC64_RGL it's 5V like the monitor I'm using so an off the shelf phone battery makes this completely wireless. To use the Ultimate 64 I do have these voltage converters that would work.
- Okay, I got both @8BitShowAndTell Easter eggs on the prodigal album. Finally. Yes, it’s what I did on a Friday evening (also my birthday). My wife helped. Took… a while and a whole legal pad page of notes to get. Well played Sir Robin. Video on it coming soon.
- If you REALLY want to get into the weeds on how I figured out the @8BitShowAndTell Easter Egg(s) inside the Easter Egg on a 35 Year old album on a 35 year old computer then you're in luck, this video is for you!
- Stillll working on this @8BitShowAndTell easter egg. I got one of the two...
- Still iterating on the portable C64 design. I’ve got a list of changes to make, but field testing today has been successful. #commodore #c64
- Very cool delivery from @gregnacu, Commodore compatible controller with switchable fire button function and Chicken logo patches. Nice!
- Well it arrived. Time to work on figuring out the easter egg @8BitShowAndTell put INSIDE the easter egg on this album. I don't have a direct input to a C64, so step one is getting this program on tape. Where IS my tape recorder anyway?
- Huh, weekend todo list is done. That’s… strange. Stretch goal is to get my pack base weight under 13 pounds.
- Just keep swimming, just keep swimming. The problem child 128 is better every day
- Considering ditching TheC64 for this and going with the Ultimate64. I have these two cases for it. Both will fit. A real C64 isn’t practical for power and fitting a cartridge in the back.
- New to me 64C keyboard. Moving my Ultimate into a 64C case and want the keyboard to match.
- What? 36 degrees F IIISSS above freezing. Time to power wash the boat
- Working on the Snappy this morning for @adrianglz64</a> , why do I like this weird character thing while flashing it? Also, my capture device does an excellent job picking up the jail bars on this particular machine ;-)
- Fits in the case. Monitor and TheC64 are 5V. Both run off of a single split wall plug or a 10Ah battery. Need to design/3D print brackets(less foam please) and buy a right-angle HDMI connector. I can visit @gregnacu and his Ultimate portable in a cafe soon #commodore #c64
- I've been trying to figure out what to do with my "TheC64". I have this pelican 1490 case and a 14" very thin monitor that will fit in the lid. I need some kind of mechanism to raise it up when it's open. Hmmm... #commodore #c64
- For the first time in weeks I don't know what to make next. Blinking cursor is taunting me... #commodore #c64
- Been avoiding this for some time.
- Finally got this 128 sorted out. 4.95 volts on the board is WAAY better than the 4.61 when I started.
- More C64 Badlines fun while on Zoom calls. Running @NoelsRetroLab benchmark with the screen on vs screen off (PAL). 2.4 seconds faster.
- In High school (like 1991) my grandma bought me a bunch of electronics equipment from Radio Shack. I’ve upgraded almost everything over the years except my multimeter which finally went to multimeter heaven last week. Its replacement lacks the vintage charm though.Thanks grandma
- 10 minute lunchtime progress: Even if I set the CPU speed on the Ultimate to 48MHz it looks like the Part 5 cipher calculations will still take 190 hours to complete. Or... 380 days on a standard Commodore 64. I may have to rethink this one a little... #commodore #c64
- The c0pperdragon ended up in the short board 64C. The installation was easy other than the momentary panic that I had bent a VIC pin(I didn’t).
- I bought one of these but have two machines that can really benefit from it. Thus begins the internal dialog about which one. Shut up, I’m not talking to myself. #commodore #c64 #128
- Only have time for so much. In addition to my code cracking work, I have time for one hardware project this week. These are my choices and I want to be all in on all of them. #commodore #fpga #6502
- Figured I might as well have one of these too :)
- Wow, added a 300 Ohm resistor to my S-Video Cable. What a difference! Also, like 2 cents.
- Two years ago today we went out the SF to pick up the Baron. Seems like 10 minutes ago.
- Super excited to be testing this Snappy cart for @adrianglz64 , definitely one of the more exciting projects I know about for the 64 at the moment
- Okay, I need to get writing posts now because I'm two weeks ahead. Finished the code for Part 4: John Connors pin cracker from Terminator 2, only on an 8 Bit Computer. This one was SO fun and unlike the movie prop this actually sorta does some work. #commodore #c64
- 10 minute breakfast progress part 3 of the cipher series: message "cracked". Now need to write the article. Only a week ahead of schedule at this point ;-)
- Someone just pointed out that my ignite talk with the infamous VHS tape Shuttle Launch story was 11 years ago today. I decided to start SpaceUPDC that night. Where did the time go?
- Late night playing airplanes last night
- Replacement RF modulator for my 64C(PAL) is in. Smoke check time!
- This evening’s project is an RF modulator replacement on this short board. It sure is tiny. #commodore #c64
- Two months of eBay patience paid off. First edition.
- I’ve been quietly working on an avionics product as a side hustle for quite some time. Today the hardware prototype build starts. #fpga
- No, I’m not retro righting these two. In my mind, they earned this color. #commodore #c64 #tandy
- This BASIC program by Raeto Collin West has been a HUGE help in understanding the SID controls. Allows you to toggle bits with the space bar in real time. Game sound effects are no longer black magic
- This screen starts like this and gets better as it warms up. Time to hunt down some bad capacitors.
- I'm VERY bullish on the Mega 65 in large part because they kept the C64 compatibility. It really could be my "one machine". With zero effort my standard dev environment just works (minus REU for now).
- Going to take a short detour this evening to look deeper at the Mega 65. Rather than get to crazy with my keymap problem I just designated an old keyboard as the Mega emulator and put stickers in places that aren’t standard. Next is picking an assembler.
- It took a lot of eBay patience to get a copy of this for a reasonable price. It’s been a wonderfully challenging read. Hat tip to @8BitShowAndTell for introducing me to it. #commodore #c64
- Just ordered a couple RF Modulator replacements. One for my 128 and the other for this 64C.That's some impressive color bleed ;-) My breadbin got the @craig1black capacitor trick and it's working great. This 64C, not so much.
- I'm thinking about replacing the RF Modulator on my short board (PAL). What is this crap on the board
- Hmm, what next
- It's working which is incredible
- 10 minute before work progress: SHA256 project is creating results, but they are incorrect. Now for the bug hunt on 800 lines of Assembly in Turbo Macro Pro where you can only view 20 lines at a time ;-) Feels close. WAY closer than I thought I'd be in a week. #commodore #C64
- I’m reasonably sure this is my original copy of this.
- 10 minute lunchtime progress: break from the SHA256 thing, the math is hurting my brain. Adding a "flour bomb" level to the game and I need some "exploding" bags of flour. Don't be intimidated by my artistic prowess. I have several minutes of art training. #commodore #c64
- Urg, this has that bloated proprietary feel that my experience tells me that I will regret doing any serious work on. I don't do proprietary formats. Bleh. #FPGA
- 10 Minute pre workday progress on my SHA256 on 6502. I think I'm close to it rudimentarily working which is kinda nuts. 900 lines of code and 126 labels so far (yikes). #commodore #c64
- The Mega 65 is the "new" project in 2021 I'm most excited about
- Finally getting around to soldering
- This card duplicator saved my butt this morning. Something went wrong on my Ultimate II and it dumped huge files onto the card and corrupted my primary assembly files. I happened to have cloned the card last night. 20 hours of work saved. Phew. #commodore #c64
- 10 minute pre evening workout code progress: Well, now I'm down the rabbit hole. Steps 1-3 of SHA256 on a 40 year old computer down, about 300 steps to go. #commodore #c64
- 10 minute lunch break progress: Implementing SHA256 on a 6502 is going to be particularly challenging
- Going through Lance Leventhal's 6502 Book and combining some lessons
- The article where I use a commodore 64 to do "slides" instead of 3 minutes with power point
- The more complex the machine, the more things that can break. Left engine alternator today.
- Tonight’s project will be moving the mess on the left to the neat and tidy on the right.
- Seems silly to use a slide deck to convey ideas when a BASIC program will work perfectly fine.
- Still working on this one. MUCH harder than I thought. This iteration is with REU, creating 512k random numbers (0-255), counting the occurrences and outputting as decimal counts. Takes 31 seconds on PAL, 38 on NTSC. hmm, I really should blank the screen during #c64 #commodore
- Pictures don’t really do justice to how wicked cool the white vinyl of this collection is. Perfectly complements the silver album cover.
- Was chatting with someone about C64 startup states, so during a long con call this morning I played with dumping memory contents as decimal location, hex location, dec value, hex value. Too slow to be usable but was fun to do
- Non helpful error messages. This is from last night, clearly the backlight is working or I wouldn’t have been able to see this…
- Just opened a box in storage looking for something and found this little gem. Came out of my Dad’s 79 Suburban. Still works ;)
- I'm trying to decide if I should fully embrace the chunky PESCII graphics or if I should spend time on a bitmap title screen. I think it's safe to say that I wont be taking anyone's graphics jobs away from them anytime soon. #commodore #c64
- The graphics are still rudimentary and the landscape scroll isn’t quite as smooth as I want, but definitely making progress. Programming on vintage hardware(not cross assembled) is harder but more satisfying somehow. #commodore #c64
- Figured out split screen scrolling on my own. After 90 days I’m ready to say that I’m graduating to intermediate level 6510/02 assembly programmer. It’s got the slightest glitch which I suspect will be worse on my PAL machine. Turbo Macro Pro lunchtime fun :) #commodore
- Version 3 of my One Time Pad program on the Commodore is in progress. Used a tip from @8BitShowAndTell he helped me with for another project in this one and it's working. The rest of v2 to v3 should be easy (famous last words) #commodore #c64
- I don’t do resolutions, but I do focus on a theme sometimes. If chapter 46 of my life had a theme, this would be it.
- I like working on the tail because it’s at eye level. #myzenith750
- I haven’t been this pleased with a new keyboard since I got my Happy Hacker in 1999. Cherry Mx Brown switches for the win.
- Welp, it's supposed to snow the next 15 hours, somewhere in the 5 inches range. I think I'll watch TV. HAHAHAHA, right. My 6502 Breadboard computer needs to be moved to some PCBs. Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to solder we go…
- My “The64 mini” will be going into my airplane panel soon (I can’t bring myself to cannibalize one of my real machines) but for now it’s become the calculator on my desk. This 7 inch screen is also going into the plane. #commodore #c64
- So far your score resets to zero if you don't stay VFR and the fire button changes the plane color. I made a list of gameplay I'm going to add a little at a time. It even sorta looks like a Zenith which wasn't easy with a 24x21 pixel sprite limitation.
- Phone apps are cool I guess, but I’ve always been a hardware device person. These make regular rotations on my desk. Hat tip to my son for the mechanical stopwatch.
- Persistence paying off
- My sprites sorta look like my Zenith, not bad for the first crack at it. #commodore #c64 #myzenith750
- Might as well put a Commodore in the airplane… screen design concept #1…
- The new video series has been in production while on my "break" (I've never been good at breaks anyway). I've forgotten how long post-production takes even with great tools. Anyway, very pleased so far.
- My Color Maximite 2 and Raspberry Pi 400 are sharing this 8 inch screen now. Perfect setup for both machines and doesn’t take up a ton of room.
- How do you feel about snow Elli? I ate some.
- Feel a little like Ralphie this morning. Merry Christmas
- I haven’t been able to get over the USB-C only ports on my MacBook. Seems like a good idea on the drawing board, but practically it’s a mess. God forbid you want to use your laptop in your lap AND plug in an SD card at the same time. #willibreakittoday
- For #doscember my favorite DOS software is STSPlus by the late Dave Ransom. This was a fixture on my computer screen for many years. Still works ;)
- 9am on the first weekday of Christmas vacation and finished my One Time Pad program on the Commodore 64. This is the first Assembly program I’ve ever competed to a 1.0 version. #Commodore64 #c64 #commodore
- This centerpiece protected by trains.
- My vacation time doesn't roll over to the next year, so starting in about an hour, I'm off until Jan 4th. Time to void some warranties!
- After all there’s only 10 more sleeps ‘til Christmas.
- The view
- That’s a bug splatter at 15,000 feet. What kind of bug flies that high? Hopefully it wasn’t Tinkerbell.
- In case you were wondering, RedHat 5.2 from 1998 will not boot on a @system76 Laptop from 2016 without some kernel trickery. I’m not giving up though.
- Working on my project to recreate my first Linux install close to how I remember it. Would you consider it cheating if I replaced the marginally flakey 30 year old hard drive with an IDE to SD card adapter?
- Looking like winter is coming.
- I was telling someone that I never use my Commodore 128 in 128 mode, so playing @8BitShowAndTell’s“10 print racer” game on it checks that box AND I get to use the number pad just like on the PET he demoed it on. #Commodore
- Recording time! Forgot how much work (and how fun) this is.
- Not surprisingly this was WAAAYY easier in BASIC. Although it runs at about 1/100th the speed
- I played around with programming Commodores as a kid, but only got so far. This is my first “real” software on the Commodore. Implemented generating one time encryption pads using a random(ish) generator. Never stop learning. #commodore #c64
- I love Turbo Macro Pro, but sometimes I want to keep things in version control. Turns out exporting to ASCII files is only two steps. (this is @8BitShowAndTell code with my annotations while I was following his video) #commodore #c64
- Urg, my “office” needs a cord organization and clutter intervention.
- I guess we used to fly without @ForeFlight, I can’t live without it in the #tigerbaron
- If you’re a pilot in winter this is what it looks like out your office window. #tigerbaron
- Oh, one more December project… Getting RedHat 5.2 (1998) on a 486 Monochrome laptop with 4MB of RAM.
- Brain, what’s the thing we’re gonna learn in December? FPGAs Pinky. FPGAs.
- I don’t have a portable Commodore and felt like coding in a different room so my MacBook is just gonna have to do for this evening. Do you suppose when they designed the Retina display they considered some yahoo using it for a 40 column display?
- On the prowl for Nat’s Christmas Album on Vinyl. I have several of his other albums but missing that one.
- Took a little modern electronics wizardry to get it working on an LCD but this is a surprisingly usable writing machine. Plus it has no internet which is its best feature. #commodore 128
- Trying to decide which to have in my office setup next. Note that the RedHat 5.2 is from the first time they used that version number. So 1998. I’m leaning Amiga...
- We're being invaded
- What's your favorite fiction book?
- Got some new office art. One of the best terrible movies ever.
- Delivery for today was a CGA to VGA converter. A Commodore 128 in 80 column mode was my dream setup in 1986. Only took 34 years to put it all together and get myself one.
- The day ended pretty okay. #tigerbaron
- You can tell you landed somewhere up North when the pilot lounge has a fireplace in it. #tigerbaron
- My quest for Super Snapshot on Commodore continues. Flashed it to an Easy Flash and it starts on both the 64 and 128 but is slow and crashes both systems.
- Just a little light Saturday afternoon reading.
- At some point over the last few years a quick 400 mile trip has become routine. 72 knot headwind this morning though so if you’re flying I suggest the opposite direction from the one I picked.
- No such thing as too much Linux
- Jeopardy for DOS: Godspeed Alex
- Not often I fly this plane so close to the ground #tigerbaron
- Are they multiplying? A friend heard about my adventures in learning 6502 Assembly and donated his 128 to my cause. In 1987 this is was my dream machine. Looks good next to my C64. #alwayslearning
- My color Maximite 2 came today. It’s insanely fast.
- Commodore 64 on a flat LCD will never stop feeling slightly wrong
- I’ve never used SUSE in all of my years of being a Linux guy. Time to give it a whirl
- Hello Pennsylvania. I don’t know how well it comes across on video, but you could have easily been fooled into thinking this cloud layer was the frozen ground in the Arctic. TV and Internet would have you believe the sky was falling. Well I was there. It’s not.
- Some people doodle. Some people play solitaire. I wire stuff together.
- Test fit of the tail. This whole section will probably be permanent by tomorrow. One step at a time.
- Once again, popsicle sticks to help with laser alignment to the rescue. Thank you kindergarten teachers for the popsicle stick skills.
- My co pilot is prettier than yours.
- Probably shouldn’t eyeball the tail alignment huh? Let’s use a “laser”!
- Even better than DOS WordPerfect on a MacBook is Word Writer 5 on my real Commodore 64.
- WordPerfect for DOS on a MacBook Pro. So wrong but so so right.
- Role models
- Caleb is back to working full time at the Biltmore winery to help put himself through school. He brings home a bottle of whatever they are making every day as an employee perk. Any guesses what they’re making this week?
- I have to apologize for violating my personal policy of only using social media to share cool things I’m doing with friends and family. So here’s the current state of one of my many projects.
- I promise I enjoy this. A lot. My face is a liar.
- With a little bit of work, Commodores can be displayed on HDMI screens
- Well there’s your problem.
- I'll never complain about 40 columns again
- A person was detected
- Both of my 80s vintage computers are in good working order. Here is the other one.
- We just pretended to fly today #tigerbaron
- Choosing wisely at 4am
- Things you cannot buy
- Back to building. Loving the 59 degree morning. #myzenith750
- Mountains to sea trail day
- Appalachian Trail day
- Biltmore bikes
- Added a kettle bell and a backpack to my daily walk now
- In 700 hours of flying I’ve been vectored over my house one time. Thanks a lot clouds.
- Dodging thunderstorms. Again :-)
- X Carve is back online and making airplane stuff
- Yeah we live here. Perfect morning for a long walk alone.
- These flexible grip mats are my new favorite thing. #myzenith750
- Finally have a more permanent place for the X-Carve CNC. Time to make custom airplane parts :-)
- The same thing we do every morning Pinky #myzenith750
- Flying, again
- Very different Fridays
- Checking things off of bucket lists
- First "REAL" 3D Maps with my 3DRobotics Solo
- A hard left turn for me
- What does a UAS pilot do to prepare for a huge snow storm?
- It's just an old beat up truck
- Ray Bradburry on Critics
- Oats
- Odd Hours
- We're getting our 3D printer today... I wonder what we're going to print first...
- A comment on Sprint Customer Service
- I used to do a little
- My 30 second Prometheus review
- The company tonight is pretty good
- Google. Shell. EVADot.
- Monsters season their meat with salt made from human tears
- No ITAR for Firefly
- Come and see us at SXSW - we were picked as a panel!
- The blinking cursor
- Suffered a minor casualty at NewSpace 2011 last week :-(
- THE Recipe: Chocolate Chip Bacon Cookies
- We're moving because of the people we become when we're where we're going
- Colorado Springs
- those kids don't need no stinking school