I write about the past, present, and future of technology across three sites. imapenguin.com explores retro computing and programming fundamentals, milkcrunch.com covers modern software development and engineering culture, and evadot.com examines commercial spaceflight and the new space movement.
Posts
RSS- 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
- Adding very large integers in 8 Bit BASIC · imapenguin
- 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
- MOS paper tape format · imapenguin