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
- 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 ;-)