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- 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