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
- 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.
- Fibonacci 1-10 on the KIM-1 (and clones) · imapenguin
- 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
- The terrible random number generation in the Commodore 64 (and 128) · imapenguin
- 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.
- Getting green and amber screens from a MiniPET 40/80 · imapenguin
- 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