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- 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.
- Simple exponents on an HP-16c · imapenguin
- 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.
- 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