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- 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
- Pi with logo is not only inefficient but also inaccurate. But it sure is fun!
- Another one of my favorite ways to estimate pi. The PET did a good job with this one in just over an hour. #commodore
- Yep, still satisfying. Gonna see how many people I can upset for one reason or another (Y'all need to relax) by posting all of my favorite ways to calculate pi on old computers today ;-) #commodore
- Ever try calculating pi with only 6502 machine code (KIM-1) and no kernal or basic floating point routines? Not trivial. Happy Pi day!! #commodore
- At some point over the last few years I’ve gone back to getting everything in print. Not even sorry.
- Well playing in the snow is done…today’s learn something every day I broke out the 128 to learn some graphics techniques. I don’t spend NEARLY enough time in 128 mode so maybe this week I’ll do something about that. This is a tricky but fun one(about 40x speed) #commodore
- Well I don’t need to do yard work today…
- Keeping an eye on a large data migration that is taking place this evening so I can’t go anywhere. It’s progressing well enough that I had time to replace a failing PLA. Hey look, when I put it back together it still works :) #commodore
- My slightly convoluted but perfectly serviceable way of getting green/amber out of my Mini PET 40/80 to a 4:3 LCD. Composite to VGA to color adapter to HDMI. Works well. And yes, I do have an Apple Green CRT, but this is a nice solution if you didn't for less than $50 #commodore
- I know it's a little hard to see in the screen capture… I just completed Week 1 of @ShawnHymel's "Computer Vision with Embedded Machine Learning" on @coursera. It's pretty confidently identifying resistors and capacitors out of my parts bin. Neato
- Some more unobtainium has arrived at my house.
- A Patreon exclusive from @8BitShowAndTell released today has me following along on my 128 in 128 mode which is pretty rare in my office. My 128 spends most of its time as a C64 that takes up a hearty amount of desk space. Robin’s deep dives are always fantastic. #commodore
- Good progress this morning. I forgot to take a picture of it assembled, but I did get the rudder and vertical stabilizer mounted permanently. More about the journey than the destination anyway. AND I even remembered where I put the hinge pin this time ;-)