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
- New life skill for me: yellow jacket nest removal. They sure are mean.
- For the most part I’ve been sticking pretty close to the plans. Today’s deviation was to add some stiffening L angles to these pulleys. Once this section is riveted they’ll be hard to access and I didn’t like the amount of skin flex I was seeing.
- Working on flight controls again before it gets too hot to be in here today.
- While waiting on my date I worked on the next part of Nick Hampshire's VIC Graphics book. Multi Colored "fan".
- I didn’t go to Blackhat this year. A friend brought this back with her for me. If I had known this sort of thing would be there I definitely would have made the trip :)
- This morning's quick "learn something new every day": Been going through Nick Hampshire's VIC-20 books. 2nd books is on graphics. #commodore
- Lunch shenanigans: Now I'm on a quest to find the slowest machine I have that will run this "benchmark" (I call it the @NoelsRetroLab benchmark). The PC-4 is the current leader.
- Installed BreakIntoProg's BBC BASIC Port to the CERBERUS 2080. On the Z80 at 8Mhz it runs this quick benchmark in around 11 seconds. Pretty neat.
- Trying something different on my Atari 800XL this week. The keyboard on the top has switches instead of a membrane. First time all of my keys have reliably worked :) #atari
- Just for fun, the 100 door problem on several different systems · imapenguin
- Finished the 100 door problem on a bunch of systems. Atari 800XL, Cerberus 2080, VIC-20, PET, Color Maximite
- Last of the 10 machines in the 100 door demo is CERBERUS. Is unfinished. Last because it's the hardest to do (for me). It's WAY too fast for the visual demo. Wasting a couple million clock cycles. Needs the result output and custom characters to be finished. Happy with progress
- Taking a break from the cipher series for a bit. This weeks article will be on the 100 door problem done on 10 different systems. Wouldn’t be complete without a calculator in the mix would it? (PS, the VIC-20 is my favorite solution set so far). Also, TI-84’s BASIC is really fast
- Old computers make good teaching tools in part because you see huge efficiency gains when changing your approach. Reducing your execution time from 30 minutes to 5 minutes is more satisfying than .003 seconds to .0003 seconds a modern system.
- I’m on the prowl for a 386 desktop. Less bells and whistles the better.
- Took months of patience but I finally picked up a copy of this book for a price that wasn’t highway robbery
- Afternoon 10 minute break noodle: Atari BASIC is not my favorite but it works
- 10 minute lunchtime noodle: Taking a quick initial swing at @somacdivad's challenge this week on a VIC-20. Looks like I'll have to do the extra credit part now.
- Since we seem to be on an early 80s book kick, my favorite from this time period is “Once Upon Atari”. Fascinating story and better writing than most small run books, most which could REALLY use an editors red pen.
- Installing the elevator pulleys this morning. It’s a measure twice cut once kinda deal. Really not something I want to have misaligned. It was more like a measure 2^8 and cut once kinda deal. The other one is inside and upside down and required some gymnastics on my part.