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
- Testing a new video capture device on the VIC-20s. Only one of them is good enough to probably be post-able. Something to work on
- Rainy weekend project number 2
- Making and breaking Ciphers on the Commodore 64, er VIC-20 – Lagged Fibonacci Sequence and a little Monte Carlo while embracing constraints · imapenguin
- Going easy on myself with the next in the crypto series since I wanted to do a couple of these on the VIC-20 in Assembly which is new for me. Fibonacci in was simple enough. Now to do a Lagged Fibonacci.
- 10 Second review of this drop in RAM replacement for your 128: Works like a charm. If your RAM is already socketed installation is 4 seconds. One more future proofed item in the bag.
- This sums up my retro theme for June 2021 #commodore
- Interesting, removing this resistor and adding a 220uF cap across these two lines DRAMATICALLY improved this PAL VIC-20's picture. It's hard to tell from a photo of a screen, but this looks excellent IRL. Not 100% sure why this works...
- Quick Post: XOR in Commodore BASIC 2 · imapenguin
- 10 minute lunch break progress: I think I’ve found a VIC 20 Assembler that fits my brain. Flashing screen warning.
- More than one person gave me a hard time about using Monte Carlo to test my PRNG without a visual. Okay, here’s a squished PAL VIC circle and point plot of it :)
- Why are PAL VIC-20 (CR) video output circuits wired like the left and NTSC like on the right?
- Before morning workout progress: This is the last of these before the refactor to do large sets on an unexpanded VIC-20. This one cheats and uses a 128 to do 30k DIMs. #commodore
- SUPER happy with this so far. Generating 100 random mod 256 integers with a Lagged Fibonacci Sequence, then test the distribution for randomness-Monte Carlo value for pi (is it in the circle?) on an unexpanded VIC 20 #commodore #embracecontraints
- Well, that random distribution count really sucks. Gonna have to work on this algorithm a lot more… In 10000 iterations, 1 came up 358 times and 2 came up 1669 times. Bleh.
- Sometimes during conference calls I do weird things.You know, like write a Lagged Fibonacci Generator (PRNG) on a VIC 20...
- Headed out for a holiday cookout, but while I'm waiting for everyone... I need top 500, 1000,10k and 50k English word files in SEQ files. Was simple enough
- I’ve read a lot of marginal documentation over the years. This one is in the bottom 5 of all time. I’ve read it twice and I still don’t know how to do anything with it.
- Done a fair amount of Commodore Assembly now but never on the VIC 20. No time like the present. Seems simple enough but I’m going to have to find a decent editor, the monitor method only works so long.
- Another new to me VIC 20 “untested” and cheap. Looks good, packed well and passes tests. Sweet.
- Back to implementing Enigma. These rings are obviously horizontal for testing, but top down they are left, middle and right. Middle should rotate when right(bottom) gets to V (the "notch") and top when middle gets to E. Making progress...