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
- Least important applicance
- On the couch so no screen capture. I’m sure there are efficiencies to do but it works. Moving to the next step: 3 rotor Enigma, 5 rotors to choose from First need all possible combinations. Tomorrow we’ll add 26 starting points to each and crunch numbers #enigma #commodore #c64
- Forming a new club. I'm calling it "Folks who run calculations on all combinations of a 3 rotor Engima at 1.022727 MHz durning lunch breaks". Membership will be limited, so sign up early. #commodore
- Well that doesn’t look anything like a square wave. Bad multiplexer. Saved a Vintage computer from the scrap heap with good tools and a 79 cent chip that is still being manufactured
- Because what I really need is another project… #commodore
- Something is different...
- That worked even better than I expected. #commodore #fixallthethings
- This might be the worst non chicklet keyboard I’ve ever used.
- 10 minute lunchtime progress: Working on more advanced ciphers I need a modulo 32 rotater (wraps 32 bit numbers around by bit at a time). Took a few minutes to wrap my mind around it, but I got it. Step 1 of a bazillion for ChaCha(and AES) complete but I'm happy at the moment #commodore #c64 #crypto
- Implementing ChaCha… I need 4 eight bit ROLs, but the 6502 is really a 9 bit ROL. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to just to a CMP #$80 until now to set the carry before the rotate. Problem solved.
- My first ever VIC-20 arrived. It seem salvageable, black screen, and you can't beat $25US... I don't own a dead test for a 20 so working on it old school. It was after I desoldered the horrible socket on UE11 that I realized I'm apparently out of 24 pin sockets. #commodore
- Late lunch 10 minute progress: Next up is Pontifex from Cryptonomicon. Occurred to me while planning that I better do some card routines first so I don't bite off too much at once. So create a deck and shuffle (requires two different jokers to work) is done. #commodore #c64
- Today on my operating table is my very reliable Evinrude 50. Just changing the plugs, it’s not even sick or anything.
- Had a young coder(11) ask me to do my BASIC prime number code program without Simons BASIC so she could do it on Dad’s VIC 20. Here you go Ms. Lisa. I hope you can improve it for us. Sorry about the lack of video capture. I’m on my front porch :) #commodore #vic20
- Tweet sized review of the @retrorewindca carts and harnesses: built solidly and they do what they are supposed to. This is machine number 4 back in service using them. #commodore
- You haven’t REALLY lived until you try and demonstrate hash collisions using the bug repellent program from Ahoy! Magazine and a type in program called Salvage diver, then cross it with checksums and SHA-256.
- Making and breaking Ciphers on the Commodore 64 Part 10 – Finding hash collisions with a type in game from 1984 · imapenguin
- Had quite a few ask about SHA-256 execution times in 6510/6502 Assembly. I'm seeing about 21 jiffies ($15 hex) on average. So 2.857 hashes per second on an unaccelerated Commodore 64. Not too shabby. Imma be Bitcoin rich!! In 50 trillion years.... #commodore #c64 #Crypto
- Ha! Reseated the ROMs and it works. I am basically a wizard.
- Getting into the nitty gritty of the crypto series on the Commodore now. I want to demonstrate hash collisions. Only 1Mhz so I'm doing shorter hashes and looking for occurrences of collisions that result in english words.