Ep.1 is about The Well and British Journalist #JamieBartlett claims that The Well was the world's first social network.
Before he was even born the Brits (and Europeans!) were running big, successful online social media sites and I think we mostly understood the potential consequences.
From an American? Fine - But come on BBC/Jamie! Do your research or get Tom Sandage to fact-check a little. Grr!
FYI, if you are taking apart a Dynalogic Hyperion, there are only six screws to worry about: two flathead captive in the handle, two Phillips on the bottom, and these sneaky Phils on the bottom-side that are SUPER easy to miss.
Don't bother trying to remove the hard-to-reach ones. #retrocomputing
Successfully dumped the #LEGO#Mindstorms#RCX' ROM. This is nothing special and has been done ~25 years ago, see http://www.mralligator.com/rcx/#Rom - but I may have been the first one doing it with bytewise with pbForth and a Python script (pyserial). Unfortunately, I stored every byte twice. :thisisfine: Of course, I also did not avoid some minor pitfalls before (e.g. trying to dump 16-bit signed(!) HEX numbers with minuses before). 🤔 🤓
I've been using computers since the early 80s, so the following makes me feel somewhat disconnected from reality: I am currently backing up a 1 terabyte drive to another 1 TB drive at several hundreds of megabytes per second.
Inner kid me who was using cassettes as storage is finding these numbers to be absurd.
Spent a bit of time early this morning to knock out the most basic vector editing features in my SCI0 pic editor. The SCI0 pic byte-code is very terse; it doesn't even have closed polygons, just lines that happen to touch each other when rendered to the frame-buffer.
I'm sure this whole UI layer will need a refactor soon, but its definitely another step in a "useful" direction. Just a few core features left before a "beta" is viable.
Remember that sashiko stitching inspired design I did a few weeks ago? I finally tried plotting it. To me, it’s very reminiscent of chrysanthemum flowers. What do you see?
Plotted on a HP 7585B from 1983 on 11x15 watercolor paper.
✅ Download quickly
✅ Can be played with a D-pad or a joystick and a couple of buttons
✅ Are incredibly well-documented now
✅ Had their DRM stripped out decades ago, or... see point above
✅ Will run on 0.03% of your PC's capabilities
✅ Are cheap to acquire in digital form
✅ Are interesting historical artefacts
✅ Are celebrated by inclusive and collaborative online communities
Save a classic gamepad from ewaste and start playing retro games today! 🎮
when @radiofreelunch extremely generously offered to send me a "couple" old Newtons, i balked. i had an old MP2100 years ago, and it was tough to get software loaded on them, even with all the correct hardware
driving home an hour later, i thought: what the hell is wrong with me, i'm turning down a free newton?! 😅
a week later, this amazingly heavy bundle of Newtons and Newton peripherals arrived. thank you good sir :D
Pictured:
Newton MessagePad (+box/software)
Newton MessagePad
Newton Message Pad 110
Newton MessagePad 120
Newton Fax Modem (battery-powered!)
there is extensive battery leak/corrosion from the AA batteries on each of them, so they'll spend the next few months getting some TLC. hopefully most survive!
Thank you so much to those who have signed up to support the SDF Computer Museum with a BOOTSTRAP membership. We still have gift items available to those who join and if you've not gotten yours it is going out in tomorrow mail. Looking forward to our announcement and events in late June and July!
In April 2018 I was having fun with the Okimate 20 thermal printer with my Commodore 64. It’s a fun printer that can use thermal fax paper so you don’t need a ribbon so you can print black as long as you have paper.
This is a PETSCII houndstooth pattern I came up with. BASIC source in the photos. I really like the built-in serif text font.
Where the #ICQ „Uh-Oh“ sound really came from: Not Worms or Lemmings, as some are telling you. Instead Windows 3.0 MultiMedia Edition from 1991 contains the exact same sample as „ohoh.wav“. #retrocomputing#windows#1990s
Found a lovely Microsoft serial mouse to go with my #HP200LX. I might do a light modification to it to have it plug directly into the 200LX with a shorter cable. Why? Wouldn't you like to know.
When I was a youngster in the late 1980s, I formed an Amiga game dev team with 2 friends.
Before making games, we started by trying to sell game music that used minimal RAM, made with our music editor SIDmon.
To promote our game music, this energetic music module was composed by our musician Ramon Braumuller. The file, including tiny sampled sounds, is only 22 kilobytes.