@davespice@mas.to
@davespice@mas.to avatar

davespice

@davespice@mas.to

Husband, father of two, space geek, 〓〓 country bumpkin, ham radio 2E0XDO. Formerly an archaeologist. Working in the space industry. Doing educational things.

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thomastospace, to random
@thomastospace@phpc.social avatar

Google has started the 'Manifest V2 phase-out', which to put it in simple user-friendly words:

Google is phasing out features that make current adblockers work. uBlock Origin will not be able to block ads as effectively as before.

https://blog.chromium.org/2024/05/manifest-v2-phase-out-begins.html

Now, how to solve this? Well, there's one answer. Move to Firefox:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

Firefox on Android is great as well, and supports adblockers as well!

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@thomastospace I've been using a pihole for several years now, it blocks the adverts at DNS level, works for all devices on your network, any browser, any platform

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@thomastospace ah I can vouch for it's reliability, you set it up and leave it, once it's going you can forget about it, once in a while some websites are blocked that you want to access but it's easy to solve that, it has a http page you can access with a professional looking interface

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@thomastospace it hardly happens in our house, and if you have kids it also protects against a whole bunch of different types of digital surveillance

markmccaughrean, to random
@markmccaughrean@mastodon.social avatar

Another populist, nationalist, & yes, sure, fascist blowhard shifts the Overton window far rightwards, dragging in supposedly centrist politicians, thanks to undeliverable or unsustainable reactionary promises & racist dog whistling.

Yet more evidence that any lessons learned from the disaster that enveloped the world in the 1930s & 1940s have definitely reached their expiry date.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/26/the-guardian-view-on-the-netherlands-a-radical-right-reset-will-challenge-european-unity

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@markmccaughrean he even dresses like Trump!

markmccaughrean, to Netherlands
@markmccaughrean@mastodon.social avatar

A return to lovely early summer weather for this evening’s enjoyable 52km ride 🌞🙇‍♂️

Not fast, as I was up at 4am & knackered by now, but sometimes it’s more about soaking up the ambience … 🤷‍♂️

Not least as I’m now in my final few rides before moving from The Netherlands – I’m getting quite emotional about it 😭

#CyclingLife 🚴‍♂️
#Netherlands 🇳🇱
#SoundOn 🎧

The row of wind turbines at the Barrepolder which supply the Heineken brewery outside Leiden with electricity. The setting Sun is behind one of the turbines and the rotating blades are casting a moving shadow over the foreground field, which has some geese in it.

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@markmccaughrean oh are you moving back to the UK?

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@markmccaughrean I can fully appreciate that and I hear Heidelberg is lovely. I don't think I could move back to the UK either. Are you registered to do postal voting though? I'm actually planning to be in London on the night of 4 July to hopefully bask in the atmosphere of Tory obliteration. I hear D-ream might get back together 😆

apzpins, to InitialD
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

Apollo 13 has a lot going on. One feature the players rarely get to see is the magnetic moon that captures balls. A lot of owners, yours truly included, have noticed no matter how special balls you use in the game, you'll end up with 13 fridge magnets very soon if the moon is in use. Here you can see it temporarily activated for cleaning. It has no major effect for gameplay, the balls just get returned to inlane instead of plungerlane.

View or Apollo 13 pinball machine's playfield. A moon shaped magnetic toy captures a ball going past it on a ramp, lifts it up and drops it onto a hole on the other side.

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@apzpins so you mean the balls become magnetised themselves?

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@apzpins interesting, I wonder if there's a material science solution to this, so basically make new balls out of a special grade of metal that is magnetic but doesn't want to retain a magnetic charge 🤔

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@apzpins yeah, probably would've been better with a mechanical solution and a weaker magnet

davespice, to Netherlands
@davespice@mas.to avatar

Gutted that were disqualified from Eurovision. I was sure was going to win! It's the most streamed song out of all the entries. Such a shame.

whitaker, to retrocomputing
@whitaker@bitbang.social avatar

An assume colleague built a couple Adlib reproduction sound cards for me. Now I just need to figure out if I want sound or networking in my IBM PC. #retrocomputing

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@whitaker are these on sale somewhere?

EUCouncil, to random
@EUCouncil@respublicae.eu avatar

Where does your honey🍯 come from?
New EU rules, adopted today, will ensure more transparency on the origin of certain food products, including honey. This will help consumers make more informed choices and reduce food fraud.

[2024-04-29 09:29 UTC]

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@EUCouncil I found a good way to test whether you have counterfeit honey, put a small amount of it on your garden wall and see if bees come and take it. If they leave it alone you've probably got fake honey.

davespice, to vinyl
@davespice@mas.to avatar

Hi folks, I'm on the lookout for a test record. Specially one that has the 3150Hz tone on it to check for wow and flutter. If you have one you want to sell or know where they can be bought please let me know! 🙏

apzpins, to InitialD
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

Time to raise the playfield and take a look. My initial reaction is amusement - I have never seen a low mileage EM game like this. After probing around, I have a hunch that this thing might fire up with very minimal work.

View from under the playfield and inside the cabinet of an electronmechanical pinball machine. Long banks of relays, stepping units, motors and other electro-mechanical units are seen.

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@apzpins never worked on one of this age, looks super intimidating!

davespice, to retrogaming
@davespice@mas.to avatar

So I finally got around to recapping the #SEGA MegaDrive v1 that I was working on. It originally had a problem with the 8-bit sound not working. I cleaned everything with IPA, removed the old caps and cleaned a bit more. @_B_ took a look with his microscope and found one SMD resistor on the bottom which was not properly connected (and fixed it). After putting the new caps and voltage regulators on I am delighted to report that it is now working correctly! ✊
#retrogaming #retrocomputing

A video of me booting up and testing the freshly recapped MegaDrive, now both 8 and 16 bit sounds are working

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

Some additional pictures, the board just before I soldered in the new caps - and a microscope picture of the unconnected SMD resistor on the bottom.

A microscope image showing a surface mount resistor on the bottom side of the MegaDrive, solder has gathered on the top of the terminal but there is no fillet down to the PCB

apzpins, to Electronics
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

Twilight Zone is being bit of an ass. The clock board fixed the flickering hour optos, but now some of the minute hand optos fail at random. I noticed that it stops if the clock is in my hands and quickly noticed it was something in the cabling. After some DMM poking, it'd appear the wiring is broken right about here.

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@apzpins what a pain!

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@apzpins that machine is a bit special, so I hope you're successful. I'm working on a Dirty Harry at the moment which I believe shares a lot of parts with TZ.

openttd, to random
@openttd@fosstodon.org avatar

Welcome to 14.0!

OpenTTD's first release was in March of 2004.
Now twenty years later, we are proud to present to you: release 14.0.

And boy, what a release it is.
Do I dare to say: this has been the biggest release yet?

https://www.openttd.org/news/2024/04/13/openttd-14-0

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@openttd thank you guys for all the hard work over the years, I played this way too much when I was at University (2004-07) and I reckon I dropped a grade because of it 🤣

darth, to VideoGames
@darth@silversword.online avatar

Do you consider borrowing the same as pirating them? If not, then what do you think the negative effect of pirating is?

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@freemo @darth I agree with that statement, however what I don't get is when companies who released games 20 years ago try to clamp down on people sharing them as abandon ware. That really is a victimless crime because the game is not on sale anymore. If someone is selling copies of abandon ware though that is a different matter. They're profiting from someone else's work.

davespice, to retrocomputing
@davespice@mas.to avatar

Has anyone got a copy of Eagle installed who wouldn't mind converting a .brd to Gerber .gbr for me? #retrocomputing

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@fbm3334 okay I just tried that and I needed to use the automatically match layers feature. Is that trustworthy? I haven't used KiCad since like version 4. It seems to have improved a lot. I see the PCB has some net lines that are not connected to things. This is the board I am trying to convert https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/cMdOmcFg go Actions/Download

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@fbm3334 wow, thank you for that! I'm not sure I follow 100% though, can you maybe give me a step by step?

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@fbm3334 actually, don't worry, I found the gerbers on GitHub. Thanks again! https://github.com/npiegdon/tms-rgb/releases/latest

davespice, to retrocomputing
@davespice@mas.to avatar

Dear #retrocomputing friends, can you help me identify this bodge wire on IC4 that I found in this M5 PAL VA4 SEGA MegaDrive? Is it a factory-made mod or has someone been in here before me? Thanks in advance!

A close view of the SEGA motherboard showing a bodge wire added to the IC4 chip, a capacitor is connected inline with the bodge wire

davespice,
@davespice@mas.to avatar

@Flux thanks yeah, I found other pictures of it on reddit here so suggests it's a factory job https://www.reddit.com/r/Megadrive/comments/cq6ba6/ok_so_im_about_to_do_the_60hz_mod_on_a_megadrive/

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