timixretroplays

timixretroplays, 6 days ago to random

This is an IOCREST-brand USB to RS-232 serial adapter, which I bought from a seller on AliExpress. It arrived in exactly the same time as an identical eBay listing said it would, for literally half the price - if eBay is still your default go-to for weird stuff like this, keep in mind dropshippers are probably fleecing you.

This adapter contains an FTDI chipset, not the much cheaper CH340, and it's time to see if this is the reason I couldn't get serial mice working natively on Windows 10.

timixretroplays, 9 days ago to random

Do other people type out entire emails and mastodon posts and card details to buy things online, and then just...... switch tabs to do something else and forget for ages that you had a thing to go back to and click send on? It's like my brain is saying "wait, stop, you might want to have time to think about this a little more before you commit" but I'm just buying more goddamned toilet paper, not committing to a home loan or something

timixretroplays, 10 days ago to random

I've dealt with a disproportionate amount of crap on Discord this week, which I won't bore anyone with here, but I'm thinking of printing a screenshot of someone saying, without a shred of self-awareness, "what's sealioning? Is that why you won't give me the reason you banned me?" and getting it professionally framed

timixretroplays, 12 days ago to retrogaming

Retro PC games:

✅ 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! 🎮

#retrogaming #retrocomputing

timixretroplays, 15 days ago to retrocomputing

I saw an inexpensive listing on eBay for a Logitech Sensa mouse last month, so I jumped on it without really looking at it - and the result arrived this week. As far as I can tell, "Sensa" was a sub-brand of their at-the-time MouseMan models, with interesting external finishes - I've seen wood-grain, carbon fibre, and... whatever this thing is, Damascus Plastic? #retrocomputing

A photo of the underside of the mouse, showing the ball (this pre-dates optical mice by some time) and the sticker which names it as a Logitech MouseMan Sensa.

timixretroplays, 16 days ago to random

Fun language/free market convergence thing: A "right angle" is where two lines intersect at a 90 degree angle, and you can buy "right angle cables", where the plug at one end is rotated to point at a 90 degree angle away from the cable.

But what if you want a cable to go the other way? Well, in that case, you want to search for a "left angle" cable, and it'll point in the opposite direction to a typical "right angle" cable.

There also exist "up angle" and "down angle" adapters, like these.

timixretroplays, 18 days ago to australia

So I've been at my current job for several years now - it's the longest I've ever worked at a single org, nevermind held the same role. It's also the happiest I've ever been - I have a solid manager, a great team and culture, and continually fascinating work.

But when a recruiter I've worked with before sends me a PD of a role I could quite probably handle, for close to double my current salary... I start to wonder.

#Australia, how and when do you decide it's time to move on?

timixretroplays, 21 days ago to TrackMania

Holy crap, the art of AI (the good stuff, neural networks and reinforcement learning and designing to solve a specific goal, not Large Lying Models) is on an absolute tear in the #Trackmania world.

This next sentence will sound a bit mysterious if you're not familiar with the game, but: this thing found an optimal wallbang in order to best a human world record on a test track, and also beat the human WR on Hockalicious.

This video's only 28 minutes, you have the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUojVsCJ51I

timixretroplays, 23 days ago to retrogaming

This is probably the only Gravis UltraSound-related thing I'll sensibly collect. This is the Gravis MIDI and Joystick Adapter, and I'm super thrilled to have picked one up for a reasonable price in this condition. At some point I'll carefully pull things out for a closer look, including scanning the paperwork, but in the meantime - did you ever have/use one of these? What'd you use it for/with? Let me know!

#retrogaming #retrocomputing

A photo of the back of the adapter package, showing some of the instructions.

timixretroplays, 24 days ago to 3DPrinting

#Plasbeams photo box update: yeah, this didn't work quite as hoped. At over 2.5kg, this thing has a will of its own, and enough weight to pull the bearing hinge assemblies apart and turn the whole thing into an uncooperative plastic octopus.

I think with anchors that slide over the hinges at full extension, and a careful order of operations, this can still be assembled; more likely I will need to swap the hinges for static brackets, and find another method for breakdown and storage. #3DPrinting

timixretroplays, 24 days ago to random

What the heck is this dingus on the end of my new dishwasher's hose likely to be for? I can make out "type 88" in the plastic moulding but both google and bing insisted I want to learn about main battle tanks instead. My best guess is that it's a temperature or flow rate sensor. I'm mildly excited by the need to add a hole saw to my tool collection, but I don't quite understand what purpose it serves being outside of the machine itself.

timixretroplays, 25 days ago to random

Bedside lamps need a "see me home" feature like modern car headlights that stay on for a few moments after you switch everything off. I don't want to reach back out from under a warm blanket just to turn a light off once I'm settled.

timixretroplays, 30 days ago to 3DPrinting

#CGAPrints update: Release Candidate 1? I took some time today to test-print a couple of colours that arrived this week, and they seem pretty close. This is the first time I've compared a full batch against colours on a real screen - what do you think?

All 16 colours are different brands and types of PLA, so given access to the complete palette, basically every printer should be capable of making some form or other of CGA pixel art.

#3DPrinting @3dprinting @3dprinting #retrocomputing

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to random

Building computers continues to be harder than it should be. Gigabyte didn't label the front panel connector pins on my motherboard, likely because they ran out of space in which to do so, but it seems like their support website has also run out of something today.

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to random

So this guy built his own gamepad from the guts of both an Xbox controller and a trackball mouse in order to improve his FPS game. This is an amazing project and I wish there was more than 29 minutes of him talking about it, because the design is utterly brilliant - I love the detail of accessing the trackball from front and back, I bet that results in having phenomenal mouse control. The pad itself looks like something Gravis would have made if they were still around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug06dhahqg0

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to australia

Hey #Australia, naive household question - how do I replace this bit of a light, just the translucent bowl that screws in around the actual light bulb? Are there standard sizes, if I take this to a lighting place are they likely to have the same one on the shelf? Or am I going to need to get someone to install whole new fixtures? Our place was missing a few of these when we bought it several years ago and it's finally bothering me enough to do something about it.

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to random

Can I just take a moment to marvel at the incredible march of technology? I'm old enough that I still mentally judge room lighting on the number of hundred watt incandescent light bulbs it would take to light a space, and today I paid AU$30 without shopping around at all for nine LED bulbs that can more than adequately light the entire ground floor of a generously proportioned townhouse within that same 100w envelope. I like this aspect of living in the future.

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to Cat

Siamese llama. Will you just look at this ridiculous creature.

#Cat #SiameseCat #CatsOfMastodon #Caturday

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to random

Have you missed an alarm on your iPhone lately? It's not you, it's an actual bug in the software that means the alarm just doesn't work sometimes: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/apple-confirms-bug-that-is-keeping-some-iphone-alarms-from-sounding/

The reddit thread I saw was full of people saying they'd missed work, interviews, all kinds of stuff. You'd absolutely assume you were at fault, and not the thousand dollar smart device failing to do something a $10 bedside clock can do, right? What a mess.

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to android

What keyboard app are folks using / can recommend on #Android? I've been using the google one forever, but it's deeply irritating me lately by changing stuff that isn't typos, like its to it's, has to had etc that I have to go back and fix, but I can't turn that off without also turning off automatically fixing stuff that definitely is a typo. Plus I often hit backspace instead of M and find myself in emojis or stickers after trying to type a comma. Boosts and suggestions of all kinds welcome.

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to windows

Is there a recommended #AirDrop equivalent for #Windows PCs? I'm sick of having to mess about with opaque network file share settings and permissions and folder settings and UAC prompts and rebooting because account credentials were cached and unspecified error 80004005 every time I just want to move a couple of files from one to another once in a blue moon. Copying files to and from a USB flash drive shouldn't be the quicker option for two networked computers owned by me in the same house.

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to random

Surely everyone's moved on to using Zip Barker instead? I would've thought Arj was quite obsolete by now

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to random

Taking a short side quest away from the photo box project to build some workshop infrastructure with my #plasbeams. Any guesses as to what this set of parts will become?

A photo of some 3D printed construction beams, four short beams form a square with hinges in each corner, and the square is bolted to the middle of a longer post.
A photo of some smaller 3D printed parts, one short beam and some parts with a cylindrical cutout.
Two of the cutout parts are now screwed to the beam and it's clear they're meant to carry or hold something that's about 2cm thick.

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to bapcsalescanada

This is the Silverstone FT03, possibly the greatest #PC case ever made IMHO. The layout looks confusing as hell, but the only important thing to get is that what would be the back of the case is actually the top - its height is also its length, so it can fit a super long graphics card in a tiny footprint, and the whole thing is one air tunnel from bottom to top. I've just spent my afternoon rebuilding the PC that was in it, and it's still just as great today as when I originally bought it.

Same case from a lower angle, showing the flow of air through the case from bottom to top.
Stock photo of the front profile of the case, showing it's a tall, narrow aluminium tower.
Stock photo of the top of the case, showing a very open air grille with spaces for cables to exit out the sides.

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to 3DPrinting

From #fakerbeams to #Plasbeams! This is ten metres of fully #3DPrinting construction beams, plus some brackets and hinges to join them together.

You're looking at the skeleton of a huge, collapsible photo tent - the four 90cm beams are the uprights, while the pairs of 40cm beams will hinge in the middle and at the ends to allow the whole thing to fold up. Half a kilo of nuts, bolts and threaded inserts will arrive next week, and then I can start assembling this beast!

@3dprinting @3dprinting