New blog post! If you're setting up a BlueSCSI image for your classic Mac, there's lots of little tricks and traps for the first-timer. I'm hoping this entry will make things easier, and you'll also learn how to change your hard drive icon... in Japanese. #retrocomputing#mac68k#bluescsi
Data Digger for Windows 95 is a program that can open certain corrupted files, allowing you to dig through them and extract the text you need. You must set the system date to 1996 before using it, or it will refuse to open.
Matthias Wiesmann reflects on how much computing used to be diverse over four decades ago. As an example he explains how weird the Commodore 64 was compared with modern systems.
I cannot date this, but apparently some time in the distant past (possibly 80’s?) the International Harvester tractor company used punch cards for inventory and parts ordering. #retrocomputing#farming
@thelastpsion If you have fun you're doing it right regardless of how interesting or useful what you do is. Even just your passion alone is inspiring. Nothing you post is boring, no matter what you accomplish or share.
@thelastpsion “interesting enough”? Well you’ve got the world’s finest PDA OS running in emulation on Haiku, and a plan to modernise the development tool chain. Could it be more interesting?! :) Glad you had a great weekend.
This mornings seemingly fruitless task is attempting to read 36-32 year old floppy disks in a drive that may be suspect using a greaseweazle fdd controller board.
Let's see what a $25 PC 8801 mkii looks like. It came wrapped in a Japanese newspaper, it has the cardboard drive inserts and most of the plastic port caps. All of which are good signs. 😁 At some point it had an expansion card that is no longer with the system. #retrocomputing#pc88#nec
@ipxfong reminds me of my 1st PC, an old 8088 – a used Goodwill find that I had to slowly upgrade, learning all the while. I miss those days. Good luck! 👍
The elegance of the DG Nova instruction set really becomes apparent when you write emulation code for it. The entire core CPU emulation (no devices) is 250 lines of C, including comments and not even written to be small.
Nova 3 and 4 will probably add another 50-100 lines at most
@loke If you are nesting interrupts you store the contents of 0 somewhere else then either put it back when ready or jump through the saved version.
The other detail is that INTEN takes effect one instruction after not immediately - ie it's the same trick the Z80 later did so you can EI RETI, but in the Nova case you can INTEN JMP @0
In this interview Charles Simonyi told the origin of the acronym WYSIWYG in the context of his work at Xerox PARC on the Bravo word processor, see page 21:
I love treasure hunting. Sometimes Usenet feels like the dusty old thrift store of the Internet. If you have ever found a thrift store with rows of shelves chock full of books, old compact discs, and ancient cassette tapes, then you know what I mean.
If you remember: I have a CBM 8050 dual floppy disk drive with Micropolis floppy mechanisms. However drive 0 has a malfunction and is not working quite right. So due to the magic of buying two, I now have ANOTHER 8050. #floppydisk#commodore#commodorePET#retrocomputing
But disaster strikes when looking at the drive mechanisms. This unit was stored in damp conditions and there is lots of corrosion visible. Oh no... Plus, this machine uses MPI 101S mechanisms, not the Micropolis mechs that my other 8050 uses.
To my #greaseweazle and #retrocomputing bubble:
Anyone else having the issue that a HD 3.5" drive (brand new Samsung SFD-321B) can read DD disks just fine, but won't write any DD image to either DD disks or HD disks? Is there any trick involved?
I don't have a DD 3.5" GW compatible drive...
This is a fun one because the .woz file was created not by analyzing a flux image of an original disk, but by the original developer's master maker program. Several years ago, a "friend of Larry [Sherman]" posted a collection of floppies on eBay which included several maker disks, the source code to several of his games, and — somewhat amusingly — pirated copies of Locksmith, presumably used for testing his own games' protections. You can download the maker disk here:
The PDP-10, a computer from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), played an important role in early computing. It made time-sharing common, and even helped build the early ARPANET, the precursor to modern internet. On this day May 17 1983, DEC announced the cancellation of the PDP-10, marking the end of an era. The PDP-10 legacy lives on in hacker folklore, and the ALT key on your keyboard is a legacy from WAITS, an operating system that ran on the PDP-10. #RetroComputing#DEC#PDP10#OnThisDay
