@peter@area51.social
@peter@area51.social avatar

peter

@peter@area51.social

Geek, Developer (Java, Go, C, 6502, Z80, 68K & many others), Retro-Computing (Acorn BBC, Amiga, C64, Sinclair Spectrum), Open Source, 3D Printing, Electronics, Weather, Space.

Works in the online games industry during the day time...

I do need to restart my YouTube channel

@peter_mount on twitter

#coding #3dprinting #opensource #making #homelab #homeautomation #electronics #java #retrocomputing #weather #railways #opendata #java #c #assembly #fedi22

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

peter, to random
@peter@area51.social avatar

The FinalGROM99 cartridge for the TI-99/4A has arrived, so with it & the Final Rom cart I already have now both of my TI's now have SD card support for cartridge images

peter, to random
@peter@area51.social avatar

Looks like github's gone down - at least from the UK, get network unreachable once you hit their network

peter,
@peter@area51.social avatar

@Rembrandt It was down for a while, but it has since come back - looks like they had a network blip for a while

peter, to space
@peter@area51.social avatar

Wow, an earlier image taken during the recent Solar Eclipse... from the Moon -r

aallan, to random
@aallan@mastodon.social avatar

You can watch the landing of ispace's lunar lander, the first commercial mission to the , at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpR1UUnix3g. The stream is now live ahead of touchdown, touch down on the Moon is expected at 16:40 UTC (12:40 EST, 17:40 BST).

peter,
@peter@area51.social avatar

@aallan you beat me to it 😉

peter, to fediverse
@peter@area51.social avatar

One year ago today I created my own instance joined

It's been an interesting year, especially getting used to how different it is here than the old place.

That said, I'm finding it far better here - there's way more interaction and a lot less vitriol, making it way less stressful.

Discovering new people is hard, but as you expand your network (& federate more if on your own instance) then it starts getting easier.

peter,
@peter@area51.social avatar

@davespice it does take a while & I think that's part of what puts people off

Once you start finding people then it starts picking up

blogmywiki, to random
@blogmywiki@mastodon.social avatar

Anyone got any experience connecting a Sinclair ZX Spectrum Interface 1 RS232 serial interface to either a Raspberry Pi's serial pins or another computer via a USB-serial adaptor? How many volts does the Interface 1 put out? What does it expect / tolerate as an input?

peter,
@peter@area51.social avatar

@blogmywiki It should be standard RS232 voltages, so inbound +-3..+-15V but the outbound will almost certainly damage the PI as it's pins are 3V3 so pumping in 15V will fry it unless you add the appropriate circuitry

A USB serial adapter should be fine as it will handle the required voltage ranges

aaisp, to random
@aaisp@social.aa.net.uk avatar

We are not convinced the UK Emergency Alert worked on roaming phones, well our EU based SIP2SIM services seemed not to get an alert (from a couple of samples). If you did, do let us know.

^RevK

peter,
@peter@area51.social avatar

@CenturyAvocado @aaisp I turned it off on my phone which does have a sip2sim in it so I wasn't expecting it to trigger

revk, (edited ) to random
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

That was crap, one phone seems to have done nothing (Voda NL SIM), and another (EE UK) beeped quietly for a fraction of a second, showed something full screen, which vanished before it could be read. And no indication of any message to anything.

Fill in response survey here: https://surveys.publishing.service.gov.uk/s/A7XZXQ

Survey does no ask even which country you are in, or which network you are on. That is really useless!

peter,
@peter@area51.social avatar

@revk I turned it off as a test to check it didn't trigger.

Phones in the pub triggered but at different times spanning 5 mins before 3pm & until 19 mins afterwards

peter,
@peter@area51.social avatar

@revk after I sent that a few then triggered, so it's not instant

confusedbunny, to random

Hmm, work o2 phone got emergency alert, but this one on 3 didn't...

peter,
@peter@area51.social avatar

@confusedbunny might be delayed there's still some in the pub receiving them right now

peter,
@peter@area51.social avatar

@confusedbunny I'm hearing that 3 in the UK aren't getting the alert

peter, to fediverse
@peter@area51.social avatar

I see Jack, one of the Twitter founders, is working on a new Twitter but "federated" ...

Not though but their own AT protocol https://atproto.com/

So XKCD 927 strikes again https://xkcd.com/927/

Wintermute_BBS, (edited ) to random

It's friday and I'm in the mood to share some lore from my .

As you may have noticed, I'm currently having a slight crush on (once more). First time I did was when I was only 14 years old and found a Forth compiler on an older issue of a magazine disk (64'er 08/1985, "Listing des Monats").

And the book you see in the photograph (Forth Gurus will recognize this instantly!) is the one I bought, back then in 1987 (look mom: no barcode on it) right after discovering said compiler for this "weird" language. There are even remnants of my former handwriting on the inside, where I put my old address in case I lost the book, some 36 years ago.

To be honest: I didn't get the hang of Forth for decades. I was either too lazy to dare try again or ventured down other roads of interest.

Until three days ago, when - for reasons too complicated to explain - I once more grabbed the book, worked my way through it and finally began to grok the concept behind Forth.

peter,
@peter@area51.social avatar

@Wintermute_BBS I suppose it's why I've always wanted a Jupiter Ace, because it has Forth as it's primary language.

I did some Forth on the Electron, but ever since I've implemented stuff either with Forth in mind or RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) - e.g. converting an equation so it can be processed. Although other methods are now available, RPN still works.

On the Spectrum 48K, basic does it's calculation using RPN & it's Calculator code is accessible from Z80 assembler.

peter,
@peter@area51.social avatar

@Wintermute_BBS Indeed it does. You can push numbers onto the stack then call the calculator via an RST which then has it's own instruction set but it's all RPN and stack based.

peter,
@peter@area51.social avatar

@Wintermute_BBS Indeed.

I've just taken a look at the rom disassembly and Basic's RND function on the Spectrum is effectively:

Place seed on stack

call calculator: 1 + 75 * 65537 mod drop 1 - dup

top value is new seed & removed from stack

top value: if exponent != then /65536

return top value as RND result

peter, to random
@peter@area51.social avatar

My Tank mice have arrived, along with 2 USB-DB9 adaptors which support the Amiga, C64 & Atari ST (don't have any Atari's).

They are wireless but the receivers are stored inside each mouse

peter,
@peter@area51.social avatar

@ai Just found out the Tank Mice are now available https://tank-mouse.com/

peter, to random
@peter@area51.social avatar

The latest cheese wedge has just arrived. The Universal Second Processor Unit.

Just waiting on the adaptor to arrive then I can set this one up.

peter, to random
@peter@area51.social avatar

For those in the UK, I've now got the UK Train Departure boards available from the console like you can with wttr.in for the weather.

You can now query a station using curl or wget (or a browser if you must)

curl https://uktra.in/mde

I've tested it with Firefox, Chrome, Chromium and Safari as well and it works*

Hit https://uktra.in/ to get further instructions and how to search

1/2

Example showing it also works with MacOS's terminal as well as Safari. Here we are looking at Swanley's departure boards

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