philpem

philpem, 6 months ago to random

I'm pretty sure this joke is gonna make some people go nuclear...

philpem, 2 months ago to random

RE #LegacyIPOnly stickers - If you want the artwork to make your own, it's freely available from

https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2013/07/the-legacy-ip-only-ipv6-horse-and-buggy-stickers-how-to-get-copies/

https://stickers.n3pb.org/

I think I posted this link earlier, but as a lot of people were asking, I'm reposting it.

philpem, 7 months ago to retrocomputing

Does anyone know what the format of the "Iomega Specific" SCSI mode page (mode page 2F) is, or have any documentation on the commands and mode pages for Iomega drives?
I found this in the FWB HDT manual, but it doesn't give the mode page format.
I'm trying to fix some bugs in the spinup/down/standby timer handling in the RISC OS Zip drive driver...
Boosts appreciated.
#retrocomputing #scsi #zipdrive

philpem, 10 months ago to random

And the award for the most unfortunate "we picked four random letters" Amazon item brand name goes to ....

philpem, 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to Electronics

From the department of cursed IC packages ... the DIP20 with odd pins, and a heatsink screw. Plessey SL414A, single channel 3W audio power amplifier.
#cursedChips #CursedPackages #Electronics

photo credit: com-place on ebay, https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/142567928927

philpem, 8 months ago to random

It's not often you see Python derps IRL... Scotrail seem to be having a special on b'-quoted byte strings today!

philpem, 6 months ago to random

The cardinal #digipres sin, the one that'll make preservationists scream:

"We tested the {tape/disc} in a machine so we didn't waste time making an image if it was bad. After playing the game for a few hours we found we couldn't load the tape again."

Lesson here is, take the image first, you can always write it back to a new tape, but that one read may be your only chance...

(the above sin was committed by a museum ... sigh)

philpem, 4 months ago to random

"Whoever wrote this code clearly has no understanding of elementary mathematics or the most basic rules of programming."

Savage, but justified.

Page 17-18,
https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/file/872/download?token=_FC526YV

#PostOfficeScandal #HorizonScandal

philpem, 5 months ago to random

And that's another generation of students who just learned about SciHub and Libgen!

Steals your personal information? Do they know how stupid they sound? What information could it gather other than your IP address and the paper you were looking for?

BBC: Police warn students to avoid science website.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-56462390

Anyway, this old meme seems perfect as a response.

philpem, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to retrocomputing

Does anyone know of an archive of old Sun patchdisks, or the access1.sun.com website/FTP?
I need Patch ID# 104688-01, a TCP/IP fix for Interactive Unix 4.1.
and Patch ID# 107232-01, a IUS 4.1.1 NFS fix.
#unix #classicunix #retrocomputing #oldunix #sun #solaris

philpem, 1 month ago to random

Kind of a mood. Happy Easter for all who observe it!

philpem, 10 months ago to random

Some code is so bad it deserves to be buried thousands of feet underground with a sign above reading: "nothing valued is here, what is here was dangerous and repulsive to us"

Using system("echo") to create a text file ... using user-generated input. No words.

"Unauthenticated RCE on a RIGOL oscilloscope"

https://tortel.li/post/insecure-scope/

philpem, 9 months ago to random

Does anyone have install media for HP-UX UNIX for M68k, version 9 or below?
My friend @RetroHoosk is looking for it. Please ping them!
Boosts appreciated :)

#retrocomputing #M68k #hpux #hpunix #unix

philpem, 7 months ago to Electronics

My Little FPGA, Pipelining Is Magic
(Or how I learned to stop trying to do everything in a single cycle and love parallelism)
#electronics #fpga #orlyBookCovers #meme

philpem, 4 months ago to random

Meanwhile the 737 MAX series is back on test...

philpem, 28 days ago to retrocomputing

Presenting the Fully Loaded 486.

• 486DX2/66, Pine Technology motherboard
• 16MB RAM
• S3 805 VLB graphics
• ISA 2xCOM+parallel+IDE+floppy I/Oaaa
• Tekram 880 VLB Cached SCSI, 10K SCSI hard drive, PiSCSI
• 8x IDE CDROM
• Monochrome video card (CGA/MDA) for second monitor
• Realtek 8019 NE2000 NIC

Of course you can watch ASCII Star Wars!
#RetroComputing #RetroPC

A very crowded 486 I/O bay

philpem, 1 year ago to random

Can anyone recommend a C/C++ library to run a simple webserver and HTML UI on the Pi Pico W / RP2040?
My use case is:

• create/read/update/delete on a database of device names/addresses
• trigger functions which send commands to those devices
• display responses the RP2040 received
• sync time to NTP and send a clock-time broadcast message every minute (optional)

#RaspberryPi #RaspberryPiPico

philpem, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to Electronics

Made this string of addressable LED unicorns out of a bunch of Wilko unicorn solar lights, a WS2811 12V LED string, a DC-DC converter and an ESP32.

The only problem is I have fifty LEDs, but only thirty unicorns. Clearly I need to get more unicorns.

Also, yes, they are all extremely gay.

#ledstring #electronics #unicorns #pride #esphome #FastLED

philpem, 4 months ago to random

I realised the other night why the whole #PostOfficeScandal #HorizonScandal is so eerily familiar.
Horizon is the successor to the ICL benefits payment card system. The one that the Benefits Office cancelled in the early 2000s because ICL made such a hash of it. The downfall of ICL - partly due to the benefits card mess - was something we studied in university.

ICL is now Fujitsu.

philpem, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago) to Electronics

Wow, the Xilinx/AMD CPLD discontinuation is an absolute bloodbath. Does that leave us with the Microchip ATF1500 series being the only 5V-tolerant FPGA/CPLD on the market? That's not great for retrocomputing, I've found the tools for that chip to be pretty awful (WinCUPL, seemingly no higher-level HDL support).

https://mm.digikey.com/Volume0/opasdata/d220001/medias/docus/5783/XCN23009.pdf

#Electronics #Retrocomputing #FPGA #CPLD

philpem, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to amiga

Does anyone know where I could get a copy of the instructions and software for the Rendale A8802 #Amiga Genlock? Not the FMC version, just the standard 8802.

Boosts appreciated!

philpem, 5 months ago to random

"This Tesla that was involved in the incident earlier this week..."
"Yeah, the one the wheels fell off? Yeah that's not very typical, I'd like to make that point."

Reuters: Tesla blamed drivers for failures of parts it long knew were defective
Wheels falling off cars at speed. Suspensions collapsing on brand-new vehicles. Axles breaking under acceleration.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/

philpem, 20 days ago to retrocomputing

Does anyone have a raw image (DD, sector image) of an "Iomega Tools" Zip disk? I'm curious how they implemented the dual Mac/PC format.

Beware: don't put it in a PC or Mac with the Iomega Tools software installed. If it sees a Tools disk, it'll delete the other partition and 'reclaim' it as free space. Guess how I ruined mine!
Imaging on Linux with "dd" should be safe.
An unmodified disk will report as being read-only.

#retrocomputing #iomega #ZipDrive

philpem, 4 days ago to random

Well it's eleven o'clock on a Saturday,
The regular crowd's sneaking in.
There's a young man sittin' next to me
Makin' love to his Club-Mate drink
He says "Son, can you find me a zero-day?"
"I'm not really sure how it goes."
"But it's easy, a treat, and I knew it complete"
"Before it was called 'out of scope'."

philpem, 18 days ago to random

OH: nanotechnology was hard, who knew?
Me: We taught sand how to think...
BF: This made a lot of people very angry and is widely regarded as a bad idea