@philpem@digipres.club
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

philpem

@philpem@digipres.club

Software preservation, electronics, software and ham radio - a maker of things!

Pronouns: https://pronoun.is/he/him

Website: https://www.philpem.me.uk

Current projects:
LF radio navigation - #Datatrak
DIY cable TV headend - #AnalogCable
#HackTV (TV signal generator for SDRs) - video scrambling modes
Acorn/ software preservation (#DigiPres)

Tags: #electronics #HamRadio #Machining #Metalworking #RetroComputing #HardwareHacking #ReverseEngineering #ICRE #Maker #DigiPres

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philpem, to random
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

I'm starting to think that "too big to fail" is a synonym for "needs to fail", or at least "needs restructuring". Nothing and no-one should be too big to fail, there's always room to admit you were wrong and learn from it.

Violet, to random
@Violet@chitter.xyz avatar

when there is nothing to do

i will meow at you

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@Violet I had no idea raccoons could meow

Jencen, to random
@Jencen@furry.engineer avatar

This time of year always brings back bittersweet memories working for cons.

OneDrive and Google both like throwing the "on this day" thing at me.

And usually, at this time of the year, I'd be panicking and running round like an idiot trying to finish making or printing things.

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philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@Jencen I know the feeling, it does the same to me in May and November. Friends departed, the cherry blossoms... I want to tell you something uplifting but all I've really got is "I know the feels".
If you and/or Widor are free in later summer (date undecided) you're welcome to visit some time. I've been known to run BBQs for friends, I may do a couple this year as the house got too full last time.

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@Jencen all that aside I remember those consoles and they were really epic. And the games machine that hid near the pool and looked like a massive nintendo joypad :D

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@DeltaWye @Jencen @vxo One of the staff used to get really annoyed (like, massively out of scale of the crime) when people didn't lowercase the "Z". It was like hearing a Xerox marketing rep complaining about someone calling a photocopy a "Xerox copy".

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@DeltaWye @Jencen @vxo Watching them complain in the chat definitely got tiresome, especially when people realised it wound them up and started deliberately screwing up the capitalisation just to piss the guy off. There's something to be said about youthful immaturity and how if it happened today, I'd probably be the guy saying "stop pushing their buttons, what are you, twelve?!"

philpem, to random
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

Alas, it seems the rackmount Acorn A4000 I built is dead, at least for now. During the LAN party, the Arduino (which runs the soft power off) came loose and touched the +12V test point on the power supply. Turns out it put 12V straight up the I2C Bus SDA pin and has blown that I/O pin on the SoC. Feck.
It still "boots" but the I/O pin appears to the CPU as being permanently low, i.e. I2C Ack and all data bits low.

david, to retrocomputing
@david@theblower.au avatar

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.

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

I hope it's not as fruitless as it seems - feel free to drop me a note if you need some advice. What type of machine wrote the disks?

ChartreuseK, to random
@ChartreuseK@restless.systems avatar

Decided to look into my Multia again and the stability issues it developed a few years back after it being super reliable. Just noticed something off with the left two power contacts (3.3v iirc)

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@ChartreuseK I've seen similar, with similar connectors, on AT&T UNIX PC systems. I usually end up replacing the connectors on the motherboard and making a new PSU wiring harness with new connectors..

philpem, (edited ) to random
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

Small repair project this morning. This is a Northern Electronics UV141 UV EPROM eraser. All it needed was a bit of a clean and some fresh ESD foam. The bulb inside looks almost new. Full ballast and starter setup. I might swap in an electronic starter from one of the old fittings in the garage - they tend to go easier on the tubes.

Edit: it also needed some fresh rubber feet.

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@galooph hopefully it's reliable! All this one needed was four rubber feet and a clean

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@dashie my little German isel one doesn't have any and it's fiiiiiiine (tm)

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@galooph ah yes, crash-burn debugging... "the second chip is in the programmer as soon as the first program crashes" :)

philpem, to random
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

C++ senses twitching.

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@Jencen Meanwhile in the co-ordinator's tent...

Dexter's Lab GIF. Dexter is running around DeeDee with his hair on fire, yelling "My hair is on fire! My hair is on fire!"

gorplop, to random
@gorplop@pleroma.m68k.church avatar

@RueNahcMohr I finally made it!

stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 115200
cat song.bin > /dev/ttyUSB0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q1iX-8eQu8

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@gorplop @RueNahcMohr Also, is it wrong I recognised the Motorola GM300 front panel you used as a speaker? Complete with "Taxi Driver spec" tobacco-yellow buttons...

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@gorplop that sounds like a line driver issue if the chip is running OK. also they're old-guard mot so they need a real (differential) RIB.

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@gorplop is valid data coming out of the TX line? I may still have the SB9600 protocol spec around here if you want to look at what data's being exchanged

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@gorplop sorry - been away this weekend. if you have the right RSS software the RIB should be sending valid data. some versions are picky and won't work on fast machines, my P166 Toshiba Libretto works OK for most of the DOS ones, in plain DOS mode.

soatok, to random
@soatok@furry.engineer avatar

One of the Matrix developers saw fit to comment on my gist https://gist.github.com/soatok/8aef6f67fec9c702f510ee24d19ef92b?permalink_comment_id=5058644#gistcomment-5058644

In response, I actually looked at their code, identified two security vulnerabilities, and disclosed them to their security@ email.

This reaffirms the opinion I held previously.

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@gsuberland @soatok @phryk OUT OF SCOPE CLOSED. MINUS FIVE POINTS. BANNED FROM SITE.

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@soatok @phryk Me: "I thought you said it wasn't a security issue? 🤡 "

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@gsuberland @soatok @phryk I engaged with FreePBX's security process and was quite impressed, though I didn't ask for a bounty. I was just happy they fixed it. I was marginally less happy when I found out my name and email was on a CVE and I was getting emails from skiddies trying to buy zero-days. (I ignored them, obviously)
The only scheme I engaged with - well, ended like my reply. It was a Twitter bug. It finally got fixed when a mutual passed it along to a friend who worked there.

Arky, to random

americans chatting shit about british food when all their best dishes are actually mexican 🤪

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@Arky I mean, most of ours are Indian or Chinese... and fish and chips, that oh so national dish... is Sephardic Jewish (if you want a geographic location.. Portugal).

philpem, to retrocomputing
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

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.

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@ChartreuseK Did it have a hidden file called "PARTISHN.MAC" in the root directory?

brouhaha, to random
@brouhaha@mastodon.social avatar

My HP 16702A logic analyzer has developed bad sectors on the disk, which today prevented me from accomplishing anything while trying to help John with his Z80 system issues.
(Current issue: peripheral card works when directly plugged directly into test CPU board, but not when plugged into test CPU board via an extender board, or into the "real" system with or without the extender.)
The 16702A has an internal SCSI drive. If I had money to spend, I'd get a SCSI2SD to replace that.

philpem,
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

@brouhaha @narylis Aye, it's not a fast process...

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