Time to take a stab at this thing. The LM338k regulator has finally failed on this WhiteStar platform driver board. I wish there was a switching PSU replacement for it like there is for the LM323K used in WPC games.
The regulator is at the upper left corner with a huge heat sink. It runs quite hot!
@RPBook bought themself a Palm Pilot. We're both remembering how good the Graffiti input was. I've even installed a Graffiti keyboard on my phone. This Toot was typed with it. I think I may even prefer it to the tapping tiny letters type of keyboard. I do think maybe I need to get a stylus.
"It is well-known that some Boeing 747s, for example, use floppy disks to load critical software updates into their navigation and avionics computers.
In San Francisco, the Muni Metro light railway, which launched in 1980, won't start up each morning without a floppy disk that controls the railway's Automatic Train Control System."
Hello everyone! Your favorite fedibirdy is back over here on thesocial.zone!
My main area of interest is gaming- particularly #retrogaming. I adore the #msdos era up through the early 00s. Games like DooM, Duke3D, Quake, EverQuest, and Starsiege Tribes.
#Retrocomputing and #retrotech bring me so much joy. As I've aged I find myself stereotypically looking back to my childhood and missing it immensely. I was quite the nerd falling in love with computers the moment I could connect to local BBS on my mom's work PC. I put that i386 9600baud Hayes machine through its paces.
#Horror is another love of mine. Every week I watch at least one horror film, and I never grow tired of them. It's the only film genre I continuously am excited for.
And, of course, #birds! These precious animals mean the world to me. They bring me peace and happiness just simply watching them from my living room window. Ever since a pair of sparrows nested in my garage many years ago have I been enamored with them.
I've been feeling exactly like this comic, but I got a cheap retro alarm clock and started keeping my phone in the living room at night. It's really nice
I got a new watch! I realized having a basic digital watch would let me leave my phone in my bag more often, which helps me spend less time checking it. Plus this looks extremely 90s and I love it
Retro-computing / retro-gaming enthusiasts, in the last few sections of https://linksta.cc/@seven you can find a range of links related to Commodore 64, Amiga, arcade game and chiptune nostalgia.
Commodore 64 claimed to outperform IBM's quantum system โ sarcastic researchers say 1 MHz computer is faster, more efficient, and decently accurateโฆ
I wanted an electronics project and also wanted a dedicated music player so I'm solving both with the same purchase.
@killyourfm convinced me so I picked up this old iPod video/classic on eBay. I'm giving it a bit of a charge then I'm going to see what all needs replacing. Hopefully it's functional just rough because I'd like to use it as I go. #iPod#iPodClassic#music#RetroTech
Back in the mid-to-late 1980s, the Commodore Amiga was, generally speaking, superior to Apple systems and PC-compatibles, which were often mocked by Amiga owners. ๐
Hey there. Just your typical #Liberal#Atheist outdoorsy single dad living in deep red rural Georgia. Love #RetroTech, especially classic #Macintosh. I am owned by a rescue #Cat and do a lot of hiking so expect a lot of cat and nature pics. I am an #LGBTQ and #BLM ally and vehemently anti-fascist. Figured Iโd move to beige.party since thatโs where all the cool folks seem to hang out. ๐
Back in 2017 I bought a Wacom Cintiq tablet for 3D sculpting (connected to the last iMac with an NVIDIA GPU).
The Cintiq didn't deliver the experience I hoped for, so I soon sold it again, but I did enjoy running the legendary Deluxe Paint pixel editor on it, via the FS-UAE Amiga emulator.
From the late 1980s to the late 1990s I used "DPaint" on a daily basis, creating graphics for games, demos, TV shows and commercials. โค
3D illustration for a 2004 issue of the Dutch ComputerTotaal magazine, about file sharing, which was still commonly done on physical media back then. ๐๐
Today marks 75 years since the first release of 45s on 31st March 1949. This one is considerably more recent, released by singer Ralph Glomp in 1989. Ralph usually sings in #Esperanto, although this one is in English and German... and yes I do have a small collection of weird and wonderful Esperanto 45s too!
The Melissa Virus This infamous computer virus spreads rapidly via email, causing widespread disruption and billions of dollars in damages. It highlights the growing importance of cybersecurity.
ESD is a nasty thing. I saw this board getting zapped when it was picked up. All the chips you see socketed here are the result of me going through the ESD's path, replacing chips one by one.
I had never taken a dive on a chip level of how this thing operates, so when I finally got a dead one, I finally got a reason to examine it more closely.
This is a WPC platform display board. Unlike other platforms, this does not have a dedicated CPU.
Instead the main CPU spoon feeds its RAM, which contains 16 128x32 pixel images on it. Page flipping happens locally, so it can do it real fast, unlike pushing the data on it, which noticeably slows down the game.
The board can not do different shades of pixels with hardware, but virtually every WPC game seems to have 4 shades. So how does that work, then?