@billgoats@bitbang.social
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

billgoats

@billgoats@bitbang.social

Cats, retro-computing, clipart, and photos of the sky, I guess. Live, Laugh, LocalTalk. he/him.

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

billgoats, to random
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

Hey guys! Have you heard about this ‘eye’ ‘pod’ thing? They’re pretty nifty, and I wouldn’t be surprised if one day they caught on 🎵

billgoats, to random
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

Got a cheap new spatula. It has a secret face hiding in it. >.<

A green spatula slightly bent showing a little smirking face

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

Made a gif of the creepy spatula face.

Creepy secret hidden face in a spatula

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

Mastodon seems to have done something extra-creepy. It's meant to be two half-second frames looping eternally, not the creepy face flashing up for a split second.

vga256, to random
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

those who have worked on CRT AC/Main circuits: has anyone ever successfully converted a 240V UK monitor to 120V US? is this even possible?

scenario: about 15 years ago, an incredibly gracious person from the UK sent me their Amstrad PC/2086. both the PC and the monitor are wired for 240V, and appear to use non-switching PSUs.

rebuilding the PC to use a standard north american AT PSU is simple, and takes about 10 minutes.

the monitor, on the other hand, is unexplored territory for me. I've never worked on the input side of a CRT before. i've done plenty of flyback and cap replacements, but never anything to the AC circuit.

any amount of thinking out loud from people who have direct experience with the HV side of the circuit would be appreciated!

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

@vga256 I have a Mac 512 that was originally with a North American analogue board — CRT + power, etc. It got plugged into UK power and sadness followed. Eventually I replaced the whole analogue board with a UK-voltage one and everything works perfectly, including the CRT. So it's definitely doable, but somebody more clever will have to tell the specifics of how ;)

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

@vga256 Yeah, that's why I say somebody more clever will have to tell you what exactly needs swapping :/

Alternatively, you can get an AC-AC brick to plug in between the wall and the device. I've got one that plugs into the UK wall socket and gives me a 120v US-style AC plug. Works really well with a couple of old computers.

billgoats, to random
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

Sunday night seems like as good a time as any to plot some old international telephone plug adapters.

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

This is from the 'Travelling with your PowerBook' PDF on the 3400, dated 1996. A weirdly in-flux time for telephone adapters.

billgoats, to retrocomputing
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

To use your AppleTalk network, open the control panel, then close it. Thanks, I guess?

NanoRaptor, to random
@NanoRaptor@bitbang.social avatar

The quad-package 8-core powermac G5 ran a bit hot.

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

@NanoRaptor who needs boring ideas like geothermal district heating when a powermac is already doing it for us, without any dangerous boreholes!

vga256, (edited ) to retrocomputing
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

today’s retro rescue: a wang word processing workstation and its WPS-5 disk drive unit!

go ahead, make jokes - we’ve heard em all! 😅

surprisingly the drive unit weighs 5x as much as the entire computer. at least 75 lbs

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

@vga256 Ooooo!

Season 5 Wang Computers GIF by The Simpsons

billgoats, to random
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

Happy ! Today is 12 years since these guys came to live with me 😻

A black cat named dave

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

@vga256 they certainly are!

billgoats, to retrocomputing
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

Well, this is definitely one way to package and send vintage RAM :/ Will find out a bit later today if it survived.

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

80mb! The questionably packaged RAM worked! :D

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

What a difference! This machine runs so much quicker and smoother now. Must have been using virtual memory alllll the time before!

NanoRaptor, to random
@NanoRaptor@bitbang.social avatar

With thanks to @michaelgemar

image/jpeg

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

@NanoRaptor @michaelgemar woof! :D

vga256, to animals
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

henry has his own private cushion beside my office chair

today he fell asleep face down 😂

A top view of a chunky tabby breadloafing with his face down in a cushion.

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

@vga256 faceplant cats are the best :D

billgoats, to random
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

Did you know?

The M in CMYK stands for Mayonnaise!
https://infosec.exchange/@catsalad/112246451337872985

vga256, (edited ) to macos
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

haha this is what i get for not reading extensively before upgrading a production machine to a newer version of macos

turns out monterey has a long, fascinating and well-documented history of corrupting/randomly disconnecting external usb3 SSDs

when i upgraded my production machine, my photos SSD was connected via usb3. the machine rebooted after a successful 12.x install, and instantly corrupted the drive 👏 👏 👏

thanks . i got to spend the last 14 hours recovering that data.

"upgrading" from big sur was a huge, huge mistake.

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

@vga256 oh nooooo, I’m so sorry >.<

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

@vga256 One bug out, a fresh one in. Not really what you want!

vga256, (edited ) to macos
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

one day after installing Monterey on one of my production machines

this is why i am extremely leery about ever touching newer versions of . ffs.

edit: could be OpenCore related. will remove that since i don't need it on this particular model

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

@vga256 Oh mannnn 💩💩💩

billgoats, to random
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

Luv 2 c a bbc article start out saying that Tesco's profits have nearly tripled:

'The UK's biggest supermarket chain said pre-tax profits hit £2.3bn, up from £882m’

and then finish up by giving patronising tips of pulling yourself out of grinding poverty by, I don't know, jumping into your freezer:

'Look at your cupboards so you know what you have already. Buy things close to their best before date which will be cheaper and use your freezer’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68776913

vga256, to macos
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

macOS users: did anyone ever figure out the cause of this Safari rendering bug in Big Sur/11.x?

it happens on every one of my big sur machines, and is inexplicably specific to news websites. i imagine it is some kind of image caching bug. sometimes it also swaps images between different news articles, so the photos are wrong 😆

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

@vga256 <rant> I detest Big Sur with every fibre of my being. It completely destroyed my work Air that should have had several years left in it. Made it unusably slow and constantly running at over 100°C. It's the reason I got an M1 way earlier than I was expecting. A year later when I updated it to Monterey, everything worked fine again. Big Sur and everything about it is made of vomit and fire and it deserves to be left in the bin. It rendering your images wrong doesn't surprise me </rant>

😜

billgoats,
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

@vga256 I don't know, they all seem so random about which version works or not on which individual machines. Ventura has been pretty stable for me, and I've been avoiding Sonoma after hearing so many nightmares. :S

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • InstantRegret
  • mdbf
  • osvaldo12
  • magazineikmin
  • GTA5RPClips
  • rosin
  • everett
  • Youngstown
  • Durango
  • slotface
  • khanakhh
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • JUstTest
  • thenastyranch
  • ethstaker
  • modclub
  • cisconetworking
  • anitta
  • cubers
  • tester
  • ngwrru68w68
  • tacticalgear
  • normalnudes
  • provamag3
  • Leos
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •