@paulrickards@mastodon.social
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paulrickards

@paulrickards@mastodon.social

Artist exploring vintage plotters with modern code. Retrocomputing repair and collecting. Mixes the best of new and old. He/him #plottertwitter refugee #penplotter #c64 🏳️‍🌈

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NanoRaptor, to random
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What are some numbers in your field that anyone else in the field would identify without even thinking about it, but folk outside may have no idea. Just the numbers, no explanations. Yet.

105 148 210 297 420 594 841 1189

paulrickards,
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@NanoRaptor 110, 300, 1200, 2400, 9600, 14400, 19200, 28800, 38400, 57600, 115200

paulrickards,
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@NanoRaptor 49152, 53280, 53281, 64738

paulrickards, to retrocomputing
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maintenance today. My HP 7585B stopped responding over RS-232. Diagnostics revealed a problem with the interface card. Luckily I have a spare machine that can donate a new working card!

paulrickards,
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And it works! Here’s a video of the HP 7585B #PenPlotter plotting a big arc Truchet tile design using three colors (yellow, cyan, and magenta) on 11x15 watercolor. Total time 1h15m.

Warning: sound may have loud clicks/taps!

#GenerativeArt #CreativeCoding #MastoArt #Art #ArtForSale #Artist #ArtForSaleByArtist #RetroComputing

Video montage of a HP 7585 #PenPlotter plotting a design of large concentric arcs broken up by squares in cyan, yellow, and magenta. It performs tool changes to swap pens automatically.

paulrickards,
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@tonymasiello Thanks! It's a beast of a machine. Extremely heavy, cast and extruded metal case and stand. First one I got in 2018 which I had to repair it (link to blog below). It developed a more serious issue that I haven't puzzled out yet so it's a parts machine for the moment. The second one I got a few years later.

https://biosrhythm.com/?p=2722

paulrickards,
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@vga256 Yeah it howls! It's a single large fan. I've already had to replace the one in my EXL. I just got the exact replacement. Can it be replaced any any kind of fan? The plotter controls the speed.

paulrickards,
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@tehstu It is remarkable that it works so well, especially considering it will change pens automatically and continue with the same prevision. It can also draw much faster than is shown here as well (I slowed it down to get good sharp lines).

paulrickards, to retrocomputing
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A Hayes appreciation post.

paulrickards,
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@tech10 Yep, it was a serial date and time clock, used when computers didn't have a time of day clock on board.

I made an adapter board that turns it into a stand alone NTP clock.

You can read about both:

https://biosrhythm.com/?p=1546

paulrickards,
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@therieau 😎

paulrickards,
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@rickt137 Super cool! Those were the days. Were they individual modems are was it a rack mount box with multiple modems built in?

paulrickards,
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@arcadeshopper That's the stuff right there!

sharewarewolf, to free
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EDIT: It's taken.
#Free to a good home: One Amiga 500 with internal floppy drive and missing covers. I don't have the AC adapter for it. 🅰️
1/2
#RetroComputing #Amiga #Commodore #VintageComputers #A500

The underside of an Amiga 500 on a wood floor. The bottom and side covers are missing. The pins and some stickers are visible where the bottom cover should be and an edge connector that should be covered by the side cover. Some rust is visible on the bare metal that can be seen through the cooling slots.
A closeup of the silver sticker on the underside of the computer. The Commodore logo and logotype are at the top, then MODEL A500, POWER 5vDc @ 4.5A 12vDc @ 1A -12vD @.1A. Below that serial number, FCC info, and MADE IN USA. A faded sticker with 009 from a dot matrix printer is to the left of the silver sticker and a white sticker with green text to the right reads FINAL TEST BY 1
The right side of a dirty A500 in profile. The floppy drive and eject button are at the right of the photo.

paulrickards,
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@sharewarewolf I'd love to give the Amy a new home here!

paulrickards,
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@scott @sharewarewolf I just happen to be looking at my timeline at the right moment I guess!

sharewarewolf, to free
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#Free to a good home: One Radius PowerView 0346/0347 SCSI video adapter.
#RetroComputing #SCSI #Macintosh

The back of a dark gray case with two screw heads in the upper corners. Upper left is a barrel jack for power and a SCSI ID selector. Below those are Mac and PC video connectors. Two Centronix SCSI connectors are to the right.
The label on the underside, printed in light gray on the dark gray plastic. radius PowerView Model 0346/0347 5 Vdc 1.5 A, plus FCC information. Made in USA.

paulrickards,
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@sharewarewolf Oh can I take that? Thanks!

paulrickards, to retrocomputing
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This Python script will convert an ImageWriter II data stream/capture into a TIFF file. This was incredibly handy for running multiple tests without needing to actually print it on the printer to see the results.

https://github.com/shysaur/ImageWriter2/blob/2f34b9174de10b2a22d825854159468a5a3c45e2/TestOutput/imwii_sim.py

paulrickards, to random
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Noticing a lot of eBay descriptions clearly written by AI lately. Like a 4th grader trying to boost the word count of an essay with sum-zero phrases.

I’ve not sold on eBay in years so I’m curious to know if they’ve added an AI description service for sellers or are sellers getting them from an external service?

paulrickards,
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@jcdenton It seems the eBay AI uses that refrain often. It’s just so, so bad.

paulrickards, to random
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@dillera Heyya! A couple of days ago I tried printing to your ImageWriter over GlobaTalk. It seemed like it was working but it took a really long time so ended up stopping it. Did anything come up on that side?

paulrickards,
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@dillera Yeah, it's pretty neat. It feeds paper correctly about 60% of the time. Makes boring videos since the paper emerges face down.

The ImageWriter is an early one (Apple II perhaps?) since there's no text next to the Apple logo. It's faded and yellowed so much! But it has the AppleTalk card in it 🙂

paulrickards, (edited ) to RaspberryPi
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I’ve been rebuilding a installation that supports my classic Mac habit 😄

I used to use the awesome image which includes a ton of pre-configured software like . But it hasn’t been updated in a while so I used it as excuse to start from scratch.

I used this Pi Zero W as my starting point. HDMI video stopped working on it for unknown reasons. I added an Ethernet/USB hub hat and a 2 hat for devices.

paulrickards,
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As promised, I wrote a blog post about creating my own classic Mac support server using a Raspberry Pi Zero, a TashTalk 2 hat, netatalk, and a few other tools. It's very much like MacIPRpi with everything current.

https://biosrhythm.com/?p=2791

Boosts appreciated!

paulrickards,
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@dbarros Yeah, it looks like my host is doing scheduled maintenance. Should be back up later. Thanks for the heads up!

paulrickards,
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@dbarros Site is up now. Cheers!

paulrickards,
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@eric AURP routing isn’t supported yet but hopefully soon!

paulrickards,
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I was able to tweak the output of the ImageWriter II prints from CUPS to be slightly better. I've updated the blog post.

https://biosrhythm.com/?p=2791

paulrickards,
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This animation shows the simulated output of CUPS ImageWriter II DitherPPI setting approximately from 2 to 31. After that, it changes to a more posterized dither and is the same for any larger value. You can see the dithering dots start very large and shrink down with each new value.

An animation showing subsequent values for the DitherPPI setting inside the CUPS iwhi PPD. The video starts as large halftone dots that slowly get smaller, eventually being clear enough to see that it's Margaret Hamilton.

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