Abby and I are both just discovering, for the first time, that my new PC case is in the perfect position and height for her to glare at me from. I was not expecting to see catface looming above that monitor. #CatsOfMastodon
This is an IOCREST-brand USB to RS-232 serial adapter, which I bought from a seller on AliExpress. It arrived in exactly the same time as an identical eBay listing said it would, for literally half the price - if eBay is still your default go-to for weird stuff like this, keep in mind dropshippers are probably fleecing you.
This adapter contains an FTDI chipset, not the much cheaper CH340, and it's time to see if this is the reason I couldn't get serial mice working natively on Windows 10.
And, yep - with Windows 10 told to enable serial mouse detection on boot, all you need is the right kind of adapter installed and a serial mouse plugged in when you boot up. Here's the FTDI-derived one working with my Microsoft Home serial mouse - you can see the adapter blinking to say it's receiving data when I move it around. #retrocomputing
So, question: Can I get some suggestions for software / tips and tricks for recording and reviewing raw data coming off a serial port? I'm a very long way from trying to reverse-engineer a novel protocol myself, but that's the eventual goal, and the next step I'd like to take is compare what I'm seeing coming out of a serial mouse with documentation online to make sure I really understand what's going on and how all this works.
Do other people type out entire emails and mastodon posts and card details to buy things online, and then just...... switch tabs to do something else and forget for ages that you had a thing to go back to and click send on? It's like my brain is saying "wait, stop, you might want to have time to think about this a little more before you commit" but I'm just buying more goddamned toilet paper, not committing to a home loan or something
I've dealt with a disproportionate amount of crap on Discord this week, which I won't bore anyone with here, but I'm thinking of printing a screenshot of someone saying, without a shred of self-awareness, "what's sealioning? Is that why you won't give me the reason you banned me?" and getting it professionally framed
✅ Download quickly
✅ Can be played with a D-pad or a joystick and a couple of buttons
✅ Are incredibly well-documented now
✅ Had their DRM stripped out decades ago, or... see point above
✅ Will run on 0.03% of your PC's capabilities
✅ Are cheap to acquire in digital form
✅ Are interesting historical artefacts
✅ Are celebrated by inclusive and collaborative online communities
Save a classic gamepad from ewaste and start playing retro games today! 🎮
I saw an inexpensive listing on eBay for a Logitech Sensa mouse last month, so I jumped on it without really looking at it - and the result arrived this week. As far as I can tell, "Sensa" was a sub-brand of their at-the-time MouseMan models, with interesting external finishes - I've seen wood-grain, carbon fibre, and... whatever this thing is, Damascus Plastic? #retrocomputing
Unfortunately I think the coating on this one was at least partially rubberised, and it's just beginning to decay - it's not at all sticky, but it smells slightly sweet, the texture is starting to feel a bit powdery in places, and there's a couple of patches on top where it's starting to come apart - so this one won't be finding its way into regular use, but it still (to me at least) looks utterly beautiful! #retrocomputing
Fun language/free market convergence thing: A "right angle" is where two lines intersect at a 90 degree angle, and you can buy "right angle cables", where the plug at one end is rotated to point at a 90 degree angle away from the cable.
But what if you want a cable to go the other way? Well, in that case, you want to search for a "left angle" cable, and it'll point in the opposite direction to a typical "right angle" cable.
There also exist "up angle" and "down angle" adapters, like these.
So I've been at my current job for several years now - it's the longest I've ever worked at a single org, nevermind held the same role. It's also the happiest I've ever been - I have a solid manager, a great team and culture, and continually fascinating work.
But when a recruiter I've worked with before sends me a PD of a role I could quite probably handle, for close to double my current salary... I start to wonder.
#Australia, how and when do you decide it's time to move on?
@timixretroplays it’s such a difficult decision. I’ve got the opposite problem where I’ve been at this employer in this role for about 7-8 years too long. I’m literally an insurance policy, all I do is fix things if they break (and I made sure they wouldn’t break about 10 years ago). It pays very well, but I’m bored out of my fucking mind.
Holy crap, the art of AI (the good stuff, neural networks and reinforcement learning and designing to solve a specific goal, not Large Lying Models) is on an absolute tear in the #Trackmania world.
This next sentence will sound a bit mysterious if you're not familiar with the game, but: this thing found an optimal wallbang in order to best a human world record on a test track, and also beat the human WR on Hockalicious.
@timixretroplays yes!!! That reminds me of the following talk I watched a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLN-t3HN22E
The idea of hooking up an AI to an emulator to have it learn the game and optimize it is fascinating to me. That is way more interesting than all the other stuff that AI is marketed for and probably much less wasteful. 😩
This is probably the only Gravis UltraSound-related thing I'll sensibly collect. This is the Gravis MIDI and Joystick Adapter, and I'm super thrilled to have picked one up for a reasonable price in this condition. At some point I'll carefully pull things out for a closer look, including scanning the paperwork, but in the meantime - did you ever have/use one of these? What'd you use it for/with? Let me know!
#Plasbeams photo box update: yeah, this didn't work quite as hoped. At over 2.5kg, this thing has a will of its own, and enough weight to pull the bearing hinge assemblies apart and turn the whole thing into an uncooperative plastic octopus.
I think with anchors that slide over the hinges at full extension, and a careful order of operations, this can still be assembled; more likely I will need to swap the hinges for static brackets, and find another method for breakdown and storage. #3DPrinting
What the heck is this dingus on the end of my new dishwasher's hose likely to be for? I can make out "type 88" in the plastic moulding but both google and bing insisted I want to learn about main battle tanks instead. My best guess is that it's a temperature or flow rate sensor. I'm mildly excited by the need to add a hole saw to my tool collection, but I don't quite understand what purpose it serves being outside of the machine itself.
Bedside lamps need a "see me home" feature like modern car headlights that stay on for a few moments after you switch everything off. I don't want to reach back out from under a warm blanket just to turn a light off once I'm settled.
#CGAPrints update: Release Candidate 1? I took some time today to test-print a couple of colours that arrived this week, and they seem pretty close. This is the first time I've compared a full batch against colours on a real screen - what do you think?
All 16 colours are different brands and types of PLA, so given access to the complete palette, basically every printer should be capable of making some form or other of CGA pixel art.
Building computers continues to be harder than it should be. Gigabyte didn't label the front panel connector pins on my motherboard, likely because they ran out of space in which to do so, but it seems like their support website has also run out of something today.
@jimp Q-Connect? I wish every motherboard manufacturer started using that the moment ASUS had the idea. Unfortunately ASUS boards haven't been the right value choice for any of the builds I've done in the last little while, and I'm not a fan of spending $20-30 extra to pick a board with a feature that will save me a couple of minutes two or three times in my life.