Epic! 8-bitguy uses 1 weird trick to detroy rare prototypes!

[AmpleApricots]

Yeah, the Z80 kinda sucks but is a lot easier to program with IMO. Fun CPU and not really all that slow (for an 8 bitter) if you go with some high clocked variant like the Z180. Re: the 6502/6510 - I remember collectors eating each over and spending insane amounts of money over getting their hands on a TurboCPU (which I think actually contained a 16 bit CPU with compatibility to the 6502) for the C64, about 15ish years ago. I know there were higher-rated CMOS versions of the 6502 by Western Digital, wonder if somebody ever built a resonably clocked, modern accelerator for the C64 that's not FPGA based. I mean it's kinda pointless for the software library there (except GEOS I guess) since everything is so timing dependant usually but hey, still. I saw the beamracer when googling what the market is up to there the other day and if people do stuff like that, who knows. I was always an amiga snob from the first hour on so I'm actually not too deep in 8 bit lore besides embedded.

Fun side fact - equal craziness happened about collecting "Golden C64s". These were literally just random C64s painted with gold spraypaint and mounted to some decorative plate that were handed out at some Commodore event to journalists IIRC. Some of them went for thousands of euros on ebay and I am not even kidding. Think there even were some fakes. I'm not sure how internationally known this is because this was before youtubers and limited to Germany, but still a funny anecdote you probably can google. Lots of boomer lolcows in that scene back then, even though some probably literally died off by now. I learned that collectors are a lot like gamblers and other compulsive obsessives and often just as unlikable.

In personal Amiga news, I copied my entire floppy image collection to an 128 gb usb stick, cleaned it up some with some light scripting (converting to hfe where appropriate, sorted files into alphabetic subfolders so I don't scroll myself to death, set almost everything write-protected, removed the infected images etc.) and that together with the HxC selection tool working on the Gotek (complete with image slots) puts a fuckton of Amiga software at my fingertips. Between this, the USB keyboard adapter, the optical mouse, and the rgb2hdmi the computer has reached a state where it's basically as convenient to use as an emulator. Very nice, especially since I never made good experiences with whdload. It still kinda boggles my mind how it all fits on a small usb stick. I had/have a MASSIVE amount of floppy disks from back then and they're not a fraction of the stuff that's on that stick. I've spent half of yesterday just loading up random stuff I've never seen. I need to get HRTMon in so I can poke around a bit.

 

[seri0us]

Lots of boomer lolcows in that scene back then, even though some probably literally died off by now. I learned that collectors are a lot like gamblers and other compulsive obsessives and often just as unlikable.

Do you know what usually happened to their hoards after death? Generic estate sale, being sold off for the raw/scrap materials, or sold at deliberate prices by a successor?

 

[AmpleApricots]

Do you know what usually happened to their hoards after death? Generic estate sale, being sold off for the raw/scrap materials, or sold at deliberate prices by a successor?

Beats me. I know of one dude who died (knew it was coming, cancer or something) while I was still around in that scene and he left everything to some other guy in the same circles. Mind you, this was a time when you'd get something like an Amiga 1200 for 20-50 bucks, so I guess lots just went into the trash. Doubt this happens nowadays as even grandma knows how to compare prices on eBay. They still were sometimes acting like complete nutjobs even then. I can't imagine what they're like now.

 

[Enig]

Got the Classic II set up perfectly now, new fan is loud as fuck at 2000 RPM but the cool air keeps whatever part that controls horizontal stability from going insane, now the real fun is a new game called "does the sound fucking work?", it's a fun game where you open a game in Mac OS 7 and try to figure out if the game is running slow from sounds being on, is the sound choppy because of OS 7, or is it just because this is a 68030 being told to do everything all at once? That's if you aren't already playing the game of "oh cool another game that won't even work on system 6 let alone 7", thank you Arkanoid.

 

[AmpleApricots]

Somebody I met for easter had some old hardware to give to me. From the description, I expected something not really all that interersting, like an atom netbook or chromebook or something, but it actually was a Powerbook Duo 230. (which honestly really surprised me, I have no idea how that person would get his hands on something like this, but I am not complaining, it's in pristine condition)

I didn't even attempt to use the original power supply but even with something whipped up at my workbench and with the battery removed, its dead. My guess is the capacitors. 030 based notebook, eh? The thing is tiny. No FPU, I am not sure what kind of impact that has on Mac software of that era, if any.

Intersting is that it exports it's PDS connector I know from my Performa at the back. The screen is a passive LCD matrix monochrome screen which my guesstimate is is awful. Not sure if I'm going to recap it anytime soon but I'll get at least everything that might be leaking out very soon. Haven't gotten an truly old system like this given to me in a long time.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

he already has on twitter, I'm just astonished it hasn't seeped into his content

That fucking disgusts me.

 

[Kalsarikännit]

Got the Classic II set up perfectly now, new fan is loud as fuck at 2000 RPM

Did you not put a Noctua in it?

No FPU, I am not sure what kind of impact that has on Mac software of that era, if any.

Barely any. Very little takes advantage of it.

 

[Migraine Box]

Barely any. Very little takes advantage of it.

68k Macs with an FPU are coveted for A/UX usage. Otherwise, yeah not much.

 

[Enig]

Did you not put a Noctua in it?

Yeah, and due to the case being full of empty space and this being an 80mm fan mod it helps to amplify even a Noctua, at least it's way better cooled than the stock 60mm offers since that stupid thing was mounted at an angle for whatever reason.

Barely any. Very little takes advantage of it.

If it weren't for 68k Macs committing the homebrew interest crime of "not being some Z80/6502 piece of shit" we could've had someone add FPU support to games with available source code like Doom to increase performance, but at least it does something to speed up old versions of Microsoft Office so it's not entirely useless.

 

[AmpleApricots]

fan

The bigger the fan, the slower you can have it rotate while still transfering the same amount of air. For silent operation, you really want the biggest fan you can possibly get. This stuff often ends up being noisy because of air turbulence, because the cases in question have places the air whirls around in ineffectively, that's where the sound comes from. With tunneling you can alleviate that but special consideration needs to be taken when dealing with high voltage parts.

Very little takes advantage of it

I guessed. Would've been just another hungry mouth to feed anyways. I checked the service manual of the thing and it says 2-3 hours of battery run time with 3 hours of charging time. Hehe. Since the battery is most certainly dead too but all is pre-clownworld, I wonder how much battery life I could get out of such a thing with the application of somewhat more modern technology and maybe some hardware modding. Always wanted to experient with that. The hungry parts are the screen, the dram and the hard drive. A modern scsi solution will be a lot less hungry than the original drive, so that's a no-brainer. The RAM you could theoretically replace with SRAM but meh. Then you could replace the CCFL backlight with LED, that'd probably do quite a bit. You could probably also underclock the CPU. The 060 was the first 68k CPU that had a power saving state in idle AFAIK. (not entirely sure about some versions of the 040 though also discounting the later static 68k stuff) Now maybe MacOS already plays with the CPU clock in some way? No idea. A pity Apple didn't go down in the 90s. We'd probably have the datasheets now. Looking at pictures of the logic board I saw a lot of apple branded ICs and that of course tells you nothing.

In personal diary news I sat down today and soldered half the Harlequin. Need more parts for the rest. Was nice to sit down and just solder a bit and listen to music, I don't really do that much anymore. while flashing Zimodem to an ESP32 I also found out that there's an embedded forth for the ESP32 (which btw. also can emulate a ton of retro systems, graphics output and everything) and somebody combined it with PS/2 input and VGA output to make a forth machine, which is actually really nice. Oh my. I hope I don't fall down another forthole.

 

[AmpleApricots]

I was complaining about the PC not getting that much love from hardware developers, I stumbled across this today:

https://github.com/FreddyVRetro/ISA-PicoMEM

It basically does everything from networking, to floppy and hdd emulation, to memory expansion, to USB input, basically making a Pi Pico pretend to be an ISA card. This is practical, but somehow it feels like the future of retro computing is a bunch of $2 microcontrollers connected to each other, occasionally getting slowed down by an ancient CPU.

 

[The Velvet Spoon]

This is practical, but somehow it feels like the future of retro computing is a bunch of $2 microcontrollers connected to each other, occasionally getting slowed down by an ancient CPU.

I expect we'll reach a point where we're simply plonking an ancient CPU into an entirely custom motherboard with modern features (till the entire thing is replicated in FPGAs, or course).

 

[Pee Cola]

I stumbled across this today:

https://github.com/FreddyVRetro/ISA-PicoMEM

It basically does everything from networking, to floppy and hdd emulation, to memory expansion, to USB input, basically making a Pi Pico pretend to be an ISA card. This is practical, but somehow it feels like the future of retro computing is a bunch of $2 microcontrollers connected to each other, occasionally getting slowed down by an ancient CPU.

I like how they've tested the ISA-PicoMEM on a bunch of proprietary machines (IBM PS/2, Tandy 1000, various Amstrad/Schneider PCs etc). I have a couple of Amstrad IBM compatibles in my collection, and I can see myself sourcing one of these once it matures a little more.

 

[Jump]

(im just catching up on this thread)

My biggest concern is that he keeps undertaking new large projects.
He still hasn't got all the Centurion stuff working, the Vacuum Tube computer just got redesigned, there's the (at least 1) PDP-11 and now he's somehow acquired a Bendix G-15 (an actual vacuum tube computer from the 50s) on loan?
Seems like he is taking on way more than he really ought to.

Well its been almost a year since your post and it seems Usagi has run down most of the loose ends on the Centurion project. The original system is fully restored and he has a cloned system and I think a 3rd card cage system working and printer is most of the way back.
The PDP-11 iirc he got working and a Rainbow PC too.

I too was thinking WTF when he got that G-15 home but he seems to steadily moving forward with it.

I'm more okay with him having help than some others because 1: he always attributes it, and 2: he really has pulled out a lot of info (especially on the Centurions) that likely would've been utterly lost to time otherwise.

Ya he goes out of his way to thank and credit when he gets help. And all the documents and manuals are scanned and published for everyone. The software utilities his community made are uploaded. It seems like its that openness and positive feedback that helped him build a network of really smart people who do all the big brain engineering for his projects. The Centurion went from being completely extinct to something that is well documented and has a working emulator so development can happen on it again. That all came from his community.
I hope they can pull it off with the G-15. There are very, very few functioning computers from that time left.

While I don't recommend Shango's level of no-fucks for anyone who cares about their safety, I did think of his admonition that "CRT high voltage is nothing if you've ever gotten hit by a car ignition."

Compared to his other channel, the abandoned mine exploring one, messing with B&W CRTs doesn't seem all that dangerous lol.
Most B&W sets are under 10KV. A grounded cliplead to a screwdriver jesus stick is enough to make them safe to pull. An aftermarket CD ignition with something like a MSD Blaster II coil is 45KV. And most people don't give a 2nd thought to tinkering around them. And I would say the hot chassis and B+ everywhere on old transformerless tube radios is way more lethal since your talking about 15-25amps on tap there. But CRT's everyone makes a big deal over. Getting anyone one of them across the heart can kill you.

 

[Mikoyan]

That all came from his community.
I hope they can pull it off with the G-15. There are very, very few functioning computers from that time left

I hope so too. It seems everything pre-VLSI really gets fucked over. I was just looking at a group who'd rescued a low end eeeearly IBM 360 to much fanfare... and are now looking to rehome it because they've done fuck all years later.

 

[Jump]

Yeah, something like that. I basically know nothing about the C16 but I think I do have spares. One of these days I have to go through my 8 bitters and see what is actually working and what needs some maintenance. These were thrown out like crazy and I have a rather high number as a result.

They will all fail according to Bil Herd. The guy who designed the C16 family and C128. MOS chips have poor passivization and iirc it's air molecules seeping in that causes oxidation. He has talked about it on his youtube channel if you want to get more info about it.
I don't even really blame CBM/MOS for it being that way. These things where built to hit a rock bottom price point and really only expected to last until the the next Christmas season. Yet here we are 40 years later.

Motorola MC68xx family chips on the other hand are on the other end of the quality control spectrum and never seem to fail but they where multiple times the cost. You never really hear of bad chips in tandy color comptuers or dragon 32s. Even that MC6883 SAM chip that runs hotter then the core of the sun seems to be reliable.

 

[Mikoyan]

They will all fail according to Bil Herd. The guy who designed the C16 family and C128. MOS chips have poor passivization and iirc it's air molecules seeping in that causes oxidation. He has talked about it on his youtube channel if you want to get more info about it.
I don't even really blame CBM/MOS for it being that way. These things where built to hit a rock bottom price point and really only expected to last until the the next Christmas season. Yet here we are 40 years later.

Motorola MC68xx family chips on the other hand are on the other end of the quality control spectrum and never seem to fail but they where multiple times the cost. You never really hear of bad chips in tandy color comptuers or dragon 32s. Even that MC6883 SAM chip that runs hotter then the core of the sun seems to be reliable.

Bil is super based when it comes to talking about that stuff, truly.

And even if they'd tried to build the chips to last... That's no guarantee either.

 

[ZipDisk]

I just watched the youtube video where 8-bitguy necks his fucking CRT for the moonbase cab, that was fucking BRUTAL. Dude needs to work on his lift strength and never carry a neck like that again.

(I probably would have made the exact same fucking mistake)

 

[Sayer of the N-Word]

Apparently, someone broke into Computer Reset and stole a few grand worth of retro junk about a week after LGR's video on it. Seems like showing off almost the whole layout of building on camera wasn't the brightest idea.
View attachment 3021442

How much of a loss to the world would it be if machines like these were melted down to harvest their precious metals? These aren't funky prototypes or Mayan codices, these are very well-documented pieces of technology which hold no surprises and offer no insights into anything, including themselves, and they're boring to look at on top of that.

 

[Jump]

Bil is super based when it comes to talking about that stuff, truly.

And even if they'd tried to build the chips to last... That's no guarantee either.

I went to go find the video where he talked about the MOS chips all dying and it seems zeroed out his youtube


Thinking it may just be a different Bil I went to his twitter and all the yt links are now broken. His c128.com website is down.

I am not a CBM fan and don't keep up on the current happenings on that platform so I have no idea why. Maybe he got tired of dealing with all the wikipedia experts ACKCHYUALLY'ing him and/or the troons that have infested 8bits. Who knows.