Looking at full size keyboards to replace this Montech TKL. Keychron looked decent, but *I want a keyboard with a scroll lock light*. It needs to have caps/scroll lock lights (ideally numlock too), wired USB, L shaped return key, support ultra clicky green key caps or similar, and VIA/QMK firmware.

Early Sierra games utterly suck, with extremely sadistic puzzles, timed events, and pathetic parsers. Space Quest 1 does, at least, feature the Blues Brothers though in the background of a space bar.

When Mandelson gets sacked from a government role.. again, and it's news to some people.

OK if it's date calculations or colour selection, but if you're processing Pinky The Brave Leprechaun's application to the league of extremely queer kinky fae, don't paste it into an online PDF manipulator to rotate it. Sorry Pinky. It wouldn't have worked out with Maurice the Merman anyway.

PikachuFace.GIF after a work conversation. Reminder: Do not post personal information into random Internet sites, especially when it is not your information! Even when your colleague says it is 'OK', & the site says 'all data are processed locally'. May be it's even true. Is it true tomorrow too?

"oh waily waily I'm just in the upper rate tax bracket, but suddenly lose 500 quid child benefit I wouldn't if just below. Let's means test everyone!" Oh fuck off! It's wrong, but people on 25K need it far more. Bung money in your pension to place you on a lower bracket if necessary, move on.

Also, ignore any moron who things the way to solve things being very slightly unfair is through more bureaucracy. Benefits means testing will be the worst for this. Means testing means expense of admin, bureaucracy, and most probably failing vulnerable people. Especially for edge cases.

A note about government & 'hints'. Referring Twitter to Ofcom is theatre - it's a big, public hint designed to worsen the public image of the person/thing & get them to change behaviour with less expense & hassle. Enforcement happens if the hint isn't taken. This is not unique to Twitter 1/3

How does the popping disk box work?

Ever wanted a PicoGUS or PicoMEM but for PCMCIA? @yyzkevin.com's PicoPCMCIA adds modern WiFi networking, Sound Blaster, GUS, CD-ROM, and storage to any computer with a PCMCIA slot. He's getting closer to launch and is now taking deposits for the first run of cards. www.yyzkevin.com/picopcmcia/

Install Steam on an old tablet. 'Do you want to participate in our Steam hardware survey?'. Hell yes! I totally want Valve to see I'm mad enough to try and run Steam on a Baytrail tablet with 2MB RAM, but with a recent version of Linux on it.

The VIC-20 was my second computer (briefly) after the Spectravideo 318. Have to say I didn't like it much as an impatient 10ish year old, but it was unexpanded from what I remember, and also, boy those games look to be pushing the VIC hard!

Twenty Six freaking minutes for the entire game on hard? :O I've *definitely* spent longer than that on single levels. Despite the dated graphics, Jedi Knight is something that should be admired 'we finished levels on very low health'. So did I, but I wasn't trying to play it that fast!

Holy fuck. These people complete the entire Quake on Nightmare difficulty probably in less time than I spent on 1-2 of some of the levels on 'normal'. I could make excuses and say it's because I'm 52, but the truth is I was *still* slow in the mid 90s when I was in my twenties & finished Quake

"To hold in my hand a device that holds such storage. To know that owning a Haircut 100 back catalogue on such a scale was my choice. To know that the tiny pressure on my thumb, enough to move the click wheel, would change the song. Yes! I would do it! That power would set me up above the gods!"

I was sort of hoping to control multiple switches via serial, but I imagine I can work around this. I'm part way through trying to hack the firmware for the MX42-HS to put in my own EDID. It's already been done by other people manually for Dolby Atmos, I just want to automate it, & learn more C.

CeX isn't just games, always worth checking if they stock something, & you get a guarantee! What was advertised was an EZ-MX42HS (HDMI 4x2 matrix with serial & USB control). What arrived is an EZ-MX42PRO-HAS (HDMI 4x2 matrix, USB control only, SPDIF audio extraction) - so mostly better.

A reminder to people that @cexofficial.bsky.social exists in the UK. Just had a delivery. Fantastic, environmentally friendly packaging. Downside is that it wasn't exactly what was advertised, some model number confusion, but it's still 90 quid of HDMI matrix switch (new) for under 40 quid used!

Sadly I wasn't quite correct about HIDMan now being fine with USB mice and my PS/2 KVM. It's much better, sure, but half way through a call at work the mouse freaked out, so I went straight back to PS/2 mode. Fortunately I'd put in an extension cable so this was literally a 20 second job.

1/4 After looking at proposals for a 'better' tax system, which included the lunacy of regular reassessment of council tax bands I decided to check if I would actually be impacted & if I'm being treated advantageously. I bought my 3 bed semi new in 2001 for 89K

HIDMan (github.com/rasteri/HIDman) firmware was updated a few months ago, & now my old (MX518) & modern (Makulu 67) mice are working fine in USB mode to my PS/2 KVM, instead of needing a direct PS/2 connection previously. It's nice to have the option of a modern mouse, 67g is a bit light though.

Need to investigate if NUSSpli can be used to just patch, rather than 'obtain' games. I have legit EU games, I just want to see if I can patch them on a Japanese Wii U. Only the ones I want to play on Pretendo are probably relevant, which is likely to mean Super Mario Maker

Little bit of Wii U gaming tonight; confirmed Aroma makes a Japanese Wii U region free. Unfortunately games can't be patched when running under Aroma; either patch outside Aroma or use USBHelper (Windows). I wonder if USBHelper's patch downloading could be replicated under Aroma?

As far as I can see it's only the Wii U homebrew that's embarrassing. It's not the development environment. That exists, and there appears to be a (mostly functional?) SDL/ SDL2 port. Programs can integrate directly into a jailbroken boot, it's a decent user experience once the homebrew exists!

Homebrew on Dreamcast is incredible - looking to get DOOM64 compiled to a CD for it. Homebrew on a Wii U is.. embarrassing :(. Hoping to correct that a bit. Homebrew on the Wii side of the Wii U is much better, even with a lot of the software being old, and Drama existing.

Shortened version of my stream of consciousness on Mastodon. It's odd which consoles stick with you. Wii U, and Dreamcast. Both flawed. Both lacking some third party support. Both still have great games, peripherals, and innovations. Have lots of games for them both, but not PS2, SNES, Gamecube.

It pragmatically means : you may get different results from some drivers, & it may be necessary to fiddle with resolutions, refresh rates, & colour depths. Or say use something like recent MST USB-C hubs that have multiple DisplayPort 1.4 out ports or DisplayPort & HDMI Or it may not work at all.

For work's Dell Pro laptop I get three monitors working with 8 bit colour if the internal display's resolution and refresh rate are reduced, otherwise it only works if one of the monitors is on 6 bit colour Doesn't make sense because the port on the laptop is DisplayPort 2.1, 77Gb/s!

Which is a nerdy way of saying 'when I connect two other monitors to my main monitor through an MST hub it doesn't work in some configurations & it's a pain to diagnose because there's no monitoring'. Works : 3 monitors at 8 bit. Doesn't work : 10 bit turned on to high res monitors

Main monitor? DisplayPort 1.4 input : 25.9Gb/s. DisplayPort output is 1.2 = 17.28Gb/s. 1440p Monitor supports 10 bit colour @ 75Hz = 8.86Gb/s, if running at full chat. DisplayPort 1.2 is sufficient for remaining bandwidth. Running at 8 bit/60Hz? 5.63Gb/s - DP1.2 output is depriving you of 3Gb/s

Downsides? Driver support. If you're running a Mac, no Displayport MST support because fuck you it's Apple, that's why. Windows/Unix you may be OK, ideally use Nvidia or Intel chipsets rather than AMD because AMD drivers suck. Bandwidth. Different DisplayPort standards have different limits.

My previous Surface setup went Surface laptop->USB-C->Monitor (USB-C port in)->Displayport out embedded in monitor (a one port MST hub)->two port MST hub (Startech)->two separate DisplayPort monitors attached by DisplayPort cables. Monitor provides USB-C power, USB ports for keyboard/mouse/webcam

This supports hubs, like USB. Displayport can be encoded in alt mode over Thunderbird/USB-C. Net effect - work's laptop can be driven by 1 cable. It provides power, takes video from the laptop, passes it to >1 monitors via an MST hub, & attaches devices via USB in the monitor including networking.

Anyway. Recent adventures in DisplayPort courtesy of tests & a work laptop. DisplayPort is great, it's not a video protocol, it's an information stream. It can support Multi Stream Transport (if you're not using a Mac) where video for several sinks (monitors) are encoded in one stream

A note - for more long winded and definitely more stream of consciousness notes from me, you need to follow me on Mastodon at @[email protected]

Looking at other compilers the advice seems to be 'you can write inline assembly, but we'd prefer that you didn't'. sigh. *Fine*. I suppose it ultimately means things are better segregated that way

oh bollocks to this! Trying to combine C & inline assembly in CP/M. Hi-Soft C needs opcodes specifying manually, but lets you directly refer to C variables provided they're globals. Hi-Tech C lets you freely write Z80 assembly, but there is no automatic method of referring to C variables. 1/2

In other news, CP/M is firmly an 'assembly first' OS, whereas Unix is fundamentally based on C I was hoping to program it in C in a compiler independent manner, but it'll need the assembly abstracting to a separate include file with different methods of using assembly depending on the compiler

You know you're dealing with an older system when the programming manual says C has 'recently been gaining popularity' and most of the examples are in BASIC, COBOL, Pascal, and ALGOL is mentioned.

If you thought ed under Unix was painful and limited, it has nothing under ed in CP/M! Just about got things working. Also, back in 1989/1990, the absence in directories in CP/M didn't seem so limiting. Now, trying to set up a C development environment & a virtual hard disk, it definitely does!

Fair enough, it *is* all free. Yet Another project to stick on the long, long *long* list, and the acknowledgement that to shift to FreeBSD I'm going to need some form of Windows emulation, VM, or compatibility just to get stuff done. Joyce also seems to miss keypresses at times. CP/M Box does not.

Tonight in 'shifting things to Unix' we have another epic fail. Been using the Joyce Amstrad PCW emulator and, well, it just can't read a lot of the disks out there. To be fair it's exactly the same under Windows. CP/M Box (Windows only) is fine, so running it in WINE under FreeBSD

The Titan keyboard is actually decent. Pity about the rest of the phone. Crap camera. Issues with keyboard software. Incompatibility with software in square aspect ratio. The worst wireless support I have ever seen. Their support don't care. It needs *proper* engineering resource for good wireless.

The last good keyboard phone I had was the Xperia Pro. Following that was a modded Photon Q (hardware failed), the Blackberry Priv (software updates stopped, hardware failed), the FXtec Pro 1 (hardware failed), & Unihertz Titan (software updates stopped, hardware is shit)

I say this because Unihertz are pushing a new phone. They have an 100% record on ending security patches early & not releasing code under the GPL. With this new phone they promise to support 'Android 17'. That's *one year of updates*. Don't reward mediocrity & deliberate contempt for consumers

Here is your regular reminder that boutique mobile phones (not from major manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung, or Google) are never a good idea. They'll skimp on engineering, they won't dedicate resource to software, & they'll end security patches early

Today in upgrading to FreeBSD 14.3. Kmods have been moved into a new repository to match releases instead of STABLE. This is in the release notes. What is not obvious is that a pkg upgrade won't work for them. drm-kmod & GPU firmware must be removed via a pkg delete, then installed again 1/2

Been transplanting a pentium 4 system using a P4PE motherboard (2002) into a new Antec VSK-4000B case (from an old case I'd cable strapped a 12" fan into when it only took 8") & remembering the joys of early adopter tech. USB 2, SATA, Firewire, HD audio. How much of it works? 1/3

Also, Bluesky, what's up with the ridiculously short limit on posts? I also use Mastodon, but hey, the public have decided *yet again* they would rather a venture capital backed company that will fail eventually but which handles things, is better than a not exactly ideal service you might pay for

Pondering updating my pentium 4 PC to a modern case. Currently it's in an old case that I've cable strapped a fan to to improve airflow; it only has space for an 8" extractor fan. Predictably there are fewer cases with external 5.25" bays these days. An Antec at fifty quid will likely do the job.