CLOSE UP: The Commodore 128D

On this day in 1966, Star Trek first beamed into living rooms across America. None of us could have imagined then the journey it would set us on. And not just the cast and crew, but the millions of fans who would find hope, inspiration, and community in its vision of the future.

A viewer sent me an email, asking me to look over a schematic for an autofire circuit that he had a generative AI create for him. This is the circuit he sent me. It doesn’t make any sense. I sent him a circuit that works from an old magazine I used before. Don’t fricking trust AI with anything.

Privater Solarstrom soll zur Kostenfalle werden – durch neue Netzentgelte, sogar für bestehende Anlagen. Ohne Bürgerbeteiligung. Ohne eure Stimme. Martin von gewaltignachhaltig & ich starten deshalb eine gemeinsame Aktion. Wir müssen bis 30.9. Druck machen!

I'm experimenting with a way to show how DOS games render themselves. Basically I'm recording a lossless video of the game running on a very slow (virtual) CPU, then removing all the frames where nothing happens, and I'm playing it back sped up a lot.

Working on fixing this PC speaker set - one of the channels had a severe noise, measurements indicate a faulty amplifier IC

HP85 Tischrechner (ca. Anfang 1980er) und Peripherie. Wurde viel eingesetzt für Ingenieursberechnungen und als Mess- und Steuercomputer. #VCFe #VCFe24 #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #hp85

If any of my followers want to read about the Pentium in German, one of my articles has been translated: www.heise.de/hintergrund/...

So my #Windows 11 just started an upgrade when booting, without my permission. I suppose it's the latest feature upgrade which is now blocking me from doing some work. Completely unacceptable 😖

#Repair session in the #LabCorner 😃 Our toaster did not keep down anymore. Fortunately it only needed some cleaning, magnet and electronics are still intact

Inside it is a pure beauty.

In the past I have used the Thickness tool in #FreeCAD to create cases with a bottom, but today I learned that the bottom is omitted if you also select the opposite face 🙂

Es gibt also ein #Skyrim inspiriertes #RPG, dass komplett in Excel läuft. Ich glaube jetzt habe ich echt alles gesehen... 😂 Hier kann man es kostenlos herunterladen: storyteller-blog.com/2024/05/17/f...

I'm going to document my very scientific way of reverse engineering a PCB 1/? 🧵

Finished the boot control for my audio station project. When the LED is constantly on, the web server on the #raspberrypi is ready. The only drawback is that the boot process takes quite some time, a lot longer than shown in this video 🫤 - probably need to analyze the boot sequence some day ...

Hmmm - I did a fresh install of #Ubuntu 24.10 yesterday and already observed two annoying bugs: GNOME terminal is crashing when detaching a tab (workaround is to disable using colors from the system theme); notepadqq is crashing after a couple of seconds (workaround is to disable automatic backups)

#linux shell alias tip: alias hdump="hexdump -e '\"%08.8_ax: \" 8/1 \"%02X \" \" \" 8/1 \"%02X \" \" \" ' -e '\"|\" 16/1 \"%_p\"\"|\n\"'" Allows to quickly create hex dumps from the command line:

KiCad Version 9.0.0 Release The KiCad project is proud to announce the latest major version release. See the blog post on the KiCad website for more information about this release. www.kicad.org/blog/2025/02...

Every time I visit the @jetbrains.com website, I get such warm memories ☺️ #retro #borland #turbovision

The Pi is now also properly shut down when turning off the audio station. The station has an LED which goes off when the power button is pressed, but the station keeps power for some time to perform it's own shutdown - I have connected the LED signal to the shutdown GPIO of the Pi 😃 #electronics

I have added an indicator LED to the audio station in place of the audio input, which I can not use anymore because this input channel is connected to the raspberry. The LED can be controlled by the raspberry to show various states (especially to indicate that the startup is completed)

This was meant to be a quick #repair (just replacing the battery) - then, all those gears came out 🤣

Does anyone know anything about IC05 from the PSP3000 battery board?

Interesting. This HDMI to DVI adapter does not seem to be just ... an adapter, but seems to have at least some internal circuitry. An old Dell flatscreen did not recognise the signal on its analog VGA input until I removed the adapter from its DVI input 🤔 #vintage #retrocomputing

Nice 😃 I think these wires will be very useful #raspberrypi #electronics

Today's intermediate project: creating some wires to connect individual pins from a pin header to a breadboard

Finished mounting the #raspberrypi module in the audio station 🙂 Need to rework the fastening though - the whole module is wiggling when inserting USB plugs 🙄

Finished assembling the #raspberrypi audio module. Fits well into the compact audio station - I had to remove the RCA sockets from the DAC shield though to reduce the overall height. Now it's time for some metal work I guess 🫣

Mein HW Thread auf Mastodon erinnerte mich daran, dass ich eigentlich ein IT Museum in Wien aufmachen könnte ... chaos.social/@leyrer/1139...

Like my previous tech demos that started out with the intention of testing some hardware features, this is starting to turn into a vertical slice instead.

The mounting plate for the #raspberrypi printed well 🙂 I printed it with the mounting domes downwards - this saved a lot of support and reduced the printing time by approx 1 hour. #3dprinting

Würth Elektronik has released @kicad.org files for some of their components including symbols, footprints, and 3D models. They're licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, but your design is not required to be shared under that or any other license if you're using them. github.com/WurthElektro...

ZX History - January 1983: The Commodore 64 hits the UK market. READ: https://archive.org/details/NH2024_Your_Computer_Issue8302/page/n23/mode/2up #zxspectrum #retrogaming

Designing the mounting plate for my #raspberrypi audio project, using #FreeCAD First time I am using the Fasteners workbench for standard parts like screws and distance nuts

Sehr cool - Ausgabe vom November 1988, unter dem Link gibts die komplette Ausgabe zum durchblättern

This is going to be a VGA interface for the PET. I hope, I will find a display, that is able to sync with the CRTC machines (8032). I was initially looking for an RGBI interface for the miniPET. Found a circuit and thought, I might try something for the PET, first.

Finished product! And it even works! Hooray! #RGBtoHDMI #Amiga

Installation of the DAC shield was easy, but then there again was a lot of noise and that 10Hz cracking 😭

I was able to get rid of the major noise by adding two audio transformers to break the ground loop between the #raspberrypi and the amplifier. The 10 Hz cracking is completely gone. Now waiting for the DAC hat to further improve the sound quality 🙂

Especially annoying are those approx. 10 Hz spikes which cause a constant cracking in the speakers. I ordered some parts today which should improve that, lets see ... 😏

Hooked up the audio output of the #raspberrypi to the amplifier input. Unfortunately this causes a lot of noise - probably caused by a ground loop, but also by the low quality, PWM based audio output of the rasbpi 😞

New video! Replacing the broken fan in my ZD-915 desoldering station and performing some upgrades. YouTube: youtu.be/26VEOadIn1M PeerTube: makertube.net/w/d5jWSb4xnu... #ZD915 #DesolderingStation #Mods #Repair #LabGear #Electronics #Tinkering

A bit of Sunday soldering, made a little traffic light simulator using 74 series logic. The design was featured in the September 1983 edition of Everyday Electronics. #electronics

Working on pimping up a Sony compact audio system with a #raspberrypi Found a 7V power source from which I can derive the raspberry's 5V supply 🙂 #electronics

Washing a rare Commodore 64C case. (If you know what to look for, you can actually spot in the picture why it’s a relatively rare variant.) #InTheBathroomDoingStuff

Today I designed a vacuum cleaner adapter for my Proxxon scroll saw with #FreeCAD - and uploaded it as my first thing to thingiverse 😀 www.thingiverse.com/thing:6863486

One of the toughest problems Microsoft has to solve is that Windows has to serve two very different types of users: business users who don't want this at all, and home users who don't want this at all.

Any #DOS #gaming enthusiasts around? Here's a sneak peak at the MS-DOS version of THE GHOSTS OF BLACKWOOD MANOR. Release on the 2nd of December for a massive load of retro sytems. Watch this space. #interactivefiction #adventure #game #retro #Infocom #textmode

Ich bastel gerade an einem „Telefonprojekt“. Irgendwie macht das gerade gut Laune, weil ich vieles dabei lerne und man sich gerade vom einem Positiven zum anderen hangelt. Gestern habe ich damit mein erstes Telefonat geführt. Bin gespannt ob am Ende alles so läuft wie ich es gerne hätte.

With the proper support structure this works out quite well - the first time I used the 0.16mm dynamic resolution #3dprint