Busy day today, some good conversations had about how games development has changed in 40 years. Lots of interest in the Spectrum Next. No pictures sadly, will hopefully have more time for that tomorrow.

Getting coffeed up before RetroFest

Journey down to Cambridge was slow but steady. All set up now, ready for the weekend. Thankfully everything survived.

Signed.

Been a stressful and hectic couple of days with job interviews and whatnot. Looking forward to getting away from it all at RetroFest this weekend.

Feeling smug tonight. Overtaken at speed by a Ford Fiesta round a corner and on the wrong side of a traffic island. They came to a sudden stop in the dip under the railway bridge as it was flooded, which we avoided because local knowledge. Dash cam footage will be submitted to the local police.

Ah nuts.

Going into that there Manchester tonight to see Miss Saigon at The Palace Theatre. Looking forward to the production, not so much the uncomfortable seats.

So I think my thing for RetroFest will be trying to get the 3D cube code assembling from the Tatung Einstein. Aside from lack of macros, different syntax for hex and binary numbers, no long labels, limited assembler directives, and no LUA to generate lookup tables, it should be easy, right?

A good night at Cheadle Geekery, with the usual crowd. As usual the Chiverton Tap were very welcoming and had some great beers on. I stuck with the Ginger by Marble Beers. Very tasty, and vegan friendly.

Transferring my lib_spectrum repo to the Einstein so that I can get it assembling my Spectrum 48K 3D cube demo as nature intended. Using a serial cable and Eintrans.

Got a project idea for next year - an IRDA (IrCOMM) modem-ish network adaptor built around the Raspberry Pico for the Psion Series 5, with the intention of getting it networked somehow. I've not thought this through. How hard can it be??

This is really cool.

Had to pop over to Facebook to contact someone who is only on there this afternoon. It is dishing up absolute garbage, most of it AI generated. Even worse than I remembered. Maybe it's the algorithm struggling with my almost empty account and lack of activity. Maybe that is what it is now.

Testing the Stunt Spectrum / Z80 PIO board ready for RetroFest. Thankfully it’s still working since the last show.

Oh, you knew the drill, I'm sure. Crosswords, Chores, Coffee, Cat and Coding Challenge. All done in record time. Get me!

Was this article written by a Vulcan?

I’ve made a start packing. Just need to test a couple more things and then we’re good to go.

Today's been brought to you by the phrase "Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good". Or "Don't let an unattainable ideal prevent one from completing something that is already good or practical". I think Voltaire popularised that. That's him there.

Slept like a log last night. Feel like a lie in but Bramhall Repair Cafe is on this morning and I’ve not packed my tools yet. Sigh.

Was this that Jason Donovan song? #TOTP

Hoping I'll be able to crack my Peter Etcetera joke this evening #TOTP

Going to take this apart now for the third and final time. I should have soldered a couple of single header pins in where the battery was, to make connecting one later more plug and play. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Did @chinnyvision.bsky.social write that headline?

Righto, better hit the sack. Got an early interview tomorrow that I don't want to mess up. Then I'll probably see if I can make a good C64 out of two bad ones.

Me removing old batteries from computers like a pro.

What the dickens is a “Beaver Supermoon”? Has everyone finally lost their minds?

One more config tested. Setting up the Spectrum Next and my Macbook on my iPhone hotspot. I can ping the Next and NextSync works just fine. Cool!

Was thinking about desoldering the battery on this Elonex today. Will probably leave it until after RetroFest now. Fixed the floppy space bar though. It has come unclipped.

Clive Sinclair has read your posts

Maybe, just maybe, filming people without their permission and shaming them online is the first law of bad pavement etiquette.

More interesting from my CV today. The autogenerated typo made me chuckle.

We’d always end up in the Boars Head after college on nights out because Fergus liked the stout there.

Walked down from the market to claim my free Octopus coffee from Greggs. It was miserable first thing. Turned out nice now. I’m pretty sure I’ve taken the Scouts kayaking under here.

Having worked in a marketing company in the early 00s, I can confirm that attention to detail can make campaigns.

Off to that there Stockport to sign on this morning. Might pop into Merseyway to see what’s occurring. Get some pick and mix from Woolworths and a new shirt from C&A.

I’m okay with job interviews on the whole. Though sometimes I do feel like this.

I'm pretty sure I've got a couple of LED vu-meter type strips that are Charlieplexed. Must dig them out and have a play with them. Also, I remember someone at Barcrest saying that the MPU4/MPU5 controllers used tri-state electronics to handle more outputs. I'd need to verify that though...

This was a turning point for me. I'd been given a ZX Spectrum by my father-in-law. It looked in near mint condition, yet didn't work. It'd sat in the corner of our spare room for a while, then I took it into work to diagnose. It kickstarted my fascination with retro and vintage computer electronics.

This is brilliant!

As many of you will know, I'm a huge fan of the Einstein TC-01. Or maybe I'm a fan of the huge Einstein TC-01. Anyhow, I wholeheartedly approve of this.

Good chat with my good friend @kevedwardsretro.bsky.social this morning - he came to pick up his repaired Sinclair Oxford 300 calculator and we ended up chewing the cud for a couple of hours. We used to work together years ago at Software Creations in Manchester, and have kept in touch.

Righto, that's enough of modern frameworks for a while. Actual footage of me looking at the bare metal from Typescript.

Anyhow, having started web development with HTML in notepad, React is practically magic.

Spent the afternoon filling in some gaps in my React knowledge, you know, the kind of thing where you've seen someone do something and just assumed it was * so * without questioning it. I wish it were available when I wrote the web front end for the video scheduler I've talked about previously /1

You know the drill. Cat, coffee, church, crosswords, code. Today’s code is brought to you by the letter J and the word “bug”.

Eldest managed to fix his old laptop with a bit of guidance. It was blue screening on boot. Error 0x0000000e. I suggested a YouTube video after we couldn’t repair it with Windows Media Creation USB boot media. Teach a man to fish, etc.

Just been to Quarry Bank Mill. I can take or leave spooky decorations. This was pretty cool though.

Looking forward to this. Better start packing soon!

The new Frankenstein movie is terrific. If you like this review, then please subscribe to my channel.