Category: In the life
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TS1000 upgrade – log entry 3 — On The Big Screen!
If you’ve been following along, you may recollect that this journey to modernizing my vintage Timex Sinclair began when I watched this four-part video series by The Byte Attic, and decided ‘yeah, that looks like something I could do’. If you’re jumping in at this point, well, I’ve done things and have more things to…
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I’m don’t have the knowledge, but ChatGPT does…
I’m working on a website, building pages that have random pull-quotes on them. And I’m making mockup / placeholder pages. Many mockups. This gets old pretty quickly so I’m thinking to myself, “Self? Let’s see if we can have some fun with these quotes”. But, rather than just do a search for quotes, I thought I’d…
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TS1000 upgrade – log entry 2 — More Power!
As I'd mentioned in my previous post in this series, I've been poking around my TS1000 a bit and doing some online digging. I found this series about refurbishing and upgrading a Sinclair ZX81. And since I wrapped up my last post testing the that unit is still alive and kicking (I think. Video is…
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Rogue One: A Masterpiece of Star Wars Storytelling
Star Wars is a universe of myths and legends, a place where the impossible becomes possible, where dreams are made real, and where heroes rise from humble beginnings. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story continues this tradition, weaving a new tale of hope, sacrifice and courage into the fabric of the Star Wars universe. The…
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TS1000 upgrade – log entry 1
#retrocomputing has been taking up more of my attention recently. Specifically, I found this series about refurbishing and upgrading a Sinclair ZX81. Since the Timex Sinclair 1000 is essentially a ZX81 that jumped the pond (and doubled it’s native RAM in the process), I’ve got one. And it’s been sitting in a box for 20ish…
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A Virtual Parallel Printer for a Vintage Computer
One of the neat things about using vintage computing equipment is figuring out modern ways to work with the older technology. Why virtual printing? Recently, I wanted to explore printed output from my NEC PC-8201a. For one thing, working ‘on the hardware’ in this case has a display limit of eight lines of forty characters…
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I Made some RAM for my NEC PC-8201a — and it’ll work on a Tandy Model 100 too!
Original expansion RAM for the NEC PC-8201a and Tandy Model 100 is pretty hard to find these days -- so I made some.
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How long will a NiMH battery pack last in a NEC PC-8201 or PC-8201a?
As I was converting NEC battery packs to be recharegable, I wondered just what the run-time of a battery pack would be. So I came up with is a simple BASIC program to run the computer battery down, and record the time that it dies and calculate the run-time. This is the story...
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Vintage Computing: Saving data to an audio device
Back when the early days of personal computing, you did your work on your computer and either printed out the finished work, or stored it to work on later. Early on, cassette tapes were the storage medium of choice as they cassette tape recorders were commonly available, and reasonably affordable. Some computer system did have…
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Aloha to a Hawaiian TRS-80 Model 100
Well, finally got a chunk of free time to get back to my ‘Model 100 school’. My goal is to learn about these m100s through hands-on learning. A new friend (Hi Larry) sent me his ailing m100 to further my education. Who knows? Maybe I can get it running again — it’s a nice looking…
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Looks like we’re doomed
Picked up Gloomhaven. Think of it as D&D as a boardgame. It’s the number one game on BoardGameGeek, so it’ll likely be pretty good. Also, the reviews like it. We set up and started getting familiar with it last night. Consider it Session Zero in D&D parlance. Can’t wait for Session One!
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NEC PC-8201a Adventures – Part Three: Getting Rid of the Dirty
Welcome back to part three of my restoration and adventures with an NEC PC-8201a vintage computer circa. 1983. Let’s get to it! Stripping Down It’s actually not that grungy to look at. Sure, a minor scuff or two, but from the looks of it, this unit is actually quite clean. So, let’s get it apart and get…