bradgrier.com

Category: Project

  • Making progress

    Updating my slowly-evolving analog audio project wherein I undertake to rebuild/recover my enjoyment of observing the phenomonon created when a tiny diamond rides merrily through a vinyl groove, delightedly vibrating, producing a minuscule electrical current that eventually (through amplification magic) becomes the sweet sound that we call analog music. The project makes progress and it's…

  • Aziz! Light!

    An AI chatbot leads me on a coding adventure that ultimately ends up ignoring all the work the AI did in the first place.

  • Q. What’s the best way to add a new boot drive to a Windows 10 system, without losing too much of my installed configuration?

    Some steps to adding a new boot drive to an existing Windows 10 system.

  • TS1000 upgrade – log entry 4 — Oh the memories we’ll make with 16k!

    Part four already? Memory -- that thing where the more you've got, the better things are for your computer? Yeah, that stuff. We'll be upgrading this vintage computer using a bit more modern tech to get it up to a whopping 16K. Oh, and there's a bit of gold in this story too...

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • NEC PC-8201a Adventures – Part Three: Getting Rid of the Dirty

    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…

  • NEC PC-8201a Adventures — Part One: It’s here, now what?

    NEC PC-8201a Adventures — Part One: It’s here, now what?

    Back in the early-to-mid ’80s, per­son­al com­put­ing was find­ing it’s way. Desktop com­puters were becom­ing more vis­ible in smal­ler busi­nesses, but the work of com­put­ing still had to be done at the work­place. Port­able com­puters were really just shrunken down desktops — they were called lug­gables at the time. Then came the revolu­tion, as they say. …

  • Instructable: Arduino Keyboard Joystick Extender Box and Sound Controller Thing Using Deej

    Instructable: Arduino Keyboard Joystick Extender Box and Sound Controller Thing Using Deej

    Update Jan. 23, 2021: Looks like the Joystick circuit has failed as it no longer toggles the Mute function. Well, I wasn’t too happy with the initial wiring job so this may be an opportunity to update that. A while ago I developed an interest in Ardu­ino micro­con­trol­lers, and this is my first ‘actu­al’ project.…