alnwlsn

9 ms·

181.
Return Void (Hacking a Vespera II Telescope)(thomasloupe.com)
3 points by alnwlsn 9mo ago|0 comments
182.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
Probably because they got rid of it when the XT came out, so it was only there for (a few months under) 2 years. But it was a good trade; removing the cassette port gave enough area on the PCB for 3 more ISA slots.
183.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
>They specify dimensions in feet, inches, and fractions of an inch. But not all of them do. There are many more fun and exciting non-metric measurements you might encounter than plain old fractional inches. A fabricator might encounter s
184.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
The whole project is a convenience. If I were in a situation where I actually had to rely on Meshtastic for comms, I'd be pretty nervous. It doesn't really work that well. Luckily, I've only enjoyed Meshtastic recreationally.
185.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
My goal is to be able to do all steps of the typical Meshtastic youtube tutorial without access to the internet. I like to liken it to my other hobby of retrocomputing. In the old days, your whole OS and all the applications ran from a few
186.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
Meshtastic is the most popular in my area. I can see about 150 nodes from my house in a US county of ~300K (though actually being able to talk to most of those remains questionable). I am certain the popularity of Meshtastic is down to how
187.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
Philosophize all you want; if the first instruction in your manual is 'pip install' I don't consider you to be anywhere near as offline / off-grid as you claim to be. All the Lora mesh projects do this. For all the off-g
188.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
Woz only did the digital designs. The Apple II power supply was designed by Rod Holt. https://www.righto.com/2012/02/apple-didnt-revolutionize-pow...
189.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
I still remember the email I got telling me that they were going to upgrade the RAM of the 256Mb Model B I ordered and that I would receive a brand new model with 512Mb for no extra cost. Hard to believe that was nearly 14 years ago. Was ve
190.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
The Z80-MBC (the original breadboard version [0]) was actually the second Z80 computer I built. I first tried out one of the Grant Searle designs [1] on a breadboard, and it worked!... for literally 8 seconds, then the single ACIA chip I ha
191.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
For the aspiring hacker, we've also got: The 80's/90's VeriFone Tranz 330 credit card terminal, which has a complete Z80 computer inside with DART, CTC and PIO chips, 32K RAM, and a socketed EPROM. The Cidco Mailstation,
192.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
I grew up in a world where the Arduino already existed, but it was not until I tried building homebrew Z80 computers like this that I really felt I understood how computers/processors work at the low level. Consider this a warning thou
193.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
Luckily so many were made, they will be around for a while yet. For years now you've been able to buy (recycled?) ones on Ebay or Aliexpress, and at a price much cheaper than the new ones sold for. It will probably be a decade or longe
194.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
It supports the developer by preventing blatant ripoffs of the Teensy. Paul is one guy, and has put in a ton of effort writing high quality libraries for it. Most or all of them are open source. The main MCU is a commodity item. Only the bo
195.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
https://alnwlsn.com
196.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
Can't say I blame them though. Paul and Robin are two people. Sparkfun (and Adafruit) are massive by comparison and have big stores that sell the same sort of stuff in much higher volume. The Teensys are popular. Sparkfun does (or at l
197.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
Thanks for the answer. I know many are scared off by the closed bootloader of the teensy (though I feel it's a fair thing to do). The lack of on-chip debugging is another shortcoming the Teensys have. I've been working on an audio
198.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
Why is your "open source Teensy" [0] just an RP2350 on a Teensy shaped board? In my book, what makes a Teensy a Teensy is 1) hardware support, like 600Mhz clock, CAN, FPU, RTC, other hardware peripherals which the RP2350 lacks and
199.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
Sparkfun redid their site a couple years ago and nuked the links to all product pages of retired products too. A shame. I found someone's archive of the old site at one point, but I've since misplaced it.
200.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
Wow, I think this is the first one of these "floppies for kids" things I've seen that actually stores something on the disk.
201.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
It would make a lousy desktop computer even if it was 10x as powerful. - high current 5V USB power supply you probably don't have - HDMI micro port you have like 1 cable for - PCIe through very fragile ribbon cable + hodgepodge of ada
202.
by alnwlsn 9mo ago
Neat. Perhaps one can use it to see PLA creep in real time. (not a joke, I'd actually like to see that)
203.
by alnwlsn 10mo ago
From this article, it seems one can be made using only the right coil of wire and an ordinary audio amplifier: https://spectrum.ieee.org/a-diy-audio-induction-loop-for-the...
204.
by alnwlsn 10mo ago
It depends. My job and hobbies are closer to mechatronics than programming. I do like programming; I appreciate the feeling of cracking a hard problem or getting something to work for the first time, and I tend to prefer programming things
205.
by alnwlsn 10mo ago
I was a young kid when these came out. I remember being in a store that had one running around as a demo, bumping aimlessly around under shelves and off shopper's feet. With amusement, I watched it bump off a table leg, and rotate perf
206.
by alnwlsn 10mo ago
Not sure how familiar you are with KiCad but its project files are just text. With a little bit of rearranging you can get things like: "Component U1 is 74HCT02, has 14 pins" "Component R2 is 4.7K resistor, has 2 pins" &
207.
by alnwlsn 10mo ago
Confused by this until I realized you meant "Shellac (band)" and not "Shellac - resin secreted by the female lac bug" which was used to press records in the 1920s. The last shellac record was indeed made from shellac. An
208.
by alnwlsn 10mo ago
In my area there are now just enough Meshtastic nodes that I can (somewhat unreliably) talk between my office and home, about 5 miles. However, it does heavily relay on the internet for setup and distribution (app stores, or else lots of pi
209.
by alnwlsn 10mo ago
Not true, you can make one yourself by hand if you want to, it just won't be very high quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PzoAReMXOE If you want a good one, you'll need the materials, machines and skills to
210.
by alnwlsn 10mo ago
May not meet your particular definition of small, but my portable printer is a Voron 0.2. The frame is sturdy enough that you can attach a handle to one corner and just carry it around with you, at least for a while. It's not particula

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