hardware - Imapenguin

A week of diving a little deeper into my Atari 800XL

I'm a Commodore guy through and through. This isn't tribalism, it's what was in my room from 1983 to when I graduated High School in 1993. After my sorta failed attempt at spending the month of September with my Coco 2, I decided for October to try spending a week

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Two weeks with a Coco 2 in September

In the inside baseball realm of vintage computer enthusiasts, a few hashtags have emerged to support one's favorite retro computers. The main one in September is #SepTandy While I've had this Tandy Color Computer 2 for many years, I've almost never used it. Out of all of my vintage systems,

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Slot Game On Tandy TRS-80 Pocket Computer PC-4

One of my first ever real programs was a blackjack game I made in BASIC on a Sharp 9300 calculator to impress my Adv. Algebra teacher. I have seen the handwritten copy of this somewhere around here recently, but I'll be darned if I can't find it now. Slot Game

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The CERBERUS 2080

A few months ago, I stumbled on a project that really caught my attention. Mr. Bernardo Kastrup, aka TheByteAttic finished a video series on a computer he designed and built "by hand." It's an impressive amount of information. Clocking in at more than 12 HOURS. Total time of his videos3

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The retro pinout project

One of my main goals in sharing retro computing is to help people DO things with these machines. They are useful for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is education and demonstration. The constraints are wonderful for this. Using 30-50 year old hardware comes at a price.

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The Commodore 64 N.O.O.C.U.L.A.R. futbal project

ConceptI'm fortunate to have a number of vintage computers I've collected over the years. Some were fun finds, others donated. One I've had since 1983 (we think) and it's one of my most prized possessions. I travel a fair bit and not long ago I was looking for something for

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Repairing a Commodore 128 and DIY Chris's RAM tester review

I have several items from DIY Chris that we'll review over the next week including a GAL PLA and flash-able ROM drop in that can hold kernal, character or BASIC ROMs. First on the list is the RAM tester. The problem child 128I have a Commodore 128 which developed a

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Finding the Prodigal Easter Egg inside the Easter Egg on a Commodore 64

If you REALLY want to get into the weeds on how I figured out the Easter Egg(s) inside the Easter Egg on a 35 Year old album on a 35 year old computer then you're in luck! This video is for you! I mention "the original author" in the

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Benchmarking Retro Computers (mostly Commodore) with marginal methods

Just the BASICs, pleaseOur friend in retro @NoelsRetroLab has a simple BASIC benchmarking tool that's fun to use to compare different basic systems execution speed. We're counting jiffies, which is roughly (sometimes very roughly) 1/60th of a second. We're using three variations of this code on the Commodore BASIC

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c0pperdragon verdict

Ahh, the quest for a better Vintage computer picture never ends. I'm having fun with it anyway. Side thought: At what point does a computer cross over from old: no one wants that 2007 Windows tower you built in your basement, to OMG, it's Vintage, let's drive up the eBay

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Replacing an RF Modulator on a Commodore 64C

The output on my newest Commodore 64 (1989) is pretty marginal. The colors are okay(ish) but the text lines are clearly bleeding and the picture is very muddy. Most vintage computers don't do red text on blue very well, but this one is particularly painful. Red on dark blue