Adam Brisebois (YesterGearPC) @yestergearpc@ccrvb.com

A modern 3D printer being controlled by an ancient KayPro II. It's printing a G-Code file saved on the floppy disk!

@SamTornado and I did an incredible amount of work to get this going. It's connected to the printer via the serial. We also had to figure out how to connect the KayPro to a PC to copy the G-Code over.

Also wrote a custom program in Z80 assembly to stream the file to the printer.

All this to prove that we could have had home 3D printers in the 80s!

#3dprinting #retrocomputing

Still trying to find my people on Mastodon. Please boost if you:

-Like pizza.

-Enjoy watching movies.

-Have recurring dreams that you are a frog.

-Feel distraught when you wake up and realize that you are in fact not a frog.

-Spend your days studying ancient texts in search of a forbidden incantation that transforms humans into amphibians.

(BTW this isn't my image. It's a cute meme I found)

It seems that some parents worry about how to explain the existence of gay and trans people to their kids.

It’s trivially easy.

“Sometimes, men love men. Sometimes, women love women. Sometimes, people find out that although they have a man’s body, they’d be happier living as a woman - or the other way around.

All these people deserve to be happy and respected, just like you.”

And that’s really all there is to it.

#pridemonth #pride

I once tried to create a program in Atari GFA BASIC that would randomly generate a pleasant on screen pattern. All I managed to do is randomly generate a series of butts and boobs. It wasn't a success.

I once was asked to sign an "advice book" at a wedding. This was literally the best advice I could ever offer.

Open up your iPad. When you click on the icon for your light vendor’s application, iOS gives its own pop up. Please update the OS to continue.

Thirty minutes later, your iPad reboots. You attempt to launch the light vendor’s control application, but you are greeted with an alert that the software is not compatible with this version of the iPad OS.

You go to the app store, but you have to login. The app store will only send a notification to your other Apple device, which is turned off.

You power on your old Mac mini. Please update the OS to continue. You must login to the App store for this. It sends a login confirmation alert to your iPad, but the reverse will not work until you update the OS on the Mac mini.

Three hours later, you have updated the OS and can now login to the App store on your iPad by clicking on a confirmation on your Mac mini to update the application to turn off your lights. You update the light vendor’s control application.

After the update, you launch the light vendor’s control application and now have to agree that not only do they get to shoot your dog whenever they want, which is fine, you don’t own a dog, but that any dog you buy must come from an approved source. Kind of weird, but you just want to turn off the lights. You click AGREE because it’s now 3am and you just want to get a couple of hours of sleep.

You must upgrade the firmware on the lighting control bridge to continue. Do not power off the lighting control bridge or it will be bricked. There is a thunderstorm brewing outside.

Though the power did blink during the 30 minute firmware upgrade process, it seems to have gone off without a hitch. The storm is worse. Also, you still can’t control your lights. Maybe it bricked things afterall? You find a forum post from six months ago that explains the problem. The background service on the iPad that speaks to the lighting controller got wedged during the update and you must reboot your iPad. On reboot, you restart the lighting vendor’s control software. You must update the firmware on your lightbulbs to continue. Also, you don’t have a choice. The process has already started. Do not turn off your lights, your bridge, your ipad, your wifi access point, or your broadband router during this process or your lights will be bricked.

The thunderstorm is in full force. The power goes out. Your lightbulbs are fully bricked and will no longer work. Due to their extremely low power consumption and massive capacitors, however, the lights continue shining for the next three hours.

6am rolls around, and the capacitors have fully discharged. The lights are finally off.

https://sevensages.org/snark/2023/04/13/how-to-turn-off-the-lights-in-2023/

I need a comfy egg chair.

https://thevaultoftheatomicspaceage.tumblr.com/post/713511506939084800

The internet was a mistake

I've seen variations of this energy harvesting circuit (from wifi, radio etc...) floating around the web and

C1 and C2 are 0.22uF 100V ceramic

C3 and C4 are 100uF 16V electrolytic

Diodes are general purpose switching, but I've also seen Germanium ones used

I'd add ground at the junction between C3 and C4 for better performance

#HardwareHacking

My mother's best friend took me out to lunch on my 28th birthday and punched a seagull that was trying to take the butter, but this here sounds like a #horror movie.

#Seagulls

Did you know that I run a #Discord server? We have over 600 members, a lovely community of retro tech enthusiasts. Invites are open at https://discord.gg/xnnUaKN

You can also connect via #IRC! All discord channels except two are instantly mirrored on my IRC server at irc.yestergearpc.com:6667 - you can bring your old machine online and chat with the modern world! Don't be afraid to do a /list, there's only 24 channels! (Feel free to use the server for your own channels too, if you like)

Today in Yahoo! Auctions abominations: the "NAVY Performa 5500（SuperColorClassic）"

Too cursed even for @ActionRetro ??

#VintageApple #RetroComputing

Today's #linux discovery was the "btop" utility. I particularly like how it shows the cpu temperature 😎

My latest Terrible Keyboard is out, in video form this time (1m39s). It's the CubeKeyboard!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRqRQ7hYxjk

Deeply in love with these AI powered spam bots by @neilmendoza !