In the previous blog post , I described my work on the Nintendo Game Boy emulator, called Coffee GB . To this day, it remains one of my most beloved projects. Every year or two, I spend some time tweaking it, adding features or fixing compatibility with particularly stubborn ROMs. One thing that I wanted to add for a long time is the netplay support. The real Game Boys can be connected to each…
For me, the most favorite type of a computer program is an emulator. Being able to run code from a completely different hardware architecture always seemed like a magic. The old computers are great on their own, so this kind of connection between historic machines and the modern computing environment feels almost like a time travel. As a developer I often think about the internal design of an…
As described in the previous post , I’m using SCSI IOmega ZIP (Z100S) drive as a mass storage for my Macintosh Plus. I prepared zip floppies with a few versions of the Macintosh System installed - if you’re into retro computing it’s fun to compare the performance and the features between different OSes. I dumped the zip floppies into disk images, so they can be easily restored. All you need is an…
I wanted to extend my vintage computer collection with a classic, all-in-one Macintosh for a long time. Unfortunately, they are not so common in Europe as in the US and the costs of the shipment are often higher than the computer itself. Sometimes you may find something on the local auction portal , but usually it costs a lot. That’s why I was really happy to find a Macintosh Plus in an attractive…
Bay Area Travelling alone has its bright and dark sides. You can neither share the excitement when you notice a sea lion swimming next to the boat nor look all the 227 meters down the Golden Gate Bridge. But you are free to do whatever you like, without discussing your options with anyone. For instance, you can exchange one more day in San Francisco for visiting the Computer History Museum in…
In the previous post I described the process of creating an ad-blocker for the polish radio station “Trójka”. It uses cross-correlation and fast Fourier transform to detect the ad jingles in the internet radio stream, silences the commercials and outputs the result. In other words: it plays the internet radio stream without ads. Creating the app wasn’t my final goal, though. I wanted to bring the…
Polish Radio Three (so-called Trójka) is famous for broadcasting good music and having non-offensive speakers. On the other hand it suffers from the number of commercial blocks between auditions. The ads, usually related to drugs or electronics are loud and irritating. Trójka accompanies me in home and at work for most of the time, so I wondered if there’s something than can be done about the ads.…