Recent content on Celso Martinho
It’s been a while. This time, I’m continuing the “computers that I never had” series to talk about a project that has been sitting on my bench for literally months, waiting for a little less busy times to complete: the Philips Telematico NMS3000. 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Philips Telematico NMS3000
 
 

 There are a couple of reasons why I bought this relic to…
My electronics lab is inside my office at home. It’s very convenient for the occasional hacking electronics project. Still, I do a lot of soldering, and breathing those solder fumes in a closed space isn’t very healthy, especially during winter when the windows are all closed. 
 Home labs are so prevalent now that brands are paying attention; fume extractors are no longer expensive…
The computers that I write about on this blog are mostly machines that I owned when I was younger. That changes today. Over the last few months, I’ve been slowly taking free time to work on a machine that I never owned (or could have; they weren’t sold outside the UK), an Acorn Archimedes A3020. 
 
 
 
 
 
 My Acorn Archimedes A3020
 
 

 What’s special…
I’ve been considering adding a chip tester to my lab for some time now, but I’ve never quite taken the plunge. BackBit, whom I know well because I have a BackBit Pro cartridge that I use to load software onto my 8-bit computers, has the Chip Tester Pro V2 . I was close to buying one, but I found it somewhat expensive, and importing it from the US didn’t help, so I waited.
This is a quick update from my Restoring a ZX Spectrum+ Toastrack blog. 
 RGB is not analog, we need more colors 
 First, I found that the 6-way IDC analog RGB extender that I used with the RGB2HDMI adapter wasn’t detecting all the colors. Specifically I wasn’t seeing the half bright variant of the 3-bit 8 color palette. 
 
 
 
 
 
 6-way IDC analog RGB…
I talk a lot about Commodore machines in this blog; they left a bigger dent in me growing up, but like most kids of my generation living in Portugal in the 80s, the first computers I played with were actually Sinclairs—first my friend’s ZX81 and then a ZX Spectrum 48K that my parents offered me. I have many memories of playing games like the Horace series , Manic Miner , Jetpac , or Chuckie…
I’m on a roll upgrading the Amiga 1000. This time, I replaced the PSU fan. 
 The Amiga 1000 PSU uses an ETRI Model 126LH metallic fan that is AC-powered 220/110V. These fans are pretty good, silent, reliable, and used in computers and industrial-grade equipment. However, they all suffer from a common problem: after long years of continuous use, the fan bearing starts developing an…
On my last post “ the first perfect computer ” I mentioned that I wasn’t done with the A1000. I finally upgraded it with an internal RGB2HDMI adapter. 
 For those unfamiliar with RGB2HDMI , it’s a brilliant and affordable open-source project that converts “digital” RGB video signals from vintage computers into crystal clear HDMI video with very low latency.…
This is a story about restoring and upgrading a Commodore Amiga 1000 , the first model of the Amiga series. 
 Many of you might be familiar with the popular Amiga 500 or later models, but the Commodore Amiga 1000 was actually the first model of the Amiga series produced. 
 I consider the A1000 a significant piece of home computing history. Arguably one of the most important machines of the…
The CP/M , short for Control Program/Monitor, was one of the first operating systems of the personal computer revolution. It was launched in 1974, and it celebrates 50 years this year. It was ported and made available for many 8-bit machines with different CPUs and was related to running productivity software. If you ever used CP/M, then, well, I hate to say it, but you’re old. 
 I had a…
The C128 is a fascinating and unusual machine. It was the last 8-bit Commodore machine before the Amiga and co-existed with the C64 series for a while. They sold ~8 million units worldwide (vs ~17 million C64). I never owned one, but I fondly remember playing with one at my friend’s place and seeing them in computer shops. 
 
 It’s fully 99.8% backward compatible with its…
Filipe Cruz (aka psenough ) invited me to Inércia 2023 , a local Demoscene event organized by the Associação Inércia that took place in the infamous Incrível Almadense . I’ve done my fair share of bouncing ball assembly demos in the 80s and others more recently , but I don’t qualify as a demoscener, not even by the lowest standards. Still, I promptly accepted the invitation. I…
The ingenuity of combining open-source and open hardware in retro computing is a force of creativity and marvel these days. 
 One of the conundrums with running old computers nowadays is how you display video. I love CRT monitors; I’m a proud owner of a classic 1084S that I use with my C128DCR , but they’re not easy to find in good condition, are expensive, and are increasingly…
Last year, I decided that I was going to build a Commodore 64 from scratch. This is the blog documenting the project. 
 It’s no secret that I love fiddling with retro computers , especially those I owned when I was a kid. When I revisit ancient technologies and hardware that were part of my younger years, I’m overwhelmed with that warm nostalgia feeling. But it’s not only…
It’s happening. The Cloudflare Lisbon office is growing, and I’m excited to announce we just opened six new positions for a new engineering team we’re creating. 
 We’re specifically looking for candidates based in Lisbon. This team will be working on data insights and special projects for Cloudflare. We operate with small groups of highly motivated and experienced software, data…
This blog just migrated to Cloudflare Workers , Cloudflare’s serverless edge computing solution, because you know, it rocks. 
 This is the workflow I had in mind: 
 
 I write a new blog post using markdown. 
 I can test things locally before going live. 
 When done, I git add the new post to my repo, then push it to Github. 
 Website gets burned to static files. 
…
Here I go again. 
 It’s been almost five years since I got the courage to end a twenty-year cycle with SAPO and, together with a group of eleven courageous co-founders, decided to create one of the first company builder studios in Portugal. 
 
 The rebels in an apartment. The office before The Office, where plans were being made for the soon to be. 
 On the 20th of April 2016, we…
This is a pure 6510 assembly program for the Commodore 64 made by Bright Pixel in 2019, because why not. 
 
 The C64 was a famous 8-bit machine in the 80s and the highest-selling single computer model ever. 
 Its hardware and architecture set it appart from other 8-bit personal computers at the time. Unlike most of the others, the C64 had dedicated advanced MOS chips for graphics and…

 As part of our T-shirt challenge this year at Pixels Camp, we decided that one of the steps would require the hunter to access some sort of retro-computer in the venue, enter some secret codes, and get the instructions for the next step, if successful.
As some of you know, I’m a sucker for all things 8-bit. I had multiple Spectrum and C64 machines in my youth (still own a few today) and…

 Blockchain has been at the center of the tech headlines lately, dividing the community between ferocious advocates, who think decentralization will revolutionize the digital landscape, and sound skeptics, who have been around for long enough to know that there are many barriers ahead before a meaningful adoption can happen. 
 We’re both. 
 At Bright Pixel we’ve been curious and…

 
 I have a boat 
 Since I left SAPO last year, after an almost exactly 20-year incredible ride, many have been asking me to talk and share on what went good and bad with my career. I guess I’m now seen as the old experienced business guy with grizzled hair who went through a shitload of problems, was able to overcome some, and can probably provide inspirational insights to the next…
It’s a fact that Facebook and Google (including Youtube) own a sizeable chunk of the global internet traffic and their competitive advantage boils down to two things: computing power and data. These two giants’ core businesses depend exclusively on tracking us to our tiniest move and correlating what they know about us across their products and platforms. And boy, do they know about…

 Celso and SAPO are ‘finito’ 
 Este é o momento em que deixo o SAPO, o projeto que ajudei a criar há 20 anos nas catacumbas da Universidade de Aveiro juntamente com o Junior, o Hélder, o Sérgio, o João Luís e o “Cooker”. 
 No dia 23 de Outubro de 2015, por volta das 18 horas, apresentei a minha carta de demissão ao presidente executivo da PT Portugal. Antes…
A passagem em conselho de ministros da nova lei da cópia privada e consequente próxima muito provável aprovação na assembleia deixou-me muito pouco surpreendido hoje. Enojado, triste, decepcionado mais uma vez com os meus representantes políticos sim, mas não admirado. À terceira é de vez, dizem, especialmente quando à terceira se junta a larga experiência de quem sabe bem que a melhor maneira de…
Miúdo, quanto te conheci eras um chavalo sem futuro, mal te aguentavas nas canelas naquele Pentium com FreeBSD , não sabias bem o que querias fazer da vida, não percebias muito nem da Internet nem de nada, eras apenas um script de bash que fazia grep a um ficheiro. Como? Perdão, base de dados, claro, peço desculpa. 
 Mas safaste-te bem, tinhas gana e paixão, foste bem acompanhado, e davas…
So, you know I’m a sucker for vintage computing. I’ve been a proud owner of an original C64, an Amiga 1200, an Atari 130 XE , and a ZX-81 , and a bunch of old peripherals and hacks that connect to them all in working condition. 
 But today I got in the mail one very special rarity. It’s an original, unopened, white, brand new, from the warehouse, Amiga 1200 Magic edition sold to me directly by…
Aproximam-se dois eventos que devo mencionar para os quais fui convidado a exortar sobre certos e determinados temas. 
 Curiosamente e para variar, em ambos elaborarei não sobre SAPO, tecnologia, empreendedorismo ou balões mas sim sobre temáticas radicalmente diferentes. Temos tudo para que corra mal, portanto. Agrada-me. 
 Primeiro, o TEDxIST , organizado por alunos do Instituto Superior…
The Raspberry Pi has been used all over the world as an excellent emulator box to resuscitate old arcade machines, but with moderate success. 
 You see, if you’re a truly arcade aficionado like me, then you’ll aim for perfection. And perfection means you’ll use the jamma connector and the old 15Khz CRT instead of a more modern retro fitted VGA monitor like most people opt to do. 
 Old…
So, recently I became a member of the home 3D printers early starters community and got myself an Ultimaker. 
 I thought I’d do a time-lapse video of the whole assembly process, including the first 3D print. 
 It took me 3 days to complete the building instructions but the result is pretty awesome. 
 Congratulations to the Ultimaker team for making such a wonderful machine and putting…
Há projectos que são invulgares pela motivação que geram nas equipas e nas organizações. São raros e curiosamente surgem fora dos nossos planos tradicionais e lineares, fora das visões condicionadas, dos retiros e dos brainstorms . 
 Há um ano atrás uma pequena equipa tentou vender-me um conceito de um projecto que lhes surgiu espontaneamente. Agarram-me em 10 minutos. Em poucos dias tiveram a…
A SPA, claramente pressionada pela péssima opinião pública que esta proposta de lei está a gerar, publicou um documento intitulado “ 10 coisas que deveria saber sobre a Lei da Cópia Privada “. 
 Apetece-me desmanchar ponto por ponto deste argumentário barato e manipulativo, mas seria um desperdício do meu tempo, da minha inteligência e da minha energia se o fizesse já. 
 Mas há aqui uma…
Andei a matutar nas receitas que a PL118 conseguiria gerar nos moldes em que está a ser proposta. 
 Decidi arregaçar as mangas e fazer umas contas de merceeiro com os dados que consegui arranjar. 
 Para não correr muitos riscos decidi ser extremamente conservador. Estas são as premissas que usei: 
 
 Fiz duas análises, uma para 2012 e outra para 2014. O objetivo era provar que os…
Como já foi amplamente exposto esta lei peca também por ter inúmeras incorrecções técnicas e por estar desligada da realidade industrial. Uma das premissas em que esta lei é baseada é falsa e ofensiva e mostra que quem redigiu esta proposta foram, das duas uma, pessoas de boa fé com um desconhecimento total do que estão a falar ou então pessoas que percebem muito bem o que estão a fazer. Eu…
Qual é afinal a posição pública dos artistas Portugueses em relação a esta indiscritível Proposta de Lei 118 apresentada pelo PS e apoiada por todos os partidos políticos? 
 Já todos percebemos que o princípio do fundo de compensação artistas é discutível, mas acima de tudo que e a implementação proposta é completamente imbecil , desajustada , mal feita , retrógrada , desligada da realidade…
A propósito das alternativas para o consumidor caso esta lei seja aprovada. 
 O português não tem grande pachorra para travar lutas por questões de princípio. Dá muito trabalho. A nossa primeira reacção, não fossemos nós os mestres da escapatória, de resto até temos uma palavra para descrever esta virtude cultural, foi a de imaginar que fugiríamos a estas taxas absurdas comprando o nosso…

 Here’s a project worth mentioning, executed by our friends at Artica and IDMind . 
 “SapoBot is a robot that wonders through spaces avoiding obstacles detects holes on the ground, follow walls and follow lines, to change between behaviors you only need to press the shell, and when he detects a collision gives a frog sound. This project was comissioned by Sapo, means frog in portuguese.”…
Once in a while at SAPO we cross our path with extraordinary people with uncommon ideas and unlimited motivation. Ideas to which we just can’t say no, those with the right amount of usefulness, awesomeness and uniqueness, you know what I’m talking about. 
 The Panoramas SAPO project was one of those moments. When Basílio and Pedro came to us and the thought of making a record Tera pixel…
Here’s a story by this guy who enjoys a good hack, crazy for all things tech vintage, who needed a new computer. He wanted a new OSX based system, he decided to build his own. Yes, it’s yet another hackintosh how to guide and yes, it’s me. 
 I have a ton of Appleish gear in my life. You name the device, I probably have it. Call me a fanboy if you need to. From where I stand, I’m just someone…
É público e sabido que eu sou um grande tarado por relíquias informáticas. Fui um orgulhoso dono e utilizador obsessivo e compulsivo de uma mão cheia de pérolas que já só fazem parte do imaginário geek da minha geração, e uns quase 30 anos depois continuo a lembrar-me com saudades desses loucos e indiscritíveis tempos. A prova disso é que na mesma sala aonde escrevo este texto estou rodeado de um…
Perspectiva. 
 No filme Ratatuille há uma cena deliciosa que eu não me canso de citar em que o Anton Ego diz assim: “- Do you know what you’d like this evening, sir? -Yes, I think I do. After reading a lot of overheated puffery about your new cook, you know what I’m craving? A little perspective. That’s it. I’d like some fresh, clear, well seasoned perspective. Can you suggest a good wine to…
A couple of years ago I bought a quad bike for fun and pleasure to play around the beautiful southwest coast of Portugal, more precisely the Costa Vicentina, near Aljezur where I own a house. Years passed through and between less visits to the southwest, a busier life, kids and other hobbies, I had temporarily forgotten how amazing the experience can be. 
 Recently I bought a goPro camera,…
Independentemente da profissão e do percurso das pessoas eu tenho por princípio nutrir uma grande admiração por todos aqueles que conseguem alcançar o sucesso profissional em Portugal. Estas pessoas têm que ser excepcionais a muitos níveis: não só na sua área de especialidade, mas também na determinação, resistência e na garra que têm que ter para conseguirem ultrapassar tantas barreiras. 
…
Um homem que não acredita em nada, sem ideias, é uma pessoa sem rumo que pouco poderá fazer por si e que muito menos fará pelos outros. Os jovens deviam ter a ambição de serem pessoas cheias de crenças, mas ao invés constato que a tendência passa muito pelo inverso: as grandes preocupações da actualidade são a consensualidade, a aceitação, o estatuto. Deixem-se dizer-vos o que é que eu penso de…
Entre tempos livres e pensamentos que me ocorrem, ando há umas semanas a rabiscar uns textos sobre este Portugal aonde habitamos. Fi-lo para minha própria referência, porque gosto e porque acho que a escrita é um excelente instrumento de preservação do que nos vai na alma durante vários contextos da nossa vida. 
 Decidi que vou partilhar este ensaio neste blog por dois motivos. Primeiro porque…
Dava-se o ano de 1986, mais coisa menos coisa, contas feitas de cabeça, tinha eu uns 14 anos e passava na rádio um programa de características muito invulgares que me agarrava à aparelhagem de som dos meus pais numa obsessão semanal digna de um caso de estudo sobre doenças adolescentes. 
 Todas as semanas, ao Sábado ou ao Domingo à noite, não consigo precisar, passava numa rádio nacional um…
On the 23rd of October, the Spacebits team did something of epic proportions. Thanks to the amazing support and sponsorship of SAPO.PT, we organized an unique event and simultaneously launched 3 high altitude balloons all from one single place. 
 
 It took us a few weeks to put everything together. We began by inviting every geek and hacker at SAPO.PT to join the team and work with us to…
Eu já falei neste blog de dados públicos há uns anos atrás. 
 No início de 2010 tive o prazer de passar uma tarde de Domingo bem passada na companhia de dois amigos, o Paulo e o Álvaro . Durante horas falámos de Portugal, dados abertos e visualizações, quer pela perspectiva tecnológica, quer social. Ali nasceu uma ideia de construir um caso prático na Internet de uma visualização dos dados…
Retrocast is an experiment, a proof of concept, an hack, and nothing else but this. 
 You may have heard of the new gaming platforms like OnLive or Meo Jogos (which the company I work for launched recently). They’re a new paradigm in what comes to gaming: you don’t need a console or an expensive PC, you’ll pay a cheap flat fee or renting cost to play the high end games, all the processing…