Today I decided to play around with the new version of Recalbox on one of my Raspberry Pis and Batocera on an old Intel Core 2 Duo Mac mini. Recalbox First up was the Raspberry Pi. Setting up Recalbox was a piece of cake. I used balenaEtcher to image a …
I didn't change out the Mac SE/30 for a couple of weeks, but for this week I dug out one of my favorite laptops, the Apple PowerBook G4. Back in the 00s I used a 15" PowerBook G4 and had access to the 12" iBooks, but never got to …
Another week at home, another retro terminal to work from, my 128MB Macintosh SE/30! I've talked about this bad boy a lot in the last few months. It's such a workhorse, and everytime I get on it I'm transported to 1990. The terminal I'm using is Zterm, which works …
My retro computer for this week is my MegaSTe. I chose it mainly because of pizza week over at /r/RetroBattlestations I'm not quite sure when and where I picked up this MegaSTe. It probably came from eBay. I really wanted an STe model, and then I stumbled oupon this …
Another week working from home, another week with a piece of retro equipment. The iMac G4 mamay not technically be retro, but I believe it is old enough! This particular model was bought during the OS X 10.3 release party at the Apple Store. Since then I've upgraded the …
For last week I decided to dig out one of my VT420 terminals. This particular terminal was picked up from a school auction back in the late 90s or early 00s. I remember looking at the terminals they had for sale at the start of the day when they were …
In honor of Apple's 44th birthday today, I decided to set up my //c+ as a terminal using my homebuilt wifi modem . Getting modem.mgr going was not fun, but once I read the manual and figured it out, I was good to go. The vt220 emulation didn't give me …
I'm working from home with my Atari 800 (with an Incognito installed) beside my desktop. So, why wouldn't I use my 800 for IRC?
Back on February 1st I ordered a Floppy Emu from Big Mess O' Wires. The Floppy Emu emulates a floppy disk drive. Floppy disk images can be stored on the SD card and mounted from the Floppy Emu itself. This makes it a lot easier to transfer and use software …
Well, I couldn't find my long handle T-15 Torx screwdriver, but it turns out I didn't have to. Apparently, when I installed the SCSI2SD, I never put the screws back in by the handle. While that works in my favor now, I'm going to need to dig through my screws …
My trusty Macintosh SE/30 has had 5MB of RAM in it since I installed the SCSI2SD and System 7.1. Now that I have a [modem/ppp] device available, I want to upgrade to System 7.5. From what I've been able to find, I really need at least …
One of my goals for creating the CHIP wifi modem was to use it as a networking device with my SE/30. Today I tried it out as a modem. My first issue was the fact I didn't have any communication software on the SE/30. Well, I take that …
I was a backer of the original Kickstarter project for the $9 CHIP computer. Over the past several years I accumulated 8 CHIPs and 3 PocketCHIPs. Suffice to say, I'm sitting pretty with CHIPs. My first project with the CHIP computers was setting up Shairplay on one, and hooking it …
This past September I had the opportunity to make it to my second Vintage ComputerFest - Midwest. It was a great opportunity to not only see a lot of great hardware and software, but to also hang out with others that are as passionate about retro computing as I am. The …
I posted a picture of my Atari collection on Reddit for fanboy week . Unfortunately, I couldn't find my 2600.
I haven't posted since January, and that's just sad. My new shell server is set up now at home, so I can write more geeky Atari articles!
I'm pretty bummed. It's the last day of break and I didn't even get a chance to start on my big project . Maybe I'll get a chance to finish it before next year.... On the other hand, I do have the parts now to build an SDrive Max . The SDrive …
This past year I took a chance on an eBay auction that featured an Atari 400 with the aftermarket B-Key keyboard. For those that aren't familiar with the Atari 400, it shipped with a membrane keyboard. Although it was pretty good for being a membrane keyboard, it wasn't as good …
With the Christmas season coming, and knowing that I would be spending time away from home, I struggled with how to bring some retro along with me. In the past I've taken a modded Xbox and a Raspberry Pi to family gatherings, but both of them require me to commandeer …
For publishing this website, I use Pelican , a static website generator. Publishing a static website has many advantages, such as no databases required and the ability to host for free on Github. The biggest downside is the lack of commenting on articles. A lot of static websites will use Disqus …
Last weekend I attended my first TRS-80 convention, Tandy Assembly . The hour and 20 minute drive was a lot easier than the 5 hour drive to Chicago for the Midwest Computer Fest that I went to back in September. Looks like wrote up anything about that trip, I need to …
I recently purchased a Nec Multisync 1970VX VGA monitor for use on my older RGB computers (Atari ST/STE/Amiga/CoCo 3/800XL with VBXE). It works well with the Amiga. Unfortunately, I can't get it to show up with my Mega STe. I haven't tried it with any of …
I've got everything working pretty well, with only a few nagging problems. The biggest is the screen corrupting of vim when running through tmux. The problem is there with screen also. If I use vim outside of tmux or screen, it works fine. Inside of tmux or screen? Problems. :-( Maybe …
I picked up a couple of DEC VT420 terminals from a school auction about 20 years ago. Unfortunately, I never did anything with them because I didn't have any way to hook them up. The VT420 terminal uses an MMJ connector, which kind of looks like an RJ11 (phone connector …
This is a test post from my iMac G4 running Leopard from an SSD drive.
A couple of weeks ago I went in the hunt for a better monitor for my MegaSTE and ended up using my old Gateway 2000 monitor. Don't let the GW2k name fool you, this is a 15" Sony Trinitron monitor, capable of 1024x768 at 75Hz. It was a pretty sweet …
Over the last few days, I've attempted to get a BBS up and going on one of my 8-bits. The original plan was to find a BBS that would run under SDX. I have an older MyIDE+Flash cart with a 256MB IDE drive which isn't being used right now …
After several hours of troubleshooting and beating on it, I'm proud to show off my successful installation of the VBXE along with an Ultimate 1M: It feels weird using the 800XL on an VGA LCD screen, almost like I'm in emulation. To convert the VBXE output to VGA I'm using …
After much troubleshooting, I now have VGA output from an 800XL! The VBXE plugs into the 5 pin connector on the GBS-8200, which then goes out as VGA. Unfortunately, the Apple monitor doesn't have a VGA plug, so I have an adapter to convert it. Looks very good! Now to …
This past Friday, as a last day before break fun activity, I brought in an 800XL with some classic games. We ended up playing Castle Crisis for almost the entire time, all on a big 70" LCD TV. I was afraid the high school students would get bored with it …
There is an HTML5 authoring tool for OS X called Hype, which makes it pretty easy to create interactive websites. I've got a bunch of retro equipment, so I figured it would be cool to use Hype and create an online museum of my stuff. So I give you: The …
Tonight I've taken my first plunge into finally learning cc65 and writing software for the A8. I'm attempting to convert my ten liner from the ABBUC 2014 contest over to c. Here's the first part, it redefine's the character set to be inverse: /************************************************ * Crack My Luggage - C version * * My attempt …
I modded my Xbox a long time ago, and over the years forgot about it, leaving the Xbox to sit on the bottom shelf. It waited patiently for years until I stumbled across a post on AtariAge about using the Xbox with emulators that piqued my interest. Upon firing up …
At some time I picked up a Colecovision Adam (complete) with several books and datapacks. I was disappointed Donkey Kong wasn't in the box, but Donkey Kong Jr. was. As I was cleaning and arranging my basement lab, I decided I had better at least try out the Colecovision. When …
Back in the late 90s I purchased a large Atari collection on eBay. It's been sitting in storage, just waiting for me to dig into it. I remember I bough it for the Spartados X cartridge and R-time 8, but didn't realize everything else that was in it. I found …
In my original upload it didn't quite solve the puzzle correctly, leading to frustrating users. :-) A fixed copy is availabe here .
After seeing Bill Kendrick's Minijong I knew I had to go back and re-work GozMind. I stole.. I mean, borrowed, Bill's character redefinition ideas, and replaced the symbols with the number 1-6. The result is Crack My Luggage . Introduction Silly me, I've lost the code to my luggage and I'll …
Over Christmas break I really started to get back into using my Atari 800xl. I got my MyIDE+Flash set up to work with Action! because I've always wanted to learn it. Then I read about the BASIC Ten-Liners - Contest 2014 . I had a snow day today, so I am …
Ready This is a test.