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Kian Ryan

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Building PrusaSlicer on Debian Sid for OpenGL ES

Lucie (from MNT) has found a better way to run PrusaSlicer on the Pocket Reform with full GL rather than using GL ES. I’m leaving this post up in case this is useful for other platforms. But for the Pocket Reform, try: LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/libGLEW.so.2.2 prusa-slicer –opengl-compatibility (I found I was using...

Plaintext pages in Jekyll

Terence Eden posted a collection of websites that post in both HTML and plain text, a nice clutter free way of consuming content. I started looking into providing the same here and realised that I couldn’t do that while using GitHub pages, so took the opportunity to migrate the site...

Hosting on Mythic Beasts

This site is now hosted on Mythic Beasts, away from GitHub Static Page hosting. That gives us the freedom to do things that we couldn’t do previously, such as host plain text versions of our blog pages. The site code is still hosted on GitHub, and the deployment process is...

Leigh Hackspace - Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying, and Embrace The Chaos

As alluded to on the Now page, after my RTA in 2022, the sporting side of my life slowed down. In the early part of my recovery, I walked in to Leigh Hackspace, which was in it’s early days of coming out of Covid lock down. A Hackspace is peculiar...

How I stream video from every old device on my desk.

I host an almost regular text and graphic adventure stream over on Twitch, where we stream from a range of home computers - 8 bit machines such as the ZX Spectrum and the C64 through to 16 bit machines such as the Atari ST (my preferred platform for Infocom games),...

Cartridge Software for the Psion Series 3

Similar to less popular handheld of the era, the Gameboy, the Psion used a proprietary cartridge format for distributing commercial software. Psion sold blank cartridges, flashing hardware and duplicators to software houses, as well as releasing a number of titles under their own license. There’s a wide range of commercial...

Psion OPL - A built in development environment, when we owned our devices

Shortly after the write-up for the Psion Series 5, I picked up a Psion 3a from a fellow collector through a retro group. The plan was to do a write-up comparing the two platforms. Despite that you can see the DNA carry from the 3 to the 5, they’re distinct...

HU-017A RDA5807S FM Radio Kit

I get asked for recommendations for practice soldering kits. Last Christmas I was surprised to find under my tree a soldering kit from my parents. Really surprised. I’m not sure if it they thought “oh, he’ll enjoy making that” or “he needs more practice”. I’m taking it as the former...

A One Handed Accessible Keyboard, Inspired by FrogPad

A couple of years ago, I was in an incident that reduced the strength in my left shoulder. I’ve been waiting for an operation to restore the function to that shoulder, but we were warned the post-operative recovery period would be several months. So I started looking for keyboard options...

Connecting your RC2014 to a Psion 5MX, Psion 3, or other RS232 terminal

Back in the early part of last year, my first frustrated attempts at connecting my Psions to the RC2014 Z80 kit computer ultimately led to building the Sidecar, a small, battery powered Linux computer designed for serial use. The early experiments used a Pi Zero as a go-between between the...

Online Psion Document Conversion With PsiConv

TLDR; you can convert Series 5 Word documents to Text, HTML5 or Markdown using this online service. No guarantees are made, and for transparency you can view the code here. In 2021, I wrote about my workflow for getting draft documents out of my Psion and in to my blog....

RC2014 Emulation for Development

Carting your precious RC2014 isn’t always practical. EtchedPixels has developed a RC2014 emulator that allows you to run a RC2014 ROM in a local linux environment. This is perfect for application development, before or in conjunction with testing on real hardware. I’m using it to test my assembly builds, in...

Getting Started With z80asm on the RC2014

Happy New Year. We’re going to start the new year by going down to the metal. The RC2014 Classic II and Pro ROM images both contain copies of the Small Computer Monitor. SCM is a machine code monitor and assembler for Z80 systems. We’re going to switch a RC2014 Classic...

In The Dark - A Rogue-like game for old and new systems

TLDR; I’ve released the first version of my rogue-like game - “In The Dark” for CP/M, DOS and modern systems. You can download the binaries for each system and source code from GitHub. I hope you enjoy it. “In The Dark” is a rogue-like game that sees you playing as...

The Rough and Ready Guide To Getting Your RC2014 Pro Online

Back in t’day (drops 20p in t’swear jar), before the advent of the Internet as we know it in its current form, computers talked to each other using BBS software and terminal programs. You dialled the remote machine, the modem on the other side would pick up and a conversation...

RC2014 Pro, Bowie, and a Merry Christmas

I’d like you to meet “Bowie”, our newest RC2014, with a focus on “Sound and Vision”. Bowie is RC2014 Pro with a number of additional cards: RC2014-YM2149 - YM2149F/AY-3-8190 Sound card (Spectrum/Amstrad/Atari ST) Quazar’s SID Interface - SID Soundchip Interface (Commodore 64) Shiela Dixon’s 8x8 LED Matrix Display - 8x8...

The Sidecar for Psion - A PPP Modem and Linux Terminal for RS232 devices

Creating the PiRS232 and playing with the Pi over serial has been leading towards an idea - I wanted to create a small, battery powered device, a sidecar that I could carry with my Psion and use as portable Linux terminal. I also managed to turn it into an Internet...

RS232 and Null Modem HAT for the Pi Zero

Sponsored Post: - PCBWay (pronounced PCBWaaaaaaaayyyyyy), reached out and asked if I had any 3d printing projects they could help with. I said no, but I did have an electronics project I needed PCBs for. They kindly sponsored the first iteration of PCBs for this project. As suggested by Rich...

TinyCPM - CP/M on a Tiny 2040

I’ve been using the RC2014 as a a CP/M development machine, especially while developing a cross-platform Rogue-like game. I love it. And whilst it’s a hell of a lot more portable than carrying a Osborne 1 or a Amstrad CPC 6128, it’s not something I can keep in the laptop...

Tetris, Two Books, Five Blocks

Like a lot of kids in the late 80s, I found a GameBoy under my Christmas tree. It came with one pack in game - Tetris. I played during the days, my Dad played in the evenings. Tetris was not my first gaming love. Games on the Spectrum probably took...