Notices by paulrickards (paulrickards@mastodon.social)

Got my Mac SE/30 SCSI chain fully populated with more things! And no termination issues! 😎

Top down, beige Epson Zip 100, Iomega Jaz 1GB, Logitech ScanMan, Apple CD 300i, SyQuest 88MB. Not pictured: internal BlueSCSI v1.

#RetroComputing #VintageApple #VintageMac

You may remember that I recapped my Radius PowerView a few months ago. Recently the video started getting distorted. Turns out there’s still cap goo on the board causing issues. Gonna clean it in the ultrasonic.

#RetroComputing #VintageApple #VintageMac

Spent yesterday replacing the two 22 AWG +5V wires in the Mac SE/30 cable harness from the analog board to motherboard with 16 AWG. Voltages at floppy port went from 4.78V before to 4.98V after. Quite an improvement!

My monster SE/30 rig is getting bigger and more stable.

#RetroComputing #VintageApple #VintageMac

I opened the CD-ROM drive to discover a present: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis for Mac. It has both 68k and PPC versions on the disc and it works on the SE/30.

#RetroComputing #RetroGaming #VintageApple #VintageMac

Retro peeps: Anyone have any tips for getting a SyQuest 88 MB drive to work? All cartridges spin up but it seems to fail the disc init check and just blinks green LED slowly (no red LED). Adrian’s Digital Basement trick of SilverLining’s “short test” didn’t work.

Apps that claim to read and seek don’t move the head. Self tests (with a jumper) do seek/move head properly.

BlueSCSI initiator doesn’t start.

Heads look clean/level/in tact. No sticky rubber bumpers.

Ideas?

#RetroComputing

Love these network topology icons in this symbols template included with MacDraw.

#RetroComputing #VintageApple #VintageMac

The civilized way to listen to the TRON soundtrack is the Sony Flamingo PS-F5. 😎 The blue vinyl is so cool looking when backlit! Soundtrack by the brilliant Wendy Carlos ❤️

#Vinyl #VinylRecords #Tron #SonyFlamingo #SonyPSF5 #NowSpinning

New blog post: iPod 3G conversion to SD card and a new battery.

I wanted to document my steps for anyone else that wanted to try this. And you don't need a disk image from the iPod as a starting point.

https://biosrhythm.com/?p=2851

#RetroComputing #VintageApple #iPod

A while back I needed to make MFM discs from image for MS-DOS (360k), Osborne 1 DD, and KayPro IV but didn’t have a PC with 5.25” floppy at the time.

What I did have was a Commodore 128 and 1571 floppy drive. So I wrote some software to write out disk images with it.

https://biosrhythm.com/?p=1680

#RetroComputing #C128 #Commodore

I’ve tried on and off for years to upgrade my iPod 3G with flash memory. I’ve tried a CF card and most recently a SD to CF adapter. Nothing seems to work. What am I missing? I’d love to get this working again.

#RetroComputing #VintageApple #VintageMac

Printing from a Newton MessagePad 2100 to an ImageWriter II via WiFi!

Normally it only supports printing to LaserWriters or certain StyleWriter printers. But it’s been chained together with CUPS and netatalk in the background to make to work. 😀

#RetroComputing #VintageApple #VintageMac #Newton

The Commodore 1520 and the other variants based on Alps plotter mechanisms were a great introduction to pen plotters and I’m still amazed to find them stuffed into the oddest of retro tech like calculators and keyboards. The gears on these suffer over time and split but I designed 3D printed replacements that have been working well for me.

#RetroComputing #PenPlotter #GenerativeArt #CreativeCoding #MastoArt #Art #ArtForSale #Artist #ArtForSaleByArtist #PenPlotterArt #PenPlot

Amazing to think I’ve been playing with pen plotters for over 10 years (longer if you count my first plotter, the Commodore 1520 with my VIC-20). What started out as a curiosity has continued to keep me engaged as a retro computing enthusiast and captivated as an artist. I thought I’d go back in time with some of the plotters I’ve used in various ways. 🧵

#RetroComputing #PenPlotter #GenerativeArt #CreativeCoding #MastoArt #Art #ArtForSale #Artist #ArtForSaleByArtist #PenPlotterArt #PenPlot

One of the loudest plotters I have is the Sweet-P Six-Shooter by Enter Computer. They basically took a HP 7475A tabloid, cloned it, shrunk it down, and sold it cheaper.

I brought this plotter to VCFEast, I couldn’t run it because it was so loud! 😆

#PenPlotter #GenerativeArt #CreativeCoding #MastoArt #Art #ArtForSale #Artist #ArtForSaleByArtist #PenPlotterArt #PenPlot

Enter the Roland DXY-990 plotter. This was the top of the line model at the time, sporting 8 pen stalls and electro static paper hold. I liked this one so much I got three more Roland models.

I also started playing with white ink on black paper.

#PenPlotter #GenerativeArt #CreativeCoding #MastoArt #Art #ArtForSale #Artist #ArtForSaleByArtist #PenPlotterArt #PenPlot

In 2016, I discovered a plotter kit by MakeBlock. This was a fun build and had lots of room for creativity by modifying it. I drew with a pen, burned with a laser, and drew in sand. The firmware wasn’t great and needed modifications to do constant velocity, which is necessary when using a laser.

#PenPlotter #GenerativeArt #CreativeCoding #MastoArt #Art #ArtForSale #Artist #ArtForSaleByArtist #PenPlotterArt #PenPlot

My first “pro” plotter was a HP 7470A back in 2014. I was blown away that these existed, being that my only exposure up to that point was the tiny “toy” plotters.

This plotter was so fast but suffered from having only 2 pen stalls and a pen head that could only use the short HP style of pens so it was limiting. Still, I got hooked immediately.

#PenPlotter #GenerativeArt #CreativeCoding #MastoArt #Art #ArtForSale #Artist #ArtForSaleByArtist #PenPlotterArt #PenPlot

Plotting with light on a vintage oscilloscope!

Tangentially related to pen plotters 🙃

#Oscilloscope

Stop using Twitter.

I bolted on WAV output to my pen plotter workflow to drive the oscilloscope. It’s all just X and Y all the way down.

#oscilloscope #PenPlotter #PenPlotterArt