Ellsworth Beast-Major

Nic, 33, UK, based. I like old tech, bikes, and music I mainly post stuff I'm working on, making, tinkering or repairing. M0SRI If you know, you know

[ellsworthbeast]

Got a new bike, something different...

[ellsworthbeast]

Finally an HR Diemen flyback that actually works

[ellsworthbeast]

Amiga 2088XT Bridgeboard

Let's get cursed

[ellsworthbeast]

Asahi with Asahi Linux. Fedora works great on my M1 Macbook, and all my regular productivity stuff (FreeCAD, Cura, PyCharm, Kicad, etc) run flawlessly. No official Spotify or Discord client though.

The battery life is good, maybe not quite as good as Mac OS and not as good when sleeping. I'm much more comfortable under Linux so I'm very happy with this. Arm64 Linux ftw.

[ellsworthbeast]

Clachan Duich burial ground

[ellsworthbeast]

Applecross Pass, Highlands

[ellsworthbeast]

Changed every cap, no more buzzing and blooming. Now I can watch Twin Peaks in peace

[ellsworthbeast]

Installing A/UX on my newly resurrected Macintosh Quadra 700. It's a Unix system, I know this...

[ellsworthbeast]

Ok, the PS2 Linux kit is my new favourite thing

[ellsworthbeast]

Fingers crossed

[ellsworthbeast]

I made a thing, behold the SCART Invader.

https://github.com/nicchester/SCART-Invader

This is designed to connect up to 8 SCART devices (consoles, 8-bit micros, etc) to one TV or video monitor.

It auto-detects an incoming signal using solid-state digital muxes, but uses relays to select a channel, so it fully isolates different sources with no crosstalk or signal attenuation.

It can also force 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio on compatible SCART TVs, and force the TV to display the RGB signal rather than composite video. There's an LM1881 sync separator IC that is switched in or out of the composite video/CSYNC signal path by a relay.

There's an IR receiver for remote control.

I just need to flesh out the firmware, which I should have time to do over this Christmas break. On the todo list is implementing persistent configuration via remote control or TTL serial interface.

For example, you'll probably want your Nintendo 64 configured to use composite video, while your Super Nintendo or BBC Micro should use RGB. The SCART Invader will remember these settings and switch the TV to the appropriate mode when a signal comes in.

It's open source hardware, so everything is available to make your own.

[ellsworthbeast]

I picked up a 'Transtec Ultra 10' recently at the Cambridge Bring 'n' Byte sale.

So apparently, Sun sold ATX motherboards with UltraSPARC II processors to OEMs and consumers. You could build your own SPARC PC. It even supports PS/2 keyboards, and a regular old ATI Rage PCI graphics cards with a PC video BIOS, since it has open firmware code for that on the motherboard.

The Board is a Sun SPARCengine AXI.

[ellsworthbeast]

IBM PS/2 Model 30

[arcadebroke]

Interceptor Mega Disk

[foone]

I am always a slut for these sorts of things. This is how you pirated cartridge games in the 90s: it's basically a flash cart, but since flash storage wasn't cheap yet, it's just RAM. You have to load the game each time, and what's the obvious storage solution for the early 90s?

FLOPPY DISKS!

You can play Sonic off floppy disks. I love it, obviously.

[follow-freeman]

sparkle on, mr freeman..

[nineties-effect]

[memewhore]

[hyperchaotix]

I saw someone reblog this dismissing it as AI despite the fact they're 1 click away from a search engine. "Rosetta Nebula" is all you'd have to type. Perhaps the biggest travesty with ai images is going to be robbing people of their wonder for what's actually possible in the universe and continuing to shrink their bubble of understanding based on whether they believe it at a glance.

The image has been colorized differently above but the Rosetta Nebula is real and actually looks like that.

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

it looks less like a human skull than it does Homo heidelbergensis:

[andmaybegayer]

Look, it formed a long time ago, it had to work with the reference it had

[foone]

The the official state astronomical object of Oklahoma since 2019, btw.