Weasel @wildweasel@computerfairi.es

Do/Have you used a CD/DVD/Bluray in a while?

What about burning a disk?

I'm surveying modern day awareness/usage of optical media, mostly to confirm some demographic theories, so if you know what a CD/DVD is, please help me (and maybe others) out by answering some ~10 questions here:

https://optical-media-survey.benjojo.co.uk/

And then please boost for better visibility! Thank you!

hmm, which Apple II Atrus to use for Riven (1977). Keep in mind it looks a lot worse full screen than it does in a thumnbail. They all compress decently well with ZX02 (from 8k down to 2.5k-4k)

This just popped into one of my feeds - I think that it's a great story about a someone meeting the man.

And now the nominations for "things that look more unrealistic than CGI" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cv2grqz2vgro

Following up on the Amstrad 386 laptop restoration

https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/112691249304838992

We've probed the VGA card all around, and even suspected one of the chips to be dead... But as it turns out, our tinkering made the card working. "Have you tried disassembling and assembling it back" approach, with thorough washing from the corrosion, helped.

The complication with the debugging was caused by the fact that VGA D-SUB works only when turned on from DOS.

The LCD screen looks much better in person than on the photo. The shades of grey on it are quite remarkable. So far it is the second most readable monochrome screen I have, second only to Playdate.

A new little restoration project.
We have computers with 8086, 188, 286, 486, P1, P2 and P3 at home, but we didn't have a 386 machine. I saw a listing of an Amstrad 386 laptop that got me curious: there were photos of a working greyscale LCD, and the seller said they recapped the board, but couldn't quite make it fully work still, so it was sold for cheap as "parts".

On arrival the screen was not working, and the computer insisted that something was wrong. The keyboard was dead, hard drive was dead, and even a poor floppy drive inside was dead. Video card had signs of corrosion. The computer has one ISA slot, and it boots when there's an external video card and a keyboard. The floppy drive cabling hasn't standard, but it was easy to cut some tracks and solder two bodge wires to make it work. Now we can boot into DOS.

Internal video is going to be an interesting fix. After washing, VGA BIOS seems to be working, but there's no video signal generated. Thankfully there's a schematic, and it's "simple".

You can tell when a computer is thinking rapidly because it goes clickclickclickclickclick really fast. You may notice computers stopped doing this around 2007, that's because that was when they got fast enough they didn't have to think anymore. Since 2007 all computers have just sort of been phoning it in. That's why you buy a more powerful computer every five years but they never *feel* like they get any faster: Loafing

Class consciousness: engage!

#marxism #socialism #WorkersRights

Someone should make a picture book of crowded cartoon spreads of isometric views of different cities in Eorzea, full of fun details and little comic vignettes.

Obviously it’d have to be called “Where’s WoL?”.

#ffxiv

What I listened to today: "illogical", Jack Howell

"Music 2000", released in America as "MTV Music Generator", was a complete and apparently highly capable DAW released as a commercial video game for the Playstation 1.

Jack here has a YouTube channel where for 15 years he has consistently uploaded nothing but Gran Turismo 2 recordings and songs made in Music 2000. He uploaded this one this weekend, and it rocks actually. Grinding rave techno with 303s and Juno hoover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=001Z0sHkD_0

p-2

Via https://cataas.com/cat/
#Bot #CatsOfMastodon #Catstodon #Cat #AltText

A Mac SE/30 with two external monitors in Mac cases.

I’d like to image an alternate universe where you could purchase a second (or third!) Apple display for your classic Mac and it would be in the same form factor. What a panorama! I’ve wanted to do this for a long time— achievement unlocked. 🙃

Thanks to CJ at the swap meet yesterday for the Classic case!

#RetroComputing #VintageApple #VintageMac

Did you know that Activision were due to release an ambitious Alien VS Predator game in 1993, where you had essentially three different games in one. It was tragically canned after licence issues.

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2024/06/alien-vs-predator-nightmare-on-ryushi/

Silencio con Konicons (With Kei Kinoshita) - Yoshihiro Kondo