My new book about Sphere, the forgotten but incredible 1970s computing pioneer is published and available! Curious? Grab a copy here: shop.gocomputernow.com/products/go-...
Posts by DevilishDesign
For the hive mind:
I'm looking for group purchasing or crowd funding sites to support a larger batch of NanoBeasts, VideoBeasts and potentially launch a couple of other projects.
Has anyone experience with Lectronz, Crowd Supply, Kickstarter or others for tech projects? UK based selling worldwide.
Oooh, snap!
I have waited a VERY long time to do this! I first saw an article about connecting a video camera to your Dragon way back in Dec 1985 and it really sparked my imagination. The idea that a camera could be digital and the images stored on a computer were so new and exciting ... 1/4
All the fun you can squeeze into 64k! youtu.be/PM18XTdua8s
We look at the international sensation Jet Set Willy and 1984's explosion of open-world adventure gaming. Plus a full Quake-style FPS in just 64k, and new flow coding and game engines for classic hardware.
If you are looking at buying a cartridge of a homebrew release for a retro system, always check with whoever made the original game to see if the person selling the cart/CDRom has permission to do so.
If they don't, don't buy it. It's that damn simple.
Hot Snot FTW! 👍
This is a picture of the Commodore 900 computer that was Commodore's first attempt at a Unix-like workstation. It used the Coherent Unix work-alike operating system. This computer never made it to production.
Had my #Commodore C900 out today to try something for a friend. More testing is needed (when I get the nerve) but it might have a medium resolution RGBI/VGA port when the stock Hi-Res ECL monitor goes.
#vintagecomputer #retrocomputer
A trio of floppy disks: a big 8" disk, a fairly ordinary 5.25" disk for PCs, and an Apple FileWare (aka Twiggy) disk.
Do you have 5.25" and 8" floppy disks that are spare, low-quality, degrading, or just generally in bad shape?
I'd like to take my floppy disk data recovery game to the next level. I have equipment, but there's no substitute for experience.
Yeah, it was certainly an experience! :)
It was Mission Impossible 8. Sadly the scene never made the final cut but you do see my Teletype in the film for approx 0.5 seconds 😀
One of my favourite TV characters. Was lucky enough to kinda work with Nick Offerman on a film set (I was offscreen, sending messages to a Teletype and he was tearing off & reading the message) Super nice guy in real life!
Happy Birthday Kevin! 🎂
A PDP-8 computer in a new-to-me blue & blue color scheme. I learned to program on one with the more typical red-and-gold scheme, and I’ve seen a hideous two+tome green variant, too.
Went to VCF SoCal today and there was a PDP-8 in a new-to-me color scheme. Learned to program on one of these in 1973.
@adventofcomp.bsky.social gave a hilarious talk about INTERCAL, the Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym
Ahh, the vents on the back tricked me. I've only ever seen the plastic cased version IRL. Nice machines! :)
Commodore 128 - Mmmm
PET II - Sweet
Amiga 3000 ? - Ooooh
youtu.be/DScdsdFIP_A?...
RetroFest 2026 - The Unofficial Advert
AI image of a 'Correctly-wired UK plug' which is anything but correctly wired, with the live wire not going into the fuse, a mystery grey wire, and the neutral being a tiny wire between the fuse and the third pin...
AI intends to kill us all
control panel of the day #HCI
I've always used DSDD disks on the S1/V9k without issue. I think the correct disks are 96tpi quad density (Same as used on 80track BBC drives). Not sure I'd trust HD media.
Oddly enough, I have a sealed box of Victor branded 1.2Mb HD media that was for their later PC compatibles.
I finally got around to putting a video together for the North Star Horizon. youtu.be/gFO5XHTvKG8?...
Yeah, I had trouble with CP/M-86 on my HD equipped Sirius. Seems to really unlike the first partition being drive A.
Also have a Z80 board I haven't tried yet. I believe the software is on archive.org
The future of robotics is here
Customer - "Can you print this on a T-Shirt?"
Me - "Yes.... Did you use AI to create this?"
Customer - "Yeah, ChatGPT is great!"
Me - "Errr, your phoenix appears to have two heads"
Customer - "But it looks good. It'll be fine. AI is great!"
<SIGH> 🤦
Nevermind, here's a Mandelbrot I printed to cheer you up! 😉
Nice! My high score is 32768 on the Apple ][ version of VisiCalc 😉
I picked up this clear Sun SPARCstation LX a couple weeks ago. I was told that it was a special machine used for trade shows. Let's take it apart, back up its hard drive with BlueSCSI initiator mode, and start recapping the power supply. Saturday noon EST. youtube.com/live/W6tjUSo...
Revisiting this now that I have a #C64U
Fewer characters available than on a C128 or the teletype so I had to fudge the numbers a bit, but I took the opportunity to add colour!
Also I can turn on turbo mode and have the whole thing generated in seconds by an emulated 64MHz 6502 😀
Grapheeti screenshot
Come test my massively-multiplayer online drawing world, Grapheeti 🎨
- One shared canvas for the whole world
- Everyone gets their own unique color
- Draw with your friends!
www.bxfoundry.com/grapheeti/
If it crashes I'll fix it tomorrow 😁