Blog · corpus.blog/blogs/michaeldoornbos.com/posts
michaeldoornbos.com
michaeldoornbos.com
2022
Driving the LEDs on the Corsham KIM clone is cool too. It’s second RIOT is busy with the SD card board, so I’m using a 65c22. Still waiting on parts for the paper tape reader so I figured learning the 6522 was a good evening activity. #commodoreoriginal ↗
18 Apr 2022
Whelp, that was harder than I thought to make manually. Already sketching out designs for project number 2: The world’s worst paper punch tape puncher ;-)original ↗
18 Apr 2022
18 Apr 2022
Waiting on some parts from Mouser for my "world's worst paper tape reader" project. I don't actually have any tape, so I'm creating it by hand. Might as well have a C64 assist in helping me punch the tape. ASCII format fits my brain the best on an 8 dot 1-inch tape. #commodoreoriginal ↗
18 Apr 2022
Happy Friday from KIM-1s (and clones) everywhere. Thanks to @masterhit for taking the time preserve this one from the 70s! #commodoreoriginal ↗
16 Apr 2022
Watching a new acquaintance react to “I really love tinkering with old computers” has proven to be a remarkable method for judging someone’s character.original ↗
13 Apr 2022
Super busy with day job today, but this evening starting to layout my first crack at the world’s worst paper tape reader, KIM-1 powered.original ↗
13 Apr 2022
12 Apr 2022
I’ve got it in my brain to build an 8 dot 1 inch paper tape reader. Because… science? I dunno.original ↗
12 Apr 2022
Going back through my own Cipher series for fun. I figured Vigenère cipher is a good one to port to the KIM-1. BASIC first, next ML and making use of the seven segments and keypad somehow #commodoreoriginal ↗
11 Apr 2022
Well @8BitShowAndTell has me down another rabbit hole. I suspect this one will be MUCH better than that time I had to endure watching Slipstream…original ↗
9 Apr 2022
9 Apr 2022
I AM SUCCESS! Now using my PET clone as the TTY terminal for one of my KIM-1 Clones with PETTERM. Both 40 and 80 columns look pretty good! Kudos to @K0FFY_Radio @tynemouthsw @ChartreuseK @svenpetersen191 and @HutchCA for the moral support ;-) #commodoreoriginal ↗
8 Apr 2022
7 Apr 2022
Cutting my teeth on the TTY ROM routines on KIM-1 (clone). Here's my version of hello world: count 0-9 and newline after each. I've definitely got the hang of these now. Soooo what to make with it... #commodoreoriginal ↗
6 Apr 2022
4 Apr 2022
Sometimes I need to use a modern computer instead of a vintage machine as a serial terminal for KIM-1 (clones mostly). So I figure a retro font (Thanks Style!) and amber color at least get me in the right frame of mind. #commodoreoriginal ↗
4 Apr 2022
First day of trout season. Haven’t found any trout but I have figured about where a half dozen smallmouths are.original ↗
2 Apr 2022
A little ice on the tent is no excuse for coffee to be skipped. All good, I put my hands in the cooler to warm them up.original ↗
2 Apr 2022
Tent camping near a creek in the mountains this weekend with Julie. Only going to get down to 31F tonight ;)original ↗
1 Apr 2022
On today’s episode of learn something every day: RISC-V core running on a Lattice FPGA at 50 MHz driving a Max7219 with a 10x10 LED matrix using 100% open source tools. Building and deploying from a headless Raspberry Pi so completely portable. Feels pretty good :)original ↗
29 Mar 2022
My colour Maximite has developed a RAM fault for no particular reason. It's surface mount, which I have a negative desire to try and remove and replace, so it is dead to me. Please, no more "modern retro" projects with surface mount. Bleh.original ↗
29 Mar 2022
28 Mar 2022
Cutting my teeth on HP-16c (clone) programming while listening to some new LPs we bought this week.original ↗
27 Mar 2022
I'm all for a couple hours of burn in, but double digit days? I mean I guess you could... #commodore #vic20original ↗
27 Mar 2022
27 Mar 2022
Went together easily. I’m very pleased with this. Aluminum case and adjustable contrast and backlight are nice touches.original ↗
26 Mar 2022
I’ve wanted an HP-16c for a looonng time. They are now in the $350-$400 range so I got a kit instead. Aluminum front and back plates, feels really nice.original ↗
26 Mar 2022
Oh yeah, @JohnKennedyMSFT just updated the VirtualKIM app so it displays correctly on iPad mini. Most excellent.original ↗
25 Mar 2022
Friday fun: Running James McClanahan's Sudoku solver on the KIM-1. Lowly 6502 solves this in around 20 seconds… not too shabby! #commodoreoriginal ↗
25 Mar 2022
Finally have a working FPGA (Lattice) development environment with ALL open source tools on a Pi.original ↗
24 Mar 2022
This morning’s pre dawn learn something every day was Fibonacci 1-10 on the KIM-1… hand coded (ie the hard way) using the keypad and pencil and paper. Also iPhones REALLY don’t like to take video of red seven segment LEDs. It’s much brighter IRL #commodoreoriginal ↗
23 Mar 2022
Learn something every day lunch break edition: soldered up the ROM expansion board for my PAL-1(KIM-1) to give Apple I integer BASIC a go.original ↗
22 Mar 2022
This says “tamperproof scoring”… clearly they underestimate the raw processing power of the mighty VIC-20. Challenge accepted. #commodoreoriginal ↗
21 Mar 2022
In the summer I don’t love that my hangar door faces east, it gets hot quickly. But in March when it’s 38 degrees (F) in here, that sun pouring in is super welcome.original ↗
20 Mar 2022
It’s best to put the shorter KungFu flash cart behind the others on an X-Pander. Gotta let the KungFu exercise its inner stealth Ninja chops. #commodoreoriginal ↗
18 Mar 2022
They are DEFINITELY not for sale, but I just looked up prices for the 42s… they are nuts. But having used both of these for many many years I get why they are still in high demand.original ↗
18 Mar 2022
Today's quick "learn something every day" breakfast (which I don't eat) edition: Trying to get used the the non contiguous screen memory locations. I know there is some good technical reason they did this, but man it makes certain things more complicated. #appleIIoriginal ↗
16 Mar 2022
Always looking for a good biography I’ve not read yet. Just picked this one up. It’s a beast!original ↗
15 Mar 2022
Studying the random number routines of various Commodore machines. Interesting how much of a pattern there is on the C64 compared to the PET. MUCH less random by default. SID vs VIA which is interesting. Identical code except screen location. More research to do... #commodoreoriginal ↗
15 Mar 2022
Another one of my favorite ways to estimate pi. The PET did a good job with this one in just over an hour. #commodoreoriginal ↗
14 Mar 2022
Yep, still satisfying. Gonna see how many people I can upset for one reason or another (Y'all need to relax) by posting all of my favorite ways to calculate pi on old computers today ;-) #commodoreoriginal ↗
14 Mar 2022
Ever try calculating pi with only 6502 machine code (KIM-1) and no kernal or basic floating point routines? Not trivial. Happy Pi day!! #commodoreoriginal ↗
14 Mar 2022
At some point over the last few years I’ve gone back to getting everything in print. Not even sorry.original ↗
13 Mar 2022
Well playing in the snow is done…today’s learn something every day I broke out the 128 to learn some graphics techniques. I don’t spend NEARLY enough time in 128 mode so maybe this week I’ll do something about that. This is a tricky but fun one(about 40x speed) #commodoreoriginal ↗
12 Mar 2022
Keeping an eye on a large data migration that is taking place this evening so I can’t go anywhere. It’s progressing well enough that I had time to replace a failing PLA. Hey look, when I put it back together it still works :) #commodoreoriginal ↗
11 Mar 2022
My slightly convoluted but perfectly serviceable way of getting green/amber out of my Mini PET 40/80 to a 4:3 LCD. Composite to VGA to color adapter to HDMI. Works well. And yes, I do have an Apple Green CRT, but this is a nice solution if you didn't for less than $50 #commodoreoriginal ↗
11 Mar 2022
I know it's a little hard to see in the screen capture… I just completed Week 1 of @ShawnHymel's "Computer Vision with Embedded Machine Learning" on @coursera. It's pretty confidently identifying resistors and capacitors out of my parts bin. Neatooriginal ↗
9 Mar 2022
A Patreon exclusive from @8BitShowAndTell released today has me following along on my 128 in 128 mode which is pretty rare in my office. My 128 spends most of its time as a C64 that takes up a hearty amount of desk space. Robin’s deep dives are always fantastic. #commodoreoriginal ↗
8 Mar 2022
Good progress this morning. I forgot to take a picture of it assembled, but I did get the rudder and vertical stabilizer mounted permanently. More about the journey than the destination anyway. AND I even remembered where I put the hinge pin this time ;-)original ↗
6 Mar 2022
Some visualizations don't get old to see on "all the things". MS Basic on the KIM-1 Mandelbrot. 10x speed. #commodoreoriginal ↗
4 Mar 2022
In case you were just sitting there wondering how to land in Lunar Lander on the KIM-1 (clone) in just two actions… start the game, count 3 Mississippi’s, thrust to 1. When your speed hits EXACTLY 85, thrust to 6. Works on this Machine... We can all rest easy now. #commodoreoriginal ↗
3 Mar 2022
At some point, my KIM-1 setups have become more complicated than a VIC-20 and I'm not even sorry about it. #commodore #problemsthatarentproblemsoriginal ↗
3 Mar 2022
Today's "learn something every day" lunchtime edition: Studying this fantastic example of a custom stack implementation to keep track of recursive searches to solve mazes. I ported it to Turbo Macro Pro of course ;-) #commodoreoriginal ↗
2 Mar 2022
I suspect no one is surprised that I started studying how to do Machine learning with cameras by detecting Commodore machines right? Eventually want to try detecting skin cancer, but that's a long road ahead. Never know when you might need a Commodore detector though #commodoreoriginal ↗
28 Feb 2022
Going to spend a fair amount of my “learn something every day” time this week with the @openmvcam. Pretty nifty.original ↗
28 Feb 2022
Someone asked me how to make a split color screen on the Commodore 64 in Assembly last night for... reasons. Easiest way I can think of is to squish the screen to 24 rows so the row count is even. #commodoreoriginal ↗
28 Feb 2022
Today’s learn something every day is tricks with 7 segments on the Corsham KIM-1. Happy Sunday :) #commodoreoriginal ↗
27 Feb 2022
Yesterday’s kitchen experiment turned out great. Had 3 pounds of leaf lard that we got 3 solid pints of snowy rendered lard from. Saved the last half pint and the cracklings as well (for science )original ↗
26 Feb 2022
After a fair amount of bug hunting I got this Rubik's cube on the VIC-20 working. Now to do a solver in 1000 bytes (yes, in ML for speed) Does require a 3k expansion. #commodoreoriginal ↗
25 Feb 2022
In Today’s learn something every day I’m making some improvements to a 40 year old Rubik’s cube game including adding a solver on the VIC-20. I forgot how hard it is to figure out which symbols to use sometimes when typing from printed listings. #commodoreoriginal ↗
25 Feb 2022
In Today’s learn something every day I switched back to this book that I’ve committed to going all the way through in 2022. But to mix things up I switched from the C64 to the VIC-20 for a while. Why make it easy right? #commodoreoriginal ↗
24 Feb 2022
I still get a kick out of the MS BASIC Easter eggs that go back all the way to 1977 (at least). MS BASIC for the KIM-1 if you press A for the memory size gives you the authors ;-) #commodoreoriginal ↗
22 Feb 2022
Today’s “learn something every day, lunchtime edition” is a short one. Clock divider on an FPGA. This is really starting to click in my mind now.original ↗
21 Feb 2022
Today's "learn something every day: Lunch break edition" is a transient planet finder (Pluto in this case) from @nostarch Lee Vaughan's "Real World Python" book. Learned a lot from this one. #python #poorplutooriginal ↗
18 Feb 2022
18 Feb 2022
18 Feb 2022
Today’s “learn something every day” is Moore Finite State machine that implements a simple 4 bit counter on an FPGA. Green indicates the done state. Neato! Thanks to DigiKey for the tutorial.original ↗
17 Feb 2022
This label order is SUPER confusing on the HP Prime since it can do both standard and RPN modes. I’ve got 30 years of muscle memory for the stack order and this label messes me up all the time.original ↗
17 Feb 2022
I’m one KIM-1 clone away from having everything I need to make a 1977 style blockchain network ;-) Could always use a VIC-20 as the third… hmm #commodoreoriginal ↗
14 Feb 2022
Julie and I are traveling again this weekend. I’m a very early morning person and she is not. Gives me a couple hours to invest my time or spend my time. My choice here is probably not surprising.original ↗
12 Feb 2022
Now that I've got some extra ram on the KIM-1, it's time to try Microsoft BASIC on it (controlling from a C64 of course). Here's a breadth first search… not only works well, it's even pretty fast. #commodoreoriginal ↗
10 Feb 2022
Putting a kettlebell ON my desk means it’s a constant reminder. Every hour during work it’s 20 push-ups and kettlebell work. Worked great!original ↗
7 Feb 2022
I bought the PAL-1 to see if I'd like noodling with the KIM-1 platform. Turns out I like it enough to have now purchased all of the available expansions … AND the Corsham KIM-1 clone as well (ships later, chip shortage) #itsonlymoneyright #sevensegmentsarethefuture #commodoreoriginal ↗
7 Feb 2022
FedEx has just left this piece of unobtainium on my porch. Good luck getting one of these in 2022…original ↗
7 Feb 2022
7 Feb 2022
This is hands down the weirdest thing I’ve ever found inside a used book I bought online. #commodore #maybetherearesecretsonitoriginal ↗
5 Feb 2022
The @Basic10L is usually about games. Since those aren't my thing, I started thinking about other interesting 10 liners. I can easily fit RC4 encryption in 10 lines with lots of room to spare. Wonder how I can expand on this… #commodoreoriginal ↗
5 Feb 2022
4 Feb 2022
How much of a nerd am I? I’m pleased with my hotel room number for more than a couple reasons :)original ↗
31 Jan 2022
How much of a nerd am I? I’m pleased with my hotel room number for more than a couple reasons :)original ↗
31 Jan 2022