Category: In the life
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I Made some RAM for my NEC PC-8201a — and it’ll work on a Tandy Model 100 too!
Original expansion RAM for the NEC PC-8201a and Tandy Model 100 is pretty hard to find these days -- so I made some.
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How long will a NiMH battery pack last in a NEC PC-8201 or PC-8201a?
As I was converting NEC battery packs to be recharegable, I wondered just what the run-time of a battery pack would be. So I came up with is a simple BASIC program to run the computer battery down, and record the time that it dies and calculate the run-time. This is the story...
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Vintage Computing: Saving data to an audio device
Back when the early days of personal computing, you did your work on your computer and either printed out the finished work, or stored it to work on later. Early on, cassette tapes were the storage medium of choice as they cassette tape recorders were commonly available, and reasonably affordable. Some computer system did have…
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Aloha to a Hawaiian TRS-80 Model 100
Well, finally got a chunk of free time to get back to my ‘Model 100 school’. My goal is to learn about these m100s through hands-on learning. A new friend (Hi Larry) sent me his ailing m100 to further my education. Who knows? Maybe I can get it running again — it’s a nice looking…
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Looks like we’re doomed
Picked up Gloomhaven. Think of it as D&D as a boardgame. It’s the number one game on BoardGameGeek, so it’ll likely be pretty good. Also, the reviews like it. We set up and started getting familiar with it last night. Consider it Session Zero in D&D parlance. Can’t wait for Session One!
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NEC PC-8201a Adventures – Part Three: Getting Rid of the Dirty
Welcome back to part three of my restoration and adventures with an NEC PC-8201a vintage computer circa. 1983. Let’s get to it! Stripping Down It’s actually not that grungy to look at. Sure, a minor scuff or two, but from the looks of it, this unit is actually quite clean. So, let’s get it apart and get…
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NEC PC-8201a Adventures – Part Two: Rebuilding the NiCad Battery Pack
These were great batteries, 40 years ago. This was a good task to start on. It’d been years since I’ve done any serious electronics work, and my previous Arduino project, while successful, reminded me just how much I’d forgotten about electronics over the years. And my skills had mostly vanished too. So a nice easy project was…
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NEC PC-8201a Adventures — Part One: It’s here, now what?
Back in the early-to-mid ’80s, personal computing was finding it’s way. Desktop computers were becoming more visible in smaller businesses, but the work of computing still had to be done at the workplace. Portable computers were really just shrunken down desktops — they were called luggables at the time. Then came the revolution, as they say. …
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Instructable: Arduino Keyboard Joystick Extender Box and Sound Controller Thing Using Deej
Update Jan. 23, 2021: Looks like the Joystick circuit has failed as it no longer toggles the Mute function. Well, I wasn’t too happy with the initial wiring job so this may be an opportunity to update that. A while ago I developed an interest in Arduino microcontrollers, and this is my first ‘actual’ project.…
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For 3d Printing, Levelling the Bed is Finicky
So a week or so ago I tweaked something on my printer. Maybe it was initial layer height. Maybe I adjusted a bed screw. Not sure, but all of a sudden my prints wouldn’t stick to the bed properly. Using the ‘paper drag’ method of bed levelling ‘sort of’ worked. But it really was trial…
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3d printing small board game accessories
I’m really happy when I can combine two of my hobbies. This time it’s Boardgaming and 3d Printing. Often, many games have tokens or chits that are pooled for players to take at different times during play. Usually, these sit in piles around the main game area. On Thingiverse, swholmstead shared this neat design — which I…