Open Hardware: Retro, Raspberry Pi, and More
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Merry Old VCR Christmas with Dick Smith and his VZ200
Video Technology designed the VZ200 as their own version of the Tandy TRS-80 Model I, which Dick Smith sold as the System-80 via the EACA Video Genie. While the Video Genie was a more or less straightforward clone of the TRS-80 Model I, the VZ200 uses the basic architecture but with a different memory map, BASIC and video chip (same as the Tandy Color Computer and others). The Z80 runs at 3.58MHz (versus the Model I's 1.774MHz) and some of the BASIC differences were caused by VTech intentionally crippling the BASIC which some extended BASICs partially reversed. VTech also produced a Laser 100 and 110, differing from the 200 primarily in built-in RAM, but Dick Smith never sold those.
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Please forward this to anyone who got a Raspberry Pi for Christmas
By the way, this is a mirage of a blog and we’re not really here today; this is one we made earlier to make sure you know how to get started with your new Raspberry Pi Christmas presents. In real life, we are watching people cook lots of things that we will put in our faces soon. See you in January!
Here you will find lots of links to help you get started with your new Raspberry Pi, as well as ideas for what you can do with it.
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Overpowered Ornament Contains Tiny Raspberry Pi Cluster
In a Medium post about the project, Bensen writes, "what’s it do, that’s a good question. Right now it runs the same software I ran on the World’s Largest Raspberry Pi Cluster so watch the video and find out and comment what I should run on it."
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Have a Helping of 8-bit Holiday Cheer! (2022 Edition)
I got my first computer, a TI-99/4A, on Christmas morning in 1982. I was 10 years old and from that Christmas on, it was nothing but games and computer hardware that I wanted Santa to leave me under the tree. On through my teenage years, part of my ritual for getting into the Holiday spirit was downloading and watching Christmas demos on whatever system I had at the time. And, apparently I wasn’t alone in this, as Benj Edwards explains in his piece, “The Oddball, Nostalgia-Inducing Christmas Tech Art Of The 1980s And 1990s.”
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It’s a MIDI Christmas With the Atari ST for “Holiday Music Week X”
Without further ado, for Holiday Music Week X I present the 1985 Audio Light holiday slideshow and music presentation, as played by my Atari 520ST and the Radio Shack MD-981 MIDI keyboard (which was likely produced for Radio Shack by Casio).