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Hardware and Retro: ZuluSCSI, Raspberry Pi, and More
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Ruben Schade ☛ ZuluSCSI, and an Ultra SCSI Power Mac G3!?
When I say that in some ways we’re living through the “golden age of retrocomputing” now, this is what I mean. Sure prices have gone way up since the days when I could get a Commodore 16 for the price of lunch, but there is so much cool new kit out to breathe new life into old machines we care about. It’s awesome.
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Old VCR ☛ The Texas Instruments CC-40 invades Gopherspace (plus TI-74 BASICALC)
I've mentioned on the blog several times the continuum that exists between handheld computers and pocket computers, battery powered devices in rather small form factors that are nevertheless fully-fledged general purpose computers — arguably more so than the modern locked-down smartphone has become. Some of these diminutive systems are best considered "handhelds," with larger size, larger keyboards, more power and (often) less battery life, and some are definitely "pocket computers," with smaller size, smaller keys, less power and (usually) better battery life. For example, systems like the Tandy PC-4/Casio PB-100 or Tandy PC-3/Sharp PC-1250 would be considered "definitely a pocket computer," while the Epson HX-20 or Kyotronic 85 systems like the NEC PC-8201A or TRS-80 Model 100 would be considered "definitely a handheld computer," and you can probably think up some examples in between.
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[Old] John Lian ☛ State of my home automation in 2018
The automation itch started in the laziest way possible: I was already under the blanket and wished the lamp would turn off by itself. That nudge toward Philips Hue led to HomeKit, which led to buying a Raspberry Pi at 1 a.m. because I could not believe there was no native way to control the TV. Once one subsystem cooperated, every other annoyance turned into a candidate for automation. The snapshot below shows the apartment as it stands today.
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[Old] John Lian ☛ Fix HDMI-CEC weirdness with a Raspberry Pi and a $7 cable
For years I treated HDMI-CEC like a house spirit: sometimes helpful, mostly temperamental, never fully understood. My living-room stack is straightforward: Samsung TV on ARC (NOT eARC - story for another day), Denon AVR-X1700H hidden in a closet, Apple TV plus a bunch of consoles connected to the receiver, and a Raspberry Pi 4 already doing Homebridge duty. When it comes to CEC, the Apple TV handles it like a dream, but every console behaves like it missed the last week of CEC school. They wake the TV, switch the input, then leave the Denon asleep so I’m back to toggling audio outputs manually.