Posts
-
Building a PiDP-11
So I have been on a bit of a run reading books about the computer industry mainly through the 70’s and 80’s. I started with The Idea Factory which is all about Bell Labs, from its beginning in the 1920s until it’s demise in the 1980s. It’s simply amazing to see what (and who) came out of Bell labs over that 60 year period. I then read Dealers of Lightning which is all about Xerox PARC from the early 70s through to the 90s. Again seeing what (and who) came out of PARC is fascinating and the stuff of legends within the computing industry. That then put me onto Steve Jobs & The NeXT Big Thing which was written early to mid 90s when NeXT looked like it could still “win”. Hearing about some of Apples early success (namely with University campuses) and then how Jobs tried to replicate that but failed with NeXT, and just how much appeared to hinge on him as opposed to the product or the company was pretty interesting. Both the previous books referenced Sun Microsystems quite a lot - so my next one was Sunburst: The Ascent of Sun Microsystems. Again this one was written mid 90s while Sun was still very much on the rise. It’s a fascinating look at how the company got started, changed pretty early on and then went on to be the success it was for at least a decade.
-
Learning CW
I’ve set a few goals for 2024 when it comes to Amateur Radio. I’ve done this because the list of aspects of radio that I want to play with is already pretty long and getting longer - and some require some more focused effort than others. One that will require some focused effort to start with is learning morse code - commonly called CW. My goal is my first QSO using CW by the end of 2024.
-
Home HF antenna cabling
So I drilled a hole in the side of my house today! I mentioned in a previous post that I’d got a permanent UHF/VHF aerial up on the roof. The next step was getting something more permanent setup for HF. I’ve been trying a few different aerials - but to use them I’ve had to run a bit of coax out the door and leave the door open. It’s been colder here the last few weeks - so leaving the door open has been a little sub-optimal, as well as the cable running across the floor and the deck. Which has also thus limited how much time I have put into building and try different HF antennas.
-
Installing OpenGD77 on a Retevis RT3s
So the Brisbane Amateur Radio Club (BARC) that I joined has been playing with a few different digital modes - and one of them is Digital Mobile Radio or DMR. The club’s page on DMR has some information on how they got started, the radio most members have bought (Retevis RT3S) and there is also a page with code plugs configured with local repeaters to help get people going.
-
HamClock
So I saw Jim W6LG post a video on YouTube about a cool little HamClock kit from inovato based on a small Quadra PC. Watching the video - it looked like quite a cool little addition to the shack. Reading the comments on the video and having a look at the product page I learned HamClock is a standalone open source application that will run on a multitude of platforms.
-
Getting (back) into Amateur Radio
So back in April 2022 I got my Foundation Amateur Radio Licence. The world was still doing a lot of things online - and I actually did my test as well as my “practical” component over Zoom. I passed both and submitted my paperwork and shortly after I was licenced and ready to get on the air.
-
Nixie Clock!
I’ve wanted a nixie clock for a long time. A good mate and I talked about doing it over 10 years ago now - and he ordered some IN14 nixies that arrived and sat on a shelf until a couple of weeks ago when he mentioned he’d come accross them. This was all either of us needed to finally order some clock kits and get going. So I ordered two of the IN14 kits from nixie diy. They took a couple of weeks to arrive. We met up this week to swap some nixies for a kit - and I got a couple hours to sit down this morning and built the clock - and it is fricken awesome. All through hole work with the only surface mount part pre-soldered on the kit when it arrived. The manual for the kit is well laid out with some keey points to stop and test the build as you go. So there was nothing to it but to dust off the soldering iron and get going!
-
Rolling your own Marlin build
So I wanted to have a crack at rolling my own firmware build for my Ender 3 V2. Marlin is pretty awesome - and setup in a way that makes it pretty user friendly. I would start with this video from Teaching Tech. He goes through how to build your own firmware - which I 100% used as a base. I did a few things slightly differently and probably will continue to tweak as I go. If you just use his video and follow it you will absolutely end up with a useable firmware. This post is as much for me as anyone else that might stumble across it - on what options I used.
-
Bed levelling upgrades
So after getting the filament sorted - the next thing to look at was bed levelling. I was trying to get a consistent first layer - and unsurprisingly Teaching Tech had a video and a whole website devoted to bed levelling! He goes through it in the video but his site generates a gcode file that will print 5 squares by default to help you see if your first layers will go down consistently in each part of the bed.
-
Filament matters
So one of the first things friends who already had printers told me was don’t skimp on the filament - which is exactly what I did. When I ordered the printer online I also ordered the cheapest white filament I could find online.
-
Getting started in 3d printing
It’s a bit of a running joke that I have been waiting for my 3d printer since 2017 - this one. It’s very obviously never going to show up - and even if it did it would be so out of date now 4 years after design. So I finally got through the five stages of grief this Christmas and got an Ender 3 V2!
-
Tandy Portable Disk Drive 2
So following along from getting my REX installed and playing with it, the next addition for my little M100 kit was a Tandy Portable Disk Drive 2:
-
M100 REX
My last post was about the SuperROM that I received with one of the M100’s I purchased. Now that my M100 was fully functional I started to look at what little extra bits might be fun to play with. One of the major bits was the REX. The summary of the REX taken directly from the wiki:
-
PCSG SuperROM
As mentioned briefly in my last post - I ended up with Portable Computer Support Group (PCSG) SuperROM. This guy is a ROM addon for the Model 100 that includes four additional applications:
-
Portable retro!
So I have always loved small portable electronics - and retro is no exception. There is a portable retro machine I have always love the look of - so about six months ago I started searching for one that wasn’t going to require me to take a loan. I found one that was listed as non-working/parts only but great cosmetic condition, going cheap and so I took a punt:
-
The last pieces of the c64 puzzle
So since the last post I have acquired the last piece that I was looking for to round out my c64 setup - a Commodore 1701 CRT monitor:
-
1530 Dataset
After getting the 1541 sorted, I thought “What C64 setup would be complete without a dataset?” They are dirt cheap on eBay and I managed to pick one up with its original box no less for little more than the cost of postage. The seller even confirmed before sending it that he had connected it up to his C64 and loaded a tape and it had worked first go. It turned up pretty quickly too:
-
1541 Disk Drive
So what have I been doing since the last post - playing some solid C64 that’s what. It hasn’t skipped a beat since I put it back together at the end of the last post. I’ve been playing some games, writing some BASIC and just generally getting reacquainted with the C64. I haven’t stopped on the hardware side of things though. Like I mentioned previously I’ve bought a few accessories, and now the system is running it’s time to work through them. The first being this guy:
-
A little more maintenance
So a lot has happened with the little C64 since my last post. I’ve tried to take photos of everything I’ve been doing, as well as some video. It’s given me a HUGE appreciation for what it must take to produce the quality of videos that I am used to watching on YouTube. I knew it took work, but wowsers. So thank you to all those makers/hackers/tinkerers I enjoy watching on YouTube. Onto the work!
-
It's Alive!
So I have a new toy and it’s amazing! I’ve wanted a desoldering tool for a long time but could never really justify the cost for the tiny amount of use it would get. This Commodore 64 was what made me pull the trigger and so I ordered a Hakko FR-300, which finally arrived yesterday:
-
Time for a downgrade...
So those that have been reading this blog for a little while (yes I know who all 3 of you are) might remember that I bought a Commodore 128 back in 2014. What I don’t think I mentioned at the time, was not only did I never previously own a Commodore 128 - I had never actually even touched one in the flesh.
-
P.V.E.D.
For a while now I have wanted to build the P.V.E.D as designed by Alain Iamburg. There is a GitHub with everything you need to get started, and a series of blog posts explaining a couple of different ways you could then approach the problem.
-
Fibonacci Clock - Part 2
Now that the electronics are done - time to tackle the case! It’s made from laser cut ply and was pretty straight forward to put together.
-
Fibonacci Clock - Part 1
I was lucky enough to be gifted a Fibonacci Clock kit towards the end of last year (Thank You!) - but thanks to #life have only just got to assembly this weekend.
-
Installing DD-WRT on a TP-LINK TL-WR842ND
I love playing with routers and network gear in general - who doesn’t? In the past I’ve never run the same router at home for long while I swap them out with different software and/or hardware. This has slowed a bit lately due to life, but hasn’t completely stopped.
-
Dev board Stage 1 - Part 2
Nowadays I’m a Python guy, so as per the previous post once I had the basics working with the BusPirate using it’s inbuilt console I immediately went looking for Python based options for using the BusPirate. I pretty quickly landed on pyBusPirate.
-
Dev board Stage 1 - Part 1
A while ago one of my best mates gave me a dev board that he had done some work with that he thought I might like to do something with. It’s sat on my shelf for quite a long time, but this week I decided that it would be my next project. This is not intended to be a short project, but if it goes the way I hope it will, it should be a medium term one with both some hardware and software involved. Time will tell.
-
Bit of an update
I hope anyone reading this got some time out over the Christmas/New year period to unwind.
-
I'm on a boat - Part 3
So the last post left off here:
-
I'm on a boat - Part 2
So a few weeks ago now we took Dusty down to give him a run with his shiny new (old) VRO pump. We put him in the water and once warmed up he was running really well. Nice and smooth, humming along.
-
I'm on a boat - Part 1
So September has seen a bit of a change, in that instead of spending the little bit of time I get at the bench, it’s been spent outside doing a bit of work on the boat getting it ready for a summer on the water! The following happened over the last 3 weekends, and a little bit here and there during the weeks in between. It was all kind of going on at the same time - but i’ve written it out as if it was one after the other.
-
Commodore 128 - Part 4
This week my 1541 Ultimate arrived:
-
Commodore 128 - Part 3
I got my hands on a Dell 2408wfp at the end of the week. This guy has an S-Video input, so I could remove the S-Video - VGA converter I was using in the previous post. I plugged it all in and flicked the switch:
-
Commodore 128 - Part 2
tl;dr It works! Read on for detail.
-
Soldering Practice
While I have been reading and building a few things on my own, process is a little slow going due to time constraints. It’s probably going to be a little while before I have any boards in hand that are of my own design. So to scratch my soldering itch I ordered some very cheap kits off eBay a little while ago. No other motive in mind with these other than just a bit of fun putting them together. There are kits available locally, but none of them are this cheap. If they were things I might put to use I’d be happy to spend a little more, but as these will probably just got on my shelf of bits - the cheaper the better. The first two were through hole clock kits, $5.60 and $7.70 respectively (including postage). They actually arrived quite quickly. Kit no. 1:
-
Commodore 128 - Part 1
I bought something off eBay about 2 weeks ago now and it arrived yesterday:
-
New Bench Supply
I finally pulled the trigger and bought a bench power supply. Up until this point I have just been using the ATX breakout board. I’ve been looking around for a while, trying to way up price vs features and finally settled on the Siglent SPD3303D.
-
Getting started with CPLDs
Just like playing with micros I wanted to get my hands on and play with come CPLDs so I went hunting around for some tutorials. The one I settled on to start with was this one. It uses a CPLD from the Altera MAX II family. The chip itself is not overly important but the branding on the chip is - as this is basically an exercise in learning how to use a the associated vendors software. I found the same boards used in the tutorial here, ordered and waited for delivery.
-
Bare Bones ATMega168
I’ve been playing quite a bit with Arduino based stuff over the last while. It’s an awesome way to get started without a huge amount of low level knowledge of the micro required to get an LED to blink. I wanted to try some bare bones bits though with some ATMega’s as well. I found a few different tutorials online that explain the gap that the Arduino bootloader fills. One of the ones I liked the most is the Hack a Day series on AVR programming.
-
Baby Monitor LCD Repair
Pretty quick post about my morning repairing the baby monitor that we were given for our new born last week. It’s an Angelcare AC401 (sensor pads not pictured):
-
Mini 7-Segment Clock (times two)
I follow quite a few electronics type blogs now, they’re a great way to learn new things and see what other people are making. One particular blog that I’ve been following for quite some time is Kevin Rye. If you haven’t checked out his blog before go get a coke and sit down and have a read.
-
Raspberry Pi Radio
I like listening to music while I work. I stream a lot of music over the internet from places like SomaFM and Pandora. I wanted something though that would play music for me while I work that was independent of my MacBook Pro. Seemed like a good way to go was a Raspberry Pi with the Adafruit LCD.
-
What's the time Mr Wolf?
So for the last couple of months the bit of bench time I’ve been able to get has all been spent on the edx course I mentioned in my previous post. There was quite a bit of content to get through before the course wrapped up, so to get it done in time I wasn’t letting myself play with any other projects or bits. I was however ordering bits and pieces here and there which have slowly started to arrive. Now that the course is done I’ve got time to play with what’s arrived!
-
edx UT.6.0.1.x
So for the last couple of months now I have been taking the edx course UT.6.01x: Embedded Systems. Like all edx courses it’s delivered 100% online. The course does a great job of teaching the fundamentals of embedded design, and is built around a Texas Instruments Launchpad. If you haven’t used one of the TI Launchpad’s before I’d highly recommend taking a squiz. They’re super cheap for what they are and after taking the UT course I feel I’ve got a somewhat ok understanding now of the processor used for the course. Setting registers, performing I/O - it’s all covered.
-
ATX Bench Supply
I’ve been starting to fiddle more and more with electronics of late, and I’ve realised that at some point I’m going to have to power some stuff off something other than a Arduino/Launchpad etc.
-
Clock kit Part 3
So after the last post, I ordered a USB-FTDI adapter and some appropriate jumper cables so I could reprogram the STC12C5620AD. They took about a week to show up - which brings me to this post.
-
Clock kit Part 2
With the schematic in hand I was itching to get my solder on. The board itself appears to be somewhat generic, in that not all components labelled on the board need to be fit for this clock to be complete. Using the schematic and the parts received list we were able to figure out what needed to go where.
-
Clock kit Part 1
So I decided I wanted to some sort of small digital desk clock to build. After looking around people seemed very impressed with clocks using the DS3231 chip, so I googled around for clock kits using that chip and came across this kit from Ali Express.
-
In the beginning...
So I’m the type that has alway dabbled in electronics - but I don’t do it for a living. Thankfully one of my best mates is a seasoned engineer, and is always willing to give me a hand or answer any questions I have. This blog is just intended as a place for me to write down some notes as I build/learn what the heck I’m doing.
subscribe via RSS