* Posts by witchy

9 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jun 2010

We know it's hard to get your kicks at work – just do it away from a wall switch powering anything important

witchy

Several years ago we got a Supermicro in to repair. It would keep randomly powering off and if you left it alone it would randomly power up again. No reason, no logic. Power switch was OK on a DMM test, and in the end I had all the components separated as much as cables would allow to test ground leakage. The power module/CDROM etc were in their own enclosure so that was removed, motherboard etc up on cardboard but as soon as you took a long screwdriver and touched the metal chassis of the case with the metal box the CDROM was in the thing would power off.

I discovered there was a hidden reset switch on the power module, same type as the main switch so I swapped them over and the problem went away. It seemed that while the power switch itself tested ok for making contact while pressed there was JUST enough GND leakage going on to make the ACPI think someone was pressing the button.

That's 4 days of my life I won't get back.

Maplin Electronics CEO ups stakes for steak house

witchy

Maplins saved my (non argentinian) bacon over xmas,

as much as I take the piss over their pricing I've been surprised to use both local stores half a dozen times over the festives. It'll be a shame if they disappear.

The Life and Times of Lester Haines

witchy
Pint

RIP Lester

Kinnell, 55 is no age. Thanks for the words Reg, he'll be missed.

VMS will be ready to run on x86 in 2019!

witchy

>Running OpenVMS in a VM in Linux would be cool !

You can do that now with Bob Supnik's SIMH. I'm running VMS on a Beaglebone Black connected to a VT100. The OS is emulated obviously, but full speed. People were clustering VMS on Raspberry Pi's in 2012.

Being an IT trainer is like performing the bullet-catching trick

witchy

Re: You had me at

Saw them at Glasto in '86.

Tandy 102 proto-laptop still alive and beeping after 30 years, complete with AA batteries

witchy
Pint

Commodore PETs

I've spent the last 6 weeks resurrecting my Commodore PET 2001-32N from silicon heaven and the weeks running up to xmas bringing life to a PET 8096SK I bought bust back in 2001 for a tenner.

http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/pet2001-32nworking.jpg

http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/pet8096-skworking.jpg

30 years on: Remembering the Memotech MTX 500

witchy

Awesome machines, easily up there with the Enterprise 64

as part of my museum I've got all the MTXs in many form factors except the S2, they're like hen's teeth. I DO have a prototype 512 that never left the factory though, it was going to be properly aimed at business with an 80 column card and single floppy controller:

http://binarydinosaurs.co.uk/museum/memotech/longmtx512.php

Should photograph my other RS128 too, it has an attached FDX repackaged into a PC case :)

Binary dinosaur drive found alive and breathing fire

witchy
Thumb Up

Domesday...

Being the hoarder that I am (that 5150 is mine :)) I have 2 Domesday machines, both working reasonably nicely, though one of them needs to be in bits and have the discs spun up manually to play. At some point the hardware WILL disappear, this is a great shame.

Twitter on a ZX Spectrum

witchy
Pint

I work with the bloke who 'created' the Dragon32

it's a UK-ified Tandy Color Computer with fixed bits for UK TV amongst other things. I never wanted one back in the day as I was a Spectrum/Amiga kid :)

Feed your nostalgia with old photos I need to update as some of them are 10 years old, but the stuff still surrounds me - www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk

I should've been at VCF UK, I know.

Ale, because I'm drinking it.