what do fingernail clippers have to do with electronics soldering equipment? the answer is stranger than you might think.

Imagine it's 1985 and someone gives you this. What would you create?

so i reverse-engineered the code that draws InstallShield's famous background gradient and text and reimplemented gist.github.com/whitequark/2...

doing a little 3d modeling livestream: www.twitch.tv/tubetimeus

come on down to the Vintage Computer Festival West, here in Silicon Valley at the Computer History Museum. Saturday and Sunday, August 1-2! this is the ultra rare 3270 PC (left) and the XT/370 (right).

Also, breaking news about VCF West: If you are there on Saturday, you’ll have the opportunity to buy a (replica) Apple-1 from the Byte Shop’s Paul Terrell, for the first time since he became Apple’s original dealer 50 years ago.

Tomorrow (Sat 8/1) at 4:30pm PDT during the Vintage Computer Festival West, I will be moderating a discussion and Q&A with Ron Wayne, the oft-forgotten third cofounder of Apple Computer. vcfed.org/events/vinta...

vcf exhibit pieces all together! come see atari st music production at the show at the computer history museum this weekend!

If you're in the Bay Area and want to check out a prerelease PicoIDE in action, go to VCF West and check out Xodium's booth!

Xodium@xodium.net · last wk.

All set up. Tomorrow comes. Also come try out @polpo.org’s amazing PicoIDE! With the web interface pulled up on an iPad! It’s Pretty Neat™.

Xerox gear deployed. (Josh is standing in front of the Alto, I'm in front of the Dolphin)

Come dial up at VCF West tomorrow!

We are all loaded-in and set up for VCF West! Come by and see us tomorrow and Sunday at CHM!

Chip companies: you pick QFP or LCC NXP: this one is both!

still surprising to me that Lattice would buy a company that makes the BIOS and BMC software running in most of the servers in the world. they've been doing BIOSes since 1986 back when they were called American Megatrends.

Timon@timonsku.zip · 2w ago

Lattice buying AMI is not an acquisition I anticipated what so ever. I feel like I either don't fully understand Lattice business or what AMI does beyond reference firmware

ever had questions about how professional PCBs are designed? i'm answering questions LIVE! www.twitch.tv/tubetimeus

tubetimeus - Twitch

tubetimeus streams live on Twitch! Check out their videos, sign up to chat, and join their community.

twitch.tv

Seems like the elderly computers destroyed by #Varta batteries finally got their revenge. https://www.reuters.com/business/german-battery-maker-varta-files-insolvency-applications-2026-07-24/

German battery maker Varta files insolvency applications

German battery manufacturer Varta has filed four ​insolvency applications, a spokesperson for ‌the Stuttgart district court said on Friday, marking another setback for ​the company.

reuters.com

There is a new AMI BIOS customizer and option ROM injector for 386SX-era boards. Super cool and I can't wait to try this out. youtube.com/watch?v=f-AG...

Made a new AMI BIOS Editor (AthAMIed). Enable hidden options. Inject Option ROMs.

YouTube video by Atheatos

youtube.com

Love this visualization of the 6502 instruction set. May you JMP for joy as you digest this ;) #retrocomputing #coding

I'm here at Open Sauce in San Mateo, CA right now. I'll be here all weekend with Curious Marc. come on by and say hi!

The green traces show a chip designer’s worst nightmare! If they take too long to settle, it causes a serious problem that can’t be fixed after a chip is manufactured. Try out my updated metastability explorer tool here: zerotoasiccourse.com/metastability/

oops, i cloned another sound card! this is the Beavis Ultrasound, an open source clone of the Gravis Ultrasound PnP. yes, i know there are already clones of this card, but mine provides the full schematic and matches the original board layout. github.com/schlae/Beavi...

Windows 3.1 is snappy with the MCGA+ core but there’s something wrong with the palette so I’m debugging that this morning. The attribute address and internal palette registers of the attribute controller are present and working in test bench, but not on the hardware.

Ian Hanschen@furan.bsky.social · 4w ago

Because the Graphics Gremlin HDMI’s digital video output is hardwired 2 bits per channel, digital output of the color modes is off the table - but it’s still sufficient for simultaneous MDA. The MCGA+ core is multiple cards in one just like the quirkiest early boards. Mah Jongg VGA and FastDoom MDA

I don’t know what Switzerland can do to tie this game but their flag certainly is a big plus

My MCGA+ core for the Graphics Gremlin HDMI may as well have the kitchen sink because in addition to the MCGA modes, it has enough of the VGA for modes 12h, “X” and “Y” as well as an isolated MDA on the hardwired 2 bits per channel HDMI. Releasing soon.

For folks that don't watch football much. It's not that Capo Verde, a tiny nation, managed to make it this far. It's that they made every team work for it. They weren't the classic minnow who played negative football and scraped by. They were equals to Argentina today. Incredible. Bravo. A classic.

these are pretty nice panels, there was a system constructed to test them to very exacting standards. how do you test solar panels? you run them backwards, like giant LEDs (infrared) and check them with a camera...

Caræsten 🇵🇸@cara.city · last mo.

living in the Bay Area is so fucking weird sometimes dude

fascinating! i'm only familiar with the original DuoDock which could host two standard PowerBooks at the same time, one on top of the other.

Nanoraptor@nanoraptor.danamania.com · last mo.

The Macintosh PowerBook DuoDock 200 was a portable battery-powered version of the DuoDock, with an inbuilt display, keyboard and pointing device, allowing it to function as a PowerBook in its own right while the PowerBook Duo that docked with it was out on the road.

I've released the new version of my Pico2 DRAM tester! This version adds some minor tweaks, including a new USB-C power connector. github.com/schlae/pico-...

mTCP is now officially on github! I was resisting for years but there are too many out of date versions out there now, so providing an official copy to fork from should be beneficial. github.com/mbbrutman/mT... #Retrocomputing