I’ve been watching 3D printer progress since I saw the first RepRaps a decade ago. They seemed interesting but very crude at the time. The few times I encountered an inexpensive 3D printer in person the creations seemed like they were very brittle. When I saw a video that was using NinjaFlex my interest in 3D printers increased quite a bit. The idea of being able to make flexible things and not just hard blocks of plastic was something I had been wanting to do. Several months ago I was...

One of the retro computer mailing lists I’m on recently had a side project go by about building a single board computer using a Hitachi HD63C09P 8-bit processor which is a descendant of the Motorola 6809. I followed along with interest and there were some small PCBs designed and when it got to the testing phase the project stalled because they couldn’t get the 63C09 to start up. For some reason the crystal wouldn’t start oscillating, or when using a full can oscillator the E...

Adventure games via Periscope Over the weekend I was having some fun with Periscope and having people join in while I played some old graphic text adventures. Remember graphic text adventures? They were text based adventure games but would show a picture above the text so you didn’t have to use your imagination as hard. You still have to type commands and read descriptions. Because of their slow pace I thought they would lend themselves well to a little bit of interaction while...

My rev B IBM PC 5150 A couple of months ago I moved my IBM PC into the living room thinking that with a more prominent location I would use it more often. It’s fun to try out ancient software, or use the PC to connect to the occasional surviving BBS. I also like tinkering trying to use the PC to access the modern internet, or at least see if I can. I definitely won't be playing YouTube videos on it, but I can read reddit, or search Google. Because of the nice keyboard and no...

A couple of months ago I purchased several relay boards and switching power supplies off eBay with the plan to re-use one of my original (256 megs of RAM and no mounting holes) Raspberry Pi model B computers as a sprinkler controller. The parts arrived and I set them aside expecting to have time to work on the project after the 4th of July. About two weeks before the 4th though I realized if I got the project assembled in time I could use the sprinkler controller as a fireworks controller. ...