• Wow is the Commodore 64 bus slow!

    20 Jul | 13
    • in Raspberry Pi • 
    • in Commodore 64 • 
    • by FozzTexx

    Got the kernel module for the Raspberry Pi that does the Commodore 64 IEC protocol working quite well. Managed to get rid of pretty much all the timing issues, and cobbled together a simple user space program to handle the file I/O. I can now read & write PRG files, even very large ones. It was interesting sending a file (by accident) larger than the C64's RAM, the poor C64 freaked out and overran even the screen and crashed. It was very cool to load a Demo without having to mess...

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  • Me Grimlock!

    16 Jul | 13
    • in Computers • 
    • by FozzTexx

    A couple of days ago I decided to visit Surplus Stuff in Sacramento for the first time. Since I've been on this retro computing kick I thought it might be fun to check out what they had and see if they had anything interesting. Found a lot of really old stuff along with stuff that was only 5-10 years old. They're not as big as Weird Stuff in Sunnyvale, but it was still a fun trip. A stack of HP9000/300 computers Something that caught my eye while wandering around was a pile of HP...

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  • Is a super cheap Android tablet completely worthless?

    23 May | 13
    • in Computers • 
    • by FozzTexx

    I often get asked by people how they can browse the internet on their TV. When I ask why they would want to do such a thing, they have this idea that it would be neat to be able to watch TV *and* browse the internet at the same time. I've been telling them they should get an iPad or Android tablet instead, because it had to be better than trying to browse the web on a TV. Of course the reason they want to do it on the TV was because they didn't want to spend much money. Since I was...

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  • USB Joysticks and Retro Consoles

    07 May | 13
    • in Raspberry Pi • 
    • in Commodore 64 • 
    • by FozzTexx

    One of the things bugging me while tinkering with old computers has been the joysticks. Several of the computers I'm playing with can use the Atari 2600 joysticks, but those joysticks are awful. I've never liked them, even back when the Atari 2600 was new. I kept thinking about getting some other 2600 compatible joystick, or maybe making a box and sticking some of my arcade buttons and joysticks in it and wiring it up with the 9 pin Atari pinout. Neither of those ideas seemed...

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  • Turning a Teensy into a floppy controller

    04 Apr | 13
    • in Electronics • 
    • in Commodore 64 • 
    • by FozzTexx

    If you've messed around in the Commodore 64 world for even a short time, you've probably discovered that it's theoretically possible to hook up a Commodore 1541 5.25" floppy disk drive to a PC. Most of the information you come across though either talks about a specialized circuit board, or using a computer with a parallel port. While I do have plenty of older computers that have the nifty parallel port that can be used as GPIO, I was more interested in interfacing the drive...

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