View on GitHub

Quorten Blog 1

First blog for all Quorten's blog-like writings

A Slack client for Windows 3.1 and useful information on Win3.1 retro development

quorten

2019-12-21

Categories: vintage-computing   windows   twitter  
Tags: vintage-computing   windows   twitter  

Wow, now this is “bonkers.” A Slack client for Windows 3.1? Almost, but HTTPS is done by an external proxy, of course. Almost all of the code had to be custom written to confirm with the C89 toolchain constraints. This article is also a great reference for how to setup a Windows 3.1 development environment on modern hardware. Technically, the development target is for Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

And, I have a copy of the book mentioned in the article! Great, now I know how to put it to good use… I better get to digitizing it as a top-priority project if it is no already in the Internet Archive.

20191220/http://yeokhengmeng.com/2019/12/building-a-new-win-3-1-app-in-2019-part-1-slack-client/

That floppy disk? Lucky for us, the author of the blog article uploaded all the source code on the floppy disk to this GitHub reposiory online.

20191220/https://github.com/yeokm1/programming-win31

Programmable Logic Array versus FPGA

quorten

2019-12-20

Categories: raspberry-pi  
Tags: raspberry-pi  

Programmable Logic Array (PLA) and FPGA. They are both very similar devices in concept, but what’s the difference between them? I think it must be mostly in terms of complexity and scale. Programmable Logic Arrays are designed to only replace a small handful of NAND gates on a circuit board, say 5 to 50, with a single chip. An FPGA by contrast is designed to have enough gates to implement a CPU, for example. To that end, an FPGA may also have built-in hardware instantiations of common circuits like couners, adders, memory, and so on. Indeed, this is the stated difference.

At the high-end of programmable logic arrays are complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs).

20191219/DuckDuckGo programmable logic array versus fpga
20191219/DuckDuckGo difference beween programmable logic array and fpga
20191219/http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/difference-between-cpld-and-fpga/
20191219/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_logic_device

Responsibly made in China?

quorten

2019-12-20

Categories: raspberry-pi  
Tags: raspberry-pi  

Responsibly made in China? What does that mean? That’s China’s efforts to improve the environmental friendliness of their manufacturing processes. For many years, U.S. companies would ship their manufacturing to China specifically so that they could sidestep the costs associated with the requirements for environmentally friendly manufacturing. But, looks like that “cost-saving” is coming to an end, with future Chinese legislation. Well… that’s assuming everyone obeys those laws, which Chinese companies have developed a reputation for skirting their own laws of a sort.

20191219/DuckDuckGo responsibly made in china
20191219/https://www.quora.com/What-does-made-responsibly-in-China-mean
20191219/https://www.kleankanteen.com/pages/responsible-made
20191219/http://www.business-in-guangzhou.com/responsibly-made-in-china-chinas-push-for-green-manufacturing.html

Aluminum foil reflectors can improve your Wi-Fi network

quorten

2019-12-20

Categories: home-network   3d-printing  
Tags: home-network   3d-printing  

Oh, interesting, from a failed search for a different topic, I found this. With data from the analysis of the spatial layout of a room, you can 3D print the shape of an optimal reflector disk and cover that witn aluminum foil to improve Wi-Fi reception. This is cheaper than buying a directional Wi-Fi antenna.

Failed search.

20191219/DuckDuckGo how to open aluminum wireless charger
20191219/https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/08/research-aluminum-foil-improves-wifi/

More sources about body language, by example

quorten

2019-12-20

Categories: random  
Tags: random  

Now, this is a curious article to write. Earlier, I’ve written a blog article about body language. Good body language versus bad body language? What are good examples? Yeah, there are scripted examples of good body language for giving speeches, but this is something different. These are examples of people who exhibit good body language just out of habit of what they do.

The first one, this video made by Rachel Hollis when she was in the middle of working a weekend. Lots of body language cues, matter of fact when the video plays without sound on LinkedIn you could infer quite a number of things just by watching.

20191219/https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rachel-hollis-495b898_im-16-years-into-being-an-entrepreneur-ugcPost-6609148021487779840-yBTV

Other information about the Hollis Company.

20191219/DuckDuckGo the hollis company
20191219/https://thehollisco.com/
20191219/https://thehollisco.com/pages/about-us
20191219/https://thehollisco.com/blogs/articles/increase-your-revenue-for-a-service-based-business-owner

Mina Starsiak Hawk and Karen E. Laine on the TV Series “Good Bones” about home remodeling to increase the value of homes, buy then sell at a profit.

20191219/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Bones_(TV_series)

SPI is faster than I2C

quorten

2019-12-17

Categories: raspberry-pi  
Tags: raspberry-pi  

What is the purpose of using SPI versus I2C? The most compelling reason to use SPI in place of I2C is that you get faster serial communications speeds, and full duplex at that. The faster speeds are particularly useful for driving graphical displays. A bus clock speed measuring up to a few (3) megahertz can easily drive a 640 x 480 x 8 display… with one refresh per second. With bus speed as the bottleneck, you can trade for high refresh rates at the expense of lower resolution and color depth.

20191217/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Peripheral_Interface

TI 84 Plus Calculator I/O port

quorten

2019-12-17

Categories: raspberry-pi  
Tags: raspberry-pi  

So, I’ve noticed that the TI 84 Plus calculator’s I/O port is indeed a 2.5 mm audio jack. Could this mean that it is a standard UART serial port? No, unfortunately it is not, apparently it uses some other custom, non-UART style protocol for communications. Oh, bummer, it was so close to being convergent technology. The GnuBee uses an 3.5 mm audio jack for its UART serial connector.

Nevertheless, there is a pretty good Arduino code library to interface with the custom protocol.

20191216/DuckDuckGo ti calculator 2.5 mm audio serial voltage
20191216/DuckDuckGo ti-84 calculator 2.5 mm audio serial voltage
20191216/https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/51486/how-to-read-data-from-a-3-5mm-headphone-jack
20191216/https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4771&start=0
20191216/https://www.cemetech.net/news/2014/10/699/_/articl-arduino-ti-calculator-linking-library
20191216/https://github.com/KermMartian/ArTICL
20191216/https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10809

Updates on rubber decay and preservation

quorten

2019-12-17

Categories: mat-sci   vintage-computing   mac-classic  
Tags: mat-sci   vintage-computing   mac-classic  

So, on the question of rubber decay. What exactly are the specific circumstances that differentiate between “dry rot” and “wet rot”? Well, it’s tough to say from what I’ve learned from my previous sources, but I’ll try to put together the best information I can, with the help of one additional source.

20191216/DuckDuckGo rubber dry rot polymersolutions
20191216/https://www.polymersolutions.com/blog/why-does-rubber-dry-rot/

First of all, temperature cycling decreases the wear and tear on rubber. Especially extreme temperature cycling does its toll. If you have really high seasonal hots and really low seasonal colds, then you shouldn’t expect rubber to last too long in such an environment. These temperature extremes take their toll due to the thermoset plastic nature of rubber. In particular, they snip the long rubber polymers shorter, which either causes rubber to become gooey and sticky (“wet rot”) or dry and brittle (“dry rot”). Oxygen exposure, UV light exposure from the sun, and high temperatures also take their toll.

But how do you know what the ultimate fate of rubber is, dry rot or wet rot when exposed to the extremes? Well, suffice it to say, I believe the end effect depends on the particulars of the rubber you use.

Read on →

Find hidden Wi-Fi networks

quorten

2019-12-16

Categories: home-network   security  
Tags: home-network   security  

Got some hidden Wi-fi networks from the neighbors that you think may be causing interference to your own? Want to find out more about their identity? No worries, it’s actually not that hard, they still broadcast beacon signals and you can receive them from a wireless scan, it’s just that the SSID is not filled in.

Nevertheless, if you really do want the SSID information, you can get it.

20191216/DuckDuckGo linux how to detect hidden wi-fi networks
20191216/http://www.bitforestinfo.com/2017/07/find-hidden-wireless-ssid-using-wireshark-and-kali-linux.html