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Quorten Blog 1

First blog for all Quorten's blog-like writings

Interesting history of SS Great Eastern

quorten

2019-10-20

Categories: random  
Tags: random  

Interesting history I’ve read from elsewhere on the SS Great Eastern. This was the biggest steam ship at the time that it was built, 75% of the Titanic, and only the third one ever built. It had a passenger capacity of 4000, and 5 steam engine “funnels.” Alas, one of the funnels exploded, and ultimately only 4 funnels were used. Also, it never reached its full passenger carrying capacity, and by all means was considered a commercial failure. However, it was converted and used to lay the first transatlantic undersea telegraph cables.

20191019/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern#Break_up

Rationale for vintage computing vs. single board computing

quorten

2019-10-20

Categories: vintage-computing   raspberry-pi   twitter  
Tags: vintage-computing   raspberry-pi   twitter  

Many times, I am challenged by a fellow engineer to explain why you’d want to do vintage computing rather than modern single-board computers. Thinking through this carefully, I have a rational explanation. Money talks. When you use basic electronics skills to make repairs to a vintage computer, you can easily estimate the difference in asset value before and after the servicing. Typically, even the most basic of servicing will grow the asset value.

If you find out that you’re not all that interested in playing with the vintage hardware, you can sell it at a profit. Alas, that alone is a motivator to buy another vintage computer in need of repair, practice your electronics skills, sell, and repeat. Single board computers, by contrast, require a much greater investment in engineering design and manufacturing labor in order to get into any market dynamic where a profit can be turned upon sale.

Very interesting modern 8-bit computer design

quorten

2019-10-20

Categories: vintage-computing   raspberry-pi   unlipic  
Tags: vintage-computing   raspberry-pi   unlipic  

Looking for a modern 8-bit vintage computer design? Look here at the Gigatron. Definitely it’s modern, and the design files are libre open-source under the two-clause BSD license.

There’s also a lot of design knowledge combined together in the design of this computer, check out the FAQ for some of the explanations.

Some notable design considerations.

  • There are no shift instructions because lookup tables are adequate and they don’t consume “much” memory for 8-bit operands… 1.25 KB is still quite a bit in my opinion, though, but they use a giant ROM.
  • There are no interrupts.
  • There is not status register, not even a carry flag, because the carry value is not too hard to compute in software. Also, RISC-V does likewise.

20191019/https://gigatron.io/
20191019/https://gigatron.io/?page_id=160

Lots of interesting articles from PetaPixels

quorten

2019-10-19

Categories: pentax-k-1-camera  
Tags: pentax-k-1-camera  

x Recently, I decided to revisit PetaPixel to look at one of the old good articles that I’ve saved. Along the way, I found some interesting newer articles too.

This is unfortunate, DSLR cameras from photojournalists were becoming a new favorite target among robbers in California. That’s hardly ever a problem in general, as I understand it.

20191018/https://petapixel.com/2015/08/15/sf-police-ask-public-for-help-in-solving-dslr-robbery/

This is a really great article about the problem with camera backpacks constantly being designed for “everyone” and “everything” as a one-size-fits all. With such an emphasis on mass marketing, it’s hard to sell more niche designs in smaller numbers, so they never really come onto the market.

20191018/https://petapixel.com/2019/10/16/the-problem-with-everybodys-bag-camera-backpacks/

This is an interesting article discussing taking wedding photos to save copies to two different SD cards and some of the counterpoints presented by other photographers.

20191018/https://petapixel.com/2019/10/16/is-it-irresponsible-to-shoot-a-wedding-on-a-single-memory-card/

Read on →

Lots of useful vintage computing and vintage Macintosh information

quorten

2019-10-19

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

Here is a variety of useful information I’ve gleaned from the 68kMLA forums, all rolled into a single blog article.

Want to know about what kind of PDS card is inside your Macintosh SE using software? Try installing TattleTech or SlotInfo from NewerTechs Gauge series.

20191020/https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/57374-asante-video-card-in-se30-apple-iigs-monitor/

Someone is looking for drivers on this CNET CN490e SCSI to Ethernet adapter, unfortunately they’re not getting much luck. Also, it’s not on the Vintage Apple drivers website.

20191018/https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/29792-driver-for-cnet-cn490e-scsi-to-ethernet-adapter/

Interesting story on repairing a Hard Disk 20 by lubricating the stepper motor shaft and giving it a good whack. Also there’s lots more great information on diagnosing and maintaining the HD20.

20191018/https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/31552-apple-hard-disk-20-repair-a-success-story/

Read on →

List and remove installed software via Powershell

quorten

2019-10-19

Categories: windows  
Tags: windows  

How do you uninstall software via Powershell on Windows? Here’s the lowdown. Unfortunately, there is a scatter-brain chaos here when it comes to Windows software install management. There are two ways to do this. The more “modern” way involves the Win32_package class in wmic.

Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_product
wmic product where "name='<SOFTWARE-NAME>'" uninstall

20191018/DuckDuckGo powershell remove software
20191018/https://devblogs.microsoft.com/scripting/use-powershell-to-find-and-uninstall-software/
20191018/DuckDuckGo wmic product where name remove
20191018/http://www.joseftschiggerl.name/2012/02/uninstall-programs-with-wmic/
20191018/DuckDuckGo powershell list installed software
20191018/https://www.maketecheasier.com/get-installed-software-list-windows/
20191018/windows 10 powershell list installed software
20191018/https://www.howtogeek.com/165293/how-to-get-a-list-of-software-installed-on-your-pc-with-a-single-command/

Read on →

Windows Powershell assign manual IP and enable PSRemoting

quorten

2019-10-19

Categories: windows  
Tags: windows  

Enabling winrm PSRemoting. Yes, that’s something we’ve done very frequently at a past company, alas in internal trade secret source code. Alas, I must be punctual to point out that it was simply copied from publicly available sources, so here I reference one of them. How to enable remote Powershell via winrm.

20191018/DuckDuckGo powershell configure winrm enable psremoting
20191018/https://labs.supinfochina.com/en/powershell-configure-winrm-and-enable-psremoting/

When in a hurry in some odd-ball circumstances, you way want to also assign a manual IP address in Powershell. Here’s how you do that.

20191018/DuckDuckGo windows powershell assign manual ip address
20191018/https://www.technig.com/configure-ip-address-using-powershell/

Ken Thompson's historic password now cracked

quorten

2019-10-19

Categories: misc  
Tags: misc  

This is interesting. An old passwords file was found in a BSD 3 source tree, and some modern folks proceeded to crack the password hashes inside the file. They were able to crack many of them, but Ken Thompson’s password remained elusive. A few years later, armed with more powerful computers, Ken Thompson’s password was finally cracked. It turned out to be a coded form of a common opening move in Chess. Ah, Ken Thompson, you thought you’ve picked among the most secure and uncrackable passwords, but now it was finally cracked.

Of course, chances are that Ken Thompson would have changed his Unix password many times since then, so no need for security worries.

20191018/https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/09/ken_thompsons_old_unix_password_cracked/

Mystery MacSE expansion card identity solved, still figuring out how to use it, misc. information on vintage computing

quorten

2019-10-15

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

So, the identity of the mystery card in the PDS slot of my Macintosh SE has been solved: it is the Micrographic Images Megascreen 3, Copyright 1987, designed by Gary Landis. So, the question that still remains, and some progress along the way. How do I use it? Where are the drivers for it? Also, I have some general notes on a lot of other useful miscellaneous information on vintage computing.

Here is another photo of the Megascreen 3 expansion card, though the board touts the same model number, it must be from a different manufacturing run, as the board finish, wire colors, and a jumper are all slightly different.

20191014/DuckDuckGo micrographic images megascreen 3
20191014/https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/56378-micrographic-megascreen-3-se-pds-video/

Here is some information about Micrographic images, namely one of their MacWorld full page ads.

20191014/DuckDuckGo 68kmla megascreen
20191014/https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/28653-ebay-finds-thread/&page=134&tab=comments#comment-593985

Here is a repository of classic Macintosh drivers, including video drivers. Presumably I could find the drivers for my particular card in there… alas, no!

Read on →