Lab Notes

Epson HX-20

April 11, 2020

Part of my brain is all like, move your retro computers to the storage unit so we have room to breathe while we’re cooped up in this house, and another part is like

Floppy cleaning experiment

March 8, 2020

Experiment time! Will cleaning these old floppy disks with rubbing alcohol make them readable? (photo thread)

Fujitsu Lifebook U810

February 29, 2020

It’s the Fujitsu Lifebook U810, a tiny palmtop from 2007! Water bottle for scale. 5-1/2” screen does 640x480 and Windows XP is not configured to scale so everything is super tiny. Intel 910GU Express 800 MHz, 1 GB RAM, 4200 RPM mechanical hard drive 40 GB.

3-2-1 Contact magazine, June 1988

February 17, 2020

3-2-1 Contact magazine, June 1988. They published BASIC type-in programs in a section in the back, including “Where’s the Beef?” by Dan Sanderson, age 9.

My first Speccy!

December 19, 2019

My first Speccy! This is a fully restored Sinclair ZX Spectrum with new case, rainbow LEDs, and composite video modifications, by the great @ByteDelightCom. I’ve ignored Speccies for so long but they’re actually quite charming.

Some Commodore disk drives

November 24, 2019

.@8BitShowAndTell ‘s new CBM disk drive video is well timed for me as I just got a few drives for a disk duplication project.

Viewmaster estate sale haul!

November 4, 2019

Finally got a chance to play with the stuff I got from this estate sale. Thanks again @cabel for the tip. Photo thread: twitter.com/cabel/status/1…

Retro Gaming Expo 2019

October 20, 2019

Just a few photos from @RetroGamingExpo, starting with this stunning 1942 mini cab by @sengbusch. Real CRT, original board (no emu!), 40% size. Extremely fluid play (because it’s real!) and solid mini controls.

Blackmagic eGPU + Looking Glass + MacBook Pro

October 5, 2019

Blackmagic eGPU + Looking Glass + MacBook Pro = I can finally use this thing with my laptop with good performance! And yes the Mac build of Voxatron knows how to use it!

Exploring the UWCUG disk hoard

September 14, 2019

Finally cracking open the disk hoard from last week. Of the first nine (9) disks chosen at random, only one (1) was readable. Not surprising, but it’s making me balance the value of my time against the possibility that I find something interesting that isn’t already a d64 online.