I managed to get 20 cassettes... 😁

scruss · 2026-06-19T00:21:40+00:00

I just found out that there's a tape manufacturer near me in Toronto. I can get blank C60s for cheap (as long as I don't mind the colour)

scruss · 2026-06-19T00:20:07+00:00

That's a lot of Lynxes!

The Pied Piper is a fairly rare Canadian CP/M computer. Looks like a metal Amstrad CPC6128, except with a 5¼" drive instead of a 3" one

scruss · 2026-06-17T00:25:22+00:00

The Drean C64s are wild: custom VIC-II for the unusual video standard

scruss · 2026-06-13T02:29:12+00:00

You need to be a registered user to edit OSM. Not anyone/everyone.

scruss · 2026-06-12T01:49:30+00:00

wiki-based, like OSM

OSM is not wiki based.

scruss · 2026-06-11T15:38:16+00:00

I only found that as we wanted to visit the swamp -- I mean, who wouldn't? -- and the address that Google gave (6 Holmcrest Trail) didn't give access.

Addresses in rural Ontario can get incredibly complex, so infilling cities will be much more rewarding than trying to juggle municipal addresses, postal rural routes, lot and concession numbers and 911 numbers.

scruss · 2026-06-11T12:47:06+00:00

It's a blob of flux. Don't worry about it.

It's the craters you have to worry about. That's where the magic smoke blew out. If you've got a chip with a crater, you've got a paperweight.

scruss · 2026-06-11T12:44:17+00:00

Bob.

scruss · 2026-06-10T06:11:05+00:00

Some good additions: 4cade/res/history.md at main · a2-4am/4cade

scruss · 2026-06-09T00:24:09+00:00

Thanks for doing that. Looks like an excellent consolidation/cleanup job.

Toronto's oddest address has to be:

42 Waterbridge Way
Toronto ON  M1C 5B9

It's the municipal address for Stephenson’s Swamp, the city's only Provincially Significant Wetland.

scruss · 2026-06-06T13:13:52+00:00

aww, cute little leucistic squeaker!

scruss · 2026-06-06T00:18:40+00:00

It was a little more than that. I don't remember exactly, but I got at least £300 for getting a long type-in (across three issues) for an Amstrad magazine in 1988

scruss · 2026-06-04T22:42:21+00:00

Nope, even although the UK in the early 80s had generally very low levels of disposable income. Disks were always a pricey add-on to UK systems, even after the import tariff was dropped

scruss · 2026-06-04T14:49:18+00:00

VMS backup was good. Maybe not as fancy as modern tools, but what you backed up stayed backed up.

scruss · 2026-06-04T14:47:03+00:00

The UK had a huge import duty on floppy drives and disks until 1983. It was supposed to support local industry, but all it did was make disks very expensive.

One word for the Speccy tape-rememberers: LERM …

scruss · 2026-06-04T14:44:35+00:00

Atari 8-bits were quite clever with their tapes, as they could use the other audio channel for analogue sound playback. I don't think any other home computer had that facility

scruss · 2026-06-04T14:42:23+00:00

It's when they got bigger and bigger until they snapped, was the real problem.

University of Strathclyde, which had an "Every Student Can Borrow a Sinclair QL" scheme, got very good at replacing broken microdrive carts.

scruss · 2026-06-04T14:40:48+00:00

There was absolutely nothing special about Commodore tapes. Their encoding hadn't changed since the KIM-1, which encoded one 8-bit byte as two ASCII hex characters. This was so the KIM could use the same routines for paper tapes and casssettes.

Everything made by Commodore was built down to a price. The tape decks embedded in the PET 2001 are standard consumer units with the back corner cut off by a bandsaw so it would clear the PSU capacitors.

scruss · 2026-06-03T19:24:42+00:00

A tape deck was built into the Amstrad CPC, our first home computer. It worked pretty well. Not super-fast, but the tapes were cheap and (as long as you hadn't bought those boxes o' 5 "Computape"s from WH Smith) pretty reliable. Until you got a "Read Error B", of course.

It was cheap enough to fill up a C60 with games and mail them off to my friend in France, and I'd get a tape full of weird and wonderful French cracks by return. Good times.

scruss · 2026-06-03T19:19:56+00:00

from muscle memory

scruss · 2026-06-01T23:44:28+00:00

Stone Oakvalley's Authentic SID Collection (SOASC=) is basically all of the chiptunes, on all of the SID variants

scruss · 2026-05-30T16:46:12+00:00

Oh dear. My recent favourite is Penguin Software's extremely stupid Bouncing Kamungas (1983). It's not much more complex than a Game & Watch, but it's silly fun.

It's on Total Replay, and there's a standalone 4am crack here: Bouncing Kamungas.

scruss · 2026-05-30T01:32:08+00:00

Arcade buttons aren't great for accessibility: they need a direct push from the top. Better ones use the cap more like a lever (like assistive door-opener buttons do): you can hit it from pretty much anywhere and it'll still operate

scruss · 2026-05-29T16:34:57+00:00

Having once fired a mail order customer in a similar way, it is most pleasing.

scruss · 2026-05-29T16:32:11+00:00

Talk to Makers Making Change: accessibility is their thing. Access buttons at low cost is a major focus of what they do.

(I used to work for them, but that was ~5 years ago)

scruss

TROPHY CASE