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  • nickt 520 days ago | parent | on: The Retro-Printer Module
    Thats neat, never come across anything like that before.
    • zxm 520 days ago
      i've only ever seen them twice. one my boss had and 1 on site at a engineers office.

      one of those obscure pieces of hardware around before the internet and apart from a few photos on auction sites doesn't exist online.

      https://www.tzsupplies.com/modular-technology-mt25-iv-interf.../

      and a 1 page pdf of the manual. https://docs.rs-online.com/e9af/0900766b8001aeab.pdf

  • nickt 522 days ago | parent | on: The Retro-Printer Module
    I remember seeing this a while ago, and my memory was jogged when reading this thread about Timex / Sinclair printers on the ZX World forums.

    https://www.sinclairzxworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=3589

  • nickt 539 days ago | parent | on: PINNACLE A modern tribute to the 1986 classic, Th...
    The Wikipedia article states, “The Sentinel has no ending sequence; upon completion of the last level, the player is looped back to level 1. When questioned about this, Crammond said he never thought anyone would go so far as to finish the game”

    That’s a fun reward!

  • nickt 539 days ago | parent | on: PINNACLE A modern tribute to the 1986 classic, Th...
    I played it on my Spectrum and Amiga. It’s one of those games that has a particular feeling, it always struck me as lonely and a little weird. TIL it was written originally for the Beeb. Also I didn’t know it was released as “The Sentry” in the US.

    There’s some download links for the C64 on this page at the very bottom, scroll down quickly to avoid gameplay spoilers! Looks like there are other remakes linked there too.

    https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/The_Sentinel

    • bmonkey325 539 days ago
      >>lonely and a little weird

      So you're saying the its a more fluid Myst for the C64/Amiga/Beeb.

      • nickt 539 days ago
        Exactly! Even the books felt like that.
  • nickt 541 days ago | parent | on: An arduino-based "spinner" game controller for Ark...
    That’s pretty cool, I might have a go at that.

    There’s also a mod for the Jaaaag for Tempest.

    https://www.retrorgb.com/jaguartempest.html

    • bmonkey325 540 days ago
      @nickt : you should submit this article, its a fascinating hack in its own right
    • bmonkey325 541 days ago
      Some games you need a spinner knob. Tempest with a joystick or D-Pad is just hard, not fun. I have often contemplated what Asteroids or Star Castle might be like with a spinner knob.
      • CrLf 541 days ago
        In the case of Asteroids (never tried Star Castle) none of the emulators that I'm using allow using a spinner.
        • bmonkey325 541 days ago
          This was more a thought experiment of what the UX might be like if it was possible. I am not even sure it would give an advantage or even be practical. I am certain there is no code that translates spinner position to left/right rotation.
  • nickt 545 days ago | parent | on: Trackstar: The Apple II clone inside an IBM PC
    LGR did a vid:

    https://youtu.be/A-6AKe2pvsQ

  • nickt 546 days ago | parent | on: My repair of an NEC MultiSync 3D CRT monitor
    The NECs are great, but my vote for best CRT would be the Eizo F56 or T57. Subjectively, I don’t think there’s a lot between the picture quality-wise, but we had fewer issues with the Eizos back in 1996. I fact, I liked them so much I bought 1200 of them! They had power saving features that meant they paid for themselves in about a year… Also, the degauss packed a real punch!
  • nickt 549 days ago | parent | on: IBM 360 model 20 rescue and restoration.
    Fantastic story. Very tempting!
  • nickt 572 days ago | parent | on: A ZX81 Replacement Mechanical Keyboard
    I have a couple of the Memotech keyboards, and for the time they were excellent [1]. I picked up one of David’s ZX key keyboards a couple of years ago and it’s also great. He has a fun read about the adventure of building this keyboard [2].

    [1] https://www.timexsinclair.com/product/memotech-keyboard/ [2] https://www.zx81keyboardadventure.com/2019/02/zx-key-externa...

  • nickt 588 days ago | parent | on: The History of the UNIX License Plate
    Ha! I couldn’t get DROP TABLE; either!
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