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penguin42

penguin42@mastodon.org.uk

<p>Chocolate eating computer geek, Manchester, UK<br />[ searchable ]</p>

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    Got myself a selection of small resistors for making dummy load for a PSU, and a few more random ones - don&amp;#39;t see the silver band much! (I&amp;#39;ve got to say Rapid electronics in the UK was - ordered just before 4pm yesterday,delivered before 2pm today on standard delivery). #electronics

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    UK currently exporting more than we&amp;#39;re fossil-fuel generating. (Thanks to grid.iamkate.com)

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    Watched Clifford Stoll&amp;#39;s Defcon talk last night; he&amp;#39;s wonderfully insane and animated enough to probably cause the camera operator nightmares. I read his original book on this back when it came out around 89/90, just as I was learning Unix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=656058JxTM0

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    a race condition: Preliminary NATS report on the outage that took out UK air traffic control for a few hours - they had a race condition of some type where a higher priority task triggering during a normal squawk code allocation caused a corruption and it gently fell to bits over a few hours. Full report ~month or so; prelim report: https://www.nats.aero/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/NATS-Preliminary-Investigation-Report-into-NAS-Incident-on-08-Sept-2026-Issued-16-Sept-2026.pdf

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    Ooh, that&#39;s getting there.... This is a BBC B captured with the RGB wired directly to a PICO GPIO and advertising USB video; now hmm, wtf is it backwards. (It&#39;s yellow because I ahem need to put the blue pin in the right place). I&#39;ve not properly done sync yet and it&#39;s not bad!

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    Got one of my Sun3&#39;s open - no life yet - but they don&#39;t look too bad; look at that BBC Engineering sticker; and they&#39;re neighbouring serial numbers on the machines - these are siblings! Few fun board bodges. #retrocomputing #suntember

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    Toolstation sell M5 bolts in 25 or 30 packs; they sell the nuts in 100 packs. Grrr.

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    I love that there&#39;s a Linux /sys file where you can tell which way up your USB-C connector is. Anyone know of anything that displays all that type of thing? Connector, USB mode, power delivery, etc etc?

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    #radio4 Does anyone know when Droitwich itself is being switched off - I heard it&#39;s 30th - but when?

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    @jann@infosec.exchange Not to mention own rules, own preferences for when to submit patches, what type of things to worry about etc etc.

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    @airlied@floss.social There&#39;s quite a few &#39;balance&#39; checks there for locking etc - how are you finding it compared to static analysers? Has it spotted anything juicy?

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    @connections@tacobelllabs.net I hate to think why the algorithm connects you to the USCSB stuff; perhaps it&#39;s time just to check all your cleaning chemicals are properly stashed...

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    @freedosproject@fosstodon.org #libreoffice &#39;s doc team starting point is https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development

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    @johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz Some clocks in Hebrew clocks also run the opposite way, following the writing - but not all.

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    @EricFielding@mastodon.social Now I want to know how a bunch of bit failures ended up with such a small but well characterised error. I&#39;m more used to things like that ending up with either (a crash) or (touching memory the program doesn&#39;t use)

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    @vathpela@infosec.exchange The requirement for 2+ jobs from the Tiobe top 20 is fun - knowing &#39;scratch&#39; and perl should do then.

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    This teardown of the remains of an Iranian drones camera set is fascinating; it&amp;#39;s almost all COTS/aliexpress boards - with a bit of conformal coating for good luck. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CXfxhH8n00

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    My Greaseweazel arrived today - in a conveniently sized cardboard box - which it was easy enough to mount it in. #retrocomputing

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    Does anyone have any service manuals/schematics/etc forr NEC fd1055 (or fd1050/1053) 5.25&amp;quot; floppy drives? I&amp;#39;ve got one that&amp;#39;s giving a disk fault 18 - which I think is not reading a sector so could be anything from alignment upwards; but occasionally gives a drive fault 10 (index sensor??) But then again it could be the beeb it&amp;#39;s attached to; so hmm suggestions welcome. #retrocomputing

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    It seems crazy that ATC people have to *talk* to each pilot in a busy airspace to tell them how to turn or which runway to land on etc when I thought they all have digital comms anyway; you&amp;#39;d think you could get it that the ATC would only have to speak to people when there&amp;#39;s issues.

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    Hth does a Cumana set of dual 5.25&amp;quot; half-height drives weigh 5.8kg? It&amp;#39;s got two separate (small) transformers for some reason; did NEC make the drives out of depleted uranium? #retrocomputing

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    I can see why &amp;#39;SpeedPAK&amp;#39; emphasises the speed to pack, and not the speed to deliver.

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    /me tries the &amp;#39;strawberry&amp;#39; music player rather than &amp;#39;Rhythmbox which I&amp;#39;ve been using for a few years.

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    I discovered &amp;#39;playerctl&amp;#39; last night - a linux util that sends mpris commands to start/stop/etc music players; quite nice.

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    The mark 1 junk box foot pedal is coming together:

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    These chunky toggle switches are nice - they can have upto 4 sets of contacts, each of which seem to have a bunch of poles each. These are momentary but there are some latching. Given the &amp;#39;under license from Ericsson&amp;#39; label I assume they came off some comms kit originally. Now, I&amp;#39;ve just got to figure out how to mount them to something other than a panel. #electronics

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    Right, my hacky #esp32 #rustlang code can now send key strokes over usb; I&amp;#39;m doing it synchronously and using usbd_hid; which is working OK (I need to add some debounce). Hmm but not terrible.