Pinned post
It looks like a #SDF #Mastodon update at the end of 2021 caused a number of instances from other parts of the #fediverse to lose follower/following status from SDF users. I lost about half of the accounts I was following and a somewhat smaller proportion of followers.
If I was following you, or you were following me, and the connection was lost, it wasn't intentional! Please re-follow or remind me that I used to follow. I'd hate to lose that good #retrocomputing or #floss content!
Ethan Blanton
boosted
Ugh. Vulnerability in basically all Linux machines since 2009.
It wouldn't boot the internal IDE optical drive, but it happily booted this external Panasonic portable SCSI drive. Who knows. It's only 4x, for some extra #retrocomputing authenticity.
Installing the BeOS, R4.5!
People say beige boxes are all the same, but that's at least four different colors of beige, and none of them match the case.
Also it quit booting from the CD drive, and I don't know why.
Apparently in 1997 I would read the #Linux Gazette and send help to people who wrote letters with questions, I found some nice thank-yous in an ancient email folder. Who knew?
I never came back to this ... but it was zeroing the (relative) extruder axis on layer change. It seems like the Ender 3 firmware I'm running can't handle that, and sometimes (but not always) crashes when it happens. I commented that out, and everything got better. Probably I should flash Marlin at some point.
Here I am with another #3dprinting project for #retrocomputing and the #DEC Multia.
Does your Multia fall over because the DEC plastic stand is broken or missing? Do you long for the days when your Multia stood up and ran without overheating? Print this base to relive the glory days!
Thanks to @cosullivan and @claudiom for sorting out what happened and the timeline.
It seems like it affected mostly instances running older versions of Fediverse software, and accounts that have manual follow approval, as I understand it.
It looks like a #SDF #Mastodon update at the end of 2021 caused a number of instances from other parts of the #fediverse to lose follower/following status from SDF users. I lost about half of the accounts I was following and a somewhat smaller proportion of followers.
If I was following you, or you were following me, and the connection was lost, it wasn't intentional! Please re-follow or remind me that I used to follow. I'd hate to lose that good #retrocomputing or #floss content!
The netinst installer doesn't ask all of its questions up front, though, which is annoying. It stopped after half an hour or so to ask me what debian mirror I wanted to use, then again ten or so minutes later to ask about popularity-contest.
So it turns out that the Debian i386 netinst installer requires > 256 MB of RAM to install. THE NETINST ISO. With 256 MB of RAM the graphical installer crashes with a cryptic message about "unable to copy", the non-graphical installer shows an error that it needs more RAM to continue, and the expert installer hangs silently.
a) How did we arrive at this dystopian juncture?
b) It's been a long time since I installed Debian fresh, the installer is actually really nice.
c) WHY?????
I haven't burned a CD in so long that I couldn't remember the name of the utility to burn CDs.
Now I'm burning a Debian 11 i386 disc for installation on a dual PII.
FreeCAD is very powerful, but I find it ... frustrating. For example, why can't I make a cube created in Part the active body in Part Design in order to fillet some of its edges? I'm sure there's a logical reason in the underlying model, but for a duffer it's just baffling.
Also, there's tons of free tutorial material out there on FreeCAD, but what I really need is some guidance on how to decide order of operations, and when to use sketches and pockets versus solids and cuts, etc.
Ethan Blanton
boosted
So our #DIYmedia and #DIYTV initiatives need developers.
I am an okay dev with no free time and a high opportunity cost for writing code, and I really don't get joy from it. Writing code accomplishes a goal.
I'm better off elsewhere.
That means I need to find (hire) a dev or three to work on some of the projects we need.
Are you a dev? Are you looking for contract work? Are you willing to do open source work for pay?
I don't know about you, but my DEC Multia's power switch had a coupling that didn't survive the decades. This, however, fixes that problem.
It's interesting. When I think about CP/M and CP/M systems, I have positive feelings about its value and the niche that it occupies in personal computing. Yet when I think about MS-DOS systems, I am preoccupied with how badly it fails to be Unix. I wonder what the difference is; is it that CP/M really does feel more like a minicomputer/microcomputer bare DOS, while DOS (with nested directories and redirection and such) seems like it's trying too hard? #retrocomputing
Tru64/Alpha anyone?
Sorry for the potato cam, I'm not sure why it came out quite so blurry.
It looks like I'm in the market for some moderately small (say, 1 to 20 GB?) SCSI hard disks. Mine seem to be giving up the ghost left and right. Maybe I should be looking into SCSI2SD or something.
I just opened a package from a fedi-friend and fellow vintage computer enthusiast and was immediately greeted by this brilliant surprise.
