Seth "Twylo" Morabito @twylo@mastodon.sdf.org

I mean, unless someone REALLY clever knows how to design a DDR DRAM replacement, but since there's no clock running to the memory, I assume that's impossible.

I might need some help from smart people who Actually Know Electronics™ soon. I want to build new memory modules for the 3B2 computer, since you can't find them for love or money. Unfortunately, a reliable source for 5V asynchronous DRAM ICs is unobtainium now, so I'd like to design a replacement around SRAM. Latching the RAS and CAS lines with the right timings sounds trickier than anything I've done to this point. Help?

It has come to my attention that AT&T's "Writer's Workbench" software from 1984 installs the files /usr/lib/wwb/sexwords.d and /usr/lib/wwb/sexsugg.d, and now I must know what these are.

I'm trying out the DREM MFM hard disk emulator in my 3B2/310. So far so good, but I'm only up to track 550 out of 1224. The other problem will be mounting — I'm going to have to print a 5.25" to 3.5" hard drive mounting bracket for it.

It works! I have completed initial work on the Math Acceleration Unit for the 3B2/400 simulator. Still rough around the edges, but I haven't found any egregious errors yet, and it passes all diagnostics.

New post on my Patreon: "The State of the MAU" https://www.patreon.com/posts/27410319

I got to see a copy of my favorite Renaissance printed book today, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, at the British Library!

I've been in the UK since last Wednesday and I think I'm finally over my jetlag? Man, bodies suck.

I'm really into this thing and I won't shut up about it.

I put the Debian 10 RC on my main workstation, and — knock on wood — it's been rock solid so far. I'm incredibly happy with it. The only major modification I've done has been replacing Gnome with i3wm.

Believe it or not, after 26 years of constant Linux use, this is my first time running Debian. It's a great first impression. If you're on the Debian team, please let me buy you a beer, won't you?

So I'm pretty late to the game, here, but this weekend I finally finished putting together my Prusa 3D printer. I went through calibration and some minor accidents today, and at long last I'm having fun with 3D printing. Even my Benchy went pretty well once I had first layer calibration dialed in.

Why did I wait so long?

Anyway, I think the future is going to get worse before it gets better in regards to how your information is managed, stores, and abused by companies. That's not a controversial opinion, I'm sure.

In general, the current state of "smart home" technology is extraordinarily hostile to doing your own stuff. Everything wants internet access, everything wants to store your data in the cloud somewhere, everything wants to treat you like a product. This grand experiment of ours where we try to have a smart home, but control 100% of our own data, is REALLY EYE OPENING.

Over the last few weeks we have been trying to build an "Intranet of Things" smart home. We have replaced many of our light switches with TP Link smart switches, for example. Critically, though, we have every smart device on a firewalled 802.11n network with NO ROUTE to the public Internet. All devices are denied access to their precious cloud.

Manufacturers do not make this easy. TP Link setup just barely works without Internet access, but it does, if you jump through some hoops.

Hey remember when the World Wide Web was a hyperlinked document storage engine? I remember that. That was really cool. I miss hyperlinked document storage engines.

I'm deep in the middle of porting parts of the SoftFloat 2c library to SIMH so I can use them in the 3B2 math accelerator implementation, and this is the most tedious work I've done in ages. I hate it. This is Not Fun™.

BRB, disrupting email with the blockchain.

I hate Google for effectively destroying the ability to self host an email server. You simply can't anymore. I mean, feel free to try, but be prepared to have half of your outbound messages dropped or rejected. And that's AFTER setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.