Tomb💀Time

twitch.tvtubetimeus - Live on TwitchVideo Pattern Generator Design | Streaming science & technology.

12h

want to see me design something in KiCad? here's my livestream! twitch.tv/tubetimeus

little-known fact: the worst video game ever, E.T., was even more difficult to play on the HP LaserJet.

i found some bugs so i called up Atari and they just told me "What You See Is What You Get"

the game was never cloned. the copiers couldn't reproduce it.

little-known fact: the worst video game ever, E.T., was even more difficult to play on the HP LaserJet.

there was a far better game available for this platform. it was a port of the arcade game "paperboy"

oddly, it never had an online version. it was print-only.

little-known fact: the worst video game ever, E.T., was even more difficult to play on the HP LaserJet.

i was so excited when i got this as a child. a game you could play WITH LASERS

in this version, E.T. was actually named Larry. Larry Page.

little-known fact: the worst video game ever, E.T., was even more difficult to play on the HP LaserJet.

printer: INVALID FONT CARTRIDGE me: but E.T. had a full recovery!

childhood memories. the smell of the toner, the whir of the fans, the anticipation of the page warmly curling out of the output rollers -- had i fallen into a pit again?

little-known fact: the worst video game ever, E.T., was even more difficult to play on the HP LaserJet.

but the font was OUT OF THIS WORLD see @ruenahcmohr.bsky.social that's how it's done.

i wish you all could try this yourselves but the game is out of print

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gloriouscow.bsky.social

@gloriouscow.bsky.social

This is a photo of Intel engineers working on the CAD design for the Intel 80286 CPU. I was drawn to the image on the right - since we have high resolution die photos, could we actually find what part of the CPU he was working on? Yes, we can #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #reverseengineering

@politicdormouse.bsky.social

this is the 1960s version of "4"

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The Spaceshipper 🚀

@thespaceshipper.com

One of my favorite sci-fi shows of the decade—of the century!—is celebrating its third anniversary today. Scavengers Reign was a shooting star🌠, poorly supported by HBO Max and then Netflix (as it was only available in a handful of countries), but I'm so glad this one season exists.

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Ceryl

Maria Artini 1894-1951 #Italian engineer 1918 1st woman electrical engineering uni graduate in Italy 2nd woman graduate @ Polytec Uni of Milan. Worked 4 Edison energy @ #Milan helped design & construct country's 1st high-voltage (130 kV) power line in Brugherio-Parma en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_A...

multiconductor color-striped cable has gotten so expensive i've taken to buying cheaper wire and adding my own stripes with paint pens.

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Ken Shirriff

@righto.com

I opened up a mystery chip; it turned out to be a "switched capacitor filter" from 1984. Filters are important circuits, for example, adjusting the bass or treble in an audio signal. This chip, the MF10, was popular because it combined two filters into an easy-to-use chip. Let's take a closer look…

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Tom Verbeure

@tomverbeure.bsky.social

This is a long shot, but I'm looking for a TDS3EM Ethernet extension card for a Tektronix TDS3000(B) series oscilloscope like the one shown. I only need it for about a few hours. If anyone in the SF Bay Area has one and willing to loan it or to allow me do my thing at their place, let me know!

-196°F is such an oddly specific temperature--oh! i get it. can you figure it out?

This post is unavailable.

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Kevin Santo Cappuccio

@jumperless.org

Turns out you can get laser cut sheet metal ~10x cheaper by pretending it's a solder paste stencil and ordering from @jlcpcb.bsky.social. Suck it, SendCutSend!

over on Mastodon, i've been fixing up an Attitude Director Indicator (probably from a F-4 Phantom II fighter jet). well, today, i got the cockpit illumination working! mastodon.social/@tubetime/11...

@mattiasadolfsson.bsky.social

fun trivia for Open Circuits (our book): Windell and I drew all the little symbols for the endsheets about a week before we went to print. they represent many of the electrical components featured in the book. i found an early draft, can you spot any differences?

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Mattias Adolfsson

Electric

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ʟᴜɪs ʜᴇʀɴᴀɴᴅᴇᴢ ⚡

@beetlenaut.bsky.social

30 Oct 2025

Jazzpunk themed Pentode-O-Lantern

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Chris Satterfield

@compgeke.com

You can just do stuff and no one can stop you

outsidewolves 🔜 FC@outsidewolves.bsky.social

#computer #tractor_feed #trypophobia

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Crazy Eddie's Used Computers

@dectape.bsky.social

Spent the afternoon cleaning up the basement in an attempt to find this set of drawings. I found it, finally, in a box in a forgotten corner. And even better, the drawings match the revision of the hardware I have to debug. Also: what a lovely bit of art on the cover.

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Peter Fletcher

@rectapete.bsky.social

With the A.I. companies buying up all of the computer storage these days, I'd like to offer up the solution we used in the 1980's to double our storage for free. You are welcome. #old

(xpost from Mastodon) mini-repair monday: my EGA monitor has been slowly fading away over the past few years. at VCF West this year it was too dim to use and i had to borrow one. but let's go fix it now!

ok, so i swapped in a new resistor, and it's now way brighter! the filament voltage is about 6.5, so it's about 3% high, but that should be ok. (i preemptively backed the screen voltage adjustment WAY down to around 410V so i wouldn't damage anything)

my guess is that the resistor is supposed to act as a ballast when the heater has a low resistance due to being cold when it first powers up. at some point it drifted up to a higher value and reduced the filament voltage to the point where emissions was just too low to be visible.

the green crud on the resistor made me suspicious, so i pulled the resistor. what value do you think it is?

the sams manual says it is 0.56 ohms. it measures 5.6 ohms. and the color code says 0.56, since the silver band divides by 100. not sure about the brown band, maybe it's 1% or maybe it's a damaged gold band.

hmm, the filter cap looks pretty crusty. maybe that failed. the diodes and the 1.2 ohm resistors also seem ok.

the capacitor tests just fine, and there's no evidence of electrolyte leakage. this brown crust looks like it used to be staking compound to hold the caps in place (staking snot?)

oh, hmm, the filament voltage is low, it's like 3.9V. it should be more like 6.3V. that would definitely explain the behavior--the emissions is too low for all 3 electron guns.

the circuit is pretty simple. it's a winding on the main transformer that goes through half-wave rectification, some series resistors, two filter caps, and another series resistor. what could possibly be wrong?

the rgb cathodes are slightly low at 75V but that might also be my pattern generator. anyhow that wouldn't explain why *all three guns* are dim.

based on the fact this monitor is super clean and has zero burn in, i suspect the CRT is fairly low hours, so it's probably OK.

fortunately i have the sams manual for it.

all the power supplies seem OK. the big red wire measures 22KV which is right on the money. the screen is quite high at 800V but only because i had it cranked all the way up to try and get some brightness out of it.

18 Sept

new book just landed on my bench: The Secret Life of Circuits, by @lcamtuf ! (soldering iron not included)

18 Sept

it has some neat illustrations, including this one of a toilet. (the book makes a point about avoiding any form of the water analogy)

15 Sept

ahh so THAT's how the Martian gets the melons.

Louis Koziarz@koziarz.com

Obscure Pinball 2000 artifact I found in a box today: a custom boot ROM for the SMC8416 network card in our development machines. This would allow us to boot CPUs over the network during development, as well as other things we had planned. 🙁