This piece was written for Personal Computer World – I presume in 1989 when WordStar 5 appeared. Note the bit about needing 512K of memory – you have been warned! I also discovered from some text I’d originally included at the beginning that my old Telecom Gold (aka BT Gold) address was 10074:MIK031. This was, of course, in the days when ordinary… Read more »
Another old article dragged from the archives, and again with an aviation theme. This one was written for Pilot magazine in the UK and was published, I would guess, in 1991 (I got my Private Pilot’s Licence in 1990). I still occasionally pine for the old days of the Bulletin Board System (BBS) and CIX. And yes, I’m aware that there… Read more »
Having discovered a trove of my old files on an archive disk, I naturally wanted to read them – and post some of them here. I’ve already written about how I went about converting the files. In the process, I had a chance to catch up with a couple of old friends. I use a FreeDOS VM running under VirtualBox… Read more »
This is another piece from my archives. This was written for Personal Computer World magazine, published in the UK by VNU. It followed on from the one on fly-by-wire, so I’m going to guess this piece appeared in 1991. By that time I was doing a lot of work for IBM, especially its RS/6000 and AIX division which was engaged on… Read more »
Recently I discovered a cache of articles I’d written for (mostly) computer magazines back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I’m going to be sharing the more interesting ones here (the first is already online). These pieces were written for a range of magazines, including Personal Computer World, Micro Decision, What PC? and something called PC Amstrad. Not only had the existence of… Read more »
Recently I discovered an archive of past work, including a handful of tech features. I guess these come under the heading of ‘vintage’ now, so I figured I’d share them here. In the late 1980s and early 1990s I wrote for a number of computer magazines. I’ve kept very few of the articles, alas, so this is a rare survivor…. Read more »
I have a mouse problem. I don’t mean the house is overrun with small rodents. (Well, it is, but that’s another story.) No, the problem is that the conventional computer mouse has become a pain to use. I have osteoarthritis in most of my joints. The hands are especially bad. Indeed, one of the things that has driven me back to… Read more »
This was not a serious purchase. I bought this keyboard purely for its looks. I mean, why wouldn’t you? The version I opted for came with retro-style keycaps that mimic a 1920s or 1930s typewriter. They look fantastic with a retro-styled project such as my HMV1960 Raspberry Pi case. Are they great for typing? Not so much. Because of the… Read more »
There seems to be an obsession with many mechanical keyboard enthusiasts to make the keyboard as small as possible. I can go along with this only so far. As you can see here and here, I’m already a fan of the tenkeyless (TKL) form factor, which dispenses with the number pad but keeps everything else. The KB Paradise V60 takes… Read more »
The Das Keyboard 4C impressed the hell out of me when I first got it. But over time, as I’ve become more familiar with mechanical keyboards and what they’re capable of, disillusionment has set in. Having decided to explore the idea of using a mechanical keyboard I started trawling the interwebz, as one does, and the name of Das Keyboard… Read more »
There is a world that most people know nothing about. It is home to a motley assortment of obsessives. Welcome to the dark and sometimes noisy domain of mechanical keyboard enthusiasts. I had no idea this subculture existed until my painfully progressing arthritis spurred me to seek out alternatives to the standard Apple keyboard that came with my iMac. More than… Read more »
GPS seems an almost mundane technology these days. It’s in your smartphone and possibly your camera. You can buy cheap GPS receivers to work with your Arduino or Raspberry Pi so that robot you never seem to have time to build never gets lost (or is that just me?). But yes, I am old enough to remember when the Global… Read more »
I remember well the first time our family got a computing device. Dad brought it home in his jacket pocket. This was probably 1971 or 72. It was a slide rule made, I think, by Faber Castell. Dad was a work study (time and motion) manager at a pharmaceutical firm. He used the slide rule, I suppose, for working out… Read more »
It’s occurred to me that I somewhat jumped the gun when I wrote a blog post a while back about interrupts on AVR ATMEGA microcontrollers. Maybe it would be useful to take a step back. This series is part of my learning process and I hope it will help others who, like me, are embarking on projects such as programming… Read more »
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking … he really should get on with building the damn computer. But I have a thing about fonts, so sue me. I was rather pleased with the original Zolatron 64 logo. I chose a font called Eurostyle because it was the most 1970s-looking one on my machine. Then I read about the history of… Read more »