How is everyone, far and wide..

Hoping Bev is starting to find the walking easier, hoping France etc are not so bad under lock down. I know Matt will be back in shorts any day now

Scotland is, well, Scotland, not sure if they notice when it gets better

Graham etc will be no doubt tinkering away somewhere...

Hoping everyone is well and safe..

Just remembered, how's Mum and Step dad Andy, calmed down?

Here remains the same, despite their official warning upstairs is still banging like a sh*thouse door, in some ways that is good because stage two letter will land sooner and then its Bye Bye...

Me and Cindy remain feeling tired, as I type Cindy is in bed 6ft away, keeping warm and having a sleep. Serena had some tests that were good outcomes but the Uni remains without proper WiFi which means she can't even do course work properly. Had a presentation today with another student and tutor but the other person's Wifi was down so it had to be cancelled and submitted as a PDF...Blooming silly..

At least Felix, our puss cat seems to have an unaltered life although he keeps a keen eye on the Kite that loves here. Clearly competition for the small animals now (and him if he gets silly)

Not played as much as I could have, shoulders painful but was pointed to a C64 variation on the Sophia 2, about the same price as well, there was another board that goes to S-Video that was cheaper but the only s-video I have is on a LED tv and I want it on my crt monitors, apparently the more expensive board that outputs component can be made to output RGB...

All very nice but they don't accept IOU's

Be well folks

A video chat at some point please...

 

Here at Chez Farrell, things are quiet. January is always a bad month for me due to some sad anniversaries but we carry on, the alternative is not an option.
Sonia is busy with work and spends most days in the spare bedroom/home office 7am-6pm so I am on my own for large parts of the day, even our two cats do one and leave me to my own devices during the day.

We are still waiting for our new neighbours to move in, our dear old friendly neighbour passed away late last year and her son sold the bungalow just before Christmas.

I have been playing with my FujiNet and having some fun on ICeTermXE and various BBS’es. I picked up a barebones Amstrad DDI-1 disk interface off feeBay which was listed as a Spectrum part. Needed a FDC chip but it seems to work. They normally go for £100 so this was a bargain. I am waiting on some PCB’s for some projects I have in the pipeline. The Quad OS boards arrive yesterday, and I’ve finished Andy’s 1541PiHAT, I just need to test the Pi Co/Pro board for the Beeb and finish the SuperSnapshot clone. So keeping busy.

 

Been working a lot from home this month so not had much of a chance (or inclination) to play with my retro gear so far.
I did load a Sega Saturn emulator on to my pc and have been really impressed with it. Actually prefer using that to my real Saturn that recently got sold!

In other news, my Christmas packages from America finally arrived last week. Knowing that I'm a bit of a Pacman collector my very awesome girlfriend got me one of the Arcade1up desktop versions of the coin-op. Then I found it also had Galaga as a second game which is my all time favourite arcade title

Hopefully going to get time later and sort out some N64 emulation and then sort out my 1040STFM which needs some Gotek refinements finished off.

 

We've had Siberian like cold-front the past two weeks with lows at night (and some days) down to -24 Celsius and a few days with highs of -16, averaging -9 to -12 most days. Our water lines eventually froze, even leaving them running and we had to fill up gallon jugs of water at the neighbors a 1/2 kilometer away in these temperatures.

The cold also did-in one of my tires on my Blazer, though it would refill with air, it went flat in about 20 min. I have a portable air compressor I keep in the truck. So we were pretty much stranded, roads were too icy and later snowy to get out for the first week. We finally got a small break in the weather (still frigid cold though) last Monday and were able to get into a tire shop and have two new rear tires installed ($190 installed, 15 inch rim,40 thousand mile tires). I really wanted to get their 80K Cooper tires, the next step up, but that step was twice as much for a pair. If it were next week, I could have afforded them, but I couldn't wait. With the new rear tires installed though, the four wheel drive handled the snowy and icy roads like a dream, and I put the anti-lock brakes to the test too!

But today we finally had a break in the temperatures and are back up to a high today 8.4c and climbing daily, reaching 20c by Tuesday. The Arctic front moved on to the north east and we are quickly getting back to our regular balmy temps for this time of year. Which we have to enjoy while we can. because buy May/June the regular highs will be 32-43c and humidity at 75-90%.

A break in the temperature wasn't the only things we ended up with breaks on though, because as the water pipes started thawing, water came gushing forth out the sides of several pipes that had burst. So we spent a temperate, but muddy day underneath the house, in the crawl space repairing pipes. We finished repairs about 2pm today, and we all took turns with are first showers in almost two weeks!

Since I had nothing better to do, I also ran through all my hot-spot data on my phone, and it wouldn't let me connect on my phone the last few days, I did get on, on occasion, with my mother's phone, but I think it's been a couple days since I last posted. Anyway, today I broke down and paid $50 for an extra 20g of hot-spot service. I basically through away ten days of service and now my end-date is ten days earlier. I do prepaid. I can of course still surf the net on my phone and stream videos, etc., just not use it as a hot-spot. Otherwise the data is unlimited for my phone.

On the bright side of the Internet provider galaxy, I received notification from Starlink, whom I had registered to be a beta-tester user saying we can now get it, guaranteed and up to a promised 100mbps usual, for $99 per month. This is great for where I live; Hughes net claimed 25mbps but the best I ever got from them was 5mbps, and on average 1.5mbps. Unreliable service and a bill that doubled to $160 after the two year contract was up. Which is why I got rid of them, and our Satellite TV provider too, similar circumstance. Starlink does say that since it is the beta-testing stage, that we will be subject to times of no service as the engineers shut-down to update.

I also spent the past couple weeks trying to learn to use all the features of all my Atari upgrades I've gotten over the past year or so; Incognito, Turbo Freezer, Fujinet, Pokeymax Quad + Covox and attempting to grasp all the features they had to offer that I haven't used yet. I haven't done much hardware hacking lately, or even used my 3D printer yet, though I did learn all about it, so I plan on my first printing imminently. Probably an upgrade piece for the 3D printer. There are about half a dozen that are apparently "essential."

 

I am currently printing out my very first 3D print. It's just a little figure of a puppy that came with other software on the memory card. I think it's suppose to be about 10 centimeters tall in the end. So far it's about the thickness of a penny, and growing taller, but I can already make out puppy paw prints that will be the bottom of the figure paws. If this is successful I'll start printing out some upgrade parts I have on file for the printer itself.

Then I'll start designing a new case for my XL/XE eprom burner. and after that, a new case for my first Syscheck 2.1 that I originally made a case for out of a cassette tape case. My Syscheck 2.2 XL that I made a case for out of a Commodore Vic modem case is just to good to not keep, IMHO. I also need a better case for my Turbo Freezer PBI board it plugs into, specially designed to be the right height for the PBI port on the back of my 800, which sits about 2 centimeters above the surface.

I already have a world of things in mind to print out for repairs, like some missing stereo knobs and knobs missing on my analog/digital trainer, and I just remembered, I need to take measurements on my 1200XL's side plate where the joysticks and cartridges go. The 1200XL case that @Timothy Kline so generously gave to me was missing this side plate.

 

Sounds like you have a few good projects for the printer Be keen to see the results!

 

Here is my first ever printing, the test dog. This is about 6 hours into it and it's about 3/4 done, but so far it looks like things are working great, so I'll be starting more productive print projects soon. I think it is cool how it builds up "scaffolding" towers around the main object to support it as it prints. It looks like a miniature of a Sphinx being built or something. It's intriguing to see the process.Click on the picture to zoom-in and see the "scaffolding" close up.

 

Sounds like you boys have been busy, nice setup for both of you, syscheck in place

Love all the Pac Man stuff, wish I had space / money for them.

I like the 3D printer but I'd just sit there printing Atari signs and Fuji's etc, use it for something creative, not a chance!

And again, where would I put it, my room corner is already so untidy and overcrowded..

 

I thought you might notice the Syscheck Paul
Not had a chance to try any games yet but got it set up as extra memory so hopefully in the next couple of days.

Whenver I went to any of the computer fairs down South I always tried to pick up a little Pacman bit. Started doing it with various keyrings as well. Thankfully I have a second bedroom that acts as my mancave so storage isn't much of an issue. Here's a couple of photo's of the rest of the cave

 

Wow, that's a lot of gear and all very nice too, I'd like a setup like it but the bedroom is my only room I can use (although I could now expand into Serena's room now she's at Uni but as I have no clue what the future hold for her the room stays as is. Hopefully she will be an amazing famous artist and buy us a cottage in the country

 

Yeah, no way you can touch Serena's room Paul, that's her place and she knows she can always come back to it when she needs to.

Plus, you need to keep her sweet until she gets you the cottage
And if there is any change I wouldn't mind a wee apartment down near Scarborough lol

 

And leave your beloved Scotland??

 

Well the SNP are determined to split us from the rest of the UK anyway...

Always had a love for Scarborough and the North Yorkshire coast. I could quite happily live there

 

Hi,fellas.

Good to hear I might be getting Al as a neighbour then soon - Scarborough just an hour or so away so bring on down your Pacman game collection, Al and we'll have a retro-match royale and see if I can actually clear the 1st couple of screens! Great pics of your personal poster collection and display of hand-helds, books, consoles and superb retro machines of an Atari vintage etc, buddy. Think we're all a tad envious there as you can see the effort that's gone in over a long period and also the joy you get from having it all set-up there on display - most cool indeed, Al.

Looks like Matt's been busy battling the elements and his 3D printer - which now looks to be working great guns with that doggy output and plenty of other cool jobs waiting in the wings. How you guys get through the extremes of weather you encounter there in Oklahoma I'll never know, Matt. It;s another world, fella, but you're a very practical bloke and you tackle the burst water pipes with the same energy and gusto and know-how as you do your electronic projects so I am sure you will have it all in hand and be fully up and running as of now, I hope.

Sorry to hear you've had a loada noisy neighbour encounters once more, Paul and I hope that Serena's college difficulties improve soon - maybe some of Boris' announcements tomorrow will give us all a sense of light at the end of the tunnel. Thank you (and Graham who text earlier) so much for asking about mam/her hubby and Bev. News there is that Bev is now walking unaided so her crutches and cast are now long gone and she's now building up from 1 short walk a day to 2-3 medium walks AND a physio workout on her bike so she is doing that well now that I am having trouble keeping up with her! She is about to start a phased return to work, I am heading back to the office too and we have had french doors/windows installed here but of course there were 1-2 issues with... bits falling off, drops of tar stuck to the glass and the ruddy door handles not working very well. On top of this my step dad is failing with his vision and mental issues (hallucinating and becoming increasingly more paranoid) plus our old mate Les is now having palliative care for her bone cancer - Macmillan nurses going in but not enough to provide all round care that she needs so I am trying to bridge the gaps there. At least mam got her covid vac jab as has Bev. Think I'll be the last one in UK as they say I have tested Oric positive and they don't like the look of the results one bit!

Richie too has been busy with his retro bits: nice work acquiring an affordable DD1 interface for your Amstrad, mate, and also having some fun with Fujinet and various other Pi projects (thanks for your work related to that 1541 device for me, pal). I just hope your new neighbours turn out to be far better than Paul's above and once more sorry to hear of the loss of that dear old lass who had lived there for a very long time as I know you guys all got along just great - what price good neighbours and sanity, eh, guys?

Reet, sincerely hope you're all keeping well and I hope to be back on board here and get a video chat up and running with you all soon. It's been a bit mad this end lately and it will continue to be so for probably the next week or two but I look forward to getting more involved again soon. The stairway up to the loft and new radiators are Bev's next home improvement goals so when that's finally done, I;m hoping things will settle down and i can get some of my machines back up and running and enjoy our hobby once more.

Take care, fellas.

 

So good to hear Bev is making good progress, not so good about the Step dad but nature is cruel. What will Boris and our other respective leaders do, who knows, it's been such a muddle around the world with places like Tanzania claiming they can cure it with a vegetable puree and that the virus is not as deadly as said, tell that to all the dead and suffering.

My neighbours are arseholes but I've been through a lot worse over my life, I'll still be here when they get booted out

Nice to see positive thoughts out there...

Y'all stay safe....(my best Dukes of Hazzard impression)

Oh god, daisy in those shorts...Back in a min.....

 

Thanks again, Paul.
Much appreciated.
As you say, life's cruel and there's always someone somewhere suffering and it makes our own personal problems pale into much less significance.
Take care and I'm taking Daisy Duke thoughts topside now too...just hope Bev comprehends when I start whooping for no particular reason...!

 

It's not the Whooping that will worry her...

That woman's legs just went on forever...

 

Can't say I ever noticed, mate...





WAHAY!!!

 

Now where is that hand cream and tissues

 

Just saying, time hasn’t been kind if you look online. Might cool you off a bit.

 

Spoilsport!

 

I’ll get me coat

 

Sadly I can't get my coat, since I ripped it a month or so ago I have been unable to buy one, all the styles in George are for drug dealers or kids, bloody puffa jackets..

Can't buy online as I have long arms and the sizes can't be trusted..

C'mon shops, open!!!

 

Just treated mesen to a 70s/80s snorkel jacket, lads.

Whaddya think, Paul??!!




You could disappear for a weekend in one of these.

 

But having to explain that you are not a kiddy fiddler must get boring..Its the exact look...(I'm told)