Santo Nucifora 🇨🇦

Both of my DEC DTC01 Voice synthesis units are working great now. As such, I put a little demo of one of them singing Jingle Bells for the holiday season and #DOScember. Using an IBM PC AT and Telix for scripting. youtu.be/n5BuiTxDFHY #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #DEC

Good luck @bzotto Count me in, of course. We need to talk about one of those Sphere mugs at some point as it's not available up in Canada.

@tschak Most of these systems are voice activated. When you pick up the phone, don't speak. If you hear silence, wait until the system hangs up. They likely won't call again. If you do speak, it will connect you to an telemarketer standing by and keep your number for the next time.

23 fucking spam calls, in the space of 33 minutes. It's now a normal occurrence for me to repeatedly tell telemarketers to go fuck themselves.

@MarkJCarney, I don't know what @JustinTrudeau future plans are but consider a "Special Ambassador to the US" role specifically for the Canada and US Trade War. Not that you can't handle it but it will piss off POTUS. I am happy to pay more to live in Canada.

Very excited to have one of the pictures of my Commodore 8296 from my website as the cover image of a new Japanese book on "Computer Nostalgia: Product Design for Early Personal Computers", I think. I wish I could read Japanese :) Looks like a great book.

@OnyxCrack No, I've only had 3 KIM-1s with bad RAM out of 9 so far. I have replace a couple of digit displays as they had bad segments as well but otherwise, I've had good luck with them.

@MrGoodBits I thought all of them had damaged ram chips.. even the Vic 20 and Commodore 64 had bad ram on one half of the bank.

This KIM-1 drove me crazy. With two bad RAM chips (one seemingly intermittent) and a bad display digit, it’s finally working. Now all if my KIM-1s are working for the first time.

@w1ngselec @CelGenStudios I would guess this is the bus version. You need the right card. My 9 pin connector is slightly different.

Big thanks to @w1ngselec for giving the me the chance to photograph the rare Microsoft Green Eye Mouse

@CelGenStudios Hrmm... I have both serial and bus mouse. I've never taken them apart. I would guess there was a difference internally between the two?

Same for the inside. Has anyone ever photographed the inside of one of these things? Two infinite rotation potentiometers for X/Y, two switches for the buttons, three floating ball bearings for rolling and the main mouse ball is...well it's a metal ball.

I think my definition of “LongLife” might be slightly different than these capacitors. This is from a Tandy Sensation power supply that would not power up. I can see why.

@leonkiriliuk I've had this happen before. The only scam I could come up with, other than those who just forgot they ordered stuff, is that the buyer is giving the seller an interest free loan for a month or so.

There seems to be a growing trend on AliExpress. Sellers post an item, they don't really have it, and they eventually issue a fake tracking number. They give up trying to find the item and you get a refund a month after purchase and getting AE involved. Happened 3 times now.

Here are some unused ceramic dual inline packages for integrated circuits. I have a few wafers in my collection, why not DIPs too?

@hackaday I almost always choose the cheapest shipping option so it takes about a month.

Here's a question that should be interestingly revealing: How long does it take you to get PCBs once you've ordered them? A few days? Weeks? Over a month?

@KevEdwardsRetro I can honestly say I've opened one but not the others. I am not sure what the differences are.

@MrGoodBits Thanks. Have you spotted any changes since the first printing?

Another two new books for the collection. I've never seen Commodore + MOS branded 6500 Hardware/Programming manuals before. These are identical to the regular MOS ones, also dated January 1976. I can't be sure if these were produced for KIM-1 or early PETs.

@ClassicII_MrMac Apple is waiting for someone to realize that the power button side is the top of the unit.

A lot of people are talking about the new M4 Mac mini power button location. Apple decided to put it on the bottom. While the bottom vent raises the height, you will still have to tip it up to reach the power button. How do you feel about the power button being placed there?

@AtticThe Congratulations! Looks awesome.

@KevEdwardsRetro I asked around myself as they are Second Edition books with no printing edition notes. No one has ever seen them. I got them from a defunct early Canadian Commodore dealer along with a bunch of other manuals. Among other things was a KIM-1 brochure.

@MrGoodBits Nice collection. I've not seen the coloured cover versions before, were they later printings?

@techknight2 I figured they used Ninjaflex. I've used it to 3d print a belt in the past for an obsolete gear tooth configuration on a 1965 Olivetti Programma 101. Works very well.

Heres the info from the person on Discord who had printed this belt for me:

3d printed belts are a godsend. It fixed this citizen floppy drive

@RetroWizzard It's one of the motherboard assembly numbers for a Commodore 64. I thought that was common knowledge :)

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