nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

Atari 800XL Composite Video Cable

March 24, 2007

Atari 800XL and TV

Atari 800XL and my TV

Thanks to this page about the Atari 800XL’s monitor connection output I was able to cobble together a composite video output cable for my parents old Atari 800XL. Thankfully the monitor connection is a standard DIN5 connector, so it was made by sacrificing a spare MIDI cable and an old red / white RCA cable pair.

After the SIO2PC adapter arrives and I’m able to either fix my Atari 1050 floppy drive or borrow one from someone I’ll begin imaging the whole box of floppies leftover from my youth. This will be done using Ape and ProSystem to copy all the old disks to images so they can be archived. Then they can either be run under emulation, or directly on the 800XL with the PC pretending to be the floppy drive (via the SIO2PC).

I should probably also consider doing something with the tape drive as well. Maybe pulling data / games off of that or something… Hmm…

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Dead Short

March 24, 2007

Do any of you have any good pointers for troubleshooting a dead short in electronics stuffs?

I tried to power up my Atari 1050 earlier today and found that the power LED wasn’t illuminating. Opening it up showed that AC power is getting into it and being rectified, but the output legs of the LM7805 and LM7812 shows a dead short to ground.

Unfortunately I’m having a hard time finding a schematic for it. :(

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Vareity is the spice of life.

March 23, 2007

Row of bottles and a can.

Today’s Beer Purchases
(Click for full resolution image.)

After a week without consuming any alcohol I decided to swing by the local good beer store on my way home from work. Here’s what I acquired, from left to right:

· Founder’s Black Rye
· Founder’s Kentucky Breakfast Stout (x2)
· Arbor Brewing Company’s Olde Number 22
· Dogfish Head’s Burton Baton
· Dogfish Head’s Shelter Pale Ale
· Dogfish Head’s Red & White
· Mahr’s Brau’s Jubelfestbier
· Stoudt’s Triple
· Breckenridge’s Vanilla Porter
· Victory’s Ten Years Alt
· Rampo Valley Brewery’s Passover Honey Beer†
· Morland’s Old Speckled Hen (x4)

I’ll try and post an image and a bit of info about each one as I try them.

And yes, I know the image looks a bit soft. I’m not sure why yet. It might be that I had it at f/14 to ensure the edges were in focus too.

† Not technically a beer, as it contains no malt.

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DAC?

March 22, 2007

Can any of you recommend a decent DAC for me? I want to convert TOSLINK and S/PDIF to something I can feed into my NAD receiver to drive a decent set of stereo speakers. It doesn’t have to be something great, but not crap either.

I’ll be using an external switch to select devices, so it only needs a single optical and coaxial input. I guess it could even just have a coaxial input and I could just get an optical to coax adapter.

Even a schematic for a known-high-quality adapter would work, I could just build one.

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Cooking Dinner and Mama, Not In The Same Pot

March 21, 2007

Tempeh marinated in teryaki sauce, tahini, and roasted garlic then grilled in a bit of oil and served on a bun. Two papadoms are used as a side dish.
Tempeh marinated in teryaki sauce, tahini, and roasted garlic
then grilled in a bit of oil and served on a bun. Two papadoms are used as a side dish.

Well, there’s my dinner; grilled tempeh bugers and two papadoms.

As mentioned earlier, Cooking Mama Cook Off for Nintendo Wii was acquired today. It’s pretty good. My biggest complaint is that some of the actions feel a bit laggy, but I think this is intentional. For example, when cracking an egg one makes a motion, then the egg moves and cracks. Move too hard initially and the egg breaks. Move too little and it doesn’t crack. I think the point of this is to get one to make the motion without the visual feedback so that muscle memory learns how to crack eggs and such.

When moving butter around in the pan (to cover it for sautéing) the tilt controls are wonderfully responsive and things work great, along with shaking various pots and pans, and things like that. That leads me to believe the previous behavior is intentional. Also, when chopping vegetables the arrow indicating where to chop isn’t visible if the cursor is directly over it. This was likely done to make the screen less cluttered while playing. However, if the level begins with the cursor already in the right place, it’s a bit confusing as to where one should begin. This goes away with a bit of practice too.

Other than that, Cooking Mama Cook Off is pretty much just like Cooking Mama for DS, except with (obviously) different actions for things, two player games, better / larger graphics, and… Wii-ness. I’d say if one likes the DS version the Wii version is definitely worth getting.

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Potato Pancake (I think?)

March 19, 2007

In line with matt303‘s suggestion, I took some of the mashed potatoes which were leftover from Thursday and mixed them together with a whisked egg. Then I added a small handful (all that I had left) of some pre-shreadded cheddar cheese.

This mixture was then placed in a small non-stick skilled containing some melted butter and cooked. After about 10 minutes it was turned with the assistance of a plate (to keep it from falling apart) and cooked for somewhere around another 10 minutes. This was then served with some salad, a glass of water, and a Cadbury Creme Egg.

Next time I make this I will likely make two smaller cakes which will fry quicker and be easier to turn. Other than that (and the lettuce for the salad being a bit brown) it was excellent.

Oh, and I also just finished The Wizards of Langley: Inside The CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology. It was okay, but the political infighting discussions wore on me a bit, and the author’s analysis of the CIA’s future at the end feels like a somewhat forced way to wrap up the book.

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Cass Collision – Shelby

March 15, 2007

Well, as mentioned on Thursday of last week, I was having some difficulties with my car. Because of a couple of complications involving having it repaired at Cass Collision – Shelby it was taking a bit longer to have completed than originally planned.

The complications were an odd blend of bad luck, bad timing, and a couple missed bits in the finishing of the repairs, all of which were handled very professionally by Andrew, the manager of the shop there. As I said before, this is the sort of thing which I’d normally expect to be frustrated by, but seeing how the problems were handled when stuff did go wrong, I really have no complaints. If I have a need to get my car repaired at a body shop in this area again, it is very likely that I’ll end up back there. Their customer service (a big thing for me) has been shown to be very good, and the repair work was great as well.

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9090 Front Panel Proposal

March 13, 2007


My first layout idea for the front panel of a desktop 9090, scrawled on a piece of paper.
(Click for higher res image…)

So, that 9090 that I’ve been working on? I’m really needing a project to work on again, so I’m going to keep working on it. It needs two caps installed on the board, an enclosure built, and final assembly, wiring, and testing.

This afternoon while on a conference call I figured out the number of pots I’d need and scrawled an initial layout on a sheet of paper. That there is what I came up with.

I’m curious what those of you who have used similar drum synths (or have an opinion on physical UI design) might think.

I may switch the Rimshot Level and Handclap Level (lower right corner-ish bits) around, and the LEDs and Master Level knob (upper right corner) might need some adjusting. Maybe move the Ride Cymbal set above the Crash Cymbal set.

So uhm… yeah. Any ideas?

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