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2010
Africa
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 10:30pm
Just returned from a quick (business) trip to Africa. I spent a day in Mozambique and then 3 days in Tanzania. Nice to see the sun again, but it was a lot of flying and very little time actually on the ground.
My UltimateSIMON project was recently featured on Hackaday, and at the moment the YouTube video has received 2000 hits. Hopefully I inspired a few people to dust off their old games and get them running again!
My miniSID project is moving along slowly. I have some reference hardware up and running and have been working on the PIC firmware to allow communication with a Windows 7 box. The windows side of the programming is taking a little more time though, since I am by no means a windows programmer. Still I'm making good progress, I now have a Visual C++ program which allows you to talk back and forth to the SID chip via USB and I'm able to get the chip to generate some sounds. Next step is to rewrite the test program using threaded calls (in case the USB device disappears) and to enhance the code to automatically detect the connection and disconnection of the device.
Once this is done I will make a custom DLL ready for integration with VICE. After that I will probably change the USB firmware to a composite device and add in USB MIDI support, which will make the device as multipurpose as possible. Watch this space...
Website improvements
Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 8:00pm
I've just finished moving my website over to a newer, faster hosting service which I hope will improve my site by serving pages faster to more visitors. Thanks to the tireless support from the people at SiteGround it's all now up and running. I hope you like it!
In other news I've been busy with PIC microcontroller projects and recently got a feature on Hackaday.com which was great; it's nice to know people are interested in my crazy hair-brained schemes :) Most recently I've been working on making a low-cost SID synthesiser board which will allow you to connect SID chips (made famous by the Commodore C64 and chip-tunes/demos) over USB. It's in its early stages at the moment, but I will be posting more details shortly!
2009
Flying high
Monday, May 18, 2009 at 9:00pm
Well lots of things have been happening in recent months... I have been expanding my collection of Acorn computers, I now have 2 BBC micros, another RISC PC 600 and an Acorn Electron as well as games on disc and cassette (and a cassette player to load them from) and many other new-old accessories. My best pal Ricky visited for a few days just recently so we decided to take a helicopter flight over Stockholm (a birthday present from my wife) and got the opportunity to direct the pilot wherever we liked. So whilst flying over my house I took the attached picture, needless to say it was a great experience and my first ever time in a chopper.
Recently I've been working on quite a few robotics and PIC projects and you can check out Beagle 3 in my projects section. Its still work in progress, but I seem to be getting somewhere with it at last. I've just added an Oscilloscope to my growing collection of electronics gear which I'm pretty happy about since it will allow me to do more advanced PIC projects and work on old computers with a view to repairing them.
Other than that its situation normal in Simon-land, the wife is off to Amsterdam this weekend with a friend, so I'm hoping to get some quality electronics time while she is out partying ;)
What's the weather like?
Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 5:00pm
This week saw an interesting addition to my chimney in the form of a bunch of weather sensors. I'd been considering setting something like this up for sometime and finally decided to climb up on the roof and get on with it. The sensors detect wind speed, wind direction, rain fall, temperature, humidity and pressure; this all links wirelessly to a box on my desk which in-turn connects to a computer using USB. The upshot of all of this is that I now have a live weather feed.
Eventually I plan on integrating this with a database and including all the information in this web-site showing a whole range of details about the conditions around my roof.
In other news I have finally finished with the restoration of the A3000 (I decided as a final touch to add a CF card HDD to it which could be removed from the back of the case to save me removing the lid all the time) and I have also ordered a new(ish) Acorn BBC Micro (model B) to add to my collection.
All I need to do now is find some more old monitors... as I seem to be running out of them rapidly.
CF Card Hard Drive
Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 10:00pm
Just a quick update on my RISC PC 600 activities... I have constructed a CF Card hard drive for the machine using a standard IDE to CF Card board, a 3.5 to 5.25 inch drive mounting converter and a lot of plastic and glue. Basically this allows me to add CF cards as hard drives to the machine. The advantage of this is that you can remove the card and then take an image of it which can be loaded by an emulator. Handy when you are converting lots of floppy disks into images, or for sharing files between a real machine and an emulator without the hassle of transferring large amounts of information (the card stores 4Gbs). To be honest, I mainly did it to see if I could :)
Anyway, I finally get to use the second 'slice' of the machine for the DVD-ROM. Hopefully I will soon get another IDE podule for the machine and reconnect the DVD drive as well as another hard drive.
Acorn RISC PC 600
Friday, February 20, 2009 at 08:30am
The Acorn RISC PC 600 has been suffering a number of upgrades over the last week or so... I've replaced the 512Mb Conner harddrive with a more modern 60Gb Maxtor drive (which not only gives me more storage but also prevents the machine from sounding like a jet engine when running), the old CDROM drive is now a DVD drive, the RAM has been upgraded from 4Mbs to 32Mbs, I've added an Ethernet card (i-cubed 600) and finally the operating system has been upgraded to RISC OS 4.39. I've also received the Acorn keyboard I ordered which looks real nice :) The whole box has been stripped down and cleaned and I also replaced the battery on the motherboard.
I would like to upgrade the processor (which is currently an ARM610) to a StrongARM which is 10 times faster(!) however I haven't yet decided whether to do this or not. The video RAM is also expandable from 1Mb to 2Mb, so if I can find a card this would allow me to run higher resolutions which would be nice.
I'm planning on setting it up as a development machine so I can do some assembly and C programming. Now it is running RISC OS 4.39 (which has support for filenames greater than 10 characters) it should be able to support all of the cross-compiled GNU tools which are available on the web. I will get this done over the weekend and should be good to go by next week.
More computer restoration
Friday, February 13, 2009 at 08:30am
Recently I've been making a grand effort to get my old computers up and running again. Since I now have a new desk I finally have somewhere to set them up. The sad news this week was the restoration of an Archimedes A3000 (which belonged to my pal Ricky); turns out that the battery on the motherboard had leaked whilst it was in storage and the resulting corrosion has made the motherboard unserviceable since it has killed the keyboard connectors and surrounding components.
My RISC PC 600 is still up and running and I finally got around to fitting new springs to the slide-down covers on the front of the machine, so the covers now function properly (hiding the drives and displaying the Acorn logo). I'm in the process of setting up an Asus EEE PC to act as a PPP server (over serial) so that I can connect the RISC PC to the Internet - believe it or not, but it is possible to do.
The main reason for this is that I just finished repairing my 1986 BBC Master Compact and I finally have the floppy drive working again - This machine I have actually owned since I was about 12 years old...
The RISC PC is capable of reading and writing ADFS floppies for the BBC, so with the help of the 'Internet' connection I should be able to transfer over BBC disc images to the RISC PC and then copy them onto ADFS L-format floppies and load them on the Master Compact. Why? So I can play Elite, one of the best games ever made. The only thing I have to do is make a new RGB video cable for the Master Compact. It uses some strange looking 6 pin DIN plugs, but it shouldn't be too hard to make.
I've ordered an original RISC PC 600 keyboard off of ebay and hopefully I will get it this weekend (a friend is bringing it over from the UK), then I can get rid of the horrible Microsoft PS/2 keyboard I am using at the moment.
Hopefully soon I will have some pictures of the Master Compact playing some games, I will try to remember to post some pictures here when I have them.
A new-ish computer
Saturday, February 7, 2009 at 18:53am
Thanks to the wonders of blocket.se I have a new computer! An Amiga A500 complete with a Commodore monitor and about 200 games (mostly copies). I've been wanting to add one of these to my growing collection of old computers (I have a ZX81, a BBC Master Compact, an Acorn A3000, an Atari ST Mega 4 and an Acorn RISC PC).
I've been testing it out and, as you can see from the picture, it is working perfectly. The monitor is an old style analogue RGB TTL-level VDU which is great because I can use it to get the A3000 running too (there are no RF TV outputs on it). I just need to build a new cable, but that shouldn't be too hard once I stop playing International Karate +...
Travels in the USA
Friday, January 30, 2009 at 10:45am
I've just got back from a trip to Scottsdale, Arizona in the US (work related) and boy, what a long journey it is from Sweden to the deserts of America. Anyway, we managed to have a little fun amongst all the working and the highlight was definitely the trip to a shooting range where I got my mitts on a Colt .45 revolver and shot the crap out of a few things :)
I've travelled quite a bit in the USA but this was my first trip to the Phoenix area. It was nice to see the sunshine again (it's a little dark here in Sweden at this time of year) and the mountains surrounding the area are definitely worth a view. So now it's back to normal with the exception of a little jet lag.
I'm hoping to find the time to work a little more on my SBC project (see the projects link to the left) and also set up a live webcam pointing at the guinea pigs since it seems like a fun thing to do ;)
Doing too many things
Sunday, January 18, 2009 at 4:25pm
Well it's been a busy Christmas period, but a long welcome break from working. I've been doing some 3D modelling (of my house) and hope to put up some details about it in my project pages shortly.
That crazy idea came from the fact that my daughter and I decided to do some geo-tagged photography for Google Earth since there weren't any photos of our street on there. A couple of days ago all 15 of our (carefully selected pictures) were approved, so I expect to see them on Google Earth shortly.
I also decided to revamp my webserver and finally get my website back online, if you are reading this then it is still working ;) After that I brought a new domain name for my daughter so she can get online and publish some of the millions of drawings she does.
So situation normal... Back to work... Let's see what happens next!
2008
Retro Gaming
Monday, February 25, 2008 at 11:47am
Last week I read an article about the 1984 BBC Micro classic game ‘Elite’. Now if during the 1980’s you happened to be on a different planet, Elite was the first 3D real-time combat and trading game produced. It was revolutionary in many aspects and is the granddaddy of all the 3D flying and shooting games available today.
After reading the article I remembered how much time I spent playing that game as a kid (around the age of 11!). The article also said that the very best conversion ever done was for the Acorn Archimedes. This was a spot of luck, since I happen to have a fully restored and working Acorn RISC PC600 (donated by my best mate Ricky), so I connected it up, downloaded ArcElite off the Internet and fired it up. Playing old games is really fun, but there is something special about playing the game on the machine it was designed for, makes you feel like you jumped through a time-warp.
Anyway, needless to say, it seems my skill at Elite (I got as far as ‘deadly’) has diminished over time; I spent an hour or so crashing into the Lave space station before finally remembering how to dock… The concept of games starting easy and then getting harder as you go along didn’t really exist when Elite was written.
My daughter (who is 11 right now) is enthralled by my arcade machines (see other blog entries) and also my converted Xbox which runs NES, SNES and Atari 2600 games. The fluid game play and straight forward playability of classics like Super Mario Brothers and the Kirby series can still take on the likes of the Xbox 360 without having to resort to HD graphics and blood by the bucket-load to be enjoyable.
So, before you waste 40 pounds, 500 kroner or 50 dollars on the next ‘like the one before but with better graphics’ game, check out the emulator scene and play Commando on the C64. Awesome :)
Or just pop over to my place and get whooped at Pacman!
Coffee and TV
Sunday, February 3, 2008 at 6:55pm
Seems such a long time since I last wrote anything here, so I thought I'd give it a shot and see if I could think of anything interesting to say as a go along (yes, I know, long shot at best...).
Well, its been an interesting few months, I built my own arcade machine, celebrated Christmas, went up north to Mora and then came back down again... Over the new year Ricky (my longest standing partner in crime) and myself attempted to drink everything drinkable and then blow everything else up (well fireworks at least)!
The new year has be quite turbulent with odd, new experiences on the work front, but really it's same old, same old. Actually some times it reminds me of a children's party, musical chairs and pass the parcel (you know, the game when the worst, snottiest kid always gets the penny whistle you didn't want in the first place).
My latest project has been to wage war against DRM. Just to listen to my music on my phone I had to spend hours of valuable time removing all the useless protection from my iTunes purchases... For the record I will *never* buy anything from apple ever again. Underneath the fashionable shiny plastic of their products lies software who's only purpose it to strip us of our rights. I never thought any company could be worse than Microsoft, but Apple has proved me wrong. All this because I decided to *pay* for the music rather than download it illegally... Ironic at best, idiotic at worse.
Anyways, in closing... In the picture are some interesting statistics for you.
2007
Not much going on...
Saturday, October 27, 2007 at 2:54pm
Well, it occurs to me that it's been a while since I last added a note. The reason? I've been too busy with work to do much else. Even so, things are good over here in Sweden, winter is coming fast and the temperature seems to drop on a daily basis.
My missus Emma has got a job, and this seems to be a good thing for her and a little more money never hurts. Emil and I are planning on building another arcade machine, this time from scratch (I hope his woodworking skills are better than mine!), and, of course, I will take some pictures as we go along and post them here on Facebook. I've brought a 22" wide-screen LCD, and a tonne of arcade parts from a UK specialist, just need to buy some wood and get going.
I'm also planning on fitting a new set of buttons to my existing arcade machine since the current ones are starting to act a bit strange (I guess there are only so many years of hammering they can take).
That's it for now, back to drinking tea!
Arcade gaming!
Friday, September 28, 2007 at 3:27pm
Well it all started when a buddy of mine (Emil Schönning) asked me if I'd be interested in an arcade video cabinet, to which the answer was (an obvious) hell yes! The timing was also perfect since I had a weeks vacation this week.
Anyway, 5 days later and it's finally ready for some retro-gaming action, After Burner II, Bubble Bobble, Pacman, you name it.
I would write more about it, but I'm off to play some more games ;-)
But, I will upload some pictures for the curious, so check out the album if you are interested!
A random act of kindness
Saturday, August 11, 2007 at 3:51pm
Well, today I finally got round to repairing my remote control sailing boat, some heavy winds had snapped some of the rigging, but a little time and a little nylon string later she was ready to go!
Now, in retrospect, letting the batteries charge overnight rather than just a few hours would have been a good idea, but patience was never one of my stronger virtues...
So, of to the lake we went, round the lake it sailed, until... off to the opposite shore it went following the wind with me standing on the other side cursing and desperately trying to control the boat. Needless to say it ended up on the other side, in the reeds.
Then, just as all hope was lost, across the lake comes a lady rowing, in my best(!) Swedish I shouted "Help! My boat is stuck" (about as complex as my Swedish gets). So this kind lady rowed over to my boat, picked it up out of the reeds, and then rowed it back to me. Needless to say I was very grateful (picking the boat up is not an easy task, it is 1m long and 1.5 meters from keel to the top of the main sail).
Anyway, next time I will leave it charging overnight ;) but thanks random lady, and I mean that sincerely!
Aching knees
Sunday, August 5, 2007 at 6:52pm
Some of those who know me, will also know that about a year and a half ago I gave up driving. Maybe this is not a great thing in itself, but for a self-confessed car fanatic with 2 sports cars and a 5.9L V8 Dodge Ram under the belt, it was quite a change.
I popped my driving licences in the cupboard (I have 2, one UK and one USA), I replaced the gap in my wallet with a bus pass and, I have to say, haven't regretted it since.
The only down-side seems to be other people's reaction. When I tell them I don't own a car, the first thing I'm asked is how I lost my licence. Interesting, in this world of 'carbon-foot prints', green living and other such crap (in my own opinion of course).
So why did I do it? A good question, and the answer is learning how to slow down. These days my trip to work is a short bus ride, a few Km's through a nature reserve and then 5 minutes on the tube (tunnelbana for those Swedes that don't get English slang). I brought an iPod and either read a book, or just enjoy the views.
Next time you jump in your car to drive down the road to a shop 5 minutes walk away, don't. Take a walk, you might find you like it, and you don't need to be there in 2 minutes so you can sit in front of the TV for an extra 3 minutes ;)
P.S. If you're wondering about the title of this entry, I ran out of some electronic parts today and decided to cycle 10Km to the nearest electronics store rather than take the bus :P
Surreal Space
Thursday, August 2, 2007 at 10:55pm
The Internet is surely a strange and wonderful thing. Previously I was extremely bad at staying in touch, too lazy to call and, in my paperless world, too unable to write... But now this is changing. I have several PCs, several laptops, several pocket computers and a 3G smart phone, if there's one thing I have it's Internet connectivity.
So, what better way to say 'Hi' to all the people I know/used to know... In fact now I can just write random stuff every now and again, and those crazy (or bored enough) can come and find it for themselves with little or no effort on my part.
"Oh look! It's Simon... I remember him! I wonder if he got any better? Ah, nope doesn't look like it."
Well, well. My life didn't get more interesting, just more accessible. Perhaps that is a good thing, perhaps not, but it is an interesting development even if it isn't an interesting block of text.
I have to admit, if someone told be 5 years ago that in the future I could 'poke' someone online, I would have told them to stop drinking so much.
RS232C (Warning: Grade A Geek Entry)
Sunday, July 29, 2007 at 8:30pm
Amazing how some things never die... In this fast changing world of technologies some things work, and should not be 'fixed'.
Probably, dear reader, you have no idea what an RS232C is, and you are not alone in this. Needless to say it is one of the most singularly useful and simple ways of making a computer talk to other things around it...
USB; over complicated, doesn't work. Ethernet; requires 150SEK of card just to join in; but... RS232... The epitome of simplicity and gracefulness.
Why am I blathering on about this? Well RS232C is dying, not only is it a dinosaur of technology, but it also relies on a old standard of voltage levels computers no longer like to support. So. welcome USB, never again shall an experimenter be able to make something simple and hook it up to a computer... not without a bunch of books from Microsoft and degree-level programming.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
P.S. Yes I am having trouble making a PIC to USB interface, yes it was easier with RS232 and no I don't feel like explaining it to the simple people; there are only 10 types of people in the world - those that understand binary and those that don't.
The Freezer Alarm Redux
Sunday, July 22, 2007 at 2:01pm
I feel a sense of closure, the warm glow of success, the heady feeling of achievement... Yes, it's true... I finally finished my freezer alarm!
You can see in the picture below the finished product. Just to keep it themed (and much to the annoyance of my wife) I also mounted the whole thing in a Tupperware freezer tub.
After finding a better buzzer it now works perfectly, although I may recode the PIC application to make the buzzer pulsate (at the moment it emits a steady tone).
It's just a shame that, since I started this project, my wife replaced the freezer and now the door seems to close of its own accord.
This, I feel, is a typical example of life when you are married ;)
When did I stop being English?
Wednesday, July 18, 2007 at 7:41am
Being an 'expat' is a funny thing. I've been abroad now for getting on to 10 years, but I always consider myself to be English first and foremost; but is this really the case any more?
I travel to England less and less, when I do go there I find I can hardly relate to the people around me. English people are so much more closed to each other than. say, Americans or Swedes. I have to admit, although there are certain English things I would like to keep (accent, automatic politeness, etc.) there are many traits I am glad to miss (arrogance (well a little any ways), unfriendliness, over-the-top response to media bullcrap, etc.)
An expat is a hybrid, after a few years you are no longer English, but at the same time your can never become 'Swedish'. A no-mans-land which you can neither progress from nor retract from.
So, as I sit and drink my tea (don't panic I will hit the continental coffee at work) and type on my English keyboard (I use a Swedish one in the office) I guess Swinglish is the best I can hope for, and who wants to be ordinary any way?
Swedish vacation period
Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 7:23am
If ever there was a time to invade Sweden, this would be it... Like a scene from the B-movie "The day the earth stood still"; there are no people, there is no traffic. A visitor to Sweden may consider that an unknown and unreported pandemic has hit the country wiping out all but a few of the population, however a visitor to Thailand may think otherwise as Swedes everywhere escape from the only nice bit of the Swedish year (known as the 'Summer-Day') and go elsewhere.
Even the famed Swedish public transport disappears, July and August are upon us a woe be to anyone who does not bow-down to the last 'screw the EU' tradition left in Scandinavia.
As for me? I wander the empty corridors of my company in search of coffee; occasionally I pass by another living soul, but they are merely shadows... beings from other offices far away, wondering where everyone went.
Computer games and crazy ideas
Sunday, July 15, 2007 at 3:09pm
Well, after my little diatribe on 'facebook's wall' the computer game problem was solved and my daughter has her money back. Still, all forms of copy protection and DRM methods are seriously flawed, they only serve to prohibit people who have a right to use the software/media and are no constraint to anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge about file-sharing.
Even Microsoft are guilty as charged... My legal copy of Visio refused to register because I have installed it more than twice (I'm on my 3rd laptop since I brought it). 20 minutes on the phone to Microsoft, not my idea of a fun morning.
On a brighter note, my latest experiment to create most over-powered freezer door alarm is coming to fruition now I've found a loud enough buzzer. Never again will the kids need to eat soggy ice-cream! - Picture attached of the 'breadboard' design, featuring an 8-bit PIC microcontroller programmed in good ol' assembly language.
The blog beginnings
Sunday, July 15, 2007 at 11:05am
After a while of scratching my head and wondering what a blog is (sounds like something that would block a toilet if you ask me), I decided to start one.
Don't know if it will be interesting, but I guess I travel quite a bit, so if I can be bothered to bring one of my many cameras along with me it might at least be worth looking at the pictures if not the text (just like Aftonbladet!).
Anyways, I digress... We'll see if I can focus my famously short attention span for long enough.
