Now this is very interesting. Both because SCSI2SD is a bit expensive, and because the newer V6 boards would need an adapter to hook up to an old Mac. But on the flipside while the current SCSI2SD seems pretty swell for connecting to other SCSI devices via adapters; a Raspberry Pi itself is a pretty general reusable platform.
As far as I’ve been able to figure out, old Macs have ridiculously slow SCSI buses by modern standards of any mass storage device, and I think they didn’t even support DMA until the late ‘90s. But to be fair hard drives were typically in the 10s of megabytes in the late 80s – early 90s, and a few hundred megs at the most.
While I think the author’s grain of salt, or “Conflicting” feelings at the end are an apt view. I will admit, this is somewhere between utterly insane and utterly brilliant. I can’t really say that I approve of the activities, but given the anachronistic nature of the server, it seems some folks sure as frak made the most of it.
It’s rare for something to be both utterly insane and utterly brilliant at the same time.
Been hearing bits and pieces for a while now, and anxiously wondering when we’d see a release. Sounds like the new Dune fil is due in October, and one can hope ^_^.
My introduction to Dune was the 1984 film. One late night, my mother invited me to watch it with her, but warned that you’ll probably have to watch it twice to understand it. And of course, I did, lol. Some years later, she would also lend me her copy of the book, and House Atreides. I think Dune still holds my personal record for most pages read in a sitting, since I basically sat on my ass and inhaled about the first 100 pages–after reading the four appendices! I remember seeing the novel had appendices with information about its world, and just knowing that it would be my kind of book.
Oddly, ironically, or fated, the other night I started reading Dune again. It’s been maybe eight or ten years since I last read it.
Since reading the novel as a kid, I’ve come to have a cautious view of anyone attempting to make a movie out of the story. It’s just to big and multifaceted. The cluster-hells aside, the ’84 film basically cut out 30 – 60 % of the novel, literally an entire cast of characters worth. But it still managed to tell the important pieces of the story, and is far from a short film. Much like the Lord of the Rings, I try to respect the fact that no one can watch a 12-hour long movie without taking multiple bathroom breaks unless you’re wearing a still suit or diapers.
IHMO, unless you’re prepared to make a film trilogy out of it I think Dune lends itself more to a miniseries than a theatrical film. So at best, I can hope to enjoy Villeneuve and cie’s efforts. Sounds like he has the good sense to make it more than one movie, hopefully that pans out. The novel itself, as I recall: was not only followed by four appendices, but also divided the story into three “Books”. Which is well reflective of how long a story Dune is, regardless of the publishing history that lead to it being so.
When I was younger, I pretty much figured that if I ever had a nice cozy garage with a work bench. Odds are, I’d end up tinkering on electronics; probably with hair like Doc Brown by the time anything useful was learned.
As an adult who ended up a computer nerd, I’m now fairly certain I’d end up with a garage full of old computers. Probably a good thing that I don’t have that much closet space nor a garage 😂
I remember hearing about Bill & Ted 3 some years back, and thinking skeptically: “Why the heck would they want to make another one after so many years?”. And, kind of happy I was wrong, lol. Face the Music is an awesome movie!
The notion that after twenty five years, Bill & Ted are still trying to write the song that will unite the world is pretty spot-on for a concept. Very happy to see how that played out with Bill & Ted & the princesses. Since I grew up watching the first two films, the continuity of spirit is kind of awesome. Excellent Adventure is almost as old as I am, and I probably watched Bogus Journey most times I came across it.
Totally loved the time hopping and universe imploding. But especially how the most excellent daughters fit into it all. As they face the music, it was quite a spectacular end to a journey.
Random fun, or perhaps just signs that I’m getting both old and weird.
In finding myself in the mood for some Advent, the only version I’ve ever encountered on modern platforms is the version from OpenBSD’s games install set. Which shows some of the joys of FORTRAN to C conversion. The code looks like the most significant changes it’s seen in years are just related to security measures ala OpenBSD. Since I don’t have a machine running that OS handy, it’s not a quick login and run.
In debating how much poking and prodding getting code to compile on one of my Linux or Windows environments, I came across a fun little fact. ESR has a repo on GitLab dubbed Open Adventure that both compiles on Linux, and has tried to make the code more legible to modern sanities.
While trying to figure out the game from its source may be a surprisingly good idea, l find it rather covenant that it compiles and runs. Because while poking around code is what lead me to the mood to play advent, that’s a bit of a different activity from porting advent, lol.
While my dogs are mostly unphased by the local fireworks, pardoning when some folks get a little crazy, I’m often reminded of this comic on The Oatmeal:
Signs of a simpleton having fun with a new microcontroller:
Write a program that makes the LED blink like a mother fucker.
Write a program that spams a hello world to USB serial.
Write a Read Eval Print Loop over USB serial.
Compared to what I’ve done in C with simpler micros like the 8051 family, I’m finding the RP2040 really damned nice. Not only because of the Cortex M0’s horse power, but because of the really nice library that comes with the Raspberry Pi Pico. For the hell of it, I decided to abuse it with some simple C++ by for the REPL just to see that C++ I/O and string handling, does in fact work.
Of course, me being me, I ended up with a really simple set of commands:
“Damn it, people! Stop making me want a handheld Pico that can play DooM!” — Terry Poulin upon seeing how many buttons this display has.
A reoccurring thought of late has been just how much of DooM could fit within the Pico’s memory constraints, and a practical way to handle storing the wad files externally.
