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MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

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Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#121

Post by hammyhavoc »

habi wrote: post #116
numpad0 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't it be done with a DLP device? CRT was X-ray projection device with phosphor paint applied inside to convert the rays to visible light.

CRTs were emitting an electron beam to draw images on a phosphorescent screen, not emitting X-rays: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode-ray_tube Blasting X-rays through a screen to the face of an observer would not have been a good idea…

Interestingly, a lot of folks used to repeat the x-ray thing, that's where the term "eyeball cancer machine" came from.

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#122

Post by quercusa »

smackeyacky wrote: post #46
rnewme wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be surprised how much trash there is in the city around us, that you suddenly start noticing when you have a diy project. Let me share you some moments of my own with you. I was leaving university campus with my buddies, talking about building magnetic card reader to check contents of my campus library card. Just as I was explaining magnetic heads to one of the guys I see a random cassette player few meters…

My personal favourite save is a Bosch dishwasher that was kerbside. The drain motor was stuck, had melted plastic around the impeller. I have it in my workshop but it’s better than the one in the house.

Mine was pretty easy to fix - I was surprised how simple it was. IIRC, there's an inlet valve, a circulating/heater pump, and an exhaust pump.

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#123

Post by Vexs »

ale42 wrote: post #88
rjmunro wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> possible exception of unit-specific power adapters No. Unit-specific power adapters should not exist. Either put a USB-C or a 120v/240v AC connector on the device, depending on power requirements. It's really not that hard. Note: it must be connector, not a fixed cable. I.e. an IEC C8 or C14.

This might apply to (most) IT devices. But there are devices that require 24 V, or 48 V, or any other voltage that USB-C can't supply, and that for various reasons (space, EMI, possibly even compliance with some safety regulation) can't contain an integrated power supply unit from 120/230 V mains. Of course this should be an exception and most consumer devices can definitely work with the regular voltages and current…

It's a bit silly IMO, but USB PD EPR _can_ support 24v and 48v- for charging laptops, I believe. The day I see a server rack with a pair of USBCs plugged into it is a far day off I hope though.

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#124

Post by doubloon »

askvictor wrote: post #72
cellularmitosis wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's what sets the RP2040 apart from other micros. I think of it as being analogous to the recent advent of "software-defined radio" -- the RP2040's PIO are fast enough to allow for software-defined Composite video, software-defined VGA, software-defined DVI, software-defined USB, etc etc etc.

What other micros are you talking about? STM32 can easily do it (I suspect that any ARM based micro can), and I've seen some vga libraries for ESP32. There's not much special about the RP2040 other than it's price and brand name.

I spent two hours trying to get hello world working on stm32 , on a pi it takes two minutes. its about barrier to entry not about quality of hardware. Same thing when Arduino came out people was saying so what its just an avr or whatever.

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#125

Post by ssl-3 »

tivert wrote: post #101
r00fus wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over a decade later, the fob got destroyed in an unfortunate boating incident. I kind of feel you dropped the lede here. Need to hear this story as well.

>> Over a decade later, the fob got destroyed in an unfortunate boating incident. > Need to hear this story as well. I bet it's "dropped her keys into the lake." Perhaps after awkwardly balancing them a place that, in hindsight, should not have been used.

Nyet, comrade.

She was at the front like some sort of living maidenhead while I leisurely rowed at the back with the entrenching tool that I kept in the car, one evening at an outdoor music festival somewhere in the Midwest. It was all very beautiful; the girl was beautiful, the sky was beautiful, the music was beautiful, and the place itself was beautiful; everything was approximately perfect. There was such a profound feeling of rightness as the sun set, and I wished it would never end.

Except: I had to pee.

So I stood up to take care of that and the stolen canoe simply went sideways. My entrenching tool disappeared (along with one of my sandals, and the boat itself), the girl went for a swim, and most importantly my key fob got drenched.

We swam to the nearest shore and hiked back through the dense young trees and brush using the flashlight on my Galaxy S5.

Once we got back to camp, the phone died for real.

It was all very much a bummer in a great number of ways.

The next day some kids there found and recovered the boat and my missing sandal.

We didn't make it, she and I. But several months later, that dead S5 came back to life like nothing had ever happened.

(Don't do drugs, kids. Maybe.)

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#126

Post by jandrese »

firewolf34 wrote: post #24

How are these people finding VGA cables in the street :S I needed like 10 or so VGA cables recently for an art installation and asked everyone I could and nobody had any lying around... I ended up having to buy new ones which seems a shame considering how many are thrown away!

Auction sites are amazing for stuff like this. IT departments are always trying to get rid of old cables.

An example I found in like 2 minutes: https://www.govdeals.com/asset/22/22839

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#129

Post by rbanffy »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #121
habi wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CRTs were emitting an electron beam to draw images on a phosphorescent screen, not emitting X-rays: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode-ray_tube Blasting X-rays through a screen to the face of an observer would not have been a good idea…

Interestingly, a lot of folks used to repeat the x-ray thing, that's where the term "eyeball cancer machine" came from.

Well... Technically we spent a lot of time looking down the barrel of a particle accelerator...

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#130

Post by rbanffy »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #111
rbanffy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you want cycle-accurate interfaces, it's pointless. Software can provide more than good enough performance and be a lot more flexible at that. As microcontrollers get faster, the cycle-accurate timing becomes less relevant, as you can still match external timings with software and have the support of an RTOS to help with that.

What about power consumption? Could you have a tiny Mac which runs approximately forever on a single charge?

I imagine the power consumption of the compute part would be dwarfed by the display in any case.
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