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Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)
11–20 of 32 posts
Re: Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)
#12Dick Smith wasn't just about the electronics, he had a few other interests.
https://www.wildernessshop.com.au/products/balls-pyramid-by-...
https://dicksmithadventure.com.au/assault-on-balls-pyramid/
These days its is essentially fly-by only unless you can get research related landing | climbing permission.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqQrWWpcT0I
Re: Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)
#13Off topic: I'm a developer who got burnt out after a few years I currently work at one of Dick Smith’s former competitors, Jaycar It’s utterly bizarre working in such a company. The sheer range of backgrounds of the people you work with is immense I’ve met genuinely top of their field “between grant” astro-physicists and kids who wouldn’t pass Year 12 It’s what I imagine working at RadioShack was like in the States,…
When I access https://www.jaycar.com.au/ from Europe, I get a 503 on every page (although the website says its a 404: "Great Scott! Page Not Found... It looks like the flux capacitor has overloaded and sent the page you're looking for back to the past.").
Interesting, I can access it from Germany. Maybe your ip is blacklisted or the server has a peoblem with your client.
Re: Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)
#14Off topic: I'm a developer who got burnt out after a few years I currently work at one of Dick Smith’s former competitors, Jaycar It’s utterly bizarre working in such a company. The sheer range of backgrounds of the people you work with is immense I’ve met genuinely top of their field “between grant” astro-physicists and kids who wouldn’t pass Year 12 It’s what I imagine working at RadioShack was like in the States,…
When I access https://www.jaycar.com.au/ from Europe, I get a 503 on every page (although the website says its a 404: "Great Scott! Page Not Found... It looks like the flux capacitor has overloaded and sent the page you're looking for back to the past.").
The site is just down today (I can attest to this as I’ve been using their site to place orders most days for the past week – and to some degree the past few weeks – and only in the part 12-ish hours has it gone down).
Re: Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I access https://www.jaycar.com.au/ from Europe, I get a 503 on every page (although the website says its a 404: "Great Scott! Page Not Found... It looks like the flux capacitor has overloaded and sent the page you're looking for back to the past.").
Interesting, I can access it from Germany. Maybe your ip is blacklisted or the server has a peoblem with your client.
The site seems “up” but showing the same 404 error page (Back To The Future - inspired) for most/all URLs.
Re: Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)
#16Off topic: I'm a developer who got burnt out after a few years I currently work at one of Dick Smith’s former competitors, Jaycar It’s utterly bizarre working in such a company. The sheer range of backgrounds of the people you work with is immense I’ve met genuinely top of their field “between grant” astro-physicists and kids who wouldn’t pass Year 12 It’s what I imagine working at RadioShack was like in the States,…
Australian 80's hacker kid, high school dropout, tuning in .. DSE and Jaycar were a constant source of enlightenment for me as teenager. I distinctly remember the smell of the Fun Way 1 Electronics clearance basket, those delightful particle board layouts ..
What do you mean by life threatening work at Jaycar?
Re: Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even though I can show countless examples of people within 200km causing their, and their family’s demise Can you expand on this ? Do you mean their deaths, or some sort of economic suffering?
Dozens of people in Australia die every year from their own 12 or 230V wiring I actually find 12V worse. People then try to run mains equipment off it with high amperage and correspondingly high heat, causing fire and…
>Dozens of people in Australia die every year from their own 12 or 230V wiring
Do they? Your claim surprised me, so I did some digging:
Not from electrocution certainly, because as of a few years ago [1], there were only about 5-6 unintentional electrocutions in the home each year nationally, and that's all cause, not DIY electrical.
WRT fire, there are 4-5 deaths from preventable house fires annually caused by electrical faults (the leading causes being smoking and cooking) [2]. There is also a further ~1 death per year categorized as "misuse of electrical equipment". It's not clear into which category DIY electrical would fall, but it's not mentioned at all in the report.
[1] https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/2c37bd48-ee08-43d5-be11-f69...
Re: Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)
#18Off topic: I'm a developer who got burnt out after a few years I currently work at one of Dick Smith’s former competitors, Jaycar It’s utterly bizarre working in such a company. The sheer range of backgrounds of the people you work with is immense I’ve met genuinely top of their field “between grant” astro-physicists and kids who wouldn’t pass Year 12 It’s what I imagine working at RadioShack was like in the States,…
I’m a founder of an IoT product company, and whenever I’m in the middle of a new product build (including right now), I find myself visiting Jaycar frequently over several weeks. I’ve been there every day for the past 3 days. I have two branches within 20 mins of my house. It’s a Godsend. An engineer in Canada I’m working with loves that when he is looking for a part we need for a device we’re building, he can first see if Jaycar has it and if so I’ll be able to get it easily. I use Core Electronics and Mouser quite a lot too but have to wait at least a few days for shipping. Being able to get so many essential items at short notice or on the way to an installation job makes my work so much easier. It seems to be a rarity in the world these days. So, thanks to you and the team!
Re: Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)
#19>I asked Cheshire if he had something to test with, and he just smiled and sent me a Sonic Invaders cartridge. I’m pretty sure that’s how the song goes. LOL. Good one, mate. As someone who grew up with the Dick Smith Electronics Fun Way 1 & 2 books, which were dog-eared and well-loved way into the 90's, it tickles me to no end that HN occasionally gets articles about this utter genius. And, as a retro-computing enthu…
Project described is very cool! Kudoz to Mike, the author.
Personally I'd never do a clone of an obscure system like that. Why? Clone a (once) popular system, and when it works, you've got a wealth of software to run on it day 0.
Including software useful during development like test ROMs, debuggers, assemblers, stuff that doesn't need keyboard input to show something (as mentioned in article), etc. And if that software comes as a known-good cartridge (or ROM), then if it doesn't work you know the problem is in the hardware.
When clone works, project could be interesting to many others.
Much value of any system is the library of software for it.
Obscure system limits your options a great deal here. Custom design means doing everything from scratch.
Exception would be a tweaked version of popular system. Where eg. you could 'correct historical mistakes', simplify design, aid programming in some way, add modern type video output, etc. Then existing software would either work, or be easy to port. Like between systems with same CPU and same video chip.
Either that, or use a similar concept as historic system, but then go all-in with modern features (much faster cpu, many MB's of RAM, high-res graphics, flash storage, modern OS, etc). If done right, such a system can still have that nostalgic, tinker-friendly feel to it.
Re: Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)
#20Off topic: I'm a developer who got burnt out after a few years I currently work at one of Dick Smith’s former competitors, Jaycar It’s utterly bizarre working in such a company. The sheer range of backgrounds of the people you work with is immense I’ve met genuinely top of their field “between grant” astro-physicists and kids who wouldn’t pass Year 12 It’s what I imagine working at RadioShack was like in the States,…
As an electronics engineer in Australia I don’t quite get what you’re saying about proper engineering - can you elaborate?
Are you talking about the markup on parts or how expensive Australian labour is? I assume the former since the average salary isn’t massive and US engineers do better? (Although there are ways, like consulting which is what I do!)