Getting ready for a few days off...
This coming week I’ve got a few days off from my dayjob. That’s rather special, since I work part-time there and somehow I hardly have a week off, this is the third full week in three years. Of course, normally I got at least one day off a week and sometimes a little more but still… This week I’m planning on doing lots of stuff, one of them being a total restyle of this very site. Next to that I’m going to see how far I can get on some projects. That’ll be the balance somehow, working on projects and working on this site (and I’ve got work to do for Bright which still continues…)...
Anyways, I started off by overhauling my desktop. One of my CRTs lost its focus lately and I needed to adjust that… You can read all about it on the projectpage:
adjusting an IIyama CRT (part 2)
click to go to the projectpage
Then, this afternoon I visited some shops, somehow it has to do with the mindset I’m trying to get in for this coming week (does this even make sense?), anyways, I visited some second-hand shops, the next best thing to dumpster-diving and this is what I got…
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I just couldn’t resist this calculator, especially since it looks brand-new!
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Then I got this Apple Keyboard. Why, you may wonder… Well, take a look at one I already had (that’s one which came with the two SE/30s from last week) and spot the difference… This one is bright white! and I like this model better, it’s not as massive… (I’m a sucker for details, I know…)
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The calculator again… I thought I already bought the right batteries for it, AA, but on a closer inspection, I need AAA-batteries for it, four of them. But the shops are closed now for easter, so I have to wait until after easter to be able to buy them… (but then I have a green led calculator! weeeeeeee! *^_^* )
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...and the catch of the day, an Atari 1040 STf ... I’m not sure what I’m gonna do with it though… I never had one before and I simply couldn’t resist it (how can I resist yet another Motorola 68K?...) ... at 1 EURO!!! ... Geez… It’s got a strange monitor-connector, but it seems there’s a composite-signal in there somewhere so I’ll see if I can hook it up to something…
Well, and if I can’t find a proper use for it, I can still make a lamp out of it *^_^*
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...oh, there’s still a Cubase-floppy in the Atari… well, that figures. On the righthand picture you can see the total score of this saturday-afternoon… The only thing I didn’t mention here is a copy of National Geographic, with a lot of 3D-pics in it… (3D is some sort of obsession somehow…)
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Well, that’s a lot of scrap and I’ve got my doubts I will use any of it… but take a look at what I had to pay for all this, 3.50 euro (1.50 for the calculator, 1 euro for the Atari, 0.50 cents for both the keyboard and the copy of National Geographic)... Even though chances are it all ends up some heap or another, for this kind of money, I’ll take my chances *^_^*
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The Atari 1040 is the shit! I’ve got a ton of games for that at my parents house ; )
Some pretty good ones too. They had both a black and white monitor and a colour monitor hooked up to it.I’m not sure, but I think the version you have with the f at the end has a midi output, which makes it very useful to control all sorts of things.
Nice!
I have a calculator like that somewhere. Gotta dig it up and start using it. Bulky, heavy and totaly geeky.
The “f” in the model name of this Atari means that it comes with a built in 720 kB floppy drive.
The keyboard is a nice score too. It’s not that easy to find an ADB keyboard without localized key layouts here in Europe. Although the layout is still different than the US one. You can see the original US keyboard here . Note the different Return key and the location of the ”`/~” key.
And the price was more than right :)
Not a bad haul!
Mine for the week:
An Acorn A3000
The Arm aquivalent of your Atari (I’ve kinda gone off my 68k systems, because of the lack of MMU – No linux without uClinux)
Ok, so less geekily cool, EXCEPT! This one, shockingly, has a 10BaseT, 10Base2 dual port ethernet podule in it. Haven’t booted it yet, but I got it free, because apparently there’s a password. If I can’t break it (Although, what are the chances of that?) I have an 010 or 020 Archimedes that the card can go in.
My other grab of the wek (This looks to be relatively expensive) Is an Innolabs Evita tablet.
Structurally perfect condition, apart from some missing paint off the back, I can’t get it to boot up. When plugged in (Either by the onboard connector or the dockng connector,) the Battery doesn’t charge, and the indicator on the PSU (Which still works fine, despite several hours of this treatment) Goes crazy.
Looks like a short in the Power supply board on the Tablet. Gonna get out my multimeter and give it a prod. It’s apparently booted up once, since this problem occurred first, So I’m hoping it’s just the PSU board, not the mainboard. The cradle, HDD, camera and screen don’t smell bad, so I think it’s probably just a PSU or Mainboard error, since the flashing PSU light when plugged into the tablet suggests a big current drain. . . still within component and fuse tolerances, but a big drain nonetheless.
Oh well, only one way to find out! Looking to spend about £20 to £40 on this carcass. If nothing else, I could do with the mid-sized (20gb) hdd, which I find useful, but are hard to get, And both the Digitizer/screen assembly, and the alloy casing itself could be useful to me.
Ferret.