PIGFX relook

After completely messing up my vt132 kit, I decided to give PIGFX another try.

PIGFX has come a long way since I last looked at it and it's very nice, but not perfect.

Good points:

• It support graphic modes and sprites, so you can get closer to the real retro PC feel.
• It's somewhat VT100/ANSI compatible.

Bad points:

• It's somewhat VT100/ANSI compatible to the point where it's frustrating.

Frustrations:

It does not support any of the VT100 attributes.  No bright/dim, underscore, blink, reverse or hidden.

The color codes aren't even close to VT100/ANSI.  It would have been nice if they were somewhat close.

It's close enough to VT100 where you just want to run the VT100 codes, but not having the attributes is frustrating when you want to highlight something.

Something on my RC2014 (I don't know where) wraps the text when it gets to 80 columns and it takes the escape sequences as part of that 80 columns and may wrap your text when you don't expect it.

So I'm going to play with this a little more and maybe see what I can do to get around the frustrations.

New Server - Update

The SATA to USB cables are starting to fail.

So, don't buy these cables.  I picked up some one from StarTech, which is usually a very good company.  We'll see what happens.

The good news is that I simply need to see what drive isn't working and unplug it.  Then plug in the new cable.  Then reboot the Pi and I'm done.

Osborne Executive - Part 3 - Final

So the new floppy controller chips arrived.  No go.

But this time it got worse.  I reseated and cleaned all the socketed chips and now it doesn't even self-test.

I did try a test where I replaced the Z80 in it with the Z80 from one of my RC2014, and put the Osborne Z80 into an RC2014.  Nothing.

What I believe happened is this:  The Osborne was stored for many years in a poor environment and the chips have gone bad.  My reseating them was sort of the last straw and they gave up.

So the plan is to reassemble it just to keep it together.  Then I'll research what it would take to interface the display in it to my RC2014Pro and maybe install the RC2014Pro into the Osborne case.  That would be cool and still be fairly true to the system.

Osborne Executive - Part 02

Well, that took a bad turn.

I pulled the floppy controller chip.  It was pretty tarnished.  According to people, the pins are silver plated and, therefore, tarnish.

So I pulled the chip and used a soft wire brush and removed the tarnish.

But still no boot.

Someone else said that I needed to replace the socket.  Another use for the Hakko desoldering tool I got for my birthday!

The socket replacement went smooth.  No problems.  I had an extra socket that fit the floppy controller chip perfectly.

But I got it assembled enough to test and now it doesn't pass the self-test.

I checked everything over.  No solder bridges.  No bad solder points that I can see.

Perhaps the floppy controller chip is really bad and now the system can see it.  Cross my fingers.  I get the replacement chips later this week.

Osborne Executive - Part 01

 A few weeks ago, I picked up an Osborne Executive.

If you don't know the term The Osborne Effect, check out the link.  This is the computer that was involved in that mess.

At first, it looked good.  It booted to a "Insert disk into A: and press Enter", but none of the boot media that I picked up with it worked.  So on eBay I got some.

In the mean time, I dismantled it and cleaned it.  I knew it was going to be dirty, but I didn't realize that the guy who owned it decided to keep it in his "man barn".  A sealed, but not heated/cooled "garage" in the back yard.  I'm surprised that it still even powered up without blowing something.

So my boot media arrived and still no go.  I keep getting the Boot Error (meaning that something's wrong reading the floppy drive).

So it's back in many pieces again.

I tried switching the floppy drives.  No go.

I checked the cable for damage.  Nope.

I had already cleaned the drive and the heads, but I put my head cleaner in and did that.  Still nothing.

Now focusing on the floppy controller.

More in part 2 later.

What's the point of the Whit-less lockdowns?

Sorry for the ramble, but I did a lot of driving yesterday and had time time to think.  I got to wondering what the point of all this lockdown BS is from Whit-less.

It's unsupported by the science and very unpopular.

Now, we all know that Whit-less is egotistical tyrant, but even tyrants usually don't do something just to feed their egos.  There's always some point behind it.  So I got to wondering what the point is.

She's not getting re-elected in 2020.  That's almost a certain at this point.  The fact that the crazies are going after her demonstrate that the pressure she's putting on the population is getting too high.  She's put too many people out of work and caused too many businesses to close.

Could she be trying to suppress the vote?  Most people voting Republican don't trust the USPS to do their job (rightly so) and deliver the ballots on time (if at all).  So those people will be voting in person.  If anything, she's suppressing the Democrat vote.  That leads to the question: Is she trying to de-legitimize the election?  Claiming that due to problems, that the Republican candidates really didn't win.

But the Democrats have been playing the long game for a long time now.  They've taken over the Media and the schools and have been indoctrinating generations of people.  I think that everything that they are doing isn't for the next few years, but to set things up for the next few decades.

(Side note: the theory that Pelosi's 25th Amendment tactic really isn't against Trump but against Biden.  She sets it up now that people aren't thinking along those lines to make it more plausible when they use it.)

Right now:
1. I think the purpose of the masks is to keep people in fear.  Fearful people tend to not think before doing, making them easier to control.
2. I think the purpose of the lockdowns is to kill businesses and the economy.  That may seem strange, but the fewer jobs, the more people on the gov't dole and dependent on the Democrats for that hand out.  Keep that up for long enough, and people lose their will to get off the dole.

Sadly, that means that the lockdowns won't end after the election.  It will be harder for her to keep it up now that the Legislature is back in the picture.  But the longer she can keep people down, the less apt they will be able to get work after the lockdowns and the more dependent on the Democrat hand outs.

Tandy 1400LT upgrade - update

So all the parts finally arrived and I attempted to replace the sticky B: drive with a Gotek.

Short update: Failure.  I will have to create my own 26-34 pin adaptor.

Long update:

The goal was to replace the B: drive with a Gotek.  If I got that to work, I'd replace the A: drive as well.  I got a 26-to-34 pin adaptor from eBay.

I have both a standard Gotek + FlashFloppy and an OpenFlops and I tried them both.

So, partial disassembly and unplugged the B: drive.  I plugged the 26-to-34 pin adaptor into the Gotek and hooked the B: drive into the cable.

First issue: The Gotek must be set to the S0.  Otherwise, the A: drive won't read at all.  Simple fix of moving the jumper and tried again.

This time A: booted up fine, but B: would not do anything.  I tried the OpenFlops with the same results.

Next attempt, I hooked up just the Gotek.  No other floppies.  That worked.  So I know that everything works.  Why doesn't it work with another floppy?

The answer is in the Tandy 1400LT Service Manual.  Go to the Appendix C - 3.5 inch FDD Specification, Physical Interface.

The problem is Pin 6.  For the Tandy 1400LT, that pin is Drive Select 1.  But in the 26 pin floppy specification, that pin is Disk Change.  So a general 26-to-34 pin adaptor won't work.  I would have to build my own specific for the 1400LT.  That's a project for another time.

But the day wasn't a complete loss.  I had purchased yet another 1400LT on eBay that was non-working and was able to recover many parts - including the floppy drives.  So while I had the computer apart, I replaced the sticky B: drive with one from the parts system.  So the sticky B: drive is fixed.

I'll see if it's worth my time to build my own 26--to-34 adaptor.

Tandy 1400LT upgrade

I was able to pick up another Tandy 1400LT on eBay for a good price.  This one has a much better screen, probably due to the fact it was taken better care of.  The new one came with a home made cover.

The only issue is that the B: drive is a little sticky when removing diskettes from the drive.  Of course, it's a special 26-pin drive connector (thanks Tandy) and replacing the drive is impossible.  Or is it?

Enter the Gotek.  I was able to source a card that will let me connect the 26-pin connector to a standard 34-pin floppy connector with power.

The Gotek arrived today, so I put Flash Floppy on it.  The only problem is that one of the 7-segment displays is missing a few functional segments, but that doesn't hurt anything for what I'm doing.

Now to wait for the other parts and see if this works.

Final truck project - complete

The final truck project (for the year, at least) is complete.

This will be the last one for this year since the weather won't cooperate for painting.

But I no longer have a goal, so unless I get a really good deal on eBay, that will probably be it for a while.

Completed projects

 My latest truck project is complete.  See here for all the details.

It was actually complete weeks ago, but the roof needed more percussive maintenance and I broke the replacement windshield doing so.  I decided to wait until my next project needed parts and I would just order them all at once.

So the actual latest project is this.

I spent some time yesterday wiring up the flasher on top.  It turned out really nice.

But I needed to add more display space to hold them all.

Power supplies don't last forever

I sold off one of my Tandy 1100FDs not too long ago.  It was the unmodified one (i.e. with the real floppy drive).  But it looks like I also sold it with the only good power supply that I had for them.

Today, I took out my Gotek-enhanced 1100FD and powered it up for a project to play with the CGP-115 (color printer/plotter).  For some reason the printer wouldn't work with my Linux box with the USB/Parallel cable.

So I fired up the 1100FD and... it wouldn't.  Then it finally started up.  Then powered off.  Uh, oh!  Is it broken?  It looked like a power issue.  But it stayed up, so I had some fun playing Star Trek.  But it powered off in the middle of the game.

Now I knew that there was a problem.  So I checked the power supply.  9.5V and seemed stable.  I moved the cord (thinking there might be a short), but no problems.  But I felt like it was a power supply issue since this PC was just sitting on a shelf for a while.

So I located a power supply from the spare parts box that was the correct voltage, but low amps (I figured that would be OK since the floppy was no longer physical) and, low and behold!, it worked without a problem and stayed up.

Now I know that the C-64 had power supply issues.  Over time, C-64 power supplies would go bad and increase the 5V power line and fry your C-64.  That's why we tell people who find old C-64's at their parent's house to get a new (yes, they actually make new ones) power supplies for their C-64 before they play with it.

So my 1100FD power supply didn't do that (fortunately), but finding a replacement power supply was hard.  It took some searching to find a 9V 2A center-negative power supply.  But I was successful in the end.

Refusing to wear a mask

So this is a side note from my previous post.

The decision to not wear a mask is 2 fold:

1. Refusing to participate in the fear mongering that our Tyrant is doing in order to keep power.

2. Knowing that wearing a mask is useless right now.

Now, our decision to not go to our favorite store comes from the fact that the store is private property.  They get to set the rules for their property.  If they require a mask, we will respect that decision and feel no animosity toward them.  We will return when they lift the stupid rule that was forced on them.

We will not comply with the mask edict from our Tyrant, but we will respect the business, so we simply will not go.

The funny thing is that other stores have been requiring a mask for a while now, but no one has said "boo" about us not wearing one.  But should that happen:

1. If it's another customer, they will be told in no uncertain terms were to stick it and I will not be polite about it.

2. If it's a store employee, we will be polite, refuse and continue on our way through the store.

3. If the store director asks us to leave, we will do so respectfully, and quietly.  We may never be back or we might come back the next day.

But we will never comply with arbitrary, baseless, useless demands from Tyrants.

Insufferable elitists

We are facing many problems today.  But one of the big, but quiet, issues is the rise of insufferable elitists.

You've all known them.  In my memory, they are women (for some strange reason) who are older.  They treat you like a 2 year old (no matter how old you are) and that you know absolutely nothing.  With the implication that they know everything.  Of course, after listening to them for 2 minutes, you realize that they are a few bricks short of a wall.

Today, they seem to cover all kinds of people, but they are easily identifiable.

When talking with them, you will find that they have a stand of "I am right, and if you disagree with me, then you must be wrong."  They have no sense that they might be wrong and need to at least listen to what you have to say.

No amount of facts will make them think that they might be wrong.  They constantly quote of some "expert"s information - but they have completely failed to vet that expert.  If they ask the source of your information, they will attack that source instead of discussing whether the information is true or not.

They become insufferable because if you post anything that goes against what they believe, they will keep posting their "questions" (really leading questions to get you to think the way they think) and not listening to your answers.

They continue to cling to their beliefs (which is really what they have) no matter how many facts you bring to their attention.

The real problem is that the Tyrants (ex: so-called Governors who have suspended the Constitution in their states and rule without consent) use these people to push the fear that the Tyrants use to keep people in line.

Yesterday, our favorite store announced that due to the restrictions of our Tyrant, they will require all customers to wear a mask.  Never mind that there is absolutely no data that shows that the lockdown we are still under is even effective.  So we decided that we will no longer go to that store - at least until the stupid rule is removed.

But I was surprised by the number of people who thought that making everyone wear a mask was a good idea and how vehement some were about the idea that someone was thinking for themselves and going against the Narrative.  The attitudes of these people were elitist (and that's really putting it mildly).

We need to counter these elitists and put them in their place (hiding in their home without Internet, preferably).

Reflections on the envious

I remember back to elementary school.  There were kids who were smarter than I was and certainly many that were more athletic than I was.  I think that all of us (at least somewhat) wanted to be more like those kids.

But over time, we realized that we couldn't be like those kids.  We just didn't have the mental or athletic talent that those kids naturally had.

For most of us, we realized that was OK.  We didn't envy those other kids.  We just accepted the fact that they would be better at sports than us or get better grades than us.  We weren't mad at them because they didn't cheat.  We all played by the same rules.  They just played better than us.

I think that some of us used them as... I don't want to say "role model"... but we did sort of look up to them and wanted to be as good as them.  They were something to aspire to.  They made us want to be better than we were.  And that's a good thing.

But something happened after I was in school.  Somehow those people were to be envied - in a negative way.  Kids were taught that these other kids who excelled were "stealing" our success somehow.  That these successful kids should hold themselves back to let others "shine".  To me that's sort of like letting someone win.  That's not helpful to either the "winner" or the "loser".

The "winner" gets a false sense of ability.  As one of my college professors put it "The first step in being smart is knowing what you are dumb at."  Unless you know your deficiencies, you can't overcome them.  If you believe that you are smart, you stop studying/learning/improving and you atrophy.

I see so many walking examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect today that it's scary.  People so ignorant that they don't know that they are ignorant.  Worse, many of these people think that they are smarter than all the people around them and they get really mad when you point out that they aren't.  They are actually holding themselves back from being better.

That's one of the reasons I like programming: It's a very humbling experience.  It constantly lets you know that you are not nearly as smart/knowledgeable as you think you are.  You don't see too many elites in the programming profession.

Now we get to the problems with the ignorant elites: when they get power, the nearly always F* things all up.

Take the recent flooding in Midland.  The dams that failed were privately owned.  The elites wanted the dams let the water rise so that the muscles in the lake would thrive.  The owners refused because they said that the dams were old and couldn't handle it.  The elites (in this case the Tyrant Whitmer and her accomplice Dangerous Dana Nessel) sued with the result that the dams came under the ownership/control of the state - who promptly raised the water levels of the lakes.

The result: the dams failed and flooding ensued.  Will the elites take responsibility for their error?  Of course not.  Failures are always someone else's fault.

So, remember, listen to the people who others call "expert".  Those people are outstanding in their field and have real knowledge.
Ignore the ones who call themselves "expert".  Those people are out, standing in their field.  And like most scarecrows, have no brains.

It's easy to mark the "experts" who are scarecrows.  They are always putting down the real experts because they envy the real expert's real knowledge.

More cleaning

*Sigh*

Well, we had a couple of furry illegal aliens here in the condo.  One really liked my walnuts, so he was trapped quickly.  But the other was either too smart to get into the food, too stupid to find the bait in the trap, or simply couldn't smell anything.  We had to use the sticky trap for him (yuck!).

But all the furry illegal aliens have been deported into the trash can and things are much quieter.

But we had to deal with the "fallout" left by the furry illegal aliens, so we cleaned all the cabinets (and the fridge while we were at it).  The good thing is that there wasn't much fallout other than on the counter tops.

But all that was in prep for our new floors (Kitchen, hallway, bathroom) on Wed.  And, hopefully, a new fridge in the future.

Computers - and why some failed in the market place.

Light thinking day today, so random thoughts are going through my head.

One of those thoughts is why many early computers failed in the marketplace and I think I have a reason.

When PCs first came out, they were for hobbyists and techies.  But when the Triad (TRS-80, Apple II, Commodore PET) came out in the late '70s, computers become consumer items.

Now, for a consumer, a computer is a tool.  The value of a tool is measured in how much work it can do for you vs. how much money it cost.  That's a big reason why the Apple II was the low seller of the Triad.  It was pricey and didn't do much more than the others (other than have pretty colors).

As time went on, vendors differentiated by making their hardware better.  But the better hardware came at a cost: incompatibility.  If you moved from Vendor 1 to Vendor 2, your software didn't work and you had to repurchase it.

CP/M fixed that to a certain extent.  A Z80 CP/M package would work on any other Z80 CP/M system (to a certain extent).  I think that's what gave people the thought to see what the full cost of "upgrading" their computer would be.

But when IBM came out with their PC - made from off the shelf components so anyone could create a clone - that changed.  Now, if you purchased a PC clone and moved to another PC clone, your software would work (again, mostly).

It's the "mostly" that was the problem for many vendors.

Tandy, for example, came out with the Tandy 2000.  It was, hardware-wise, much better than the competition.  But it wasn't that compatible.

The Amiga was another example of great hardware, but true cost of moving from your old system to a better, but incompatible, one was just too high.

When I look back at the old computer systems, I see the shift in thinking among consumers.  Yes, better hardware is good, but if I have to repurchase all my software (and in many cases, there was no software to purchase for the new computer), the value just isn't there.

A fast computer with pretty graphics that can do none of the things that I need it to is just a paper weight taking up desk space.  Ya, I know that in a year, if enough people purchase this new computer system, the software will be there.  But I need it to do something today not tomorrow.  So the market doesn't buy and the new computer fails in the market place.

Think about this.  My TRS-80 Model 4P wasn't discontinued until 1981.  Z80.  Only 128K memory (max), 2 floppy drives (max), IBM clones having taken over the market already.  But many people had made big investments in TRSDOS (and the like) software for themselves and the cost of moving to a powerful IBM clone was too high.

Rebounding from the depths of madness

Just kidding.  I'm coping well while under house arrest by the Evil Tyrant Whit-less.

The new desk has arrived and now have more space.  I have the C-64 set up more or less permanently.  But the Composite to VGA adapter that I have leaves a "rainbow" at the top of the screen.  Nothing that stops me from doing anything, but it's just bothersome.  I've tried others adapters and they do the same thing.  So it could be my C-64.  But other people said that they had the same issue and tracked it back to the adapter.  So it's spend more $$$ on a better adapter or leave it.  I think I'll leave it for now.

Since I had room, I was finally able to test out my Hakko FR-301 desoldering tool that Dawn got me for my birthday.  Really nice.  This will come in handy when I get some time to replace the battery in my Tandy 1400LT and in future projects.

New laptop today!  Woo Hoo!  Just waiting for the friendly neighborhood UPS guy to stop by.  Signature required (which is a good thing).

Exercise is going good.  The weather has been good and we've been able to get out for walks.  I've also been doing light weights in the dance/exercise room.  I'm in a good routine now.  The only thing we have to "fix" is that we are eating out on the weekends too much.

The projects that require lots of time and desk space are still building up.  I have my power switch for my TRS-80 4P.  But I have to do a big disassembly to get that installed.  I already alluded to my 1400LT battery replacement.  I also want to start moving on the new alarm clock.

We have a Sonos speaker in the bedroom.  But we really only use it as an alarm clock.  I want to create an internet alarm clock that runs off our internal server and doesn't have the security issues a Siri/Alexa-enabled speaker might have.

Still locked down

Our fearless leader Queen Whit-less has decreed that we shall self-quarantine until May 15.  But she did "allow" us to do the things she stupidly said that we couldn't do 2 weeks ago (and caused a large protest that made national news and several petitions to recall her to hit over 200,000 signatures).**

So I am officially banished to the Man Cave until May 18.  Not happy.

The good news is that the Man Cave is getting several upgrades.  One of which is a new desk - actually an extra desk.  This will allow me to set up some of my larger projects (like the RC2014 and the C-64*) more or less permanently.  It should also allow me to have more other systems set up to play with.

The bad news is that my main work area will be taken up by real work until at least May 16.  So I can't play with my desoldering tool that I got for my birthday.  Also, my clock batteries arrived for my Tandy 1400LT and I need that area to install them.

* The C-64 requires a power supply for the C-64, plus another power supply to hook it to a modern monitor, and if I run the 1541 floppy drive, yet another outlet.  So it does require quite a bit of desk space to hook it up.

** Ignore this if you don't care about Michigan politics.
The emergency order that gives Whit-less the power to make these edicts ends on May 1 and to extend it, she needs to get permission from the legislature.
So I'm uncertain if her latest edict will have any authority past May 1.  It's possible that the legislature will just override it and let people make their own decisions.

I do know that the legislature wants to limit Herr Whit-ler's emergency power, but it's mostly symbolic since it won't pass.  But it does mean that the legislature won't give her permission to extend her authority beyond what's currently in the Michigan Constitition.

Time for the lockdown to end

So, the last room was cleaned out this weekend.  We have officially gone through the entire condo and cleared out things.  We have a large pile of stuff that will go to eBay/Goodwill as soon as the lockdown ends.

Some interesting things that were heard:

Me: "Why on Earth do I have a Fart Gun?"
Wife: "But we should keep it!"

"Where did all these rare earth magnets come from?  I have not pulled that many old hard drives apart."

"Do routers reproduce when put in a dark place for a long time?"

"So that's where we hid all the chocolate?"


Next weekend, we have nothing to do now.  It's time for the lockdown to end.

New Server - active

So, the old server is now turned off and the new server is now active.

The new server hardware is:

• Raspberry Pi Rack
• Raspberry Pi 4B 2M
• 4 2.5" hard drives (2 500GB and 2 1TB)
• Power USB hub - to supply power to the 4 drives

I put the Pi 3 back into the NAS kit setup that I purchased a while ago and have set that one up in a different spot instead of putting it into the rack.

I have an extra Pi 4.  I'll be cloning the SD card for the server this weekend and making that extra Pi 4 a "cold" standby should the active Pi 4 fail.

Office Exile Extended

So, I'm banished to the Man Cave for the next month.  Not happy.

I'm hoping that some companies start bucking this unconstitutional "stay at home" order by governor Whit-less.

I keep hearing that, at this point, the "stay at home" order will create another crisis because we aren't acquiring herd immunity - which is the only way we will defeat COVID-19.

Let the people who are not high risk go back to work.  Let us get sick and get over it (many of us think that we already had it back in Dec. when we got sick but just thought it was the "creeping crud" that comes out every year).

Let the high risk people "stay at home".  Let the people who get sick stay at home until they are better.  Get the country moving again.

I like my Man Cave, but it's wearing hard on me to be there 8+ hours per day.

But there is a light at the end of this tunnel: we got toilet paper last Friday when we went grocery shopping.

Tandy 1400LT

So, ya, I promised no new projects this year.  But when a Tandy 1400LT came up at a reasonable price, I had to jump on it.

It turned out that the only thing "wrong" with it was a missing AC adapter.  But another eBay sale later, and I have an AC adapter.

The floppy drives are working well.  The screen is good.
I took it apart for cleaning an inspection.  Even the clock battery wasn't leaking (but as soon as I get my Man Cave back, I'll be replacing that).

So, some Windex, rags, Q-Tips and elbow grease later, and it looks almost new.

The album is here.

I used many of the diskettes I created for my 1100FD and created some extra ones.  Pretty much all the software works really nice.

One interesting thing about this PC is that it has 768K of RAM.  It comes with a driver that will take that extra 128K and turn it into a RAM disk.  The boot floppies that came with the PC copy things like COMMAND.COM there on boot - which makes this feature really nice.

Office Exile day 9

Nothing really to report today.

I'm just getting tired of the toilet paper issue.

Luckily, we already had our normal supply.  So we are good for about another week.

But every time I go to the store, the shelves are empty - I mean completely empty - of toilet paper.

Did the hoarders drain the supply chain so badly that we are still recovering?
Or do they show up every morning and buy up all the TP on the shelves?

I got to the store minutes after it opened today.  (Meijer is normally open 24/7 but is now closed from 10p-8a for restocking and cleaning.)  So they should have had some.  I thought I saw a package on someone's cart as I was going in.  But the shelves were empty.  Same for Family Fare.

Of course, our worthless governor doing her unconstitutional "shelter in place" order didn't help.  I'm sure that it caused another bout of hoarding.

If you are hoarding, please stop.  The only people who have a legitimate reason to hoard are the over 60 crowd since they really need to stay away from people (they have the highest mortality rate from this virus).  Everyone else: just buy what you need.  If people did that, there'd be plenty of TP for all of us.

New server - Update

The USB hub arrived yesterday and only took me a few minutes to get set up.  It works like a charm.

The second hard drive was added to NAS2 and there were no problems.

Now, I have to rethink things a bit.  I think the second Pi4 that I have will become a cold standby.  I'll clone the SD card when everything is set up.   Then I'll install it in the rack, but unpowered.

But the other 2 hard drives are on order.  When they come in, I will have all the parts and I'll find out if this set up works for what I need it for.

In exile

Working for home is greatly overrated.  I mean, I like my man cave and it's the perfect place to set up a home office since the desk, computer monitors and office chair are there.  But spending 8+ hours there every day... it wears.

So, today is day 8 of our exile from the office and, I'm getting...  I want to use the word 'depressed', but that's not correct.  I'm lacking energy.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Benefits with working from home:

1. Short commute.  I can walk to work.  8)
2. No distractions - at least none inside our condo.
3. Very relaxed dress code.
4. No lunch room filled with free junk food.  So it's kinda hard to snack (we don't keep much junk food in our condo).

Drawbacks:

1. Lack of human interaction wears on you.
2. I find I move less than I do when I'm in the office.
3. I'm less productive.  There's just some things that are harder and more time consuming do to via the VPN.  And hope that the device that you are using back in the office doesn't decide to lock up.

So, there's not much I can do about most of those.  But I can move more.

I dug out my old hand weights and every hour or so, I stand up on the exercise mat and do a set of upper body exercises.  It only takes a minute or so and gets my energy levels back up.

Death to the hoarders!

So I went grocery shopping early yesterday, thinking that the main reason we can't get our stuff is because we are going so late (and close to the time that they are normally restocking).

Not only was the TP all gone, along with the usual: paper towels, soup, most packaged meat.  But the flour was gone too!

WTF!??

One person claimed that it was because people wanted to bake their own baked goods.  Really!  I wasn't aware that the bakeries have shut down.  They don't do self-serve on the donuts anymore, but I've seen no shortage of baked goods.

Personally, I think that someone is winding these morons up and then they go out and create a shortage to make this whole COVID-19 thing seem a bigger crisis than it is.

New Server

So Haruka is getting old.  While she's working just fine right now, sooner or later she will fail.  So it's time to start working on the replacement.

The plan is to create a Raspberry Pi setup with laptop hard drives.

I use Haruka for:

1. Remote playing.
2. Backup our main systems
3. Serve media (music, pictures and video).

Here's the planned BOM:

• 8 Slot Cluster Cloudlet : Stackable Cluster For Raspberry Pi 4B and other Single Board Computers
• Raspberry Pi 3 B+
• 2 Raspberry Pi 4 B+ 2GB
• 3 500 GB 2.5" hard drives
• 2 1 TB 2.5" hard drives
• 5 USB3 to SATA adaptors

Phase 1:
Cannibalize the NAS kit hardware for the "play" system.  I also want to see if I can NFS mount the drive as an experiment.  The only outlay is for the case.

This was very successful.
I loaded log2ram to make the SD card last longer.
I renamed the 'pi' user to mine (and made sure that the user numbers matched).

Phase 2:
I got 1 Pi 4 and the other 2 500 GB hard drives and cables.
The plan was to set up the backup system with disk mirroring.

Not quite successful.  The Pi4 will work just fine with 1 hard drive, but it will fail with 2.  The drives pull too much power.


So the plan changed a little bit.  Add to the BOM:

• 1 Powered USB3 hub

This lets me hook up all hard drives to the one Pi4.  I originally was going to serve the videos from one Pi4 and the backups and music from the other.  I knew that 4 drives was out of the question.

But the with the powered USB hub, the hub can power all the drives.  Now I can hook up all 4 drives to the one Pi4.

So waiting for the USB3 hub to arrive.  Then the project can move forward.

Death to the Toilet Paper Thieves!

So, last night we went on our weekly grocery shopping trip.

We get to Meijer and, I swear, it looked like the Zombie Apocalypse happened and everyone went bonkers.

No toilet paper, paper towels, bleach, hand sanitizer, etc.  Canned food was very low.  Bread almost gone.  Produce was also very low.

Why?  COVID-19 isn't that bad.  70% of us will get it and the vast majority will live through it with only flu-like symptoms (after which we will be immune).

The CDC said that only those in the high risk category (like the ones with low immune systems) should shut themselves up for the next 2 weeks or so.  That's fine since most of those people are already shut up in nursing homes.

But for the rest of us, the only thing we need to do is lower our contact with people to slow the spread.

But we did ask ourselves "Why toilet paper?"  IMHO, the left-wing media wound the morons who actually listen to them up for this purpose.  Nothing says "crisis" when you go into a large retailer and find empty shelves.  BTW: those shelves will probably be full come Tuesday when the supply chain fills things back up.

SunFounder NAS kit

So I picked up a SunFounder NAS kit and the hard drive for it finally arrived today.  So I set it up.

For $80, you get a nice enclosure, eInk display with buttons, fans, USB-to-SATA adaptor and an SD card with Raspian and Open Media Vault on it.

You need to supply a Raspberry PI (I used a 3B+ I had laying around) and a 2.5" SATA hard drive (that I got on Amazon for $30).

Overall, this is a pretty simple set up.  I had some issues setting up NFS, but that was an Open Media Vault issue.

So for $80 + $30 + $35 = $145 I got a nice little 500 GB NAS.

You should install log2ram on it to lengthen the lifespan of the SD card.  I would like to see them upgrade the distro to include that out of the box.

But other than that, it's really nice.

Now, does it meet my needs?  The jury is still out on that.  We'll see.

The plan was to replace Haruka with a bank of Raspberry PIs.  Using a case like this.  I would have a Pi that:
1. Does the backups of our PCs
2. Serves our Movies
3. Services our Music
4. Allows me to access stuff from outside our network.

None of Haruka's drives are over 50% used and they are 1TB drives.  So 500 GB drives for the Pis would work nice.


The wheels are turning.  We will see.

COVID-19 = Tower of Babel?

I recently read a Blog post today that "COVID-19 heralds the end of Globalism" and I can't help but think there is a grain of truth to this.

Looking at this from the point of view of just diseases, a homogeneous society is the most susceptible to diseases since the disease finds it easy to jump from host to host.  (Read what has happened with bananas for a real-world example.)  In a heterogeneous society, diseases spread much slower, or even die out, as the disease runs its course and can't find another host to infect.

Globalism is the idea that we are one big, homogeneous family.  It's open borders and people moving from one place to another freely.

From a disease point of view, this is a really bad thing.  If people from a location where the disease is rampant - especially if the disease has a long incubation time - move en masse to another location, the disease spreads easily.

If the borders are closed, the disease can be stopped, or at least the spread slowed to keep it manageable.

Logically, this means that globalism is bad for pandemics (or diseases that have that potential).

Relating back to the Tower of Babel...  The story is basically saying the same thing: globalism is bad.

Remember, globalism isn't about "diversity".  It's about sameness.  It's not about living peacefully with your neighbor.  It's about making you and your neighbor the same.

True diversity, a heterogeneous society, is good.  In the short term, it's good to keep COVID-19 down and, hopefully, out.

TRS-80 Model 4P

I have a TRS-80!  Yes, after 40 years, I finally have a TRS-80 and it works!

Pictures here.