Mackinac Island in the Fall

So we just finished our vacation.  This year, we decided on Mackinac Island, but going in the off-season (i.e. after Labor Day).

We stayed at a wonderful Bed and Breakfast: Haan's 1830 Inn.  It's only a 10 minute walk to the town and very close to the Butterfly House and Mackinac Art Museum.

So, the good:

• Since it's after Labor Day, the number of Fudgies is low.  The crowds are light and the lines to get into things is small.
• Prices are low.  Big discount at the Inn for this time of year.  Plus most of the shops had sales. 
• Staying on the island means you can see things without even the low crowds during the day.

But then, there is bad:

• The weather at this time of year is cold and rainy.  The day we arrived, it poured.  But we remembered to bring our rain gear and were were not uncomfortable as we walked from inside venue to inside venue.
• The next day was rainy in the morning.  But, you know, it was rather nice.  We met maybe 5 people on the trails.  We rested in several covered areas around the island and by afternoon, it was clear and dry (with the expected upswing in tourists).
• The day we left was, of course, bright, sunny and dry.  *sigh*

On the whole, we'd do it again.  The Inn was nice enough that we would pay the premium of going in season next time.

On the way back, we had time, so we stopped at Fort Michilimackinac. They have done a wonderful job of reconstructing the fort and turning the place into an excellent museum.  There was more of crowd at the fort, though.  But mainly because the Wrinkle Wagons dropped a bunch of seniors (who were all very nice).

PI4 as desktop

So let's start at the beginning.

In the Man Cave, I had a Chromebox.  The purpose was to have something that I could do web searches and display information that I needed for my projects.  But I was finding that I really needed something more.

I was able to pick up a Raspberry Pi 4 4GB and got a case with a fan.  According to everyone, it would work as a full desktop PC.  But it wouldn't be a speed demon.

That was fine.  I didn't need a powerful PC for the Man Cave.  Just something that would do some light weight things.

The bad news: YouTube was not "light weight" enough for the Pi4.  8(

So the Pi4 is now a project box.  It will get a new OS install at some point.

Today, I visited the Junk Store (what other people call Valley City Tech Store) and picked up an HP EliteDesk 800 G1 (small form factor PC).
Core i1-4360u, 3.70Hgz, 500 GB HD, 8GB RAM.  It includes a DVD writer, sound, NIC and 10 USB ports (some USB3!).  Only $120 (including the Display Port to HDMI cable).

My only disappointment is that it's supposed to have wireless, but it doesn't.  I had to use the UDB WiFi dongle that I had in a really old PC that's about to go to Goodwill.

Interestingly, that's the same amount that I paid for the Pi4 and extras.

Script kiddies with too much time on their hands

So, I wanted to be able to access Haruka from outside of my home.  When I first set that up, Haruka was getting "hit" by hundreds of login attempts per minute from all over the world.

At first, I was intrigued and kept stats, but over time, I was blocking bigger and bigger portions of the Internet from Haruka.  So I decided to simply move the ssh port to a non-standard number.

That worked and worked for quite some time.  But that ended about 4:50am today.

Someone, with way too much time on their hands decided to do a big port scan looking for non-standard ssh ports and finally stumbled on mine.  So back to their really lame attempt at logging in as root (hint: root's not allowed to ssh in to my server - so that isn't going to go too far.  And for the person doing a dictionary attack, and the other person doing a rainbow attack, there's exactly 2 user IDs that can log in and you can't guess what they are - let alone guess the passwords).

But I'm tired of getting emails saying "there's an attacker!" and having logs filled with their lame attempts.  So I've moved the ssh port again.  Good luck finding that port.  There are only 65535 ports.  If it took them 2 years to find the last one, I figure it should take them about 10 to find the new one.

R.I.P. Mad Magazine

I just saw in the news today that Mad magazine is effectively no more.  It will no longer be sold on the "news" stands and starting in Dec. will no longer have new content - instead rehashing the old content that is has in its vault from the last almost 70 years.

I was sad to see it go, but it was time.  Magazines just aren't that useful when people get their content from the Internet.  But I think it was more than that.

While Bill Gaines was head of Mad, all of Mad's owners had 1 rule "make money".  As long as Mad made money (and they usually made quite a bit), the owner left it alone to do what it knows how to do.

But Bill passed away.  The magazine got new editors and a new owner.

It was about this time that I noticed a change in Mad - which was expected with new editors - but the change was not a good one.

Bill's magazine was an equal-opportunity-satire magazine.  Your politics made no difference.  If they could make fun of you, they did.  The new editors, however, were certainly more left-wing and, so, they focused on making fun of those on the Right, but making fun of those on the Left was frowned upon.

Being purchased by DC was not a good thing either.  DC already has a terminal infestation of SJWs and will likely be out of business soon.  I'm sure that purchase pushed Mad even more Left.

And the final nail was the fact that we all know:  The left has no sense of humor.  The magazine was simply no longer funny and, therefore, no longer entertaining.

I still have my Spy vs. Spy collection.  Antonio was always my favourite.
I know that Sergio will keep going - I highly doubt that he's reliant on Mad too much.

But for everyone else at Mad: Thanks for running a great magazine into the ground.  I'm sure Bill Gaines would be proud of you.  Not.

Who likes socialism?

There are 3 groups of people who like socialism:

1. The power hungry (dictator wannabes).
2. The elite.
3. The stupid/lazy.

Let's take each group more in depth.

The Power Hungry
Despite the name, socialism is not about people.  Well, I should say it's not about individuals.  Under socialism, people are nothing more than components in a machine - easily replaceable and of low value.

Under Socialism, the gov't owns everything.  Therefore who ever controls the gov't controls everything.  And, like we saw in every socialist experiment, socialism devolves into a de-facto dictatorship.

People like Crooked Hilary and Crazy Bernie fall into this group.  They are pushing socialism, not because they think it's great, but because they think that once it's in, they will siphon off power/money for themselves.

The Elite
You see these people mainly in the Ivory Tower of universities.  These people are experts in their own fields, but are woefully ignorant in every other area.  But they think that they have The Plan that will create Utopia.

History has shown time and time again that these people are extremely ignorant.  They are ignorant about their own Plan.  They are ignorant in that they think that if socialism comes that the Power Hungry will allow them to implement their Plan.

They speak of themselves as "smart" because they have a degree in X, but X has nothing to do with economics.

The Stupid/Lazy
This is the biggest group.

The Stupid are people who think that Socialism is more "moral" than capitalism (how they can think that stealing the work of someone is "moral" shows how bad our education system has become).  They are simply ignorant - and made so by the media/education.

The Lazy are people who like the idea of getting "free stuff" without working.  These people are parasites who society should be eliminating.


So when someone wants to tell you what a wonderful idea socialism is, ask yourself "What group does that person fall in to?"  I guarantee that they will fall into one of these groups.

Student loan debt

One of the big problems you hear about today is the "crushing" student loan debt that many people have today.  And, of course, everyone has their "solution" to the problem.

The student loan debt problem was created by

1. A myth that a college education is required to get a good paying job.  This myth was perpetuated by the Left (mostly in Hollywood by stereotyping non-college-grads as stupid working low paying, menial jobs).
2. A student loan program that allowed students to take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans to get a worthless degree.
3. Colleges raising their tuition in response to this easy-to-get student loan money.
4. Colleges turning from educational institutions to Left Wing indoctrination centers and producing people who are uneducated in their chosen field.

Simply put, the student loan system was created by the Left to funnel money into their institutions.

This is not a banking problem.  The banks are simply the intermediary for the money (since they had the infrastructure set up to give loans and take payments).  The Federal Gov't backed those loans, so the banks never used their money.  But they have to play by the rules that the Federal Gov't set for them.

Crazy Bernie Sanders wants free college education.  (Note that the only valid response to Crazy Bernie's ideas is to laugh - since they are the stupidest things ever said.)

Companies are tired of getting college grads who can't do their work and are no longer requiring college degrees.  New students don't want to be shackled with student loans and are seeking other education.  People are discovering that you don't need a college degree for many good jobs.

All this is adding up to colleges that are starting to fail financially.  And now you have the real reason why Crazy Bernie wants free college education.


So what to do about the ones who have "crushing" loans.  Nothing.  They messed up.  They paid way too much for a degree worth way too little.

When I went to college, I got a student loan.  But I also did a cost/benefit analysis of my degree.  My degree was worth more than the loan at the time.

If students did not do that and are taking it on faith that they will get a good paying job, then they were idiots and get what they earned: a poor lifestyle.

I should not have to pay for someone else's mistake.

Teacher Misery: Helicopter Parents, Special Snowflakes & Other BS

So I picked up a book titled "Teacher Misery: Helicopter Parents, Special Snowflakes & Other BS" by Jane Morris.

The book is basically a series of anecdotes about dealing with the current crop of bad students.

Before I get into my opinion of this book, let me first say this:  My dad taught middle-school for 43 years.  For most of my life, I had a view into what was happening on my school system that few other students had.  I know that being a teacher (especially one that wants to be a good one) is a frustrating, tiring and thankless job.

If you take the book as just a series of stories about stupid students and their parents (sort of like watching the car crash videos on YouTube), it's a pretty enjoyable read. But I would expect most people don't like schadenfreude.

But what was distasteful to me was the whining - from the teachers.

Every, and I mean every, problem in the stories has its root cause in the public education system.  The poor teachers, who can't be fired.  The poor administrators who won't discipline problem students.

Of course, you will say "but isn't some of this caused by poor parents?"  And you are correct.  But I will argue that those poor parents became poor parents due to the broken public education system.

One of the stories was about a couple of students who "identified" with animals.  The teacher telling the story wanted to not laugh at them, but that's exactly what should have been done (short of bullying).  Instead they humored them, reinforcing this moronic idea.

So Teacher Misery is a well written book and I would recommend it.

If you are like me and have strong beliefs about how our public education is failing, this book may be painful to read.

Mary Poppins Returns

We had a quiet Christmas, so we decided to go see a movie.  Based on the reviews that I had read, Mary Poppins Returns sounded good.

Now, I knew that this wasn't a remake of Mary Poppins.  So I expected it to stand alone as a fun movie.  My expectations were low - so that I don't do a Dick Tracy and be underwhelmed should the movie not live up to its hype.

I'm sorry to say that even though my expectations were low, the movie did not meet them.

First, I can't fault the acting of any of the actors.  They all did stellar performances.  At no point did any of them do bad - even the kids.

The problem is with the story and director.  The musical scenes were poor and way too long (and there were too many that did not improve the story).  The actors were at some times required to not maintain their character (i.e. they made decisions that their characters should NEVER have made).

It felt contrived and pretentious.  It's like they took a bunch of Mary Poppins ideas, dumped them into a pot, stirred them up and dumped them out.

At 1 hour in, I was wondering how long I would have to wait until the end of the movie.  By the end, I wanted to go.

IMHO: Go see Spider-Man instead.

VCFMW13

I enjoy geek conventions.  But since Penguicon self-destructed due to an infestation of Left-wing nut jobs, we had not been going to any conventions.  Then I discovered VCFMW (Vintage Computer Festival Midwest).  It's a reasonable drive from home and sounded like the Left-wing nuts would stay away.

The traffic was...  well... horrible.  But that's pretty normal for Chicago but we made it through.

The hotel overbooked (the reason that was given was a good one, though, and I agree with it) but they got us a room on Friday night at a nearby hotel.  That would have been nice, but my GPS sent me the wrong way, so it took us a bit to locate the backup hotel.

VCFMW started on Saturday morning, so we just checked out and went back to the original hotel.

But you don't care about our hotel and traffic issues.  You want to hear about the show.

Josh Bensadon - RCA 1802 Microprocessor
Very good talk about an early CPU that I never heard about: The RCA 1802.
Also we learned about Joseph Weisbecker, the Cosmac computer and his flip game. All items that I had never heard of before.

Glenn Holmer - geoCom (a BASIC Compiler for GEOS)
This was a nice talk about a backwater product. I had used GEOS way back in the day but I think it was for AOL on an IBM PC.

Mike Willegal - The History and Technology of the SCELBI Computer Business

Another good talk about a computer that I had never heard of before.  It's interesting that some of those computers are still in use today and how important this company was in the PC business.
http://www.willegal.net/scelbi/the8008andScelbi.html

The Auction

So every year, people donate stuff and they auction it off.  Proceeds go toward finding VCFMW (since the event is free to attend).  Lots of cool stuff.  Lots of old Sun stuff.  An ADM3A. And more.  It was supposed to be 2.5 hours and lasted over 4!

The last couple of events were videos, but we were tired and skipped them.

Side note: For some reason, we did not sleep well all weekend.

Jack Rubin - Annual Family Of Eight Panel

Another interesting talk about the PDP computers.  I'm not that interested in these, but still, it was interesting to hear how people are keeping them running.

Alexander Pierson - Cactus 6502 Homebrew
A very good talk on how he created an Altair-like system based on a variant of the 6502. Lots of detailed information. He learned a great deal how these old computers worked.
https://hackaday.com/2018/06/13/vcf-east-cactus-retro-because-it-wants-to-be/
CommodoreZ.com

The final talk was painful, so we bailed and headed home - dealing with the traffic and all.

I was able to pick up:

A TRS-80 TP-10 serial thermal printer

A Z80 assembler book (which should be useful when I get my RC2014 working)

A couple of other TRS-80 books

A new laptop case for my niece

Unfortunately, the deals that I had hoped for weren't there.  8(  I did see a TRS-80 Model III Cassette Only for $125 (working!), but I need to not bring in so much hardware.  I just don't have the room and I want to spend time actually playing with my machines.

Overall, a good weekend.  This is not an event that I'd go to every year - just because it won't change much from year to year.  But we will go back in a few years (or sooner if they have a speaker that I really want to hear).

PC-2 digital recorder

So I have a PC-2 (and PC-4) and, unlike my Tandy 102, the only input/output available is the cassette port.  (Yes, I know about the RS-232 interface for the PC-2, but the PC-4 has no such thing.)

So I located this on Tindie.com.  The SoundDuino claims to be able to record/playback sound.  Coupled with an Arduino, I should be able to make a nice digital recorder.  The keyword is "should".

After thinking it through, I also decided to pick up a 16x2 LCD display with buttons from Adafruit.

I also picked up a PowerBoost 500 Shield and battery to power everything.

Everything looked good.  I didn't see any problems.  Until I tried to actually make things work.

The main problem is that the SoundDuino doesn't work.

To be fair to the developer, he responded very quickly to my questions and even offered to replace my SoundDuino as though it was defective (he says that he tests all of them before he ships them out).  So I got my new SoundDuino and just set out to make his examples work.

After a few hours of work, I gave up.  Playback works fine.  The only problems that I had were with some sound files that were recorded with a really low bit rate.  I didn't expect the SoundDuino to play those.

The SoundDuino was very flaky.  I got it to record a short sound using the built in microphone - but only twice.  I never was able to get it to work with a known good microphone.  Communications was spotty at best.  Most of the time, the board wouldn't communicate back with the Arduino.  I could send commands, but responses never showed up.

Even playback wasn't reliable.  25% of the time I booted the device, the board wouldn't respond at all.

I fully believe that the maker tests all his boards.  But I don't think he really tests them thoroughly.

There was a minor problem with the LCD display buttons.  They didn't really de-bounce them very well.  I had to add some extra de-bounce code to prevent double clicks when the button was pressed only once.

Overall, a failed project.  But lots of learning in it.

As far as my PC-2 and PC-4 are concerned, using my PC's sound card is much more useful.

Altair-Duino and TI Silent 700

The TI Silent 700 is a teletype using thermal fax paper.  It's light weight (compared to many teletypes) and fairly quiet.  I picked up a 703 on eBay.  When I got it, I discovered that it had the "high speed" package installed (that's means it's 1200 BPS instead of the default 300 BPS).

When I tried to hook it up to my Altair-Duino, I found that the DSR to be asserted or it doesn't think that it's online.  I had a choice between cannibalizing one of my serial cables, or making my own.  I decided to make my own.

I found a place online that sells DB-25 connectors and bought some male and female connectors.

The Silent 700 has a female connector.  So I took one of the male connectors and started on that end.

I looped back DSR/DTR and CTS/RTS (not known if that's needed, but I did it just in case). 
RTS/CTS are pins 4 and 5.
DSR/DTR are pins 6 and 20.

A co-worker told me about "security wire".  This is nice stuff for my projects.  4 wires wrapped in one cable.  The stuff that I got was solid, making it easy to solder into the DB-25 connectors.

I connected wires from pins 2, 3 and 7 (Transmit/Receive/Ground) of the Silent 700 to pins 2, 3 and 7 on the other end of the serial cable that I was creating.  One thing that I learned is that the pin numbers on the female end are opposite the numbering on the male end.

I also needed a DB-25 to DB-9 adaptor to connect the home-made cable to the Altair-Duino.  I probably should have gotten DB-9 connectors instead, but I wasn't thinking and I had the DB-25/DB-9 adapter laying around.

The problem that I ran into was that I soldered pin 1 on the Silent 700 side to pin 1 on the other end.  The DB-25/DB-9 adapter linked that to pin 2 for some reason.  De-soldering the pin from the Altair-Duino end solved that problem.

I won't go into setting up the Silent 700.  It doesn't support 8-bit communication.  I set it for 7-bit, even parity.  Then I went through putting those settings into the Altair-Duino through their instrtuctions (https://www.altairduino.com/2017/06/03/serial-device/).

And I now have a new retro-computing toy to play with.

Christmas lights

I've updated my Christmas Lights.  Mainly rewired the cable for the lights so that the box doesn't have to be so close to the start of the lights and reworked the logic to make it less seizure-inducing.

GitHub project

Lost in Space - Reboot

We watched the first 3 episodes of the Lost in Space reboot this weekend.  And....  If lost me before episode 3 finished.

My expectation was that they would take the original idea, turn it around a bit to some up with a different story, but still keep the "Swiss Family Robinson in Space" theme.  I was disappointed.

The balance between sci-fi and drama was not there.  It was a drama set in space.  If you had replaced the space ships with wooden ships and planets with islands, you could have the same story.

First off, what was good:
1. The visuals.  Great special effects.  Great scenic shots.
2. I can't fault the acting.  I thought that they played their parts very well.

If you don't want any spoilers, you probably want to stop reading now.

What pissed me off:

1. The family unit was too dysfunctional.  They needed to have some to create some drama and action, but it just too much.
2. Too much angst from Will, who thought he wasn't up to the mission.
3. Too much "I'm immortal" teen attitude from Penny.
4. Too much brooding from Judy.
5. John Robinson is not a strong male role model.  He's supposed to be a soldier, but is too uncertain.  Maureen seems to be the "leader" of the expedition.  I had expected more of a partnership between them.
6. The Dr. Smith character was as evil as the original series intended - which was a good thing.  But without a strong family to counter her, it just didn't work.
7. The robot is an alien artifact.  As such, it's always suspect and not part of the family unit.
8. Too much "and the gods (i.e. alien robot) came down and fixed everything".  Boring.
9. Too many "suspend reality" moments.

The story that they came up with had sooooo much going for it.  Multiple Jupiter ships landing was a cool idea - and they messed it up.

From an article I read, the space travel technology that they were using was stolen from aliens - who wanted it back.  Hence the robot being there.  In a later episode, all the surviving Jupiter ships regroup and head back, but, of course, Dr. Smith messes everything up and warps only the Jupiter 2 to someplace else.

The planet with its storms, glaciers, forests, etc. would have been a great place to spend the first season just trying to survive, explore, etc.  And maybe save the Dr. Smith Warps The J2 thing at the end to move them to another planet to survive on for Season 2.

Penguicon 2018 - R.I.P.

Looking at the categories this year, if we assume equal distribution of panels there are 14 categories. I’m only interested in 6. That’s actually pretty good. But that assumes equal distribution.

Track	Really interested in	Sort Of Interested in	Notes
DIY	0	3	Most panels are craft, not really DYI.
Food	0	2	Many Vegan panels
Life	0	1	Lots of alt-left lifestyle panels
Penguicon	0	2	Really, only the opening and closing ceremonies, but that's nothing different for me.
Science	0	0	Not really science for many panels. Sorry, but anything with "J.R.R. Tolkien" in the title is not "science". Bob Trembly pretty much carries this track.
Tech	1	1	Programming panels were beginner level, which shows the level of the attendees.  Not much "tech" in the Tech track.

Wow. 48 hours of programming with only 1 panel that's really interesting and 9 that are sort of interesting. I remember when the norm was that I had to choose between 3 different panels that I really wanted to see, but were scheduled at the same time - and find time to eat lunch since there was no open slot for that.

Once again, there is little Linux, real science or tech.  Mostly alt-left stuff.  Penguicon is dead as a "geek" convention.  It's really just an alt-left festival now.

I guess it is true: The left really does ruin everything it touches.

Penguicon 2018 - a pre-mortum

Once again, we won't be attending Penguicon this year (I feel no loss at all).  But I do like to see what's going on with the convension I attended for many years.

When did Penguicon become a writing convention and not a Linux/Anime/Games convention?

Looking at the guest list this year, I broke them down into categories.

Writers:
MARK OSHIRO
DR. KRISTINE LARSEN
MARY ANNE MOHANRAJ
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL
AMAL EL-MOHTAR
Karen Burnham
Kevin MacLeod

Technical:
JOHNNY XMAS
Jeff MacLeod
Curtis Potterveld
Chad Sinke
Bob Trembley

Other:
CHRISTINE SUNU
MAGIC MEEPLE GAMES
Nemo T Rathwald
Charles Severance
Claire Winn

Which puts Penguicon as a very writing-heavy convention.

Reading the Penguicon 101, they still describe Penguicon as

"Think of a weekend-long Linux Users Group meeting with hundreds of other very curious geeks, nationally acclaimed guests, hotel room parties, debates about world-building and the practicality of ion drives, video games and gaming tournaments, nerdy makers selling t-shirts and hardware, anime, costume contests, and free caffeine and snacks always available in the ConSuite."

• But Linux has been lacking in the last 6 years.  None of the GoH or Featured Guests have anything to do with Linux.  And no Eric S. Raymond as a Featured Guest.
• "Nationally acclaimed guests"?  What?  Who?  I've never heard of any of these people before (except for MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL who is a known SJW, and Bob Trembley who I've known from past Penguicons).
• "Debates"?  Not with the politically correct crowd running things.
• And they are pretty low on Anime again this year, except for the cosplay people.

I would describe Penguicon today as a SJW-oriented event praising bad writers (who are SJWs) where you have people falling over one another trying to be more "victimized" than others.  And, oh, ya, there are few technical talks and geeks running around too, but try not to notice them.

Doing some (admittedly cursory) research on each GoH, I see that most of the guests are SJW (or lean in that direction).

Some have laid claims to knowledge/experience that they obviously never had.

***Tangent***
Some years back, I remember interviewing a "highly technical" person for a technical position.  His resume was filled with "headed", "lead" and "managed" terms but had no "programed", "wrote" or "created" terms.  That didn't fill me with confidence in his skills, but he might have tailored his resume to get past the managers.  So we interviewed him (mostly because our management made us).  To make a long story short, he never did any of the work on any of the projects he was on.  He just went to meetings and talked a lot.  Needless to say, we didn't hire him.
***Tangent***

Reading the bios of many of the Guests at Penguicon this year reminds me of this person we interviewed.  Lots of nice sounding things, but if you really read the bios, you see that they really didn't (and still don't) do anything.

In a month or so, they will have the list of panels for Penguicon 2018.  I'll look through them and post on them later.

PC-2 Password Generator

So after the pyrrhic success with my PC-2 Enigma, I decided to repurpose a previous version for something else:  Password generator.

This version started out as an Enigma, but instead of needing an array to store the characters that I could us, I just used the ASCII character set 32-127.  Instead of looking up a value in an array, I could just do an "ASC" or "CHR$".  Much faster.

It had a big drawback, though.  Some of the characters in the table could not be input from the PC-2 keyboard.  So much for decrypting something.

But a password generator only needs to "encrypt".

1000 "V" clear: dim a$(1)*80: wait 0
1010 input "Start value:";r
1020 input a$(0)
1030 for i = 1 to len(a$(0))
1040 a= asc(mid$(a$(0),i,1))
1050 a=a-32+r
1060 if a > 95 LET a=a-96
1070 a=a+96/2
1080 if a > 95 LET a=a-96
1090 a=a+32
1095 :rem PC-2 chars not in standard ascii
1100 if a = 39 let a = 34
1110 if a = 91 let a = 123
1120 if a = 92 let a = 47
1130 if a = 93 let a = 125
1140 if a = 96 let a = 44
1150 if a = 127 let a = 32
1160 a$(1)=a$(1)+chr$ a
1170 r=r+1: if r >95 LET r=0
1180 cursor 0:print a$(1)
1190 next i
1200 wait: print a$(1)
1210 end

The only thing special was the 6 characters that the PC-2 uses that doesn't match up with the standard ASCII character set.  The PC-2 doesn't any single quotes (forward and back quotes).  It doesn't have "[" or "]" - instead it uses Yen and Square Root.  The "\" was some up-down square bracket that the PC-2 uses to denote an empty place in the string (sort of like a null).  And DEL was just like space.  So I convert those characters to something else.

This works much better and much faster.

So you enter something like "Tasty Cookies" and get "0>QSYa%RSPOL{" (start value of 12).

Given the same inputs, you will always get the same output.

I can say that the PC-2 is still useful today.

PC-2 encryption

So I decided to play some with programming my PC-2.  After much trials and tribulations (not to mention a nice long walk down memory lane re-learning how to program in BASIC), I was able to get the original project working.

The original idea was to make a version of the german Enigma working.  But that wasn't working out.  So I settled for something that had an encryption and decryption component.

The cypher is a simple polyalphabetic cypher with a rot-13 thrown in just for fun.

Text is limited to 80 chars (limitation of the PC-2) but since it takes so long to encrypt, I doubt anyone will hit that.

The aa() array is used so that we only encrypt to values that are enterable on the keyboard - otherwise we can’t enter the values to decrypt.

The main problem is that it's very slow.  I mean really slow.  *sigh*  It works, but the lack of speed makes it impractical.

DEF A - Encrypt text
DEF D - Decrypt text

10 "A" gosub 610:Wait 0
20 input a$(0)
30 for i = 1 to len(a$(0))
40 a= asc(mid$(a$(0),i,1)): gosub "L": a=e: gosub "F"
45 a$(1)=a$(1)+chr$ e
50 gosub "Z"
55 cursor 0:print a$(1)
60 next i
70 wait:print a$(1)
80 end

110 "D" gosub 610
120 input a$(0)
130 for i = 1 to len(a$(0))
140 a= asc(mid$(a$(0),i,1)): gosub "S": a=e: gosub "F"
145 a$(1)=a$(1)+chr$ e
150 gosub "Z"
160 next i
170 print a$(1)
180 end

200 :rem encrypt with current rotor value
210 "L" gosub 810:e=b+r
220 if e > 83 LET e=e-84
230 return

300 :rem decrypt with current rotor value
310 "S" gosub 810: e=b-r
320 if e < 0 LET e=e+84
330 return

400 :rem reflector
410 "F" e=a+84/2
420 if e > 83 LET e=e-84
430 e=aa(e):return

500 :rem rotate rotor
510 "Z" r=r+1: if r >83 LET r=0
520 return

600 : rem setup
610 clear: dim aa(83), a$(1)*80:restore
620 input “Start value:”;r
630 for i = 0 to 83: read aa(i): next i:return
640 DATA 32,33,35,36,37,38,40,41,42
650 DATA 43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52
660 DATA 53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62
670 DATA 63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72
680 DATA 73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82
690 DATA 83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,94,97
700 DATA 98,99,100,101,102,103,104,105,106
710 DATA 107,108,109,110,111,112,113,114,115
720 DATA 116,117,118,119,120,121,122
730 return

800 :rem lookup
810 for ii =0 to 83: b = ii
820 if aa(ii)=a then return
830 next ii
840 return 0

The end of "vacation"

So yesterday was my last "vacation" day.  I start work at a new job on Monday.  Which is a good thing because I finished up most of my projects.

The MemoSaver project was (finally) a success.  I had the expected issues with the serial interface, but I got it working at 1200 BPS.  At that speed, even with large memos, it works pretty well.

I finished up my Christmas Lights project.

150 NeoPixels hooked up to an Arduino Uno.  I powered it off a 5V 10A power supply.  Everything's protected with (laugh) a utility bucket with a tight fitting lid and some silicone sealant.

Still more projects in the queue, though.  I have a Fun Light Switch Box.  I made one of these before, but made some mistakes (partly due to a poor design and partly my ignorance).  They updated the design and I've learned, so this one should work out much better.

I have a couple of Matchbox restoration projects that are almost done.  Just waiting for parts now.

I want to write some meaty software for my PC-2.  So I'm looking at porting the Enigma (yes, the German WWII encryption machine) to my PC-2.  Since it's a complete rewrite from a modern programming language to a very constrained BASIC, I have to take it all the way down to basics and redesign things.  A nice, meaty, project.

The rest of my projects remain in hold status.  When I get time...  (Probably after I retire in 18 years.)

More DVD reviews

So, while finishing up the Christmas Cookie work (which is now done!), I decided to finish up the movies in my DVD queue.

Captain America: Civil War

It was OK.  Not as good as the first Captain America or Winter Soldier, but still good.  I think the reason the movie was just OK was that it was a "set up" movie for something later on.

Spiderman: Homecoming

This movie just failed to grab me at all.  It wasn't a bad movie, though.  I just couldn't get in to it.  But then I realized that they made it like the first Spiderman comic: for teens.  The reason Spiderman took off was that the hero was in the same demographic as the comic book readers.

So this DVD went off to the "give away" pile.

So now the DVD queue is empty.

(Well, that's not quite true.  Dawn has the Little (out)House on the Prarie box set there, but I'll only watch that with her.)

Pocket Computer 4 printer (more)

So, here's more details about what I did (along with pictures).

The green/black wires used to be hooked up to the battery.  The yellow/purple (hard to see since I cut most of them away - near where the black/green wires attach to the circuit board) used to be hooked up to the AC adapter plug.

The green wire is negative and it's hooked up to the center pin.  The AC adapter that I used...

is something I picked up at the "junk store" and is just a 6V power supply.  I normally use these with my TRS-80 Model 100/102s.

The original battery pack was a set of 4 AAA NiCd rechargeables, so 6V was right.

Side note: I tried a couple of other "6"V power supplies, but they were showing me 9-10V on my volt meter.  Strange.

Anyway...  it's working.

Sorry for the sideways video.  I had hoped that it would have auto rotated.

All I did was a simple program that loops 1-20 and displays the number and the number multiplied by 10.  I used Mode 7 to send the output to the printer.

Notes:
1. This will not work with the cassette interface hooked up.  Only with the printer directly connected.  I don't know why.  But since I use the cassette interface so rarely, I probably won't look into it.
2. You must have the power supplied to the printer before turning the PC-4 on.  Otherwise, you'll get an Err 9.

But overall, I'm pretty happy.  I liked working with these.  It was a nice learning experience.