Notices by Ding Dang Trevor Flowers (trevorflowers@machines.social)

If you'll be around Seattle on October 5 and 6 and you're into #retrocomputing then you're in luck because those are the spacetime coordinates for the Fall Interim Computer Festival run by the fine folks of @SDF.
https://sdf.org/icf/

@foone I imagine a mouse that you can plug into a 2D printer to print a page of config info. 😸

After a ~year of development, the 1:3 scale working VT100 terminal is ready to go!
🎉
https://store.transmutable.com/l/small-vt-100
🎉
It has a tiny working USB keyboard with ~80 keys. It has a cute little 3.5" display panel. It may be the cutest thing I've ever created but you tell me!
🤷
To celebrate the completion of what turned out to be a bear of a project, for one week there's a $75 discount code for friends of smol retros: DINGDANGFRIENDS
🛁
Ok, time for me to take a bath and weep for exhausted joy.

This is your friendly reminder that I make and sell delightful miniature retrocomputers like TRS-80s, Osborne Ones, and the occasional big friends like Connection Machines and Crays.
I'm a retired nerd who's living the dream. Well, if your dream is working in your garage on tiny art machines. 😺 ⚙️
#retrocomputing #miniatures #trs80 #cray #shamelessSelfPromotion
https://store.transmutable.com/

This is a thoughtful piece about the balancing act of making physical things. How long should they work? What do recycling, repair, and durability bring to the equation? Whether you're making one-offs or runs of 110k, I think this is worth your time.
#manufacturing #machining
https://www.core77.com/posts/132088/Fantastic-Industrial-Design-Student-Work-How-Long-Should-Objects-Last

@foone Like, does it Bluetooth to a PC?

Friends, if Microsoft tries to squeeze you to buy a new computer to run version 11 when every new version of Windows gets worse and adds ads then please consider that more than 100 million people use Linux on their desktop computer, including people who make all sorts of projects with videos, illustrations, digital photographs, laser cuttings, animations, paper media, CAD, CAM, 3D printed stuff, circuit boards, etc.
Will it be exactly the same as Windows? No.
Can it be awesome? Yes.

@foone How is the keyboard? I have the Hand386 and basically can't stand to type on it.

I'm looking forward to receiving the open hardware music player, #tangara, but now I greedily want similarly hackable wireless earbuds. I would insta-back a crowdfunding campaign for that from the Tangara team.

I'm pretty excited by this news from the #KiCAD 8 announcement page: "With the help of 8 new librarians joining the effort, the library gained over 1500 new symbols and 760 footprints, and had thousands of updates to fix or improve existing parts."
https://www.kicad.org/blog/2024/02/Version-8.0.0-Released/

If you haven't messed with PeerTube, it's sort of like Mastodon but for videos. The nice folks at @feditips have put together a "What is PeerTube" intro with a bunch of fun video playlists over on their PeerTube instance: https://fedi.video/

@murph No, the logo and power indents of top of the VIC-20, please.

@murph It did! Thank you. If you have a moment to take another photo, I don't have a close-up and clear photo of the logo and power insets in the on the top of the machine. I think I'm going to print the logo on vinyl so I'll need to recreate it in inkscape.

So it begins.
#FreeCAD #miniatures #retrocomputing #vic20

A bit of progress on the VIC-20 case.

Quick question for #retrocomputing folks:
My Patreon members voted for the VIC-20 as my next retrocomputer miniature and I'd like to create a display to go with it. However, I'm not sure which one is most appropriate.
❓
If you use(d) a VIC-20, what's a classic display to pair with it?
💻
(image credit: By Evan-Amos - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38582541)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIC-20#

Oh, hai tiny floppy disk organizer but for micro SD cards.

So, the thing about the GRiD Compass is that in 2023 dollars it cost more than $25k. Can you imagine what kind of laptop we could put together for $25k?! Alternatively, I suspect that I could design a laptop roughly as capable with a BOM cost of less than $50.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/nasas-original-laptop-the-grid-compass

If you're bummed that you missed the tiny TRS-80 Model III models then have no fear, I have parts for more sitting on my bench that just need finishing and assembly. I'll announce it here when they land in the store but if you also want email then here's where you can sign up: https://buttondown.email/TransmutableUpdates
I'm also working on a version that has a tiny TFT display and a wee QT Py microcontroller board. It'll be significantly more expensive but ding dang it's cute!
#miniatures #retrocomputing #trs80

I wonder how difficult it would be to bring up a BASIC editor and interpreter on an @adafruit QT Py and EyeSPI display. Those would fit into a roughly 1:6 scale TRS-80 Model III. I found a few BASIC interpreters in portable C but the editor might be tricky.
#retrocomputing #trs80 #miniatures
https://www.adafruit.com/product/5700
https://www.adafruit.com/product/5206