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ArsTechnica has a fun project--hacking a TRS-80 to get online:
The true test of a man's patience is crimping pins onto the end of a cable that leads to building a custom serial cable—especially if it's the first time you've even handled a serial cable in a decade. So as I searched under my desk, using my phone for a flashlight, I wondered whether I had finally found the IT project that would send me over the edge. On a recent day, I set out to turn my recently acquired vintage Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 computer into a working Internet terminal. And at this moment, I crawled on the floor looking for a DB-25 connector's little gold pin that I had dropped for the sixth—or maybe sixteenth—time.
Thankfully, I underestimated my patience/techno-masochism/insanity. Only a week later, I successfully logged in to Ars' editorial IRC channel from the Model 100. And seeing as this machine first saw the market in 1983, it took a substantial amount of help: a Raspberry Pi, a little bit of BASIC code, and a hidden file from the website of a certain Eric S. Raymond.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:04PM
I've still got a TRASH80 w/16K extended color in the closet next to the IBM model 68 (luggable). Not sure why though...
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:28AM
Here is what I don't get...if he had to use an Rpi, a device more than capable of surfing the net on its own, just to get the thing to work? Well then why not just use the Rpi instead of adding all those extra hoops and bullshit?
I'm a PC shop guy and we are all about being packrats and trying to find new uses for old hardware, I've taken ancient office boxes and slapped DSL Linux on them to turn them into accounting machines for churches that have no budget for gear, rigged up old laptops so some single mom can have something for her kid to do his schoolwork on, i GET that kind of stuff. but in this case you are slaving something more powerful to make something less powerful work and am I the only one that finds that kinda wasteful and dumb? At least the C64 mods are just using homebrew OSes and modded ethernet cards and the like so all the actual gruntwork is being exclusively handed to the C64, but to me this feels like taking the guts out of a PC and stuffing it into some old calc just so you can say you have a 75 calc that plays DOOM, just seems like a waste of hardware that could be doing the job much better than what he ended up with, am I wrong?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Monday August 10 2015, @08:35PM
agreed, it is not aesthetically pleasing, but sometimes things are fun to do just because...
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge